Adam and Death

Travis Campbell, a philosopher and theologian has recently revisited that Adam and Eve would have eventually died even if they had never fallen into sin because they were physical beings.i

The Bible talks of two forms of death, spiritual and physical. Could it be that it is mankind’s spiritual death that is the consequence God means when he warned Adam not to eat of the ‘tree of knowledge of good and evil’. God said;

“When you eat of it you will surely die.” Genesis 2:17

Paul refers to Adam’s sin and teaches that death came to us through Adam’s sin,

“. . . just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.’ Romans 5:12

‘Since by a man came death...in Adam all die’ 1 Cor. 15:21-22.

But which form of death is Paul referring to? He could be talking about spiritual death – separation from God. In both these references it is the death of man that is mentioned, not that of animals. We die because we, like Adam, sin; we reject God’s rule over us. When this death is understood in terms of physical death, not just of humans but of animals too, it is easy to see how some would insist that physical death only appeared on earth after Adam’s fall. However the evidence from fossils is clear that death pre-existed the appearance of homo sapiens sapiens. Fossils of dinosaurs show they suffered from fractured bones and they certainly died. Consequently Paul cannot be referring to physical death but spiritual death.

Augustine refers to some who ‘say that Adam was so formed that he would even without any demerit of sin have died, not as the penalty of sin, but from the necessity of his being,’ii He decided that this theory was unlikely because God subsequently said,

“For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.’ Genesis 3:19

However this subsequent statement could be a reminder that all physical life is hard and temporary.

It has been commonly understood within the major Christian tradition that the first humans, Adam and Eve, were created as immortal beings. On this, the first canon of the Council of Carthage (418 CE) takes a very strong position as it states emphatically: ‘Whosoever says, that Adam was created mortal, and would, even without sin, have died by natural necessity, let him be anathema.’iii Clearly there were some around at this time who thought that the ‘death’ referred to in Genesis and in Paul’s letters was spiritual death. However we now know from discovered bones that early Homo sapiens lived around 180,000 years ago. the Adam of Scripture was no, as John Stott pointed out a cave man but was neolithic. He farmed and his sn, Cain,was terrified that he would be killed when he was expelled from Adam’s family. He subsequently built a city, presumably was for people to live in.

The Hebrew of the Genesis passage literally reads, ‘On the day you eat of it you will surely die.’ But neither Adam nor Eve died physically on the day that sinned but they did die spiritually that day and were expelled from the presence of God.

Calvin in his commentary on Genesis questions what Adam’s death meant:

“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. ...We must also see what is the cause of death, namely, alienation from God. Thence it follows, that under the name of death is comprehended all those miseries in which Adam involved himself by his defection; for as soon as he revolted from God, the fountain of life, he was cast down from his former state, in order that he might perceive the life of man without God to be wretched and lost, and therefore differing nothing from death. ...Wherefore the question is superfluous, how it was that God threatened death to Adam on the day in which he should touch the fruit, when he long deferred the punishment? For then was Adam consigned to death, and death began its reign in him, until supervening grace should bring a remedy.”iv

Similar arguments could be applied to the significance of the rainbow. Rainbows and clouds must have been present before Noah but they acted as a reminder that God has established a covenant with Noah and all living beings that he would never again bring a flood to destroy existence. Genesis cannot be a scientific treatise on how the world began, it means much more than that, it teaches us why the world began. Man is made to live with and for his creator. Theearly chapters of Genesis are poetic with a strong message. The different story of creation in Genesis 2, where man comes before the plants and animals, appears to be logically in conflict with Genesis 1, but its message is the same. God made the world and made man. In Genesis 1 man is the final created being but in Genesis 2 he is the first, first in order of importance though not in sequence of creation.

BVP

1. https://reasons.org/explore/publications/articles/the-morality-of-prelapsarian-adam-whitepaper

2. Augustine, ‘On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants’, II, 2.

3. Philip Schaff, ‘Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity: A.D. 311-600, vol. 3 of History of the Christian Church.’ 3rd ed. (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1889), 799.

4. John Calvin, ‘Commentary on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis’, trans. John King, (vol. 1; Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1948), 127–28.