A reader writes:
We’ve been discussing the whole issue of Hurricane Katrina and God’s role in nature. We have a grip on the whole problem of pain (thanks to Lewis and Kreeft), but we have another question concerning things like hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and the like. Did those things exist before "the fall" or are they a result of "the fall"?
Scripture does not address this question directly, except possibly in the case of hurricanes. Hurricanes involve rain, and there is a passage in Genesis that many have taken to mean that there was no rain before a certain point in history. The passage is Genesis 2:4-5, which reads:
5: when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb
of the field had yet sprung up — for the LORD God had not caused it to
rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground;
6: but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground
The Hebrew of this passage, and the surrounding text, contains a number of difficulties, and it is not certain that the passage is stating that there was no rain. The passage is referring to a time before the standard agricultural cycle with which the Hebrews were familiar had been set up. That cycle involves the elements named in verse 5: the springing up of plants and herbs of the field, the sending of rain from heaven for purposes of making them grow, the going forth of man to till the ground to make them grow.
The passage thus may simply be setting the timeframe as "before the agricultural cycle was set up." It may not be denying that rain took place any more than it is denying that the same plants and herbs that would later be cultivated already were growing, they were just growing wild. In the same way, the rain (if it existed) was wild in the sense of not being sent by God to cause crops to grow because there were no crops. There were just wild plants here and there, but no man had yet been created, and thus there was no agriculture.
Verse 6 may reflect this disorganized state as well. The term "mist" may not be the best translation here. If memory serves (I’m afraid I don’t have time at the moment to look it up for verification) the term translated "mist" more literally means "flow." This may represent the numerous shifting watercourses in the Tigris-Euphrates delta (where Eden was supposed to be located), which often resulted in a chaotic flooding, swamp-like conditions, and thus conditions unsuitable for agriculture. (One notes also that the term "earth" used in this passage just means "land" and can mean a specific land, like the land where Eden was; not the whole planet.)
The biblical author may simply be trying to get us to envision the chaotic, undeveloped Mesopotamian swamp which God then started to organize, creating a garden and a gardener and the first stirrings of horticulture/agriculture.
On the other hand, if the passage is stating that there was no rain, anywhere on earth, then it is possible that it was not intended by the biblical author to be taken literally (the Church acknowledges significant elements of symbolism in the early part of Genesis; see the Catechism’s discussions on this point) but as a literary device of some sort, perhaps to set the reader up for the drama of the Flood narrative, which definitely involved rain.
Or one might think that there just was no rain at this time. It seems very hard to square that with the geological record, but one is free to believe that if one wishes.
The other disasters that you mention do not seem to be addressed one way or the other in Scripture. However, there are factors that would suggest that they did exist.
Even if you just stick with Genesis 1 it seems clear that a basic fact about the universe was the same then as it is now: The universe is entropic or prone to entropy, which is the tendency for systems to run down and break down. Without entropy, stars don’t shine (their energy doesn’t dissipate in the form of light and heat) and animals don’t need food (because they aren’t losing energy either). Since Genesis 1 both depicts the sun and the stars shining and the earthly creatures–even man–needing food, it thereby acknowldges that the pre-Fall universe was entropic.
That suggests that the same basic physical laws were in place, and thus that the effects of the sun on the earth’s atmosphere, driving the hydrological cycle, would have been the same (meaning things like tornados, hurricanes, and rain would occur). Indirect testimony to the hydrological cycle is also found in Genesis 1 in the fact that the waters have been divided into "the waters above" (i.e., clouds) and "the waters below" (i.e., oceans, seas, lakes, rivers). That only happens if you’ve got sunlight causing water evaporation, and thus the hydrological cycle. Lightening also occurs as part of the hydrological cycle, which would give rise to things like forrest fires (though you didn’t mention those, I thought I’d throw them in as a lagniappe).
The innards of the earth, for their part, would also be trying to radiating their internal heat outward in keeping with entropy, causing the convection currents in the earth’s mantle that are one of the things driving continental drift. This would then produce things like earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanos (to throw in another couple of lagniappes).
