Posted by
ValiantForTruth on Tuesday, November 03, 2009 2:00:20 PM
"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." – apostle Paul [1 Corinthians 15:26]
"Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil." – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
These quotations capture the core debate between the naturalistic worldview and the biblical worldview. The evolutionary naturalist insists that death is a "good" and "essential" mechanism to produce the advancement of life. (Though he has no reason to explain why life forms should always increase in complexity or why there should be a vast variety of life forms.) By contrast, the Bible defines death as an enemy and the result of God's judgment on Adam for his rebellion. God's “very good” creation [Genesis 1:31] was cursed by death that was "passed upon all men" [Romans 5:12].
Ms. Gilman (1860-1935) was an ardent American Darwinist, utopian feminist, and evolutionary humanist, whose prolific writings on sociology through her novels, short stories, poetry, non-fiction, and social reform lectures heavily impacted early 20th-century thinking. Sadly, her view of death as an "essential condition of life" has been embraced by many within the theological world as an accommodation to the Genesis record and the apostolic testimony.
Did God design eons of death into the creation?
Some have suggested that all living things were originally designed by God to die, that over the millions of years in which animal and pre-human life was developing, death played a perfectly natural role in the creation. Some have even taught that the death which God threatened Adam with was a "special" kind of death that applied only to humans.
Necessary death and long ages are exactly what anti-theistic science would advocate. How can the God who is life create death as part of His own signature? How ludicrous to think God would design death into His creation, and then agonize over the necessity of His own death in order to bring us salvation. Death by the design of God is absolutely foreign to the revealed nature of God.
In Genesis 3 man’s sin enters the creation. God by His word activated the "groaning and travailing" of the earth and its inhabitants. The ground was cursed, yielding thorns and thistles, surrounding Adam with sorrowful labor for the rest of his life until he himself would return to the earth from which he was fashioned.
Is physical death irrelevant for salvation?
A dangerous extension of the naturalist’s acceptance of death as good and necessary is that physical death becomes essentially irrelevant in the punishment of sin. Gethsemane's agonizing was for nothing, and the warnings against sin detailed in Scripture are of no consequence.
However, physical death is specifically identified as absolutely necessary to accomplish the atonement for sins [Hebrews 9:22]. The "blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin" [1 John 1:7; Ephesians 1:7; Hebrews 9:14; 1 Peter 1:19]. Jesus participated in "flesh and blood" to redeem flesh and blood men from the curse of death. He purchased reconciliation through His death on the cross [Hebrews 2:14-18], thereby destroying the devil's power of sin and death. This is the good news of the New Covenant.
If there were eons of pain, suffering, and death before the awful rebellion of Adam brought "death" into the world, then the suffering of our Lord Jesus becomes unnecessary. If death is not the "wages of sin", then Christ’s physical death as a sin offering to free His people from the power of sin and death is nonsense because the atonement is a lie, and the gospel of grace is a deception.
Those who try to accommodate Moses and Darwin do not realize the greatness of their error. There can be no compromise with that which demeans the person and work of Christ. We know the identity of the deceiver and we know his devices. Mr. Darwin and his drones are being used by him to perpetuate the great fraud that death is normal and not the result of a world ruined in sin and in need of redemption.