Kenneth Piers wrote:
> It seems altogether clear that death of both plants and animals occurred
> long before any humans were on the scene. In deed, it would be hard to
> imagine any kind of life existing without (the seeming co-requisite) of
> death. So how should we understand the "death" passages in Genesis? It
> likely does not refer to bodily death. Instead, perhaps we should
> understand this "death" as the separation of humanity from perfect
> fellowship with God the Creator - a fellowship which humans themselves
> were absolutely powerless to restore. So it is a spiritual death - left
> to ourselves we are "dead in our sins". Having lost our ability to
> understand ourselves, our neighbor, and our place in creation, humanity
> has ever since tried to find its point of reference somewhere within the
> creation itself - always with unsatisfactory consequences. These
> consequences express themselves in every avenue of life - in our
> inability to love God above all, to love ourselves as we ought, to love
> our neighbor rightly, and to care for the physical and biotic creation
> properly.
> By the gift of God's own Son we are restored (in principle) to perfect
> fellowship with our Creator through the gift of faith by the testimony
> of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. In this way we are restored to life -
> and ultimately will gain eternal life.
The belief that the first humans were in "perfect fellowship with
God the Creator" is highly problematic. There is no theological reason to
accept it, and if we do so, evolution will always be something of a foreign
element in our theology, however much we may be willing to accept it as a
scientific theory. This is part of an essentially static world view which
simply contradicts what we know about the general character of God's whole
creation. & it doesn't help to say that things evolved up to the point
where humans emerged. In fact, by suggesting that all the rest of creation
& cosmic history has been here only as a kind of launching pad for humanity,
it leads to a devaluation of the non-human creation.
IMO it is much better to understand humanity, having been created by
God through evolutionary processes, to have the potential to develop (again
through divine cooperation) toward such fellowship. Where perfect
fellowship of humanity (& the rest of creation) with God the Creator occurs
is in the Incarnation, which should not be seen as God's "Plan B" but as the
plan for creation from the beginning (Eph.1:10).
Again I would point out the general view of the Eastern Church, that
humanity was not created perfect but in an immature state. While this is of
course not an "evolutionary" view in the modern sense, it is open to
evolutionary theories in the way that the western idea of humanity created
in a state of static perfection (with all the totally unbiblical
speculations about A&E's beauty, wisdom, physical abilities &c) is not.
Shalom,
George
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 19 2001 - 09:28:51 EST