Did St. Basil, St. Augustine, or any Church Father teach that animals died before the fall?
Robert Sungenis answers that none of the hundreds of Fathers he has read taught death before the fall; they held that death came to Adam and the animals together only after it. He holds that death before the fall is a new idea needed to fit evolution to the Bible, and that Scripture ties the animals' fate to man's, as in Jonah, the flood and Romans 8.
A viewer named Caleb asks whether St. Basil taught that animals died before the fall, and whether St. Augustine or any other Fathers taught animal death before the fall.
Answer
I do not know of any. Of the hundreds of Fathers I have read, none taught that death came before Adam fell; they held that death came to both Adam and the animals only after the fall, which makes sense. This is a new idea being pushed by liberal Catholics, such as a man at Catholic Answers preaching death before the fall, because the only way to fit evolution and the Big Bang with the Bible is to allow death before Adam and Eve fell. It is dead wrong. In Scripture there is a constant correlation between the judgment that falls on man and what happens to the animals: in Jonah, God spares Nineveh's people and its cattle together; in Noah's flood, the humans die and so do the animals; and Romans 8 says the whole creation groans for the consummation. So whatever happens to man as a judgment for sin happens to the animals with him, and there was no death before the fall.