On June 12, 2025, Air India Flight 171, a Boeing
787 Dreamliner headed from India to London, crashed
just 32 seconds after takeoff into the campus
of BJ Medical College. 241 people on board were
killed. 19 people on the ground were killed.
Investigators later reported that moments after
liftoff, both engine fuel control switches were
moved into the cutoff position. starving the
engines of fuel. Why that happened remains unclear.
One passenger survived. She missed the flight
because she was delayed in traffic and arrived
too late to board. When she later learned the
plane had crashed, she said, This is totally
a miracle for me. And that response makes sense.
It feels like a miracle. But 241 families lost
someone that day. Nineteen more died on the ground.
If we call one miracle, what do we call the other?
That tension may go all the way back to Genesis.
If you've been tracking with parts 1 and 2, you
know the direction we're moving. In part 1, we
asked whether Genesis actually calls Adam perfect,
or whether it calls creation very good. In part
2, we explored how that distinction shapes how
we understand the fall. If Adam began fully mature,
fully ordered, fully complete, then the fall
becomes total collapse. If Adam began good, but
immature, with growth ahead of him, then the
fall becomes distortion, interruption, corruption,
not annihilation. Now in part three, we follow
that distinction forward. Because one imagination
of the beginning leads logically to one view
of depravity, one view of grace, one view of
sovereignty, and even one view of the cross.
If you walk into an average evangelical church
and ask, does everything happen for a reason?
Many people will say yes. If you ask, was this
tragedy part of God's plan? Many will say yes.
Maybe softly, maybe carefully, but yes. If you
ask, could things have been otherwise? That question
makes people uneasy. Why? Because many modern
evangelicals inhabit what I call an inevitability
instinct. History feels scripted. Events feel
ordained. Outcomes feel fixed. They may reject
formal predestination. They may call themselves
Arminian. They may distance themselves from Calvinism.
But culturally, they often breathe air shaped
by Reformation anthropology. And that anthropology
depends on how you imagine the fall. And that
imagination may hinge on one word. Not very good,
but perfect. There was a time when I believed
the logic of Lorraine Bettner was airtight. Bettner's
The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination became
one of the clearest systematic defenses of Calvinism
in modern America. What struck me was not tone.
It was structure. He began with total depravity.
If humanity is spiritually dead and capable of
initiating anything toward God, then salvation
must be entirely God's work. If salvation is
entirely God's work, then election cannot be
conditioned on human response. It must be unconditional.
If election is unconditional, atonement cannot
merely make salvation possible. It must actually
accomplish redemption for those elected. If grace
accomplishes what it intends, it cannot ultimately
fail. It must be irresistible. And if God secures
salvation through sovereign grace, perseverance,
or once saved, always saved, must follow. Tulip
is not five disconnected doctrines. It is a chain.
Break total depravity, and the rest loosens.
Grant total depravity, the inability to will
salvific good, to will rightly toward salvation,
and the rest follows. If humanity cannot will
toward God, grace must override. If grace overrides,
sovereignty must be meticulous. If sovereignty
is meticulous, history unfolds according to decree.
The system works. I never questioned whether
Calvinism was logical. It is. My question became
whether its starting premise is correct. Because
if the first premise shifts, everything downstream
shifts, and that premise rests on an assumption
about Genesis. Before I go further, I want to
say something clearly. Despite these differences,
I call evangelicals my brothers. I call Catholics
my brothers. This is not abstract for me. My
children attend an evangelical private school.
My grandfather was a Methodist pastor. My grandmother
and grandfather are among the most genuine Christians
I've ever known. My father attended a fundamentalist
Bible college. Some of my closest friends are
Reformed. This is not an outsider critique. This
is family. I am grateful for their love for Jesus
Christ, for their confession of the Trinity,
for their dedication to Scripture, for their
missionary zeal, for their evangelistic urgency.
for apologetic courage, for serious academic
labor. Even for music, they've developed songs
that have shaped worship for millions. This episode
is not about tearing that down. It is about examining
assumptions. Because brothers can reason together,
the issue is not whether evangelicals love Christ.
The issue is how we imagine the fall and what
logically follows from that imagination. Most
of us assume Genesis says perfect. In the book
of Genesis, 1 .31 Creation is called Tov Me 'od.
Very good. Not metaphysically complete. Not fully
actualized. Again, Genesis reads like a beginning,
not a final state. Because Adam's given a vocation.
Be fruitful. Multiply. Fill the earth. Subdue
it. He names animals. There's a growth in knowledge.
He must eat from the tree of life. He must ongoingly
depend. on the source of life God has given him,
which sustains him. Before the fall, God says
it is not good that man should be alone. There
is development built into the text. Very good
is not perfect. To understand how perfect became
instinctive, let's look at a few confessional
documents that shaped Western Christianity. The
39 articles were drafted during the English Reformation
under Elizabeth I to define the doctrine of the
Church of England. They were meant to stabilize
English Christianity after decades of doctrinal
upheaval. Article 9 states, Original sin standeth
not in the following of Adam, as the Pelagians
do vainly talk, but it is the fault and corruption
of the nature of every man that naturally is
engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby
man is very far gone from original righteousness.
and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so
that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the
Spirit. So the language, very far gone, inclined
to evil, the flesh is always in opposition to
the Spirit. The Westminster Confession of Faith
intensifies it. Man, by his fall into a state
of sin, hath wholly lost... all ability of will
to any spiritual good accompanying salvation.
