Sermon Tone Analysis

Deep Time and Theodicy

(Week 5 of SBTS 28960)

 

A.

Biblically, it would seem that moral and natural evil did not precede, but came as a result of man’s sin:

1.      ‘Before’ the creation there was only God.

Since there was no evil in God there was no evil of any sort; since there was no physical world there could be no natural evil.

2.      It seems that spirit beings were created without sin and did not sin until after the Creation Week.

a.       God, speaking to Satan, claims Satan was ‘perfect in all your ways from the day that you were created, until iniquity was found in you’ (Eze.

28:15).

b.      Satan was without sin in the Garden of Eden (Eze.

28:12-15), which was planted (Gen.

2:8) after the creation of Adam (Gen.

2:7) and before the creation of Eve (Gen.

2:21-22) on Day Six of the Creation Week (comp.

Gen. 1:26 and Gen. 2:7-22).

c.

The fallen angels seem to respond to a fallen Satan, so it would appear that the first of the spirit beings to fall was Satan.

è there seems to have been no moral evil in the spirit world through the Creation Week.

3.      Humans were created without sin and did not sin until after the Creation Week:

a.       Adam and Eve seem to have been without sin (moral evil) before eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil:

A)    At their creation Adam and Eve were without shame (Gen.

2:25), becoming ashamed only after eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen.

3:6-11).

B)     Adam and Eve were created with access to the tree of life and being able to live forever, dying only after eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen.

2:17; 3:22).

b.

The first sin (moral evil) of humans seems to have been the consumption of the tree of knowledge of good and evil:

A)    The first recorded sin in the Bible is Adam and Eve eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen.

3:17)

B)     Sin entered the world through the disobedience of Adam (Rom.

5:12-21), and the only disobedience of Adam mentioned in the Bible is eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

c.

The fall of man seems to follow the Creation Week:

A)    The account of the Fall (Gen.

3) textually follows the creation account (Gen.

1-2).

B)     Events of Gen. 3 leading up to the Fall seem to have taken multiple days

1)      There is a hint in the text that God walking in the cool of the day with Adam and Eve was a habitual event (Gen.

3:8).

2)      The temptation of Eve (Gen.

3:1-5) was probably over an extended period of time as was the temptation of Jesus (Mark 1:13; Luke 4:1) and as suggested by the fact that the serpent seems to be interacting with Eve alone (without Adam), whereas Eve’s eating of the fruit is done with Adam in her presence (‘the man with her’: Gen. 3:6)

4.      It seems that no form of death preceded man’s sin:

a.       Biblical life (and thus Biblical ‘death’) is probably restricted to God, animals, and man (and not include plants, fungi, protists, algae, bacteria, or even individual cells of a living organism’s body):

A)    Whereas God, man, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and even insects are described as ‘living’ in Scripture (/e.g./ Genesis 1; Genesis 6-9; the Levitical laws), nothing else (including plants) is never described as living (Wise, 2002) (NOTE: only the verse which describes the planted seed as ‘dying’ would be an exception... but this is probably just a picture of burial – especially since the seed does not die!);

B)     ‘living’ is a common adjective for animals; ‘green’ tends to be the proper adjective for plants – see, /e.g./ Gen. 9:3

C)    God told Noah that every living thing on the surface of the dry land was to be represented on the ark.

He also said that their food (the plants) was to be included with them.

Plants were not included among the ‘living things on the surface of the dry land’ (Wise, 2002);

D)    Although every living thing on the face of the land was killed in the Flood (Gen.

7:4), an olive branch lived through the Flood to picked up by the dove (Gen.

7:23), so an olive tree is not considered living (Jones, 1993; Wise, 2002); and

E)     The physical characteristics often associated with the words translated ‘life’ or ‘living’ in Scripture (/e.g./ /dām/, translated ‘blood’; /nepeš/, often translated ‘soul’; /bāśār/, translated ‘flesh’; and /rūach/, translated ‘breath’) are more comfortably associated with animals than with plants (Stambaugh, 1992; Wise, 2002)

b.

In the initial creation no animals died due to carnivory.

A)    All animals were herbivores in the original creation (Gen.

1:30)

B)     In the new creation (paralleled with Eden, see above) there will be peaceful cohabitation of wolf & lamb, leopard & kid, lion & calf, bear & calf (Isa.

11:6-7)

C)    In the new creation (paralleled with Eden, see above), the wolf, bear, and lion will eat grass (Isa.

11:6-7; 65:25)

c.       Death

A)    is called an enemy (I Cor.

15:24-6), as if introduced after the initial creation and foreign to the initial creation.

B)     ‘entered the world’ with man’s sin (Rom.

5:12-21).

C)    Although the I Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 passages are /explicitly/ referring only to human death, the overall sense of these passages (and Scripture in general) is that man brought more death into the world than merely the death of humans.

Consider, for example, the ‘groaning and travailing’ of the entire creation (Rom.

8: 22) in the larger context of Romans.

D)    will not be found in the new heaven and earth (Isa.

65:20; Rev. 21:4), and the Isaiah passage indicates that animals will be there.

d.

When the Bible explains why death occurs, sin is the cause given:

A)    Jesus died only because of human sin (/e.g./

I Cor.

15:3).

B)     Humans die because of human sin (Gen.

2:17; 3:19, 22-24; Rom.

5:12-21).

e.       Animal death results from the punishment of man’s sin:

A)    Before the shedding of the blood of Christ, God used the blood of innocent animals to cover the sins of man.

B)     God used the Flood to destroy both man /and/ animals (Gen.

6:7) from off the face of the earth.

Which would imply the absence of anything that might cause human or animal death before the Fall (/e.g./ the natural evils of famine, drought, earthquake, flood, hurricane, tornado, disease, predation).

5.      It seems that no form of suffering preceded man’s sin:

a.

The curse explicitly

A)    increased the pain of human childbirth (Gen.

3:16)

B)     introduced serpent-human conflict (Gen.

3:15)

b.

In the new heaven and earth there will be

A)    ‘no more pain’ (Rev.

21:4)

B)     no more sorrow (Rev.

21:4)

C)    no animals harming humans

1)      child leading wolves, leopards & lions (Isa.

11:6)

2)      child playing on asp den (Isa.

11:8)

D)    no hurt or destruction (Isa.

11:9; 65:25)

E)     no tears, crying, weeping (Isa.

65:19; Rev. 21:4)

c.

The entire creation is groaning in pain (Rom.

8:22), being subjected to this until the glorification of humans, suggesting excessive pain was placed upon the /entire/ creation because of human sin.

d.      God’ love (/e.g./ Rom.

5:8), mercy (/e.g./ Ps. 108:4), and compassion (/i.e./ pained by pain) (/e.g./ Ps. 86:15) would suggest He would not subject His creation to suffering before there was need to do so (in judgment).

e.

There seems to be a universal tendency for humans to consider physical suffering (of animals and humans; not so for viruses, bacteria, protists, algae, or plants) to be evil and discordant in the created world.

Which would imply the absence of anything that might cause human or animal suffiering before the Fall (/e.g./ the natural evils of famine, drought, earthquake, flood, hurricane, tornado, disease, predation).

6.

It seems that no unrewarded work (toil) (and implicitly physical weariness and emotional frustration and sorrow associated with it) preceded man’s sin:

a.

The curse explicitly introduced

A)    toil into farming (Gen.

3:17, 19)

B)     a curse onto the ground (Gen.

3:17) so that it was less productive