Between the various lines of evidence, both from Genesis 1 and from what we know (or think we know) about the history of the earth from science, my best guess is that such disaster-phenomena did occur prior to the Fall, but if anyone wants to disagree with that, he’s welcome to.
I also heard that if they did exist before the fall that man had a special sense of imminent danger from these things and could take action to protect themselves. What do you think?
That, I really couldn’t tell you. Many have conjectured that our first parents had a very large number of impressive superpowerspreternatural gifts. That could have been one of them. On the other hand, God might have kept them alive some other way.
The same could be true, theoretically, of animals before the Fall (e.g., there might have been animals with superpowerspreternatural gifts like those of Krypto the Superdog, or Streaky the Supercat, or Comet the Superhorse, or Beppo the Supermonkey, or Proty the . . . well, Proty the proty–or any other members of the Legion of Super-Pets).
On the other hand, we’ve got pretty good fossil evidence that some animals died in pre-Adamite disasters, but if one takes Augustine’s and Aquinas’s view that only human death entered the world through the Fall and that animal death could and did happen prior to it then this is not a problem.
Hope this helps!
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It seems to me that the problem of reconciling the Fall with fossil evidence of natural history is deeper than is usually portrayed. I do not mean to imply that theories of physical cosmology and of biological evolution should be ruled out on the basis of scripture and Tradition, but it seems that there are real problems with any attempt to locate the Fall within the context of a physical model, whether it be an astrophysical model, a geological model, a biological model, or an overarching theoretical construct including all of the above.
One big problem comes from the notion in which the physical universe is created initially good by God. Before the Fall, there was certainly no moral evil in the universe. Moreover, there was not even any physical evil, for the Church teaches that even physical evil is ultimately the result of moral evil. Still, the existence of physical evil seems built into the universe at a very deep level. So deeply, in fact, that, just as our current physical theories appear applicable well into the distant past—long before the appearance even of neutral atoms—so too does the universe’s ability to harm the human body seem present as far back in time as we choose to look.
Thus I find myself asking, What can be meant by “before the Fall”? Certainly, the Fall has eternal as well as temporal consequences. So I wonder whether “before” should be construed not in terms of temporal priority but rather in terms of logical priority. Now, this is a radical conception, and I am by no means confident that it can be squared with Catholic teaching. Yet it is intriguing to consider that the Garden, though really existing, might not ever have existed in the physical history that we can now see by looking at a backward light cone or digging up fossil remains. The entrance to the Garden has truly been sealed.
In this conception, Adam and Eve “before” the Fall lived in an as-yet unspoiled physical reality. Their Sin, however, damaged the world so deeply as to change the very physical laws by which the world operated. Indeed, their Sin may have affected all of time (even back to the beginning) simultaneously. “Afterward”, Adam and Eve found themselves in a hostile world with a different history, perhaps one in which their bodies, being the product of some evolutionary process, were doomed to die. Whether time really existed “before” the Fall is in this view an interesting speculation; the breaking of the universe into space and time as we now conceive them might be a logical consequence of the Fall. One might imagine the Fall to be like the collapse of a wave function in quantum mechanics, in which some particular choice closed off certain possibilities for physical reality and brought some others permanently into being.
Anyway, it’s just a thought that I’ve been playing with for a while.
My head hurts.
FWIW I think the only thing we know for sure is that the fall brought tragic death into our reality. Before the fall people could have been killed by hurricanes but, if you’re living in the beatific vision, who cares?
john_di,
In the line of reasoning that I am exploring, there was before the Fall no death of the human body, for that is a physical evil that follows from the Fall. That nature would be so constructed as to cause the death of the human body reflects the presence of evil in her. In this line of reasoning, nature was initially created by God so that no harm would ever come to human bodies, but the Fall wounded nature very deeply so that now she does cause harm to the human body.
