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!
