2.4 Sin and Death

by Ulrich Utiger

Abstract

St. Paul claims that death was only introduced into the world through the sin of Adam, which has been interpreted in various ways. As discussed in section 2.1.2, the Priscillianist interpretation consists in arguing that the consequence of the sin of the first parents was the expulsion from a celestial paradise into the terrestrial world, whereby they got a physical and mortal body. This would mean that the unfolding of the first two phases happened on the celestial level and the following two phases on the terrestrial level, which, among others, leads to a contradicting theodicy: our material world could not be considered the good work of a good God. Most other theodicies interpret all four phases on the terrestrial level, which also implies contradictions. As we are going to see, the solution to all these problems consists in assuming that the unfolding of all four phases must be considered separately for the angels and humans.

Contents

Young-Earth View
Old-Earth View
Theodicy
References

2.4.1 Young-Earth View

It is well known that young-earth creationists (YECs) believe that the universe has been created in six literal 24-hour days, rejecting radiometric dating and other dating methods that give the opposite result based on uniformitarianism, that is, the obvious view that the laws of physics are not only everywhere the same in the universe but also were the same in the past (Morris 1974 chs. V, VI; Morris 1994 ch. 5). They cement their reasoning on Romans 5:12-19 and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, according to which sin and death were introduced by Adam and Eve by eating the forbidden fruit (Gen 2:17, 3:1-19), considering that this curse extended to the whole of creation according to Romans 8:19-23:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

They argue that these passages can only be true if originally there was no physical death on earth until the sixth creation day. Thereby, they suppose that animal fossils cannot be millions or billions of years old because the first humans sinned on the six creation day when all animals were already created, which would mean that predators such as cats, bears, wolves, and so on did not kill other animals but instead fed on herbs according to Genesis 1:29-30 (Mortenson 2009). Furthermore, Hugh Ross, an old-earth creationist, reports that the founders of the young-earth movement (like Henri M. Morris, John Withcomb and others) considered that predators evolved their carnivorous capacities through natural selection in just several hundred years after the fall, so in less time than even the most optimistic Darwinist would dare to suggest (Ross 2001b pp. 91-92; Whorton & Roberts 2008 p. 74).

Morris and Withcomb also thought that the second law of thermodynamics was absent in the creation before Adam’s sin because they held it responsible for increasing disorder (entropy), decay, aging and death. However, from the moment one accepts the existence of atoms and molecules, one also has to accept the second law of thermodynamics, which is indissociable from the material world. More modern YECs recognize that thermodynamics is responsible for many processes that sustain life like breathing, digestion, friction (without which it would be impossible to walk on the ground), heat transfer (enabling us to see the Sun and stars), and so on. But they nevertheless claim that God never permitted this law to cause disease, suffering, death, or extinction. Rather, natural repair mechanisms were in place to prevent humans, animals and plants from aging and finally dying (Ross 2001b pp. 95-97; Faulkner 2013; Anderson 2013).

The DNA of all mammals as well as birds, reptiles, amphibians, bony fish, and many plant species contain so-called telomeres at the end of chromosomes. These are short nucleotide sequences that are repeated several times as chains. Each time a cell is divided, the telomere chain is shortened such that the number of cell divisions is limited. After 30-50 cell generations, the chromosomes begin to lose essential genes from their ends instead of telomeres. As a consequence, the cells start showing signs of senescence and then die (Hartwell et al. 2015 pp. 396-397). Biologist Leonard Hayflick (2007), a co-discoverer of such programmed cell senescence, explains that the aging of multicellular organisms is a very complex process still not fully understood. Beside telomere shortening, there are indeed several other genetic mechanisms behind aging but the law of increasing entropy also plays an important role such that biological deterioration would probably also take place without genetics. In other words, aging and death were always present in living organisms because increase in entropy was present from the beginning.

To the objection that plants die when ingesting them, YECs answer that plants don’t live in a biblical sense because they have no soul (nephesh), a characteristic that is indeed only attributed to some animals and humans, for instance in Genesis 1:30 (Sennott 1984 pp. 152-153; Stambaugh 1989; Mortenson 2009 p. 153). It is also true that chopping only the top of grasses does not kill the entire plant, just as eating fruits, like Adam and Eve did, does not destroy the entire tree. Nevertheless, eating plants destroys their cells and claiming that plants have no life would make every serious biologist laugh.

