On an Old Earth View, How Do You Reconcile Animal Death Before the Fall with Genesis 1?

As a presuppositionalist. I see more and more how arbitrary our society has become, and no different in the church, evidenced by this video.

“Theology, bible, Christianity is not tidy”

Ummmm…only to a person who places their own fallen human intellect over the authority of scripture.

His example of untidiness is that people wrote much different than we do today i.e. Moses wrote Genesis 3500 years ago, (please note) he can understand the rest of the bible, just not Genesis 1 and 2. Genesis 1 and 2 is untidy

He claims that Genesis was not written not to be in chronological order but thematic order, (please note) that there are numbers and number of days in Genesis, but we will just ignore that, because that doesn’t fit his narrative.

He claims that both Hugh Ross and Ken Ham are both concordist, and they try to read the bible in such a way, but goes on to ask, what if we are not to read the bible that way? (please note) how he doesn’t apply this theory to the rest of the bible, which would then render all of scripture “untidy”

So, now we get to the crux of the issue. How do we deal with animal death before sin? (please note) that he set this up in a way that we can’t trust scripture errr…sorry that we can’t trust our interpretation of scripture.

He says, that the presumption is that animals did not die before the fall, but that it is not clear to him just from reading the text, (please note) scripture says, (Genesis 1:31) “And God saw EVERYTHING that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day”

He claims that people may infer that belief from something Paul wrote in Romans chapter 5, talking about the fall and that nothing died before the fall, (please note) I have not a clue what he is talking about. I, nor have anyone I listen to uses Romans chapter 5.

He doesn’t see anything in Genesis 1 that animals didn’t die before the fall, (please note) scripture says, (Genesis 1:31) “And God saw EVERYTHING that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day”

He is basing his entire argument that YEC are being dogmatic in misinterpreting/misapplying scripture from Paul in Romans chapter 5 for animals dying before the fall. Again, I have no clue what he is talking about, (please note) scripture says, (Genesis 1:31) “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day”

He claims that we can’t trust the genealogy, because they are wildly incomplete. Ya…that’s not dogmatic.

This part is absolutely hilarious if not sad. This entire video, he tears down scripture or our lack of understanding of it, using words like “untidy”, but then believes he can still hold a high view of scripture’s inerrancy? and goes on to use an “untidy” (see what I did there) example of Augustine being an old earth, but still able to hold a high view of scripture.

He finally makes a claim that I can agree with. This particular discussion is a non-essential and that we should be gracious towards one another.

Therefore I will graciously say that he is not only wrong but also arbitrary. This is what happens when you use your intellect to interpret scripture, rather than the other way around.

Gloria in excelsis Deo…Christ Is Risen!
Christ is Risen Indeed!

Why does describing Scripture as “untidy” mean that he is tearing it down? As I understand it, that’s just saying that Scripture speaks to us on its own terms, which are very often not the terms that we want it to speak on.

Thing is, we often want Scripture to spoon-feed us with a literalistic, if-then-else set of instructions, checklists and laws that we can deterministically walk through making sure we’ve ticked all the boxes. But if God had wanted to give us that, He would have given us a computer program, not a living, breathing, active anthology written in human languages with all their vagaries and ambiguities and metaphors and figures of speech. And nobody would have been able to understand it, because they didn’t have computers in those days.

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Wookin, repeating this verse over and over again does not change the fact that that verse says absolutely nothing about whether or not animals died before the fall. It simply does not reference it at all. Many “very good” things are still difficult to deal with and require a lot from us. I think you are reading an awful lot into one verse that simply isn’t there.

If you don’t understand what he’s talking about, you might do well to come here to ask a question about that instead of simply bashing this video because his views don’t line up with yours.

What in particular in his interpretation of Romans 5 do you find confusing?

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The problem with Romans 5 is the fact that the Bible clearly talks about two kinds of death. In Luke 9:60 Jesus says, “let the dead bury their own dead.” And then there is the fact that God told Adam and Eve that on the day they eat of the fruit they would die. So if you don’t understand the words of Jesus about two kinds of death then you just like the snake in the garden you are calling God a liar and saying that Adam and Eve did not die when they ate of the fruit.

But Adam and Eve did die because just there is two kinds of birth, that of the body and that of the spirit, there are also two kinds of life and two kinds of death. Our spiritual life is a relationship with God and when Adam and Eve lost that then they were spiritually dead. AND if you want to be sticklers about it then what of the plants that were given to us for food? Were they not alive? And did they not die when they were eaten? So there was death before the fall and so you cannot say that all death came into the world because of the fall. Well the evidence of evolution is that it wasn’t just the death of plants that was in the world before the fall, but that all living things experienced death all through the history of the earth because that is a part of life itself.

Ummmm… that is only someone who uses their brain to understand what scripture is saying, eh? Well I can certainly agree with that. It is only when you use your brain to understand what the Bible is saying that you begin to see numerous difficulties. But simply parroting the Bible without any investment of thought is rather like the slothful servant who buries the one talent given him and returns it to the master without taking any risks. What a coincidence that the fundy xtian also believes an unforgiving wrathful god just like that slothful servant.

Indeed it is.

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Genesis 1:26-28 says humans were to bring dominion over the animals through military violence. Just saying.

Also, God ‘preferred’ Abel’s animal sacrifice to Cain’s grain offering.

For me, there is no confusion regarding animal death before the Fall. There are two Falls in the Bible, and both happened before the Earth was created. There is the Fall of 1/3 of the angels (Rev 12:4-9, Isaiah 14:12 and Luke 10:18), where Death first occurred. This is spiritual Death, the fall from God’s Grace.

The second Fall takes place in Genesis 3:24, where Adam and Eve are cast out of Paradise (Luke 23:43). So, no physical death happens as both of the Falls happened in the spiritual world, not in the physical world.

Good video.

We aren’t told what “very good” actually means. It could mean that what He had made was a balanced self sustaining ecosystem including predator-prey systems. Even Creation Ministries International seems to accept the possibility of death of insects and lower forms prior to the Fall.

However I think Genesis is pretty clear that human death was a consequence of our sin.

I think that’s what we have in the Law in the Old Testament. What you get from carefully following every jot and tittle is a Pharisee. I think the Law was necessary at the time but also it shows us that this legalistic approach doesn’t work; it misses the heart. Even the OT prophets told the Jews that God wanted adherence to the spirit of the Law rather than strict adherence to the letter.

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