God and Nature Summer 2024
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By William Horst
One of today’s key science-faith questions is whether faithful Christians can reasonably understand the Bible in a way that aligns with evolution. Several key biblical passages are relevant to this question, but arguably the trickiest is Romans 5:12–21, where Paul is usually understood to blame human mortality and the corruption of creation on the “original sin” of Adam (1). As Paul puts it in Romans 5:12, “Just as sin came into the world through one person, and death through sin, so death spread to all people” (2). The notion that Adam and Eve introduced corruption and physical death to creation is difficult to reconcile with evolutionary biology because evolution is a process for which death is necessary. Indeed, virtually everything we understand about ecology presupposes the operation of physical death and decay (3). If humans emerged through an evolutionary process, this implies that biological death was present in the world long before any human had the opportunity to cause it.
One possible solution to this problem is to understand “death” through Adam metaphorically, as a reference to something other than the death of the physical body. For example, some science-faith scholars have proposed that the “death” introduced by Adam and Eve should be understood as “spiritual death,” meaning separation from God (4). After all, Adam and Eve did not die physically on the day they ate the forbidden fruit, but they were cast out from the garden where the Creator walked in their midst (Genesis 2–3). This sort of interpretation implies that Adam and Eve’s disobedience and judgment had a real effect on the rest of humanity, but this effect involved a moral/spiritual transformation, not a transition from an immortal to a mortal state.
One of today’s key science-faith questions is whether faithful Christians can reasonably understand the Bible in a way that aligns with evolution. Several key biblical passages are relevant to this question, but arguably the trickiest is Romans 5:12–21, where Paul is usually understood to blame human mortality and the corruption of creation on the “original sin” of Adam (1). As Paul puts it in Romans 5:12, “Just as sin came into the world through one person, and death through sin, so death spread to all people” (2). The notion that Adam and Eve introduced corruption and physical death to creation is difficult to reconcile with evolutionary biology because evolution is a process for which death is necessary. Indeed, virtually everything we understand about ecology presupposes the operation of physical death and decay (3). If humans emerged through an evolutionary process, this implies that biological death was present in the world long before any human had the opportunity to cause it.
One possible solution to this problem is to understand “death” through Adam metaphorically, as a reference to something other than the death of the physical body. For example, some science-faith scholars have proposed that the “death” introduced by Adam and Eve should be understood as “spiritual death,” meaning separation from God (4). After all, Adam and Eve did not die physically on the day they ate the forbidden fruit, but they were cast out from the garden where the Creator walked in their midst (Genesis 2–3). This sort of interpretation implies that Adam and Eve’s disobedience and judgment had a real effect on the rest of humanity, but this effect involved a moral/spiritual transformation, not a transition from an immortal to a mortal state.
...a faithful interpretation of Paul’s letter to the Romans does not require a rejection of evolutionary convictions... |
Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise - chromolithograph after a drawing by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld
The “spiritual death” interpretation of Romans 5 may be appealing, but is there any concrete reason to think that Paul had a metaphorical conception of death in mind? In other words, is this approach simply a desperate attempt to save the Bible from embarrassment in the face of modern science?
It turns out that certain writings from Paul’s historical-cultural context do provide good reason to think that “death” through Adam refers to moral corruption rather than the introduction of physical death. Many texts from this era use the metaphor of death to describe conditions of moral inadequacy, and several specific elements of Romans 5–8 suggest that Paul does indeed have some form of this moral tradition in mind as he discusses the plight of sin and death that stems from Adam.
A wide variety of Greek and Roman writings, as well as Jewish and Christian writings from around the time of Paul, describe moral failure as a kind of living death. For example, the first-century Stoic philosopher Seneca says that “those who … ‘hearken to their bellies’ should be numbered among the animals, and not among men; and certain men, indeed, should be numbered … among the dead” (5). In the New Testament, the first letter to Timothy similarly says that a self-indulgent widow “has died, even though she lives” (1 Timothy 5:6). The use of death as a moral metaphor for a person’s governance by unvirtuous desires was widespread in the literature of this era, and the basic concept would likely have been familiar to most educated people (6).
One author is particularly important as a parallel to Romans. Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish interpreter of scripture who was roughly contemporary with Paul, regularly finds in the narratives of the Torah allegorical portrayals of violent conflict between a person’s rational, virtuous intentions and irrational, vicious drives. He often interprets instances of death in the Torah using the metaphor of “the death of the soul,” which refers to the domination, enslavement, and/or imprisonment of a person’s rational soul or mind by irrational passions and appetites associated with the body (7). For example, in Numbers 21:4–6, the Israelites in the wilderness grumble about a lack of food, and the Lord sends serpents that kill many of the people. Philo interprets this as an allegory portraying how the human soul, as it dwells in the body, is ruled over by excessive pleasures, with the result that the soul is corrupted and dies, and thus the person can no longer live virtuously (8).
