In Genesis the serpent tells Eve that essentially God lied to her and that she would not surely die as God said would happen if she ate from the forbidden tree. Most evangelicals believe this was a spiritual death which ocurred. Could it be referring to physical death though??? What is the Hebrew word for death and is it the same word for death everywhere in the Bible?? Most YEC as well as other strict literalists hold it must be physical death as no death happened before the Fall. What then to explain dinosaurs and neanderthals then?? Could it be Adam & Eve represent the archetype of all created in the image of God and thus possessing spiritual life as well as physical?? The tense and voice used in the statement doesn’t have to mean they would die immediately right?? It could mean death would happen to them at some point now. What say ye??
I think (without looking it up) that it says “in the day ye eat of it, ye shall surely die” or something close to that. That said, I’m not (any longer) a YEC. I accept the theory of evolution as being as near as we can come in this present day to a physical creation story. So far as I (or anyone else) can tell, God alone could have added the spark that became life. I’m not set in stone on this, but I think your archetypal representation of humans by Adam and Eve is likely true. I see God waiting until a species developed the cognitive ability to sustain consciousness, and imparting His likeness to that species–which turned out to be us. That’s not to say I see Him stopping with humans necessarily. It seems possible and even probable to me that He means for all the species to become so developed. But like I say, that’s just me and my musings.
As for the Bible having different words for spiritual and physical death, I don’t think it does. I’m a little bit crippled here because I’m on a new computer and haven’t got my e-sword transferred over yet (because I’m not sure how to do that). I need to take the whole shebang over to my SIL to do for me and haven’t gotten around to it yet. So . . . I couldn’t say whether there are separate words for death. I haven’t researched that in particular but it’s a good idea. I will say that I haven’t come across any particular words for death that would be used for physical as opposed to spiritual death. Also that in reading scripture, it seems to me that God lightly regards physical death in comparison to spiritual death. I believe He was speaking of spiritual death when He warned A&E not to eat of the TOKOGE. (That’s tree of the knowledge of good and evil in case you didn’t figure that out. 
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The Tree of Life (TOL) to me represents Jesus. “This is the bread that comes down from Heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die . . . I am that bread that has come down from Heaven . . .” The TOL represents living by the life of God. The TOKOGE represents living by our own cleverness. We get the life and with it comes all the knowledge we need whenever we need it, by eating of the TOL. It’s not knowledge that’s bad. It’s independence from our Father and from one another. Choosing the TOKOGE was a vote for autonomy–self-determination–independence. While it’s a good thing to be independent from bad things or from leeching off others’ efforts, etc., it’s a very bad thing to fancy ourselves independent of our Father God. We see the results of this prideful independence all around us, wherever there is suffering and anger and self-righteousness, and on and on. THAT is the death that comes of eating the fruit of the TOKOGE.
I’m sure there are many, many, many more lessons to be learned from the Eden Narrative, but this is what it’s taught me (in part) thus far. As always, discretion is advised.
Another way to understand this is, “In the day that you eat from it, the death process in you will begin.”
Cindy- as per your norm you again share excellent musings 
I hope more comment on all you shared because, as you noted, it really is an area not greatly studied as far as i have seen. The interesting twist i see in all of it is, when you look at the human family, the goal of parents is to raise kids who become independent mature adults. Is it immature independence God did not want for His created children??/ Death is the ultimate enemy and the last one to be defeated. Do you think A&E fully understood the ramifications of death and all it meant?? hy is there no backstory on the serpent?? I think this leads so many to see the serpent as satan because there is no background info on him. You raise some more interesting points into why God had to go through a process of creation before getting a species of human with full cognitive,emotional,willful and imaginative capabilities. If God is totally omniscient shouldn’t He have known what ultimately would become the human race as we are today?? I also want to include in this the secret things They are said to beling to God alone, but of course man desires to know as much as he can, even as much as God. Why is there such mystery and unknowing about life after death?? Many on here have noted Scripture is pretty scant overall on that subject. What purpose does God have in limiting our knowledge of it???
Paidion- good reading there my friend.
