Paul’s explanation of the groaning of creation in Romans 5 may not be an original explanation for his understanding of sin, but part of a long history within rabbinical interpretation. Appreciating this point helps us to appreciate Paul’s Jewishness and the tradition from which his words arise.
One of the most well-known midrashim (at least in Jewish rabbinic circles) with regard to creation, and which I think helps us to understand Paul’s exegesis, relies on a small nuance, that imprecision or mystery that appears in the text, often out of place, but becomes an opportunity for the creative yet arguably over-working minds of the Jewish Tannaim and sages of the earliest midrashic periods.
Christian theology has often taught that the suffering in the world that we experience and sin comes at the hands of other humans and through natural disasters. When we think of the question of the origins of evil, we often point to humanity’s first disobedience in Genesis and sometimes overlook the evidence for disobedience of creation. The groaning creation of Paul is often read as figurative language for the absolute value of the fall of creation accompanying humanity.
The Jewish rabbinical interpretation, rather than suggesting that humanity’s fall brought about the fall of creation (as is more common in Christian theology) does something unique with the text. In Genesis, we find that God’s punishes humanity for their disobedience, but that he also punishes the earth, causing it not to bear fruit without toil. Why is this? The theology supporting this seems to be based on a linguistic queue. In Genesis 3:11, the phrase “fruit tree that bears fruit” is replaced in Genesis 3:12 with “tree that bears fruit.” The omission, which at first appears merely to be an unnecessary modifier since the bearing of fruit is accomplished in the latter half of the phrase, actually caused concern for early rabbinic teachers. Why in the second instance does the tree lose its attributive fruit-nature? Genesis Rabbah 5:9 attempts to resolve the inconsistency within the text. Rather than frame the modifier in verse 11 as a strange addition, they focus on verse 12, which omits the word. Here, they reason, what must have happened is that the trees were originally commanded to not only bear fruit but to become fruit themselves. When the trees actually do bear fruit but refuse to become fruit, it is accounted as disobedience. The trees themselves are possessed of will. Later thinkers like Maharal in his Gur Aryeh would assert that the trees did not possess a will but rather that God intentionally created imperfections (apparently between these verses) to challenge humanity and spur him to reliance on God. Part of the reason no doubt was given that in Genesis 1:11, God commands the fruit tree to bear fruit, saying “it is so” and then follows by praising the tree that is not itself made of fruit by saying “it is good.” Nevertheless, this form of the pathetic fallacy (attributing to non-humans characteristics generally applied to humans) is striking as an early attempt to imply a fundamental reason why God goes on to curse the earth. Though he is not explicit, Paul appears to accept this tradition, or at least the consequences that the earth has been cursed for some sort of willful disobedience, since the earth itself “groans” in anticipation of its own redemption. Does this make Paul or the early Jewish rabbis pantheists? Probably not, as it was rather more important to resolve the text than work out the consequences of the said resolution. Nevertheless, this groaning earth, one might argue, places Paul squarely in the ebb and flow of his rabbinic contemporaries and the accepted traditions about the rebelling world that humanity occupies.
