And this where I would question some alleged, pristine and univocal Hebrew spirit that the Greeks somehow perverted. What was the Hebrew spirit about heaven? We all go to Sheol? What was the Hebrew spirit about death? The record I see pretty widely attributes it to Adam. As far as the lion (or wolf as Is 11 reads) and the lamb, how “good” was creation to parts of the Hebrew instinct? Did some differ in their understanding of it? Why does the lion need to lay with the lamb in the final eschaton? Children playing with highly venomous snakes? Is 11:6-9 reads:
6 The wolf shall live with the lamb;
the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together,
and a little child shall lead them.
**7 **The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
**8 **The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
**9 **They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
The Jewish Study Bible says 6-9 is “The ideal age as manifested in nature. 10–16: The ideal age as manifested in Israel’s relationship to other nations.”
Is there something imperfect or not good about the arrangement now? That God declared creation good is undeniable but we all have to define “good” and deal with the natural world, including death, disease and predation. Augustine who wrote “all nature is good” [Concerning the Nature of Good, Against the Manichæans [De Natura Boni Contra Manichæos] and “I saw and it was made clear to me that you made all things good, and there are absolutely no substances which you did not make.” [Confessions]. Augustine also thought predation preexisted the garden of eden and there is nothing wrong with it. He accepted a literal garden story (maybe not every detail but Adam for sure) but disease and at least animal death existed long before. He does subscribe to some form of a privation theory of original sin I advocated here not too long ago.
For primary sources material…..its a hard read but Augustine lays out some dense stuff in City of God (book 11, chapter 22).
>This cause, however, of a good creation, namely, the goodness of God — this cause, I say, so just and fit, which, when piously and carefully weighed, terminates all the controversies of those who inquire into the origin of the world, has not been recognized by some heretics, because there are, forsooth, many things, such as fire, frost, wild beasts, and so forth, which do not suit but injure this thin blooded and frail mortality of our flesh, which is at present under just punishment. They do not consider how admirable these things are in their own places, how excellent in their own natures, how beautifully adjusted to the rest of creation, and how much grace they contribute to the universe by their own contributions as to a commonwealth; and how serviceable they are even to ourselves, if we use them with a knowledge of their fit adaptations — so that even poisons, which are destructive when used injudiciously, become wholesome and medicinal when used in conformity with their qualities and design; just as, on the other hand, those things which give us pleasure, such as food, drink, and the light of the sun, are found to be hurtful when immoderately or unseasonably used. And thus divine providence admonishes us not foolishly to vituperate things, but to investigate their utility with care; and, where our mental capacity or infirmity is at fault, to believe that there is a utility, though hidden, as we have experienced that there were other things which we all but failed to discover. For this concealment of the use of things is itself either an exercise of our humility or a levelling of our pride; for no nature at all is evil, and this is a name for nothing but the want of good. But from things earthly to things heavenly, from the visible to the invisible, there are some things better than others; and for this purpose are they unequal, in order that they might all exist. Now God is in such sort a great worker in great things, that He is not less in little things — for these little things are to be measured not by their own greatness (which does not exist), but by the wisdom of their Designer; as, in the visible appearance of a man, if one eyebrow be shaved off, how nearly nothing is taken from the body, but how much from the beauty!— for that is not constituted by bulk, but by the proportion and arrangement of the members. But we do not greatly wonder that persons, who suppose that some evil nature has been generated and propagated by a kind of opposing principle proper to it, refuse to admit that the cause of the creation was this, that the good God produced a good creation. For they believe that He was driven to this enterprise of creation by the urgent necessity of repulsing the evil that warred against Him, and that He mixed His good nature with the evil for the sake of restraining and conquering it; and that this nature of His, being thus shamefully polluted, and most cruelly oppressed and held captive, He labors to cleanse and deliver it, and with all His pains does not wholly succeed; but such part of it as could not be cleansed from that defilement is to serve as a prison and chain of the conquered and incarcerated enemy. The Manichæans would not drivel, or rather, rave in such a style as this, if they believed the nature of God to be, as it is, unchangeable and absolutely incorruptible, and subject to no injury; and if, moreover, they held in **Christian**sobriety, that the soul which has shown itself capable of being altered for the worse by its own will, and of being corrupted by sin, and so, of being deprived of the light of eternal truth — that this soul, I say, is not a part of God, nor of the same nature as God, but is created by Him, and is far different from its Creator.
Anthony Smith has a nice piece here which has a section on Augustine and animal suffering concludes with this:
>The Augustine we have found through his writings is far from the ‘Augustinian’ who believes ‘that earthquake and flood, disease, decay, and death are consequences either of the human fall or of a prior fall of angelic beings’.61 Rather, for Augustine, the world in which we live is the good world that God created, except in two respects. First, as a punishment for sin, many features of the good creation are now functioning contrary to ‘proper use’ in such a way that they cause harm to humanity. Second, human beings have been deprived of the protection they enjoyed in Paradise through the tree of life.
>For Augustine, ‘evil’ is a moral category, involving rational beings. In that case, ‘natural evil’ would only meaningfully refer to the harm that human beings experience through a distorted relationship with the good creation. Hence, for Augustine, there is nothing ‘evil’ about the suffering of non-rational creatures in the wild, or the violent processes at work in creation. For Augustine, decay and change are simply features of a creation that is ‘fundamentally contingent, limited, and different from God’.62 That such a creation is displeasing to us in many ways is itself part of creation’s goodness, in that it leads us to set our hearts on something more enduring, namely, God himself.
Thanks but I have a lot of books on the burner and while I think Augustine positively contributed a lot of our faith, it was ultimately Aquinas and hylomorphism which fixed all the problems/difficulties/tensions. I’m pretty much a full fledged Thomist at this point. I just don’t like the Hebrew though good Greek thought bad trope that author utilized. No one can seriously read or study Augustine and claim he did not see creation as good. There is no recession of a Hebrew instinct here (that is made up). As I noted, Augustine baptize platonic philosophy and I will add that all of us Westerners are greatly indebted to him for doing so.
Vinnie