Virgin Birth (Vol.5) - Pt.II, CH.1

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

Part VIII

Part IX

Part II: The Nature of the Forbidden Fruit

Chapter 1

Some Considerations of Theology and Genetics

I DON'T SUPPOSE there are many folks left who believe that the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden was an apple. As a matter of fact, I suspect that not too many people seriously believe any more that a real fruit was involved at all. It was some kind of symbol, allegory, or something. But it is rather surprising what can be learned from Scripture if the account is allowed to speak for itself and its actual words are taken quite seriously to mean what they say. It is, of course, particularly necessary to bring light from other parts of Scripture to bear upon any passage to which a rather literal interpretation is being applied. In this context the results of adopting this principle are quite remarkable.
The record in Genesis reads as follows:

     And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
     But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it for in the day that thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.                                  (Gen. 2:15-17)

     Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
     And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:  but of the
fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall
ye touch it, lest ye die.
     And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:  For God doth know that in the day
ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

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     And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes,
and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also
unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
     And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed
fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
     And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam
and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
     And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?                                  (Gen. 3:1-9)

     Now let us assume for the sake of discussion that this is a simple, historic record of what was actually said and done. Adam and Eve were real people, the Garden of Eden a real garden, the trees real trees, and the environmental conditions exactly as stated.
     Most people would concede that the statement in Genesis 3:21 about the provision of clothing by God was real. So clothed, they began a new kind of life outside the Garden and in the course of time Eve bore her first child. The events which followed immediately have the ring of truth about them, and thenceforward the record reads as though the Author had every intention that His readers should take it all as plain, simple truth. Bernard Ramm rightly points out that those who seek to set the first appearance of man thousands upon thousands of years ago will have difficulty establishing any hiatus in this record in which to insert the millennia they require. (7) From Adam to Noah Scripture gives a continuous history without obvious breaks of any kind. This being so, it becomes difficult indeed, if one once begins to postulate that this or that part of the story is allegory, to determine where the allegorizing begins and where it ends. It may create problems in the light of modern science to assume the text means exactly what it says, but it certainly becomes remarkably illuminating when it is taken seriously.
     The state of Adam and Eve as created is the subject of another Paper in this volume (see Part III). The evidence for their original immortality is there considered in some detail. It is far more extensive than many people are aware. This condition of immortality is an assumption which, I think, we are forced to make, if the Plan of Redemption is to be logically defensible. This point will be elaborated subsequently. Here, then, is a basic premise, namely, that

7. Ramm, Bernard, The Christian View of Science and Scripture, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1954, pp.327ff.

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Adam and Eve in the Garden had bodies which probably looked very much like ours do at their very best, but need not have undergone those biological changes which lead to senescence and decay. Augustine put the matter this way: "Non imposse mori, sed posse non mori," which means, "It is not impossible to die, but possible not to die." This, I believe, is an exact statement of the case. Adam and Eve need not have died. But in an act of disobedience they ate a fruit which had the effect of robbing them of their immortality. This effect was immediate, the process of disintegration began that very day, although they still survived for a remarkable length of time. I think this is the implication of the Hebrew, "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," where the phrase "shalt surely die" is a reduplicate one in the original, rendered literally, "dying thou shalt die," but I think is more accurately read as an idiom "thou shalt begin to die."
     This was a new condition of living: created immortal, they were now mortal. Unlike themselves, their children never shared this condition of immortality at all. Cain and Abel, and all who succeeded them by natural generation, were born mortals. We have here, then, a situation in which parents by their disobedience acquired a characteristic, namely mortality, and their children inherited this acquired characteristic.
     To the casual reader, this may not seem a very remarkable circumstance. From the biological point of view, however, it was. In considering this fact, we should point out that throughout this Paper we are confining ourselves to the physical aspects of life, not the spiritual, so that the words mortal, immortal, etc., are to be taken in their biological sense.
     One of the most clearly demonstrated facts of modern genetics is that acquired characteristics are not inherited. But here is the record of an occasion upon which two biologically immortal people ate a fruit which may have contained a poison that upset the perfect balance between anabolism and catabolism, and this ultimately led to their physical death. And this new characteristic was inherited by all their descendants subsequently. According to the biblical statements, even after they had eaten this forbidden fruit, it appears that what may have been an antidote was available in the Garden to be derived from another tree referred to as the Tree of Life in Genesis 2:9 (Tree of Healing in Revelation 22:2). Had they been able in their fallen state to gain access to this tree, it seems their bodies would have been healed, the perfect balance re-established, and immortality

