Death in Relation to the Creation and Fall

For reference: Yes, it goes on to emphasize that all humanity dies as a result, but for the purpose of my argument I'm emphasizing that sin entered into the world AND DEATH BY SIN, because the point is that there was no sin or death BEFORE the Fall, both ENTERED when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and I consider that further confirmed by the other scripture I quoted, Romans 8:21: Are you going to argue that all creatures were CREATED in "the bondage of corruption?" That would make God's Creation much less than "good," wouldn't it? But put it together with Romans 5:12, which says that sin entered the world and death by sin (entered at the same time as a result), and the obvious conclusion is that all Creation was subject to corruption (death and decay and disease) as a result of the Fall. It still says that sin entered into the world by Adam's sin, and the rest is just the attempt of somebody who doesn't know Greek to make it mean something other than the English translators who DID know Greek said it means, and again I point you to Romans 8:21 about how all Creation is going to be released from "the bondage of corruption" which is death, when this world comes to its end.Besides, why are you making such a big deal out of this? If you are willing to say that there was no death for humanity before the Fall but there was death for all other creatures, you've eliminated human beings from evolution at least. Do you want to do that? (Let me guess, you've got Adam and Eve suddenly appearing as human beings after millions of years of evolution up to that point?)And that passage in Romans 8 goes on: Surely this says that both "they," that is all the other creatures, and ourselves also, are waiting for the redemption of our body. Ours was corrupted by the Fall, you want to claim that all the other creatures were created corrupted? All very clever, as good liberal Christians tend to be with their manipulation of the Greek, but I don't see why anyone should trust your translation over that of Tyndale and the King James translators who were steeped in Greek. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What a demeaning view of me. Where would I GET my point of view for them to agree with if not from reading them in the first place, along with a lot of others who didn't convince me of their thinking? I am not one of those who got my theology from growing up in church, I came by it all, including my belief in Christ, through reading all kinds of books in my forties, including a lot of Eastern religion as well as cultic writings and Catholic writings and liberal Christian writings. I arrived, I think quite honestly, at Protestant Reformation Christianity as a result of sorting through all the options out there. You can of course conclude that I'm stupid and chose the wrong authorities in the end, but you can't conclude that I started out with a theology to which everything I read must conform. I do not see that "a plain literal reading of the scriptures" demands [abe] a heliocentric view [/abe] an earth-centered view at all. That came from Aristotle, to which the RCC was dedicated far more than it ever was to the Bible.And why are you going back to Galileo? The Protestant Reformation overthrew all that, thank God, and it is to them that I trace my own understanding of scripture. Well for me it is clearly NO, as I've shown here already. And yes what you are doing IS a matter of manipulating scripture to fit modern beliefs. The way DA made the Greek, which of course he doesn't know at all, mean that only human beings suffered from the Fall, as I just pointed out in my previous post (which should raise questions about the evolution of humanity anyway, and I can hardly wait to see where you all go with that one.) I'm sorry but I find this very sad. I'm very attracted to the writings of the Holiness people but I'm also aware that churches founded on Wesley have a strong tilt to liberalism, and I've often wondered if that's because he insisted on Arminianism over Calvinism. He himself was a powerful preacher of Christ as were most of the Holiness people, but once you've got a false theology in the sheepfold it tends to take over. I don't take myself for the standard of anything, but I do of course believe I'm right about the things I defend here or I wouldn't defend them. Shall I accuse YOU of thinking you have a monopoly on the truth because you are strongly committed to a different point of view? It is horribly sad to me that people think they need to seek some kind of new reading of scripture after two millennia of the work of, yes, the greatest spiritual and intellectual minds who all agree on the inerrancy and basic readings of scripture. AND PLEASE DO NOT DENY THAT THIS IS ONLY BECAUSE OF THE PULL OF EVOLUTIONARY "SCIENCE." You ARE trying to deny this, as if this new "seeking of the truth" would have occurred without its influence. No, evolution has an iron grip on today's minds and that is the ONLY reason for such a conference as the one you describe. The nonChristians here think Christianity is outmoded and silly and our pride in our own intellects is naturally wounded by this and by what seems like their consistent reasoning (I emphasize "seems," because it's all an illusion). You don't get the brunt of this here because you've already conceded, but I get it all the time because I refuse to concede, and now I'm getting it on this thread from you and DA who consider yourselves to be Christians. I don't have to insist on what I glean of the scriptural standard for life and death, I can stick with the simple scripture that says "ALL CREATION" is waiting for redemption from corruption without having to figure out how.And I'll just ignore your speculations about what would have happened in the Flood because it doesn't belong on this thread, and anyway you imagine it from the point of view that denies that it ever happened. I have set myself the task of imagining it from the opposite point of view. You don't know what happened and neither do I, because we're talking about the unwitnessed past, but I think I've made some good arguments based on knowing that God's word IS God's word and not open to the kind of debunkery you've allowed yourself to fall into. So the bugs found refuge in the ark, I have no trouble with that idea. There are a lot of creationist arguments that don't cut it, so what? They're no sillier than the evolutionist arguments that have slabs of different kinds of rock representing millions of years of time and dead creatures within them representing evolution up the strata, although they are simply dead creatures that obviously died en masse in conditions peculiarly conducive to fossilization. Odd then that you haven't said one thing that demonstrates such supposed inconsistency. Why, because I looked for scripture to explain why plants don't die when they're eaten, or live or die in the same sense meant in scripture about the effects of the Fall? I think I came up with a reasonable scripture-based explanation for that.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : to correct "heliocentric" to earth-centered

