Definition
Total depravity (Latin: depravatio totalis) is the Reformed teaching that the whole person — intellect, will, and emotion — is affected by sin, and that the fallen human being is, of himself, unable to please God or seek redemption. “Total” means not that the person is as evil as possible, but that no part of him is untouched by sin. In the corpus Warnock affirms the core of this teaching without naming it as Calvinist: the absolute inability of the fallen person is his hamartological ground-note.
Usage in the corpus
George Warnock
Warnock affirms the total depravity of the fallen nature without qualification: “it is not within the power of any man in Adam’s fallen race to present himself acceptably before God. There is none righteous, no not so much as one; and by the works of the law there shall no flesh be justified in God’s sight.” Scriptural basis: Rom. 3:9-31. [Warnock, The Feast of Tabernacles, Ch. 2]
Warnock also acknowledges the dormant potential for evil in the fallen nature: “Have we not all shuddered at the revelation of the great potential for evil that has arisen in our own nature? Have we not lamented over the fall of some great man, and wondered how one so mightily used of God could have been so completely overtaken?” The fallen nature contains a latent power that, once activated by spirits compatible with darkness, leads to terrible evil. [Warnock, Evening and Morning, Ch. 2]
At the same time, the fallen person is in his deepest nature negative — lacking the inner power for victory: “We are negative by nature, and victory is not ours by blindly refusing to acknowledge our own futility.” The practical consequence is a radical rejection of all human self-confidence: “God is consistently seeking to bring us to the place where we recognize the utter nothingness and futility of our whole being and way of life by nature.” [Warnock, Evening and Morning, Ch. 4]