Physics of the Fall: PART 1 [Randy]
The following 7-part essay conflates a number of posts written by three correspondents.
What was
Physics of the Fall: PART 2 [Nick]
Adam may have been capable of physical death but kept alive by the Tree of Life as well as the lack of stupid things brought on by sin which rob our health and lead to accidental or intentional trauma and/or death. In other words, "immortality" means "moment to moment dependence" on God's sustenance, much like caring for an infant or child – nurturing, protecting and guiding them – rather than some kind of Superman-like invincibility. There is biblical basis for this view of God's constant care for creation and life expressed several places in scripture.
If this be the case, then the biology pre-fall was pretty much like it is now, with respect to the natural processes and cycles driving it (providentially designed and maintained, as now), except for the degradative effect of sin on lifestyle which shortens life considerably. Affluent
God may very well have meant for this creation to mature to the point where it would be replaced by the new creation, presumably one where the law of entropy was not in effect. Why, then, didn't God do this from the start?
Many Christians have projected this final "new creation" back on the original creation or Edenic "paradise" and claim that the Fall changed it into the groaning mess we now live in. However, what is to be made of the fact that
Perhaps this space/time/energy/matter realm is a "proving ground" or a kind of "incubator" preparing free-will creatures for a permanent eternal state; a kind of necessary stage requirement [purgatory?]. Certain Scriptures do support this supposition; there is also plenty of material (the cosmos) that reveals what God actually chose to do, rather than what we speculate He could have done. In the course of exploring these things, this combination of special and general revelation needs to be kept in mind.
Physics of the Fall: PART 3 [Craig]
Our knowledge of the world before the Fall is drawn mostly from the two accounts of Creation. How significant is it that one Scriptural account of Creation (Genesis 1:1 – 2:3) seems to entail the whole earth, while the second account (Genesis 2:4-25) focuses narrowly on
It is quite significant that
Perhaps we should take Christ's word on the cross as a hermeneutical key to understanding
"The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in
Surely Man did more than mere taxonomic research! In addition to naming all the animals, might Adam have discovered more within those special boundaries of the Garden? Did he later share those discoveries with Cain, who then wandered off, bloody-handed, with that knowledge to pass it on to his own progeny? Consider Jabal's agricultural program or Jubal's musical accomplishment or Tubal-cain's implementation of bronze and iron tools.
All these innovations had to begin somewhere and where better than a prepared place protected from chaotic nature?
The cultivated environment of
The text shows us a God causing and forming, quite involved in what went on in the Garden –
"Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food ..... Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called the living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field ..."
Now that is some scientific enterprise!
So man studied the natural sciences and, eventually, went on to do coursework in behavioral sciences as well. Enter his lab partner, Eve. You know the rest of that experiment.
It is interesting to note the environmental differences with which man had to contend after the Fall. Before, Man operated with God's blessing. He even had a ready source of water which watered the Garden in which grew what was readily available to eat. Following his Fall, Man had to contend with cursed ground, toiling against thorns and thistles growing in fields where he had to find plants he could eat (incidentally, did Man sweat as he cultivated the Garden? Or was that particular place temperate enough to work comfortably otherwise?). No longer allowed in the lush Garden, Man fearfully faced the dusty domains of the rest of Creation. Although God remained gracious by not letting Man go out naked into the world, He made sure that Man could not reach the Tree of Life from the Garden anymore, driving Man away to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. How did this ground of exile differ from the ground in the Garden?
Another question is, how was Man's new knowledge of good and evil related to his ability to "to stretch out his hand" to "take from the tree of life" so that, eating, he would "live forever"? Could the phrase "stretch out his hand" be applied significantly to other goals other than the tree of life? For example, later in the Genesis narrative, the story of the
The thread of this discussion regards the "roots of violence." Violence is force wrongly applied (it is anthropomorphic to call what happens in nature "violent"; like calling the lion a "murderer" for killing the lamb).
The roots of violence are not in Creation itself, but in Man's frustrated response to his struggle for survival following the Fall. Finding ourselves outside of the Garden, unable to get in, we have knowledge of good and evil but lack the wisdom to discern the difference. We ignore God's grace that helps us survive, and grasp to get what we imagine we need to have, applying our efforts toward getting what we want and subjecting others to yield to our will.
