Ex Post Facto Death

One of the greatest barriers to belief in God is the problem of suffering and evil in the world. Why, people ask, did God create a world in which violence, pain, and death are endemic? The answer of traditional theology is—he didn’t. He created a good world but also gave human beings free will, and through their disobedience and ‘fall,’ death and suffering came into the world.1

Although I agree with this statement—these aren’t my words. They come from the prominent New York pastor and author Tim Keller, who doesn’t believe that God created a “good world” like traditional theology (derived from a plain reading of the Word of God) states.

Why? Because although Keller may profess the lordship of Christ, he is a devout evolutionist and so views God’s world not through God’s Word as plainly written but rather through the lens of billions of years of cosmic, geological, chemical, biological and human evolution.

Like all theistic evolutionists, he then tries to retrofit God’s Word back into what he believes about the false history of the universe—to try to make it mean what it doesn’t plainly say.

Like many Christian leaders, Keller is very compromised, which is why he is so comfortable fraternizing with the heretical organization Biologos—the false teaching group for which he wrote this article. And it seems he knows they have a problem because they believe in the story of evolution:

The process of evolution, however, understands violence, predation, and death to be the very engine of how life develops. If God brings about life through evolution, how do we reconcile that with the idea of a good God? The problem of evil seems to be worse for the believer in theistic evolution.2

The problem is that they have no solution, and his article provides none. Just live with the contradiction, they say. Keep calling God good, but realize he used billions of years of death and struggle to “create.” Nothing to see here . . . move along.

Is This Your First Rodeo?

In case you are new to the creation/evolution debate within Christian circles and don’t really understand why we can’t all just get along and believe God used evolution to create—perhaps we should start with this.

“All compromise positions regarding Genesis (Gap Theory, Progressive Creation, Theistic Evolution, etc.) require a time-frame of millions of years”3 that defies the plain reading of God’s Word (as Keller and most theistic evolutionists admit). For example, Scripture clearly states,

“ . . . in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them” (Exodus 20:11).

However, “since long-agers defer to ‘science’ [translation: evolutionary storytelling] over Scripture, compromisers [like Keller] have attempted [to perform] a variety of theological gymnastics over the years to overcome the obvious problems the supposed Ma [millions-of-years] paradigm creates”4—namely, the fact that it necessitates death having occurred before Adam sinned.

Yes, It’s a Big Deal

This isn’t a trivial issue because it directly speaks to the character of God, so the “let’s all get along” crowd needs to fully understand what this compromise means.

The chronogenealogies listed in Genesis simply don’t allow for millions of years after Adam, so long-agers almost always assign “deep time” somewhere into the six days of creation. However, again, adding millions of years to the Bible entails believing that “the fossil record (a record of death, suffering and disease) must have occurred before Adam sinned.”5

In this deep time view, “hundreds of millions of years of death [including human death6] occurred before”7 the fall. “However, the view that death came before people [the fall] makes it impossible to take verses like Romans 5:12”8 at face value (which is what Keller admitted),

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

Theistic evolutionists like Keller believe that death was the very mechanism God used to have man arrive on this planet—not the result of sin. Fellow professing Christian and committed evolutionist, Professor Ian Barbour (Carleton College), has stated the same:

You simply can’t any longer say as traditional Christians that death was God’s punishment for sin. Death was around long before human beings. Death is a necessary aspect of an evolutionary world . . . .9

But even a cursory reading of the Bible’s teaching on the fall and its practical consequences—as well as Christ’s redemptive work in response to the fall—rejects the idea of millions of years of natural evil before Adam.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

This dilemma of a supposed loving God using death to create is not simply a moral conundrum but a theological quagmire for theistic evolutionists as well, as fellow Biologos contributor Peter Enns acknowledges:

[E]volution raises problems for how Christians have normally understood pivotal sections of the Bible… The hermeneutical issue concerns not only the creation stories in Genesis 1–3, but more acutely Paul’s handling of Adam in Romans 5:12–21 and 1 Corinthians 15:21–22, 44–49. The dilemma is almost self-evident, and it is not long before these passages are brought into the discussion.10

So, to summarize what many theistic evolutionists and long-age believers readily admit, they know that the Bible indicates there was no death and suffering before Adam sinned (many theistic evolutionists don’t even believe there was an actual first Adam). Still, they believe death and suffering predate the fall despite what the Bible plainly says. And they believe all this because of what they think science indicates surrounding these issues.

And much ink has been spilled in trying to explain away this obvious problem—only to fail as it is compared to the whole counsel of God’s Word.

What Will They Think of Next?

“Christian comedian Tim Hawkins discusses a skit where he describes his mom spanking him [as a child] for something he didn’t do. Wondering why she doesn’t seem remorseful after discovering he wasn’t at fault she says ‘That’s for something you’ll do later!’ [Apparently wanting to get the last word in] He quips, ‘You mean I have a spank account?’”11

As funny as this comedy bit might be, this “pre-punishment” idea is quite similar to a newer argument that “some long-age compromisers have suggested as an answer to the powerful ‘no death before sin’ argument .”12 It’s the concept called “retroactive death.”

No, you aren’t misreading this. This is an actual and supposedly serious proposal developed by Christian philosophy professor and intelligent design leader Bill Dembski—in an attempt “to counteract what many long-agers have admitted is the clearest exegesis (most plain and obvious understanding) of the Genesis text”13 regarding creation: God created in six literal days approximately six thousand years ago.

