Introduction
Part One: Biblical Authority
Part Two: Authority from Tradition - The Jewish Sages and the Early Church Fathers
Part Three: The Weight of Traditional Views
Part Four: Man's Fallible Opinions
Part Five: Clues in the Text
Part Six: More Clues in the Text
Part Seven: What are the Days of Genesis?
Part Eight: Misconceptions of Paradise
Part Nine: Life and Death in the Pre-Fall Animal World I
Having looked at the general state of the pre-Fall world, and having examined passages that are often used to prove that all death is a result of man’s sin, I will examine some general theological implications that result from these teachings. I will also offer some observations on how the character of God and his intent in the creation lend support to old-earth interpretations far more readily than they do young-earth interpretations.
Problematic Design Features
As a young-earth creationist, I fully embraced the teaching that animals were harmless vegetarians until man’s sin ruined the peace of creation and left nature “red in tooth and claw.” One issue I always had trouble with, however, was the fact that so many animals appear to be just a little too well designed for predation and defense, a little too well constructed for a life they were, supposedly, never intended to lead. For instance, why did God create the triceratops with a bony face-shield and three formidable horns if nothing threatened it in the original creation? Why can chameleons change color to conceal themselves when they shouldn’t have to hide from anything? Why are lions and other large cats equipped in every possible way to stalk, run down, and subdue prey with such deadly efficiency if God never intended them to do these things?
Young-earth teachers are aware of this problem and have suggested a few possible workarounds. Some have argued that predation and defense features may have served other purposes in the pre-Fall world. For instance, it has been suggested that spiders may have originally spun webs in order to catch dew rather than insects. Others have suggested that perhaps God redesigned his creatures following the Fall in order to equip them to handle their new situation, and that they may have originally been quite different from how they appear and behave now.
Writing in his article, “Did Death of Any Kind Exist Before the Fall?” Simon Turpin suggests that the predation and defense features of animals were actually part of their original design, and represent indications of God’s foreknowledge of the Fall:
If we consider the fact that God foreknew the Fall…then it is also logical that He programmed creatures with the information for attack and defense features, which they would need in a cursed world. This information was “switched on” at the Fall.[1]
It is unquestionable that divine foreknowledge played a key role in the creation. In fact, I believe that it played an even more fundamental role than young-earthers like Turpin are prepared to accept. I’ve hinted at this to some degree already and will go on to develop the idea more fully throughout the rest of this book. In the meantime, however, Turpin’s argument as stated here is problematic for two primary reasons.
The Nature and Extent of the Death Curse
First, as I already demonstrated, passages used to allegedly prove that we live in a “cursed world” do not establish this at all. The only curse on the physical creation that appears in the biblical text is the curse on the ground in Genesis 3:17-18. This is a specific curse on man’s labor for food, and in light of Genesis 8:21 it may not even be in operation today. The curse of death that was placed upon Adam in Genesis 3 was pronounced only upon man; no mention whatsoever is made of the curse extending to the animal kingdom. Nor is anything said with regard to animals in Romans 5, where we are told that death “passed upon all men” as a result of Adam’s sin. The famous “subjected to futility” passage in Romans 8 does not state that the world is cursed, only that it “groans,” awaiting the time when the sons of God will be revealed. In short, there is no exegetical case whatsoever that can be made for man’s sin resulting in either a curse on the entire creation or predation and death in the animal kingdom.
Second, the assertion that animal attack and defense features were prepared for them beforehand in view of their ultimate need to survive in a “cursed world” is far more theologically loaded than it may at first seem.
To begin with, exactly why did Adam’s sin have to bring about death in the animal world? Why must animals suffer for a crime they didn’t commit? It’s exceedingly difficult to see either the necessity or the justice in this. Some have tried to argue that the cosmos as a whole, including the animal kingdom, was tied to the character of Adam and automatically fell along with him, but this is nowhere found or even hinted at in the text of scripture. Nor does this answer as to either the necessity or the justice of the arrangement; it merely explains the mechanics of it, how it came about. Furthermore, this arrangement seems highly implausible given that the natures of the physical universe and the animal kingdom were already established prior to the creation of man, given that they were created and deemed “good” before man came on the scene.
