When I was a child I was taught that God created a perfect world without death and then death entered the world through man's sin. ......
How do you reconcile the evolutionary necessity of death with God's perfect deathless creation?
God's initially perfect creation included death - which is needed, as you point out.
A careful reading of Genesis makes it clear that humans were not created physically immortal - only spiritually immortal. For instance, you can see that there was worry that Adam and eve would also eat from the tree of life and become physically immortal - and that they did not do so. So of course they knew about physical death from the start, and were never physically immortal.
Plus, the idea of "no physical death before the fall" is both unscriptural, and makes no sense.
First, let's look at scripture alone. No scripture ever says that animals didn't die before the fall - it's just an idea made up by YECs. The closest one could come is in Romans, where Paul says that sin came to all people through Adam - but there is nothing to indicate there that other animals are affected. Also, in Gen 2, before the fall, Adam and Eve are both clearly familiar with what death is (they understand God's statement about it, and use the term themselves), so animal death had to be happening all the time. So even a strictly literal reading of Genesis and the rest of one's chosen Bible shows that the "no animal death" idea can't be right.
Next, the present day animals that God created clearly show that death has always been around because many creatures are clearly designed head to toe to be predators. A few examples:
- Spiderwebs - I suppose those were for catching seeds to eat?
- Poison - literally thousands of animals have poison for predation (snakes, spiders, wasps, etc.) or for defense against predation (arrow-frogs, toads, monarch butterflies, etc.).
- deep sea anglerfish - Why would anything be attracted to their "bait"? and look at the anglerfish's teeth!
- Alligator snapper turtle "worm" tongue bait - same thing.
- many other deepsea fish.
- Sharks - what did they eat?
- A cheetah's speed - why be designed fast if you only have to catch a squash? Did squash vines grow really fast back then?
- A chameleon's tongue - gotta snatch those mexican jumping beans!
- and on and on........
That's not to mention past creatures, like a T-rex, etc. There is also tons of evidence for disease, predation, death, and so on from the fossil record. Limestone - one of the most common types of stone on earth - is literally made up of many trillions of compacted marine fossils.
With no physical death before the fall of man (which was a spiritual death), many other Christian doctrines make plenty of sense in a theistic evolution framework:
There are many theistic evolution ways to see the core doctrines of Christianity, just as there are many creationist descriptions, depending on the person and denomination. However, these may at least be common, if not exclusive.
The Garden: The Garden of Eden can be a metaphor for the natural world before humans became fully conscious/able to think. It need not have happened as a literal, single location “garden”, just as Ezekiel’s army of bones (37) is a metaphor that never happened as a literal army of zombies.
The Fall: The fall of man can be what happened when man evolved enough mental capacity to make rational decisions, and decided to rebel against God. The consequence was alienation from God. This view is explicitly supported by the Pope, and many other Christian leaders
Adam: Note that many theistic evolution supporters (including apparently the Pope) believe in a literal, real, single human Adam, the father of us all, who was the first transitional ape-human to cross the line to being human, who sinned and brought about original sin (not the first death). This fits with the above mention of the Fall.
The Flood: The flood can be a metaphor describing God’s sovereignty over humans and the earth, and still shows those same messages either way. It need not have happened as a literal flood, just as Ezekiel’s army of bones is a metaphor that never happened as a literal army of zombies.
Jesus: Jesus was a real human who was both God and Man. He often spoke in parables (metaphors) while on earth, just as he did when he, as part of the trinity, inspired Genesis. Because Genesis is the word of the same God who spoke parables while on earth as Jesus, it should come as no surprise that he starts off the Bible speaking the parables of the creation, fall and flood.
Atonement: The Atonement of Jesus is the same in either a literalist or a modern Christian’s view. Jesus needed to atone for the sin of the fall, which was rebellion against God.
In Christ-
Papias
. There are quite a few interesting points of view coming out in this thread which is what I was hoping for.
