Now you're leaving Genesis and going off on a discussion about theology again. Paul isn't exegeting the text.
If you're not starting with the text, then we won't be able to agree. Notice how I am referring the Bible when I speak. Your position involves more theological extrapolation, which is a secondary question to what the text is originally describing.
Of course you would like to restrict the discussion strictly to Genesis because once the rest of the bible is considered your arguments fall apart pretty quickly.
I've already responded to this, and you essentially ignored me. I'll just copy my prior comments:
You said "The bible says death entered through Adam's fall but theistic evolution says "no, no, that is speaking of spiritual death." Darn that Paul for forgetting to add that modifier."
The onus is still on you to demonstrate where the Biblical text parts from its historical context. Otherwise, death before the fall is the historical default. And again, theology doesn't replace original context. That requires an assumption that Paul was attempting to exegete Genesis.
This is laughable. Do you really imagine that you can make a valid argument simply by saying it is so? Then the onus is on your to demonstrate that Paul was not including physical death when He said it came through Adam and passed onto all men. Your's is an attempt to introduce facts not in evidence.
Paul’s arc is explicit: death was not part of creation (Rom 5:12; 1 Cor 15:21–22). Through one man, Adam, death entered. Through one man, Christ, God redeems creation from death and restores humanity to its intended glory (Rom 8:19–23; 1 Cor 15:42–49).Also, consider some other passages by Paul on the matter of sin and death:
Romans 6:4-5, 7-8 ESV
[4] We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. [5] For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
[7] For one who has died has been set free from sin. [8] Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
Paul obviously isn't talking about physical death here, as if he were a zombie that came out of the grave.
Or this one:
Romans 7:4, 9 ESV
[4] Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.
[9] I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
Sin came alive and then I died? I mean, Paul, you're writing this letter, what do you mean "I died"?
Or even in Romans 5:
Romans 5:14 ESV
[14] Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
Death reigned from Adam to Moses. What, so people stopped dying after Moses?
It's pretty obvious that Paul isn't speaking in a concordant way. Paul is addressing spiritual realities, not biological events.
So we have a lot of issues with extrapolating his theology back to Genesis as though he were exegeting on the question of death before the fall.
This does not require that all physical death originated with Adam. The contrast concerns representative headship and the reign of death over humanity, not the biological history of all organisms. Paul himself speaks of death as something that “reigns,” something believers have already “died” to, and something that can be broken prior to resurrection. Resurrection answers human death under sin; it does not function as a claim about pre-human animal mortality. Reading that assumption into Paul goes beyond what his argument actually states.
What does the length of a “day” matter if the text isn’t describing material origins? I can organize a pizza in a day, assign toppings, slice it, and plate it, but that doesn’t tell anyone how long the dough or ingredients existed before I began. Genesis 1 works the same way: it orders and assigns functions without specifying the prior existence or creation of the material.
These aren’t textual or exegetical arguments, they’re personal assumptions about how God must communicate. No one ever reads Jesus’ parables and says, “This isn’t literal history; how can I trust it?” Truth can be conveyed without insisting on modern scientific description.
Correct. Which is why it is meaningless to argue that animals being created in a day is contradictory to theistic evolution, because the creation may very well be functional or otherwise involving the use of animals that are already there beforehand.
This is good up until the last sentence. The historical and cultural context of the Old Testament does not assume ex nihilo creation; there is no textual evidence for it anywhere in Israelite writings (or anywhere else in the broader ancient near east, in these times creation was functional or otherwise always included pre existing material). Yes, God speaks and things happen, but if the passage isn’t about material origins, what happens reflects ordering and purpose, not modern biological processes.
Sorry, but you did not make it to the end of Paul's argument. No one is saying the spiritual death is not part and parcel of Paul's teaching on death but to throw out physical death is to collapse Paul's argument completely. Lats take a look at the conclusion of Paul's argument.
Romans 8
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that[h] the creation itself will be liberated from its
bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
The bondage to decay is speaking of the physical
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship,
the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
The redemption of the body is physical
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
In Romans 8, Paul is speaking of
physical realities, not merely spiritual states. “Bondage to decay” refers to the material corruption and mortality that characterizes the created order. Creation itself was subjected to this condition and now awaits liberation, not escape.
The same framework governs verses 22–25. Creation groans, and believers groan with it, because redemption is incomplete. Though we possess the firstfruits of the Spirit, we do not yet possess what we hope for:
the redemption of our bodies. That redemption is explicitly physical.
Creation is not waiting for spiritual resurrection. According to Paul, believers already share in new spiritual life. Hope, by definition, concerns what is not yet seen or possessed. What remains is bodily resurrection and the restoration of the material order. Thus the entire passage points forward to the physical renewal of both humanity and creation, not merely a spiritual consummation.
