Some believe that the decay of the universe (along with
death of all living things) is the result of Adam's sin. Scripture does not say
this, but because we are trained to think it does, that is what we believe. In
fact Scripture does not say when this groaning began, only that it continues to
the present time. Also notice that creation was subjected to frustration by the
will of the one who subjected it. Now, did Adam will the universe to decay? Of course not. It is by the sovereign will of God that the
laws of nature behave as they do, not by the sin of man.
We have been taught that Adam's sin affected the entire
universe because six times in Genesis chapter 1 we read that God saw His latest
creation and it was good. Further, after all of God's creating has been
completed we are told: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold,
it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day” (Gen 1:31).
It is understood that if it was good by God's standards it
must have been perfect. So if it was very good how much more divinely perfect
the universe must have been! This sure sounds right, doesn't it? And it is,
just not the way it has been taught. This misconception is based on the same
reasoning that caused Ptolemy to construct his model of the geocentric universe
with complex epicycles. Since the universe must be perfect, the planetary
orbits must follow a geometric pattern of mathematical perfection. But Ptolemy
was wrong. The earth is not the center of the universe and the planets do not
orbit in perfect circles. Ptolemy and countless others since have made the same
mistake by forcing their preconceived
idea of perfection on God's creation. That the universe was created very good is true. It perfectly accomplished the purpose for
which it was created.
Cosmology provides some insight here. The birth and death
of stars was necessary from the beginning to form the heavy elements in the
universe in sufficient quantity that planets could form and life would be
possible. The laws of thermodynamics also point out why the universe is
decaying. It takes energy to run a universe, but the universe is a closed
environment. All the energy that is available to run the universe was created
with the big bang. For the past 15 billion years the universe has been running
down, using up its available energy. This is necessary because without entropy,
no work could be done. Planets wouldn't form, stars wouldn't light up, and life
couldn't reproduce or even exist in our current universe.
The
fact that Adam and Eve persisted biologically after sinning, while having been
warned that “in the day that you (sin)
you will die” (Gen 2:17), leads us to conclude that when they sinned they died spiritually in the sense of separation
from God. Physical death came later as a consequence of the fact that they had no more access to the Tree of Life.
The
soul's persistence after bodily death suggests that the soul is inherently
immortal. “At the death of the body the
spirit is 'given up' to God,” according to Eccl 12:7; Luke 23:46. Correspondingly,
man in the beginning might have been wholly immortal, and then lost his bodily
immortality only because of sin. Prior to the fall, the human body was not
liable to death from internal causes, but only from external. It had no latent diseases, and no seeds of death in it. It could, however, be
put to death if deprived of food or air. This original immortality of the body
was mutable and relative only. It
might be lost. Adam's immortality before the fall was therefore probationary.
The
whole of Scripture teaches that man's existence is never autonomous but is
always dependent on providential support from God. Adam and Eve had to be
banished from the Garden of Eden. This was necessary to deny them access to the Tree of Life, which itself was necessary
for eternal life. Taken first in the literal sense, the verse implies that
eating a physical fruit was necessary for eternal life, and hence Adam and Eve were not inherently immortal.
Augustine
believed that “Adam's body (was) a natural and therefore mortal body.” Further,
he said that “Adam's body (was) ... mortal because be was able to die, immortal
because he was able not to die.... This immortality was given to him from the
Tree of Life, not from his nature. When he sinned, he was separated from this
tree.... He was mortal, therefore, by the constitution of his natural body, and
he was immortal by the gift of his Creator.”
It
is concluded, therefore, that Adam and Eve before the fall were not by nature immortal but instead had
access to immortality as provided by the God through the Tree of Life. Sin
produced loss of spiritual life as it distanced them from God, the only source
of life. This is precisely what God warned Adam and Eve about (Gen 2:17; 3:19).
Upon sinning, Adam lost fellowship with God and died spiritually.
Since
animals do not have the moral capacity to sin, their death cannot have arisen because
they sinned, as in the above prescription. Therefore, animal death came with
creation. Scientific evidence shows one that there was disease and death and
bloodshed in Nature long before man appeared on the earth. So
ideal conditions mast have existed only for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Because
Adam was not immortal by nature, there is no reason to expect that the first
animals were immortal by nature either. Moreover, the animals, like Adam, were
created with physical sensitivity to pain and suffering, as well as
susceptibility to death. Unlike Adam, however, animals were not offered access
to the Tree of Life. Of course this is especially so for beasts outside the
Garden. Therefore they had no possible way to achieve immortality. On such
considerations one should conclude that animals were created mortal by nature.
This view is supported by scientific evidence.