Adam and the immune system

Image stock.xchng

Viruses

Published: 30 May 2009(GMT+10)

Joshua C from Arizona asks about a pre-Fall role for the immune system, given that God created everything “very
good” (Genesis 1:31). Medical doctor Carl Wieland responds.
JC: I did my senior project on biblical validity and in the process of my research, I found numerous amount of
evidence supporting The Holy Bible, the literal six day creation, and the young earth.

However, I have one question lingering regarding human creation and The Fall. I understand that all creation was
once perfect before Adam & Eve’s fall. There was no death, disease, and such, correct? Then they sinned and death
entered creation. This brings me to my question. If life was perfect before The Fall, did life, especially humans, have
an immune system? I mean, there was no need for one before The Fall, right, because life was perfect and there was
no disease to fight off. So did life acquire an immune system after The Fall? Or did we have one and it was just not
in use before The Fall? If the second one is true, then we had vestigial organs in the beginning.

Please get back to me on this one, for this question is the only one that lingers for me and I’ve not seen addressed.

CW: In writing about preFall conditions, we have to bear in mind first of all that there will always be an element of
“maybe”. Biblical information is very compact, and often indirectly deduced. And we can’t make any actual
observations. However, I have found a few principles to be helpful in ensuring that one’s speculations are as
informed as possible, especially concerning the issue of biological structures or systems used to either harm or
defend against harm.

1. We are the physical descendants of Adam. This is very important theologically. Isaiah spoke of the
coming Messiah (Jesus) as literally the ‘Kinsman-Redeemer’, i.e. one who is related by blood to those he
redeems (Isaiah 59:20, which uses the same Hebrew word ‫( ּגואֵל‬gôēl) used to describe Boaz in relation to
Ruth). Without being in the line of the first Adam, we would be excluded from the possibility of salvation
 through the sacrifice of “the last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45), the Lord Jesus Christ (a descendant of the “first
man, Adam”, through Mary (Luke 3:23–38)—see Christmas and Genesis). So Eve had to be a physical
descendant of Adam, too, or else she could not have been a potential heir of salvation. Hence we truly have our
inheritance “in Adam”, not “in Adam and Eve”. Thus, she was made from the bone in Adam’s side (bone of
my bone, flesh of my flesh”)—i.e. his rib, not directly from raw materials as was Adam.1

Our physical descent from Adam indicates a biological/DNA connection, or continuity, if you like, from Adam
(and Eve) to ourselves. This immediately makes it highly unlikely that Adam and Eve’s bodies were radically
different from our own. The structures and organs in our body are coded for by the DNA in our genes. These
are the programs we inherited from our parents, who in turn inherited them from our grandparents, and so on
backwards—in varying combinations, of course, so that each of us is genetically unique. Trace this back to
Adam and Eve, and why would these same programs have coded for anything else in our first ancestors? In
short, their bodies would have been much the same as ours. From this alone, one would be reluctant to propose
that Adam did not have an immune system.

2. Creation was finished at the end of Creation Week (Genesis 2:3). This would seem to preclude anything
other than perhaps a limited amount of redesigning at the Fall—for example, the serpent’s body and Eve’s (re
childbearing). A wholesale new creation or recreation is therefore unlikely.

Both points 1) and 2) suggest that Adam’s immune system was probably very much like our own (though
without any inherited genetic copying mistakes, known as mutations, of which we all inherit many hundreds
from previous generations).

But then, what was the immune system for pre-Fall? First, a few extra points.

3. The Fall was most only a few weeks after Creation Week, probably much less time. This is a deduction
from the fact the Eve was not pregnant until after the Fall. Adam and Eve were two healthy married people,
who had been commanded while still in Eden to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:22). In a pre-Fall world
without suffering and disease, there would have been no blocked fallopian tubes or other defects or
deficiencies leading to infertility. It is highly unlikely that Eve would have gone through more than 1–2
fertility cycles at the most without conceiving. However, the first conception recorded is that of Cain, which
was after the Fall. See also The Fall, Curse and Satan
4. God foreknew the Fall. As creator of time, God is outside of time. Jesus in John 8:58 does not say,
“before Abraham was born, I was”—He says, “before Abraham was born, I am”.2 He, Yahweh (YHWH,
Jehovah), the great “I am” of Exodus 3:14,3 the eternal present tense if you like, is the one who also says, “I am
the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 21:6). In Isaiah 46:10 God tells us, “I make known the end from the
beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come.” In short, the future does not take God by surprise.

Points 3) and 4) taken together would allow for God having built structures into His creatures (including Adam and
Eve) that were only going to be utilized or fully utilized after the coming Fall.
So one possible answer to your question is that the immune system was there in Adam because it was required to
defend against the pathogens of the soon-coming Fallen world.