But even if it is true that the physical universe and the animal kingdom are somehow intrinsically tied to the character of man, it can only be true because God has decreed the relationship and engineered it into the creation; and this must be considered in light of divine foreknowledge as well. God knew that man would fall, and engineered the universe so that his fall would affect the entire creation, including animals. Thus, either by intrinsic design beforehand or else sovereign decree on the spot, from a young-earth creationist perspective, God actively determined that animals would share man’s punishment.
Furthermore, not only did God determine the extent of the curse, but also its nature. In other words, he didn’t just proclaim creation cursed and let the situation work itself out from there, with the result being disease, predation, and death among animals. No, he himself determined what the “cursed” world would look like, and he sovereignly crafted it and set it into motion. God could have decreed that whatever made animals immortal (going by young-earth assumptions here) would be cancelled out, thus ensuring age, disease, and ultimate death by natural causes while leaving them harmless toward one another and toward humans as well. Predation did not have to be part of the equation in order for animals to die. By the nature of the case, God actively chose to introduce it. After all, animals could not hunt and kill one another (or human beings, for that matter) if their creator had not equipped them to do so.
So why do cute little meerkats enter the burrows of their rivals and rip their helpless young to shreds? Young-earth teachers say, “Because Adam sinned.” Why do tarantula hawks (a type of wasp) paralyze spiders with their potent sting and then lay eggs on them that later hatch and devour the still-living spiders? Once again, young-earth teachers insist: “Because Adam sinned.” But what about Adam’s sin makes it necessary to program meerkats with the instinct to destroy the young of rival clans? What about Adam’s sin makes it necessary to tie the life cycle of a wasp to the death of a tarantula? Such considerations deprive the young-earth interpretation of any genuine explanatory power or any morally satisfying basis.
Young-earth creationists who are repulsed by what they consider to be the cruelty of nature must come to grips with the fact that their interpretation of scripture requires that God actively chose to introduce that cruelty. He might simply have allowed animals to die of natural causes and called it sufficient, but he went beyond this and chose to equip them to visit death upon one another as well.
A Visual Indictment of Man?
Young-earth teachers occasionally argue that man is forced to confront the consequences of sin whenever he looks at suffering and death in the animal world, making animal pain and death a type of indictment against man. We saw this previously in a quote from Tommy Mitchell, who says that God “uses the deterioration of the created universe to show us the consequences of our sin.” Some may feel that this alone is sufficient reason for God to have ordered the post-Fall animal world as they believe he did, but think on the assumptions that underlie this idea for a moment.
First, man is forced to confront the consequences of sin whenever he considers the darkness within himself and sees its outworking in the world at large. What is insufficient about war, murder, rape, theft, abuse, hate, and other forms of human depravity that would require God to impose pain and death on the animal world in order to further indict man? What is gained by this? What more does man learn about his sin while watching a lion bring down a gazelle on the African grasslands that he did not already learn from studying the Holocaust?
Second, most animal behavior takes place “off the radar” of mankind, so to speak. The oceans, forests, and jungles of the world are literally full of creatures engaged in continual battles for survival, but the vast majority of these creatures and their activities are never seen by humans. The deep oceans in particular were totally hidden from mankind for thousands of years, and remain mostly hidden from our sight even now. What purpose then do the sufferings of animals serve in this context? What lesson do they convey, hidden away in such places? Why should animals experience pain and death as a result of man, and specifically as an indictment of man, yet mostly out of the sight of man?
Third, was condemning animals to pain and death really the most evident way man could be made to see the consequences of his sin? What if, instead of penalizing the animal world, God had instead chosen to exempt it? What if animals did not die or harm one another, but rather, related to their environment in perfect harmony? In that event, a great juxtaposition would be evident in the creation that does not now exist, and with it a great moral object lesson. Humans, who had offended God, would be subject to age, disease, and death; but animals, who had not offended God, would not suffer from anything humans did not directly inflict on them. How could man then escape the fact that any suffering or death that existed in the world—whether animal or human—was directly and solely attributable to him?
