Sin death and beyond

SIN, DEATH AND BEYOND: M.M.NINAN
If the tree of life was unique, it might have been enough for Adam and Eve to eat from, but it
would never have been enough for all of the animals of the world to eat from. This may be
another sign that the animals were not understood to have the tree of life for their food. If so,
then the text of Genesis itself would suggest that, while man was meant to be immortal,
animals were not. That would support the idea, based on St. Paul’s statement, that it was
human death that entered the world through the Fall, not animal death.
Furthermore, we should note that giving “every green plant” to animals as food does not mean
that some of them weren’t also carnivores. It’s not as if, before original sin, lions ate dandelions
and toadstools and only afterward did they begin picking on poor old wildebeest. This is
something Thomas Aquinas wrote about in his Summa Theologica:
In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state,
have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite
unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man’s sin, as if those whose
nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and
falcon.
(We should add, lest anyone be tempted to think that this is a forced retreat in the face of
modern evolutionary theory, that Thomas wrote these words nearly 550 years prior to the birth
of Charles Darwin.)
Plants
What about plants? Is there evidence in Genesis to suggest that plants died before the Fall?
My colleague Jimmy Akin addressed this in a recent post of his:
We can go even further, though, because of God’s permission to eat fruit. That means death.
Specifically, the death of the fruit’s flesh (and its seeds, if those get chewed up, too).The fruit’s
flesh (and its seeds) are alive. They’re made of living cells.
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