Well you said "in my book" and that is normally meant as injecting personal opinion into a debate or conversation. I was not seeking to put words in your mouth just qouting you and rebutting it with Gods book vs. yours as the term is normally understood.
My misunderstanding again. (whacks self - should apply non-literal interpretation here too)
Neither does your rejecting it makes it true! I can point to various scriptures saying that there was at least by implication no imperfection on the world before sin--can you?
Empty rhetoric until you can
actually point to "various scriptures saying that there was at least by implication no imperfection on the world before sin", and show that carnivorism is imperfection.
Can you rebut my point with Scripture-- especially in light of Romans 5 that says death on the planet entered by sin. So scripture that says there was death before sin on ther planet.
Let's go!
1. God glorifies Himself through carnivorism.
Assyrian mentioned Psalm 104.
Inserting Adams name doesn't make it a creation passage and this was written long after the fall.
And if you wish to see the order of this--uit is after the short creation account and the short flood account.
So why is it that only
after the "short creation account" and the "short flood account" (which it isn't:
Psalm 104 isn't about the flood) that the psalmist says:
O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
(Psalms 104:24 ESV)
"Them all" includes the lions, which God made in wisdom, not as a result of the Fall!
"Can you hunt the prey for the lion, or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in their thicket? Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones cry to God for help, and wander about for lack of food?
(Job 38:39-41 ESV)
Would God take this and portray it as His glory if this was actually the result of sin and the fall?
"The wings of the ostrich wave proudly, but are they the pinions and plumage of love? For she leaves her eggs to the earth and lets them be warmed on the ground, forgetting that a foot may crush them and that the wild beast may trample them. She deals cruelly with her young, as if they were not hers; though her labor be in vain, yet she has no fear, because God has made her forget wisdom and given her no share in understanding. When she rouses herself to flee, she laughs at the horse and his rider.
(Job 39:13-18 ESV)
Now God takes glory in the ostrich's stupidity and cruelty. If this was a result of the Fall, would God have any right or reason to be proud of it? If it wasn't, how can you argue that God wouldn't include cruelty - or what seems like it to sentimental modern minds - in original creation?
"Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars and spreads his wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high? On the rock he dwells and makes his home, on the rocky crag and stronghold. From there he spies out the prey; his eyes behold it afar off. His young ones suck up blood, and where the slain are, there is he."
(Job 39:26-30 ESV)
Hmm, God is describing graphic animal violence to Job and then saying "Are you as great as Me?" I don't suppose He is very much troubled by it ... even if you are.
2. God has used death as a means to exercise His grand plan.
I need not point out all the times when God Himself, or through proxy of the Jews, wrought death on sinners in multitude. But here is something surprising:
Arise therefore, go to your house. When your feet enter the city, the child shall die. And all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something pleasing to the LORD, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam.
(1 Kings 14:12-13 ESV)
This child was pleasing to God, and God's reward is to send him to the grave? If God has the right to do this with a child, a
human who pleased God, is it really beyond imagination for God to have had animal death in a world without sin?
3. Two of the four living creatures described as praising God are carnivores.
As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal. And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had a human likeness, but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf's foot. And they sparkled like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. And the four had their faces and their wings thus: their wings touched one another. Each one of them went straight forward, without turning as they went. As for the likeness of their faces, each had a human face. The four had the face of a lion on the right side, the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle.
(Ezekiel 1:4-10 ESV)
From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God, and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight.
(Revelation 4:5-7 ESV)
4.
God describes Himself as a carnivore (i.e. lion)
Behold, like a lion coming up from the jungle of the Jordan against a perennial pasture, I will suddenly make him run away from her. And I will appoint over her whomever I choose. For who is like me? Who will summon me? What shepherd can stand before me?
(Jeremiah 49:19, 50:44 ESV)
For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.
(Hosea 5:14 ESV)
They shall go after the LORD; he will roar like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west;
(Hosea 11:10 ESV)
But I am the LORD your God from the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior. It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought; but when they had grazed, they became full, they were filled, and their heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me. So I am to them like a lion; like a leopard I will lurk beside the way. I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs; I will tear open their breast, and there I will devour them like a lion, as a wild beast would rip them open.
(Hosea 13:4-8 ESV)
And one of the elders said to me, "Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals."
