Did People and Animals Die Before Eve Rebelled Against God?

                                                                      BLOG
               DID PEOPLE AND ANIMALS DIE BEFORE EVE
                          REBELLED AGAINST GOD?
                                                                        Thursday, August 20, 2015
                                                                                    Jeff Lampl

      And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the
                   day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”   Genesis 2:16-17 (ESV)  

Is the picture above a biblical one?  Did God create a world with no animal and human death?  Does Genesis 1:30 (green plants for food) mean that animal death did not exist?   Did death enter our world with the rebellion of Adam and Eve, their decision to ignore God and instead of obeying him to “become like him” (Genesis 2:5).  If so, death (human, and in the view of some, animal death also) is then the punishment/consequence of human rebellion.  In this view humans were created immortal and because of their rebellion human beings lost their immortality.   

However there is another view shared by others of our church “fathers and mothers”     (Acquinas and Calvin among them).   In this view, animal death existed from the beginning and humans were born mortal.  

The passage above tells us that rebelling against God would result in death.   But what kind of death?  Adam did not die “on the day” he ate from the wrong tree.   What did happen?  He lost access to the tree of the life, the opportunity to become immortal.   He forfeited his direct connection to life in the “eternal now” with God, which is immortality, unceasing life in God’s great world.  He “died” spiritually (lost the opportunity for eternal life)  and, yes, eventually died physically, just as his mortal body without God was built to do.   “From dust (mortality) you came and to do dust you will return”  Gen. 2:7 and 3:19  

The Apostle Paul makes this same point.   “When Paul speaks of humans having immortality in the future, it is the whole mortal being to which he refers    

 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”  “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
                                         1 Corinthians 15:54-55 (ESV)  

In this view Paul is saying that this mortal thing, this body I live in, must put on immortality.   We do so by God’s Grace, by receiving the gift of immortality (eternal life) through believing, the faith that God has forgiven my sin, cleansed me of it and has received me into his forever family as his son or daughter.  Christ’s new life then dwells within me and it is then that in him we “live and move and have our being”  (Acts 17:28).  

Does it matter which view is correct?  I’m not really sure that in the big picture of things it has to.  God has revealed everything we need to know for a flourishing life with him both now and the age to come.   But he has not revealed everything to us which leaves a lot of mystery.  

For me, however, it does matter.  If, indeed, God created a world in which death and therefore suffering existed from the beginning, and he called what he created “good” (not perfect, but good) then I have to adjust my understanding of good.   Making that adjustment has meant everything to me.   More on this in future posts. 

 
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