To answer JD’s Questions from Round 5:
Q: In your model, what exactly changes in the created order because of the Fall? If animal death, predation, disease, extinction, parasitism, natural disasters, and suffering already existed before Adam’s sin, what did the curse introduce into the non-human created order?
A: I’m not convinced Scripture ever teaches that the non‑human creation was altered at the Fall. What Scripture does teach is that human sin affects creation because humans were appointed to rule it. When the rulers are corrupt, what they govern suffers. Creation is not “cursed with death” in Genesis 3 — it is subjected to futility because the ones tasked with stewarding it are in rebellion. As I explain below, Paul’s point in Romans 8 is precisely this: creation groans under the misrule of fallen humanity and waits for the revealing of the redeemed sons of God. When humanity is restored to its proper vocation in the resurrection, creation will finally be set free from the corrupting influence of human sin.
Q: How do you distinguish death as a created good from death as an enemy? If biological death was part of God’s very good creation for ages before Adam, in what sense is death the enemy Christ defeats?
A: Scripture distinguishes between human death as a covenantal enemy and biological death in the non‑human world. Revelation 22:3 says that in the New Creation “there will no longer be any curse,” using the Greek term katánathema (κατάναθεμα), meaning “a cursed thing devoted to destruction.” That curse is tied to sin and spiritual death, not to the ordinary life‑and‑death cycles of animals.
Human death is the enemy because humanity was exiled from God’s presence in Eden (Genesis 3:22–24). Spiritual death and the lost access to eternal life in God are what Christ defeats—which is why Scripture consistently treats eternal life is something we have now, not some future reward. Scripture never treats animal death the same way. So yes, death is absolutely an enemy — but it is the human, covenantal and judicial death Christ came to destroy, not the biological death of non‑rational creatures.
Q: What does the new creation restore or consummate? If the original creation already included predation, disease, extinction, and suffering, should we expect those realities in the new creation as well? If not, why should the final state differ so sharply from the original state?
A: This is ultimately an eschatological question. But the short answer is that Scripture consistently points to a New Creation, not a reset to Eden. Peter says that “the present heavens and earth are being kept for fire” (2 Peter 3:7), and John declares that in the New Creation “the former things have passed away… behold, I [Jesus] am making all things new” (Revelation 21:4–5).
In my view, God’s command to Adam and Eve to “subdue the earth and rule” (Genesis 1:28) was the beginning of His plan, not the final state of creation. The original world was functioning as it needed to for that plan to unfold, but it was not complete. It was the starting point of the redemptive story that culminates in the New Creation, where God dwells with His people forever (Revelation 21:3).
If biological processes such as animal death were part of what this creation required in order to bring about God’s ultimate purpose, then so be it. The New Creation is the finished product. We are still living in the “work‑in‑progress” phase as history moves toward the consummation of God’s Kingdom where the former things — our present reality — have passed away.
JD’s Round 5 post can be read here.
Round 5: Death, Fall, Flood, and Theological Coherence:
Which model better preserves the theological structure of creation, fall, curse, death, and redemption?
As JD stated in his opening comments, the question of animal death before the fall is the lynchpin that holds the Young Earth Creationist worldview together. If animals were dying for millions of years before Adam, then there is no need for Flood Geology to explain the fossil record. And without Flood Geology as an alternative to mainstream science, the scientific claims of YEC evaporate almost as quickly as the flood waters themselves.
Where JD and I agree is that Scripture explicitly teaches that death and suffering “entered into the human order” as a consequence of sin—as JD stated in his opening statement. Where we disagree is on the premise that Adam’s sin was a nature-upending catastrophe that introduced death and chaos into the created order as a whole.
So, the crucial question we need to ask at this point is: does the Bible explicitly teach that animal death is a “rupture” into creation caused by sin? Moreover, does Scripture portray animal death and natural disasters as a moral evil standing in opposition to God’s character? I would argue that Scripture does not for the following reasons.
1) The text of Genesis assumes that death is a known category for Adam and Eve. A warning that cannot be understood is no warning at all; therefore “you will surely die” (Genesis 2:17) presupposes that death is already a known reality in creation. Otherwise, the consequences of sin lose their weight.
