Question by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 16, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 16.

Question.

By Editor

"WAS Adam created mortal or immortal?"

There is a difficulty attendant upon such a question as this; there is no positive declaration of the Scriptures on the point. Three positions have been assumed in regard to it.

1. That he was created neither mortal nor immortal, but a candidate for immortality, or, so to speak, for mortality, if he failed in his probation. This may appear sensible to some people, but to us it is utterly incomprehensible. Mortal means "subject to death," and immortal means "exempt from liability to death." We will not venture to say that a person cannot occupy such a position; we only say that we cannot conceive the possibility, even as we cannot conceive that a person may be neither dead nor alive.

2. That he was created immortal, and was put on probation for a continuance of his immortality. We do not accept this as truth, though we have no confidence in the objection that is usually urged against it, namely, that immortality could not be lost. We can readily believe that God could change or reverse any condition in which he should place his own creature. The mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God ought to make us modest in fixing the limit of God's power over his own work.

3. That he was created mortal, and put on probation for immortality, eternal life. This appears the most reasonable, and we think is most nearly in harmony with the teachings of the Scriptures. It appears that all that was necessary to execute the threatening that he should die, was to shut him away from the tree of life, and he necessarily decayed and returned to the earth. The Apocrypha says that Adam was made to be immortal, but that is not considered sufficient as authority.

The nearest that we can come to positive proof we here give. In 1 Cor. 15:47 Paul says: "The first man was of the earth, earthy." The last word, earthy, is from choikos, which Greenfield defines as follows: "Of dust, earthy, terrestial, and by impl. corruptible, frail, mortal. 1 Cor. 15:47, 48, 49." But we find no other lexicon which gives this implied signification. The following from commentators of repute seem to give a warrant for these words of Greenfield. Olshausen on the text says:—

"When employed by the apostle Paul on the contrary, psuchee and psuchikos mark a lower relation, standing parallel to the choikos (v. 47), and indicating not the sinless creature, proceeding from the hand of his Creator, but the fallen being under the power of corruption."

If it be so that choikos expresses a corruptible condition of being, then Greenfield is justified in his definition. But Olshausen would not then be warranted in his distinction, as relating to this word, between the sinless man as he proceeded from the hand of his Creator, and the fallen, corruptible man, for Paul uses the word choikos of the first man as he was made. From this it would appear that he was made of the earth, corruptible, mortal. And Dr. Barnes comments as follows:—

"The first man. Adam. Is of the earth. Was made of the dust. See Gen. 2:7. Earthy. Partaking of the earth. He was a mass of animated clay, and could be appropriately called 'dust.' Gen. 3:19. Of course he must partake of a nature that was low, mortal, corruptible."

This is the best light we can afford on this question, and we think our querist will agree with us that the balance is in favor of the last position stated, that Adam was created mortal.