Original creation → Adam and Eve → the temptation and Fall → the fallen creation and its natural history → Adam and Eve’s expulsion into that fallen world → redemption and new creation.

This is an order of dependence. The Fall is the reason the fallen creation exists, even though its internal history contains billions of years.

Big Bang → formation of stars and galaxies → formation of Earth → geological and biological deep time → human populations → Adam and Eve enter the fallen world → recorded history.

This is the sequence measured from inside the fallen creation.

Causal order asks, “What brought this world about?” Chronological order asks, “What sequence unfolded within this world?” FEC proposes that the Fall can be causally prior to the Big Bang even if Adam and Eve enter the fallen timeline much later.

An author decides that a fictional world will exist because of a character’s act. The finished story can still contain a long history before that character appears within its internal chronology. The analogy is limited, but it shows how causal priority need not equal earlier clock time.

FEC does not claim that geology or cosmology can observe the original creation or date the Fall. Nor does it claim that the Big Bang occurred only a few thousand years ago in fallen-world time. Scientific measurements belong to the chronology of the fallen creation.

If the two orders are collapsed into one, FEC can sound self-contradictory. Once they are separated, the proposal becomes clearer: Genesis describes the original creation, the Fall, and humanity’s expulsion; science describes the long internal history of the fallen creation.