What is death?
Death is the irreversible cessation of the biological processes that sustain life.
Why is there death in our world?
There is death because there is sin. (Romans 5:12) God cursed the world with death because of man’s sin.
What sin brought down this curse upon us?
Adam’s violation of the covenant of works. This is called our original sin.
Explain this.
When Adam and Eve were created and placed in the garden, they had a kind of immortality. It could be called a conditional immortality since it was conditioned on their compliance with the covenant of works. Death certainly existed, but God kept it back and preserved their life. Augustine calls (p510) this Adam’s first immortality:
For as the first immortality which Adam lost by sinning consisted in his being able not to die, while the last shall consist in his not being able to die; so the first free will consisted in his being able not to sin, the last in his not being able to sin.
Goodwin (p100):
Yet though his body was thus immortal, it was not immortal by virtue of its own principles; his immortality was not natural to him, for he had the four elements in him, the one fighting against the other; and had it not been for a promise that God would poise them, it would in the end have wrought old age and death. His immortality was natural indeed, as a natural due to such a creature created in God’s image, while he stood in that state, but it was not natural, as arising from the principles of nature, and from the natural constitution that was in his body, but the contrary. Rather it was God’s promise, ‘Do this and thou shalt live,’ and his protection over him, that made him immortal. Our divines use to say this, that Adam had a posse non mori, that he could not have died, but he had not a non posse mori; that is, he had not such a principle as that no way he could die; for he might die and he might live, as he might sin and he might not sin, he had but a conditional immortality; he was not indeed moriturus, but he wall mortalis; he should not have died for the act, but take the power, and he might have died. There was a possibility of Adam’s being killed if he had fallen off from on high, as well as any of us; only the promise was, that God would keep him by his providence, and therein lay his immortality; and he had the tree of life to eat of, for to repair nature, and so to live for ever. It is not natural to the body of man to live for ever, for the contrary elements would bring a man to ruin; nor was it in the power of the soul to keep the body; it was not like salt to keep the body from corruption or putrefaction; but, as I said afore, it was the promise of God did it, that if he did thus and thus he would protect him and keep him, he should live; and that it was by virtue of the promise of God that he was thus immortal is clear by this, that the sacrament of the tree of life did seal up this promise. He might eat of that tree of life, and it was a sacrament to him that he lived by promise of God, that said, ‘Do this and thou shalt live.’ So as, if you ask whether immortality was natural to Adam? I answer, It was natural in this respect, it was a due to that condition according to the covenant of works; it was a suitable promise, and a due promise to man in that condition; but it was not natural in that respect, as arising out of the principles of his own nature; for neither could the body have kept itself immortal, nor could the soul have kept that body immortal; the temperature of his body would never of itself and its own mixture been so equally poised, but it would have been ruinated; only he was under God’s protection, he was under God’s promise, he was under the covenant of the tree of life, and so he should have been immortal. And to me this is clearly hinted in these words, ‘Thou art dust,’ saith he; that is, in that thou art not fallen to dust again, it doth not arise from the constitution of thy original, for thou art but a dust-heap, and thou wilt easily mould and fall to nothing, it is easy for dust to return to dust; but it is my protection that hath kept thee from falling to dust; and therefore the Lord saith, ‘Thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return;’ I will now withdraw this promise of protection from thee, and then to dust thou shalt return. Which evidently implieth, that he was not immortal from the union of soul and body, or from the constitution of his own body, but that the covenant of works, to which the promise was made that was everlastingly to keep him, so he was immortal.
So death was possible before the fall but God preserved His creation in life and did not allow death to enter.
That is correct.
What then was the purpose of the tree of life?
It was a seal of God’s promise to Adam that God would never allow death to take him so long as he kept the terms of the covenant of works.
Would Adam have lived forever in the garden if he had not sinned?
Some say that Adam would have died a natural death even if he had never sinned; this is clearly wrong. Others say that Adam would have lived forever if he had not fallen. Calvin says (p127) that Adam would have eventually come to his end but would have been transported to heaven without dying:
But it is asked, what kind of death God means in this place? It appears to me, that the definition of this death is to be sought from its opposite; we must, I say, remember from what kind of life man fell. He was, in every respect, happy; his life, therefore, had alike respect to his body and his soul, since in his soul a right judgment and a proper government of the affections prevailed, there also life reigned; in his body there was no defect, wherefore he was wholly free from death. His earthly life truly would have been temporal; yet he would have passed into heaven without death, and without injury.
How do some Christians argue that Adam would have died before the fall just as he did after the fall?
First, they point to the fact that Adam was made from dust. (Genesis 2:7) Since dust is something transient and fragile, it is implied that Adam too was mortal.