I see I didn't address DA's quote from the NASB but looking at it now I see nothing to object to. It also says that it was through Adam that sin entered into the world, and that's the main point I want emphasized, sin and its consequence, death. That point along with Romans 8:19 that shows that all the creatures have been subjected to the "bondage of corruption" which means death, from which they hope for release at the time of the redemption of all things, add up to my proof that death entered the world, including all the other creatures, at the Fall. It is? Do you have any notion of my arguments about these things? I am NOT "KJV-only" by the way and I try very hard to make that clear. KJV-onlies think the KJV was inspired by God, I do not, I think it is simply the best translation we have, and this is because all the others are based on the bogus Greek texts that Westcott and Hort used in their revision of 1881. This is a long argument and I have a whole blog about it, "The Great Bible Hoax of 1881."But this does not mean that the newer translations are necessarily inaccurate otherwise and I've never said anything remotely like that. Spoken like a good liberal revisionist, which is the presumptuous thing here. Death is the definition of imperfection. Death is pain is decay is corruption is disease. There is nothing GOOD about any of those things. Right, without some artificial notion of good and evil we would just LOVE pain and disease and decay and corruption, we'd just love the stink of dead things, we just revel in deformity and the witherings of age. Yes, we know these things are bad without the help of any special knowledge. No, and I'm sure if one ate one of your arms or legs you'd just revel in the experience as "good," right? BECAUSE IT HURTS! What more do we need than our fear of death, and the pain often involved in it, and our natural recoiling from the smell of death and disease and our grief when someone we're close to dies to tell us that death is bad??? What a bunch of sophistry, HBD. You really need to rethink all this. We do? Seems to me we're far more likely to UNDERestimate the suffering of not only other creatures but other human beings because of our own self-centeredness. You are treating our inevitable EXPERIENCE of the pain of disease and death as some kind of mental aberration? Have you never experienced any of the things I've been describing here? You think it's all an illusion, a mental fabrication? Uh, WHAT? That's pure gobbledygook it seems to me. If you go back through my posts I'm sure you'll see that I never said they weren't. But the sea creatures had to stay in the sea and could not get onto the ark, which was for the land animals. And the whole point of my searching out the scriptural distinctions between life and death in relation to the Fall was to explain why PLANTS were not treated as living things in the same sense, nor their being eaten as death, and why Noah was not commanded to take them onto the ark. Which doesn't mean there weren't lots of plants on the ark! But the passage speaks of sin ENTERING THE WORLD, not the universe or the heavenlies, where Satan had already fallen. And it's not mere "tradition" that says the serpent was really Satan, scripture itself says so. And I don't think we know what is meant by "the knowledge of good and evil" really, but because it is presented as bad for us I can't accept the liberal idea that it was a good thing in any sense. Eve was simply seduced by the idea that she'd become like God, which is the perennial temptation to all of us since then. Do keep your eyes open for the gradual decline in genetic diversity that might show you differently. See my previous comment, things are deteriorating with our without our help, but otherwise yes, we ARE fallen and we don't always do right by the Creation. Well carry on then. I can get off this thread if you all stop addressing me. You can enjoy your shared liberal revisionist view of the Bible without my interference.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Look, "Faith" YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ME. Stop pretending you do.By the way, I have studied Koine Greek and have a basic understanding of it.The Greek I gave you, was straight from an interlinear Greek translation directly from the Textus Receptus (which by the way was used for the KJV and other versions of the NT). A word for word translation of Greek to English.If you want to argue the individual meanings of these words in the Greek or the passage as a whole, let me know and we can battle it out.Otherwise, cease and desist on your ridiculous and outrageously wrong one liners.Your very attitude is unChristlike and unbefitting as a Christian.

Ironic since many early Christian theologies disagree with you on your intepretation of these scriptures. If you want we can go down this rabbit hole and show you were you are wrong.However I demand you show evidence on your side that all pre-modern theologians side with your interpretation instead of your snide, derogatory, vacuous and unsubstantiated statements that hold no evidential weight.

A basic understanding of Greek is not enough to translate the Bible. What an absurd thing to say. Many of the KJV translators had been taught Greek from early childhood, but a year or two of basic Greek compares to that in your mind?And so what that the Greek was taken from the Textus Receptus, those translators who USED the TR did not read it as you insinuated it should be read by presenting it as you did.I guess I'm not being properly Christian because I'm not a liberal? Otherwise I fail to see how I deserve your accusation.

Wow. Snide? Where? Calling you "liberal" perhaps? But that's the simple truth. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

If none of the animals died before The Fall, then presumably man was a vegetarian. So then, why do we have canine teeth that are designed for tearing meat?Did The Fall cause our physical features to change too?And all the scripture that you have quoted only shows that you can interpret it to be saying what you want. It doesn't show that what you interpret is the right interpretation. It can also be interpreted to be talking about solely about spiritual death, and not body death.The Bible simply is not clear on this matter.

I disagree, it seems clear to me that the scriptures I've quoted make the case.

I confess that I don't know who all argued as I'm arguing, it is merely an impression I've had that the history of theology supports the idea that all creatures were made to die as a result of the Fall, but possibly I'm wrong about that.I looked up Gill and Spurgeon and found Gill interpreting the "creatures" as the "Gentiles," and Spurgeon thinking only in terms of the physical appearance of the earth, and they are both theologians I much respect. But in these particular views I can't agree with them. I also looked up the Westminster Confession but it doesn't comment on the passages in question.So I don't know now where I got my very strong impression that there is such strong agreement that scripture is talking about the death of all living things being the result of humanity's Fall.Perhaps I will yet find the sources that led me in that direction. But meanwhile I can't read those scriptures any other way and I don't find any of the arguments against the idea to be at all convincing."The wages of sin is death" seems conclusive all by itself. Death has no other reason for existing than human sin. All creatures that experience death are therefore the victims of human sin. The idea that all creatures are waiting for release from "the bondage of corruption" also seems conclusive all by itself. The idea that "death by sin" ENTERED the world at one time is also sufficient to me, but with the other statements absolutely conclusive.To say that all this only applies to human beings is to imply that the death of animals could be part of a good Creation. The idea of death before the Fall to any creature capable of suffering utterly contradicts a good Creation. There is nothing good about death, or all the forms of death in disease and decay and other evil effects of bodily corruption, it is all pain and suffering and misery and fear and loss and grief, for human beings and animals alike. Have you ever seen a pet die? Anyone who has can't possibly speak of death as a good thing.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Whatever floats your boat Faith. Continue to put people down, you lose all credibility.

