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[Distant Songs]

Mass extinctions are incompatible with a Christian worldview

Leaving aside the silliness of YECs who read Romans 5:12 so literally they postulate vegan T-Rexes in the Garden of Eden, I think there is definitely room for a theistic evolutionary view of creation. Natural selection and common descent doesn't necessarily contradict the fundamental ideas about God laid out in either the Old or New Testaments.

However: even if you can stretch the theology to allow natural death before the Fall (whether you believe there was a Garden or not), the entirety of Christian theology depends on the idea of God redeeming a creation that was once "very good" until it was broken by human and angelic rebellion. But the fossil record is very clear that there was periods of immense and sometimes incredibly violent suffering long before humans existed, to the extent that complex life was almost wiped from this planet on at least one occasion. No matter how you stretch it, you just can't reconcile the fundamental idea of a loving creator (even a progressive one) using such violence so we could live. Why would he need to wipe the dinosaurs clean in an apocalypse of fire from the sky so mammals could take their place? Or nearly end all life during the Permian extinction?

I don't think it's impossible to reconcile this with the idea of a God per se, but that God can't be the Biblical one. You have to read too much into it to make it something it isn't for that to work. It's too fundamental a contradiction.

[jimwalton]

I'm pretty sure you are mistaking "good" in Genesis 1 to mean "morally righteous" rather than what it means instead: Functional. Characterized by order. Genesis 1 is about functionality and order as over against disorder and non-order. Mass extinctions are not, therefore, contrary to nature functioning the way nature functions: life, death, selection, mutation, process, and cause-and-effect.

What God is redeeming us from is death brought on by rebellion and sin, not from natural death, natural disasters, and natural processes.

> No matter how you stretch it, you just can't reconcile the fundamental idea of a loving creator (even a progressive one) using such violence so we could live.

The Bible never claims that God uses the violence of natural processes so we can live. What it claims instead is that God created the universe to function in a predictable, orderly, regular way, and science confirms for us that the universe is truly that. In the midst of this natural world, we as humans live both as part of it and as unique within it. There is nothing about mass extinctions that causes an irreconciliation between Christian theology and life as we see it.

> Why would he need to wipe the dinosaurs clean in an apocalypse of fire from the sky so mammals could take their place?

What makes you think God orchestrated this? Certainly nothing in the Bible would lead you to that conclusion.

I don't see a contradiction at all. Let's talk more about it.

[Distant Songs]

Okay so the way I've always understood the Biblical narrative (having grown up evangelical) is that the New Creation is going to be a perfect world with no curse on either humans or creation, that the creation "groans with birth pangs" for it to be revealed, and that it's supposed to be a restoration of God's original design that was broken by human sin. Therefore, it's strongly implied that suffering (not necessarily death per se) wasn't supposed to be part of the original design, until we came along.

So what you're telling me makes it sound like the New Creation won't be a world without death, where the wolf lies down with the lamb. Either that or that it'll be better than the original design, which begs the question of why God didn't just lead with that in the first place.

(I also want to make clear that I don't necessarily believe any of this, except for what the scientific consensus has shown. I deconverted at 14 but I'm soul searching these days. I'm trying to argue devil's advocate in order to see if Christianity/the Bible can be reconciled with what the fossil record tells us about mass extinctions).

[jimwalton]

> Okay so the way I've always understood the Biblical narrative (having grown up evangelical) is that the New Creation is going to be a perfect world with no curse on either humans or creation

I think I know what you think you mean by this, but just a single point of clarification, even in the New Creation, a curse will remain on Satan and his angels.

> that the creation "groans with birth pangs" for it to be revealed

John Walton writes,

"The result of Adam’s sin (putting humanity as the source and center of wisdom) was not order centered on humanity, but rather disorder. This disorder extended to all people of all time as well as to the cosmos. When we stepped out of harmony with God’s purposes, we also stepped out of harmony with the rest of His creation. Now all creation groans, not because it suffered damage but because it is no longer in harmonious relationship with us. We changed; it did not."