Many elements of Romans 6–7 link Paul’s letter to the sort of metaphorical death found in Philo’s writings (9). First, Paul repeatedly refers to being enslaved by, violently dominated by, or otherwise engaging in warfare against sin (10), which closely resembles the tyrannical language Philo uses to describe irrational desires. Second, Paul portrays the body or “members” of the body as the location where sin influences a person (11), much as Philo associates excessive, irrational passions and appetites with the soul’s dwelling within a body. Third, and perhaps most strikingly, Paul uses the language of death to describe being controlled by sinful drives associated with the body: “I delight in God’s Law according to the inner person, but I see another law in my members, waging war against the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin, which is in my members. Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:22–24) (12). These parallels between Paul and Philo suggest that the two first-century Jewish authors are drawing from a common set of ideas in their cultural milieu, regardless of whether Paul specifically knew Philo’s writings.
Another crucial parallel from Philo’s body of work supports the strong possibility that Paul has a moral metaphorical death in mind when he discusses death through Adam in Romans 5. Specifically, Philo interprets the “death” visited on Adam and Eve after their transgression in Eden as the “death of the soul” rather than the death of the body. Philo points out that Adam and Eve do not physically die when they violate God’s command, and he explains that the death of the body is natural to creation, whereas the death of the soul is a punishment that entails “the destruction of virtue and the ascension of vice” (13). Given the already strong parallels between Paul’s and Philo’s discussions of struggle with excessive desires, the fact that Philo interprets Adam and Eve’s death sentence as a metaphor for moral subjugation lends serious plausibility to the prospect that Paul has this in mind as well (14).
Although the assumption is widespread that Paul blames bodily death on Adam, good exegetical reason exists to interpret his words against the backdrop of the metaphorical use of “death” in writings like Philo’s. For that matter, nothing about Paul’s discussion in Romans 5–8 requires “death” through Adam to have anything to do with the death of the body. Based on these considerations, a faithful interpretation of Paul’s letter to the Romans does not require a rejection of evolutionary convictions in favor of the classical view that Adam and Eve introduced mortality to a previously immortal state of human existence. Adam and Eve could potentially be understood instead as individuals at some point in history whose disobedience toward God brought about a punitive worsening of humanity’s moral condition. Paul’s point, of course, is that Jesus Christ, another historical individual, brings glorious deliverance from this condition (Romans 5:12–19).
References
1. See, e.g., John E. Toews, The Story of Original Sin (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013).
2. All biblical translations are my own.
3. See John R. Wood, “An Ecological Perspective on the Role of Death in Creation,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 68, no. 2 (2016): 78.
4. E.g., Daniel M. Harrell, Nature's Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2008), 111–26; Daniel C. Harlow, “After Adam: Reading Genesis in an Age of Evolutionary Science,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 62, no. 3 (2010): 190.
5. Seneca, Moral Epistles 60.4. See Epistles, Volume I: Epistles 1–65, trans. Richard M. Gummere (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917), 425.
6. For more examples, see Dieter Zeller, “The Life and Death of the Soul in Philo of Alexandria: The Use and Origin of a Metaphor,” Studia Philonica Annual 7 (1995): 19–55.
7. Ibid.
8. Philo, Allegorical Interpretation 2.77–78. Philo’s writings can be found in various English translations, including The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, trans. C. D. Yonge, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993).
9. On the elements described in this paragraph, see Emma Wasserman, The Death of the Soul in Romans 7: Sin, Death, and the Law in Light of Hellenistic Moral Psychology (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2008).
10. See Romans 6:6–7, 12, 14, 16–20, 22; 7:5, 14, 23, 25; 8:2.
11. See Romans 6:6, 13, 19; 7:5, 23.
12. See also Romans 7:5, 9–11, 13.
13. Philo, Allegorical Interpretation 1.105–8.
14. See William Horst, Morality, Not Mortality: Moral Psychology and the Language of Death in Romans 5–8 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2022), chapter 4.
William Horst received his Ph.D. in New Testament Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary, where he is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of New Testament Greek. He is also an adjunct professor for International Theological Seminary, and the author of Morality, Not Mortality: Moral Psychology and the Language of Death in Romans 5–8 (Lexington Books, 2022).
It turns out that certain writings from Paul’s historical-cultural context do provide good reason to think that “death” through Adam refers to moral corruption rather than the introduction of physical death. Many texts from this era use the metaphor of death to describe conditions of moral inadequacy, and several specific elements of Romans 5–8 suggest that Paul does indeed have some form of this moral tradition in mind as he discusses the plight of sin and death that stems from Adam.
A wide variety of Greek and Roman writings, as well as Jewish and Christian writings from around the time of Paul, describe moral failure as a kind of living death. For example, the first-century Stoic philosopher Seneca says that “those who … ‘hearken to their bellies’ should be numbered among the animals, and not among men; and certain men, indeed, should be numbered … among the dead” (5). In the New Testament, the first letter to Timothy similarly says that a self-indulgent widow “has died, even though she lives” (1 Timothy 5:6). The use of death as a moral metaphor for a person’s governance by unvirtuous desires was widespread in the literature of this era, and the basic concept would likely have been familiar to most educated people (6).
