It is not what man must do to
be saved
but rather what God had to do to make his salvation a possibility:
That is the theme of this book
PART I: THE INTRUSION OF DEATH
Chapter 1. Natural Death: Medical Fact or Legal Fiction
Chapter 2. Death: Event or Process
Chapter 4. Longevity in Antiquity
Chapter 5. Longevity in Genesis
Chapter 6. The Original Immortals
Chapter 7. Human Death: A Process of Tragedy
Chapter 8. Death for Animals: Programmed Limitation
Chapter 9. The Trial of Man: and the Price of Failure
Chapter 10. Towards the Identity of the Forbidden Fruit:
Chapter 11. Towards the Identity of the Forbidden Fruit:
Chapter 12. Towards the Identity of the Forbidden Fruit:
Chapter 13. The Theological Implications of Death
PART II: THE SEED OF THE WOMAN
Chapter 14. Setting the Stage for the Incarnation
Chapter 15. Male and Female Created He Them
Chapter 16. And He Called Their Name Adam
Chapter 17. God Hath Made All of One
Chapter 18. The Seed of the Woman and the Seed of the Man
Chapter 19. The Life History of the Seed of the Woman
PART III: WHEN THE WORD BECAME FLESH
Chapter 20. Embodiment: Essential to Humanness
Chapter 21. "A Body Hast Thou Prepared for Me"
Chapter 23. "When He Bringeth the First-begotten into the World"
Chapter 24. "In the Volume of the Book it is Written of Me"
Chapter 25. "What is Man, and the Son of Man, That Thou Visitest Him?"
Chapter 26. Lamb of God and Lion of Judah
Chapter 28. The Sinless One Becomes a Sin offering
Chapter 29. Why the Demand for Crucifixion
Chapter 30. The Great Day of Atonement
Chapter 31. An Eternity: In Three Hours of Darkness
Chapter 32. Death by an Act of Will
Chapter 33. Resurrection Without Corruption
Chapter 34 .The Presentation of the Blood
I. Tabulation of Supercentenarians
II. The Two Values of the Saros
III. Criticisms of the Shorter Value of the Saros
V. Genesis 5: Names Viewed as Dynasties
VI. The Combined Genealogies of Matthew and Luke
And now....lest he live for ....God drove the man from the Garden. Genesis 3:22-24
Was there once such a Garden where man lived and might never have died, a substantive basis for all those Shangri-Las where people scarcely ever grew old only, in this Garden, they would never have grown old at all?
Is it conceivable that man could have lived on and on endlessly, for hundreds of years, even for thousands of years perhaps, indeed, even for ever? Is not death inevitable as the appropriate and expected end for every thing that lives - not only for animals but for man as well? Is not dying automatically part and parcel of the price of living? Is not every living thing destined to die?
Research in the Life Sciences has been modifying our opinion on these matters quite fundamentally. It is now clear that innumerable living things actually never do die. They simply divide into two and go merrily on their way, multiplying indefinitely but leaving no dead behind - barring accidents. Such forms of life actually far outnumber those that are mortal! It is quite true that they are tiny organisms and might not be thought to have any kind of "real life" experience: but this is not so. Small though they are, those who have investigated them have concluded that in their own way they experience many of the reactions which we attribute to higher organisms with intelligence, e.g., dogs*. Life is by no means wedded to death. Although all living things are clearly capable of being killed in one way or another, remarkably few classes of organisms are actually subject to 'natural' death.
[* This statement was made by H. S. Jennings, one of the first to observe the actions of amoeba for hours on end. He reported his observations in fascinating detail in Behaviour of the Lower Organisms, Columbia Univ. Biological Series X, Col. Univ. Press, 1915, xvi & 366 pp.xil]
It should be realized that animals experience death for many reasons. They are subject to predators, to accident, to disease, to starvation, to dehydration, even to the very effects of their bulk which (if they grow large enough) can immobilize them and reduce their chances of getting food or defending themselves. So they die. But the important point is that they do not die for inherent reasons. Thus for billions of living, growing creatures, death is not the 'expected end' and almost certainly never was. Living tissue that is functionally immortal is not a poet's dream but a biological reality. Granted the fact of the creation of life, it is mortality, not immortality, that needs accounting for.
