David wrote:
<<<The Gap Theory, which was once very popular among evangelicals, involved
death before the Fall. In fact, most of the fossils were attributed to the
ruin of creation caused by the fall of Satan. I don't recall ever having
heard of Scofield being lambasted for this supposed heresy back before the
rise of Henry Morris's movement. This would lead me to suspect that the
propagandizing by Morris's followers has played a very major role in giving
people the idea that death before the Fall is heretical.
I believe that several pre-old earth theologians advocated animal death
before the fall, including Augustine and Calvin. Very slight effort on my
part has not located the relevant references. Various aspects of the
Genesis account were taken to indicate such death, including the lack of
need for being fruitful and multiplying unless there is attrition and the
meaninglessness of "you shall surely die" as a warning unless Adam and Eve
had some clue as to what it meant. >>>
I used to think that nonhuman death before the fall was a major theological
problem for evolution until I asked that question of why. Why is death and
killing a problem among amoral creatures? It is only a problem is one can
show that God intended animals to live forever and that killing (predation)
is wrong because nonhuman animals are moral agents. Given that I see no
evidence of either of those, I can now accept nonhuman death before the
fall.
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