THE DEATH OF ADAM.
The inquirer into the nature of man, and his condition in death, must
ever turn with the deepest interest to the record left us concerning the
father of our race. In Adam we have an account of the origin of the
human family, at once so simple and consistent that the jeers of
skepticism fall harmless at its feet, and science, in comparison, only
makes itself ridiculous, in trying to account for it in any other
manner. And in the sentence pronounced upon him when he fell under the
fearful guilt of transgression, we are shown to what condition death was
designed to reduce the human family. In the creation and death of Adam,
we have the account of the building up and the unbuilding of a human
being; and this case, being the first and most illustrious, must furnish
the precedent and establish the rule for the whole race.
Of the creation of Adam and the elements of which he was composed, we
have already spoken. The record brings to view a formation made wholly
of the dust of the ground. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of
the ground.” This body was endowed with a high and perfect organization,
and was quickened into life by the breath which the Lord breathed into
its nostrils. The body, before it was made alive, had no power to act;
the breath which was breathed into it could not of itself act; but the
body being quickened, the machinery set in motion by this vital
principle, all the phenomena of physical life and mental action at once
resulted.
The Author of this noblest of creative works, who must of necessity, as
the ruler over all, require the creatures of his hand to obey him, and
toward whom an exercise of love, and a voluntary and willing submission,
can alone constitute obedience, placed the man whom he had formed, as
was meet, upon a state of probation, to test his loyalty to his Maker.
The scene of his trial was the beautiful garden in which was everything
that was pleasant to the sight and good for food; and over all that
adorned or enriched his Eden home, with one exception, he had unlimited
control. The condition upon which he was to be tested is thus definitely
expressed:--
“And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden
thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof
thou shalt surely die.”
Adam and Eve could not mistake the requirement of this law, nor fail to
understand the intent of the penalty. And before Satan could cause his
temptation to make any impression on the mind of Eve, he had to
contradict this threatening, assuring her that they should not surely
die. A question of veracity was thus raised between God and Satan; and
strange to say, the theological world, in interpreting the penalty, have
virtually, with the exception of a small minority, sided with Satan.
This is seen in the interpretation which is commonly put on this
penalty, making it consist of three divisions: 1. Alienation of the soul
from God, the love of sin, and the hatred of holiness, called spiritual
death. 2. The separation of soul and body, called temporal death. 3.
Immediately after temporal death, the conscious torment of the soul in
hell, which is to have no end, and is called eternal death. The Baptist
Confession of Faith, Art. 5, says:--
“We believe that God made man upright; but he, sinning, involved himself
and posterity in death spiritual, temporal, and eternal; from all which
there is no deliverance but by Christ.”
Let us look at the different installments of this penalty, and see if
they will harmonize with the language in which the original threatening
is expressed: “Thou shalt surely die.” Adam incurred the penalty by
sinning. After he had sinned, he was a sinner. But a state of sin is
that state of alienation from God which the orthodox school make to be a
part of the penalty of his transgression. In this they take as the
_punishment_ of sin that which was simply its _result_; and they make
the sentence read, virtually, in this profoundly sensible manner: “In
the day that thou sinnest, thou shalt surely be a sinner!”
Because he wickedly became a sinner, and brought himself into a state of
alienation from God, the doom was pronounced upon him, “Thou shalt
surely die.” Could this mean eternal death? If so, Adam never could have
been released therefrom. But he is to be released from it; for “in
Christ shall all be made alive.”
These two installments, then, spiritual and eternal death, utterly fail
us, when brought to the test of the language in which the sentence is
expressed: one is nonsense, and the other an impossibility.
Temporal death alone remains to be considered; but the interpretation
which is given to this, completely nullifies the penalty, and makes
Satan to have been correct when he said, “Thou shalt not surely die.”
