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{"id":15706,"date":"2014-03-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-24T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=698"},"modified":"2014-03-24T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-24T00:00:00","slug":"death-before-the-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2014\/03\/death-before-the-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"Death Before the Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Ronald Osborn\u2019s \u00a0Death Before the Fall<\/a>\u00a0is two books in one, as the subtitle suggests: \u201cBiblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of the book is a critique of \u201cliteralism,\u201d especially as expressed in young-earth creationism, the other part is an exegetical defense of the notion that animal death was part of the original creation and an attempt to provide a theodicy regarding animal mortality (as Osborn says, a neglected topic).<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t care much for Osborn\u2019s treatment of literalism or creationism, and I\u2019m not persuaded by his theodicy. Perhaps more on that at some later point.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for death before the fall, I think Osborn is exactly correct. He points out that Genesis never says that the original creation was perfect<\/em>; rather, it was \u201cvery good.\u201d The reason, he claims, is that when God completed His work it was still incomplete. He intended creatures, especially humans, to finish things up. In fact, as he observed, creation was already \u201cassisting\u201d during the creation week: God commanded earth to produce plants, and it did.<\/p>\n

He notices that Adam\u2019s task was something closer to \u201cdoing battle\u201d than to \u201cpruning hedges\u201d (32). He was to guard the garden, which implies a threat, and to \u201csubdue\u201d the creation, which suggests struggle and a kind of violence. Besides, the world was filled with wild as well as tame creatures, and Adam was sent out to rule them (32-33).<\/p>\n

Nowhere, he observes, does the text deny \u201cthe possibility that natural cycles of life and death involving plants and animals were . . . included in God\u2019s good creation in the beginning.\u201d It\u2019s an \u201copen question\u201d whether predators were predatory prior to Adam\u2019s sin.<\/p>\n

The common view that animals were domesticated vegetarians at the beginning is the result of retrojecting prophecy back to Eden. Lions lying with lambs and bears eating straw \u2013 that is a vision of a future world, the end <\/em>of history not the beginning, a vision of a world completed.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"