Animals before the Fall

Question:

What about the Geisler "all animals were herbivores before the Fall" thing? How does that square with T-Rex?

Answer:

Before the fall we know that there was no death, at least for the human community. If there was no death for the animal kingdom, then there couldn't have been any carnivores before the Fall.

If after the Fall some of the animals became carnivores, then the Fall would have had the effect of not only bringing sin and death into the world, but the curse would have also changed the physiology of some of the animals wherein they would have turned from herbivores to carnivores (including having man in their diet if the occasion arose).

Of course, if there was death among the animal kingdom before the Fall, then carnivores could have existed prior to the Fall, and would have continued as such after the Fall.

I tend to think, however, that considering the biblical imagery portrayed in Isaiah 65:25 and elsewhere, that the idyllic state, which is characterized as the "lion eating straw like the ox," would have been the case with the Garden of Eden before the Fall.

Also, today a large carnivores would not hesitate to kill a man and eat him, but if man was guaranteed not to incur death before the Fall, this would mean either that the carnivore would have been prohibited from attacking man before the Fall (which denotes God's intervention), or that there were no carnivores before the Fall.

If God's intervention prohibited the animals from eating Adam and Eve before the Fall, then such intervention could not be ruled out if God decided that the animals would physiologically be changed from herbivores to carnivores after the Fall.

We know, according to a literal reading of Genesis, that, after the Fall, the serpent's body was changed from a creature that apparently walked on limbs to a creature that slithered on the ground and ate dust. If such physiological changes occurred in one species of animals due to the Fall, it is not prohibited for other physiological changes to occur in other animals, e.g. change a herbivore to a carnivore.

And, just the fact that Adam and Eve's physiology would have to have changed after the Fall so that they could age and eventually die, so it is not out of the realm of logic that God would have changed the physiology of some of the animals to become carnivores from herbivores.

Robert Sungenis
Catholic Apologetics International
November 15, 2001