Was Adam Immortal before The Fall?

Why does God permit evil?   The question itself seems a bit strange. Why then does he allow evil? That sounds a bit strange also. Adam was not “allowed” or “permitted” to eat of the forbidden tree. (God) made it plain that it was not his will and that the penalty would be (spiritual) death. Adam was simply free to choose Gods’ will or his own. I say spiritual death because Julius Africanus mentions that when Adam physically died that was his “second death”. I suppose God blocked him from the Tree of life so he would not spend the rest of eternity, like the serpent alive forever without God.

               The penalty for eating of the forbidden tree was the banishment from eating of the tree of life. As we will see this tree makes a reappearance in the last book of the bible representing an eternal spiritual existence rather than a physical one.  Sin brought death to man because he was kept from the tree of life, because if he ate of it he would live forever. Again, living forever in a physical temporal body was never the intention of the garden existence.

Our life of faith is much the same as in the Garden..the two trees (“Life” or the knowledge of good and evil, “Law”) are mutually exclusive to each other, in the same way as the selfish mind is mutually exclusive to loving serving God and others, the law opposes grace and the flesh opposes the spirit. I suppose if God wanted to violate a man’s free will this would have been the time to do it.

The Garden trees are metaphors, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is allegorical in Paul’s argument that the Law gives us the knowledge of sin, without it, there would be no sin.

( I was fine until the law came, then I died) The law brings us death because it is about our righteousness or the lack of it. (our works) Notice that God does not say the tree of good and evil is bad, he simply says don’t touch it or eat of it, likewise Paul asks of the Law, “was that which brought death to me bad?, absolutely not. The tree was a boundary, which is a problem for folks like us who love to test boundaries. The tree of life would have given Adam eternal life, Adam’s problem like ours is apparently did not appeal to him according to his earthly nature.

    It seems God preferred a world where sin and freedom are possible rather than a world where His will constrains true freedom . If by trusting and obeying God, Adam chooses the tree of life, then by his faith in God he is welcome to eat of it, showing his faith by his resistance to the serpent and obedience in not eating of the forbidden tree.

     Eternal life comes to Adam by faith as it comes to all men, not as a birthright (so to speak)and not by virtue of simply being created. Every man that is born of the water in a natural state will die, however one who is born of the spirit will live eternally. Adam did not choose to be created nor does one choose to be born, however one who chooses to believe in Christ by faith experiences a second birth, literally a new creation in Christ Jesus born of the spirit. “To him that overcomes I will grant to eat of the tree of life”, our Lord says in the Revelation of John, in order to receive the eternal Adam (man) must overcome the natural, earthly, fleshly order by faith. As is common to every natural man, Adam trusted and believed in himself and nature, taking advice from the serpent rather than trusting the words of God.

   The significance of the two trees should not be missed. If only the tree of life existed in the Garden and there is no beguiling serpent, where then is the freedom to choose? Choice and freedom only exist in the presence of a boundary creating a dilemma if you will. Likewise, the spiritual and eternal are only recognized against the backdrop of the finite. Man’s creation in a natural finite body with a human nature affords him the opportunity to have a genuine choice to live with God eternally by faith and transformation by the spirit  or die spiritually  as a result of trusting in the finite earthly creature, the old serpent and earthly knowledge. God can deal with a world full of evil, but he cannot deal with men that are not truly free. One who is not truly free is not free to choose unconditional love for the Creator over the creation.

Before the fall, evil was present on the earth in the form of a serpent and death was present organically from the earth wherein the laws of entropy and corruption make the natural order possible. When a seed is planted it must die first before it can bring new life ( seeds strangely are planted in soil) Farming, eating, aging, digestion, just to name a few are impossible without death and corruption. Man it is said is subject to these things not willingly (of his Creator) ..but in hope.

    Many of the Ante-Nicene fathers believed that man was created only potentially immortal and that the completion of the image of God in Adam is consummated at the Resurrection. Peter alludes to this process through death as a blessing and a curse when he speaks of Noah’s flood allegorically as a type of our baptism in Christ. Noah was cursed by the water and saved through the water, man is cursed by death and saved through death.