Eden Revisited #5: Creation of Death

Where does the Bible say that sin revoked immortality?  Actually, nowhere.  Without the unbiblical constraints of perfectionism, death was part of God’s creation from the beginning, no redesign necessary.

Most believers will reply, “What about God’s first command in Genesis 2:17?  If the fruit made the man die after eating, then that means he was immortal before eating.”

It is not that simple.  Scholars describe God’s command as a difficult Hebrew phrase to interpret.  The literal translation is “In the day you eat, to die you will die.”  Translators assume this is a “Hebrew double” used as an emphasis.  They already believed eating the fruit activated eventual physical death within the once immortal man, so it became, “… you will surely die.”  Theology influenced the interpretation, which supported the theology.

Immortality is an important detail.  Believers use it to define the basic concepts of humanity.  Yet, no biblical text mentions initial immortality or morns its loss.  If the Bible totally ignores it, then is the interpretation more inspired then the text?

How did Adam comprehend God’s command, if he had never seen death?  God could have simply said, “Don’t eat that,” but He did not.  God provided a reason.  Without man’s understanding, the reason for the command was meaningless.  Perfection theology answers with God instilling understanding into Adam and Eve.  This addition makes no sense.  It requires God to tarnish perfection before the reality of sin or death even existed.  It establishes God as irrational. 

How could the Tree of Life give additional life to an immortal?  In Genesis 3:22, God tells the cherubim that it would be bad if the people, with knowledge like theirs, ate from the Tree and lived forever.  He does not say the fruit would return humanity to an immortal state.  That is an assumption.  God’s statement may not even mean the tree’s blessing was physical immortality.  The Tree of Life gave life beyond what was normal. 

All these problems come to the same conclusion: a perfect and immortal creation is an assumption based on non-biblical perfectionistic ideologies.  Biblically, God created everything.  He called creation good, not perfect.  The additions scorn God’s “good” creation by insisting our current existence is not what He intended.  Theology degraded God’s supremacy, when it assigned God-like authority to sin as the creator of our current world.  All it took was a simple act of non-compliance to spoil everything He planned.  Perfectionism’s attempt to guard God’s holiness simply displays him as incompetent. 

The serpent spoke the truth; eating the fruit did not instantly kill.  He twisted the meaning, and religious dogma retained that distortion.  The choice to eat the fruit changed how Adam and Eve perceived the world.  Physically, they remained normal.  Today, normal means life requires death to survive (food).  If no biblical passage mentions a redesign to end immortality, then that means God lied to Adam or the edict of “death” did not refer to physical bodies.

In a natural interpretation of the text, if Adam and Eve had not eaten from either tree, then they would have died in the garden as innocents of natural causes.

Biblically and scientifically, a naturally imperfect universe included physical death from the beginning.  Death is not evil, not something to be feared.  It is a transition from one state of being into another, which takes place throughout the universe, not just in life.  Stars die (explode) to seed the next generation of stars with heavier atoms.  Rocky planets form around these, and life appeared on this one.  Life lives and dies, which changes the atmospheric and mineral makeup of the planet.  Because of death, multitudes of life forms can exist.  Our sun will die too, and the universe will be richer in that death.

God’s command introduces the concept of a different kind of death, one much more important.  The Old Testament regularly hints at this death and the New Testament clearly defined it.  Choosing to eat the fruit was the choice to make bad choices.  Such choices slowly distort and wound the human soul.  Enough bad choices can kill the spirit, God’s Breath within, long before the physical body dies.  Dead soul/spirits do not go to heaven.

To create His image, God warned the man of second death.  “In the day you eat, to die you will die.”  Our Creator wants you to live.  He desires your presence in heaven.

To be continued:

[Lessons from Creation’s Parables: Genesis and Standard Science, Sung as One, by Jo Helen Cox.]

Also in this series:

Eden Revisited #1: Powerful Love vs. Limited Perfection

Eden Revisited #2: A Safe Place to Grow

Eden Revisited #3: The Garden River

Eden Revisited #4: Humanity’s Origins

Eden Revisited #6: Curse? What Curse?

Eden Revisited #7: Original Sin Theology

Eden Revisited #8: The Lesson of Blessing

Also see series:

Genesis Revisited

Eden Revisited