Scientifically, eating is just an intake of energy and nutrients. But theologically eating has a much more sophisticated sense: it can be considered a flow of life from one biological organism to another, which implies that the first organism is sacrificed for the life of the second, regardless of whether one eats only plants or also meat, even though it is true that just killing plants is not at all the same as killing animals. The essential point, however, is that both foreshadow the ultimate sacrifice by Christ, who compared his redemption act to a grain of wheat that falls into the earth, dies and bears much fruit (Jn 12:23). So even the consumption of grains and fruits implies that they die. Jesus’ sacrifice is perpetuated by the Eucharist, by which eternal life flows from God to humans (Jn :27-6:58).

Death can have multiple expressions, but it always symbolizes naught, out of which everything was born (sec. 1.1.3). The universe was plunged into deep darkness (night) in the very beginning after the big bang. Only after millions of years it was illuminated by the first stars on the first day (sec. 1.2.3), which again echoes its creation out of naught. Thereby, night is a synonym of naught, and the endless cycle of night and day referred to with the six creation days is an image of ever-recurring death and life. So in a sense death reigned from the very first creation day, even before the first living organism was created, which was subjected to death from the start. This contrasts with the restored Eden, the new Jerusalem, in which both death (Rev 21:4) and night (Rev 21:25) will cease to exist.

We sleep at night and wake up when the day dawns, which is also an image of death and life. This can be extended to the whole creation because animals also sleep, even plants in some way. We have also seen that the sleep of Adam, during which God removed him a rib to form Eve, prefigures Christ’s death during three days before his resurrection, when his life was restored (sec. 2.1.1). The four seasons mirror the same imagery, especially in geographical regions where there is a winter period with a vegetation standstill. Idem for the lunar phases, which may have an influence on the menstruation cycles of women in primitive communities that are not exposed to electrical light. So this is an alternating cycle of infertility and fertility, which thereby also mirrors death and life.

One may object that night, sleep, seasons and so on are only images of death, so not the real thing, that is, biological death endured by humans at the end of their lives. However, the real thing is not death but naught, or, more precisely, return to naught. So the physical death of living organisms is as well an image of return to naught. For living beings endowed with an eternal spirit naught means spiritual death, that is, eternal pain by deliberately choosing to live in God’s absence, which can be regarded as naught. This is the ultimate meaning of death. Though, this is not what Adam and Eve brought upon them and the world. They just were subjected to die physically like animals, thus subduing humanity – not the whole of creation – to original sin and physical death.

There are immortal physical living beings. For instance, the hydra, a small animal living in freshwater, seems to be capable of regenerating all of its cells indefinitely (Martı́nez 1998). Thereby, if these animals did not serve as food for other animals or were not destroyed otherwise, they would live forever. But if God had created all animals and the first parents in such an immortal state, why then expose them to all the dangers present in the material world? A horse that is galloping over a prairie risks killing worms, insects, mice, and so on. Natural catastrophes like landslides, trees uprooted by a storm, torrential rain, and so on also endangers the lives of bigger animals. It would therefore make no sense if God had created immortal but at the same time vulnerable beings. In other words, vulnerability implies mortality.

One could argue that God only endowed the first parents with immortality and then placed guardian angels on them to prevent them from whatever mishap or catastrophe. Idem for their offspring if they had never sinned. But here again: why place them at all in a dangerous world, which, furthermore, is destined to last only for a limited time (Rev 21:1; sec. 2.3.1)? It doesn’t make sense to admit physical vulnerably on one hand but require eternal life on the other. If the YEC’s credo “death only after the fall of man” were true, one would have to conclude that God’s creation is imperfect or that he had no other choice than to make some concessions. However, God is unlimited in his creation power and thereby doesn’t need to resort to compromises. He was not subjected to natural laws when he created the material world and its inhabitants. Vulnerability is indeed a prerequisite for the Incarnation and our salvation by Christ’s sacrifice, as discussed in section 2.2.2. In other words, the vulnerability of the first parents is wanted and does not imply that God’s power is limited.

 

2.4.2 Old-Earth View

Old-earth creationists (OECs) obviously reject the YECs’ view that the world before the first humans was without death, since they admit the scientific fact that plants and animals lived and died for billions of years before humans were around. They therefore have the delicate mission to explain to YECs in what sense such a cruel world can be considered good. Also atheists often argue that if God existed, he would not have created such a cruel world. In a letter to a friend, Darwin lamented:

What a book a Devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low and horridly cruel works of nature (Shinn 2001 p. 308).

