I think you're correct.
Yes, we both agree that we have, if we believe that He died and rose again. There are a bunch of side points that go along with that, but that is the basis for the gospel.
We might disagree here, but not in much substance.
I appreciate that you relooked at it.
I would agree were the death and resurrection of Christ not purely a physical phenomenon, because it points to our physical resurrection INTO something both physical and spiritual, according to 1 Corp 15.
Can we agree that "it" is talking about the physical body? And therefore when it is raised a spiritual body, the reference is to the physical resurrection?
My point was mainly to discuss why people who have not sinned are still affected by the penalty for sin, meaning death.
No, they are all born descendants of Adam, and as such they are subject to death. Jesus appears to be an exception, probably because of the virgin birth. Yet He submitted Himself to death for our sakes.
But I was arguing against
@ttruscott's position that sin occurred prior to physical existence.
All I'm saying at this point is that infants die (physically) because of Adam's sin. I think you agree with me here. We can discuss further what ramifications that brings. But you can't use the
supposed fact that it is blasphemous that such has happened to argue against the
actual fact that we experience death even if we don't sin.
Right. That's why I think we can keep conclusions simple regarding that passage. Death, a penalty, resulted from Adam's sin, and it applies to all of Adam's descendants.
Death as used in chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians is talking about the part that is corrected with Jesus' death and resurrection, which are both expressly about Jesus physical death (since Jesus didn't die spiritually), else the earlier portion, where we have no hope without the resurrection, is nonsensical.
I think we part ways a bit here. Not because death is a moral judgment on each individual, but because it is a moral judgment on Adam that is applied to all that were in Adam, which is all of his descendants.
Agreed.
I might have made a mistake above suggesting Christ didn't die spiritually in your view, but the concept is strange to me.
Correct.
Yes, I understand you read it that way. I tend to combine physical and spiritual death into a single thing--that there is no spirit of man without the body, and no functioning of man without the spirit. The spirit isn't a self-sufficient entity, and neither is the body. So if the spirit is dead, so is the body, and if the body is dead, there is no spirit.
Aren't you now arguing for infants being born spiritually dead? Aren't infants part of the race that came from Adam? Or are you saying "Like Adam became spiritually dead when he sinned, so the race that came from him becomes spiritually dead when the individual sins"? If that is the case, then how is it that Jesus fixes the spiritually dead problem we
didn't inherit from Adam?
Pushing back here: Do persons who are in Christ die spiritually when they personally choose to sin?
This is a problem with an unclear definition of "spiritual death" across the gamut of Christian thought, and possibly what you have stated above. But I agree that physical death is inherited from Adam, It is a punishment (wages of sin), and it is unclear why a punishment for Adam's sin is morally transferred to his descendants. I'm offering a solution to that problem. If physical death is Adam's punishment, amd Adam had no children before he sinned, then any children conceived after that sin bear the same penalty, since they were "in Adam" in the same way Levi was "in Abraham" when he tithed to Melchizedek. Levi had no choice whether he tithed to Melchizedek, but he reaped whatever reward might have come from it. We had no choice whether we sinned in Adam, but we reaped the penalty, which is (physical) death.
Ezekiel 18, on its own, is positive proof that your proposed solution cannot be correct. The problem lies in a flawed premise. You see no meaningful distinction between physical death and spiritual death, or at best, that any such distinction is irrelevant, but that conflation is precisely where the reasoning breaks down and thereby gives you a problem that needs a solution.
Once you let go of that single premise, the entire issue resolves itself. If, on the other hand, you cling to it, insisting that physical and spiritual death are the same, I don’t see how you can reject either the doctrine of original sin or Truescott’s central argument, which is that if original sin is true, then God is unjust.
The distinction between physical and spiritual death is a super clear and totally undeniable biblical fact...
Genesis 2:17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die
Adam did not die physically that day. He lived 930 years (Gen. 5:5). Therefore, some other kind of death occurred "that day"; namely, spiritual death, or the breaking of fellowship with God. This alone proves that death is not always physical in nature.
Ephesians 2:1
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the [
a]course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
That passage hardly needs any commentary, but just to state it explicitly, Paul is speaking to people who were physically alive but spiritually dead. Thus, spiritual death is a condition of separation from God, not the cessation of biological life.
Luke 15:24 for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.
The point is being made here is the form of typology. The prodigal son was clearly not physically dead. The father is describing estrangement, (i.e. spiritual separation), as death.
Ezekiel 18: 20 The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.
21 “But if a wicked man turns from all his sins which he has committed, keeps all My statutes, and does what is lawful and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. 22 None of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him; because of the righteousness which he has done, he shall live. 23 Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?” says the Lord God, “and not that he should turn from his ways and live?
God is not saying there that the man who repents from sin will be physically immortal, right? Of course not! He's saying that the person who repents will live - spiritually! The passage is saying that the righteous man's soul will survive his physical death.
Now, I could go on and on and on here, right? There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of such passages. There can be no doubt about it - physical death and not the equivalent of spiritual death. There is a very clear and deeply important difference between the two and conflating them leads to gross errors, not the least of which is the doctrine of original sin.
There is one additional point that should be made here having to do with the death of Jesus. You stated in your post that "Jesus didn't die spiritually". This is not only a denial of the very gospel itself, it openly contradicts your previous statements in the same post where you stated that "I would agree were the death and resurrection of Christ not purely a physical phenomenon, because it points to our physical resurrection INTO something both physical and spiritual, according to 1 Corp 15."
The death of Jesus physical body cannot undo the spiritual death of Adam's race, Derf! If the issue could have been solved by Jesus merely dying physically, then Jesus could have died painlessly in His sleep at the age of 102 and satisfied justice. The cross, with its emotional, relational, and spiritual agony, would be totally superfluous. The fact that He endured all of it points to a deeper problem than biological death could ever account for. He was remedying the rupture between man and God.
And that's what spiritual death is, by the way. Often the objection people have when confronted with the idea that Jesus died spiritually is that it translates in their mind as "Jesus ceased to exist", which isn't the case at all. None of us will ever cease to exist. The issue of death is not one of existence vs. oblivion, but of being in relationship with God vs. being separated from Him, of spending eternity is God's presence vs. being cast into outer darkness. Spiritual death is not the cessation of existence, but separation from God. It's alienation, exile, and loss of communion with the Source of life itself. To deny that Jesus experienced this on the cross is to gut the very heart of the gospel. He bore not just our physical fate but our spiritual condition, our estrangement from our Creator, and in doing so, He opened the door to reconciliation.
If we fail to distinguish physical from spiritual death, then we cannot understand what Adam lost, what Christ restored, or what salvation actually saves us from.
