Read Chapter 2.2: Biblical Life

In the case of plants, Scripture does not seem to consider them alive—or at the very least they are not described as having nephesh or soul life. When God creates animals, He refers to each category of animal as living (Gen. 1:21 & 24), but when He creates plants (Gen. 1:11-12), He does not describe them as living. In fact, at the end of the Creation Week, plants were given as food to everything ‘wherein there is life’ (Gen. 1:29-30), strongly suggesting that plants themselves are not living (at least in the biblical sense of life).

A millennium and a half later, after requiring that ‘all living things’ of the land be included on the ark of Noah, God refers to plants only inferentially when He required that the food of the animals be included as well (Gen. 6:19-21). Again, the strong suggestion is that plants are not considered living beings in Scripture. In fact, nowhere in Scripture are plants referred to as living. Most commonly, the Bible refers to plants as ‘green things’ (e.g. Ex. 10:15; Rev. 9:4), as if the Bible refers to thriving plants as photosynthesizing, rather than ‘living’. As for whether plants can die, plants in the Bible can be ‘cut down’, ‘cut off’, ‘choked out’, ‘felled’, ‘hewed’, ‘smitten’, ‘broken’, ‘burned’, ‘plucked’, and ‘pulled up’, but there is no biblical example of a plant being ‘killed’.

Most of these phrases when applied to animals or humans would involve death (e.g. for a human to be ‘cut down’). However, when these words are applied to plants, they do not necessarily refer to the complete end of a plant, since “there is hope in a tree when it is cut down, that it will sprout again” (Job 14:7) and “…if a seed dies, it brings forth much fruit.” (John 12:24). The Bible seems to ignore whatever ‘life’ a plant might have and refer instead to what the plant produces (e.g. seeds, fruit, leaves, wood). This probably reflects the purpose of plants—which is to provide food for animals. The Bible also indicates that a plant can ‘fade’, ‘languish’, ‘wither’, ‘dry up’, ‘fail’, ‘fall’, and ‘wax old’. Of the scores of references to the termination of the vitality of plants, only four passages might suggest that plants can perish or die, but each passage can also be interpreted to refer to the cessation of a plant’s productivity, not its actual ceasing to exist.

Plants, then, not only seem to lack nephesh or soul life, but they seem to lack anything at all that the Bible refers to as life. Consequently, what might be called biblical life—or that which is considered ‘life’ in the Bible—is possessed by God, spirit creatures, humans, and animals, but it is not possessed by plants. Nephesh life, since it is possessed by animals and humans, but not God and spirit creatures, would then be a type or subset of biblical life. Other things, like fungi, protozoa, algae, and bacteria are not specifically mentioned in Scripture. However, their similarity with plants would suggest they, like plants, do not possess biblical life.

Biological Life

God and spirit creatures are not studied by biologists because they are not physical beings. This suggests a limitation of biology. Biology cannot study all beings that possess life. On the other hand, biologists study and consider living a number of things that may not be living as the Bible uses the term (e.g. bacteria, protozoa, algae, fungi, and plants). This text will refer to all being studied by biologists (humans, animals, plants, fungi, algae, protozoa, bacteria) as organisms, and the type of life possessed by organisms will be referred to as biological life.

Even More Types of Life

A summary of the different types of life we have considered is illustrated in Figure 2.1. Since biblical life, creature life, nephesh life, and biological life are not the same, but do overlap, it is likely that there are a number of different types of life and that biblical, creature, nephesh, and biological life are different categories of life—each including multiple, distinct types of life. Different types of spirit creatures, different types of animals (I Cor. 15:39), different types of microorganisms, and different types of plants may each contain distinct types of life.