A voice from the past in 1874!
“You said in 1869 that there was no change in Adam’s nature at the time he transgressed. Now you seem to say there was; I see in the same article (1869) you speak of condemnation ‘running in the blood,’ which looks like the same position you take now. Does not the threat, ‘dying thou shalt die,’ show that Adam was dying?”—(E.C.)
Answer:
Is there any difference in nature between a man in a state of health and a man dying of small pox? No. Both men have the same nature, but it is the same nature in different states. So Adam before and after transgression was the same nature, but in two different states—the second state being expressed by the word mortal or subject to death, which is not affirmable of the first. The sentence of death became a physical law of his being; hence it has passed on us who are derived from him. Its passing on us would be incomprehensible on any other principle. God’s sentences are carried out differently from man’s, who has no power beyond mechanical acts. When God decrees death, “we have the sentence of death in ourselves” (2 Cor. 1:9) as Paul expresses it. It is a law “working in our members.” When man decrees death, he has to carry it out with rope or guillotine. This difference has to be kept in view. We bear “the image of the earthy” in its second or condemned state, in which it became “heir” to “ills” unknown to the first. Hence the proverb. When the Dr. speaks of “nature unchanged taking its course,” he means nature unchanged into the spiritual body. He does not mean that the law of death, inoperative before, did not set in. He does not contradict himself. The glib assertion that he does only indicates the superficial thinking of the speaker. “Dying, thou shalt die” is a Hebraism not to be understood according to the English idiom. It occurs in the description of many other acts: e.g., “living thou shalt live;” “running thou shalt run;” “hearing, thou shalt hear,” &c., &c. It expresses both the act and the result as future to the time of speaking. Hence, when it was said to Adam, “dying thou shalt die,” it amounted to an intimation that the “dying” would not commence until transgression. No one having understanding of the Hebrew idiom would suggest that it meant he was dying.
Robert Roberts 1874
