Thesis #2: Death Existed Before the Fall

There is strain of theology which teaches that God made the initial creation perfect. That is both morally perfect and without sin and without physical death, even of animals. In this view, long associated with young earth theology, there was no death, no decay, and no sin on earth before the fall of Adam. In this view, before the fall of the man lions laid down with lambs. There was no predation. Even the laws of thermodynamics were different so that what we consider the “natural” process of decay was absent.

This is what I call "theology that is not in the Bible". In this writing I shall examine the Old Testament scriptures used to promote this error and show how they are being misunderstood or wrenched out of context. I address the New Testament scriptures such as Romans chapter five separately. This article is largely an excerpt from the book "Early Genesis, The Revealed Cosmology". In this book I present evidence to support each of my "Twenty-Five Theses Where the Church is Getting Early Genesis Wrong." This article speaks to my second thesis.

To support this idea, some believers cite the many instances in Genesis chapter one in which God describes His work as “good.” They combine that with questions like “is death something God would describe as “good?”

As we discussed in the section on the days of creation, the Hebrew word for “good” in Genesis chapter one is towb. It does not mean moral perfection. Indeed it couldn’t because the sixth day is described as “very good.” If “good” means “sinless perfection” then what does “very good” mean? How can one get better than sinless perfection? In addition, in chapter two God describes Adam being alone as “not good”, so something can be “not good” even before the fall.

Clearly creation was not perfect in some moral or absolute sense. God made the world suitable and beautiful for His purposes and that is the sense of “good” conveyed by towb. This world was never meant to be perfect, or even permanent. It was meant to be a place between heaven and hell, a place of choice between two eternities. It is the spinning coin- a temporary state with the question being on which side will it land?

The same word, towb, is translated as “fair” in Genesis 6:2 where it says that the sons of the Elohim saw that the daughters of Adam were “fair”. Does that mean that the females from the line of Adam were in a state of sinless perfection?

If God had wanted to convey the idea of “perfect” to describe His creation He might have inspired Moses to use the word tamiym which is translated “perfect.” It is used in places like Genesis 17:1 where God tells Abraham to walk before Him and be “perfect”. Abraham was only able to do on the basis of faith (just like us).

Others take God’s statement in Genesis 1:29-30 as further evidence that there was no human or animal death before the fall since the text only mentions plants as being authorized for “meat” for man and beast. These are probably the strongest two verses of scripture they have to support their view of the original condition of creation, since all of the New Testament verses they use are wrenched badly out of context. To put those two verses in context, I am going to start with the previous and connected verse:

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

It is reasonable to believe from this verse that God wanted humanity and wild animals which live on the land to be vegetarian. I get that. It is fair to say that was God’s intention. On the other hand, the text does not say that animals did not eat meat. It says that plants are what God established for animals to eat- it announces God’s intentions. It doesn’t say that predation never happened, only that the provision of plants for food (for land animals) did happen. Every parent understands the difference between what you provide your children to eat, what you wish they ate, and what they actually eat. There is a difference between your stated goals for their diet and their actual diet.

If God saying He has given plants for animals to eat somehow means that all animals ate only plants then why isn’t God saying He has provided a means of salvation to everyone evidence that all are saved? As we shall see with more detail and clarity in a bit, it is a mistake to confuse what God says He has provided as a statement about what His creation is actually doing.

Beyond all that, proponents of this view also use this passage to say that there was no physical death of any kind before the fall (some concede there might be the death of plants). The passage does not say that. It doesn’t even really say that animals never ate meat before the fall of man, much less that they never died. It is a huge leap from the idea that God’s original intention or goal for creation was for wild animals and humans to eat only plants to saying that there was no physical death before the fall. The passage doesn’t even say that sharks, fish, whales and other animals which live in the water were to eat only plants for food.

This idea that there was no predation on earth before the fall is more theology that is not actually in the Bible. It is only inferred from something that the Bible says viewed through the lens of misunderstandings about the initial conditions of creation. It is a misunderstanding founded on previous misunderstandings.

The root misunderstanding is about what this earth was supposed to be. Before the fall of man, there was the fall of Lucifer. Sin was in the universe prior to the fall of man. The Garden of Eden was a special place on the earth where God fellowshipped with Adam. It was not indicative of the condition of the world as a whole, though perhaps the world could have been lifted up to be like Eden had Adam not fallen.

Even in Eden the serpent was there, challenging God’s integrity. The Devil dares not do that in Heaven, it is only recorded that he challenges our integrity, accusing the brethren night and day. There is no reason to believe that the rest of the world, outside of the Garden of Eden, was in any better shape and every reason to suppose that it was worse.

From this evidence it is clear that God did not create the world as a place of sinless perfection without physical death or decay. He did not create the world as a place where His will must be done at all times: That is, He did not initially create the earth as an extension of heaven. Nor did He create it as a place where His will is excluded, as an extension of hell. Rather, the world was created to be the battle ground between heaven and hell where an argument is being played out between God and the Devil. The question is whether faith in God or faith in self produces true freedom.

The answer to the question becomes ever clearer to the angels: Hell lost at the cross. Its defeat is made manifest through the body of Christ, which is the church. But in vengeful rage Hell will, just before History’s end, form a compulsory collective of the great mass of mankind in mimicry and mockery of the body of Christ. But that my friends, is another journey, for another time.