And in another he reasons:

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [a kind of parasitic wasp] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice (Behe 2019 p. 85).

In front of this undeniable cruelty of nature, OECs resort to downplaying or reducing the scientific content of Genesis. Ramm (1964 p. 151), for instance, argues that it is not the intention of Genesis to describe modern science, agreeing with Galileo Galilei who said that “The Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go” (Brown Taylor 2001 p. 26). So they are more inclined to consider it a less divinely inspired text with more subjective human content. Or they make sometimes absurd statements. Ross (2001b p. 98), for example, argues that herbivores need to be thinned out by predators in order to maintain their health. Thereby, carnivorous activity would maximize the quality of life for the herbivores as a whole. Ramm (1964 p. 233) likewise invokes overpopulation in order to justify death among animals. However, also humans need to be thinned out for exactly the same reasons, that is, because of the limited resources of our planet. And there is certainly no absolute difference between the death of animals and humans in the sense that the former is completely meaningless, especially if it is a species close to humans. So overpopulation is not at all a satisfying explanation.

Other OECs like Richard Deemclaims that animals lack a spirit to communicate with God, have no concept of God and are not under any of God’s laws. However, research increasingly shows that animals are much more intelligent than usually believed and are able to communicate with each other. So what do we know about whether they are able to communicate with God or whether they have any concept of their Creator? Jesus says that even sparrows are not forgotten before God (Lk 12:6). As for being under God’s laws, animals are held responsible for harming humans (Gen 9:5). It is true that animals are not guilty of killing other animals. They are genetically programmed to do so for their survival and thereby are completely innocent. But this does not mean that the killing among animals is good. Sin that is not imputed does not mean that it is no sin.

Deemalso states that God himself is implicated in the death of animals since he clothed Adam and Eve with skin made of animals (Gen 3:21). First, I don’t think that this passage must be taken literally, in other words, that God took a knife, killed some animals and then sewed clothes out of their skins. Second, God as a donor of life has the right to retake it, which is why it is not at all the same whether God or man kills. God also decreed that Adam, Eve and all their descendants die due to their sin, which does not entitle us to stab our neighbor. So it is absurd to legitimate the killing of animals based on God’s right to take lives.

It is true that God allows us to kill animals for food and other purposes (Gen 9:3; Rom 14:1-23; 1 Co 10:25). Does this permission dignify the killing of animals? When asked why Moses allowed husbands to give their wives a certificate of divorce, Jesus answered that this permission was a concession to the hardness of their hearts, but that in the beginning there was no such authorization (Mt 19:3-8). With “in the beginning” Jesus refers to the time when God instituted marriage upon Adam and Eve (Gen 2:24), that is, to a pre-flood period. On the other hand, the permission for killing animals has been given in a post-flood period just like Moses’s decree. Similarly, Adam and Eve were held to be vegetarians in the beginning (Gen 1:29). But the wickedness and evil thoughts of their descent continually increased (Gen 6:5) such that eventually humans began to eat meat. So by analogy, this is a similar concession: God allows us to eat meat because of the hardness of our hearts (Cassuto 1961 p. 58).

One may also argue that God was pleased when Abel presented an animal sacrifice before him (Gen 4:4). It is well known that God even prescribed to Old Testament Jews to make animal sacrifices on special occasions. However, these are prefigurations of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice because Jesus is called God’s Lamb slaughtered for our sins (Jn 1:29; Rev :6-14). So can the death of God’s Son be considered good? This can be answered in two manners: the incredible suffering of Jesus can certainly not be considered good. If this were the case, it wouldn’t be a sacrifice. But just because it was so barbaric, it discloses the foolishness of the humans who imposed it on him, which is very good. As we would all have behaved more or less like the people in Jesus’ time, his sacrifice allows us to recognize ourselves as sinners and to return to God. So it was in a teleological sense good in that it was necessary to fulfill God’s Redemption plan.

So killing animals is certainly not inherently good, since for the first concerned, the victim, it is diametrically opposed to being beneficial. Any situation that leads to victims cannot be considered perfectly good, even if it gives an advantage to the perpetrators. This is why considering the killing of animals by humans as good because the killers are supplied with food, fur or whatever can enhance their life is utmost anthropocentric thinking. But also the killing among animals is certainly no good.

