Calvin, Barth, Schrader: The Depths of Depravity and the Reality of Freedom

The Reformed tradition of depth of human depravity and the reality of freedom speaks with a multifold voice. This paper explores three of those voices: two theologians—John Calvin, Karl Barth—and the contemporary writer and director, Paul Schrader. Though first two are theologians, and the third is a filmmaker, they all are working with and within a tradition, learning from it and arguing with it (as Alasdair MacIntyre argues is the nature of tradition, “an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined"). 

         Stated with lapidary succinctness, their ideas together affirm that human depravity is real, but in Christ, so is true freedom.

         Calvin, of course, defined the Reformed doctrine of total depravity in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, even if later Reformed theologians shaped to their own liking. As he wrote in Institutes 2.1.9, “Sin overturns the whole man. For this reason, I have said that all parts of the soul were possessed by sin after Adam deserted the fountain of righteousness. For not only did a lower appetite seduce him, but unspeakable impiety occupied the very citadel of his mind, and pride penetrated to the depths of his heart... Paul removes all doubt when he teaches that corruption subsists not in one part only, but that none of the soul remains pure or untouched by that mortal disease.” From Calvin we learn a simple theological conviction: we can never be surprised that sin exists—because it is endemic to each of us—nor can we be surprised by its depth. And necessarily, there is any place to take refuge because, as Romans 3:23 with commanding brevity, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

         Four hundred years later, Barth reinterpreted the pervasiveness  of human sin (though he indeed allergic to the word “depravity”) by taking a christological focus, principally in Church Dogmatics IV: The Doctrine of Reconciliation. Along the way, this method helped undermine a lurking erroneous theological direction, that human finitude causes sin. (Cf. the thought of Reinhold Niebuhr, who does not define finitude as sin, but edges closely in that direction.) This would undermine the central doctrine of Christianity: that God became human in Jesus. Instead, in the Incarnation of Jesus the Christ, Barth unveiled what it looked like for a finite man to embody true human freedom. “The reality of sin cannot be known or described except in relation to the One who has vanquished it.” Sin has depth, but the redemption of Christ reaches deeper still to reveal the nature of true human freedom. The embodiment of true freedom in Jesus the Christ is a freedom from sin, and even more, toward love and empathy.

         Paul Schrader updates this teaching in late 20th and early 21st century contexts through films like Hardcore, Taxi Driver, and First Reformed. From Schrader, we learn (as Richard Mouw has done in Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport) that any person can become overwhelmed by sin because the power to do so lies just below the surface of every human life. We don’t need to find or to designate a “monster”—i.e., an entirely different form of human being—to see the depths of depravity. For example, in First Reformed, Reverend Ernst Toller confronts and overcome evil through his faith, even in the face of sometimes overwhelming despair. Nevertheless, freedom, in Schrader’s films, is more elusive, but can emerge unexpectedly.

         Taken then in systematic, but not historical order: From Calvin, we learn that in the Reformed tradition sin is pervasive and thus total both individually and societally; from Schrader, that freedom may be surprising, and the reality of sin is not reserved for “monsters”; and from Barth, that our nature contains sinful intentions and actions, and its overcoming can only be fully realized in Christ. Through these three interpreters of the Reformed tradition (one of which was of course the founder), we discover that depravity lurks always beneath the surface of human life, but that freedom is possible, and ultimately assured, in Christ.