I do not raise these points in order to somehow mock or indict the character of God. Rather, I raise them in order to force young-earth teachers to consider the full, logical implications of their theology, and to ask themselves whether they find their assumptions an adequate basis upon which to sustain those implications. As a young-earther, I did not find them adequate. In my opinion, the old-earth paradigm offered a much more plausible and biblically consistent view of why creation exists as it does.
The Plan and Purposes of God in Creation
Fact v Intent
Admittedly, the standard young-earth objection to “millions of years of animal death” prior to the Fall of Man sounds theologically impressive at first glance. Taken apart from other considerations, it appears to defend the integrity of God and render man’s sin, in the words of the apostle Paul, “utterly sinful.” Yet, like so many other faulty theological positions, it rests precipitously atop the false dilemma fallacy. It argues that unless God created a world without animal pain, disease, and death, he could not call his works truly “good.”
This argument overlooks a third option, however, a theme that appears over and again throughout the scriptures: namely, the element of divine intent. God often takes things that are, by themselves, not good, and uses them to achieve ends that are in fact good. There are five prime examples of this tendency that readily present themselves from the scriptures, and they are worth taking the time to consider in a bit of detail for what they can potentially teach us about the ways of God.
Joseph’s Captivity in Egypt
The story of how Joseph’s jealous brothers sold him into captivity in Egypt is a model of righteous perseverance in the face of adversity. As such, it is often held forth as a source of encouragement for Christians undergoing times of trial, reassuring them that God can protect, exalt, and use his people in wonderful ways even during the worst of circumstances. It’s also a bit of a perplexing story in some ways, though. The end result is clear enough: God maneuvered Joseph into a position of power in Egypt in order to prepare the people and land for a future famine, thus saving the lives of many, including Joseph’s own family. Joseph himself eventually testified of this to his brothers when he said, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive” (Genesis 50:20).
But why did God put poor Joseph through the wringer as he did, when he might have achieved the same result in any number of other ways? Joseph was stripped and beaten, thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, falsely accused of attempted rape and jailed for a number of years, deprived of years he should have had in the company of the father and younger brother he loved, and left to languish in prison by a fellow inmate who should have been grateful to him but instead forgot about him. None of the things that happened to Joseph along his journey to Pharaoh’s court were good in and of themselves, but observe how Joseph himself thought that God had deliberately engineered them in order to bring about a result that was, in fact, good. We may find this difficult to comprehend, but there it stands in very plain terms.
The Death of King Ahab
First Kings 22:19-23 is one of those rare instances in scripture where the veil of the spirit world is pulled back a bit, allowing us to glimpse events occurring behind the scenes of our natural realm. The account concerns an agreement made between Ahab, one of Israel’s wickedest kings, and Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, to combine their military forces and wage war on the king of Aram.
In the midst of their preparations for battle, Ahab and Jehoshaphat consulted with four hundred prophets in order to learn whether God would aid them in their campaign. Jehoshaphat was evidently unimpressed with what he heard, however, because he asked whether there were any prophets of the Lord who might also be consulted. In response, Ahab reluctantly called the prophet Micaiah, whom he hated.
At first, Micaiah sarcastically mocked Ahab and encouraged him to fight against the king of Aram, but when pressed by the king to tell the truth he revealed the following vision:
“I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left. The Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said this while another said that. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord and said, ‘I will entice him.’ The Lord said to him, ‘How?’ And he said, ‘I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ Then He said, ‘You are to entice him, and also to prevail. Go and do so.’ Now therefore, behold, the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the Lord has proclaimed disaster against you.”
