Category Archives: Old Testament

Death: Punishment or Consequence?

Throughout the Bible, God reveals Himself to us because of His desire for a loving relationship with each one of us. Sin is our rejection of this loving relationship that we enjoy with God.

St. Paul states, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 6:23) Here we see that death is a result of sin and is the opposite of eternal life in Christ. The connotation of ‘wages’ is that death is something that we earn; it stems from our choice.

Many read parts of the Old Testament and overlook God’s perpetual love; focusing on the repugnant gore and violence, they assign undue weight to the horrible things that happen to people. How could a God who is Love do or allow these horrible things to happen? If God really loves us, the thought goes, would He be so unrelenting and harsh? This theology considers death as a punishment. I suggest instead, and will explain below, that the result of sin (wages earned) is not punishment but rather consequence.

A definition of punishment is “the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offense”, while consequence is “a result or effect of an action or condition”. If death is punishment, then it would come from God as a penalty for our misbehavior. As consequence, however, death does not come from God, but rather out of the nature of our not accepting the relationship of love that we enjoy with God. Spiritual death is the absence of a relationship with God- our not even acknowledging His existence. Physical death is a consequence of our existence in this material/physical world that is limited by space and time.

Sin – the rejection of God’s intended relationship of love – enters human reality in Genesis 3 with the depiction of Adam and Eve eating of the forbidden fruit. As portrayed in the Bible – Old Testament and New – God’s reaction to sin is one of protection for the sinner. God’s response in Gen 3:17-19 (and Gen 3:16) is clearly that God, in the aftermath of the sin, prepares humankind for life in this new reality that exists as a result of sin. He is not punishing Adam and Eve, but rather lovingly protecting them. God is forewarning them of the new reality that they have chosen; forewarned is forearmed! This understanding is consistent throughout all facets of the Old Testament including the psalms and narrative and prophecy and wisdom literature; it is also consistent throughout the New Testament.

Indeed the Bible, as an indicator of our relationship with God, is the story of our journey from the Garden of Eden through death/sin to redemption/eternal life in Christ as portrayed in Revelation.

In the Old Testament God is consistently the Good Shepherd tending His flock, perpetually bringing the outliers (sinners) back into the fold, i.e., a loving relationship. All it takes is our sincere repentance, which is a result of our acknowledging our true and happy relationship to God: that He is the Creator and we are the Created.

— Eric Wolf

The (Inspired) Word of God

Christians believe that the Bible (Old and New Testaments) is the inspired Word of God. Human authors wrote the various books over a millennium; each however was inspired by God. inspire means both to ‘breathe in’ and to ‘fill one with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially creative’.

God did not dictate to the human authors, as for example Islam claims that God/Allah dictated the Qur’an to Muhammad. Rather we believe that the Holy Spirit infused human authors with the understanding of what God wished to communicate, so that the authors could do this appropriate for human understanding yet without theological error.

Recently a friend shared with me an insightful article written by Jason Carlson and Ron Carlson entitled Is the Bible the Inspired Word of God?. To paraphrase their article into a Catholic context, let’s delve into what the Church understands about the formation of the Bible.

Although our term ‘Bible’ comes from the Greek word (biblion) that means ‘book’, the Bible is not one book but a collection of 73 books.

The 46 books of the OT were composed over a period of 10 centuries leading up to the time of Christ; portions had been taken from written stories from perhaps several centuries earlier. The 27 books of the NT were written over the last half of the first century AD/CE. During this long span of time that the books of the Bible were composed, the culture and society changed dramatically many times.

These 73 books were written by an untold number of authors- several dozen at the least. They were a wide variation of educated and not-so-educated people including priests, prophets, preachers, apostles, kings, courtiers, scribes, fishermen, a physician, and regular people like you and me. There could not have been collaboration between the disparate authors.

The Bible, and indeed a sizable number of the books, are not of a single literary genre. Throughout the books in each testament we find story, poetry, prayer, prophecy (speaking on behalf of God), wisdom, novellas, letters, and history. Yet each holds true to the central message of God’s creation and plan for our salvation.

The books were originally composed in at least 3 different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. This would seem to lead to confusion and dissonance, yet the opposite is true- the books agree on their message of God’s love and care for His human creation.

The various authors composed the books on 3 separate continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe, from Jerusalem (Israel) to Rome (Italy) to Babylon (Iraq) to Alexandria (Egypt). Again this cultural variation would seem to lead to less cohesion, yet the opposite is true: the Bible is consistent in its message of who God is and what our relationship is with Him.

The consistent message throughout the span of the Bible points us to the One author- the Bible is the Inspired Word of God.

— Eric Wolf