Death, the World, and Everything

One of the most common fall-back positions for Christians who hold to either a theistic-evolutionary view of origins (that is they think the Bible has one truth and the popular materialist conception of evolution has another truth about the very same thing) or who agree that long ages preceded Adam, as per that same materialist conception of reality, relies on death being an integral component of the creation.

 

The scriptures are quite clear that Adam's rejection of God brought with it death: reject the giver of life and death would inevitably follow, as per God's prediction: they would know good and evil, and evil maximally is death. Thus it is termed 'the last enemy' in scripture.

 

To get out of the implication of Genesis 1-3 that Adam brought death in toto: that is all death everywhere, it is claimed that the Fall brought spiritual death, death that affected only mankind. In this evasion, death would have always been a part of the cosmos, but restricted to all living beings except mankind.

 

But I think this cannot stand in the light of Romans 5:12, which reads:

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned

Before sin there was no 'death in the world, the material cosmos'.

 

Sin entered into the cosmos: the created world, in global terms; death came by sin, so the only way death entered the world was by sin.

 

For a 'long-ager' there could be no death (of any type, as Paul is making a global reference to 'cosmos') before sin and therefore no death of any life within that same material cosmos. So how could evolution work, noting Steve Jobs who called death: "death is very likely the single best invention of life; it is life's change agent" at, I think, his Stanford University 2005 commencement address.

I can only guess that his family, and indeed he, himself, are applauding his death still.