2) The warning never extends beyond the one who sins. In both Genesis 2:16–17 and Eve’s refrain in Genesis 3:2–3, the consequence is the same: the person who eats will die. A death‑curse on creation is never mentioned or implied in either case.
3) Crucially, Adam is never treated as the federal head of all creation in Scripture—neither is Christ. Both Adam and Jesus—the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45)—represent humanity, not animals, ecosystems, natural laws, or biological processes. The gospel is not “God so loved the birds, the bees and the trees.” The gospel is “God so loved the world”—that is, humanity.
4) When the fall does occur in Genesis 3, there is no curse pronounced on animals or nature. In fact, there is no “death curse” mentioned at all.
There are four judgments in Genesis 3: The woman is judged with increased toil (ʿiṣṣāḇōn, עִצָּבוֹן) in conception, child‑rearing, and her relationship with her husband (Genesis 3:16). The man is judged and given increased toil (ʿiṣṣāḇōn, עִצָּבוֹן) in his labor (Genesis 3:17). The serpent is cursed and presented as a defeated foe groveling in the dust, culminating in the proto‑evangelium (Genesis 3:14–15). And both the man and the woman are cast out of Eden specifically so they will not eat from the Tree of Life and live forever (Genesis 3:22–24)—that is how death becomes a reality for humanity according to the narrative.
The word “curse” (ārūr, אָרוּר) appears only twice. The serpent is cursed (Genesis 3:14), using common ANE/biblical language for defeat, and the ground is cursed in regard to human labor—the effects of which are spelled out in detail: Adam will toil to produce food, and the ground will bring forth thorns. Eden had been a place of plenty where he could eat freely (Genesis 2:16). But outside Eden, the ground would be uncooperative—thorns and weeds would grow freely while cultivated crops would be produced “by the sweat of [his] brow.” (Anyone who farms or gardens knows this struggle well—even with the convenience of modern technology.)
In order to find a “curse” on nature, the YEC interpretation must therefore take the only two curses in the chapter out of context and read their presupposition—that the pre‑fall world was death‑free—back into the text. Thus, “you [the serpent] are cursed more than any livestock and more than any wild animal” is taken to mean that the livestock and other animals were cursed to a lesser degree than the serpent. And “the ground [’ereṣ, אֶרֶץ] is cursed because of you” is interpreted as meaning that the entire created order is cursed with death, disease, natural disasters, and entropy because of Adam’s sin—even though ’ereṣ specifically refers to the land or visible surface of the ground in Genesis 3, and is the same word YEC interpreters also take to mean the entire planet Earth in the Flood narrative, not the cosmos. The result is a composite fifth judgment on nature and the animal kingdom—one the text does not explicitly state or support—effectively reading a cosmic death‑curse between the lines rather than letting the text speak on its own terms.
5) Scripture never portrays animal death or natural disasters as a “rupture” into the created order, or a moral evil caused by sin. Even the Bible’s own exposé on the problem of suffering—the Book of Job—never connects natural disasters or animal death to Adam. Instead, Scripture repeatedly praises God for feeding predators and scavengers—the lions roaring for their prey (Psalm 104:21), the ravens crying out for food (Psalm 147:9; Job 38:39–41), and even the eagle’s young feeding on the slain (Job 39:27–30). Scripture also affirms that God Himself governs the life‑and‑death cycles of creation: “When you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust… When you send your breath, they are created, and you renew the surface of the ground” (Psalm 104:27–31).
Additionally, far from portraying animal death as a necessary evil, Israel’s sacrificial system presents it as holy and acceptable. None of the sacrifices in Genesis (Genesis 4:3–5; 8:20–21; 12:7–8; 13:18; 15, 17; 22:1–14; 31:54; 35:1-7) are described as atonement for sin. And within the Mosaic system, animals were killed not only for atonement (Leviticus 4), but also for fellowship offerings (Leviticus 3), thanksgiving offerings (Leviticus 7:11–15), free‑will offerings (Leviticus 22:18–23), vow‑completion (Numbers 6:14), and ritual purification (Leviticus 14; Numbers 19). If animal death is inherently evil, then God required evil as worship and called it “pleasing.” That conclusion is incompatible with God’s character, so the premise fails.
