“The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.” 1 Corinthians 15:26
Without a doubt, there is a sting to death that is felt by Christians and unbelievers alike. Even when we know a loved one’s death is imminent, we still feel the blow of an immediate void when it comes. The loss of connection is so final. There’s no going back. However, feeling the sting is where commonality ends, for Christians think very differently about death compared to the world’s view.
Biblical Characteristics of Death: Curse, Punishment, and Enemy
Death is a curse and a punishment for sin. God warned Adam, “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Adam sinned and death did come: “So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died” (Genesis 5:5). Death is a certain, appropriate punishment: “sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death” (James 1:15), and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
Death is universal to all people. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12), and “the soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4).
All creation is subject to the Curse and death—not just humans. “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now” (Romans 8:20–22).
Death is an enemy. “The last enemy that will be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26). The Lord Jesus destroyed death through His death: “our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10). One day, death will end: “Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:14), and “there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying” (Revelation 21:4).
Death Is Central to Darwinian Selectionism
Death and extinction are essential for evolutionary improvement. “As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence . . . we shall then see how Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life.”1
Death is the means to good. Darwin exalts death as integral to his worldview: “as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing . . . the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death . . . the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life.”2 Selectionist and Apple cofounder Steve Jobs seemed to embrace his cancer diagnosis, proclaiming, “death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.”3
Death-driven selectionism wars against biblical theology. Renowned evolutionist Stephen J. Gould wrote, “Moreover, natural selection, expressed in inappropriate human terms, is a remarkably inefficient, even cruel process. Selection carves adaptation by eliminating masses of the less fit—imposing hecatombs [great slaughter] of death as preconditions for limited increments of change.”4 He later adds, “The radicalism of natural selection lies in its power to dethrone some of the deepest and most traditional comforts of Western thought, particularly the notion that nature’s benevolence, order, and good design . . . to these beliefs Darwinian natural selection presents the most contrary position imaginable.”5
Having reviewed the two dominant, competing views on death, the Bible clearly teaches that death is a curse from which we need salvation in Jesus—it wasn’t part of God’s originally very good creation. “Glaring” aptly depicts how this contrasts with the invariably muddled, morbid, and perverse views of death promoted by Hollywood, educational systems, and definitely Darwinian selectionism. These differences are so profound that any infusions of selectionism into Christian doctrine produce a pernicious characterization of our Creator’s relationship to humanity.
References
- Darwin, C. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. London, UK: John Murray, 63.
- Ibid, 491.
- Jobs, S. Stanford University Commencement Address. Delivered at Stanford University June 12, 2005.
- Gould, S. J. 1994. The Power of This View of Life. Natural History. 103 (2): 6–12.
- Gould, S. J. 1997. Darwinian Fundamentalism. The New York Review of Books. 44 (10).
Dr. Guliuzza is the president of the Institute for Creation Research.