Of course, one may counter this line of reasoning by positing that preternatural grace was granted to every human before the Fall, so that, even if nature operated according to the very same rules all along, still there was no death of the human body before the Fall. This seems a bit artificial to me, however. After all, Genesis describes a real change to the whole world as a result of the Fall, and the post-Fall world seems very deeply connected with the death of every body. We should in any case need preternatural grace in order to choose to live sinlessly, but I am skeptical of our need to invoke preternatural grace for the purpose of having bodies that don’t decay.
So, I suppose that one question for Jimmy is whether a Catholic is bound to subscribe to the notion that, before the Fall, preternatural grace allowed the human body to continue indefinitely unmolested by a nature whose functioning is essentially the same as her functioning today. I suspect that such is really just a popular and pious speculation. In any event, it is hard to reconcile with the observational record.
Strike the last sentence of my last message. It is a mistake resulting from my trying to think and type too fast.
One notes that Jesus Himself described a woman crippled as “This daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now,”
Did the devils fall temporally before the creation of the world?
Mary, that’s how I’ve always understood it. How was Satan there in the Garden if he didn’t already exist?
In response to Thomas (although, like St. Gimp, my head hurts) – my personal “spin” is that natural disasters and such existed before the Fall, but humanity would have been somehow protected from them. Either by God guiding us to not be in the way of the storm, or perhaps via the superpowers Jimmy has mentioned (although I don’t really understand where the evidence is of us ever having preternatural gifts).
Elsewhere on the Internet, we were discussing the possibility that this could all be somehow related to chaos theory and the “butterfly effect.” (not that the movie with Ashton Kutchner would be a result of evil entering the world…but, then again…) I guess my question is more one of *how* does original sin result in the physical evil manifested in the world? My thought is that people’s sinful behavior in one place has far-reaching influence, possibly even to the point of impacting climactic events? Or maybe just to the point of making other people (far removed from them) be in the path of climactic events?
That’s not heretical, right? I’m not talking about natural disasters = divine retribution, but rather people’s sins having influences far beyond their little circle of existence.
Ultimately, I guess the answer to the question of “Why suffering?” is just “Suffering happens, and it’s not always a result of someone else’s actions. Suffering exists because of our fallen state.”
Jimmy: Were you thinking of Proty the Protozoan? 🙂
Thomas, you said: “After all, Genesis describes a real change to the whole world as a result of the Fall…”
I can’t see this in Genesis, could you please point it out? Also, why do you think the preternatural grace argument is an artificial one? If God promises that by his own power he’ll raise our bodies (which have turned to dust) into a glorified state and this glorified state due to His Power (as seen in Jesus’ life before the Ascension and the lives of the Saints) allows us to bi-locate, travel instantly, manifest ourselves in people’s dreams, speak to people at a distance, levitate, walk through walls, walk on water, cure diseases, raise others from the dead, command the wind and earth to “calm down”, then where is the difficulty in expecting that His Grace (i.e. His Power) is required to keep us from suffering or dying?
Cheers
I found this to be a good article on the original sin/death issue.
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9811/articles/oakes.html
The key passage:
“Now if Paul does hold to a corporate view of Adam, then this must mean that Romans 5:12b should not be translated “death spread to all men inasmuch as all men sinned” (implying that personal sin causes death) but rather “with the result that all men sinned” (with its implication that the specter of death generates sin; this, at any rate, is Father Joseph Fitzmyer’s choice for translating eph’hô in his recent Anchor Bible commentary on Romans). If this translation is accurate, then Augustine is fundamentally right and this verse in the Bible comes very close to asserting a doctrine of original sin: in other words, we die not because we commit individual sins of our own volition; rather we sin, and inevitably, we die, and inevitably, as a result of Adam’s sin.”
The specter of death generates sin…I find this to be an intriguing idea. Loss of God’s grace results in death, and it’s our conciousness of death (our mortality, which is a result of the loss of grace) that tempts us to sin (something along the lines of “eat drink and be merry, for tommorow we die”).
Anyway, I’m probably not doing justice to the article (and sorry for the long quote). But have a look.
Ashton: I can’t say as I’m familiar with Proty the Protozoan.
I was thinking of Proty (or more specifically, Proty II), who was a member of the Legion of Super-Pets.