Jesus Himself also taught that not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the Father (Matthew 10:29). And the Old Testament explicitly declares that God is the One who “kills and makes alive” (Deuteronomy 32:39; 1 Samuel 2:6), while the New Testament ascribes all authority over life and death to Christ, who holds “the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:18).
Furthermore, Scripture consistently distinguishes between human death (which is moral, judicial, and covenantal) and animal death (which is biological and non‑moral). Conflating the two categories is not a biblical move—it is a modern one. Scripture also clearly teaches that even human death is not always inherently evil. The gospel itself depends on the death of Jesus as the ultimate act and self‑revelation of God’s love (John 15:13; Romans 5:8). Furthermore, the Bible even goes so far as to tell us plainly that Jesus was destined for the cross before the foundations of the world were laid (1 Peter 1:20, Revelation 13:8, 2 Timothy 1:9, Ephesians 1:4). The Cross was not a desperate Plan B to restore creation—it was the plan.
Scripture also consistently portrays God as sovereign over the untamable forces of nature—storms, seas, lightning, earthquakes, and the deep—none of which are treated as moral evils but as instruments of His power and providence (Job 26:7–14; Psalm 29; Psalm 93; Psalm 104:1–9; Nahum 1:3–6).
If you define animal death and the forces of nature as morally evil, then the biblical portrayal of God’s sovereignty over animal death and nature becomes morally problematic. It is one thing to affirm that God’s character sets the standard for what is and is not moral and that He, as Creator, reserves the right to define goodness. It is another thing entirely to submit to that standard when it challenges our own assumptions and moral intuition about what goodness must entail.
6) All four of the prooftexts used to support the presupposition that death could not exist before the fall—or that death in nature before the fall impugns the character of God—are about human beings, not nature. Romans 5:12 begins and ends with statements about humanity, and the word “world” is kosmos (κόσμος)—the same term used in places like John 3:16, meaning the inhabitants of the earth (cf. John 1:10; 1 John 2:2; 1 John 5:19). Romans 6:23 teaches that the wages of sin is death, but animals are not moral agents; they cannot sin and therefore cannot earn death as a wage. Nor can they receive eternal life as a gift from God through faith in Jesus. These are entirely human categories. In 1 Corinthians 15:21–22, Paul contrasts Adam with Christ—the first man brought death to humanity, but the last Adam brings resurrection life. Again, the emphasis is on the resurrection hope of the believer, not nature.
Romans 8:19–22 is the strongest prooftext, but it is strong precisely because it is ambiguous. Notably, the word “death”—thanatos (θάνατος)—is absent from the passage, and so is the word “curse.” Paul never uses katara (κατάρα)—the standard Greek term for “curse”—anywhere in Romans 8. If Paul intended to teach that creation was placed under a divine curse of death, he had clear and familiar vocabulary available to him. Yet he chose not to use it.
Instead, the two Greek terms Paul does use are mataiotēti (ματαιότητι), meaning “futility,” “vanity,” or “frustration,” and phthoras (φθορᾶς), meaning “decay,” “corruption,” or “ruin.” Neither word means “death.”
It is also important to note that Romans 8 begins with a “therefore” (8:1), which means Paul is continuing the argument of Romans 7. And Romans 7 is about moral corruption, spiritual bondage to sin, and the broken human condition—not animal biology or natural processes. (This is the same “death” Paul contrasts with the eternal life we have in the Spirit in passages like Ephesians 2:1-9, 4:17-24, and 5:14, etc.) Reading Romans 8:19–22 within this broader context makes it clear that Paul is describing creation’s participation in humanity’s moral and vocational disorder, not a cosmic death‑curse imposed on nature.
Paul also describes creation as groaning like a woman in labor (Romans 8:22–23). Labor pains point forward to something new and better coming, and the pain is forgotten when the new life arrives—which is exactly the point Jesus makes in John 16:21, where He says that a woman forgets her anguish once the child is born because of the joy that follows. And in Romans 8:23 Paul explicitly connects the coming joy to the Resurrection. In context, creation is longing for the revealing of the sons of God—redeemed humanity restored to its proper vocation as co‑heirs with Christ (Romans 8:16-17)—not a reset to Edenic perfection.
