In this book, the author challenges the last 500 years of Christian thinking on the created order. He shows that, up until the Reformation, the Christian world understood that man’s fall did not directly damage the physical non-human creation beyond humanity. The heavens and the earth were always seen as unfallen, in contrast with more pessimistic views in Christian circles today.

What the Bible says

Garvey’s case for his position begins with Section 1: The Bible. Here the author looks at the terms of the covenant in Exodus and Deuteronomy, where God indicates that he will use blessings and curses to govern the created order in response to Israel’s behaviour. God, Garvey says, uses weather, crops, health, disease and wild animals in this process, as seen in Job and the Psalms. Nothing in all this suggests that any aspect of the created order (beyond humanity) is in any sense fallen or outwith God’s immediate control.

Those attracted to Young Earth Creationism will not enjoy the remainder of Part One, in which the author demonstrates, to my personal satisfaction, at least, that Genesis and the rest of the Old Testament do Not teach that all animals were originally herbivorous, becoming carnivorous only as a result of Adam’s Fall.

Nothing in all this suggests that any aspect of the created order (beyond humanity) is in any sense fallen or outwith God’s immediate control.

The final part of Section One deals with the parallels between three realities: the levels of sacredness in the Tabernacle; the degrees of God’s presence in Jerusalem, Israel and the nations; and the elements of the created order. This study in microcosm and macrocosm refers to existing works by Walton, Beale and Middleton, and shows that God built degrees of separation from Himself into the world, without ever allowing non-human creation to fall along with humanity.

What theologians say

In Section 2, Garvey looks at what theologians have said over 2,000 years about these issues. He finds that it was early paganism that saw nature as a hostile force, while for 1,500 years the ‘big names’ of Christian theology held that the created order, other than human beings, was unfallen and therefore wonderful in its current state. The list includes Philo, Josephus, Irenaeus, Clement, Lactantius, Athanasius, Cyril, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Augustine, John of Damascus, Anselm and Thomas Aquinas.

the author demonstrates that Genesis and the rest of the Old Testament do Not teach that all animals were originally herbivorous, becoming carnivorous only as a result of Adam’s Fall.

By contrast, Calvin, Luther, the Puritans, Wesley and other Reformation and post-Reformation theologians have had a much more pessimistic view of ‘nature, red in tooth and claw’, as Tennyson expressed it. Garvey suggests that the Renaissance myth of Prometheus, which came to dominate Enlightenment thinking, seeped into theology in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

This would certainly explain how Christians came to see the non-human created order as fallen. While Adam’s righteous sentence for his sin was to struggle with thorns & thistles among his crops - the redemptive response of a kind and gracious God; Prometheus was a figure of outright rebellion who stole fire from the gods and thus forged a path for human progress in the face of divine disapproval. Thus nature was seen once more, in pagan style, as a hostile force which must be overwhelmed and subdued by violence to serve humanity, as advocated by Francis Bacon.

What science says

Section 3 of the book, The Science, draws on Garvey’s own scientific and medical qualifications and experience in order to challenge the view of nature displayed in popular TV documentaries. These portray the natural world as run through by vicious competition - the ‘survival of the fittest’. Predation figures prominently.

Animal suffering, he argues, has been greatly exaggerated

Garvey goes on to show that there is bias in this view of nature, and a big helping of anthropomorphism. Animal suffering, he argues, has been greatly exaggerated and the real science of animal pain shows that the great majority of living species, below the ‘higher’ animals, do not have the necessary biological mechanisms to experience the pain and suffering we project onto them.

This section also critiques the idea of animals as ‘selfish’. Animals do not have a self-conscious self with which to be selfish. They merely do what their programming (and indeed God) tells them to do – to eat and to breed. To call this behaviour ‘selfish’ is just silly. As for genes being selfish (Richard Dawkins), this is an unscientific and indeed a nonsensical use of language.

What Creationists and Theistic evolutionists say

In Section 4: The Application, the author deals with the consequences of these two opposing views of the created order. Young Earth Creationist writers tend towards a pessimistic view of current nature as being a victim of Adam’s Fall and thus corrupted. Predation is seen as a source of great suffering and the questions around how an original creation might have worked without death tend to be ignored. (Garvey says the earth would have been very rapidly overcome by the sheer volume of living organisms).

Young Earth Creationist writers tend towards a pessimistic view of current nature as being a victim of Adam’s Fall and thus corrupted

Theistic evolutionists, while theologically distant from YECs, have a similarly dark view of nature as necessarily the product of billions of years of evolution and death. These are said to have allowed simple species to crawl their way up to greater complexity - a paradigm of progress through mass death.

Garvey is not happy with either position. While he does not state his own view of origins clearly, he appears happy to accept an earth billions of years old, while seeing God acting continuously during that time to bring in new species of life, apparently in the manner of many Intelligent Design thinkers.

Reassuring message

So what difference would an unfallen creation make to Christians? This book argues that we would have more joy in nature, more gratitude for God’s Creation, and that our worship might come to include worship of God on behalf of the created order. Clearly the Creation does worship God (Ps 98: 7-8; 103: 19-22) – another sign that it is unfallen. But also, according to Garvey, ‘humankind was created to be a priesthood to creation - in God’s cosmic temple to be those who bring sacrifices of praise worthy of the God who has made all things’.

we can show (readers) a benevolent earth of complex and brilliant ecological design; we can help them to see how the sciences testify to that design, and thus to a Creator; and we can point them towards God’s solution to earth’s biggest problem – human sin.

The author also argues that we Christians would have a more reassuring message for the younger generations, who have been taught systematically that nature is a random accident and is full of violent struggle; that the earth’s climate is out of control; and that they, the young generation, can help to ‘save the planet’ by not having children.

Instead, says Garvey, we can show them a benevolent earth of complex and brilliant ecological design; we can help them to see how the sciences testify to that design, and thus to a Creator; and we can point them towards God’s solution to earth’s biggest problem – human sin.

In this short review, I have not been able to do justice to the full richness of this book, but to me it is both a theological and a scientific masterpiece worthy of careful reading and reflection.

1. This book was also reviewed by Paul Luckraft.

Andy Fraser is a retired pastor and university lecturer.