> Therefore, it's strongly implied that suffering (not necessarily death per se) wasn't supposed to be part of the original design, until we came along.

Based on the comment by Walton, the suffering of the natural world could easily have been part of the original design. There was no biological or cosmological change in nature because of sin, but only in humans. Craig Keener writes, "For Paul, the sufferings of the whole present time are birth pangs, meaningful sufferings that promise a new world to come." The sufferings have always been there. We eagerly wait for the day when they are no more.

> So what you're telling me makes it sound like the New Creation won't be a world without death, where the wolf lies down with the lamb

The New Creation will be a world without death, pain, and suffering. The Bible is clear about that.

> Either that or that it'll be better than the original design, which begs the question of why God didn't just lead with that in the first place.

It will certainly be better than the original design. Why didn't God lead with that in the first place? God wanted more children, and the only way to engage in a love relationship is to choose it. The only way to choose it is to have an authentic choice. The only way to have an authentic choice is where evil is just as accessible as good. Heaven can only be Heaven because people have freely chosen to submit their free wills to the will of God, so that His will is done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Therefore a probationary period was necessary, and a Heaven of perfection is possible only after the probationary periods plays itself through.

[Distant Songs]

Okay, this all makes a lot more sense, thank-you. I like the interpretation of the creation groaning because we are at disharmony with it. I feel like that better reflects the historical rise of hierarchical societies with the agricultural revolutions, which started to see nature as something to be dominated (unlike indigenous peoples who see it as a relational web).

I still don't know if I buy your answer about God not creating the world perfectly in the beginning. It seems to contradict the New Testament's (at least) insistence that death is the last enemy to be destroyed. I personally find the idea of death being a part of the continuation of life to make a lot more sense, but the Bible seems to disagree as far as I can tell. Moreover, it ties into an old problem I've heard about the Free Will reading of the Eden narrative - if we'll always freely choose the good in heaven, why couldn't Adam and Eve have been created such? Doesn't this all mean God meant for it to happen? It wasn't some kind of tragedy? There's some parts of scripture that do seem to hint at it (Paul's comments in Romans about judgment being for the sake of showing grace), but that is definitely not the God I was raised to believe in. Nor one that I'm sure I could call perfectly moral.

[jimwalton]

> I still don't know if I buy your answer about God not creating the world perfectly in the beginning

There is no term, notion, or concept in Genesis 1 about creation being perfect. Even the term "good," if you take it in a moral sense rather than a functional one, as I have mentioned, doesn't speak of perfection. Eden is never called Paradise. There is no suggestion of perfection anywhere in the text. If you see one, I'm glad to discuss it with you.

> It seems to contradict the New Testament's (at least) insistence that death is the last enemy to be destroyed

Even if death were always in the system, even before human sin, it could still be the ultimate enemy and the last enemy to be destroyed. If the world was always characterized by death, Christ's resurrection is portrayed to be the enemy of this not only natural order of things but also its spiritual extension (theological) in spiritual death. Jesus's resurrection and His coming in power at the end of the age will ultimately change reality as we know it.

> if we'll always freely choose the good in heaven, why couldn't Adam and Eve have been created such?

The only people in Heaven will be those who have freely chosen to submit out wills completely to God. The only way that makes sense is if we've had a chance to exercise our free wills to reject sin and accept the free gift of God which is salvation. The only way to have had a chance to exercise those options is if both options (sin and life) are in front of us and we have an authentic choice. To have created Adam and Eve to only choose the good negates free will. It's not free if I am given only one choice and the decision is made for me.

> Paul's comments in Romans about judgment being for the sake of showing grace

I'm guessing you're in Romans 5.15-21.

> but that is definitely not the God I was raised to believe in

We have to follow the Bible's teaching, even if we were not properly taught as children. I'm not saying you were or weren't, but I think we've all had to undo some things we were taught as children. It's part of growth.

But if it's Romans 5 you're in, I don't see him teaching that judgment is for the sake of showing grace. Instead I see that grace undoes the judgment under the Law so that the result can be true righteousness, but I'd have to know the specifics to speak more accurately.