Once again, this prooftext is entirely centered on human sin, human death, and human resurrection hope in Christ. Animals are nowhere to be found. More than that, the age of the earth itself is nowhere to be found. Even within a YEC framework, Paul’s statements on death and sin contain no information with which to reconstruct a chronology for natural history. The YEC chronology is an inference and must be assumed prior to the interpretation of these passages in order for them to become relevant.
To put it simply, Paul—writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit—had precise Greek vocabulary available to express a cosmic death‑curse if that is what he intended. Yet he deliberately chose terms that describe moral frustration and corruption, not the biological death of non‑rational creatures.
7) Since the Bible never portrays animal death as a moral evil introduced by Adam, never links it to Adam’s sin, and consistently praises God as the master of life and death, the claim that animal death before sin challenges the goodness of God or undermines the gospel fails to stand up to the witness of the Word itself.
So then, what of the “very good” world in Genesis?
First and foremost, we need to understand that tov meod (טוֹב מְאֹד) does not mean “perfect.” That word is tamim (תָּמִים), rendered “perfect,” “blameless,” “complete,” or “without blemish or spot” in English Bibles. If God had meant to say creation was complete, death‑free and perfect in the sense YEC readings assume, that is the word He would have used. Instead, He called creation tov meod—a term that specifically refers to functionality and intended purpose. God was essentially giving creation His divine stamp of approval—the stage was set for His ultimate plan: sending His Son to die for His enemies to demonstrate His love and goodness to them for all eternity (Romans 5:10; John 3:16).
Ironically, the assumption that animal death is a moral evil actually comes from humanism, not Genesis. As Dr. John Walton notes:
“Our modern Western system of ideas, which historians and philosophers call humanism, is based on the belief that human happiness constitutes the highest value and therefore the highest good. Happiness in turn is generally defined in terms of an absence of pain, such that our word evil is synonymous with human suffering. … The cognitive environment of the ancient Near East, however, did not hold human happiness as the highest ideal. Their highest ideal is probably best described by our English word order. For ancient Near Easterners, a thing was good not based on the extent to which it produced human pleasure or alleviated human suffering, but to the extent to which it was functioning as it was intended to. … This was part of the cognitive environment of the ancient world and was what ancient writers meant when they used the word that translators render in English as good.” — John H. Walton, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, pp. 21–22
In short, the idea that animal death before the fall contradicts Scripture or the character of God is not rooted in the biblical text at all. It is the product of modern people anthropomorphizing a modern worldview and then applying their own cultural sensitivities to animals—sensitivities the original audience of Scripture did not share, and that many people today still do not share. Even within the modern West, farmers, ranchers, hunters, and outdoorsmen have no difficulty butchering animals or taking animal life for food; they do not regard it as a moral evil to eat a fish, a deer, or a cow. And in much of the developing world, people live far closer to the ancient agrarian realities assumed by Scripture, where animal death is simply part of God’s provision.
What Scripture explicitly teaches is that human death—both spiritual and physical—is a consequence of the Fall. But the text is silent on whether animals died before then, and it is reasonable to infer that they did based on the textual evidence presented above. This silence becomes even more significant when we consider that there are only four prooftexts in the entire Bible—approximately seven sentences in total—used to support the YEC claim that no animal death existed before Adam’s sin. And all of them come from a handful of passages in two epistles written by the same author in the mid‑first century.
If this doctrine were truly as essential as YEC theology assumes, we must ask why the only supposed biblical support appears in a few isolated Pauline statements rather than throughout the canon. If the idea that “no animal died before Adam” were a foundational biblical teaching, we should expect to find it woven into the Law, the Prophets, the Writings, the Gospels, and the rest of the New Testament. But we don’t. In fact, as we have seen, the overwhelming testimony of Scripture actually points in the opposite direction.
My questions for JD:
1) I really only have one question for JD — and it’s as much a question for the audience as for him. Given the premises that (a) God’s character is the standard of moral goodness, and (b) as Creator, God alone has the right to define goodness however He wills, then consider this:
If God had created a universe in which millions of years of animal death, predation, disease, and extinction were necessary for His ultimate plan — and if God Himself called such a creation “very good” — would He still be worthy of all honor, glory, praise, and worship? Or would He be evil for doing so?
Full Debate:
