Mike,

Good question. I think I have to agree with the commentators I have read that actually place this time in the mellenial reign of Christ where there evidently is still physical death. After the final judgement, it says in Revelation that there will be no more death, pain, sorrow, or crying. So, as I understand it, this would have to be the case. Unless, of course, you are to assume that there still is physical death in eternity. Which means that I Cor 15 makes no sense at all when it speaks of being raised immortal.

However, I don’t think that changes the picture painted here of animals laying down in harmony with others that used to be their prey. Or the statement that the lion will eat straw. Or the final statement that they will no longer hurt or destroy. Animals devouring each other would certainly come under hurting or destroying it seems to me! And as we know, all of those animals are not likely to lie down together or feed together if they are going to turn on and devour each other.

And, by the way, the animals not harming seems to include people. Notice the little child putting his hand into the viper’s den.

Cherylu,

In Isaiah 65-66, how do you explain the presence of physical death in the “new heavens and new earth”?

Willim, Re comment # 34,

I believe there are other verses that speak to this issue. In Genesis one God repeatedly called His creation “good”. Then when He was done creating, He looked at all of it and called it “very good”. If we go over to Romans 8, we read that God subjected “the whole creation” to vanity, futility, frustration, etc. depending on the version you read. In other words, the creation was no longer “very good”. Why was that so? He says that the very creation will be set free at the same time that the sons of God are manifested. That is connected in these verses with the redemption of our bodies and our glorification. And of course what we are being set free from is the results of sin–that is made plain by the context of these verses. Would this not then very likely hold true for the rest of creation too? If that is not the case, you are left to come up with another reason altogether that is not even hinted at in the context of these verses as to why God’s “very good ” creation was subjected to futility. The context of the chapter certainly seems to say that it was because of man’s sin.

And then of course there are the verses in Isaiah 11 and 65 where God is telling us about the new heavens and the new earth. These are the famous verses that speak about the lion laying down with the lamb, etc. And the lion’s food is said to be straw–not meat. He goes on to say that they will no longer harm or destroy. Since this is obviously the ideal, does it not suggest a very strong possibility that this is the way God’s “very good” creation was in the beginning before He subjected it to futility? Specially since He makes a point out of telling us in Genesis one that the food for all animals was to be the green herbs?

I’ve responded critically to a few arguments I disagree entirely with. To be fair, here’s a response to one that’s very much closer to my own viewpoint:

Here’s the Jonathan Edwardian defense…

The problem with this specific defense is that it assumes a need within God to reveal His wrath against sin, and such a need makes no sense if there’s no sin within God, since God could have no need that was not eternally met in the Trinity. God didn’t create in order to meet a need within Himself.

We have to first establish that God is right to create even though He knows that His creation will be at least exposed to sin and evil, and possibly corrupted by that sin and evil.

It seems clear that God knew about the presence of evil, because God chose us “before the foundation of the world” to be conformed to His image — which means that there was a certainty that we would be at a point of not being thusly conformed. (I’m following Eph 1 very closely here, in a way that I think both Calvinists and Arminians can agree on.) So open theism isn’t an escape, even if we suppose that God gives up His detailed knowledge.

I need to stop so I can get other things done today. Am I making sense?

-Wm

There is absolutely no mention of any creature, man or otherwise being a carnivore there. If they were all designed as herbivores, wouldn’t it have taken some major change to turn a large share of them into carnivores? The kind of change you don’t seem to think happened?

cherylu, the problem is that one can’t build an entire doctrine on one verse — and one especially can’t build an entire doctrine on a verse that gives “absolutely no mention” of the disputed topic.

The fact is that there’s no verse that gives any hint that God entirely redesigned large sweeps of creation as a result of man’s sin. Therefore, any conclusion that there was such a redesign would have to be strongly supported by some other evidence (perhaps philosophical, perhaps scientific). And all the other evidence points elsewhere.

This suggests that a good course of action is to consider other interpretations of the disputed text.

-Wm

John, I agree; disagreements are so much more exciting . I hope you do get time to critique my only substantial blog post; I’ve put the blog on the back burner for now, but I’ll put my full attention on it if it gets any comments.

I read Moreland’s blurb; it’s a nice recommendation (it appears to have been written only as a back-cover blurb, since there’s absolutely nothing else like it on any other site), but it’s not a review, and doesn’t even start to consider the philosophical issues. There doesn’t seem to be any mention of any of his concepts by any actual philosopher — the closest I found was a YEC objecting in great detail, and he only considered the length of Dembski’s timeline, not its ordering.

At the very least, I have to say that Dembski has a HUGE philosophical issue on his plate, if he wishes to overturn the chronological nature either of causality or judgment.

It’s also a little odd that someone attempting to defend libertarian free will would cite a person who thinks that God judged an entire universe based on free will actions which hadn’t been determined at the time the judgement was enacted. Formally speaking, even if God *knew* that man would choose to sin, he wouldn’t bring about any of the consequences (effects) of that sin outside of His own knowledge until after the sin is actual: otherwise, anyone (say, an angel) looking at the universe would immediately know that man _was_ going to sin, because a good God wouldn’t place a curse on a universe without sin.

-Wm

# John,

You may have addressed this elsewhere in some other thread, I don’t know. You made this statement, “I would argue that the YEC position is neither Biblically consistent, nor makes sense of how Genesis deals with evils. Were all carnivores suddenly redesigned as soon as Adam sinned?…..”

I am wondering what you do with the statements in Genesis 1 that says God gave the herbs of the ground and the fruit of trees as food to man and all the green herbs to “everything in which is the breath of life”? He named all the beasts of the earth, the fowl of the air and everything that creeps on the ground. There is absolutely no mention of any creature, man or otherwise being a carnivore there. If they were all designed as herbivores, wouldn’t it have taken some major change to turn a large share of them into carnivores? The kind of change you don’t seem to think happened?

RE post 30. William, it’s nice to be agreeing on something, finally, though it doesn’t have the same spark as our disagreements.

I can’t recall where I read the positives from philosophers (though if I come across them again I’ll repost here or on your blog (which I haven’t gotten around to posting on). However, IIRC, Moreland gave it a positive review and said that anyone who deals with the problem of evil will have to interact with Dembski’s book.

regards,
#John

Furthermore, before critiqueing Dembski’s argument as “incoherent” it might be worth people’s time to actually read it.

Good point, John. I retract my critical statement. The summary given here seems incoherent, and I can’t imagine a form of the argument that’s coherent, and I’m not going to buy his book given those facts (even though I own and enjoyed his “Intelligent Design” book); but I’ll concede that constitutes a failure on my part, not Dembski’s.

Let me also state for the record that you’ve made some good clarifications that I haven’t responded to because they’re so right that a followup would be an anticlimax.

(Huh, it looks like I didn’t click the post button when I replied to the YEC post. How annoying.)

If professional philosophers are giving it good reviews and a thumbs up, there must be something to it.

I saw his page of back-page props, but I didn’t see any reviews from philosophers. I’d like to see that; where can I go?

-Wm

I would argue that the YEC position is neither Biblically consistent, nor makes sense of how Genesis deals with evils. Were all carnivores suddenly redesigned as soon as Adam sinned? Would he have even recognized as the same an animal that had been changed from herbivore to carnivore? Did all insect pests suddenly arise? And all harmful bacteria and viruses suddenly start existing as a new creation?

Furthermore, before critiqueing Dembski’s argument as “incoherent” it might be worth people’s time to actually read it. If professional philosophers are giving it good reviews and a thumbs up, there must be something to it.

regards
#John