To many people unacquainted with the literature of modern research in this area, this is a new thought. To the biologist, it is not. Immortality - and I am speaking of physical, not spiritual, immortality - is commonplace among living things whether plant or animal, and the Bible assures us that man, although he is a far more complex organism, was a candidate for this kind of immortality. Placed in a special environment, in a real honest-to-goodness garden, planted with real honest-to-goodness trees bearing real honest-to-goodness edible fruits and edible leaves, he was so constituted that he could have lived for ever. He was provided with the means of either maintaining this immortal constitution or destroying it. For man as created, mortality was only a contingent possibility: it was by no means inevitable. When man disobeyed and ate the forbidden fruit he did not merely shorten his life: he introduced death into it as something entirely foreign to its original design.
The more we examine the evidence in the light of what we know, the more certain we can be that biblical commentators of former times (both Jewish and Christian) were perfectly correct in their understanding of the constitution of the first parents of the human race. Adam and Eve and their descendants (you and I) might very well have still been enjoying physical immortality if certain tragic circumstances had not intervened to change everything. Scripture has been telling us about this potential physical immortality for thousands of years: and now science is just beginning to acknowledge not only that such a concept is valid, but that it might yet be again true in the future.
Now the fact that the great majority of living things never do die naturally but for the most part come to an end by accident, indicates two rather obvious but very important circumstances regarding the nature of life in such organisms.
First: they CAN die, for otherwise they could not be killed. But, secondly, they do not need to die, for they can actually go on living indefinitely. We thus have an important distinction to note regarding the meaning of the term physical immortality as applied to any organism including Adam and Eve as created.
In the light of modern research, physical immortality means that a living creature will not die unless it is killed. It does not mean that it cannot be put to death but only that death is not an inherent condition of its life. Death overtakes it, happens to it. By avoiding accident successfully, it is quite capable of living on for ever.
And this, I believe, was precisely the position of man when he was first created. Adam need never have died: but he did die in due course because he introduced a poison into his body through the agency of the forbidden fruit with fatal consequences to himself and to the bodies of all his descendants (including you and me), besides perverting his spirit with equally fatal consequences for his relationship with God. He might, even after his disastrous disobedience, have partaken of the healing leaves of the Tree of Life and recovered his physical well-being...though not his spiritual well-being. And physical immortality in such a state would have been condemnation to everlasting defeat and disappointment from which there could be virtually no escape except by some kind of suicide. It is almost certain that it was for this reason, God drove the man out of the Garden and excluded him rigidly from the Tree of Life.
From this graphic record of the events that transpired in Eden, events that seem almost childishly naive, arose a situation for mankind which called forth the working out of a plan of redemption made possible only because the laws of nature had been designed to accommodate it. Though divine intervention marks every step of the plan, at no point was the natural order violated. The natural order was merely put by the Creator to a higher service. And we now have many new insights into the physiological whys and wherefores of the steps by which man's redemption was to be made possible.
Why Eve was taken out of Adam and not made a separate creation: why death was both a penalty and a remedy, and how this penalty was made the basis of the remedy: why the virgin conception was essential to the vicarious death of the Redeemer and how that death was physiologically unique: and finally, why his resurrected body had not seen corruption though entombed under conditions of burial very similar to those of Lazarus: - all these were part and parcel of the plan of redemption. Such, then, is the subject matter of this volume which is a study of some of the biological factors in the plan of redemption which are seldom treated as a connected chain of events.
Is it all fantasy? I think not. I believe it is sober history. This is a new approach to the study of the Articles of the old Faith which in the light of modern research proves itself to be indeed a Faith needing no apology.
Here, in fact, is the meeting place of Science and Theology. To the theologian, much of science seems highly speculative. To the scientist, theology often seems speculative to the point of being irrelevant to the facts. In each branch of inquiry, a problem has been created because of ignorance of the data, method, motivation, and philosophy of the other. Theology is based on the strictest form of logic applied to revelation. The scientist applies his logic just as rigidly, but to the data of experiment and observation. Neither side always respects these pre-requisites, and many contradictory conclusions result through misinterpretation of the meaning of the data.
But it seems time now to attempt some kind of joining - and as in all such "weddings" there will continue to be quarrels. But the marriage could have tremendous possibilities. Such weddings have been tried in recent years by groups of people, and proved disappointing failures. Perhaps a one-man effort to form such a union might have a better chance of success. This volume has at least a certain inner harmony which may help towards achieving a more fruitful partnership.
An established fact is as sacred as a revealed truth.
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First published in 1980. Online version created December 18, 1996.