Second, they point to the tree of life. The Bible makes clear that anyone who eats from this tree will live forever. (Genesis 3:22) The implication here is that such a tree is necessary because humans were mortal. Why would an immortal person see any value in a tree which confers immortality?
Third, they argue that God’s promise of death for covenant breaking was the threat of capital punishment. Adam would have died a natural death just like any other person; but if he broke the covenant, he would have been struck dead immediately. The law codes of that time used an infinitive absolute with a hofal verb to make this point. Outside of the law codes, however, a simple qal verb was used with the infinitive absolute which is the case in Genesis 2:17.
What can be said to the first argument?
There is no disagreement here. All admit that Adam’s body was not eternal. His immortality was not natural to him; it was a gift God gave to him for his obedience to the covenant of works.
What can be said to the argument based on the tree of life?
First, it is true that Genesis 3:22 implies that Adam and Eve had not yet eaten from the tree of life. It does not have to mean this, however, especially when one considers that God’s initial word to Adam was that he had a green light to eat from every tree in the garden. (Genesis 2:16) Surely this included the tree of life.
What about the third argument?
It is certainly true that Genesis 2:17 is a threat of capital punishment as is clear from the words used including the temporal clause. It does not follow from this that death was already a normal feature of life prior to the fall. A better way to understand this is that death was always possible before the fall but that, as Goodwin explained above, God kept it back and did not allow it to reign over men. (Romans 5:14) After the fall, God punished Adam by cursing the creation and allowing death to reign over the whole creation.
Why didn’t Adam die the moment God pronounced the curse?
The Bible does not answer this question.
How are we to understand the words of Genesis 3 where God pronounces the curse?
In Genesis 3, God curses, the serpent, Eve, and Adam. God hands down the curse and tells Adam:
Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:17-19)
Here we see that the capital punishment which God gave to Adam. It involved a curse even on the ground itself. Adam’s work would wear him down until eventually he succumbed and would return to the dust. This means that death would now reign over Adam and all his descendants.
How are we to understand that nothing died before the fall? What about plant and animal death?
The Bible makes it clear that God gave the plants for food:
God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1:28-31)
Some accept these verses as teaching that the natural cycle of plants germinating, growing, seeding, dying, etc. was part of God’s original and very good creation. Others deny that even plant death happened before the fall. They argue that we cannot know how the animal and plant world worked prior to the fall into sin. We can’t assume it worked the same way it does now. God may have managed His kingdom differently then than He does now.
Is there another way to understand this?
Some have argued that in the Bible, plant death was not considered death. The authors of Scripture had a phenomenological understanding of the universe; i.e. they understood it in terms of what they saw. They did not have an understanding of plants cells, metabolism, growth, and death. For them, a death was something that occurred when blood was poured out and a creature stopped breathing. Plants dying would not have been understood by them to be a death.
Where does the Bible associate death with a creature’s blood?
God taught Israel that the life of any creature is in the blood. Hence, the pouring out of the blood or the shedding of blood represents the loss of life.
For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.’ (Leviticus 17:11)
A plant sheds no blood; and therefore, was not considered to be a death.
Where does the Bible associate death with a creature’s breathing?
When Genesis is describing the effects of the flood, it writes:
All flesh that moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind; of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. Thus He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, and they were blotted out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark. The water prevailed upon the earth one hundred and fifty days. (Genesis 7:21-24)
Here life is defined as anything which has breathing nostrils.
So in our own language and terminology, we would say that the Bible’s teaching is that there was no animal or human death prior to the fall.
That is correct.
Why do some object to this?
Some hold to the theory of evolution which requires vast amounts of animal death in order to work. Others point to the fossil record such as Hoekema:
It seems quite likely that there must have been death in the animal and vegetable worlds before man fell into sin. We have fossil records of many kinds of plants and animals which have been extinct for thousands of years. Many of these species may have died out long before man appeared on the earth. Further, death plays an important part in the mode of existence of many plants and animals as we know them today. There are carnivorous animals who subsist by eating other animals. There are plants and trees which are killed by animals or insects. Many of the cells of living plants (for example, of trees) are dead cells, and these dead cells serve a most important function. Unless we wish to maintain that nature today is different in every respect from what it was before the fall, we must admit that in all likelihood there was death in the plant and animal world before the fall. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future, 79–80.
Is there any biblical reason for believing that animals died before the fall into sin?
The following arguments are given:
- The fact that the curse was announced to human persons only. (Genesis 2:17) Along the same lines, Paul says that death came to all people. (Romans 5:12) When the curse was actually realized, it came down on only the serpent (Genesis 3:14) and Adam & Eve. (Genesis 3:16-17) It was not pronounced as a general curse on all living things.
- In the Psalms, animals eating each other is praised as a part of God’s perfect creation. The same is true of Job.
- The terms subdue and rule are harsh terms that imply violence and taking animals for food. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)