What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Man, Sin, & Salvation
Singalphile
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Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by Singalphile » Wed Jul 16, 2014 12:32 am

jriccitelli wrote:I think the clear understanding of the Genesis account comes from the contrast between the Serpents statement and Gods statement. God said they will die, and the Serpent said they would ‘not die’.
A month or so ago, I heard a Christian radio show host speak with disappointment about a children's book that his young daughter had read. He was upset that the book said that the serpent's great lie was that "God doesn't love you." He went on for a while with some passion about how incorrect that was. Then he even brought his daughter on air to repeat what he had taught her was the serpent's real lie, which was that Adam & Eve would "be like God." That really surprised me! Of course the serpent did say that "you will be like God, knowing good and evil," but that's exactly what happened! So a swing and a miss on that one, I had to say. ... but I like his show and learn lots of helpful, interesting stuff from him.

There's a commentary on Genesis from the mid-1500's in which the author discusses "what kind of death God means in [Gen 2:17]." He does not use "spiritual death" nor similar wording, but he talks a bit in ways that you often here nowadays. His main point is that alienation from God is the cause of death and so Adam made "a kind of entrance into death, till death itself entirely absorbs him" so that Adam was then "consigned to death, and death [including the the terror of it] began its reign in him." That is here: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom01.viii.i.html

I'm still guessing that the common use of the "spiritual death" metaphor to describe "the fall" (another non-Biblical metaphor, not that I object) came later than that. (I didn't read more of that commentary.)
... that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. John 5:23

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psimmond
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Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by psimmond » Wed Jul 16, 2014 3:05 pm

jriccitelli wrote:From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die” (Eve, Garden of Eden)
There is nothing untrue about her statement. I think there is more un-truth in the commentaries and people accusing her of misunderstanding, than in her statement.
dizerner wrote:God wasn't recorded as saying anything about touching it. Either she exaggerated (is that the same as lying?) or...
jriccitelli wrote:She had more first hand knowledge than us.
dizerner wrote:This seems to open the door to a lot of speculative interpretation... which I don't think is a bad thing, but you seem to not like the fact that commentaries and preachers have done this very thing for a long time. The thing is, I don't think it's only traditions people are preaching, all these ideas were gathered from the overall Scriptural context. For example, the tree of life was not even mentioned until after their expulsion, yet we assume they were eating from it. Is that a bad assumption just because it's not directly stated? Should we insist the tree of life was never eaten of or maybe wasn't even created until after the expulsion? Deductions like that, can be made over many years of studying and preaching, and although it never hurts to re-examine them, I think it also doesn't hurt to realize that they were not just made up for no Biblical reason.
God had a conversation with Adam and Eve right after they ate the forbidden fruit and he didn’t say a thing about Eve lying.

Rather than assume Eve was a liar, why not assume God told Adam and Eve not to touch the forbidden tree? The Bible says God walked in the garden and it says he spoke with Adam and Eve. Yet Genesis only tells us 4 things that God said to Adam and Eve:
1. Be fruitful and multiply.
2. Subdue the earth and have dominion over every living thing.
3. I’ve given you lots of plants and fruit trees that you can eat from.
4. You can eat from every tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because if you eat from that one you will die.

It would probably take about 15 seconds to share these four points with Adam and Eve. Does it seem reasonable to assume that God had only 15 seconds of conversation with the first humans he created before they fell into sin by eating the forbidden fruit? Furthermore, there’s not a single reference in the Bible to Eve lying.
Let me boldly state the obvious. If you are not sure whether you heard directly from God, you didn’t.
~Garry Friesen

dizerner

Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by dizerner » Wed Jul 16, 2014 7:30 pm

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Singalphile
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Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by Singalphile » Wed Jul 16, 2014 10:31 pm

Hello again, everyone.

A) A commentary (possibly quoted already here) from about 1709 does not mention "spiritual death" in Genesis 2-3, here and following

It says (in part) that "Adam is threatened with death" as a "sure and dreadful sentence" so that he "shalt become liable to death, and all the miseries that preface it and attend it," "shalt become mortal and capable of dying; the grant of immortality shall be recalled, and that defence shall depart from thee," "shalt become obnoxious to death, like a condemned malefactor that is dead in the law (only, because Adam was to be the root of mankind, he was reprieved);", and "the harbingers and forerunners of death shall immediately seize thee, and thy life, thenceforward, shall be a dying life: and ... the soul that sinneth, it shall die."

B) I looked in a Study Bible that I have and, sure enough, Genesis 2:17 has its own comment with "Spiritually Dead" as the bold heading. It doesn't define the phrase, but just states that A&E "did suffer immediate spiritual death that later led to physical death."

It is curious.

As mentioned, I don't object to the phrase as a metaphor. It can be useful (though not nec. in Gen 2-3, imo). What does bother me, I realized just now, is when a person replaces the actual condition - a self/flesh centered life - with a non-Biblical metaphor that somebody came up with, and then treats the metaphor as a real or literal thing and then uses the words of the metaphor to replace another real thing - death - whenever it suits him. That confuses things, I think.