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repudiated. Except for a certain type of possible exception which it is not our intention to enter into here, biological opinion is pretty well unanimous that acquired characteristics are not inherited, at least not in the way that early Darwinians supposed. We shall have occasion to refer to this exceptional circumstance later in the Paper.
There are some remarkably conclusive demonstrations proving how difficult it is to modify a parent body in such a way that the offspring inherit the modification. For centuries, Chinese girls had their feet tightly bound because it was felt that small feet added to a woman's beauty, yet Chinese babies are still born with normal feet. For an even longer period of time, probably, the children of Israel have practiced circumcision; yet all their male children are still born exactly as the children of uncircumcised parents are. One of the most famous experiments of this nature was carried out by a man named Weismann who cut off the tails of rats, generation after generation, but never succeeded in getting any baby rats born without tails. Someone with witty insight observed, quoting Shakespeare, "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we may." J. N. Sullivan summed up the situation simply by saying: (9)

Nothing that happens to any particular body in this chain of life is transmitted to any subsequent body, unless the happening is of such a nature as to influence the germ plasm.

For those not familiar with the terminology of genetics, it will be sufficient for the moment to say that the germ plasm in any individual is that part of its reproductive system which gives rise to the next generation. For the hen, it is the egg. Nothing that happens to the hen affects the egg. The egg is totally indifferent, using the hen's body merely as a vehicle for its own production. Biologists are in the habit of saying that the hen is merely the egg's way of laying another egg. And this is as true of the woman and the "seed" within her or the man and the sperm which is his contribution to the conception of the child as it is true of the hen and the egg. It is because the body and the seed-producing mechanism are so distinct and separate that acquired characteristics are not inherited. No matter what happens to the body, which is thus merely a vehicle to carry the seed, the seed itself is untouched. As we have indicated previously there are certain exceptions to this rule, but if a little over-simplification is permitted the statements made above are essentially true.
Weismann's experiments were among the first to show what

9. Sullivan, J. N., The Limitations of Science, Mentor Books, New York, 1952, p.87.

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seemed to be taking place here. He spoke of the continuity of this germ plasm, and explained what he meant by using the following diagram.

Part of this germ plasm contained in the parent egg cell is not used in the construction of the body but is preserved unchanged in the formation of the germ cells of the following generation. The germ plasm G is enclosed in a body B (see diagram above) and from G is derived the germ plasm Gl and its enclosing body B1 and so on. It appears that the germ plasm is in no case derived from the body cells but directly from the germ cells of the previous generation. From this it will be seen that body cells and germ cells are differentiated, and it seems extremely unlikely that acquired characteristics of the individual, i.e., body changes acquired during life, could be inherited.
J. N. Sullivan put the matter this way: (10)

The reproductive cell of an organism is derived solely from the reproductive cell of its parent. None of its characteristics depend upon the rest of the parent's body. The germ plasm, as Weismann called the substance of the reproductive cells, passes without breach of continuity from generation to generation. The various bodies which contain it in its passage down the ages, are merely sheaths or vehicles for it.

The significance of these things in the present context will be apparent if it is remembered that Adam and Eve were created immortal creatures and surrendered this condition after eating a fruit which seems to have introduced a poison into their bodies. But according to what has been stated above this should not have affected the germ cells; for as we have seen, they are normally uninfluenced by accidents which happen to the body. Thus genetic theory demands that the seed of the man and the seed of the woman should have suffered no violence from this poison.
It ought therefore to follow that when Adam and Eve came together for the procreation of a second generation, even though they were now themselves mortal creatures, they should still logically

10. Ibid.

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have passed on to that generation the condition of immortality they had once enjoyed. And this second generation should therefore have been as immortal as the first had once been.
     But we know that this was not the case, and the circumstance deserves careful consideration because we must conclude that such a poison had in some way reached the germ cells after all. However, from subsequent history, it appears that this conclusion must be qualified. The poison reached only the male seed or germ plasm, but not the female seed or germ plasm. It has thereafter in some way been transmitted to the seed of the woman so that every embryo which results by natural generation from this union becomes a mortal, and not an immortal, creature. In other words, the seed of the woman is poisoned by the seed of the man: life and death are introduced at the same time.
     The evidence that this is not altogether fanciful will be presented in due course. But it may be sufficient at this juncture to say that God had apparently taken steps to derive Eve out of Adam and entrusted to her body part of the immortal seed which up to that time Adam had encompassed in its entirety. And this had to be done before Adam sinned. Moreover, her body was different from his in this respect, namely, that whereas subsequently the poison reached Adam's seed, the same poison entering Eve's body did not reach her seed. Thus did God leave the way open that the seed of the woman (once the seed of the man) might one day be brought into the world, in the strictest sense, a Second Adam whose immortal Body was derived by a long unbroken chain of immortal cells from the First Adam.
     But we must carry our theory one step further. Evidently in natural generation, when the seed of the man and the seed of the woman are united to produce a living embryo, the poison in the man's seed in some way is prevented from taking effect upon the seed of the woman until the stage of embryonic development is reached in which body cells begin to appear. As we have seen, body cells are apparently derived from germ cells, and not germ cells from body cells. There is some evidence that when body cells do appear for the first time they are actually germ cells which have lost some part of their structure. Could it be that this part which is lost either contains, or is, an inhibitor of the poison introduced by the male seed? Thus it could come about that at the very beginning of the development of the embryo the germ cells retain their immortality because they are able to inhibit the action of the poison: but when the body cells appear, these cells are no longer immortal since the inhibiting element is

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now lacking. In view of this, it will be seen that the germ plasm maintains its immortality and gives rise to the germ cells of the next generation thereby guaranteeing the continuance of immortality, though in the meantime it erects around itself a mortal body as a temporary vehicle. An attempt is made in Fig. 5 to present this diagrammatically, but it should be realized that this series of figures is nothing more than a mental creation.
These germ cells are as perfect as in the day when God created them in Adam, as when He separated Eve from him in his yet unfallen state and when He appointed her to be the guardian of all that was left of man's original immortality after the Fall. It should be mentioned in passing, that the word "perfect" in this context is intended to signify that there has been no loss of the condition of immortality, though mutations have indeed taken place which manifest themselves as modifications of the body.

As a result of these events, Eve quite literally became the mother of all living, whereas Adam became unhappily the father of all dying -- for by man sin entered and by sin death (Romans 5:12) -- even though it was Eve who first partook of the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:6). It seems essential that the separation of Eve out of perfect Adam should have been performed in this way, in order to guarantee that the seed of the man would henceforth always have the effect of poisoning the seed of the woman, because once the race had become sinful, it was necessary to prevent in each generation the birth of immortal creatures, lest in such a state their sinful nature would thus find unlimited opportunity for evil. Human beings were thereafter born mortal creatures, that a limit might be placed upon their wickedness. Yet the way was still open for the birth of One Immortal

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who could be both the Offspring or Seed of the Woman and truly a Second Adam.
It may be difficult to believe that any mortal creature could convey from generation to generation a continuing stream of immortal cells without corrupting them. But evidently this is what really does take place.
V. H. Mottram has told us: (11)

Today it is believed that the sex cells are early formed in the course of the divisions which ultimately give rise to the full formed animal. Though active and ripe sex cells may not be formed until much later -- at the age of fourteen in man -- the tissue which makes them is laid down very early in fetal life: which of course is not so very astonishing, for the sex cells are the only physically immortal things [emphasis mine].

This statement can now be elaborated a little further in the light of increased understanding since it was written. In order not to break into the discussion disruptively, further details will be found in the appendix. But it may be stated here that the phrase "immortal things" now seems to apply more exactly to the ova than to the sperm, to the woman's seed rather than the man's. Part of the evidence for this conclusion lies in the possibility of parthenogenesis or "virgin birth," in which the female seed may be induced to divide and grow apart from the introduction of the male seed. The ovum, in this respect, is therefore not unlike certain unicellular creatures which are also immortal in that they will continue to divide and multiply indefinitely never experiencing death unless mutilated in some way.
A. S. Pearse remarked: (12)

Through a series of divisions, a germ cell gives rise to a body or soma, and to new germ cells. The latter, and not the body, give rise to the next generation.

This is Weismann's "continuity of the germ plasm" stated in slightly different terms. Thus, in so far as the germ cells generate germ cells, immortality perpetuates immortality; and having first assured this process, the same cells then proceed to build a mortal body about themselves. Kenneth Walker put it this way: (13)

In "the theory of the continuity of the germ plasm," published in 1885, Weismann showed that at a very early period the fertilized ovum (which later becomes the embryo) separates into two parts, a somatic part and what

11. Mottram, V. H., The Physical Basis of Personality, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1949, p.25.
12. Pearse, A. S., General Zoology, Henry Holt, New York, 1930, p.379.
13. Walker, Kenneth, Meaning and Purpose, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1950, p.63.

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Weismann called a propogative part. The somatic half grows into the body of the new individual, while the propogative half forms only the germinal epithelium or reproductive glands. A clear and very early division is therefore made between the cells which are to form the body and those highly specialized cells which become the sex glands and eventually give rise to the next generation. A man's body is doomed to die, but in a way his reproductive cells are immortal, for they will live on as his children, his grandchildren, and their descendants. Even though more than 99.9% of the man will perish, the remaining fraction of him will continue to live so long as his descendants multiply.
All that the somatic cells, which form the main bulk of his body, are really called upon to do is to provide a refuge in which the immortal cells within him can find temporary lodging and sustenance. It is a little bit discouraging to our self-esteem to be looked upon as only useful wallets for conveying the valuable germ plasm down the ages. . . .

