> Overview: The problem of death is central to the Gospel and is
> antithetical to life. How does Theistic Evolution (TE) handle the
> theological problem of the origin of death? I propose that by accepting
> death before the creation of humanity the Evolutionist, to remain
> consistent, should not be prepared to accept the inspiration of
> Scripture or the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
> Theological Problem for the Christian Theist: If death was present before
> people, then death is a part of the natural created order and is not the
> consequence of disobedience to God.
As you might expect, this issue has been debated several times in this
group over the past year. Therefore, I'm taking the liberty of piecing
together parts of three posts which I have archived, and I am attaching
them to the end of this one. I hope you'll find them useful; they should
give you several perspectives (from TEs and old-earth PCs) at once.
(I hope I'm not breaking etiquette here, and I hope Steve Jones and Glenn
Morton won't mind that I am quoting them. The posts I'm quoting should be
on the www archives of this group, and I'm including the posting date and
subject heading so that you can look up the surrounding posts to get
context.)
But first, some quick comments on what you wrote:
> Consider: If death, both physically and spiritually, is not a
> consequence of human disobedience, then the scriptures are in error.
Scriptures are not in error, but our interpretations sometimes are.
> If the scriptures are in error, then why would God send his Son into the
> world to reverse the curse of death. Why would Jesus subscribe to
> receiving the wrath of God for the disobedience of humanity? Jesus had
> done nothing wrong, and so did not deserve to die - he willingly gave
> himself up for the likes of you and me. Only after his work had been
> completed, God's penalty being satisfied, did He rise from the grave to
> destroy the works of death and Hades. Please note that the work was
> completed on both planes. On the spiritual plane God restored our
> communion with Himself and reconciled us through spiritual rebirth and
> regeneration. In the physical plane God will reverse the effects of
> physical death with the bodily resurrection to come.
Suppose, for a moment, that physical death was a natural part of creation
and not a result of human disobedience. In that case, human disobedience
would still be responsible for
(1) a loss of our good relationship with God in THIS life; and
(2) our unworthiness to be resurrected into the new creation.
Jesus' life, death, and resurrection reverse both of those effects, and
his resurrection is the guaranty of our own.
> Conclusion: By compromising the doctrine of Special Creation with those
> who are "in the world" and are not spiritually regenerated, we have made
> the Word of God conform to the principles of natural man. This is not
> an issue of methodological science, but of philosophical naturalism.
> The Church, by holding the Word of God up to the standards of the
> predominately atheistic scientific community, has nullified the
> authenticity and validity of the Scriptures.
In this paragraph, you seem to have equated "the doctrine of Special
Creation" with scriptures themselves. If more than one interpretation is
supported by scripture, we can --- and should --- use what we learn from
life's experiences (and from studying creation), under the guiding of the
Holy Spirit, to determine which interpretation is correct.
===============================================================
Here are some reasons offered by some theologians for why it is (human)
spiritual death, not physical death, which is the result of the Fall.
(These reasons are based only on the biblical text and are independent of
what they believe about evolution.)
--Physical death for sinless human beings is not necessarily a bad thing,
but rather a transition to a new life.
--If Adam and Eve were naturally immortal before the fall, why was there a
"Tree of Life" in the Garden? If they were naturally immortal, they
wouldn't have needed the Tree.
--God told Adam and Eve that "on the day that you eat [of the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil], you will die." But they did not physically
die that same day. This suggests spiritual death.
--After they sinned, God drove them out of the Garden to keep them from
eating of the Tree of Life.
So it would seem that (human) physical immortality was something
ATTAINABLE before the fall, but not necessarily a "natural" part of human
nature.
==============================================================
Here are some theological reasons for expecting that animal death is a
natural part of creation, not something added after the fall:
---(from Stephen Jones, 17-April-1995, Subj: Re: Divine Dish)
1. The Bible writers nowhere indicate that they find the death of animals is a problem. In Psalm 104:21 the Psalmist sees animals eating other animals as part of the natural order and as such a manifestation of wisdom of God:
"The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God...O LORD, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all" (Ps 104:21,24 KJV)
Even sharks are presumably included in this:
"So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts....These wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give them their meat in due season. That thou givest them they gather: thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good" (Ps 104:25,27-28 KJV).
2. Jesus saw nature as fundamentally good, and had no problem with animal death. His statement in Matthew 6:26 "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them", presumably includes predatory birds? In fact he confirmed that the death of sparrows (and therefore presumably of all animals), cannot occur unless it is willed by God: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny ? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father" (Mt 10:29).
3. I have been greatly helped in the problem of suffering in the animal world, by Robert E. D. Clark, in his book "The Universe: Plan or Accident?" (1961). Clark says:
"Long before man came upon the scene there was Darwinian struggle in nature- the strong did kill and eat the weak and predatory animals were so made that they could live by feeding one upon another. Can we imagine that a good God would have made them so?
To this we may, of course, reply that the struggle idea in biology has been grossly exaggerated and that the element of co-operation in nature is a much more marked feature than that of struggle. Nevertheless, it is certainly true that animals do prey upon one another for food, and the blame for this state of affairs most certainly cannot be placed upon man.
Yet, on this matter there is a surprising degree of misunderstanding. It is useless to complain that nature is made according to such and such a pattern unless we can suggest some better way which it might have been made.
Suppose, then, that animals never ate one another but always died naturally. Would their suffering be less than it is? It certainly would not. The wounded and the infirm would linger on inde finitely in joyless existence, only to die of starvation when physically incapable of finding their food. But suppose animals were immortal -what then? The answer comes that over-multiplication would soon bring universal death from starvation. Alternatively, if the were immortal but had no progeny, accidents, frost or drought night cause the species to die out.