A few more of my ideas for us all to hash out. Look forward to seeing what all of you put forth
Hi Robert - good topic.
For me, the following verse sheds some light on the death in Genesis:
For me, Christ’s death and resurrection were physical and so the death which Adam brought was of the same type. As Paidion put it, the day they ate of the fruit, death entered into their being.
But this gives me a problem: “Since by man came death” IMO means that death had not entered the world until Adam sinned. That, IMO, is the plain reading of the text. And that presents a problem if I am to embrace current evolutionary ideas.
I agree that it would be much more convenient for me to interpret it differently (in the light of current scientific thinking) and say that, well, perhaps it means spiritual death entered the world, or the first “made-in-His-image-man” would not have experienced death if he had not sinned (even though the animal kingdom was full of death). But if I were to interpret it this way, I can’t help thinking that I am just contorting the texts in order to try to eliminate the contradiction with modern science. Too convenient!
So at present, unless anyone can enlighten me, I have to live with a seeming contradiction between what scripture is saying and what TofE teaches. But I’d rather live with that contradiction than pretend the texts say something which IMO they don’t.
Not quite on topic, but something I had thought I would share after reading Cindy’s post on evolution and the potential of all species coming to that maturity.
Observe the known universe. The smallest (that we know of) is a Quark. Many of these form Electron, Proton and Neutrons and these form an Atom. An Atom forms into all things physical. For example, bacteria… This bacteria forms colonies and allows us something more sophisticated to operate, such as our gut. Basically, what I am saying is this. Who are we to think we are the pinnacle of this creation? We might be as bacteria are to us in some greater life form. Seriously. Why are we so special? Just because we have self-awareness? Perhaps the universe looks at us and doesn’t believe we have this self-awareness. To them, they are the only ones self-aware… Perhaps, bacteria that live in our gut and very well aware of their existence. Perhaps.
It just seems so very arrogant to think we are something greater than we may be or to think of less forms as less than we. Perhaps we are nothing. Many people want to say humans will live forever and all my reconciled to God. Ok, but then do bacteria also become reconciled to God? No, you say? Why? Just because we don’t perceive their self-awareness? The Bible wasn’t written to them? Perhaps they have their own type of Bible.
This might seem far out, but I really don’t think it is at all. We are not even the size of a bacteria in the eyes of the universe and to think the universe was created for Humans is utterly arrogant. Perhaps we were created for something else, above us. Many would say, of course, God. But… What if our sole existence is to feed another’s existence? Then what are we? Nothing more than microbes to be disposed of and forgotten.
While I am a hopeful universalist, I am really leaning towards all things being reconciled, even bacteria, or if not that then the possibility of no one being reconciled. Just one big cosmic recycling job. Even so, lets say God doesn’t grant immortality, can we accuse him of wrong? I don’t believe so. We can certainly accuse him of wrong if he were to torture us. But if he were to simply create us to live out our existence and die and be no more, we can hardly fault him. If that was our intended purpose. A lot of this really hinges on the Bible and how we choose to interpret it.
I was at Perkins and noticed an old fella with his wife. I had a scary moment. That is going to be me in 30-40 years. There is nothing I can do about it. Nothing. I can dream, wish, strive, but the fact is I am going to get old, become decrepit and eventually die. Will I be raised again? I honestly don’t know. Do I hope? Of course. But, maybe my problem is the obsession with wanting to live forever. Should I not be content to live the life God has given me and thank him as I die for allowing me to experience life? Can I be angry with God for not giving me guaranteed immortality before I die? This is my main difficulty. I don’t think I can and I think my time is better served living in this world and making the most of it. Leaving the world a better place than before I came. Maybe.
But it really makes me ponder. Perhaps the true sons of God are the ones who don’t believe there is anything after death, but still strive and work for the betterment of humanity. I guess that is more noble to me, because they are not working for a carrot on the stick. They are just doing what they believe is right. They believe in helping those that come after them when it does not benefit them at all. I think these people will have a special place in the Kingdom.
