Evolution once again

Creationism runs into the same problem, so this doesn't strike me as an issue unique to evolutionary, or theistic evolutionary theory.

It's perhaps with distinguishing between human death and animal death. Does Scripture anywhere say that animals, insects, bacteriophages, etc., weren't subject to death?

 

I think it goes to our misconception that there was no death of anything prior to sin.

Hello. If I pull a piece of asparagus out of the ground and munch it, the asparagus plant dies, or at least the part I munched did.

I think sometimes we need to go back and re-examine our theological presuppositions.

 

Yes. It seems to me the significance of death for Adam and Eve and humanity wasn't that death didn't have a role to play in creation (we're never told they're immortal, either), but that Adam and Eve and humanity are image-bearers of God. Death and image-bearers are two things that aren't supposed to mix, it's like, desecration in the truest and worst sense imaginable. That is, death as in the physical consequence and not just the spiritual consequence of separation.

 

I think the reference in Genesis to driving Adam and Eve out of the garden so they could no longer eat of the Tree of Life is significant here. It gives me the impression that humans were only immortal for as long as they had access to the Tree of Life. At the end of the Revelation the tree is back and we can eat freely from it, once we are in heaven and become immortal again.

Obviously, as the good Rabbi said, if Adam and Eve ate a plant then that part of the plant would die. At the time I don't think they were eating animals but there's no specific indication of whether or not animals would die. Presumably if they didn't eat from the Tree of Life they would be mortal and would eventually die.

 

Yeah, I tend to think that tree of life = in proper relation/relationship with God. So, it's not so much an actual fruit. A fruit you kill to live forever

 

I recall a discussion in another thread about whether it was a literal tree. If it is analogous to being in proper relationship with God it doesn't make sense to be turfed out of the garden to deny access to it, unless God is somehow restrained to the garden and we can't be in relationship with God unless we are physically in the garden.

Although I'm minded to think it was a literal tree it doesn't explicitly say so in Scripture, so it may be something metaphorical. I just don't think your metaphor works.

 

I get the sense that uprooting/eating something was not considered "death" within the context of the Biblical writers. Death seems limited to humans and animals.

 

That's the thing about an account that probably wasn't written as the literal history we modern audiences would like it to be. I do think there was a historical event that led to the fall of humanity like the one described, but I think there's more to the story than mere concrete descriptions.

 

Even then presumably things would have to die sooner or later to make room for other things. Otherwise when God said "let there be wriggling things that wriggle in the sea" and told them to multiply, what happens when they run out of sea and have to wriggle on the land instead? Even that assumes there's room on the land, and that the things that were already wriggling on the land haven't taken up all the space.

Arguably the call to Adam and Eve to multiply and dominate the earth makes a case for the tree of life not being a literal tree because if people had to eat from one tree to remain immortal I can only imagine the growing lines of people standing around waiting their turn to eat.

 

I think the concept of a "cruel food chain" potentially muddies the water. If we consider it cruel for a cat to catch and eat a mouse we need to ascribe human-like qualities to the mouse. When a cat bites a mouse the mouse dies more or less instantly so there's not a lot of suffering involved for the mouse. So from that perspective it's not necessarily cruel.

Can we assume that before the first sin this was a world filled with disease, earthquakes, hurricanes etc? I'm not sure we can specifically conclude that such things existed before the first sin. Scripture appears silent so it seems we can only speculate. It doesn't seem like a huge leap of faith to figure that paradise, more or less by definition, does not contain such things (but, again, this is speculation).

If we regard humans as special, which is consistent with Scripture, it seems there was no human death before the fall and therefore "the necessity of death" only applies to non-human species. Unless we are going to start grieving every single plant and wild animal that dies I'm not sure this is inherently a bad thing.

The question of future generations not having a chance to live in Eden but being stuck with a post-fall world where they can never reacquire what Adam and Eve once had is an interesting one. I can't help thinking it lends credence to the concept of a literal Adam and Eve, who sinned and thus condemned all their offspring. That would seem to make more sense than humans evolving from something else with the potential for multiple individuals to be "kinda-sorta-humanlike" and close enough to count as humans, some of whom were condemned by an individual significantly removed from them on a "family tree".

This is an interesting thought but I'm not sure it addresses your concern about the idea that the first humans fell and condemned everyone who came after them. I'm also not sure that it makes a lot of sense given the price that Jesus had to pay to give us that "better choice" - if it was about teaching us a lesson that some would grasp and some would not then it might make more sense, especially if paired with concepts like reincarnation so people can try and try again if they need to. But it seems like a curious approach to give us a few years to learn the difference between good and evil, but then do all the work for us so we don't have to actually do much with that information. I'm trying to figure how the thief on the cross fits into the picture here.