[Distant Songs]

I think what I was specifically referring to was Romans 5:21:

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

At first glance it sounded like how I described it - judgment being increased for the sake of increased grace.

You do make a good point about "very good" not necessarily = perfection. It'd be interesting to know if those words imply anything different in the original Hebrew. Though I still wonder how one reconciles the idea of God creating a universe with mass death only for that to be the ultimate enemy to be destroyed. Thankyou for all these answers regardless; it's really helped to open my perspective.

[jimwalton]

You mean Romans 5.20. Paul's point is that the Law alerts us to our sin so much that it's as if we're sinning with every breath we take. But the grace of God is greater than all our sin, and God will never fail to bring eternal life to one who is in Christ. Sin cannot hold a candle to grace.

Notice Paul uses the verb "was added." The Law doesn't create sin or cause sin, though it does provoke it. There's nothing like a rule to motivate people to break it. But it came into this state of affairs between Adam and Christ, and it shows in graphic ways man's desperate need for God's salvation by grace through faith.

Manfred Brauch, in "Hard Sayings of Paul," writes,

"On first reading, this seems to suggest that the purpose of the Law was to make people worse. But this is against the teachings of Scripture, where God is drawing all people to Himself and where the Law is a gift.

"In this section (vv. 12-21), Paul is contrasting the devastating consequences of sin and the magnificence of salvation. All humans, regardless of whether they had the Law or not, are part of corporate humanity separated from God and His good purposes (vv. 13-14).

"This verse, in the context, cannot mean that God intended to increase sin. Paul has already shown both sin and death to be universal realities. It cannot increase beyond this. Thus, the meaning of the passage must be that the Law was given to “increase the awareness, the consciousness of sin” (Rom. 3.20; 7.7-8; Gal. 3.19). The Law revealed the destructive, devastating nature of sin against the good intentions of God. In light of both the Law and God’s grace revealed in Christ (5.20-21), human sin is exposed and revealed to our consciousness in all its magnitude."

> It'd be interesting to know if those words imply anything different in the original Hebrew.

The Hebrew term is simply tov: good. Dr. John Walton, in "The Lost World of Genesis One," argues convincingly that Gn. 1 is about how God ordered the universe to function, not about its material manufacture. (He's not arguing that God didn't create the cosmos, but only that's not what Gn. 1 is about.) And if the text is about function and order, then "good" needs to be interpreted not as "created good," but rather "functioning 'good'." When God declares that it is good, He is affirming that He has ordered the cosmos to function well (light and dark alternate in sequence, the Earth brings forth vegetation, the sun and moon set the seasons, humans rule the Earth in His stead), not that it is a morally perfect place (where good = righteous).

> I still wonder how one reconciles the idea of God creating a universe with mass death only for that to be the ultimate enemy to be destroyed.

You know that cosmologically and biologically speaking, death is regenerative, not a cessation. Death is a necessary part of a process of bringing forth life. Death in the ecosystems of Earth is essential to the processes of life. Spiritually speaking, death is an enemy.

I attended a conference about 5 yrs ago. One of the lectures I attended spoke to this issue somewhat. The lecturer, William Horst, said,

"Paul has two distinct senses of death in mind between Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. We are not to confuse the two or think he is speaking the same in both chapters. Paul’s letters are not systematic theological treatises. They are letters to two different communities. He construes creation differently in each text, and his cosmological emphases differ between the two books.

"1 Corinthians 15: death = physical death as an aspect of how humans were made in the first place. Mortality is a feature of how humans are built. Death is because of our corruptible bodies like Adam’s. Death is an aspect of creation that needs to be brought under God’s dominion. Paul associates Adam with corporal morality.

"Romans 5: Death is not morally neutral. Death metaphorically involves a life characterized by bondage (an inclination) to sin. Sin operates through members of the body. Death here is not the expiration of the body, but rather moral corruption. Death is a metaphor for moral bondage which translates to all humanity."