I’m sure I won’t encounter too many objections if I say that deception is a bad thing. Indeed, scripture warns us to guard against being deceived and commands that we not deceive others. Yet, here in I Kings 22, written in very plain language, we have an instance in which God not only permitted a man to be deceived to his death but actually mandated that it be done. God could have killed Ahab directly, perhaps by striking him with a plague as he did Herod in Acts 12, or by any number of other means, but he chose to use an act of deception through a spirit of some kind. Furthermore, and as a sort of post-script to this account, consider how the apostle Paul warned the church at Thessalonica that God himself would eventually send a “strong delusion” upon those who reject the truth at the end of the present age (II Thessalonians 2:1-12).
The Story of Job
The ordeal of Job is remarkable in many ways. Like the story of Joseph, it often serves as a call for patience endurance in the midst of suffering; and as with the story of Ahab’s death, it provides a glimpse into the spirit realm. It also conveys some facts that often make believers uncomfortable, however. Here we have a tale in which God permits Satan to harass a righteous man, depriving him of his holdings, killing his children, and striking him with a painful disease. Interestingly enough, if you read the first two chapters of the book carefully, you’ll note that Satan did not initially appear before God for the purpose of targeting Job. On the contrary, God himself directed Satan’s attention to Job—twice (Job 1:6-12, 2:1-6).
Further, note that God allowed Job to be attacked by Satan—within certain limitations—without Job’s having done anything to deserve it, as he remarks to Satan, “You incited Me against him to ruin him without cause” (Job 2:3b). Lastly, consider that, when God finally appears to Job near the end of the book, he never explains why Job has suffered so greatly. It would have been a simple thing for God to have described his interviews with Satan, and how he decided to permit Satan to test Job; but instead of doing this, God spends four chapters (38-41) asking Job a series of questions having to do with creation and its creatures, demanding that Job explain their function to him and demonstrate that he can deal with them in the place of God.
The following are a few choice excerpts from God’s interrogation of Job:
Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said,
“Who is this that darkens counsel
By words without knowledge?
Now gird up your loins like a man,
And I will ask you, and you instruct Me!
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding…
Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty?
Let him who reproves God answer it…
Now gird up your loins like a man,
I will ask you, and you instruct Me.
Will you really annul My judgment?
Will you condemn Me that you may be justified? – Job 38:1-4; 40:2, 7-8
Given everything Job had endured—the loss of his holdings, the loss of his children, the loss of his health, the repeated accusations of his ‘friends,’ and even his own wife’s admonition to “Curse God and die”—this seems like a bit of a harsh response on the part of God. Job 38-41 basically boil down to: “I am God. I made the world and everything in it. I know how it all fits together. What do you know? What can you do in comparison to me? Who are you to question me?” Yet, no matter how it may appear to us as we read these things, God’s own challenge stands: “Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it.”
The Man Born Blind
In John 9, Jesus works one of his greatest miracles by healing a man who had been blind from birth. In keeping with the traditions of the Jewish elders, Jesus’ disciples assumed that the man’s condition was a judgment for some kind of sin, potentially even some kind of sin he committed in the womb. Accordingly, they asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus replied, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3-4).
The healing of this particular blind man was an unprecedented sort of miracle. The man himself testified to this when he remarked “Since the beginning of time it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind” (John 9:32). That God was glorified by this event is beyond question, but think for a moment about what it took to achieve that result. This man was allowed to be born blind and to suffer the difficulties and indignities of being unable to care for himself well into adulthood. Adding to this, the reaction of Christ’s disciples shows us that the blind man and his parents would also have had to deal with the suspicions of those around them, as everyone would have been wondering what kind of awful sin they had committed for the man to be cursed in this way (or so they assumed). God allowed this situation—or even directly brought it about, as Jesus’ words suggest—in order to glorify himself through a great miracle.
The Death of Lazarus
In John 11, two sisters, Mary and Martha, send word to Jesus that their brother, Lazarus, is gravely ill. Given the Lord’s reputation for healing, they no doubt believed he would come right away and heal their brother, especially since he was not very far away to begin with. But Jesus lingered where he was for another two days, and in the meantime Lazarus died. When Jesus finally did arrive on the scene in Bethany, Lazarus had been dead for four days. Mary, Martha, and a number of others in the village were in deep mourning for him, so much so that when Jesus saw their grief John tells us “He was deeply moved in spirit, and troubled,” and that he openly wept (John 11:33-35).
