Author: Jimmy Akin

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!

Recently someone engaged in an apologetic discussion about purgatory e-mailed me with a question about some of the questions that had arisen in the discussion. These touched on some significant issues, including the nature of purgatory and the way it is theologically elaborated. I thought I’d share (a slightly edited version of) my response to him, as it covers some ground one doesn’t often see covered.

I wrote:

There are different ways in which a doctrine can be theologically
elaborated. The core of the doctrine of purgatory is that (a) there is
something that occurs after death in which, for the saved, the
consequences of sin are dealt with and (b) those experiencing this
event or process can be assisted by the prayers and suffrages of the
living. That’s the core, but it can be developed and explained in
different ways.

Historically, a common way of explaining this among many theologians
has involved the idea of temporal punishments, understood in a literal
sense.

This would not conflict with the fact that Christ paid the price for
our sins because Scripture uses language indicating that Christ’s
Atonement, which rescues us from hell and which is sufficient in value
to wipe out all punishment if God wants to apply it that way, usually
does not eliminate all punishment for sin from the Christian life.
Instead, Scripture makes clear, God applies the infinite value of
Christ’s Atonement in a way that rescues us from hell and that
eliminates *many* of the sufferings in this life that we would
experience for our sins, but not *all* of the latter.

The book of Hebrews speaks of God chastizing us for our own good and
scourging every son he receives. There is thus a residuum of
punishment due for our sins that God allows us to bear in order to
teach us a lesson and encourage our growth in holiness. This is not in
contradiction to Christ’s Atonement but an outworking of it. The only
reason we receive this discipline from God is that we are his sons and
he is disciplining us to help us grow. The book of Hebrews makes this
point explicitly.

Since the chastisements and scourging that God allows to come to the
saved are not everlasting, they are therefore referred to as temporal
punishments–punishments that last only for a time, as opposed to the
eternal punishment of hell.

If, when we die, we have not dealt with all the remaining temporal
punishments that God has allowed us to experience for our sins then we
deal with them in purgatory.

This elaboration of purgatory has been popular for a number of
centuries, particularly in the West, where theologians have tended to
apply a juridical (courtroom) model to the situation, with God serving
as a judge who imposes penalties for transgressions of his law (albeit
in a fatherly manner).

Eastern Catholics have not always articulated purgatory in this way.
There are other ways in which the theological core of the doctrine can
be elaborated. One model that has been gaining ground in recent years,
including in the West, does not look to a courtroom/punishment model
but which instead speaks of purgatory as a purification or cleansing
that occurs to deal with attachment to sin. This kind of explanation
is found, for example, in the book Eschatology by Joseph Cardinal
Ratzinger and also in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Exponents of this view tend to view the
punishment/chastisement/scourging language of Scripture less literally
than it has been historically taken, seeing punishment for sin not as
something God inflicts from without but as the natural outworking of
the consequences of our sins, which God allows us to experience.

(Hell is then understood similarly, not as a place to which one is
sentenced by an angry God but as the state of definitive alienation
from God, which one has freely chosen by rejecting God’s offer of
union. In other words, on this understanding, God doesn’t send us to
hell against our will; we insist on leaving his presence and he allows
us to do so.)

How the punishment model and the purification model are to be
reconciled–or even if they need to be reconciled–is not something on
which the Church has authoritatively pronounced.

It is possible to reconcile the two to a significant degree. For
example, relying on the biblical emphasis on the sufferings and the
divine "scourgings" of the saved as means of spiritual training, one
might use the punishment model but say that the *only* temporal
punishments God allows us to experience are those needed for our
sanctification (which on anybody’s account is a painful process for
most).

This would bring the two models significantly into harmony in that on
both there would be no "excess" punishments one received. The only
sufferings the believer would have on account of sin would be those
used for his sanctification.

The question would be how one is to look at these sufferings: Are they
things caused by God from without, on the manner of a father punishing
his children? Or are they the natural outworking of the consequences
of sin, which we might envision as the pain experienced by a patient
who has broken (or shot) his foot and is having it worked on by a
doctor.

There’s a difference between "It’s time to take your punishment" and
"I’ve got to set this bone and it’s going to hurt," but they both
involve sufferings meant for the good of the one who experiences them.
Which way one looks at purgatory is currently an open question in
Catholic theology.