God obviously intended that Man would have the opportunity to live forever, but that way remains guarded by His angel, swinging sword in hand. However, that angel also carries a message of Good News – the way is now open through Christ Jesus.
Physics of the Fall: PART 4 [Nick]
I have often wondered what God and Adam talked about "in the cool of the evening."
On such evenings, I often walk the paths in our woods and reflect on what is going on all around me – the budding trees, the green leaves, the insects, the soil, the clouds, the fractal forest, the ecological niches, the biochemical processes underlying and geologic cycles driving it all – and the sheer beauty of the every detail and grandness of the whole scheme. And I feel a strong sense of the Lord 'directing" my gaze, guiding my thought patterns, bringing to mind scriptures and things I learned, opening new insights (sometimes I stop to take notes right on the spot).
Beethoven and Bach both drew inspiration from nature for their music for God's glory.
I have often taken the boys along on such walks and enjoy watching them discover (ant hills, bird's nests, animal tracks, mushrooms) and listening to their explanations and questions. If a post-fall sinner like me (and "father, being evil") has such an experience, is it that hard to imagine Adam's Heavenly Father strolling with Adam and later Eve, detailing for them the wonders of His creation just to see their looks of wonder and expressions of awesome praise for such a goodly world; as well as for their knowledge in "subduing the earth and being fruitful" ... as well as basic body stuff like how not to cut open a cantaloupe and where the best place for a latrine would be, etc.
The thesis of "
Amazing isn't it? That God didn't "take back" the stuff He shared with Adam (maybe he even knew about DNA – why not?) but, saddened, God watched man run off with it to use for his own selfish purposes, distorting it all with each generation. (Like Elvis whose talents were nurtured in an Assemblies of God church when he was young - but look at his end; like Michael Jackson – the one bloated, the other bizarre beyond recognition). Noah's family might have preserved a lot; and we know that Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Daniel and others received the best courtly education in the greatest empires the world has ever seen; or, perhaps, were they actually sharing the knowledge passed on to them with their masters (or attempting to) which is why they were so sought after; I am sure it was a two way street, with these patriarchs and prophets taking from these ancient cultures necessary know-how which helped form the durable Jewish people, right up to the present day.
Thanks to the insights from Genesis voiced in the previous post, perhaps we have a clearer path to identifying the original Source of such knowledge back to the Creator Himself!
Physics of the Fall: PART 5 [Randy]
What was different, biologically, in Adam, after the fall, so that he was then subject to death? The things said about God's actively cultivating the garden are most interesting to me, along with the idea of Adam and his kin taking divine knowledge with them on their exit from the garden. I think we consider too little how much we lost from sin.
Physics of the Fall: PART 6 [Nick]
The true effect of sin is something to contemplate. How much the locust have eaten! But how much the Spirit restores with salvation! That is why I am careful with factoring in the "noetic effect of sin" which is a popular way some try to get around why we can't trust secular science today.
As for Adam's biology, why should it have been different if, as I pointed out, God was taking care of him anyway – just like now. In other words, had he not providential protection, no kind of biology would be invincible. It is a fearful thing to consider how vulnerable we carbon-based creatures are, made up as we are of 63% water packaged in little cells that need constant links to the cosmic cycles, all maintained and sustainted (as well as designed and created) by God Himself. (So much for deistic thinking.)
As for how sin affected Adam's biology directly (apart from the "doing stupid things" or "not doing healthy things" effect), we know that, with each replication cycle, something is lost; in other words, the DNA / RNA / protein mechanism, as efficient and accurate as they are (it's been constantly at work for thousands of years – I'll just leave how many thousands at that for now), there is a demonstrable degradation which has occurred, and is occurring (perhaps at an accelerating rate, just like the expansion of the universe albeit for different reasons). This "built-in obsolescence" spells temporal doom for humanity – and in fact, any species. For a fuller treatment of this, I could suggest some references which actually calculate the outside parameters. Suffice it to say, we wear out far sooner than say, the earth or sun, making biblical prophecies of humanity's end quite reasonable to contemporary minds who comprehend the true nature of Nature.