The text of John 11 is clear that Jesus knew in advance that Lazarus would die. Indeed, it seems that he delayed going to Bethany as long as he did in order to allow time for Lazarus not only to die but also to be buried. It was his intent to go and raise Lazarus from the dead, and although he had raised others from the dead, he had never before raised someone who had already been buried and started to undergo decay (John 11:39). For that reason, this was an exceptional miracle, one that caused great rejoicing amongst his disciples and great consternation amongst his enemies. When he first heard that Lazarus was sick, Jesus himself testified of what was to come, saying “This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it” (John 11:4).
Yes, the story ended well, as did the stories of Joseph, Job, and the man born blind. But think here for a moment of what was required to make this situation turn out for the glory of God. Lazarus became seriously ill and undoubtedly suffered to at least some extent prior to his death. His sisters also suffered in caring for him and then burying him, all the while wondering why Jesus had not come to help the one whom he loved (John 11:3, 21, 32).
The Hidden Purposes of God
All of the stories I’ve related are well known in the church. I go into them here in a bit of detail in order to forcefully bring out the point that God can and will use things and circumstances we don’t understand—including things that are, in and of themselves, not good—in order to bring about results that are in fact good. Thus, given that we see this pattern in scripture, how can young-earth teachers argue authoritatively that God would not have allowed “millions of years of animal pain and death” because pain and death are not, in and of themselves, good?
Do we know the mind of God so well that we can discern his every intent in the creation? If God were to show up and ask us the same questions he asked Job, could we answer him any better than Job did? Were we his partners in creation? Can we see the ends he intends to achieve? Quite simply, it’s possible that God had reasons for ordaining the created order as he did to include animal death. We know that predation serves to control animal populations and maintain ecosystem stability, which makes it an overall benefit to life on this planet, but why God chose to arrange things in this manner when he might have done it differently is another question. It’s possible we will know his reasons in time, but as God himself made abundantly clear in the book of Job, he is under no obligation to explain himself to us.
At this point, I imagine it will be argued that the scriptural examples I’ve cited are inapplicable to the pre-Fall creation because the events in question took place in the post-Fall creation, when God had no choice but to work with fallen, sinful men in order to achieve his aims. In response, I point out the following:
First, look carefully at Genesis 1:2-3: “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.” Notice here that God calls only the light “good.” He does not call the darkness “good.” In fact, darkness is often used as a metaphor for evil, death, and judgment in scripture. Yet, God doesn’t do away with the darkness. Instead, he names it and assigns it a function in association with the light. The cycle of light and dark, day and night, then becomes a fixture of the creation, a major aspect of how all life on earth is regulated. At the end of the creation week, God then calls all of his works “very good.” This necessarily includes the light and dark/day and night cycle established on Day One. The darkness is not good by itself, but when juxtaposed with the light, the combined system is deemed good. God used the darkness to his own purposes before the Fall of Man.[2]
Second, note again how God speaks to Job when he finally confronts him in Job 38-41. Rather than addressing Job’s specific situation, God leads him through the process of creation, emphasizing how he carefully planned and executed the whole affair. He then goes on to describe various aspects of the universe, the earth, and the creatures that inhabit the earth. He speaks of everything as a unified whole, existing under his careful supervision. He discusses predators like the lion, the eagle, and the hawk, and how he provides for them. Yet, something is missing from God’s discourse.
Interestingly enough, God does not speak of Adam’s fall even once in these chapters, which seems almost fantastic if indeed Adam’s fall so totally disrupted the grand scheme of things. On the contrary, God’s tone in this discourse indicates that everything is proceeding according to his design in ways that he ordained, that he alone understands, and over which he has total control.
