The essence of life

The verb ζαω (zao) means to live in the sense of to be alive. It mostly describes to live as opposed to die (θνησκω, thnesko), whereas to live in the sense of to live one's life is covered by the verb βιοω (bioo). One's personal state of being alive is covered by the noun ψυχη (psuche), commonly translated with mind or soul, which opposite is νεκρος (nekros), a corpse.

The crucial difference between the pagan understanding of life and the Biblical one is that pagans imagine that living things can exist on their own, whereas the Bible sees the whole of the biosphere as one continuous entity and living things as nodes or ripples on an otherwise homogeneous ocean. Just like one single ant or one single bee cannot exist and will die, so can no living thing exist on its own. This is why Eve is called the "mother of all life" (Genesis 3:20); she represents the entire biosphere.

What is life?

A living thing can be an entity that consists of molecules (that would be a living cell), or cells (which would be a complex organism), or minds (which would be a culture). An entity is alive when it is able to absorb energy without dispersing it over its elements (i.e. molecules, cells or minds) in the form of private, thermodynamic excitation. A living thing stores energy in the bonds between its elements and transforms energy into chemical equivalents — at the biological level mostly in carbohydrates (proverbially called μελι, meli, or honey), and at the mental level in conventions such as speech and script. A living thing creates a significantly greater entropy than a non-living thing of identical mass, which might explain why natural law allowed the formation of DNA (which decreases entropy much less than life increases it).

Note that according to these definitions, life begins at the atomic level, namely when atoms bond into molecules. This means that a form of proto-mentality occurs when single cells cluster up into colonies. And it also means that human culture the way we know it is a mere preview of yet another step up in complexity. What that is, precisely, is as hard to imagine for most people as it is for a colony of bacteria to imagine what it would be like to be a squirrel. But note that the formation of Adam from the dust of the earth and the infusion with God's breath (Genesis 2:7) is perfectly self-similar to the formation of the Body of Christ from the dust-like seed of Abraham (Genesis 13:16, Galatians 3:7) and the infusion with God's Spirit (Acts 2:4).

Consequently, these definitions suggest that life, ultimately, is not a condition but rather a progression, namely that of increasing complexity and thus diversity. The opposite, namely to die, is a decrease in complexity and diversity. The process of evolution is commonly very poorly understood — it's very real but obviously not a carnival of accidents. Most people agree that the universe came out of the Big Bang like a bullet fired from a gun, but the universe is not evolving randomly but rather onto a so-called attractor. In more familiar terms: God is creating the universe by pushing it forth from one end and pulling it forth from the other (Genesis 12:1, Jeremiah 1:5, John 5:25). On its journey, the universe is "governed" by perfectly righteous natural law (Matthew 5:18), which likewise expands from very simple (Matthew 7:12) to very complex (John 21:25 — and if this confuses you, compare Psalm 12:6 to Luke 2:52).

Evolution is a parabolic journey between two deaths (from singularity to heat death), while life peaks in the middle of it. In between the two deaths nature provides a window in which life is able to generate a whole new level of complexity that self-similarly evolves between its two deaths. Hence matter generates biological life, which in turn generates mental life, which in turn generates super-mental life (whatever that might be; 1 Corinthians 2:9). It's a bit of a wild hypothesis, but here at Abarim Publications we surmise that somewhere in the window in the window in the window, nature allows some sort of arrest of further decay at lower levels. That would mean that the universe stops expanding, living things stop dying and cultures stop collapsing (Luke 18:30, John 3:16, Revelation 21:4).

For more on the Bible's view on evolution, read our article on the verb ιστημι (histemi), meaning to stand, and particularly the derived noun αναστασις (anastasis), meaning rise, resurrection or evolution. Also note the similarity between our verb ζαω (zao), meaning to live, and the verb ζεω (zeo), meaning to seethe or boil.

Our verb ζαω (zao) is used 142 times in the New Testament, see full concordance, and from it derive: