Faith writes:
What I'm doing is standard hermeneutics as I've studied them. Sure I COULD be wrong about this or that but I've spent enough time on these things to be convinced of what I've said here. The rule is to interpret the difficult scriptures by the clear scriptures, there's nothing about percentage. ALL scripture is inspired by God, and it must all be reconciled, you can't make one part contradict another. God said death would be the consequence of disobedience, and "the wages of sin is death" confirms that. Therefore the Tree of LIfe has to conform to that revelation, you can't assume there's a contradiction just because that's the way it first hits you, you can't just make it eliminate the immortality that is obviously implied in the other scriptures. Again, the obscure is to be interpreted by the clear. If you aren't clear about any of it then keep working on it, but I am clear about it.
If you've studied hermeneutics, you know that one of the most helpful keys to interpretation is
context. I would encourage you to look again at the context of Rom 5:12ff.
First, Paul is clearly stressing
man, not
animals as his subject of discussion:
quote:
Rom. 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
(emphasis mine)
Second, what about the word "world" (κόσμος ) in Rom 5:12? This Greek word has a very wide semantic range, so a Greek lexicon doesn't help us much. Again, we need to look at context to decide what it means. And in the context, "world" here is referring to the world of mankind, just as it does in John 3:16 (God loved the world, so that He gave His son, so that whosoever believes in him shall be saved. In Jn 3:16 "world" clearly includes only those who can possibly have faith in Christ, i.e. it is only mankind, not animals.)
Third, we need to note the context of the whole passage. Paul is comparing and contrasting the "First Adam" and the "Second Adam". The first brought sin and death, the second offers righteousness and life. In Paul's argument, if the death of the first included animals, then the eternal life offered by the second must also extend to animals, which is heterodox. Conversely, if in Paul's argument Christ offers eternal life only to mankind, then Paul only has mankind in view when he speaks of Adam bringing death.
Stepping back and looking at the context, it should be quite clear that Paul is ONLY talking about mankind in Rom 5:12ff. He doesn't have animals in view at all. Paul's comments in Rom 5:12ff cannot properly be used either to
support or to
deny animal death before the Fall. Whether or not animals died before the Fall of man must be argued elsewhere.
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein
I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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