To answer the OP - I believe the verse is talking about physical death, not spiritual death. I don’t think anyone spiritually ‘died’ that day. In fact, I would argue that was the first step towards their maturity. We as humans train our children to be independent. Perhaps that is the result of the fall, but it sure seems to me that this wasn’t a ‘fall’ but a planned lesson for humanity. To think that God didn’t know what would happen is an insult to Him. To think that God knew this would happen and damn us for it with no hope of rescue is to insult his goodness. Either way you look at it, God is inept or a monster if you view Adam and Eve as a mistake that wasn’t supposed to happen. It was supposed to happen and God knew it.
I for one will go in to bat for the “death” in view here being primarily “spiritual” thus “relation” or “covenantal” being experienced in real terms as “separation from God” – or as in biblical parlance, “exile”.
As I understand it… simply read this means Adam died (obviously not physically) on the day he ate thereof. There is no “process” of physical death to be found in this passage but rather an expressed Hebrew idiom (a form of expression having a significance other than the literal one) by the repetitious “die, die”; the differences in verbal tensing do not affect this Hebraism.
The words translated “you shall surely die” is the combination of the infinitive absolute form of the Hebrew verb “mvōṯ” <מ֥וֹת> (surely [die]) followed by the future form of the same Hebrew verb “tāmuṯ” <תָּמֽוּת> (die). In the Hebrew, when a word or short phrase is sequentially repeated it intensifies its given meaning (not dissimilar to the likes of Jer 7:4 and Ezek 16:6) emphasising its unequivocal or definitive position of certainty. For example in the NT Jesus would say… “amen! amen!” meaning “truly truly!” meaning ‘with absolute surety!’ Gen 2:17 literally means without fear of contradiction “you SHALL SURELY die!” and that, not “eventually” or inevitable, BUT imperatively so.
And in this instance, according to this verse “…in the day…” Again, NOT talking about the beginnings of a “process” but rather with strong overtones of the immediate execution of divine judicial sentence being at hand; thus “spiritually”. Sin-death (relational separation from God) came via the first Adam and was defeated via the last Adam.
Anyway some of this was discussed already over HERE.
I’ve thought about this too, Robert–the thing about human parents raising kids to be independent, I mean. In Jesus’ day it wasn’t quite like it is in our time, which may be significant. Families lived in family compounds from the oldest grandfather to the tiniest little baby girl. So while physical death does eventually force us to be independent from our parents, I’m not sure it was quite that way in Jesus’ day. In truth, I’m not at all sure that the way we live today is the ideal for the human race. In any case, I don’t believe the scriptures teach that we are to be independent of God (or of one another, either, for that matter.)
I’m pretty sure A&E had no idea what God was talking about. And since I see them as archetypes, I think they probably DID understand physical death. But He had opened their eyes to know Him. I really do think that is the death He warned them of.
On the one hand, I think that a lot of what we attribute to Satan might better be attributed to our own adversary within–our fleshly nature that is always in opposition to the spiritual. On the other hand, I do think scripture contains more than adequate reasons to see Satan as a personal being as opposed to a mere representation of that fleshly nature. It doesn’t get talked about very much–not enough at all for us to develop anything like a comprehensive understanding of angels. I figure that if God wants us to know, He’ll tell us–because He certainly hasn’t told us a whole lot in His written word. It’s not something I worry about very much.
I don’t know how God could help knowing all the things there are to know. Unlike Paidion (who will almost certainly challenge me on this ) I think the current theories of time are more or less correct. If time then, is a matter of perspective, and if you could gain the correct perspective, that would enable you to see all of time, then certainly God, who IS eternity, knows every moment of it. It’s more than this mind can hold, but then there are very many things I do not yet understand, so that doesn’t trouble me.
As to why God limits our knowledge of life after death, maybe it’s just so that we can focus on our lessons in this now we’re living in. There’s quite a lot to occupy us here, and I have a very long way to go in becoming all that Father desires as He molds me into the image of His Son. I think that’s what we’re supposed to focus on, while knowing all the while that we are safe in His arms. To live is Christ and to die is gain. In the present, we’re supposed to focus on the first part of that equation, I think.
