Of all the oddities that could rouse me from a two-year blogging slumber, this has to be the oddest—and one which reveals a depth of nerd-dom that may heretofore be unplumbed.
I have posted before of my leaning toward the "old earth" perspective of the age of the universe. However, I have not touched on the topic of the possibility of death on earth prior to the fall of humanity. I expect that those who hold to the belief that death did not exist on earth prior to Adam's sin would have some level of curiosity about what life on earth actually looked like without the presence of death.
One thing is sure: It would not simply look like it does now, but without the presence of death. From the microbes that live off the decaying matter in your digestive tract to the blue whale filtering tons of krill through its baleens each day, death has an integral part in sustaining and shaping the world of the living.
Consider, for example, the lowly female rabbit, a creature that bears as many as twelve kits at a time, is always fertile and has a gestation of a month. In the absence of predation and natural death, a normal rabbit pair could quickly multiply to a number that would destroy every living plant on earth.
Is a rabbit's reproductive biology a design innovation introduced after the fall as a sort of Rabbit 2.0 for the purpose of feeding the newly-revised Coyote 2.0, who has given up his herbivorous proclivities? Was the pre-fall cheetah a slow-moving, tree-dwelling creature akin to a sloth, with no need for razor-sharp eyesight and finely-tuned muscles to propel it 60 miles/hour in pursuit of an antelope?
Of course, the above could be true, but I don't think it is required by a contextual reading of scripture. Adam's sin introduced death to the human race (Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:21), but there are no passages stating that death did not exist in creation prior to Adam's sin. If anything, the presence of death outside the human race would have emphasized Adam's dominion over creation and uniqueness as one created in the image of God, and it would have provided him a vivid picture of the consequences of disobeying God's command.
I have posted before of my leaning toward the "old earth" perspective of the age of the universe. However, I have not touched on the topic of the possibility of death on earth prior to the fall of humanity. I expect that those who hold to the belief that death did not exist on earth prior to Adam's sin would have some level of curiosity about what life on earth actually looked like without the presence of death.
One thing is sure: It would not simply look like it does now, but without the presence of death. From the microbes that live off the decaying matter in your digestive tract to the blue whale filtering tons of krill through its baleens each day, death has an integral part in sustaining and shaping the world of the living.
Consider, for example, the lowly female rabbit, a creature that bears as many as twelve kits at a time, is always fertile and has a gestation of a month. In the absence of predation and natural death, a normal rabbit pair could quickly multiply to a number that would destroy every living plant on earth.
Is a rabbit's reproductive biology a design innovation introduced after the fall as a sort of Rabbit 2.0 for the purpose of feeding the newly-revised Coyote 2.0, who has given up his herbivorous proclivities? Was the pre-fall cheetah a slow-moving, tree-dwelling creature akin to a sloth, with no need for razor-sharp eyesight and finely-tuned muscles to propel it 60 miles/hour in pursuit of an antelope?
Of course, the above could be true, but I don't think it is required by a contextual reading of scripture. Adam's sin introduced death to the human race (Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:21), but there are no passages stating that death did not exist in creation prior to Adam's sin. If anything, the presence of death outside the human race would have emphasized Adam's dominion over creation and uniqueness as one created in the image of God, and it would have provided him a vivid picture of the consequences of disobeying God's command.
5 comments:
Interesting thoughts there Matt. Death involving the animal kingdom and the length of time between Creation and man's rebellion have great opportunities for the creation of theories. To me they are equally valid arguments for a very rapid sequence of events from Creation to the rebellion.
I would agree that it could have been a fast sequence, not allowing for the rapid multiplication of the pre-curse/fall creatures. However, I would assume that part of the "good" that God pronounced on creation would have been its ability to continue on into the future without destroying itself with overpopulation of certain species. In other words, creation was designed with perfect balance, in much the same way that there is a perfect balance now among species that is only disrupted with human activity. In that regard, the fall/curse was not necessary for the continued survival of creation.
On a related note, one of my favorite books is Wolf Totem, which recounts the consequences of human intervention in the wolf/prey ecosystem of Inner Mongolia. Shepherds were incentivized by the Chinese government to kill wolves which were periodically stealing sheep. When the wolf population was killed off, the pasture land was destroyed by rodents, rabbits and other prey that the wolves had kept at bay. The sheep starved and the shepherds' way of life was lost. Far better to lose a few sheep to the wolves than to lose more to starvation.
Without death, wouldn't this same problem over overpopulation eventually affect humans as well? For me, its impossible to take God's foreknowledge out of the equation.
I don't think we can fully imagine how many people this earth could accommodate without the sinful effects of waste, misappropriation, selfishness, warfare, etc. I agree with your note on foreknowledge, though. It does throw a monkey wrench into speculation and begs the question of whether this earth was ever intended to be our final destination.
…At least our final destination as pre-rebellion beings. Regardless of resource stewardship, the earth population would have to reach a population limit at some time. If it is true for rabbits it would also have to be true for people. ☺
Post a Comment