MORE INFO HERE.
You all are missing the really impressive point which is that Jimmy can spell ‘lagniappe’!
I’ve heard a version of the rain story where it didn’t rain until Noah so I had always dismissed the whole discussion as loopy, but you all bring up some interesting points.
I don’t know about the specter of death generating sin. People start to sin at a pretty early age, before they can really get a handle on the idea of death. I did my most spectacular sinning when I thought I would never die (in my teens/young twenties). Intellectually, I knew I would die, but the idea really seemed very remote and unreal.
I don’t know all the details of the pre-Fall world and humanity, but I am convinced that in an unfallen world we would be spared such horrors as “The Legion of Super-Pets.”
My problem with Thomas’s theory is located in this section: “Indeed, their Sin may have affected all of time (even back to the beginning) simultaneously. ‘Afterward’, Adam and Eve found themselves in a hostile world with a different history, perhaps one in which their bodies, being the product of some evolutionary process, were doomed to die.”
This smacks of the kind of retroactive reality-bending manipulations that I find so distasteful in science fiction stories. If sin caused Adam and Eve’s world to collapse into another form like a “wave function,” then why should we consider this world to be real? Why is it anything more than a quantum fluctuation without anything but illusory reality? It seems to me that this could easily lead into a type of gnosticism. I once read a story where a young cat was told that felines once ruled the world, and that humans were a lower form of life. But the humans banded together and dreamed of a world where they were the rulers, and suddenly the entire world, past, present and future, was conformed to this dream. It was changed so that things were always that way, and cats had never ruled the earth. I didn’t like it anymore then than I do now.
Not that I have any grand theory to explain it all, though Ashton may be onto something with the examination of the preternatural gifts. C. S. Lewis accepted the evolutionary model unreservedly, and he inserted some of his speculations on early human life in The Problem of Pain and Perelandra. Germain Grisez also had similar thoughts in Fulfillment in Christ, his book on Christian moral principles. We live in a time where we are learning a lot about early human life from archeology and genetics, and I expect theologians to have plenty to chew on for decades to come.
There is nothing to prevent God (pre-fall) from directly preserving man from the effects of entropy.
Tim,
I see your point. On the other hand, I suppose one could argue that the spectre of death can also be an unconcious or extremely subtle thing for those who do not yet have an explicit awareness of death. The further back you go in terms of youth the more you enter into the issue of the age of reason as well, I would think.
Also, Wisdom Chapter 2 does seem to contain the idea, and I also think it’s interesting that Aquinas describes despair as the most dangerous sin from a believer’s point of view, because of the tendency for more temptation to follow from it. But still, at this point I think I would agree that it’s not an absolute thing, maybe just a major contributing factor.
“This smacks of the kind of retroactive reality-bending manipulations that I find so distasteful in science fiction stories.”
Considering that any attempt to articulate how an eternal God interacts with a temporal world will “smack” of this kind of thing (see Lewis, discussing the logic of praying for weather, in Screwtape Letters), this does not seem like a very sound objection.
“If sin caused Adam and Eve’s world to collapse into another form like a “wave function,” then why should we consider this world to be real? Why is it anything more than a quantum fluctuation without anything but illusory reality?”
Because real quantum physics aint like dustin’ technobabble on Star Trek, boy. It’s an attempt (successful or not, I don’t know) to model how reality works. Katrina was a transient phenomenon, the mechanics of which we partly understand, partly do not. The fact that it’s an atmospheric “fluctuation” does *not* make it illusory. If quantum fluctuations are part of how reality works, then there is nothing “illusory” about their results. If not, than they are simply a symbolic model with limited predictive power and Thomas is doing the equivalent of using the Ptolemaic theory as a basis for theological speculation.
“It seems to me that this could easily lead into a type of gnosticism. I once read a story where a young cat was told that felines once ruled the world, and that humans were a lower form of life. But the humans banded together and dreamed of a world where they were the rulers, and suddenly the entire world, past, present and future, was conformed to this dream. It was changed so that things were always that way, and cats had never ruled the earth. I didn’t like it anymore then than I do now.”
