Natural Evil a Retroactive Effect of the Fall of Man?

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TruthInLove
Posts: 105
Joined: Mon Dec 29, 2014 12:35 am

Natural Evil a Retroactive Effect of the Fall of Man?

Post by TruthInLove » Tue Jan 24, 2017 11:46 am

Hi Friends,

I apologize if this section of the forum is not the right place for this. This topic seems to fit in several different categories.

Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the theory that death and predatory behavior in the animal kingdom has always existed due to retroactive effects of man's sin?

The thought is that since God exists outside of time, He would have seen man's sin before it happened and this affected the "goodness" of His creation. This is akin to how God considers future events in His interactions with man and the creation at the present time (cf. Isaiah 65:24). The idea is similar to the retroactive atonement provided for people before the time of Christ.

This is not a new theory but new twists on it are being popularized by William Dembski of the Intelligent Design movement. He writes about this in his book "The End of Christianity: Finding a good God in an Evil World". I haven't made up my mind on this subject one way or another. I do however find this idea intriguing.

Thoughts anyone?

Blessings in Christ,
Carmine

dizerner

Re: Natural Evil a Retroactive Effect of the Fall of Man?

Post by dizerner » Wed Jan 25, 2017 5:18 pm

It strikes me that some variation of this is very intuitively plausible and answers a lot of difficult questions.

Yet, if one keeps going with the logic—evolution itself could be a result of the fall and curse of sin. This seems reinforced when one thinks about the principles of evolution—selfish dominance of the gene pool, suffering and violence, a seeming lack of care and meaning for life—that evolutionists love to use as an argument against a loving God, could in fact, be the punishment of sin in some way, and illustrative of what sin even represents at it's core, the banishment to evil and futility yet with redemptive elements contained within it—given us in the picture of the death and resurrection of Spring, the night and morning of the circadian rhythm, the metamorphosis of the lowly caterpillar in "resurrection," the nurturing spirit towards the innocent young. And signs of our origin itself being cursed—our reproductive system itself being inextricably tied in with our toxic waste system, our painful birth and inevitable death. Perhaps creation is telling us more of a story that aligns with Sin and Redemption than we might at first perceive, intense suffering and selfishness combined with a longing and a hope for a better existence. The Knowledge of Good and Evil might be thought to contain within the Evil of that Rebellion and Exile the Good of a Redemption in Christ—and put us into an experience and a creation where heaven in essence marries hell and has a baby, where justice is hard to discern in that all men are born "from the dirt of the ground" as sinners and victims to arbitrary suffering, yet given a hope in the Great Seed of Christ's death for sin, a transformation from the common, the lowly, the sinful, the painful, into something more glorious than our lowly existence could even imagine, as the amoeba could never begin to fathom our own feelings. We are, after all, the scientists tell us, the very dust of the stars—within the oven of past saints and sinners tested lives, exploded the autonomous sin, righteousness and faith of redemption that created the very elements of the Story of Redemption that are the components that make up our spiritual life.

As was the earthly man, so also are those who are of the earth;
and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven.
And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man,
so also shall we bear the likeness of the heavenly man.

steve7150
Posts: 2597
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:44 am

Re: Natural Evil a Retroactive Effect of the Fall of Man?

Post by steve7150 » Wed Jan 25, 2017 10:00 pm

Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the theory that death and predatory behavior in the animal kingdom has always existed due to retroactive effects of man's sin?

The thought is that since God exists outside of time, He would have seen man's sin before it happened and this affected the "goodness" of His creation. This is akin to how God considers future events in His interactions with man and the creation at the present time (cf. Isaiah 65:24). The idea is similar to the retroactive atonement provided for people before the time of Christ.





Whatever the retroactive benefits from the atonement that occurred were, happened because God decided this would occur but not because it just happened on it's own. Also it was applied to certain people like Abraham and Moses but not just applied in mass to everyone. I kinda have an unpopular view about animal predatory behavior and the so called "fall" which is that things played out how they were meant to play out, not in a Calvinistic sense in that God didn't make them do anything. More like when God said everything was "very good" it was good for the purpose it was intended for.

TruthInLove
Posts: 105
Joined: Mon Dec 29, 2014 12:35 am

Re: Natural Evil a Retroactive Effect of the Fall of Man?

Post by TruthInLove » Thu Jan 26, 2017 1:06 am

dizerner wrote:Yet, if one keeps going with the logic—evolution itself could be a result of the fall and curse of sin. This seems reinforced when one thinks about the principles of evolution—selfish dominance of the gene pool, suffering and violence, a seeming lack of care and meaning for life—that evolutionists love to use as an argument against a loving God, could in fact, be the punishment of sin in some way, and illustrative of what sin even represents at it's core, the banishment to evil and futility yet with redemptive elements contained within it
Hi dizerner,

It's encouraging to hear such observations. I've had very similar thoughts myself. While Dembski is not a evolutionist in any sense and I myself tend to at least view Atheistic Evolution (i.e. increased complexity by purely random chance) as an unsatisfactory view of origins, Theistic Evolution seems much less reprehensible to me if viewed as a judgment for sin rather than the creative process of choice for a God whose essence is love. You articulate interesting reasons in that same vein.

