Notebook

Prevenient grace basically defeats the purpose of Romans 3. Not by denying it: Romans 3 stays true, but it gets turned into a lower layer, a description of what we would be on our own, with a second layer sitting on top of it. The second layer is grace applied to everyone, and it is the only one anybody actually lives in. So when you say there is none righteous, no not one, you have to say which layer you mean, because on that account the sentence is never true of anyone you have met.

Where I land

I agree with part of the premise. Human nature is not something apart from God, since we are made in his image. But we have defiled that image, and in that sense we are separated from him.

Here is the split. Our mere nature just is the defiled image, and all of Romans 3 is true of us right now, in reality. There is no second state stacked on top of it. God gives grace, yes, but the grace he gives does not make us better. I mean that generally, about human beings as such, not about what he does in the man he regenerates.

What I still have to check

Whether that is actually their position, put that way, or whether I have rebuilt it into something easier to answer. Worth reading Wesleyan and Arminian writers in their own words before I set any of this down as a position.

• Romans 3:10–18
• Genesis 1:26–27
• James 3:9
• Ephesians 2:1–5
• Related: Common Grace and Saving Grace, The Doctrines of Grace

I do not have an answer to this one yet.

Is the way around it basically that God is the creator of a being that created evil? That seems to move the question back a step rather than close it, since he made that being knowing what it would become.

The part I actually want to know: are there interpretations that just bite the bullet and say God is the creator of evil, and that without it we would be worse off, or he could not glorify himself as fully? I want to know whether anybody says that openly, and what it costs them, before I decide what I think.

The boundary this has to sit inside

The 1689 says both halves at once. God ordains whatever comes to pass, and he is not the author of sin. Any answer I give has to hold both, or admit which one it is giving up.

• Isaiah 45:7
• Genesis 50:20
• Acts 4:27–28
• Romans 9:17–23
• James 1:13–17
• Related: 1689 London Baptist Confession, chapters 3 and 5

Of course it is. It says where things land, not how they feel on the way, and it never promised the road would be good. It also carries a clause most people drop when they quote it.

Which puts it next to the question above. Whatever answer I end up giving about God and evil has to carry the evil he ordains all the way through to the good it produces, without softening either end.

• Romans 8:28–30
• Genesis 50:20

If we believe we have eternal life, the question of how to spend this one changes shape. The useful question is not what matters. Everything that matters still matters there. It is what is only available here.

Marriage

Jesus answers this one directly, and the answer is not that we will stop wanting a family. It is that marrying is not a thing there at all.

Luke keeps the reason attached. Those counted worthy to attain to that age neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot even die anymore. Marriage belongs to an age where people die and have to be replaced.

Evangelizing, which is the big one

Once we are in eternity we do not get to go back and say I should have talked to that person. I am not saying it failed to work out for the best. I am saying I could have done better, and God could have worked through me to do it.

What else goes on the list

This is the open half. Candidates, each of which needs a text before I would put it in writing: suffering and enduring it, believing without seeing, repenting, giving when giving costs something, forgiving someone who is still able to wrong me, and telling the truth about Christ in front of people who can still say no.

• Matthew 22:30
• Luke 20:34–36
• Romans 10:14–15
• 2 Corinthians 5:7
• Revelation 21:4
• Related: The Intermediate State, Christian Life