The difference is, if Thomas is correct, Adam and Eve *do* remember the better world, however dimly. I repeat: if the scientific ideas Thomas is borrowing are correct, complaining about ppl turning them into fantasies about subjective reality is no more (and no less) meaningful than complaining about people turning the fossil record or primate sign language or whatever into an excuse to see the human race as *mere* animals: because an idea can be misinterpreted, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Considering that any attempt to articulate how an eternal God interacts with a temporal world will “smack” of this kind of thing (see Lewis, discussing the logic of praying for weather, in Screwtape Letters), this does not seem like a very sound objection.
This isn’t quite the same thing. You’re talking about the interaction between a timeless being (God) and time-bound creatures. Such things cannot be easily categorized by our common ways of thinking, but for the creation itself to make such a drastic internal change is something else entirely, in my opinion. All creatures are subject to change, and thus to some form of time, which is the measure of change.
If quantum fluctuations are part of how reality works, then there is nothing “illusory” about their results.
I’m not well versed with recent quantum mechanics writings, but I do know that one paradox is that the physical universe on a large scale simply does not work in the same way as the microscopic quantum world. Some people try to apply quantum physics to the cosmos, or even to a proposed “multiverse,” but this all sounds like speculation.
Also, isn’t the point of collapsing waves or probabilities that something unknown (i.e., either speed or location) becomes known when it is observed? Did Adam and Eve live in some kind of limbo where the nature of the universe would be decided by their choice? Perhaps by desiring the knowledge of good and evil, they received only the knowledge of evil, since they could not partake of both at once. That’s actually an intriguing possibility, but it might be hard to square with the Genesis account.
My concern is primarily with the integrity of the physical universe, and of its appearance as being essentially non-deceiving. Back when I was still reading creationist literature, there was a lot of talk about light waves being created en route to earth, without even having traversed the space in between. The problem with this argument is that these phantom light waves are telling us that stars have exploded or dispersed, when in fact this is false information implanted into the light. If the Fall resulted in a collapsed universe with a new history, that sounds to my untrained ear like the same thing.
Good point about the retained memories, although this again almost seems like false information planted in the creation. Like if God created a tree complete with dozens of rings inside but put up a sign that said, “Created Yesterday.” The sign would say one thing, but the physical evidence would say another. I’m not entirely comfortable with God saying something different than the physical evidence. The story I referenced was just meant as an explanation of the way this theory appears to me; the reality may differ insofar as I misunderstand it.
What if Adam and Eve were created in Heaven? (I think bodies can exist in Heaven from what I’ve read here and elswhere). The Fall would then have taken place wholly in the spiritual realm, before the creation of the physical universe but after the creation of Heaven and the angels. It could thus have been that Satan’s tempting of Adam and Eve was what resulted in him being banished from heaven to begin with (or rather he could have visited after his banishment like in Job). Just a possibility I’ve been kicking around, I don’t know if it would even work or what the ramifications would be (new Catholic here :-p ).
Jimmy: I thought the Legion of Super-Pets in your post was a joke. Proty II should be the mascot for the Darwinists – Evolution Man (from Protozoan to uber-mensch in 3 seconds flat!) 🙂
Ryan C: That possibility contradicts the text of Genesis, so I don’t think that’ll work. In Genesis, God creates the Adam and Eve, commands them to multiply and simultaneously gives them dominion over creation and asks them to subdue it. From the text the location is clearly the physical earth and life on in it.
Thanks for the First Things post!
“Ryan C: That possibility contradicts the text of Genesis, so I don’t think that’ll work. In Genesis, God creates the Adam and Eve, commands them to multiply and simultaneously gives them dominion over creation and asks them to subdue it. From the text the location is clearly the physical earth and life on in it.”
