Let us think about what life would have been like, if man had never sinned against God. According to the Genesis account, God created man in His own image after His likeness. He made man in two genders, male and female. He placed them in a garden. The man's job was to till the ground. (Gen. 2:5) His wife's function was to be his companion, helper, and support. (Gen. 2:18; Mal. 2:14; Tobit 8:6; Ecclesiasticus 36:24) Both of them were responsible for taking care of God's creatures. (Gen. 1:28; Psalm 8:6; Wisdom 9:2) God also told them to "Increase and multiply." (Gen. 1:28, LXX)
If they had abstained from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and had partaken of the Tree of Life, they would have had sexual relations with each other without experiencing any sinful lusts. The wife would have become pregnant many times and would have borne children. Blessed Augustine wrote:
In Paradise, however, if sin had not preceded, there would not have been, indeed, generation without union of the sexes, but this union would certainly have been without shame; for in the sexual union there would have been a quiet acquiescence of the members, not a lust of the flesh productive of shame. Matrimony, therefore, is a good, in which the human being is born after orderly conception; the fruit, too, of matrimony is good, as being the very human being which is thus born; sin, however, is an evil with which every man is born. (On Marriage and Concupiscence, Book II, chapter 37, by Blessed Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D., vol. 5, p. 298, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series)
Due to our fallen condition, sex has acquired a bad stigma. People have trouble imagining sex without thinking about the sin and shame that all too often accompanies it. When God created sex, He did not create sin. Through its abuse and misuse, however, sex has become sinful, but actually it is holy and was never intended by God to be done in any sinful way. Sex in and of itself is not evil.
There is an ancient heresy — the heresy of the Encratites. They taught that sex and procreation are evil. Another heretic named Marcion of Pontus taught the same thing. By teaching that sex and procreation are evil, these heretics are essentially saying that God created sin when He created sex and commanded our first parents to sin when He told them to procreate. What these heretics were teaching is, of course, not true.
There would be no doctors and no health insurance. There would be no need for life insurance.
There would be no abortion clinics. Women would conceive and joyfully give birth to their children. They would experience no pain in childbirth. Women experience pain in childbirth now because of the Fall in Paradise. (Gen. 3:16)
If man had never sinned, women would be giving birth to babies and experiencing no pain in childbirth. There would be no need for hospitals or doctors to deliver babies. For attribute click here.
Now, people pass mortality on to their children. If man had never sinned, the reverse would be true. Instead of passing mortality on to their offspring, the couple would have been passing immortality on to them. Their offspring would have contracted heterosexual unions among each other and would have had children of their own. All the posterity of man would be immortal. Death and funerals would never have existed among humans.
Having immortal children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and other descendants, it would have been possible for someone to spend time doing things with someone who is twenty, thirty, a hundred, or even a thousand generations removed from him.
Children would probably grow up to full maturity at a slower rate. In Isaiah it says that in the afterlife a youth will be a hundred years old.
Neither shall there be there any more a child that dies untimely, or an old man who shall not complete his time: for the youth shall be a hundred years old, and the sinner who dies at a hundred years shall also be accursed. (Isaiah 65:20, LXX)*
After reaching a certain age, they will stop aging. The same would have been true for children if man had never sinned. I think that they would develop faster intellectually and emotionally than they would physically. For example, if man had never sinned, a child might have the mind of a thirty year old and the body of a six year old.
There would be schools for the children and post-secondary schools for adults. People would have forever to study a new discipline and learn it. Many people would be multi-skilled and adept at doing many different things. A man could be a poet, song-writer, electrician, civil engineer, and farmer within the first thousand years of his existence. During the next thousand years, he could be learning other trades.
If man had never sinned, there would still be schools for children.
Instead of populating only this planet, we would be populating distant planets in distant galaxies. Mars would not be a dry desert planet. We would have had sufficient time to transform it into a beautiful Paradise with plants and animals from Earth. We, likewise, would have done the same thing with other planets in our solar system.
If they had abstained from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and had partaken of the Tree of Life, they would have had sexual relations with each other without experiencing any sinful lusts. The wife would have become pregnant many times and would have borne children. Blessed Augustine wrote:
In Paradise, however, if sin had not preceded, there would not have been, indeed, generation without union of the sexes, but this union would certainly have been without shame; for in the sexual union there would have been a quiet acquiescence of the members, not a lust of the flesh productive of shame. Matrimony, therefore, is a good, in which the human being is born after orderly conception; the fruit, too, of matrimony is good, as being the very human being which is thus born; sin, however, is an evil with which every man is born. (On Marriage and Concupiscence, Book II, chapter 37, by Blessed Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D., vol. 5, p. 298, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series)
If man had never sinned, people would still continue to have sex and women would still be getting pregnant.
Due to our fallen condition, sex has acquired a bad stigma. People have trouble imagining sex without thinking about the sin and shame that all too often accompanies it. When God created sex, He did not create sin. Through its abuse and misuse, however, sex has become sinful, but actually it is holy and was never intended by God to be done in any sinful way. Sex in and of itself is not evil.
There is an ancient heresy — the heresy of the Encratites. They taught that sex and procreation are evil. Another heretic named Marcion of Pontus taught the same thing. By teaching that sex and procreation are evil, these heretics are essentially saying that God created sin when He created sex and commanded our first parents to sin when He told them to procreate. What these heretics were teaching is, of course, not true.
There would be no doctors and no health insurance. There would be no need for life insurance.
