Your comments certainly represent a traditional view of the western
church concerning this relationship - but that doesn't mean that they're right.
The first thing to note is that Gen.2:17 is directed specifically to the
human - "_You_ will surely die." There is no suggestion that the animals - which have
not even been created yet in this account - are involved here. (& for that matter,
if one is going to try to make animal death contingent upon human sin, why not plant
death? After all, humans & other animals could eat fruit without killing the trees!)
Secondly, the consequence of sin is not just "you shall die" (NRSV) but "thou
shalt surely die" (KJV). The Hebrew is _moth tamuth_ with the absolute infinitive
which adds emphasis to the verb. An ultra-literal translation would be something like
"dying you shall die" - & in fact that is what the Septuagint has. Athanasius read
this as implying a twofold death dying - not only physical death (which he seems to
have thought would have happened even without sin) but spiritual death & corruption
because of separation from God. That is not what the Hebrew means. However:
a. This shows that one of the major theologians of the early church considered
physical death of humans _not_ to be a consequence of sin.
b. It suggests that we might give some attention here to the distinction -
often made by Christians in talking about dying in other connections -
between "merely" dying and "surely" dying, the latter having the character
of the "second death" of Revelation.
.............................................
> So, as a result of sin, man, animals and nature are all fallen. And
> there is nothing that excludes the idea that nature includes all of the
> universe. A bit of thought suggests that God most likely heralded the
> post-sin era with His principle of entropy. From that time on, the
> stars including our Sun were also doomed to die because the universe's
> supply of useful energy began depleating i.e. ceased to be upheld by
> God.
Of course without the "principle of entropy" the atmosphere would have
stratified & chemical reactions, including all those necessary for Adam & Eve's
metabolism, would have been a little different! Read Bob Russell's article
"Entropy and Evil" (Zygon 19, 449, 1984) before you try to make the 2d law
a consequence of sin.
> One must mention that some of the difficulty with what preceeds comes
> from trying to wedge in the theory of evolution which suggests a
> chronology of events where carnivorous dinosaures (i.e. able and willing
> to eat its fellow beast) cavorted the Earth long before man...therefore
> that death existed before man existed...therefore downplaying the
> seriousness of sin. ........................
Of course we are pushed to reconsider traditional interpretations of Genesis
(& Romans 5) by scientific evidence but it is not evolution which comes into play
here. Even if one takes a progressive creation view with no macrevolution at all,
the geological record makes it crystal clear that animals were dying & species becoming
extinct long before humanity came on the scene - a point Howard Van Till makes in a
parallel post. Evolution via natural selection introduces another issue - not just
the fact of prehuman death but death as a means through which creation takes place.
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/