Temporal death is interpreted to mean the separation of the soul from
the body, the body alone to die, but the soul, which is called the real,
responsible man, to enter upon an enlarged and higher life. In this
case, there is no death; and the sentence should have read, In the day
thou eatest thereof, thou shalt be freed from the clog of this mortal
body, and enter upon a new and eternal life. So said Satan, “Ye shall be
as gods;” and true to this assertion from the father of lies, the
heathen have all along deified their dead men, and worshiped their
departed heroes; and modern poets have sung, “There is no death; what
seems so is transition.” If ever the skill of a deceiver and the
gullibility of a victim were manifested in an unaccountable degree, it
is in this fact, that right in the face and eyes of the pale throng that
daily passes down through the gate of death, the devil can make men
believe that after all his first lie was true, and there is no such
thing as death.
From these considerations, it is evident that nothing will meet the
demands of the sentence but the cessation of the life of the whole man.
But that, says one, cannot be, for he was to die in the very day he ate
of the forbidden fruit; but he did not literally die for nine hundred
and thirty years. If this is an objection against the view we advocate,
it is equally such against every other. Take the threefold penalty above
noticed. If death spiritual, death temporal, and death eternal, was the
penalty, how much was fulfilled on the day he sinned? Not death eternal,
surely, and not death temporal, which did not take place for nine
hundred and thirty years, but only death spiritual. But this was only
the first installment of the penalty, and far less important than the
other two. The most that the friends of this interpretation can say,
therefore, is that the penalty begun on that very day to be fulfilled.
But we can say as much with our view. “Dying, thou shalt die,” reads the
margin; which some understand to mean, thou shalt inherit a mortal
nature, and the process of decay shall commence. As soon as he sinned,
he came under the sentence of death, and the work commenced. He bore up
against the encroachments of dissolution for nine hundred and thirty
years, and then the work was fully accomplished.
When God proceeded to pronounce sentence upon Adam, he gave us an
authoritative interpretation of the penalty from which there is no
appeal. Gen. 3:19: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till
thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: _for dust
thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return_.”
The return to dust is here made a subsequent event, to be preceded by a
period of wearing toil. And being finally overcome by the labors and
ills of life, the person addressed was to return again to the dust from
which he was taken. With Adam, this process commenced on the very day he
transgressed, and the penalty threatened, which covered all this work
from beginning to end, was executed in full when this process was fully
completed in Adam’s death, nine hundred and thirty years thereafter.
Two things are connected together in the penalty affixed to Adam’s
disobedience. These are the words, day and die: In the _day_ thou
eatest, thou shalt _die_. The dying, whatever view we take of it, must
include temporal or literal death. But this was not accomplished on that
very day. Therefore, to find a death which was inflicted on that literal
day, a figurative sense is given to the word die, and it is claimed that
a spiritual death was that day wrought upon Adam. But we inquire, If
either of these terms, day or die, are to be taken figuratively, why not
let the dying be literal, and the day be figurative, especially since
the sentence which God pronounced upon Adam, when he came up for trial,
shows that literal death, and that only, was intended in the penalty?
The use of the word day in such a sense, meaning an indefinite period of
time, is of frequent occurrence in the Scriptures. An instance in point
occurs in 1 Kings 2:36-46. King Solomon bound Shimei by an oath to
remain in Jerusalem, under the sentence that on the day he went out in
any direction, he should be slain. After three years, two of his
servants ran away to Gath, and he went after them. It was then told
Solomon that Shimei had been to Gath and returned. Solomon sent for him,
reminded him of the conditions on which his life was suspended, and the
oath he had broken, and then commanded the executioner to put him to
death.
Gath was some twenty-five miles from Jerusalem. That Shimei could go
there and get his servants, return, be sent for by Solomon, and be tried
and executed, all on the same day, is a supposition by no means
probable, even if it is possible. Yet in his death the sentence was
fulfilled, that on the day he went out he should be slain. Because on
the very day he passed out of the city, the only condition that held
back the execution of the sentence was removed, and he was virtually a
dead man.
So with Adam. He was immediately cut off from the tree of life, his
source of physical vitality. So much was executed on that very day.