Walker's observations are valuable, and yet would have become a more exact statement of the situation if he had substituted the word "woman" for "man." The fact is that the ovum evidently has the quality of immortality because, like the unicellular animals, it has under certain conditions the power of self-perpetuation. This cannot be said at the present time to be true of the sperm. The point will become clearer if the reader will take a moment to make this substitution and re-read Walker's statement.
In writing about bodily changes which could be artificially induced during the lifetime of the individual and which are sufficiently persistent and marked that one might surely suppose the germ cells to have been influenced, Sir Julian Huxley was forced to the following conclusion: (14)

     Can the hereditary constitution be permanently changed by environment? It is clear that theoretically it should be possible to induce such changes. The hereditary constitution is seen to be something material which only our lack of knowledge prevents us from defining chemically; and as such it must be possible for us to alter it. The remarkable fact, however, is its stubbornness in resistance to alteration.
     Sixty-nine generations of flies bred in the dark -- and yet no alteration in their eyes or their instincts with regard to light. Ninety generations in an attempt to raise their resistance to heat by acclimatization and selection -- without result. Indefinite time spent by dandelions in the lowlands not preventing their reacting to mountain conditions immediately by changing size, form and proportions -- and vice versa on replanting from mountain to plain. . . .
      In spite of all the work that has been done, we have only established the very definite certainty that to a great many apparently outward influences the germ plasm is quite unresponsive.

14. Huxley, Sir Julian "Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics," in Essays in Popular Science, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1938, pp.36, 37.

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Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University, after outlining experiments which involved the controlled breeding of over 300 successive generations of one species of fly, concluded: (15)

[This is] perhaps the longest bit of controlled breeding ever carried out with the result in each successive generation carefully observed and precisely recorded. Allowing thirty years as a round figure for the average duration of a human generation, the time equivalent in human reproduction of the experiment would be of the order of 9000 years . . . considerably longer than the total span of man's even dimly recorded history.

     The objective of this experiment was to see whether it would be possible in any way to influence the germ plasm by various manipulations of the environment. Raymond Pearl summed up the situation by saying, "The demonstration of the inherent stability of the genie mechanism of heredity that this experiment has given is extremely impressive."
     It seems desirable also to mention one further aspect of this subject, namely, mammalian parthenogenesis. It is sometimes said that a virgin birth is after all nothing particularly unusual, and that it has been artificially induced in a number of species. However, this really throws no light upon the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, for the simple reason that all "natural" mammalian virgin births result in the birth of a female. It is not possible by this means to produce a male child.
     In very simple terms it is like this: In every cell, whether a germ cell or a body cell, there are a certain number of small particles which are called chromosomes. These chromosomes are of several kinds and in the germ cells there are two special ones which appear to determine the sex of the resulting organism. In the human species, as well as in mammals generally, the chromosome for a female child is termed an X chromosome and for a male child a Y chromosome. Only the male germ cells carry the Y chromosome. Thus if a germ cell from a female is induced to divide and multiply and to develop by itself into an embryo, the embryo cannot possibly contain a Y chromosome and cannot grow into a male child. Hence virgin births, except in the case of birds, result in the appearance of females only.
     Let us recapitulate very briefly something of what has been said thus far. The seed or germ plasm of the woman was originally taken from the man, for Eve was created out of Adam's body. Her seed or germ plasm was once Adam's. No matter what has happened to the various vehicles which have conveyed it from generation to generation,

15. Pearl, Raymond, Biology and Human Trends, Smithsonian Report for 1935, pp.331f.

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it is still the original seed or germ plasm unchanged since it came from the hand of God in Adam. This is why it is immortal. Because the fruit which they ate contained a poison which destroyed their bodies, Adam and Eve returned to the dust. But before they died, Eve had raised daughters as well as sons (Genesis 5:4) and thus through her daughters was able to pass on this immortal chain which in any succeeding generation could have been brought to life and would have grown into a perfect body such as Adam had before he fell, if only it could have been fructified by some agent other than man.
This may seem highly speculative. In a sense it is. Yet it is not unreasonable, and some evidence in support of it is already available. Moreover, there is possibly a type of poison which seems to fulfill certain of these essential requirements -- a poison, in fact, which is easily derived from a particular type of fruit about which Scripture has many significant things to say, and which is -- as a fruit -- beautiful to look at and tasty to eat.
This is a profound mystery, and one must surely speak with great humility of such things. What evidence there is to justify these statements thus far is here presented very tentatively and with a clear recognition of how limited our understandings must always be. The fact of the Fall will remain even if our reasonings about its nature should require drastic modification or be disproved altogether. To reaffirm what has been said in the rather lengthy introduction, the events in Eden are given by Revelation and accepted by faith. Rationalization is quite proper so long as it is never made the sole ground of faith.

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