This is a common enough question that I'm going to try to answer it myself rather than post it. The basic concept behind total depravity is that mankind is helpless without God. This is of course a common enough Christian idea. It is possible to explain total depravity in a way that most Christians would find acceptable. Some people have said or implied that the Fall did not affect certain parts of our nature. E.g. some Christians act as if the body and bodily desires are the source of evil, implying that without them, our intelligence and spirit would be OK. The point behind total depravity is that everything is touched by our corruption. Of course it doesn't mean that people are incapable of doing anything good. That would deny the simple fact that we see people doing good things all the time. However those good actions are invariably the result of a mixture of motivations, some of which may indeed involve love for others, but others also are selfish. This means that even actions that look good don't get us any spiritual "credit". (Luther used the term "civil righteousness" to refer to actions that are good in the sense of helping the community, even though in and of themselves that don't make us righteous in the Christian sense.) I think this explanation is probably acceptable to most Christians. However there's more involved. In the Lutheran and Calvinist analysis, salvation is entirely up to God. Luther believed it was important to Christians to know they their salvation depended completely upon God, and not on anything they did or anything about them. The problem was that he had a pessimistic (or realistic) enough view of himself to doubt that anything involving him was "good enough". If we have to repent before we can be saved, what if we don't remember everything we have done wrong? Or what if our repentance isn't complete, because we haven't really given up the desire to commit certain sins? He believed that the only concept that could give Christians any real assurance was one that placed the entire burden of salvation on God. In his analysis, we couldn't even be trusted to give God permission to save us, because if it were up to us, we'd say no. That's total depravity in the more radical sense. Unfortunately, history shows that this approach didn't provide real assurance either. The problem is that it leaves the definition of who is saved and who is not up to God. That's "predestination". And we can never know whether we're saved or not. So Luther replaced the problem of not being sure he had repented well enough with the problem of not being sure whether we are one of the elect. Oddly enough, this problem seems never to have occurred to Luther or Calvin. But in later Calvinism it was a big problem. Theologians spent a huge amount of time trying to come up with tests so that people could know whether they are one of the elect or not. People were haunted by the fear that they might not be one of those God had chosen to save. >The question that >comes to mind right away is "Where does the impulse come from >to come to know God?" If we cannot know or obey the Lord in our >natural state, how can we ever be gotten out of it? Christ came >to save, but is his offer of salvation not something we >have to respond to? The impulse come from God. In the Calvinist analysis, God's call comes before our response. In effect it creates our response. We certainly do have to respond, but that's not something we do on our own, without God. He gives us even the ability to respond to him. Without that, we'd reject him. >I would be interested in others denominations positions on this >subject, especially Roman Catholics. The Reformers' position was quite common during the Reformation. Indeed it is considered by most scholars to be the essential theological issue behind the Reformation. For the Reformers, "justification by faith" was closely tied to these ideas. Aside from Lutherans and some more conservative Presbyterian groups (the largest Presbyterian group -- the Presbyterian Church (USA) -- by and large no longer holds these views), Protestants have come to a position which is roughly the same as the Catholic one. This is very funny, because you hear Protestants quoting the catch-phrases of the Reformation, while their actual views on the most critical issues are those held by the Catholics during that period. The Catholic (and modern Protestant) position attempts to balance God's overall providence and human responsiblity. Calvin did in fact believe that people are responsible for their choices. But most people believe he and Luther overbalanced in favor of God's providence, not taking human responsibility properly into account. Catholics also believe that God's grace comes before our response, but they believe that ultimately the difference between who is saved and who is not is a difference in the people. Calvin believed that ultimately the difference is that God wants to save some people, but not others. Thus for Calvin the difference in whether God chooses to bestow enough grace on a given person to overcome their builtin opposition to God. The Catholic position agrees that there is is a builtin opposition which God's grace has to overcome, but doesn't think God has stacked things due to a specific intent to save some and not others. The distinction can get pretty small. In both theories, God understands that what he has done will be sufficient to cause some people to respond and others not to. The argument is in some sense over his intent, i.e. whether he specifically decided to save only certain people, or whether it just sort of comes out that way. I think even the Catholic position includes something like total depravity, though that term is so associated with Calvinism that they wouldn't use it. They do acknowledge that all aspects of our nature are corrupted and require God's grace to be regenerated. However the Catholic position does not agree that we are so bad off that we must be forced to accept God's grace. Again, to a large extent this is a difference not over the substance but how we are to describe the situation. Both agree that we require grace, that God offers this grace at least in some formal sense to all, and that the grace he offers is sufficient to save some and not others. A Calvinist believes that God has specifically arranged things to force people he wants to be saved. (Actually the term "force" is probably not one a Calvinist would use. This implies an external and impersonal action, God as rapist. That's not a fair description of the way God actually deals with us.) Others believe that he has not. The Calvinist evaluation of others is that they do not take human sin seriously enough. If anything is left up to us, this implies that the difference between the saved and those who aren't is that the saved somehow are enough better that they respond to God, while the damned are not. This means that the saved have some righteousness of their own, independent of God's grace.