Holy lost all ability. The 1689 London Baptist
Confession of Faith says the exact same. This
is not weakness. It is inability to will anything
good towards your salvation. Now, many assume
Armenians soften this, but listen carefully.
John Wesley writes, By nature every man is dead
in sin, wholly corrupt, that in his flesh dwelleth
no good thing, that he is void of all power to
do good, and that he has no free will unless
it be to do evil. And hence he can do no good
work, no, not even think a good thought, till
the grace of God prevents him. That's strong
language. Jacob Arminius writes, In his lapsed
and sinful state, man is not capable, of and
by himself, either to think, to will, or to do
that which is really good. But it is necessary
for him to be regenerated and renewed in his
intellect, affections, or will, and in all his
powers, by God and Christ, through the Holy Spirit,
that he may be qualified rightly to understand,
esteem, consider, will, and perform that which
is truly good. Notice, not capable, to think,
to will, to do that which is really good. The
difference between Calvinism and Arminianism
was not whether the collapse was real. It was
how grace operates. Both retain the collapse.
And to quote someone more modern, Chuck Smith,
the founder of Calvary Chapel Churches, Man in
his natural state is spiritually dead. He cannot
respond to God. He cannot understand the things
of the Spirit of God. He is incapable of coming
to God apart from the work of the Holy Spirit.
The language persists. Collapse, inability, deadness.
Calvinists and Arminians debated the mechanics,
but the anthropology remained. This is why even
mainstream evangelicalism, outside confessional
Calvinism, retained perseverance language. Assurance
grounded in a moment of regeneration. Age of
accountability debates which presume inherited
guilt, inherited incapacity, or inherited condemnation.
A sharp dualism between soul and body. A framework
where salvation is transferred from eternal torment
to eternal bliss at a decisive moment. These
instincts assume something. They assume depravity
means inability to will towards your salvation.
And once that is granted, the rest follows. One
imagination leads to another. Orthodoxy does
not deny corruption. Athanasius of Alexandria
writes in On the Incarnation, For having turned
from things eternal to things corruptible, they
became themselves corruptible and were held fast
by the law of death. Held fast by death. Not
erased. Not metaphysically annihilated. Held.
Maximus the Confessor goes deeper. Maximus distinguishes
between the natural will, what your will would
naturally do, functioning as God intended, the
faculty itself, and the fallen mode of willing,
sometimes called the gnomic mode. The faculty
of will remains intact because it belongs to
human nature. If the will were destroyed or rendered
non -functional, humanity would cease to be human.
But the mode of willing becomes distorted by
death, ignorance, and fear. In Western anthropology,
inability means the will cannot will. salvific
good until regenerated. In orthodox thought,
inability is more like this. Imagine a compass
placed near a strong magnet. The needle still
exists. It still points. But it is pulled off
course. The faculty remains. The direction is
distorted. Because death exerts force. Fear exerts
force. Satan exploits our mortality. The will
is not erased. It is enslaved. This is why Paul
can say, those who are in the flesh cannot please
God. And yet, also command, if, by the Spirit,
you put to death the deeds of the body, you will
live. The will is darkened, not annihilated.
The inability is bondage under death, not ontological
erasure. Someone living as though death is the
ultimate cannot please the God of life. That
is serious. That is not light. That is slavery.
If Adam was perfect, and the fall produced infinite
guilt against an infinite God, then punishment
must be infinite. And Christ must absorb infinite
wrath. That system coheres. But if the fall introduced
mortality, corruption, and fear, then the cross
confronts death. Christ enters death. He destroys
death. He offers himself voluntarily. He secures
forgiveness. He restores communion. One imagination
leads to one atonement logic. Another imagination
leads to another. Death enslaves the human race.
Fear of death drives violence, greed, pride,
lust, control, envy, domination, and Satan holds
humanity in bondage through that fear. Corruption
spreads to every faculty of the human person.
That is not a light diagnosis. That is cosmic
slavery. In the epistle to the Hebrews, Chapter
2, verses 14 and 15. For as much then as the
children are partakers of flesh and blood, that's
us. We partake of this body. He also himself
likewise took part of the same, that through
death he might destroy him that had the power
of death, that is, the devil. and deliver them
who through fear of death were all their lifetime
subject to bondage. All their lifetime subject
to bondage. The question is not whether sin is
serious. The question is what makes it serious,
how it destroys, and why. Very good is a long
way from perfect, and we have not yet exhausted
what that means. Next time, we will look more
closely at fear of death and how it becomes the
engine of sins of every kind.