All of this dovetails nicely with what we saw in Psalm 104, where the psalmist praises God for all he has made in his wisdom, including the predators of the earth. Here we have a unified view of creation that spans both the pre and post-Fall timeframes, yet does not recognize any such division. Again, it is the entire created order that God deemed “very good.” In light of these things, it is a great mistake to focus on the individual components of the creation and lose sight of the whole. Job 38-41 make it clear that God views it all as a functioning whole.
Third, while we saw that Simon Turpin appealed to divine foreknowledge of the Fall in order to explain why animals were created with attack and defense capabilities, I would argue that he has the right idea but does not take it far enough. Instead, I would argue that the entire universe was deliberately structured as it is now from its very beginning, and that man was given the chance to tame it as a proper steward of God’s estate. As we saw previously, God instructed man to forcefully subdue the earth and rule over its creatures, strongly implying that the earth and its creatures were not docile and would resist him.
On the whole, I believe this world and the universe it occupies were created as a means to an end—as a testing, proving, and refining ground, in part to cultivate and separate the wheat and tares of the human race.[3] The characteristics of natural laws and the creatures of the world are part of the test conditions, presenting challenges and opportunities by which humans are to learn, grow, and distinguish themselves. Just as resistance builds strength, so adversity reveals and builds character. Scripture indicates that this sort of character-building activity in man is a key part of God’s plan for his redeemed, not a contingency he was forced to adopt when man didn’t go along with the program:
Some of those who have insight will fall, in order to refine, purge and make them pure until the end time. – Daniel 11:35
Behold, I go forward but He is not there,
And backward, but I cannot perceive Him;
When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him;
He turns on the right, I cannot see Him.
But He knows the way I take;
When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold. – Job 23:8-10
We also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope. – Romans 5:3-4
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. – Hebrews 12:1
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. – James 1:2-4
When the testing and refining are complete, conditions will change. Note for instance that Revelation 21:22-25 tell us that there will be no night in the New Jerusalem, which will be home to the redeemed of all ages.[4] For these blessed individuals, “the first things have passed away.” The trials of life that were part of the first creation are over and only eternal blessings follow.[5]
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. – Romans 8:18
“He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he will be My son.” – Revelation 21:7
In light of these things, I would suggest it’s entirely possible that God’s work of refinement is not limited to the human race. The entire creation may be undergoing this to a certain extent, including the animal kingdom. Mass proliferations of life followed by extinction level events in earth’s history may represent a cyclical process in the plan of God that is currently unknown to us.
In thinking on this, I’m reminded of Romans 8:20, where the apostle Paul talks about the creation being subjected to futility, but “in hope.” Then, just two verses later, he says: “For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” The labor process is a struggle for the mother, a painful ordeal; and Paul tells us that the whole creation is caught up in such an ordeal of labor, in the process of birthing something. Exactly what that might be, we won’t know until the birth takes place; and then, looking back, it will be easier to understand, once we have seen “the end from the beginning.”
The Question of Perspective
In a debate with old-earth creationist Dr. Hugh Ross on the John Ankerberg Show, young-earth defender Kent Hovind countered old-universe arguments regarding ancient starlight with the following objection:
“The God that I worship made a full-grown man and a full-grown garden. He didn’t make two babies and put them in the garden and say, ‘Here’s a package of seeds; go plant ‘em quick,’ you know. There was fruit already on the trees. That’s not deceptive; it’s necessary. It doesn’t work otherwise. And the reason God made the stars was for signs and for seasons so that Adam could see them. God made the stars and the light all simultaneously, or the light traveled faster. My God is not limited by stuff like that. And I get real concerned that maybe we’re talking about different gods here.”[6]
As a young-earth creationist, this was one of my chief criticisms of the old-earth interpretation. I didn’t see anything especially mighty about a God who required billions of years to develop his creation. By comparison, creation within six literal days seemed far more impressive, far more in keeping with my image of a God of true miracles. After all, the Bible is filled with accounts of miracles that took place instantaneously, including where certain kinds of life were involved.