(Revelation 5:5 ESV)
Both points 3 and 4 show that God is not ashamed of using carnivores as a metaphor for Himself and for His government (since the four creatures are taken by many scholars to represent the aspects of God's government). God and His characteristics are eternal and immutable. Would God have chosen to reveal Himself in the image and metaphor of a carnivore, and
bearing their carnivorous aspects, if they were indeed results of the Fall and of the entry of sin into the world?
So now the onus is on you to prove that carnivorism and animal death are so deplorable that God would not have had them in His original world.
If that is as far as it went then yes! But the bible is a whole single book though written by multi human authors, and God does let us know later on that death entered into the world AFTER sin, not BEFORE, so the bible does declare no animal death before Adam sinned. Just because it isn't where some would like it to be declared is of no import for His children or at least should be an irrelevant issue. Just like the trinity. We only learn that God is a triune God in the NT as well though He was triune from eternity past-- He always was! He only chose to put the evidence together 4,000 years after he first revealed himself to Adam!! Maybe Adam knew it but was not inspired to write it down. Who knows??
Argument from personal speculation. You are simply repeating your interpretation that Romans 5:12 invokes all biological death in the entire physical universe, without independent support.
Well the simplest answer is that when God sent His son--there was clearly establishe dhuman hierarchies that could and are called kosmon
Kosmon is not the object of sent in John 3:16, nor even a dative noun for it. It is the object of loved, which is egapesen or agapao in the aorist tense, a perfect action of God. Did God only start loving the world of humanity when it started having human hierarchies?
but in Adams day there was none-- it was Adam, Eve and God
But there
was a hierarchy. Adam was the husband and Eve was the wife, as can be seen when Jesus Himself uses their marriage to justify the sanctity of marriage. By this logic kosmon is as easily applicable to them, since there was already human hierarchy (the institution of marriage) between them!
yes it is true that Romans five definitively speaks of the human condition- it also qualifies it for sin entering the kosmos (planet) caused death to be passed on to all men even though they did not sin like Adam or had diviner laws to disobey.
You have no way to show that kosmon represents the planet in this case. Furthermore, even if you could, you have no way to show that thanatos in this verse is anything other than human death, since the verse qualifies it by saying this death is death that passed "to all men".
Come to think of it, I have no idea where your definition of kosmos (the world of humanity, but only where there is specific hierarchy or order) comes from.
G2889
κόσμος
kosmos
kos'-mos
Probably from the base of G2865; orderly arrangement, that is, decoration; by implication the world (in a wide or narrow sense, including its inhabitants, literally or figuratively [morally]): - adorning, world.
G2889
κόσμος
kosmos
Thayer Definition:
1) an apt and harmonious arrangement or constitution, order, government
2) ornament, decoration, adornment, i.e. the arrangement of the stars, the heavenly hosts, as the ornament of the heavens. 1Pe_3:3
3) the world, the universe
4) the circle of the earth, the earth
5) the inhabitants of the earth, men, the human family
6) the ungodly multitude; the whole mass of men alienated from God, and therefore hostile to the cause of Christ
7) world affairs, the aggregate of things earthly
7a) the whole circle of earthly goods, endowments riches, advantages, pleasures, etc, which although hollow and frail and fleeting, stir desire, seduce from God and are obstacles to the cause of Christ
8) any aggregate or general collection of particulars of any sort
8a) the Gentiles as contrasted to the Jews (Rom_11:12 etc)
8b) of believers only, Joh_1:29; Joh_3:16; Joh_3:17; Joh_6:33; Joh_12:47 1Co_4:9; 2Co_5:19
Part of Speech: noun masculine
A Related Word by Thayers/Strongs Number: probably from the base of G2865
Citing in TDNT: 3:868, 459
Romans 8 also supports this when God subjected creation to phthera (decay, corruption, death).
Phth
ora. And it is not death.
Creation is declared to groan in anticipation of the redemption of the sons of God-- that would require prescience on creations part before the fall , but a natural response after the fall since the subjection to this happened after the fall!
Humanity, the sons of God, fell, and when they fell and subjected creation to the bondage of their moral corruption and futility, creation began to groan awaiting its release from that bondage. That is a valid interpretation and it nowhere precludes the idea of animal death before the Fall.
And this is the Scriptural support we have for the creationist projection that God would not have allowed animal death before the Fall. Sorry, just because you say so doesn't show that God says so.