What might have been

In answer to a correspondent:

Rom 8:17-25 is an allusion to the fall in general and the curse in particular (Gen 3:17-19), with a patina of Ecclesiastes.

I take that to mean at least a couple of things:

1. Due to the fall, mankind has been unable to fully or properly implement the cultural mandate (Gen 1:28; Ps 8). In that respect, the subhuman creation has failed to realize its appointed end.

2. Man is subject to aging, disease, and death.

As to your other (related) question:

1. I think of natural "disasters" as intrinsic goods and extrinsic evils.

2. I have no exegetical or scientific reason to believe that floods, wildfires, earthquakes, volcanoes, cyclones, or tidal waves are a result of the fall and/or the flood.

3. I have no scientific reason for supposing that there would or could be alternative mechanisms for regulating the forces of nature.

4. And even if there were, that would involve such a far-reaching alteration of the world as we know it that I have no firm idea of what such a proposition actually entails.

I don't simply mean a world without natural disasters, but the underlying conditions which give rise to natural disasters.

For example, what would be involved in a world without mudslides? The absence of precipitation? The suspension of gravity? A change in the atomic bond?

As a Calvinist I have a healthy respect for second-causes, even though these are not all-encompassing.

A couple of general preliminaries:

1.As I indicated before, The Genesis Flood established the modern paradigm for flood geology. This has been modified in various ways by the next generation, but that tends to supply the point of reference.

Morris and Whitcomb were both dispies. And that dispensational hermeneutic colors their interpretive strategy. It's very literalistic.

Contemporary fundamentalism—at least at the academic level—has shifted from doctrinaire literalism to the grammatico-historical method. This will often yield a literal interpretation, but that's the result of GHM, and not a literalistic, hermeneutical system per se. Sometimes it will favor a non-literal interpretation.

For example, the late Charles Lee Feinberg, who's an old school dispy, interprets the millennial temple in Ezekiel literally, whereas Block, who is, I believe, a progressive dispy, treats it figuratively.

And I also think that dispensationalism, especially of the old school variety, tends to shape its hermeneutical grid with a view to prophecy, and then extend that to the non-prophetic genre. The literal fulfillment of prophecy supplies the hermeneutical reference point for non-prophetic genres as well.

Dispies, at least in the past, like to talk about having a "consistent" hermeneutic. A hermeneutic which is applied uniformly irrespective of genre.

Now, I don't have any problem with taking various events literally. Whether it's a big miracle or a little miracle makes no difference to me.

But I want a literal interpretation to grow out of the GHM.

I'm also not saying that dispensationalism is always wrong.

There is an opposite extreme. To some extent, the traditional Reformed handling of prophecy has been influenced by the allegorical method of Augustine, whereby OT golden age prophecies were "spiritualized" and automatically applied to the church age.

As with dispensationalism, my immediate point is not to challenge the exegetical conclusion. I happen to think that many OT prophecies do apply to the church. But we need to arrive at the right conclusion via the right methodology.

2. Second, any discussion of life in an unfallen world is admittedly speculative.

Moving to the specifics:

1.I believe that animal dead would occur in an unfallen world. Animals are not made in the image of God. I also think that Ps 104 has some implications for the original order.

2.Mankind would reproduce. And they would fulfill the cultural mandate by extending Eden. By domesticating the wilderness.

3.In principle, they would be subject to natural disaster. But they could be providentially shielded from natural disaster. This could take many forms. Advance warning from God, perhaps.

Even in a fallen world, Scripture records various instances in which a remnant are providentially spared death and destruction from natural disaster.

4.Let's also remember that in an unfallen world, technology could progress at a far more expeditious rate than in a fallen world. So man could learn in some measure to master the forces of nature. Science would advance at an unprecedented pace in an unfallen world.

Even the ancients did this to some degree, viz. Mesopotamians, because they lived on a flood plain, engineered flood-control mechanisms.

5.I think the "thorns" have reference to the inhospitable conditions that always existed outside Eden. But you can turn a wilderness into a garden. We to that all the time in a fallen world.

6.As to heaven, we need to distinguish between the intermediate state and the final state. I equate heaven with the intermediate state, which I equate with a disembodied state.

I equate the final state with a reembodied state. In the case of the saints, this will take place on earth with the renewal of the earth.

Taken by themselves, the golden age prophecies of a renewed earth could be either figurative or literal. However, we also have a doctrine of the general resurrection, which can only be taken literally. And a general resurrection is superfluous if the final state is a discarnate condition.

So, with that in view, I take the golden age prophecies literally. When a Christian dies, his soul is in the presence of God/Christ and the saints in glory.

At the Parousia, we will be reembodied and resume life on a renewed earth. From there we may eventually colonize the universe. Who knows? The sky's the limit.

By the same token I'd draw a parallel distinction between hades and hell. Hades is the disembodied state of the damned during the interadventual period.

At the second coming, the damned will also be reembodied, and spend eternity in a literal place of punishment.

There are Christians who believe that we should reinterpret the intermediate state as involving an instantaneous, postmortem glorification.

I don't agree with this, but, taken by itself, there is nothing heretical about that exegetical alternative.

However, it is often part of an argument for conditional immortality, viz. there is no immortal soul. When you die, you cease to exist unless God intervenes by giving you a new, glorified body—which he only does for those who die in Christ.

A further variant would be postmortem evangelism.

Both of these particular alternatives are heretical.