But I’m pretty sure that command and the giving of dominion of over creation is given in the first creation account in Chapter 1. The story of Adam and Eve occurs in Chapter 2 in the second creation account. In my reading the first chapter of Genesis would certainly be refer to the creation of the physical world. But the second account (which is from a different narrative tradition I believe) would describe with the original Fall in heaven using figurative language. Some of the things that motivated my thinking are this: I think it’s interesting that in Revelation the tree of life is in Heaven. I also think it’s interesting to consider Satan’s inteference in Creation from the *very* beginning, as in Tolkien’s mythology (in the Silmarillion) where he adds discord to God’s music of creation (which is probably a medieval figure he borrowed).
But I think you’re right to critisize the idea as a whole. I certainly need to think about it some more, so thanks for your thoughts.
And you’re welcome! 🙂
I haven’t read any Biblical commentary so its possible my own meager understanding is at fault.
I don’t understand why you’d suddenly shift into a “figurative” interpretation for the second creation account. What exactly does “figurative” mean?
I thought that we read scripture as the Church has read it and that the literal meaning of the text is given priority. All other meanings of the text (allegorical, moral, anagogical) are built on the literal. It can’t be just ignored. Have I misunderstood what literal means? (I’ve only read Mark Shea’s “Making Sense Out of Scripture”)
Regarding the tree of life, I think that the tree refers to Jesus, just as the lamb does. He is the true tree of life. I don’t think any more can be read into that. There ain’t any other source of food/life.
I’ve heard the Satan’s inteference story before and it creeps me out. I also can’t reconcile it with the text. The text seems to make no room for this. All I read is God speaking to himself (“Let us”) and creating. No other being is in the text. I also see the text referring to the creation of angels and their division into the two camps as part of the creation account. Specifically his work on the First Day – “Day” being the angels and “Night” being the demons. The sun and other celestial bodies were created later so can’t be the reason for light and darkness. Is this reading too much into the text? Can anyone who has a better grasp of this package, i.e. a Catholic understanding enlighten me if I’m wrong. Jimmy, any suggestions for further readings? (Those with a modern/liberal/deconstructionist bent stay away)
I’m sorry, I should have stated that I want to read both accounts figuratively, just in different ways (such as the symbolism of the seven days for the first account). And hey, I like your interpretation of the tree, it being profoundly Eucharistic. Hadn’t thought of that.
I think this passage from the Catechism is interesting:
309 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better. But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world “in a state of journeying” (earlier “in statu viae”) towards its ultimate perfection. In God’s plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.
What is this theological concept – “in statu viae”? Where does it come from and what does it mean in the context of the rest of the Catechism? Hmm…anyone?
Mary’s question about the timing of the Devil’s fall is the key for me. It is undeniable that this fall predated the first human sin. He was, after all the Tempter! But how far before in time? We have no obvious answer to that in Divine Revelation.
And what effect did this First Fall have on the natural world, if any? Again, we don’t know. But I would suggest that the very fact that the Devil is symbolised by a talking snake is suggestive. At this point in the story, evil appears to have entered the natural world before any human sin. If Genesis 1 is, as one traditional interpretation says, a record of step-by-step (day-by-day) revelation of an actually instantaneous Creative Act, then the adjectival phrases “good” and “very good” could refer to the Creation as originally intended. An early anglelic Fall could then have implications for the development of the earth, especially biologically. It is worth noting that another traditional (non-dogmatic) belief about angels is that they had some (regulating?) role in Nature.
M.K.+
On another matter, we should not expect to find any palaeoanthrolpological evidence of the pre-Fall paradise and any associated supernatural gifts (including immortality) of the first humans. This is because this period was brief in time, extremely localised in extent, and non-physical in cause by definition.
Ryan C: “What if Adam and Eve were created in Heaven? (I think bodies can exist in Heaven from what I’ve read here and elswhere). The Fall would then have taken place wholly in the spiritual realm, before the creation of the physical universe but after the creation of Heaven and the angels. It could thus have been that Satan’s tempting of Adam and Eve was what resulted in him being banished from heaven to begin with”
Ryan, nothing impure enters [or exists in] Heaven, so Satan couldn’t have been in Heaven tempting Adam and Eve, after his own fall from grace.
Thanks Fr. Kirby and Ryan.