For instance, during Moses’ confrontation with Pharaoh, God caused lice or gnats to form from the dust of the ground instantaneously. This was the first miracle that Pharaoh’s own magicians were not able to duplicate, and which they directly attributed to the power of God (Exodus 8:16-19). Another noteworthy example is the plant God caused to grow up from the ground overnight in order to shelter Jonah from the sun while he camped outside the city of Nineveh (Jonah 4:5-10). If God can do such things—and it’s more than evident that he can—what need would he have of spending billions of years on creation?
We will examine this issue a bit more in the next chapter. For the sake of context within this discussion of pre-Fall animal death, however, I feel it’s appropriate to make a few brief observations on the topic.
As I’ve outlined to some degree already, God does not always do what we might expect him to do. Sometimes, his ways seem genuinely inscrutable. Had any of us been in God’s position, would we have offset darkness with light as he did on Day One of creation? Most of us would probably have done away with the darkness altogether.
On another front, most of us probably would not have included the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden to begin with. After all, why set man up to fall, particularly if you know ahead of time that he will in fact choose to eat from the tree? How many of us would allow Satan, fallen angels, and demons to roam free, tempting human beings and causing misery throughout the world, as God has allowed them to do for so long? How many of us would have allowed the bloody history of mankind to go on as long as it has without putting a stop to it? How many of us would have put Joseph through his sufferings in order to save the Middle Eastern world from a famine? How many of us would have permitted Satan to strike Job as he did, even to the point of killing his children? How many of us would have allowed Lazarus to die when he could still have been saved and his family spared the pain of his loss? How many of us would have allowed a man to be born blind and live in shame and deprivation for so long before healing him?
For that matter, how many of us would have thought to redeem mankind through the horrible sufferings of the most righteous person who has ever lived—exchanging the innocent for the guilty? How many of us would have waited as long as God did before sending him into the world to perform this redemption? How many of us would then wait at least another 2,000 more years before sending him again in order to establish the righteous government of God on the earth?
Putting God and His Creation in “Context”
The problem here is that many Christians have formed the core of their view of God and his ways around their interpretation of the Genesis creation account. This is why, as we saw previously, people like Ken Ham will argue that you need their view of Genesis in order to properly understand the gospel. By their way of thinking, if you don’t have their view of Genesis, then you can’t properly understand the world and what God is doing in it. Young-earth, no-death-before-the Fall, “cursed world” creationism is the bedrock upon which they have built their entire theological system. But Genesis is only one part of the Word of God, and more often than not it’s a mistake to interpret the whole by one of its parts rather than interpreting the parts in light of the whole.
In Genesis we know comparatively little about God’s ways and character. Much more is revealed about him as the scriptures unfold. In this way, the young-earth approach to theology is rather like reading the first chapter of a novel and assuming you know everything you need to know about the main characters without letting the story develop further.
I believe it’s wiser to look back on Genesis in light of the whole counsel of God before coming to firm conclusions as to everything that might be going on in the creation account. For instance, what does God mean when he says that things are “good” or “very good”? Does he mean they are absolutely good in and of themselves, or that they are suitable for a particular purpose? The wider context of scripture reveals that both of these are possible interpretations.[7]
Conclusion
In summary of this survey of pre-Fall animal death and related issues: The young-earth creationist no-death-before-the Fall, “cursed world” interpretation presents God as presiding over a cosmic train wreck, even while allowing him advance knowledge of the wreck. Further, I would argue that it presents God as deliberately making the wreck even worse than it might have otherwise been, not to any constructive purpose but more or less out of what appears to be vindictiveness toward mankind.
From the old-earth perspective, however, while it is certain that man’s forfeiture of the proper stewardship God intended him to exercise over the earth has resulted in negative consequences for the animal world—prolonging and probably worsening animal disease, pain, and death, in addition to causing human misery—there is no scriptural reason whatsoever for arguing that animal pain and death could not have been part of God’s original design, for purposes that perhaps he alone understands. The Bible reveals a unified creation in which God is willing to use (and has even ordained) things that are not good in and of themselves in pursuit of larger purposes that are in fact good. It is clear that God has been testing and refining mankind since the very beginning, deliberately arranging circumstances in order to produce certain results, and that at a given point in the future the testing will come to an end—and the current state of creation with it.
