Monthly Archives: June 2022

Were Adam and Eve Vegetarians?

Did God forbid Adam and Eve to include hamburger in their diet?

Many vegetarians and vegans would agree with that. But an even broader group of Christians today believe that Adam and Eve’s restricted diet demonstrates that there was no animal death before Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden. Young Earth Creationists, whether they be vegetarians themselves or not, claim that in God’s good Creation there would be no animal suffering or death. This all changed once Adam and Eve fell from God’s grace. It was not until the time of Noah and the Great Flood that humans were finally allowed to expand their diet to include the eating of meat.

But Adam and Eve were not the only ones required to have such a restricted diet. Visitors at the Creation Museum in Kentucky have at times taken a photo of a sign that asks, “What did dinosaurs eat?” Unlike what you see in all of those Jurassic Park movies, T-Rex would not have been a carnivorous, meat-eater. Instead, he would have feasted primarily on perhaps flowering plants.

 

No Animal Death and Suffering Before the Fall: Rationale for Adam and Eve’s Vegetarianism?

There are many arguments advanced by Young Earth Creationism, but this argument about “no animal death before the Fall,” which leads to the corollary belief that Adam and Eve were vegetarians, is probably the strongest argument in favor of a Young Earth Creationist interpretation of the Bible.

After all, it really is hard for many to imagine how God could create the animal world, and then allow for animal death and suffering to exist, and still call such a creation “good.” It is reasonable to conclude that God’s good plan for the redemption of humanity would also include a solution for the suffering experienced in the created world of the animals.  As the Apostle Paul tells us:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now (Romans 8:19-22 ESV).

The argument is summarized by Ken Ham, the President of Answers in Genesis, on a rainy Kentucky day by a graveyard:

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A Complementarian Vision? : Kevin DeYoung on Men and Women in the Church

How are men and women to relate to one another, in the church and in the family?

When we read the Bible, we find various statements about men and women that seem to be at odds with one another. Galatians 3:28 sees no distinction between male and female, whereas 1 Timothy 2:12 seems to place a restriction on women that men do not have, when serving in the church. 1 Corinthians 7:1-5 has Paul saying that husbands and wife share mutual rights with one another, whereas Ephesians 5:22-33 suggests some type of priority husbands have in relation to their wives, in terms of who submits to whom.

What is a biblically faithful Christian to do with this?  Select a certain group of texts has having priority over others, thus having a “canon within the canon” approach to Scripture, …. or find a way of integrating the whole of the Scriptural material?

A debate rages among evangelical Christians as to how to resolve the tensions that various Scriptural passages like these present to us. On the one side are the egalitarians, who sense a profound embarrassment over anything in the Bible that appears to be misogynistic, and thus emphasize the equality between men and women. For egalitarians, the liberating message of Jesus for women takes center stage. On the other side are the complementarians, who recognize gender equality, but who refuse to shy away from those passages that might suggest otherwise. Complementarians instead see such difficult passages as offering clues into the complementary relationship between male and female. Instead of embarrassment, complementarians see a beauty being expressed in the gender complementarity of the Bible.

It is important to say at the outset that Christians of good faith, can and indeed do disagree on these matters. Nevertheless, the positions we do take on how male and female relate to one another do have an impact on both marriages and the structure of a local church, and in how we think about gender more generally.

 

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