I searched online and this word kind of describes what I think I mean: reification
... that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. John 5:23

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jriccitelli
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Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by jriccitelli » Fri Jul 18, 2014 1:28 am

By the way, more crazy thoughts here: I don't believe that Adam necessarily spoke Hebrew as Moses did, or that Moses while writing in Hebrew, translated every word verbatim. Not that Moses' words weren't perfect to the actual meaning of the words, but I can't imagine Adam necessarily was speaking to God in Hebrew. If you think about it, 'every' word that Adam spoke would have to have been explained to him by God himself, because God spoke to him prior to Eve. I don't know how much they spoke, but to learn anything like language it would have to practiced and used 'alot' (that would mean alot of talk between God and Adam, since there was no one else till Eve). Or else given supernaturally. So God must have 'taught' Adam the meaning of death, or given him the understanding supernaturally.

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psimmond
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Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by psimmond » Tue Jul 29, 2014 11:48 pm

I'm gravitating toward the views expressed by Singalphile, jriccitelli, and mattrose. It seems to make a lot of sense to say the references to death either refer to physical death or are references to a sinner's positional standing (dead in sins and trespasses) and in that context would mean "on a course that results in death rather than eternal life."
Let me boldly state the obvious. If you are not sure whether you heard directly from God, you didn’t.
~Garry Friesen

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robbyyoung
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Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by robbyyoung » Sat Dec 05, 2015 10:17 am

dizerner wrote:My response was logical and not emotional.
You said...
Yes, of course, Jesus spent an entire chapter explaining the most beautiful and detailed description of spiritual salvation in all of Scripture just to mock Nicodemus as a vessel created for damnation before the foundation of the world, and not a genuine opportunity for Nicodemus to respond in faith to something above his understanding. Makes perfect sense.
Then you said...
Also Christ said dead people can hear his voice and live. Also the prodigal son was "dead" but came "alive" by a decision to return. You are simply heavily misusing the metaphorical imagery of death, quite common among Calvinists repeating their teachers.
Your logic is skewed against "the logic" of scripture. Your illogical thought process brings in a straw man argument "vessels created for destruction" while totally ignoring God, as the initiator, in the details; yes, those little details concerning how salvation is initiated. The prodigal son's decision to come to his senses and return to his father was no more of his own doing than the account written about King Nebuchadnezzar:

While the words were still in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, “O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.” Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws. At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation;

Being a little light-hearted, I said your logic is skewed against the testimony of scripture, so let me show you how:

Long, long ago in the 1st century there was a man called Dizerner. Dizerner knew 12 Apostles and a man named Yeshua. The story goes as follows...

:? Dizerner is unsaved, but it's no surprise because his friend Paul tells him, "God says, there is none that seeks after Him".

:) One sunny day, Dizerner begins to actually seek after God. Confused, he asked himself, how could I seek out God when He says no one can? He then remembers what Yeshua taught, "Yeshua and The Father are one, and no one can come to the Son unless The Father draws him".

:D Dizerner then knew that without God initiating the call to salvation he would have never sought after Him.

:o Dizerner then remembered Yeshua's words, "If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me".

:lol: Dizerner knew man couldn't possibly take any credit for initiating the salvation process.

:shock: However, Dizerner also remembered that now he must work out his own salvation with fear and trembling.

The End.

dizerner

Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by dizerner » Sat Dec 05, 2015 4:58 pm

Cool story, but that's not Calvinism if we work out our salvation.

I didn't decide my own birth. I didn't decide to create the universe. I didn't decide for man to fall. I didn't decide for Christ to redeem. I didn't even decide when and where I heard the call of Christ.

But I did decide to follow Christ when Christ called me. Do you take issue with that?

When You said, "Seek My face," my heart said to You, "Your face, O LORD, I shall seek."

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robbyyoung
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Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by robbyyoung » Sat Dec 05, 2015 7:02 pm

dizerner wrote:Cool story, but that's not Calvinism if we work out our salvation.
I know it's not "Calvinism", but I am not Calvinist.
dizerner wrote:I didn't decide my own birth. I didn't decide to create the universe. I didn't decide for man to fall. I didn't decide for Christ to redeem. I didn't even decide when and where I heard the call of Christ.
Nothing to disagree with here.
dizerner wrote:But I did decide to follow Christ when Christ called me. Do you take issue with that?
Absolutely not. My contention has always been that God is the initiator in the process of salvation. God usurps man's enslaved will, who would otherwise choose not to serve Him, in order for salvation to take place. Once that fire is kindled, man can do whatever he desires, for or against God. However, man cannot and will not turn to God on his own without God first initiating the process of a spiritual awakening - no matter how brief it may be.

In our previous discussions, I have chosen my words carefully and deliberately to highlight "initiator". However, all you could see was "Calvinism" which has nothing to do with my beliefs. Man can decide but he is not the initiator or genesis of the thought or idea. Just like birth, we were not the initiator of the miracle; however, after the fact, we are able to make decisions that affect our lives. The new birth is no different.

God Bless.

dizerner

Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by dizerner » Sat Dec 05, 2015 8:10 pm

Well, I apologize for assuming you're Calvinist; you use many of their arguments. If you believe that God is the initiator and we respond to that initiation then we are both believers in true cooperation with God's grace. 8-)

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