Did plants and animals physically die before the Fall?

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I was wondering. If we believe that death entered the world after original sin, is this implying the spiritual and physical death of man only? Since before the fall there must have been a physical death of plants and animals especially since the dinasours walked the earth many years before our time. It says in the Bible that God saw that everything that He made was Good. How can the physical death of any kind be good since physical death usually preceeds with pain and suffering? I mean now that we have suffering God can bring about good from it, such as the suffering of Jesus, but this is after the fact. Was pain and sufferig on the plants and animals part of His Divine plan from the beginning before the Fall? It just doesn't make sense.

-- D Joseph (newfiedufie@msn.com), June 20, 2004

Answers

Response to Did plants and animals pysically die before the Fall?

Bump

-- D Joseph (newfiedufie@msn.com), June 20, 2004.

Response to Did plants and animals pysically die before the Fall?

The creation of man was a spiritual event. God breathed His own life into the first human beings - spiritual life - allowing Adam and Eve to live in a way that no earthly being before that time had been able to live. It was the loss of that divine life within - spiritual death - which entered the world through the sin of Adam and Eve, and which the salvific act of Jesus Christ restored, though not to its original fullness.

Biological death has been a part of God's plan from the beginning. God created biological organisms with many wonderfully complex means of reproduction, and biological death is and always has been the natural means of counterbalancing reproduction. If living organisms reproduced but never died, every square inch of the earth would soon be filled with organisms. As you correctly pointed out, dinosaurs died out millions of years before human beings were created, as did millions of other kinds of animals and plants. Also, some forms of dinosaurs were obviously predators, as were some forms of early mammals (saber-toothed tigers for example) which means they lived by causing the deaths of other animals. This was and still is God's plan, and has nothing to do with man's spiritual fall. Man had and still has a unique relationship with God. There is no reason to think that anything that happened between God and human beings would influence the biology of plants and animals, and all available evidence indicates that it did not.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), June 20, 2004.


Dear Paul,

Your answer I found quite good and intersting. I was curious, do you believe Adam and Eve would have died even if they never sinned. I was always taught that sin is what caused our bodies to decay, which is why people lived longer long ago. i.e. sin had just started to work in men's lives. Also, what do you think also about the devil (before he was fallen) ruling over this world and how that plays into creations before us. Since it says he is the prince of this world it doesn't seem far-fetched that he could have been given a certain amount of sway over this world. Anyway, this is stuff I never learned in Church and was curious about so whatever insights you have will be much appreciated. Josh

-- JD Brabant (joshua123@qwest.net), June 20, 2004.


hey JD, other paul here,

Your answer I found quite good and intersting.

yeah, most of us find Paul M's posts to be good and interesting, its in his nature.

I was curious, do you believe Adam and Eve would have died even if they never sinned. I was always taught that sin is what caused our bodies to decay, which is why people lived longer long ago. i.e. sin had just started to work in men's lives.

speaking for myself, there are conflicting theories on this one. is it possible that before sin man could physically die, but that their soul was not in danger, therefore the original sin cost man their guaruntee of salvation (ie, let them die) OR does this mean that there was no physical death prior to the original sin. what you say is true, the life span is very long back then, but it also goes up and down, even today, so we can't be sure. Paul M would have a better answer on what is official catholic teaching.

Also, what do you think also about the devil (before he was fallen) ruling over this world and how that plays into creations before us. Since it says he is the prince of this world it doesn't seem far-fetched that he could have been given a certain amount of sway over this world.

when we say that the devil is the prince of the world, we dont mean that he is the ruler of the world in the sense that i think you mean it. what we mean by that is that the world and wordly things are pleasurable to satan, and therefore we should strive to transcend wordly things and enter the realm of sanctity which Christ called us to.

God bless,

-- paul h (dontsendmemail@notanaddress.com), June 20, 2004.


"do you believe Adam and Eve would have died even if they never sinned. I was always taught that sin is what caused our bodies to decay, which is why people lived longer long ago."

A: The Church teaches that "Even though man's nature is mortal, God had destined him not to die. Death was therefore contrary to the plans of God the Creator and entered the world as a consequence of sin. Bodily death, from which man would have been immune had he not sinned, is thus the last enemy of man to be conquered." (CCC 1008)

However, "bodily death" as spoken of in this passage means human bodily death. That's the point. Even though bodily death was always the norm for purely biological creation, God had destined man to be an exception to that law of nature, by creating man in His own image and likeness, that is to say by creating man as a being who is not purely biological, but who has an immortal spritual nature similar to that of God Himself.

Therefore if man had not sinned, we would not experience biological death, and our bodies would not undergo decay. That leaves us with the problem of ongoing reproduction without the natural balance of death. We don't have a definite answer to that question. As paul said, there are a number of theological thories which have been discussed by theologians for centuries. One prominent theory - the one I lean toward - is that if man had not fallen, a human being would live his/her allotted lifetime on earth, and then be assumed body and soul into heaven as Mary was. But we don't know that for a fact.

