What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Man, Sin, & Salvation
User avatar
psimmond
Posts: 438
Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2010 7:31 pm
Location: Sharpsburg, GA
Contact:

Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by psimmond » Sun Jul 13, 2014 6:20 pm

Brenden, when dizerner wrote...
To an unsaved person these words sound like gibberish. The words without spirit behind them, do not convey any revelation. Our foundations are not found in naturalism, right? Since every argument from apologetics but one is sourced in naturalism, I really don't always see the use of it.....The only spiritual reality is an experience, but to make sure we don't have a false experience we check the Scripture. It's like our lodestone, our north star. Every born again believer is not some brain that heard and processed data, it's a spirit that's come alive in another dimension. You just can't "convince" or "inform" someone into a new birth.
You responded with...
So, it would be safe to say you would gravitate more to Kierkegaard than C.S. Lewis?
Could you explain this for me. I've read some Lewis and some Kierkegaard, but not enough to figure out how you made the above inference.

Thanks,
Peter

edit: I just did some online searches and see now that Lewis didn't like the doctrine of Total Depravity. Since Adam and Eve sinned with the nature God gave them when he created them, I have to wonder if they had had children prior to eating the fruit, how long would it have taken their children to sin? I'm really wondering if the bias or tendency to sin is a result of nature and nurture, but not the result of a supernatural act that occurred when two people tasted a forbidden fruit. (The one verse that still puzzles me is Gen 3:7. This verse does make it seem as though there might have been an instant supernatural change that occurred.)
Last edited by psimmond on Sun Jul 13, 2014 7:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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 » Sun Jul 13, 2014 7:16 pm

[user account removed]
Last edited by dizerner on Sun Feb 19, 2023 1:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
TheEditor
Posts: 814
Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2010 9:09 pm

Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by TheEditor » Sun Jul 13, 2014 7:21 pm

Hi Peter,

That was just one of my little fast and loose epigrams I like to throw out. I was being a bit broad. I suppose I was contrasting Lewis' apologetics with Kierkegaard's "experiential" view of God as "wholly other". I suppose I fall somewhere in the middle.

Regards, Brenden.

PS. I don't believe in total depravity either, but then again, I'm not a Calvinist. :D
[color=#0000FF][b]"It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery."[/b][/color]

dizerner

Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by dizerner » Sun Jul 13, 2014 8:19 pm

[user account removed]
Last edited by dizerner on Sun Feb 19, 2023 1:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Homer
Posts: 2995
Joined: Sat Aug 23, 2008 11:08 pm

Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by Homer » Sun Jul 13, 2014 9:11 pm

And I'd agree, yet still we need the faith to believe that "no man spoke like this man" and that faith comes by the Spirit; physical words aren't enough in themselves.
But on the other hand does the Spirit work in conversion apart from the word?

Romans 1:16
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

dizerner

Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by dizerner » Sun Jul 13, 2014 9:15 pm

[user account removed]
Last edited by dizerner on Sun Feb 19, 2023 1:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
jriccitelli
Posts: 1317
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 10:14 am
Location: San Jose, CA
Contact:

Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by jriccitelli » Mon Jul 14, 2014 7:32 am

I also hold to a 100,000yr old earth (question from pg5, top)
No biblical Numerology here, the number is just close to about what I have deduced from reading geology and geophysics, the rates of energy, organic material life, discomposure, oxygen, radiation, etc. I may know very little in the area but I am not willing to ignore certain data from either side. And ‘day’ can, and does sometimes depict an age or event in scripture, people still talk this way.

User avatar
jriccitelli
Posts: 1317
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 10:14 am
Location: San Jose, CA
Contact:

Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by jriccitelli » Mon Jul 14, 2014 7:44 am

Why can't we just say "AND" instead of "OR." (Dizerner)
Just like the term ‘Faith’ Brenden mentioned, although it is a biblical term (unlike spiritual death) it is the ‘meaning’ we, or some others have put into the word or phrase that redefines it. I agree with both Brenden and Psimmond over Faith, so in this instance (Faith) it is an “AND” not an OR.

Biblical phrases can ‘sound’ biblical but in what context they are used is the question. A sermon or conversations context can redefine even verses in the Bible: ‘Judge not lest you be judged’, ‘whatever you ask in my name you will receive’, 'this is my body', the terms Pentecostal, mother of God, etc. I think great spiritual deception can easily happen when we allow a phrase to change the actual intent.

Originally, Psimmond asked about the phrase in relation to the Garden of Eden event, and specifically what did God mean when he said “… in the day that you eat from it you will surely die”
Yet if physical death were always a punishment, what would we do with the holy death of the martyrs? (Dizerner, July 12)
I might put out there that I am not a Universalist or Eternal Tormentist. I am a Conditionalist (Conditional Immortality), and that’s because I believe the unrepentant unbeliever 'eventually' experiences the death God assured us of in Genesis 2:17. Dizerner, I said that the death spoken of by God in Genesis ‘did not’ simply mean the death of the flesh, but the surety of the death of both flesh and spirit, eventually. You still are presuming I was speaking 'only' of the death of the body. Conditionalists believe that most all the death spoken of in scripture speaks of 'sure’ death, and that death is eventually: eternal death. Death means just that: death, and not something else (that is 'unless' you repent and have faith).

User avatar
jriccitelli
Posts: 1317
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 10:14 am
Location: San Jose, CA
Contact:

Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by jriccitelli » Tue Jul 15, 2014 10:43 am

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’. Thus any teaching that suggests God did ‘not’ mean ‘surely death’ in this verse is Satanic. Any teaching that seems to take away and change from the statement ‘sure death’ should set off warning bells. The day they ate they became mortal, they were removed from the tree of life, and God explains their fate in 3:19: Until you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; For you are dust, and to dust you shall return”

I have also heard the following idea from pulpits around the Genesis 3 account; the idea that 'Eve misquoted God', as if she misunderstood Adams instructions to God and thus quoted it differently or wrong. And, that this rephrasing of the statement was a clue to why she fell for the Serpents lie. I have long felt preachers quote this because they heard it ‘somewhere’ (from someone else’s sermon?). Yet in studying the statement I have found no fault in Eve’s statement. I feel the idea has no more credibility than saints in heaven growing wings. I could note hundreds of passages that are not repeated verbatim by other biblical writers and speakers, mainly because a statement is usually in the second or third person and disallows perfect verbatim.

“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. She had more first hand knowledge than us.

dizerner

Re: What does it mean to be spiritually dead?

Post by dizerner » Tue Jul 15, 2014 10:03 pm

[user account removed]
Last edited by dizerner on Sun Feb 19, 2023 1:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

Post Reply

Return to “Anthropology, Hamartiology, Soteriology”