No, I wouldn’t.
Instead, I would conclude that you always intended that I could eat other things than canned food, and that perhaps I had at first taken you too literally.
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Actually there is. I explain my reasoning at https://creation.com/animal-cruelty
Is it your contention that Abel could NOT have been killed if Adam’s family were still in Eden?
When you say “immortal”… do you mean no act of mayhem could have ended someone’s life if they had eaten of the Tree of Life?
Your honest interpretation of the above statement is, “Just eat anything you want.” Just checking this is what you honestly believe.
Prior to the Fall humans did not have a sin nature, and they would not have even attempted to kill one another.
In your opinion, would a fatal accident have been possible before the Fall?
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No. God was directly present on Earth and would have prevented such a thing from happening.
Do you consider this your opinion, or fact?
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Wow, the perfect tautology!!!
Cain could murder … because sin was introduced. But until then, the sin of murder could not have occurred. But sin DID occur that made Cain able to kill Abel?
Humans were created with the FRAILTY for the capacity of sin. Which means, eventually SOMEBODY would have sinned.
Your analysis is flawed philosophically and theologically.
I agree that you can make some big strides on the issue of Vegetarianism, but you are completely twisted around on the issues of immortality.
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My honest reaction is some degree of puzzlement over what was intended.
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When I look at these two passages side-by-side:
Genesis 1:29-30 (NRSV)
29 God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.
Genesis 9:3-4 (NRSV)
3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. 4 Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.
it does seem to me that there is an interesting contrast here. I don’t think I would go so far as to say that Genesis is teaching that the animals were designed as herbivores (as it seems more like an inference), but I can see why people would think that. In other words, I think Genesis 1 would be consistent with the idea that they were all created as herbivores, but it doesn’t prove it.
Is there any relevant Hebrew scholarship on this? I think it’s also a bit dangerous to take English translations and read too much between the lines.
@PDPrice, on a more practical level, how does this apply to things like phytoplankton? The “there was no death” idea is much easier to think about when it’s a lion (not) eating an antelope, but what does it mean for bacteria or microorganisms that are smaller than the plants or that don’t exactly “eat” in the sense that the ancient Hebrews would have thought about it?
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@jongarvey just wrote a book on this specific topic. I also recommend looking at this article. It is not Hebrew, but is shows that early Christians did not interpret these passages this way:
For many Christians, Genesis teaches that substantial changes occurred in the structure of creation at the time of Adam’s fall. There is widespread belief that thorns and thistles were specifically introduced into the world to be an annoyance to sinful human beings. Such plants, it is thought, did not exist in the original creation. That was certainly not Augustine’s view. He says:
We should not jump to the conclusion that it was only then that these plants came forth from the earth. For it could be that, in view of the many advantages found in different kinds of seeds, these plants had a place on earth without afflicting man in any way. But since they were growing in the fields in which man was now laboring in punishment for his sin, it is reasonable to suppose that they became one of the means of punishing him. For they might have grown elsewhere, for the nourishment of birds and beasts, or even for the use of man. Now this interpretation does not contradict what is said in the words, Thorns and thistler shall it bring forth to you if we understand that earth in producing them before the fall did not do so to afflict man but rather to provide proper nourishment for certain animals, since some animals find soft dry thistles a pleasant and nourishing food… I do not mean that these plants once grew in other places and only afterwards in the fields where man planted and harvested his crops. They were in the same place before and after; formerly not for man, after- wards for man. And this is what is meant by the words to you. (p. 94)
It is a further surprise to note that Augustine does not even see animal death and corruption as a direct result of the fall. In answer to the question as to why animals eat each other, he claims that it is because that is the way they were made. Human sin is not considered as the cause. Moreover, it is because we are fallen that we perceive animal death and corruption as an evil.
One might ask why brute beasts inflict injury on one another, for there is no sin in them for which they could be a punishment, and they cannot acquire any virtue by such a trial. The answer, of course, is that one animal is the nourishment of another. To wish that it were otherwise would not be reasonable. For all creatures, as long as they exist, have their own measure, number, and order. (p. 92)
He also speaks of death as follows: “For He has wrought them all in His wisdom, which, reaching from end to end, governs all graciously; and he leaves not in an unformed state the very least of His creatures that are by their nature subject to corruption, whose dissolution is loathsome to us in our fallen state by reason of our own mortality” (p. 90, emphasis mine).
THE CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE OF AUGUSTINE
This is all in Augustines literal interpretation of Genesis!
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What you have there is a single data point in which Augustine stands in for “early Christians”. I would hope for a more thorough sample before coming to a conclusion.
As luck would have it, a scholar just submitted an article on almost precisely this topic. There are a large range of views among the Church fathers. Though they usually held the earth was young, because they had no reason to think otherwise, similarity with modern YEC interpretations are just this superficial.
As I state already, @jongarvey wrote a book on this topic, and others have too. Soon we will have a blog post expanding on it too.
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“Death” in YEC usually applies to sentient animals, those with nephesh. So the death of plants and microorganisms is not the type of death they usually say did not occur before the fall.
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It’s a good argument, in my view, from Augustine about animal death before the fall, but it doesn’t address Genesis 1:29-30. Do you know how Augustine interpreted it? I haven’t made it to God’s Good Earth yet, hopefully soon, but I do have a copy so if it’s in there I’ll try to go find it.
This is a bit weird to me. Much of the YEC literature I grew up with from ICR and Answers in Genesis seemed to make a big point about finding modern science within Genesis. Why would all of a sudden would we switch to the ancient Hebrew definition of “not a plant” now? That seems kinda like cherry-picking.
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@Jordan makes sense if we understand it as an antropocentric story, explaining how God provisioned the world for Adam and Eve. Notably it does not forbid eating animals or speak of animal diets. It just says that God made plants available to us to eat.
So why would it not mention animal predation explicitly? Probably because the story isn’t about animals, but about us.
Note also that there is a distinction between what God allows and what actually happens. Even if God did not want us to eat animals, doesn’t mean in fact that we did not eat animals.
It makes sense historically. This interpretative approach is important in Seventh Day Adventism, the birth place of modern YEC, and they are all vegetarians now.
There are good philosophical/theological/exegetical reasons for distinguishing plants from animals. Certainly, there is not moral issue with slowly dicing an onion, and everyone should agree causing harm to animals has different moral character. One idea is that animal death is wrong, and that God permits it as a concession to our sinfulness.
What is more interesting is how “no death before the fall” can be taken up by fundamentalist YECs, such as @PDPrice, while leaving behind behind the implications, such as the vegetarian ethic it arises from.
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I eagerly await that article. But I’d just like to say now that I would not consider a 6000-year-old earth to be a “superficial” similarity. “Central” would be more appropriate.
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But when you look at Genesis 9:3, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.”, why would there be this new covenant with Noah if God had already allowed for the eating of animals? The parallel language and quoting of Genesis 1:30 seems to indicate a “before I allowed you to eat plants, now you can eat animals”. Is that not how you would naturally interpret Genesis 9:3?
I agree that it doesn’t explicitly forbid eating animals, but it seems to me to be inferred, especially when you add Gen. 9:3 to the mix.
Very much so. @swamidass has repeatedly brought up Augustine, who apparently failed to grasp this point. Yet, Augustine was writing hundreds of years after the fact and was highly influenced by both outside Greek philosophies, cults like Manichaeism, and the liberal, allegorical Alexandrian school of thought. Iraenaeus wrote on this many centuries earlier and was clear that there was no animal death before the Fall.