Death was then his inevitable portion, to be accomplished within the
limits of that period covered by the word, day.
We are very well aware of the method adopted to evade the conclusion
which naturally follows from the language of the sentence in Gen. 3:19.
This, it is claimed, was spoken only of the body, not of the soul. The
poetry of Longfellow,
“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul,”
takes much better with most people than the plain language of
inspiration itself.
To whom, then, or to what, was this sentence addressed, “Dust thou art,
and unto dust shalt thou return”? Admitting that there is such a
creature of the imagination as the popular, independent, immortal soul,
was the language addressed to that or to the body? If there is such a
soul as this, what does it constitute, on the authority of the friends
of that theory, themselves? It is the real, responsible, intelligent
man. Watson says, “It is the soul _only_ which perceives pain or
pleasure, which suffers or enjoys;” and D. D. Whedon says, “It is the
soul that hears, feels, tastes, and smells, through its sensorial
organs.” The sentence, then, would be addressed to that which could
hear; the penalty would be pronounced upon that which could feel. The
body, in the common view, is only an irresponsible instrument, the means
by which the soul acts. It can, of itself, neither see, hear, feel,
will, or act. Who then will have the hardihood to assert that God
addressed his sentence to the irresponsible instrument, the body merely?
This would be the same as for the judge in a criminal court to proceed
deliberately to address the knife with which the murderer had taken the
life of his victim, and pronounce sentence upon that, instead of the
murderer himself. Away with a view which offers to the Majesty of Heaven
the insult of representing that he acts in this way!
In the sentence, the personal pronoun, _thy_, is once, and the personal
pronoun, _thou_, is five times, applied to the Adam whom God addressed.
“In the sweat of _thy_ face, shalt _thou_ eat bread, till _thou_ return
unto the ground; for out of it wast _thou_ taken: for dust _thou_ art,
and unto dust shalt _thou_ return.” When we address our fellowmen by the
different personal pronouns of our language, what do we address? The
conscious, intelligent, responsible man, that which sees, feels, hears,
thinks, acts, and is morally accountable. But this, in popular parlance,
is the soul; these pronouns must every time stand for the soul. The
pronouns thy and thou, in Gen. 3:19, must then mean Adam’s soul. If they
do not mean it here, how does the same pronoun, thou, in Luke 23:43,
mean the thief’s soul, when Christ said to him, “This day shalt _thou_
be with me in paradise”? or the _I_ and _my_ in 2 Pet. 1:14, refer to
Peter’s soul, as we are told they do, when he says, “Knowing that
shortly I must put off this my tabernacle.” Our friends must be
consistent and uniform in their interpretations. If in these instances
the pronouns do not refer to the soul, then these strong proof-texts, to
which the immaterialist always appeals, are abandoned: if they do here
refer to the soul, they must likewise in Gen. 3:19, refer to the soul.
In that language, then, God addresses Adam’s soul; and we have the
authority of Jehovah himself, the Creator of man, against whose
sentence, and the sunlight of whose word, it does not become puny
mortals to oppose their shallow dictums, and the rushlight of human
reason, that man’s soul is wholly mortal, and that in the dissolution of
death it goes back to dust again! There is no avoiding this conclusion;
and it forever settles the question of man’s condition in death. It
shows that the intermediate state must be one in which the conscious man
has lost his consciousness, the intelligent man his intelligence, the
responsible man his responsibility, and in which all the powers of his
being, mental, emotional, and physical, have ceased to act.
No further argument need be introduced to show that the Adamic penalty
was literal death, and that it reduced the whole man to a condition of
unconsciousness and decay. But a few additional considerations will show
that the popular view is cumbered with absurdities on every hand so
plain that they should have proved their own antidote, and saved the
doctors of theology from the preposterous definitions they have attached
to death.
We have the authority of Paul for stating that through Christ we are
released from all the penalty which the race has incurred through Adam’s
transgression. “As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made
alive.” If the death in which we are involved through Adam is death
spiritual, temporal, and eternal, then all the race is redeemed from
these through Christ, and Universalism is the result.
