127 Kay,

You asked:

Perhaps you can unmuddled something for me – if a person believes in calvinist “total depravity” of the human intellect, how can they ever be certain that they are actually born again? How can they even be certain about their own “total depravity?”

No one in that mindset can really know for sure. The biggest problem is that there is the teaching that God allows some of the unregenerate to merely believe that they are saved but since He doesn’t give them the “gift” of faith, their belief is really a deception. No one can know for sure, in this thinking, whether the faith that they have is an actual “gift” or if they are one of the deceived ones who only think they have saving faith. This is one of the heartbreaks of Calvinism that causes many to question their own salvation.

Frankly because of the teaching, it is absolutely impossible for anyone to say for sure if they are really one of the elect according to Calvinist doctrine. The only way that they will ever know for sure is if they persevere to the end. So until the day that they die or until the day that Christ comes, they can never really know for sure.

I listened to a debate with James White a Calvinist apologist and he was asked about the assurance of his own salvation. He would not answer that question but spoke about the assurance about other people’s salvation. In other words he turned the question around to be how can he know for sure that other people are saved? But that wasn’t the question that he was asked. However I can see that those who really know Calvinism and its teaching very well, do not claim that they can know for sure that they are one of the elect. They can only hope that they will persevere and not be one of those whom God has chosen to mock by giving them a fake belief that isn’t a saving faith. How very, very sad.