Whether this process was begun or accelerated at the Fall, and whether God originally programmed humans for a longer tenure, is hard to say. From the declining biblical life-spans, we can get some general feel for what I am talking about here. Adam surely was not some kind of mythical superhero or superhuman, but was Adam perfect? What does “perfect” mean? Protein metabolism is not "perfect" but it is optimal, for instance. To be "perfect" would drain all the energy of the universe just fighting the entropy which drives it – so, in one sense, perhaps God had a new creation in mind from the start.
This, of course, is merely speculation, very much subject to further consideration.
Physics of the Fall: PART 7 [Craig]
Man's relationship with God changed when Eve, then Adam ate of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We know this for sure from the text. Let's look to see what hints the text may have regarding not the obvious relational difference but what physical differences there were.
Note that there seems to have been no difference between that tree and any of the other trees in the Garden, except for the status of being off-limits. "Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow EVERY tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; and the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ... [T]he women saw that the tree was good for food, and it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise ..." "The LORD God commanded the man, saying, 'From ANY tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.' "
This is almost all we know about that fateful tree and its fruit. The only physical description we have, that it seemed to have been located in the midst of the garden near the tree of life (of which very little is said), and that it was good for food. Other descriptive language focuses on non-physical aspects of the tree, one might say metaphysical – the look of it was delightfully pleasing and something about it aroused in Eve the desire to be made wise. It is somewhat confusing to read that Eve saw that the tree was good for food, but God said that in the day the man (can one rightly assume that God meant the woman as well) ate from it, he would surely die. Was the goodness that Eve saw a deception? I don't think so, but the fact that we only have a description the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from the perspective of Eve may be significant.
Given my understanding of goodness as being inextricably related to God, I posit that our understanding should be founded on the verb not the noun - the fruit of the tree was not evil (and, from Eve's perspective looked good for food), but EATING of that fruit was undoubtedly evil because God forbid it. We can only wonder what might have been if Adam, instead of taking of the fruit as well, would have instead paused, then gone to God to seek counsel on what to do next. After all, according to the text, the command had been given directly to him, not the woman.
Of course, he did take the fruit his wife gave to him and ate. The next thing the text tells us is that "the eyes of both of them were opened." This describes a physical act transitively; one wonders, were their eyes closed before? Did they close their eyes somewhere in the process after seeing the tree? What is the significance that their eyes were opened rather than them opening their eyes? It is interesting to read that then "they knew that they were naked." The text says nothing of them being dead. Hmmmm. How are we to understand the relation between the two phrases: "you shall surely die" and "they knew that they were naked"? Previously the text told us that "the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." The language leads one to connect nakedness, shame and death. Before the Fall, no coverings seemed to be needed, but after the Fall, the shamed couple, knowing now that they were naked, made coverings for themselves - loin coverings to hide their genitalia. Hmmmm. This recalls the first command, "Be fruitful and multiply." Covering themselves as they did, they placed an obstacle in the way of being able to obey God. Then they "hear the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day." Their physical senses still operate just fine - they can taste, see and hear; however, such sensation now serve much more selfish ends than those guiding them prior to the Fall. Before the Fall, Man used his senses to discover what might be revealed in God's Creation; after the Fall, the senses alerted the man and wife so that they "hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden."
I have tried to read the text closely to understand the physics of the Fall. Further study is necessary, but my conclusion so far is that the text supports the notion that no physical change resulted immediately from the Fall. My father insisted that of the four components of love, eros, the only one which is wholly physical, was unchanged; in contrast, the most radically changed was agape - in fact, agape became impossible for Man on his own (review my father's paradigm for love at http://tavani-family.blogspot.com/2008/08/paradigm-foundational-to-understanding.html). I wonder, then, if the primary consequence of sin is not to be found in the physical realm.
I admit there remains the question of how to understand what God meant when he warned the man, "in the day that you eat from it you will surely die." Perhaps a hint is hidden in the possible consequences of eating from the tree of life: "he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever." What does God mean to "live forever"? Is this the same as the "eternal life" promised in the Gospel? If so, then it is possible to understand all this as one understands the "old age" and "new age" - the phrase "already-not-yet-here" comes to mind. The Fall ushered in "the old age." Prior to the Fall may or may not have been like what was ushered in by Christ, "the new age." The old shall pass away, the new shall remain. For now, however, we exist in in both.