Again, Christ tasted death for every man. He hath redeemed us from the
curse of the law, being made a curse for us. That is, Christ died the
same death for us which was introduced into the world by Adam’s sin. Was
this death eternal? If so, the Saviour is gone, and the plan of
salvation can never be carried into effect.
In Rom. 5:12-14, occurs this remarkable passage:--
“Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and _death_ by sin;
and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (For until
the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no
law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that
had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the
figure of Him that was to come.)”
In the first part of the verse Paul speaks of the death that came in by
Adam’s sin, and then says that it reigned from Adam to Moses over them
that had not sinned. From this language, accepting the popular
interpretation of the Adamic penalty, we must come to the intolerable
conclusion that personally sinless beings from Adam to Moses were
consigned to eternal misery! From such a sentiment, every fiber of our
humanity recoils with horror. We cannot stifle the feeling that it is an
outrage upon the character of God, and therefore cannot be true. The
death threatened Adam was literal death, not eternal life in misery.
To the view that the Adamic penalty was simply literal death, many
eminent men have given their unqualified adhesion.
John Locke (_Reasonableness of Christianity_, s. 1,) says:--
“By reason of Adam’s transgression all men are mortal and come to
die.... It seems a strange way of understanding a law which requires the
plainest and directest words, that by death should be meant eternal life
in misery.... I confess that by death, here, I can understand nothing
but a ceasing to be, the losing of all actions of life and sense. Such a
death came upon Adam and all his posterity, by his first disobedience in
paradise, under which death they should have lain forever had it not
been for the redemption by Jesus Christ.”
Isaac Watts (_Ruin and Recovery of Mankind_, s. 3), though he was a
believer in the immortality of the soul, has the candor to say:--
“There is not one place of Scripture that occurs to me, where the word
death as it was threatened in the law of innocency, necessarily
signifies a certain miserable immortality of the soul, either to Adam,
the actual sinner, or to his posterity.”
Dr. Taylor says:--
“Death was to be the consequence of his [Adam’s] disobedience, and the
death here threatened can be opposed only to that life God gave Adam
when he created him.”
With two more considerations we close this chapter:--
1. Adam was on probation. Life and death were set before him. “In the
day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,” said God. The only
promise of life he had in case of disobedience came from one whom it is
not very flattering to the advocates of a natural immortality to call
the first propounder and natural ally of their system. But had Adam been
endowed with a natural immortality, it could not have been suspended on
his obedience. But it was so suspended, as we learn from the first pages
of revelation. It was, therefore, not absolute, but contingent. Immortal
he might become by obedience to God; disobeying, he was to die. He did
disobey, and was driven from the garden. “And now,” said God, “lest he
put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and
_live forever_;”--therefore, the cherubim and flaming sword were placed
to exclude forever his approach to the life-giving tree. Quite the
reverse of an uncontingent immortality is certainly brought to view
here. Adam could bequeath to his posterity no higher nature than he
himself possessed. The stream, that commencing just outside the garden
of Eden, has flowed down through the lapse of six thousand years, has
certainly never risen higher than the fountain head; and we may be sure
we possess no superior endowments in this respect to those of Adam.
2. The second consideration under this head is, the exhortations we have
in the word of God to _seek_ for immortality, if we would obtain it.
“Seek the Lord, and ye shall live,” is his declaration to the house of
Israel. Amos 5:4, 6. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is
eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Rom. 6:23. Gift to whom?
To every man, irrespective of character? By no means; but gift _through_
Christ, to them only who are his. Again, “To them who by patient
continuance in well-doing _seek_ for glory, honor, and immortality [God
will render], eternal life.” Rom. 2:7. Varying the language of the
apostle a little, we may here inquire, What a man _hath_, why doth he
yet seek for? The propriety of seeking for that which we already have,
is something in regard to which it yet remains that we be enlightened by
the advocates of the dominant theology.