One author is particularly important as a parallel to Romans. Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish interpreter of scripture who was roughly contemporary with Paul, regularly finds in the narratives of the Torah allegorical portrayals of violent conflict between a person’s rational, virtuous intentions and irrational, vicious drives. He often interprets instances of death in the Torah using the metaphor of “the death of the soul,” which refers to the domination, enslavement, and/or imprisonment of a person’s rational soul or mind by irrational passions and appetites associated with the body (7). For example, in Numbers 21:4–6, the Israelites in the wilderness grumble about a lack of food, and the Lord sends serpents that kill many of the people. Philo interprets this as an allegory portraying how the human soul, as it dwells in the body, is ruled over by excessive pleasures, with the result that the soul is corrupted and dies, and thus the person can no longer live virtuously (8).
Many elements of Romans 6–7 link Paul’s letter to the sort of metaphorical death found in Philo’s writings (9). First, Paul repeatedly refers to being enslaved by, violently dominated by, or otherwise engaging in warfare against sin (10), which closely resembles the tyrannical language Philo uses to describe irrational desires. Second, Paul portrays the body or “members” of the body as the location where sin influences a person (11), much as Philo associates excessive, irrational passions and appetites with the soul’s dwelling within a body. Third, and perhaps most strikingly, Paul uses the language of death to describe being controlled by sinful drives associated with the body: “I delight in God’s Law according to the inner person, but I see another law in my members, waging war against the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin, which is in my members. Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:22–24) (12). These parallels between Paul and Philo suggest that the two first-century Jewish authors are drawing from a common set of ideas in their cultural milieu, regardless of whether Paul specifically knew Philo’s writings.
Another crucial parallel from Philo’s body of work supports the strong possibility that Paul has a moral metaphorical death in mind when he discusses death through Adam in Romans 5. Specifically, Philo interprets the “death” visited on Adam and Eve after their transgression in Eden as the “death of the soul” rather than the death of the body. Philo points out that Adam and Eve do not physically die when they violate God’s command, and he explains that the death of the body is natural to creation, whereas the death of the soul is a punishment that entails “the destruction of virtue and the ascension of vice” (13). Given the already strong parallels between Paul’s and Philo’s discussions of struggle with excessive desires, the fact that Philo interprets Adam and Eve’s death sentence as a metaphor for moral subjugation lends serious plausibility to the prospect that Paul has this in mind as well (14).
Although the assumption is widespread that Paul blames bodily death on Adam, good exegetical reason exists to interpret his words against the backdrop of the metaphorical use of “death” in writings like Philo’s. For that matter, nothing about Paul’s discussion in Romans 5–8 requires “death” through Adam to have anything to do with the death of the body. Based on these considerations, a faithful interpretation of Paul’s letter to the Romans does not require a rejection of evolutionary convictions in favor of the classical view that Adam and Eve introduced mortality to a previously immortal state of human existence. Adam and Eve could potentially be understood instead as individuals at some point in history whose disobedience toward God brought about a punitive worsening of humanity’s moral condition. Paul’s point, of course, is that Jesus Christ, another historical individual, brings glorious deliverance from this condition (Romans 5:12–19).
References
1. See, e.g., John E. Toews, The Story of Original Sin (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013).
2. All biblical translations are my own.
3. See John R. Wood, “An Ecological Perspective on the Role of Death in Creation,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 68, no. 2 (2016): 78.
4. E.g., Daniel M. Harrell, Nature's Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2008), 111–26; Daniel C. Harlow, “After Adam: Reading Genesis in an Age of Evolutionary Science,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 62, no. 3 (2010): 190.
5. Seneca, Moral Epistles 60.4. See Epistles, Volume I: Epistles 1–65, trans. Richard M. Gummere (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917), 425.
6. For more examples, see Dieter Zeller, “The Life and Death of the Soul in Philo of Alexandria: The Use and Origin of a Metaphor,” Studia Philonica Annual 7 (1995): 19–55.
7. Ibid.
8. Philo, Allegorical Interpretation 2.77–78. Philo’s writings can be found in various English translations, including The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, trans. C. D. Yonge, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993).
9. On the elements described in this paragraph, see Emma Wasserman, The Death of the Soul in Romans 7: Sin, Death, and the Law in Light of Hellenistic Moral Psychology (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2008).
10. See Romans 6:6–7, 12, 14, 16–20, 22; 7:5, 14, 23, 25; 8:2.
11. See Romans 6:6, 13, 19; 7:5, 23.
12. See also Romans 7:5, 9–11, 13.
13. Philo, Allegorical Interpretation 1.105–8.
14. See William Horst, Morality, Not Mortality: Moral Psychology and the Language of Death in Romans 5–8 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2022), chapter 4.
William Horst received his Ph.D. in New Testament Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary, where he is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of New Testament Greek. He is also an adjunct professor for International Theological Seminary, and the author of Morality, Not Mortality: Moral Psychology and the Language of Death in Romans 5–8 (Lexington Books, 2022).