Thanks, Dave. I especially like your insight that being expelled from the
garden was merciful. Perhaps the inspired Hebrew writer was answering the
question "why do we die ?" by saying that it is God's will that physical
creatures not live forever. The extent to which the ancient Hebrews
distinguished between the physical and the spiritual (both life and death)
is unclear to me, but even if they didn't, we can. And I completely agree
with your analysis of natural "evil" (physical death, pain).
I guess it's the relationship between moral evil and natural evil that has
me stumped. I used to read the Fall as saying that human moral evil casts
a shadow on the natural world such that the whole creation needs redeeming.
But, evolution tells us that such a shadow would need to have been
retrospective, in effect long before the first humans, does it not?
Some might say that only after humans appeared was the creation tainted.
Well, yes and no. Granted, human bumbling and greed has despoiled the
environment in a rather unique way, but was Paul really thinking of
human-caused ecological crises when he wrote that all creation groans?
Others might say that Satan had already corrupted creation (at least earth)
before humans appeared on the scene. That too seems odd.
In _Perelandra_, C.S. Lewis imagines Venus as an uncorrupted paradise.
From that I gather that Lewis took the possibility, if not the reality, of
an unfallen Eden quite seriously. Alas, I cannot.
Chuck
Dave wrote:
>>
>Chuck, you've put out a number of questions, more than I can claim to
>answer. But I think things may come easier through a consideration of
>several terms: evil, death, pain, and the related good, bad, sin. Part of
>the difficulty seems to lie in the overlap and ambiguity of some of these
>terms. For example, consider 'death'. It had to be in existence since the
>origin of life. Is it then evil? A common interpretation of Genesis 2:16f
>makes it so. "...in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
>die." does not apply to the death that characterized living creatures,
>for Adam and Eve ate and then lived for centuries. The spiritual death
>that they suffered was immediate, for they had to hide from the God with
>whom they had earlier fellowshiped. In the divine mercy, the pair was
>shut out of the garden lest they should eat of the tree of life "and live
>forever" (3:22). What is bad is unending life in the fallen state.
>
>The cessation of life is stressful, certainly for human beings, but also
>for animals. I understand that elephants are perturbed at the death of a
>fellow, and react also to the skeletal remains later. Could God have
>created undying entities? Apparently, but their being would have to be
>very different than the life familiar to us. But an eternally reproducing
>"species" would soon use up every basis for its life. So reproduction
>would be out. Nutrition would have to be on a very different basis, with
>no animals eating plants, and no decay possible. Boiled down, the life of
>angels (so far as we know) may fit, but not terrestrial life. Even with
>the indefinitely long lives of some desert palnts, rings form, with the
>central growth dying out, like a fairy ring in very slow motion.
>
>Is pain evil? Certainly animals feel it, so it must be ancient. It is
>generally unpleasant, although the controlled pain of chili can be an
>acquired taste. But discomfort after eating something warns me that it is
>poisonous, or at least not good for me. The pain of a strain keeps me
>from aggravating the injury. Granted, the nociceptive apparatus can get
>out of whack. But this is a malfunction of what is essentially
>beneficial. An inadequate sensation of pain is what killed the tallest
>man on earth, Robert Wadlow.
>
>'Evil' is ambiguous, for it applies to moral evil or sin, as well as a
>variety of other conditions, almost anything one doesn't like. But it is
>in the sense of sin that it is relevant to Genesis 2-3. Mixing all the
>rest of the notions in causes grave problems. "Good', taken as the
>opposite of 'bad', has its own ambiguity. Part of this can be removed by
>recognizing the difference between intrinsic goods, things good in
>themseves, and extrinsic goods. The quick test for the difference is to
>ask whether something is good for another thing. If the answer is yes, it
>is extrinsic. The obvious failure of this test is when something is a
>mixed good, with some of each. A purely intrinsic good is recognized as
>being good in and of itselt. Indeed, there is a certain twisted relevance
>in what has been given as a child's definition: "A lie is an abomination
>unto the Lord and an ever present help in time of trouble."
>
>Truth is properly held as an intrinsic good. However, the whole
>unvarnished truth told to someone who has just been diagnosed with an
>inoperable malignancy is probably not the best approach. There is
>something relevant in "speaking the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15). This
>fits in with there being a hierarchy of goods. So something that is good
>may be evil in circumstances where its acceptance interferes with a
>higher good. I think, for example, of a widowed father who abandoned his
>minor children to go off to do missionary work with his new wife.
>
>The questions you raise need to be examined with careful attention to the
>terms involved, so as to avoid confusion and ambiguity. Obviously, the
>problems are difficult enough to demand much thought.
>
>Dave
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