This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://biologos.org/blogs/deborah-haarsma-the-presidents-notebook/a-perfect-world
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://biologos.org/blogs/deborah-haarsma-the-presidents-notebook/a-perfect-world
We need to be cautious about what things in nature we attribute to the Fall. It’s too easy for us to take our conception of how we would make a good creation and assume that’s how God made it.
Good article, and this is one point I know I’ve fallen into before. “The results of the fall” simply becomes code for “anything in the universe that I don’t personally like.” It may be difficult to parse where the line is, but these are good things to think about.
(I’m still blaming Adam and Eve for every little pain in childbirth though 
).
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In his book, The Problem of Pain __C.S. Lewis offered a different hypothesis to explain what appears to be ancient natural evil: the influence of Satan on God’s creation. I quoted Lewis at length here:
It’s interesting. We are so limited, and while we think about these things we have to remember we are dealing with an INFINITE being, such a beautiful concept. This is why we will never get bored in eternity, we will learn more and more and more about God for all of it, and we will praise Him and glorify Him all the while. He is limitless and endless. With this come some things of this life.
One of these is really hard to understand, how could God call a world with suffering and death good? How can God create the day, see BOTH the darkness and the light, and allow the dark, while only calling the light good. (Gen. 1:3-5). This is beyond us, and while the easy answer would be to ignore it all and say God could never call this good, this is the same God who for the sake of the mission was pleased to crush His son, who in a sense called it good, not just allowed it but did it willingly. How? Why? We might never know, and even in eternity, we might spend it all trying to find the answers, and that will be a joy not a frustration in reality.
We can catch a sense of the general picture. He did it for the ultimate good, for His ultimate glory, and as we all know, Christ did not remain dead!! NO, three days later God brought out the most good of it. But we may never know every detail of it all, and how much it really meant, until Heaven. But let us spend our days focusing not on what we don’t know, but on what we do, and live in that. "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law. (Deut. 29:29).
God bless!
Hi Josh,
I agree that all we can do here and now is speculate. However, for those of us who find the idea of carnivorousness and pain too evil to call good, I think Lewis’s hypothesis offers a way of dealing with it.
As a side note, since you alluded to Isaiah 53:10, Isaiah 53:5 is usually translated, “…he was crushed for our iniquities.” However, the Hebrew actually reads, “…he was crushed from our iniquities.” If we go with this alternative, then I think it makes more sense of Isaiah 53:10. It was God’s will to crush the servant with our iniquities.
There is only one sacrifice in the Hebrew Scriptures where the sins of the people are placed on the animal: the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement. And once that is done, it is sent out into the wilderness. And not just into the wilderness, but to Azazel, a desert demon. Our sins are being returned to their original source and owner, so that he has no claim on us. The Ransom Theory of the Atonement is what Isaiah 53 is really about. Not Penal Substitution.
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