Isaiah 11:6-9 seems to state that the law of the jungle will be abolished in God’s kingdom. Whorton & Roberts (2008 pp. 185-186) report that YECs conclude from this passage that the carnivorous animals will be redesigned with regard to their digestive system and will become again vegetarian like before the fall (Gen 1:30) in the millennial kingdom, thus reversing the changes that occurred after the fall. However, they reject this view, qualifying it as a literal misreading of the text, which uses vivid imagery, and claiming that the Bible never says that all animals were first vegetarian and became carnivorous only after Adam’s sin. Likewise, Ramm (1964 p. 143) argues that large fish could not possibly survive on a seaweed or plankton diet. The same thought is expressed by Deem, arguing that this passage only applies to a specific class of animals and that missing from the list are the large creatures of the sea. He also suggests that this passage may be understood in the sense that for all animals – even the carnivores – plants are at the end of their food chain. Regarding humans, Ross (2001b p. 71) denies this, arguing that Genesis 9:3 clearly reiterates that initially they were constricted to a vegetarian diet.

So there is even dissent among OEC’s how to interpret these passages. They are certainly right that carnivorous animals were always carnivorous. As for the reversal to vegetarianism during the millennial kingdom after Christ’s return (Rev 20:1-6), it is indeed not certain that Isaiah 11:6-9 is referring to this era taking place on earth. Nevertheless, the interpretations they propose are not completely satisfactory and devoid of contradictions with the Bible, which is why I propose another solution in the next section.

 

2.4.3 Theodicy

Most theologians fall into the trap of limiting themselves to the material world when trying to explain the apparent contradiction between God’s goodness and the obvious cruelty that reigned in nature long before our first parent’s fault. This is somewhat surprising because the Eden story clearly depicts the Devil, a spiritual being, as the main responsible for their sin. So why not take into account this fact? Because explaining evil in the world is primarily a question of its origin. However, evil was clearly not invented by our first parents but by Satan who in turn was not around since eternity but was created as a good angel (sec. 2.2.1). So the fall of our ancestors is indissolubly linked to the fall of the angels and its consequences.

Ross (2001b p. 99) is one of few to acknowledge that evil already existed before the sin of Adam and Eve because of Satan’s rebellion. However, he does not develop his reasoning further, even though he wisely abstains himself from linking vegetal and animal death directly to Satan. Perhaps scholars fear being mistaken as Priscillianists by tracing back sin and death in the material world to the angels. As mentioned in section 1.1.5, gap theorists have a similar view since they attribute vegetal and animal death directly to Satan, which is thereby not far away from Priscillianism.

In order to understand that there is no direct link between Satan and death in our world, one has to take into account the angels’ cycle involving the phases of peace, sin, punishment and partial salvation (ch. 2.2): since the angels were created before the material world and humans, they were the first to live in a perfect Eden where there was no death, curse and general tendency to decay as requested by YECs, unlike OECs. Later, the angels’ fall introduced spiritual death into their world. This has brought about the necessity of salvation, which was the incentive for God to create the material world including vulnerable and mortal plants, animals and humans in order to make the incarnation and the sacrifice of cross possible. Thus the entire world has indirectly been affected according to Romans 8:19-23 as requested by YECs but again dismissed by OECs. However, as demonstrated in section 2.2.2, this is part of the salvation phase, which confers the material world a good cause from the start, even though biological death is omnipresent in it.

Therefore, the goodness of vegetal and animal death must be understood relatively and teleologically. Anderson (2013) and Faulkner (2013) from Answers in Genesis recognize that the Hebrew word tob (good) used several times in the first chapter of Genesis in order to underline God’s good creation can indeed have at least two meanings: either as inherently morally good or serving a higher good purpose. But the theodicy they propose upon this is convoluted and contradictory (sec. 2.4.1). What has to be retained from the twofold meaning of tob is that in the first case no victims are allowed. In the second case, there can be victims in the sense of the famous saying, “The end justifies the means”. The first sense is applicable to the flawless Eden lived in by the angels before their fall, the second sense is referring to the material world.

One may object that the creation account is only referring to the material world and that thereby its mentioning tob is not applicable to Eden. This is not correct, however, because we have seen that there are also some references to the celestial world when vertical chronologies are involved. Furthermore, the Eden account is not a second creation account but rather resumes it under another angle, also involving the spiritual world, which implies that tob is also applicable to the celestial Eden (sec. 2.1.4).

