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represented as a separation of body and soul, Eccl. 12:7 (comp. Gen. 2:7); Jas. 2:26, an idea that
is also basic to such passages as John 19:30; Acts 7:59; Phil. 1:23. Cf. also the use of exodus in
Luke 9:31; II Pet. 1:15,16. In view of all this it may be said that, according to Scripture, physical
death is a termination of physical life by the separation of body and soul. It is never an
annihilation, though some sects represent the death of the wicked as such. God does not
annihilate anything in His creation. Death is not a cessation of existence, but a severance of the
natural relations of life. Life and death are not opposed to each other as existence and non-
existence, but are opposites only as different modes of existence. It is quite impossible to say
exactly what death is. We speak of it as the cessation of physical life, but then the question
immediately arises, Just what is life? And we have no answer. We do not know what life is in its
essential being, but know it only in its relations and actions. And experience teaches us that,
where these are severed and cease, death enters. Death means a break in the natural relations
of life. It may be said that sin is per se death, because it represents a break in the vital relation
in which man, as created in the image of God, stands to his Maker. It means the loss of that
image, and consequently disturbs all the relations of life. This break is also carried through in
that separation of body and soul which is called physical death.
B. THE CONNECTION OF SIN AND DEATH.
Pelagians and Socinians teach that man was created mortal, not merely in the sense that he
could fall a prey to death, but in the sense that he was, in virtue of his creation, under the law
of death, and in course of time was bound to die. This means that Adam was not only
susceptible to death, but was actually subject to it before he fell. The advocates of this view
were prompted primarily by the desire to evade the proof for original sin derived from the
suffering and death of infants. Present day science seems to support this position by stressing
the fact that death is the law of organized matter, since it carries within it the seed of decay and
dissolution. Some of the early Church Fathers and some later theologians, such as Warburton
and Laidlaw, take the position that Adam was indeed created mortal, that is, subject to the law
of dissolution, but that the law was effective in his case only because he sinned. If he had
proved himself to be obedient, he would have been exalted to a state of immortality. His sin
brought about no change in his constitutional being in this respect, but under the sentence of
God left him subject to the law of death, and robbed him of the boon of immortality, which he
might have had without experiencing death. On this view the actual entrance of death, of
course, remains penal. It is a view which might be made to fit in very well with the
supralapsarian position, but is not demanded by this. In reality this theory merely seeks to
square the facts, as they are revealed in the Word of God, with the dicta of science, but even
these do not make it imperative. Suppose that science had proved conclusively that death
reigned in the vegetable and animal world before the entrance of sin, then it would not yet