You make absolute statements. Some theologians believe as you do, many do not. Not all things are as black as you say they are as far as theological positions. Here is chart of early church fathers and their beliefs as far as the original state of Adam and Eve (found here: F.R. Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin The sources of the doctrines of the fall and original sin : Tennant, F. R. (Frederick Robert), 1866-1957 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive).

Church Father	Date	Was Man Mortal before the Fall?	Reference
Justin Martyr	c.100-c.165	No	Dialogue 124
Tatian	110-180	No	Address 7
Theophilus of Antioch	c.180	Yes	Autolycus 2.27
Irenaeus of Lyons	c.115-202	No	Demonstration 15
Clement of Alexandria	c.150-c.215	Yes	Miscellanies 3.9
Tertullian	c.160-c.225	No	Testimony 3
Methodius	d. 311	No	Chastity, 3.7; 9.2
Athanasius	c.300-373	No	Incarnation 3, 4.
Gregory of Nyssa	300-394	No	Moses 44.397; cf. 45.33
John Chrysostom	374-407	No	Genesis 8.4; 15.4; 16.6
Theodore of Mopseustia	c.350-428	Yes	Galatians 2.15, 16
Augustine of Hippo	354-430	Yes	Literal 8.4.8-8.5.11; 9.10.16-18; 11.18.23-24

So much for your idea that this is a modern "liberal" idea. This is what they believed on the mortality of Adam and Eve. Even fewer believed that all creation including animals were immortal before the fall.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

One other factor you haven't thought of faith. God is outside of time is he not? Therefore he could put in place something even such as death even before the first sin by man occurred (of course this is not the very first sin, sense Satan committed the first sin by rebelling against God) and yet still be true to the fact that through sin, death entered into the world. Not saying this interpretation is correct, per se. Just giving food for thought. Why? Life and death are natural processes. In fact, life on this planet cannot exist without death. Without death, the equilibrium of life is thrown off balance. Bacteria would quickly outnumber and push out any other organism on the planet. If you restrict it to animals, some animals reproduce faster than others resulting an overpopulation of a few organisms which would prevent other animals from reproducing. Just saying there are a lot of factors here to think about. Why not? Animals do not have souls do they? So why would death be an issue? Just asking. I think this is a warped view of Christianity. Christians must suffer for Christ to be with God but that is not considered evil or bad. Through suffering, God brings joy. Joy really makes no sense without suffering or pain. The same thing with the rest of creation. There is no happiness without sadness, no joy without pain, no life without death. Its a duality. No Faith, I have never seen an animal die?!? Yes, I have seen pets and loved ones die. Not all die in pain and suffering and even if they do, is that evil?Yet, you talk about plants and other animals dying before the Fall but say nothing about them. Do fish feel pain? Other animals? I think to a certain degree they do.

I am not translating it myself. I am showing you a word for word translation of Greek into English from an online interlinear Bible. English is derived from Greek through Latin and several other languages. In fact sentence structure is very similar and pretty easy to follow. I presented it word for word from the translation. Take it or leave it. It is how you talk to people.

it may not make a whole lot of sense to put a forbidden tree in the center of the garden, but perhaps we can rationalize that: maybe yahweh was saving it for later, maybe it was a test, etc.but it makes zero sense to give them a magical tree that is clearly special in its gifts... of absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. the text isn't very clear on the idea of whether the benefits stuck around from the first bite, or whether the trees sustained them.i would make an argument that it's from the first bite, because the story is strongly allegorical and etiological in nature. but you could probably make an argument the other way.