In his book The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World, Dembski attempted to answer the problem of evil in a billions-of-years time frame that would somehow be faithful to the clear teaching that evil is the result of human sin.

To be clear, “Dembski [like many old-earth and/or evolution believers] admits that the clearest exegesis supports the young-age position,”14 saying,

“The young-earth position, which has been my principal foil, receives its support not only from Genesis 1–3 but also from Genesis 4–11. The latter chapters present a chronology that appears to allow only around 6,000 years from the creation of Adam and Eve to the present.”15

He admits a careful analysis of passages such as Romans 5:12 and 8:22 demonstrate that evil in the world is the result of the fall, granting biblical creationists—

[T]he stronger case here, both exegetically and theologically, in interpreting such passages as speaking about death and corruption generally and not just about human death.16

It is precisely because the young-earth position is the plainest reading of the Bible that he even came up with his retroactive death idea! So, once again, one has to ask: why would a professing Christian reject the plain reading of the Bible? You guessed it—as always, because of so-called science.

Retroactive Laws Are Unlawful

Since they punish people for committing acts that violate a future law they had no way of knowing, retroactive punishment is expressly forbidden in the constitutions of many free countries for very good reasons.

Imagine a police officer showing up at your door and giving you a fine for where you had parked five years ago, even though your car isn’t parked there now. Their justification is that even though there wasn’t any law against it previously or a sign forbidding you to do so, a new sign is there today because of a new law forbidding cars to now be parked there. And so, they punish you retroactively. How could that be considered fair in any way?

Analyzing Retroactive Death

Despite how unfair it may seem, Dembski’s new concept “proposes that God ‘spanked’ mankind by [pre]cursing the cosmos”17 because of his foreknowledge that Adam would sin against him later on.

Essentially, Adam entered into a world already full of death and suffering because the punishment came before the crime—hence the fossil record pre-dating Adam’s sin. Astoundingly, Dembski’s “rationale behind this stems from the concept that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was retroactive”18 for those who lived before him because the Bible clearly states,

[T]here is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)

“The argument is then that if God saved people retroactively before the event of Jesus’ crucifixion to pay for sin (in effect ‘saving’ people before the cause of salvation occurred), perhaps God could have cursed the world prior to Adam sinning (causing bad things to be in effect before the cause of bad things happened). But is this concept [of pre-punishment] justified?”19

A Nonexistent Argument

Firstly, nowhere in the Bible do we see this concept of retroactive punishment by God expressed; however, we do see precedent against it where it could have been enacted if God wished.

For example, during the first centuries after creation, close intermarriage was commonplace in Scripture and was never condemned. Abraham married his half-sister (Sarah), for example, and there is no mention of God being displeased.

However, 2,500 years after creation, in the book of Leviticus, God expressly forbids close intermarriage from that point on in history—likely because the mutation rate in humans had reached a point where birth defects would now be problematic.

There is certainly no record of Abraham and Sarah having been pre-punished for being married because of a law God would later enact. Abraham was not considered retroactively guilty of sinning because he’d married his half-sister during that former time because that law was not yet in effect.

A Self-Defeating Argument

Secondly, if Adam and Eve had entered a world already full of death and suffering, that would have negatively influenced them and affected how they might have perceived God and his trustworthiness. Theoretically, it could have influenced their decision to trust or rebel against God. The very decision for which Dembski proposes God pre-cursed the cosmos!

Dembski’s solution actually creates the whole reason for needing it in the first place! Remember what Keller said?

One of the greatest barriers to belief in God is the problem of suffering and evil in the world. Why, people ask, did God create a world in which violence, pain, and death are endemic?20

If Dembski’s narrative is true, then Adam would have been susceptible to the same barrier to belief—namely, why trust in a God who created a world in which violence, suffering, and death exist? In Dembski’s ploy, God didn’t create a good world either, so his entire argument fails spectacularly.

One could argue that instead of evil being the result of human sin- human sin could be the result of the evil God had placed into the world. This would be akin to coercion, exerting pressure upon someone to make a negative decision and then punishing them. This is certainly not the character of Jesus, our Creator.

The Plan of Salvation

As for Christ’s sacrifice being retroactive—the Bible speaks of God’s planning for salvation from the beginning of creation. This means that he created knowing that Adam (and thus, all of us descended from him) would sin and need to be saved. 1 Peter 1:20 says:

“He [Jesus] was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”

While God had planned for salvation before he created the world, it only made sense to manifest the way of salvation through Christ’s atoning death and resurrection after our need for salvation had become abundantly apparent. Salvation has always come by grace, through faith in the one true God, based on Christ’s atoning death and bodily resurrection.

Why Not Just Trust the Bible as Plainly Read?

As you can see, like so many other schemes proposed by long-age believers, the concept of a retroactive death or “a ‘retroactive fall’ (an event extending punishments backward) is unbiblical and is totally different from the pre-ordained salvation explained in Scripture.”21

“Like all compromise opinions, it is simply an attempt from the minds of men to blend the man’s illusory deep time into the Bible.”22 One wonders why, with all the evidence pointing to the truth of God’s Word as plainly read, which explains things like fossils, rock layers, and the wonders of creation, professing Christians won’t simply trust the words of Scripture.

It’s truly frightening to realize that many will someday stand in front of their creator and admit they knew what the Bible says, but they refused to believe it. It’s as Scripture confirms,

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge. (Hosea 4:6)