I personally don't think the scientific evidence conclusively supports any sort of macro-evolutionary processes. And Theistic Evolution poses some interesting problems of its own relating to morality and exactly when God gave hominid-Adam and hominid-Eve a spirit in His image, but I don't think I necessarily find Theistic Evolution completely incompatible with the character of God as I once did.

Hi steve7150,
steve7150 wrote:Whatever the retroactive benefits from the atonement that occurred were, happened because God decided this would occur but not because it just happened on it's own.
I think proponents of theories similar to Dembski's would likely disagree with this statement. That is, Christ's sacrifice would not have been necessary had man not sinned. Man's sin sort of, "just happened" of his own free will. Of course, God somehow knew that would happen and He always intended to offer His death as an atonement for that sin. Perhaps, in the same sense, the whole of creation would never be actualized in God's ideal plan for it for these very same reasons.
steve7150 wrote:Also it was applied to certain people like Abraham and Moses but not just applied in mass to everyone.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but this seems to be in conflict with your later statement to the effect that the events of "the fall" weren't dictated by God in a Calvinistic sense. Isn't this essentially Limited Atonement, one of the central tenants of Calvinism? Please clarify if I'm misunderstanding your statements or those of Calvin.
steve7150 wrote:I kinda have an unpopular view about animal predatory behavior and the so called "fall" which is that things played out how they were meant to play out, not in a Calvinistic sense in that God didn't make them do anything. More like when God said everything was "very good" it was good for the purpose it was intended for.
Could you please elaborate on this view? On the surface, it sounds similar to that of Meredith G. Kline and others. Would that be a fair characterization?

Anyways, just some points to facilitate discussion. Thanks to you both for your responses and God Bless.

Carmine

steve7150
Posts: 2597
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:44 am

Re: Natural Evil a Retroactive Effect of the Fall of Man?

Post by steve7150 » Thu Jan 26, 2017 9:53 pm

steve7150 wrote:
Also it was applied to certain people like Abraham and Moses but not just applied in mass to everyone.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but this seems to be in conflict with your later statement to the effect that the events of "the fall" weren't dictated by God in a Calvinistic sense. Isn't this essentially Limited Atonement, one of the central tenants of Calvinism? Please clarify if I'm misunderstanding your statements or those of Calvin.





I may not be quite understanding this but anyway, i thought you said man's sin may have been applied retroactively to the animal kingdom making it predatory from the start. I thought you compared this to Jesus atonement being applied retroactively. My response was meant to say Jesus sacrifice didn't automatically retroactively apply to everyone but it did apply to certain people like Abraham and Moses. I based this on the fact i'm not aware of any scripture saying it applied to anyone other then a few specific folks. So it's not a limited atonement going forward but retroactively it appears to me to have been applied on a case by case basis.
I don't want to go off on a tangent but "the fall" to me appears to be an event that God did not force yet seemed destined to happen. Eve had in her already, lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh & the pride of life before she ate the fruit and she had Adam's DNA. They were innocent yet tested by the master deceiver of the universe and then what Adam did is applied to all of mankind. I can't imagine that it was just by bad luck we have to go through all this tribulation in this life but if only Adam made a different choice. Romans 8 seems to even say it was by God's will.

TruthInLove
Posts: 105
Joined: Mon Dec 29, 2014 12:35 am

Re: Natural Evil a Retroactive Effect of the Fall of Man?

Post by TruthInLove » Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:04 am

steve7150 wrote:I may not be quite understanding this but anyway, i thought you said man's sin may have been applied retroactively to the animal kingdom making it predatory from the start. I thought you compared this to Jesus atonement being applied retroactively.
Yep, I think you understood me correctly for the most part. However, I didn't mean to imply that Christ's atonement saved everyone who ever lived in Old Testament times in the same way that Adam's sin affected the entire creation including all future humans and animals.

All that analogy was meant to convey was that God's actions in our present often take into consideration our future actions. For example, even before the physical creation, God's intent was for Christ to come and die for us although this was based on the foreknowledge of the sin of humans who hadn't even been brought into existence yet. Likewise, people like Abraham and Moses, who demonstrated a desire for God and obedience to Him, were covered by the righteousness of Christ despite the fact that His death was many hundreds of years in the future. So, if we can accept that God acts preemptively regarding redemption and blessing, why should we find it difficult to accept that He acts preemptively regarding judgement? Hopefully that clarifies things a bit.
steve7150 wrote:They were innocent yet tested by the master deceiver of the universe and then what Adam did is applied to all of mankind. I can't imagine that it was just by bad luck we have to go through all this tribulation in this life but if only Adam made a different choice.
I agree. I don't think it is bad luck either. Though, the justice behind the tribulation of mankind doesn't really bother me so much as the tribulation introduced on innocent animals. All of mankind has ratified Adam and Eve's decision to sin by sinning ourselves and therefore the trials we face are just consequences of our actions. I'm still not quite sure how to make good sense of the justice behind the introduction of suffering in the animal kingdom because of something man did. That is, unless one denies that animals suffer at all, even in death.

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