Total inability is the doctrine that human pride most fiercely resists, for it strips man of the one thing he most wishes to keep: the power to save himself, or at least to contribute the decisive turn. The denials run along a spectrum. Pelagianism asserts a full natural ability to obey God and choose salvation, sin having done no damage to the will. Semi-Pelagianism grants that grace is needed but lodges the first move in man, who by his own unaided will takes the initial step toward God, whereupon grace assists. Arminianism, more subtly, concedes that fallen man cannot turn of himself, but holds that a universal prevenient grace restores to every man the ability to cooperate or resist—so that the decisive choice still rests with the sinner’s libertarian will.

Each of these, however it adjusts the dosage, preserves the same fatal core: the ultimate power to come to God resides in the unregenerate man. Scripture flatly denies it. The natural man cannot know the things of the Spirit; the carnal mind cannot be subject to God’s law; those in the flesh cannot please Him; no man can come to Christ unless the Father draw him; the dead cannot raise themselves. These are statements not of difficulty but of impossibility. Total inability does not destroy human responsibility—man is unable because he is unwilling, enslaved by his own love of sin—but it does destroy human boasting, and it casts the sinner entirely upon the sovereign mercy of God, who must give the new birth before any man will believe. Salvation is of the Lord, from first to last.