Clogged Pipes? Or Totally Depraved?
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Karl posts about works, and Jennifer responds. She pulls in an analogy from one of her seminary professors about pipes and grace: “[Balthasar] sees us as clogged pipes, and grace is Draino. Barth would say the pipes are rusty and no good. Destroy the pipes. We need new pipes! Christ can give us new pipes. Or, does Christ unclog our pipes? Does Barth make grace too disruptive? I guess this is the classic Catholic-Reform debate.”
Therefore, the pipe in this analogy is human nature. In response, the pipes are not totally depraved. We did not irreparably malform human nature. That is categorically false. We do not have the power to entirely pervert what God created good; we have introduced a disease to it, but Christ is still able to heal it. He does not destroy human nature and start over. To return to the analogy of the pipe, it is clogged, not rusty.
If human nature is by nature sinful, the Incarnation is impossible. If the human nature has become sinful by nature, then Christ could not have taken it on, without taking on sin.