The function of the immune system is not just to fight against living organisms such as germs that
actively cause disease, but it also helps the body to distinguish self from non-self.

However, I think it is very likely that the immune system in humans already had an important role to play pre-Fall.
The function of the immune system is not just to fight against living organisms such as germs that actively cause
disease, but it also helps the body to distinguish self from non-self (as we have pointed out before, e.g. Vaccines
and Genesis: Questions and Answers on Vaccinations and the Immune System). One function of the 4

immune system is to build up antibodies as a protection against any foreign protein (not just germs) that enters our
body.

It has been estimated that only a small minority of all bacteria and viruses are pathogenic, less than 1%; no
pathogens are known in the Archaea domain.5 But there are a number of beneficial functions of bacteria and viruses.6

In particular, there are today germs that do not cause us any harm, in fact are helpful to our bowel function, if they
stay inside the bowel. Recent research shows that the appendix is a ‘good safe house’ for such “good” germs (see
Appendix: a bacterial ‘safe house’). If those same germs were to enter the bloodstream, they could cause an
overwhelming blood poisoning. This is what can happen when an inflamed and infected appendix that is not
removed in time becomes gangrenous, leading to peritonitis and thereafter septicemia (blood poisoning)—those
same germs that were harmless in their “proper place”, having invaded the bloodstream, now threaten that person’s
life.

But with countless millions of those same bacteria in close contact with blood capillaries, etc. how come such a
hostile invasion does not happen on a regular basis? Part of the answer is the immune system 7 which is there to mop
up any such “accidental invader” before it has the chance to multiply. The same immune system also ensures that
the bacteria in the large bowel (which are supposed to be there) do not enter the small bowel (where they are not
supposed to be).

I think that the same situation likely pertained pre-Fall, i.e. that microbes inhabited our large bowel for various
‘good’ functions. This is also relevant to the origins of those (and other) bacteria, because a similar question could
be asked about this—when did God create E. coli bacteria, for instance. These can nowadays cause disease, but are
also a part of our normal “gut flora” as it is called, i.e. the inhabitants of our large bowel. I suggest that the answer is
that they were part of the original creation. Just because something has the potential to cause harm under the right
circumstances does not mean it would be excluded from a perfect world. What is excluded is actual harm. For
example, there would have been lakes for Adam to fall into, and stones that could theoretically be thrown at
someone with force. Neither lakes nor stones are intrinsically “bad”, though each is capable of causing “bad things”
in certain circumstances. In the same way, E. coli would have been there already before the Fall, because they are
not intrinsically “bad” any more than lakes or stones.
We can be sure that there was no actual chance of this harm happening to Adam, due to God’s protection
and oversight. But in this case, the mediate mechanism God used was a ‘natural’ physical mechanism He
himself designed—one that served the same ‘protection from harm’ function both pre-and postFall.

We can safely assume that in a perfect, preFall world, God would have ensured that no harm would come from
anything, whether lakes, rocks or E. coli. We don’t know of any general mechanism (other than His perfect
supervision of all situations, similar to the situation of the Israelites in the wilderness when their shoes did not wear
out for 40 years (Deuteronomy 29:5)) that God could have used to prevent harm from things like lakes or stones.
But we do know of a general mechanism which God could have used to prevent harm from E. Coli, for instance—
namely, the same immune system that would give humanity protection (albeit no longer perfect) after the Fall.

The same sort of argument could be put for the immune system’s role in warding off other potential “invaders” of
our body—preFall it serves the same function as postFall, only postFall involves the possibility of failure, i.e.
organisms being able to overwhelm a body’s defences. PostFall there would also be increasing challenges from
pathogens (disease-causing entities) which can mutate towards more virulent strains, or from strains that do not
cause disease in humans mutating to become ones which do (to show why this is not evidence of microbes-to-man
evolution or any part of it, see Has AIDS evolved?).

The notion I’ve tried to develop here is that if Adam has a mechanism that protects against potential harm preFall,
this does not conflict with the notion that there was no scope for the actual harm to occur in that harm-free world.

To clarify this still further, consider this analogy—the human skin. One major function of our skin is to prevent
harm to us by way of our body drying out, losing its internal fluids. This “natural mechanism” is there to prevent an
ever-present potential harm. There would be no argument, I trust, with the proposition that Adam had skin like ours.
So here we have Adam being protected from a potential harm (loss of vital bodily fluids) preFall via a builtin
physiological system (skin). We can be sure that there was no actual chance of this harm happening to Adam, due to
God’s protection and oversight. But in this case, the mediate mechanism God used was a “natural” physical
mechanism He himself designed—one that served the same “protection from harm” function both pre-and postFall.
Ditto for the immune system. Hope that helps.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Carl W.