In the wake of modern evolutionary biology, it seems difficult to understand biological death as the consequence of human sin, since God seems to have used such death as the means for creating new forms of life. Yet, Christian theology poses a tension. This tension is captured in the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s teaching that “in a sense bodily death is natural, but for faith it is in fact ‘the wages of sin’” (CCC 1005). This lecture examines Aquinas’ treatment of the “naturalness” and “unnaturalness” of human death, and explores what this might teach us today as we consider the origin of life and nature before sin.
22 October 2022
On the Death of Adam and Eve
Lecture Eight in The Origin of Life and Nature Before Sin, with Randall S. Rosenberg, PhD, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, St Louis University.
In the wake of modern evolutionary biology, it seems difficult to understand biological death as the consequence of human sin, since God seems to have used such death as the means for creating new forms of life. Yet, Christian theology poses a tension. This tension is captured in the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s teaching that “in a sense bodily death is natural, but for faith it is in fact ‘the wages of sin’” (CCC 1005). This lecture examines Aquinas’ treatment of the “naturalness” and “unnaturalness” of human death, and explores what this might teach us today as we consider the origin of life and nature before sin.
In the wake of modern evolutionary biology, it seems difficult to understand biological death as the consequence of human sin, since God seems to have used such death as the means for creating new forms of life. Yet, Christian theology poses a tension. This tension is captured in the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s teaching that “in a sense bodily death is natural, but for faith it is in fact ‘the wages of sin’” (CCC 1005). This lecture examines Aquinas’ treatment of the “naturalness” and “unnaturalness” of human death, and explores what this might teach us today as we consider the origin of life and nature before sin.
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