There would be no abortion clinics. Women would conceive and joyfully give birth to their children. They would experience no pain in childbirth. Women experience pain in childbirth now because of the Fall in Paradise. (Gen. 3:16)
If man had never sinned, women would be giving birth to babies and experiencing no pain in childbirth. There would be no need for hospitals or doctors to deliver babies. For attribute click here.
If man had never sinned, women would still be giving birth to babies. Instead of passing mortality on to their offspring, they would be passing immortality on to them. Children would grow up at a much slower rate than they do now.
Having immortal children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and other descendants, it would have been possible for someone to spend time doing things with someone who is twenty, thirty, a hundred, or even a thousand generations removed from him.
Children would probably grow up to full maturity at a slower rate. In Isaiah it says that in the afterlife a youth will be a hundred years old.
Neither shall there be there any more a child that dies untimely, or an old man who shall not complete his time: for the youth shall be a hundred years old, and the sinner who dies at a hundred years shall also be accursed. (Isaiah 65:20, LXX)*
After reaching a certain age, they will stop aging. The same would have been true for children if man had never sinned. I think that they would develop faster intellectually and emotionally than they would physically. For example, if man had never sinned, a child might have the mind of a thirty year old and the body of a six year old.
There would be schools for the children and post-secondary schools for adults. People would have forever to study a new discipline and learn it. Many people would be multi-skilled and adept at doing many different things. A man could be a poet, song-writer, electrician, civil engineer, and farmer within the first thousand years of his existence. During the next thousand years, he could be learning other trades.
If man had never sinned, there would still be schools for children.
Instead of populating only this planet, we would be populating distant planets in distant galaxies. Mars would not be a dry desert planet. We would have had sufficient time to transform it into a beautiful Paradise with plants and animals from Earth. We, likewise, would have done the same thing with other planets in our solar system.
If man had never sinned, Mars would not look like this. Photo courtesy: NASA.
Instead, Mars would look more like this. For attribute click here.
There would still be genealogical records kept. There would be birth certificates and records of heterosexual unions. Marriage would not exist. (St. Matt. 22:30) The system used for contracting heterosexual unions would be the same system that the angels have. (We really do not know what that system is. We can only speculate about it.)
Snakes would have legs. God cursed the snake and took away its legs after the Fall of Man. (Gen. 3:14)
Man and all animals would be vegetarians. They would live in peace with each other. Originally humans and animals ate only vegetables, fruits, and nuts. (Gen. 1:29,30) Sometime after man had sinned, people and some animals became carnivores. (Gen. 9:2,3)
There would be no prisons. No one would be committing any crimes. There would be no armies. No one would want to go to war with anyone.
People would outlive the usefulness of their homes and would have to replace them with new ones periodically.
A thousand years would not seem like such a very long time to anyone. People would live so long that time would not mean that much to them.
Work would be easier and not toilsome. A man would not have to produce food to stay alive and he would not eat bread "in the sweat of his face." (Gen. 3:19)
People would enjoy worshipping God. Church attendance would almost always be at one hundred percent.
Life, in general, would be much more blissful if man had never sinned.
Steve
* "The sinner who dies at a hundred years shall also be accursed." I have thought about this part of this verse and I think that it means that the unrighteous who are resurrected will spend a hundred or more years with the resurrected righteous. After spending a hundred years with them and seeing the blessedness of the life they could have had if they had followed Christ, they will die the second death spoken of in Revelation. (Rev. 20:11-15) St. John Chrysostom calls it a "deathless death." In the second death, people will be tormented in body and soul in Gehenna forever. Their souls will still be joined together bodies, though.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts, D.D. & James Donaldson, LL.D., volumes 1-10, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D., volumes 1-14, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Massachusetts
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D. & Henry Wace, D.D., volumes 1-14, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Massachusetts
Snakes would have legs. God cursed the snake and took away its legs after the Fall of Man. (Gen. 3:14)
Man and all animals would be vegetarians. They would live in peace with each other. Originally humans and animals ate only vegetables, fruits, and nuts. (Gen. 1:29,30) Sometime after man had sinned, people and some animals became carnivores. (Gen. 9:2,3)
There would be no prisons. No one would be committing any crimes. There would be no armies. No one would want to go to war with anyone.
People would outlive the usefulness of their homes and would have to replace them with new ones periodically.
A thousand years would not seem like such a very long time to anyone. People would live so long that time would not mean that much to them.
Work would be easier and not toilsome. A man would not have to produce food to stay alive and he would not eat bread "in the sweat of his face." (Gen. 3:19)
People would enjoy worshipping God. Church attendance would almost always be at one hundred percent.
Life, in general, would be much more blissful if man had never sinned.
Steve
* "The sinner who dies at a hundred years shall also be accursed." I have thought about this part of this verse and I think that it means that the unrighteous who are resurrected will spend a hundred or more years with the resurrected righteous. After spending a hundred years with them and seeing the blessedness of the life they could have had if they had followed Christ, they will die the second death spoken of in Revelation. (Rev. 20:11-15) St. John Chrysostom calls it a "deathless death." In the second death, people will be tormented in body and soul in Gehenna forever. Their souls will still be joined together bodies, though.
Bibliography
Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts, D.D. & James Donaldson, LL.D., volumes 1-10, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D., volumes 1-14, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Massachusetts
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D. & Henry Wace, D.D., volumes 1-14, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Massachusetts
No comments:
Post a Comment