So if the material world is only teleologically good, the arguments of OECs like the necessity of thinning out herbivores or generally death to prevent overpopulation become valid in order to view the law of the jungle in a positive sense. But this is not the main reason for the existence of physical death because being created after the angels’ fall, the material world is a mirror of the spiritual world (sec. 1.5.2), which is why physical death is an analog of spiritual death. It is a warning that we can get lost spiritually, just as we can get lost physically because of all the dangers that surround us in the material world. The devil is said to be like a lion that surprises us (1 Pe 5:8). Similarly, we can be threatened by evil spirits, which is even more dangerous. The aggressiveness of certain animals indeed echoes the terrible warfare that occurred between the angels loyal to God and those rebelling against him because of the analogy between the angelic and animal hierarchy (sec. 2.1.2). This is why, as a global trend, there are meek animals on one hand and frightening predators on the other.

In order to demonstrate the absurdity of the gap theory, Ramm (1964 pp. 143-144) asks whether the ugliness of certain animals like the dogfish or the coyote means that they are cursed while beautiful animals like the peacock or the lions are not. His answer is that no animals are cursed, of course, because God created them like that from the beginning. But because our world is a mirror of the spiritual world, the ugliness of certain animals is nevertheless an image of the curse the fallen angels have drawn upon themselves. Thereby, the fact that predators kill other animals for food is an image of the selfish and egocentric behavior of the fallen angels, even though angels cannot be killed. But they can get lost.

One has to keep in mind that these are just analogies that do not impose any responsibility on animals, except when they hurt people (Gen 9:5). Therefore, all animals, even the worst predators, are innocent and pure (Act 10:9-16). They can be as lovely as lambs if they are tamed, as domesticated cats and dogs exemplarily show. So the law of the jungle is like a painting or a movie created by God in which the animals are like actors: they just do what the director is telling them. Nevertheless, if humans did the same as certain animals, they would sin. But for animals, their sin is not imputed. Where there is no law, there is no sin (Rom 4:15).

Including the spiritual world into the creation and Eden account also explains the initial vegetarianism of all animals and man (Gen 1:29-30): it’s just an image of the initial peace among all angels. Everyone was friendly to each other. Only after the fall they began to more or less hurt each other – not with fists or weapons but with words and contempt. However, these accounts also refer to the whole history of humanity, including our earliest forebears, the Australopithecines, who subsisted mainly on a vegetarian diet (sec. 3.2.2). They may also refer to the literal Adam, who lived about 6000 years ago and possibly has been a vegetarian just like his domesticated animals.

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References

1. Anderson, L. (2013). Thoughts on the Goodness of Creation: In What Sense was Creation "Perfect"? Answers Research Journal, 6, 391-397.
2. Behe, M. J. (2019). Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution. New York: HarperOne.
3. Brown Taylor, B. (2001). Physics and Faith: The Luminous Web. In R. L. Herrmann (Ed.), Expanding Humanity’s Vision of God: New Thoughts on Science and Religion (pp. 23-40). West Conshohocken: Templeton Foundation Press.
4. Cassuto, U. (1961). A Commentary on the Book of Genesis: From Adam to Noah (Vol. 1). (I. Abrahams, Trans.) Jerusalem: The Magness Press.
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7. Hayflick, L. (2007). Entropy explains aging, genetic determinism explains longevity, and undefined terminology explains misunderstanding both. PLOS Genetics, 3(12), e220.
8. Martı́nez, D. E. (1998). Mortality patterns suggest lack of senescence in hydra. Experimental Gerontology, 33(3), 217-225.
9. Morris, H. M. (Ed.). (1974). Scientific Creationism. San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers.
10. Morris, J. D. (1994). The Young Earth. Green Forest: Master Books.
11. Mortenson, T. (2009). Christian Theodicy in Light of Genesis and Modern Science: A Young-Earth Creationist Response to William Dembski. Answers Research Journal, 2, 151–168.
12. Ramm, B. (1964). The Christian View of Science and Scripture. The Paternoster Press.
13. Ross, H. (2001b). The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis (2nd ed.). Colorado Springs: NavPress.
14. Sennott, T. M. (1984). The Six Days of Creation. Cambridge: The Ravengate Press.
15. Shinn, R. L. (2001). The Mystery of the Self and the Enigma of Nature. In R. L. Herrmann (Ed.), Expanding Humanity’s Vision of God: New Thoughts on Science and Religion (pp. 301-323). West Conshohocken: Templeton Foundation Press.
16. Stambaugh, J. S. (1989). The Relationship Between Sin and Death in Genesis: Death Before Sin? Retrieved March 11, 2024, from https://www.ldolphin.org/icrdeath.html
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