So Earth was created as a place where His will can increasingly be done, not a place where it is automatically done each moment (though in the end it still will be). If those whose faith is in Him have their way, it will look more and more like heaven. If those who disregard Him have their way, it will look more and more like hell. Are we in “evening”, a “twisting away from the light”, or “morning”, a turning toward it?

Creation (minus the fallen angels) was in a state of innocence, which is not the same thing as a state of obedience to God’s will. My small children do things that would, for you or me, be sin, but they don’t see the sin in it. They are selfish without the capacity to see their selfishness. They parade around naked without seeing the shame of their nakedness. They eat candy when I want them to eat vegetables.

When animals or toddlers take from others, we don’t think of it as stealing. When a lion kills a zebra we don’t think that the lion is committing a sin. They are not morally accountable for those actions because of their state of innocence. Sin is not counted where there is no law (Rom 5:12).

The Bible defines sin in Romans 14:23. It says “Whatever is not of faith is sin.” When Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit, it was an act of unbelief. They did not have faith in what God said. Not only in that instance of disobedience, but in the desire to be able to decide right and wrong for themselves rather than trusting God on decisions about what is right and wrong.

The text implies that they had wandered around naked in front of God before the fall, but had never considered that it might be something to be ashamed of. The action was there before the fall, but the awareness of right and wrong was not present. Man was in a state of innocence, not sinless perfection.

Going back to the passage in Genesis, what it says in verse thirty should be taken in the context of what is said in verse twenty-eight. That is, the provision of plants as food for fowls, creeping things, and “beasts of the earth” is in the context of humanity being given a mandate to subdue the earth and exercise dominion over the animals.

The word translated “subdue” is kabash, and it means “to tread down” or “to conquer, subjugate, violate:—bring into bondage, force, keep under, subdue, bring into subjection.” The word translated “dominion” is from the Hebrew ra-dah and it means “to tread down, i.e. subjugate; specifically, to crumble off:—(come to, make to) have dominion, prevail against, reign, (bear, make to) rule,(-r, over), take.” In both cases these meanings are taken from the famous “Strong’s Concordance”, online version.

I note here that some of those who hold to a young and perfect earth try to skirt around the harshness of these terms by saying that man was only told to subdue the earth, not the animals. They say man was only told to “have dominion” over the animals. Then they give a very soft definition of “dominion” which does not convey the full meaning of the word in the original.

These are shady tactics. If humankind is to subdue the earth, surely the “beasts of the earth” are a part of it. Regardless, the proper definition of the word used for “dominion” also includes subjugation. They both confer a sense of “treading down”. The meaning of both of those words is very evocative of Christ giving His disciples the power to tread on serpents and scorpions. I invite you to get to a concordance and read for yourself who is giving you the most accurate and complete meaning of these Hebrew words.

The use of both of these words implies that the world was not in a state of sinless perfection, or even general obedience, to God. Rather, with the creation of the human race, things were finally in place where God could through humanity begin the process of making the earth more like heaven rather than the middle ground it was created as.

God’s plan was unfolding. Earth began formless and void, a place of darkness and confusion. That was the original state of creation. With each intervention of God into the physical world, it became more illuminated and orderly. His crowning work was the introduction of man, made in His own likeness and with the potential to share His own image, into the world. Humanity was there to complete the task of subduing it, of subjecting it, and of exercising dominion over it.

Verse thirty of Genesis One is not describing what wild beasts and fowls and creeping things ate prior to the fall of man, it is describing what God intends them to eat and established for them to eat when man finally exercises his authority according to the will of God. It is the desired outcome when mankind subdues the earth and assumes godly dominion over the creatures in it. This declaration of God will come to be reality in the Messianic age, such as is foretold in Isaiah 11:17 and again in chapter 65 where it says that “the lion will eat straw like an ox.” It will happen once man, in subjection to Christ, rules the earth according to the will of God instead of his own will.

As further evidence that this view of the matter is correct, compare the list of creatures created on the sixth day with the list that God said He provided vegetation for food. “Creeping things”, such as lizards, snakes, and small animals which scurry about on the ground, are on both lists. “Beasts of the earth”, which are considered to be wild animals, are on both lists. Fowls are only on the list of creatures for which plants have been given for food, because they were created on the fifth “day”, not the sixth. Finally, cattle (the word is behemah and in the form used here means large domestic-type quadrupeds) in all its kinds are created on the sixth day, but they are not on the list of animals to whom plants are given for food!

That last should be a giant red flag that the no predation/no death view has it wrong. Many wild animals, lizards, and fowls are known to be predators, but they are on the list that God wants to be vegetarians. Cattle and animals of that class are known to be vegetarians but they are the only category of land creature which is not on the list of things which God wants to be vegetarians.

A reasonable explanation is that cattle and such did not need to be on the list because they were already plant eaters. The other categories were rife with predators, rife with carnivores. That they were on the list of animals that God had provided plants for was not a statement of initial conditions, it was a statement of the desired goal for man whom had just been given dominion over these creatures!

Man was to set about making the earth into the kind of earth God intends for the millennial kingdom to be. We are simply ridiculous failures at it in our own strength. On our own, we can’t even fully understand the instructions, much less carry them out. We can’t do God’s will without a continuous vital connection with God.