"Also, what do you think also about the devil (before he was fallen) ruling over this world and how that plays into creations before us. Since it says he is the prince of this world it doesn't seem far-fetched that he could have been given a certain amount of sway over this world."

A: The devil, before he was fallen, was not the devil, and at that time (so to speak - there was actually no such thing as "time" yet) he served God in Heaven as Lucifer, an angel of light. His identity as prince of this world was contingent upon the creation of man. His influence in this world is spiritual, and can have an effect only on spiritual beings. We don't know when the fall of Lucifer took place. (Again, the term "when" is actually meaningless here, as it happened in eternity, not in time, but its difficult for us who exist in time to discuss such concepts without using time-related terms.) But we do know that Satan already existed when mankind was created, because the devil tempted the first humans, trying to draw them away from God.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), June 20, 2004.



Paul M. You said [b]"Biological death has been a part of God's plan from the beginning. God created biological organisms with many wonderfully complex means of reproduction, and biological death is and always has been the natural means of counterbalancing reproduction. If living organisms reproduced but never died, every square inch of the earth would soon be filled with organisms."[/b] This is a very good logical answer however I'm guessing that we must take it on faith that pain and suffering that inevitably happens through this is "GOOD"?

-- D Joseph (nufiedufie@msn.com), June 20, 2004.

Physical pain and suffering are neither good nor bad from a moral perspective. If pain and suffering were "evil", then euthanasia of suffering people, or abortion of severely handicapped babies, could be justified on the basis of "the lesser of two evils" - one instantaneous evil act vs. a lifetime of suffering and agony for the afflicted person and their family. However, such a comparison is not valid precisely because suffering is not a moral evil, and therefore an immoral means may never be used to prevent it.

Suffering itself is morally neutral. The fruit of suffering in the life of an individual can be good (a source of grace by offering the suffering as a sharing in the suffering of Chist); neutral (simple acceptance of the suffering as a natural part of earthly life), or bad (anger and resentment toward God, or even outright rejection of His love); but the suffering itself is not really a moral issue. It is just a part of our natural nature, which did not disappear when we received an additional supernatural nature.

It is my feeling - NOT official Church teaching - that the idea of "suffering coming into the world through the sin of Adam and Eve" is sometimes overgeneralized. It is certainly true that Adam and Eve would not have experienced much of the pain we experience - and neither would we - if they had never sinned, because much of the pain we experience is the direct result of sin, our own sin and the sin of others - greed, selfishness, anger, lust, pride, etc. THAT suffering did indeed come into the world through the sin of Adam and Eve. But I believe there is also suffering that has nothing to do with sin, but is just the result of living in the natural world. If I trip and fall down the stairs, I don't say "that wouldn't have happened if Adam and Eve had not sinned". Even if they had never sinned, I cannot conceive of Adam and Eve walking around the Garden for a hundred years or so, maybe much longer, and never stubbing a toe or skinning a knee or getting a sunburn. That's just part of earthly life. In that respect we are the same as other species, even though we are vastly different from a spiritual perspective.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), June 20, 2004.


Alright, I now have a better understanding of this thanks to all your responses and especially you Paul M with your insightfull replies.

-- D Joseph (newfiedufie@msn.com), June 20, 2004.

Anything that is composed of parts, will fall apart (by nature). This is why God, Angels, and the souls of men are immortal - because they're not material, ergo, have "no parts".

Angels and human souls once created will stay created eternally. But material things are by nature passing, changing... thus only a miracle of Grace would keep Adam and Eve immortal in their corporality - a miracle outside the order of nature (which amazingly the Masons and others don't understand as they continue the Fall's mistake of supposing that the Garden of this world itself has the elixur of eternal life!)

-- Joe (joestong@yahoo.com), June 21, 2004.


And what do we make of St. Paul who says in Romans 5:12 "...Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned ..."? This would seem to imply that before the Fall there was no death in creation.

-- Fr. Mike Skrocki, JCD (cand) (abounamike@aol.com), June 25, 2004.


There wasn't any spiritual death in physical creation before the fall because there were no spiritual beings in physical creation before human beings were created. However, we know for an absolute fact that there was biological death in physical creation long, long before human beings existed. When a Tryrannosaurus captured its prey, that prey was most definitely dead. And eventually so was the Tyrannosaurus. The fossil remains of animal and plant life from millions of years ago - eons before human beings, or even terrestrial life existed - are quite definitely dead. Therefore this biblical text has to be interpreted in light of what we already know to be true, for the Word of God is truth, and truth cannot conflict with truth.

No, I am NOT suggesting that scientific truth takes precedence over revelational truth. I am saying that science reveals scientific truth and scripture reveals revelational truth, and there cannot be any conflict between the two. Therefore in a case where scientific truth is incontrovertible, while a particular scripture passage is ambiguous on a particular point and is open to several interpretations, what is known to be true from other sources should then be used as a guide in interpreting the scripture correctly.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), June 25, 2004.


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