Young-earth teachers who argue “God wouldn’t do that!” when confronted with issues like animal death before the Fall, should reflect on the examples from scripture that I’ve cited here and ask themselves what people like Joseph, Job, Lazarus, and the disciples of Christ thought in the midst of their trials. Didn’t Job’s friends repeatedly tell him “God wouldn’t be doing this to you if you hadn’t sinned.”? Yet, Job had not sinned, and his friends eventually realized this, although not until the end of the story. Did Mary and Martha think that Jesus would really stand by and let Lazarus die when he had the power to save him? From the way they met him in John 11, it’s clear that they had different expectations, and they were devastated when those expectations were not realized. Yet, look what happened in the end.
With all of these examples before us, and others that might also be mentioned, is it really wise to say “God wouldn’t do that!” before the story has reached its end? Are we so confident to judge the person and motives of God while we yet “see through a glass darkly”? Do these stories teach us nothing? Yes, old-earth creationists argue that God potentially would in fact spend billions of years developing the universe and potentially would in fact allow millions of years of animal death—if these things served a particular purpose. As to what that purpose might be, he will show us when he’s good and ready. In the meantime, the words of Christ to Peter echo down through the centuries: “What is that to you? Follow me.”
So, in answer to Terry Mortensen, who maintains that old-earth viewpoints make God “into a bumbling, cruel creator who uses (or can’t prevent) disease, natural disasters, and extinctions to mar His creative work, without any moral cause,” perhaps there is indeed a righteous cause for these things. In fact, God, being the excellent multitasker that he is, may very well have more than one cause in play here. It is not God but rather man who is bumbling about here, pretending that he understands what he plainly does not, about things that occurred before he graced creation’s scene. From that point of view, and to the young-earth teachers who are so adamant that they know what God would or would not do in his eternal purposes, I quote the creator himself:
“Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?”
Next in this series: The Other Realm and the Other Fall
[1] Simon Turpin, “Did Death of Any Kind Exist Before the Fall?”
[2] Nor is this the only such example of God using darkness to his own purposes in scripture. He descended upon Mount Sinai in a great spectacle of fire and darkness that caused even Moses to tremble (Exodus 19:18; Deuteronomy 4:11, 5:23; Hebrews 12:20-21). David declared that God surrounds himself with darkness (Psalm 97:2).
[3] Job 7:17-18; Psalm 7:9, 11:4-5, 14:2-3; Ecclesiastes 3:16-18; Proverbs 15:2-4, 17:3; Isaiah 48:10; Jeremiah 17:10; Zechariah 12:9; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43; I Corinthians 9:24-25; Hebrews 12:1-3; James 1:2-4; I Peter 4:12
[4] Again, I should note here that I do not view the New Jerusalem as indicative of what is sometimes called “the eternal state,” but as of the renovated city of Jerusalem and its environs in the Kingdom Age. As demonstrated previously, Jerusalem and the surrounding area will be particularly blessed in relation to the rest of the world, where scripture appears to indicate that life will continue rather as it does today. Thus, there is no reason to believe that Revelation 21 teaches that the sun and moon will be done away with; rather, the text states that the inhabitants of New Jerusalem will simply have no need of them. Furthermore, the declaration that “there will be no more sea” does not teach that the oceans will disappear from the earth. The “sea” spoken of there is the Red Sea, which Isaiah prophesied will be dried up in the Kingdom Age, allowing people to cross over in order to come up and worship the Lord in his land (Isaiah 11:15-16, 23; 19:5).
[5] See Revelation 7:15-17; 21:1-4
[6] “Hugh Ross vs Kent Hovind How old is the Earth.” YouTube video, 1:19:31 – 1:19:59, posted by “Victoria Cantrell.” June 4, 2014.
https://youtu.be/2_Z_br-4RCo
[7] The juxtaposition of day and night in Genesis 1 demonstrates that both meanings are present in the passage.
