The other way to see it is, as St. Augustine says with the thorns and thistles, that these injurious organisms were created in the beginning with everything else, but would not have harmed man who retained his original innocence. In other words, the poison and the thorn have their own purpose in the will of God which is intrinsically good, and it's only because of man's Fall that man *experiences* them as harmful.
Many poisons, after all, can be medicinal if used properly. Many noxious plants have very useful other properties. And animal death is not an intrinsic evil. As Augustine says
"One might ask why brute beasts inflict injury on one another, for there is no sin in them for which this could be a punishment, and they cannot acquire any virtue by such a trial. The answer, of course, is that one animal is the nourishment of another. To wish that it were otherwise would not be reasonable.....Indeed this struggle for life that goes on in the lower order of creation does but admonish man for his own welfare to see how resolutely he must struggle for that spiritual and everlasting life by which he excels all the brute beasts."The Fall did not, generally, change the natures of animals and plants. It changed man's relation to those natures.
I’ll buy that. Very well put.
I don’t believe Creation or the Earth went from Good to Bad when Man fell. Man was affected, not animals and plants.
Augustine -
- the ace of anti-Biblical allegory,
- the instigator of illogical logic,
- the excuser of Biblical revelation.
Gimme a break, I am so weary of Catholics and Protestants alike referring to Augustine as some infallible sage.