However we regard the matter, the conviction grows that the actual state of affairs that we find in nature is the only possible one -short of one in which, by special miracle, God healed every broken wing or brought a special dish of food to every animal unable to fend for itself...."
(Clark R.E.D. "The Universe: Plan or Accident?", Third edition, 1961, Paternoster, London, pp214-215).
----
(from Glenn Morton, 10-August-1995, Subj: new view part 2 (long))
Adam's immortality
There has historically been an objection to evolution because of the belief that death entered the world through Adam. Romans 5:12 states, "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world {cosmos}, and death through sin and so death spread to all men, because all sinned." Notice that the verse says death spread to all men. It does not say that death spread to the animals or plants. Death was man's punishment for sin. Man was the only creature given the possibility of immortality by God. The cows, goats and my cat never had that possibility. To interpret this verse as implying that the death of animals prior to the advent of sin is taking the verse further than it wants to go. The very fact that God created reproduction argues very strongly that death, at least for the animals was part of the creation. Bacterial reproduction, if unchecked by death and stasis, would cover the earth in less than a week's time. Cockroaches are well renown for their reproductive success. Do we really think that God created a world in which cockroaches would continue to multiply without end and never die? No, death was part of nature at the creation of Adam, but Adam had the opportunity to not participate in that death had He made the correct choice. The second passage is the Romans 8:20-23: "For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now."(NAS) The creation suffers from man's sin far beyond mere death. Man's sin has upset the ecological balance, we are not being good stewards of the earth (and I don't think we even know how to be). But the above passage does not say that creation was subject to death, but to futility. No matter what man does in the area of conservation and ecology, he faces a Hobson's choice. Save one species but at the expense of another. By allowing the saving the wolf, we run the risk of killing off other species because of their predation. Suppose the wolf captures the last black-footed ferret?
=======================
(from Stephen Jones, 23-September-1995, Subj: RE: "Bondage to decay")
... Creation was "very good" but not perfect - Adam had to "subdue" it (Gn 1:28). The word "subdue" here is very strong:
"...the primal creation. We shall hardly expect the latter to be a state of perfect bliss, an idyllic paradise. We shall rather be ready to understand the `good' and 'very good' of Genesis in terms of the stern (but loving) programme the Creator had in mind for his new creature, man. At this programme we must now look. It is expressed in the mandate given to man in Genesis 1:28 which reads, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion . . . over every living thing . . .' This mandate thus charged man with `subduing' the earth. The Hebrew word for 'subdue' is kabas, and in all its other occurrences in Scripture (about twelve in all) it is used as a term indicating strong action in the face of opposition, enmity or evil. Thus, the land of Canaan was 'subdued' before Israel, though the Canaanites had chariots of iron; (Josh 17:8; 18:1) weapons of war are 'subdued', so are iniquities. (Zech. 9:15 RV; Mic. 7:19). The word is never used in a mild sense. It indicates, I believe, that Adam was sent into a world where all was not sweetness and light for in such a world what would tbere be to subdue?" (Spanner D.C., "Biblical Creation and the Theory of Evolution", 1987, Paternoster, p53)
Decay is an essential element of the physical universe. Adam and Eve's need to eat was an indication of decay, in terms of the Second Law of Thermodynamics:
"Moreover, it can be shown from Genesis that the Second Law must have been in operation before Adam sinned. We need to eat as a consequence of the Second Law, because the available energy in our bodies decreases and must be replenished from an external source. And both man and the animals needed food before man fell, according to Genesis 1.29,30. This implies that they we subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics from the moment of their creation." (Hayward A., "Creation and Evolution: Rethinking the Evidence from Science and the Bible", 1995, Bethany House Publishers, p184)
It may be that the Fall has accentuated the decay that was already present, but it cannot be maintained that there was no decay before the Fall.
[...]
Paul discusses *Human* death. There is no warrant to extend this to mean no death before the fall. Ramm says:
"Ideal conditions existed only in the Garden. There was disease and death and bloodshed in Nature long before man sinned. As we have shown in the chapters on geology, we cannot attribute all this death, disease, and bloodshed to the fall of Satan. Certainly the Scriptures do not teach that death entered the world through Satan. There is not one clear, unequivocal, unambiguous line in the entire Bible which would enable us to point to the vast array of fossil life and state that all the death here involved is by reason of the sin and fall of Satan.
Life can live only on life. All diet must be protoplasm. Are we to believe that the lion and tiger, the ant-eater and the shark, were all vegetarians till Adam fell, and that the sharp claws of the big cats and the magnificent array of teeth in a lion's mouth were for vegetarian purposes only? One might affirm that such a creation could hardly be called good, but that is pre-judging what good means. The cycle of Nature is an amazing thing, and the relationship of life to life sets up a magnificent balance of Nature. Unless a very large number of certain forms of life are consumed, e.g. insects and fish, the earth would be shortly overpopulated with them. Some fish lay eggs into the millions and if all such eggs hatched the ocean would shortly be all fish. Carnivorous animals and fish keep the balance of Nature.
Outside of the Garden of Eden were death, disease, weeds, thistles, thorns, carnivores, deadly serpents, and intemperate weather. To think otherwise is to run counter to an immense avalanche of fact. Part of the blessedness of man was that he was spared all of these things in his Paradise, and part of the judgment of man was that he had to forsake such a Paradise and enter the world as it was outside of the Garden, where thistles grew and weeds were abundant and where wild animals roamed and where life was possible only by the sweat of man's brow."
(Ramm B. "The Christian View of Science and Scripture", 1955, Paternoster, London, p233).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "There's nothing more exciting than science. You get | all the fun of sitting still, being quiet, writing | Loren Haarsma down numbers, paying attention. Science has it all!" | lhaarsma@opal.tufts.edu --Principal Skinner (_The_Simpsons_) |