I don’t think that the death spoken of in Genesis was referring to the afterlife or to physical death in the sense that this is why we grow old and die. As we can see, everything on the earth has a life cycle, including man. When our time is up, we leave this life to others and it goes on in a continuous cycle through the process of reproduction. This is the way that God made it. I believe the death that occurs is (as Cindy made some excellent points), the loss of God’s Spirit in our lives, as well as premature physical death ( war, destruction, etc.) when we choose not to walk according to God.
To me, the process of how life began is unknowable. I neither believe in evolution on the grand scale that many scientists suggest, nor would I say that the human race started with only two people as many Christians believe. The afterlife is also unknowable. I agree with Gabe ( another great post, by the way). It would be like trying to explain to an ant the life of a human. My personal belief is that the answers to these things will remain unknown in this life. What we do know is that there is a God who loves us, that His word is the only way to live and this is what the bible explains.
As for Adam and Eve, we all know the story because it is played out right in front of our very eyes. They were raised in God’s word and knew the way of the Lord but were deceived by the ways of the world. The serpent, being the most cunning of all creatures, is the man with the forked tongue, speaking good things, but behind the façade is a liar, cheat and deceiver ( Matthew 12:34, Psalms 58:3, Deuteronomy 32:31-33, Isaiah 59:4-5, Matthew 23:33). In other words, they are the wolves in sheep’s clothing, promising the world, having all the answers, but are only seeking power and glory for themselves. We know these people-the snake oil salesman, the spin doctor, the politician who buys votes, the lawyer who promises big settlements etc. etc. Following them is our downfall. It is the downfall of our individual lives as well as the downfall of our societies. But, through all of this we learn a lesson; that God’s word is true,( which we should have trusted to begin with), it never dies, and should we walk in it, we will receive the blessings of life. There is hope. As the story goes on to tell us, after Adam and Eve realized what they had done, suffering the consequences of their actions, God in His love for them gave them new clothes (Genesis 3:21). He brought them out of the Garden of Eden to start their lives over again, renewed in the word of God. This story is repeated throughout the bible; Noah and the flood, Abraham, Lot, the Exodus etc. From the beginning of the bible to it’s end, we see God’s love for us and the redeeming power of His Spirit and His word.
Robert said:
Oops! I should have said “LLC said.” Sorry!
Wow! Great observations, Robert! I’d love to hear you expound further on this. How do you see the expulsion from the Garden as “starting their lives over again”? That part isn’t clear to me, but I’m very much open to hearing more.
Hi Cindy- much as i would delight in taking claim for this comment, it belongs to LLC. 
I agree with you it is a very good analysis if the story which is humanity and God. I fully agree we see exactly what LLC said happening again and again. Life death resurrection occur over and over again each time we fall and need to start over again with God.My question would be as to the reality of our sinful nature preventing us from always 100% walking in complete obedience to God and i would suggest His love covers us even so.I think life is always about wrestling with God, seeking God, being fully invested in a relationshipe with God as opposed to going our own way ignoring God or His wanting relationship with us.
I would say to Davo and others who say the primary focus is to be on THIS life, yes we should keep it as a primary focus BUT… we also NEED a hope and faith in a life in eternity because this life is fraught with pain and many times meaninglessness. I am referring to Ecclesiastes here. For so many throughout life here it has basically sucked. Nothing but war,death pain misery hunger you name it. Jesus declared in the world you shall have tribulation but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world There is a verse that says God has placed eternity in our hearts. For me, life here has too much opposition to love,to God and to the desires He wants for it because of the fall and its aftermath, to accept it as being all there is. Just my thoughts.
Most evangelicals believe this was a spiritual death which ocurred. Could it be referring to physical death though???
I think Peter said a day to God is like a thousand years so since Adam died in just under a thousand years, maybe?
Oops! Sorry, Robert (and LLC). I edited my comment. As for what you DID just say, Robert, I completely agree.
Robert… you would be reading me way wrong to assume THIS LIFE is “all there is” as I’m NOT saying that. I’m merely highlighting “this life” i.e., the one God created and gave us, as being the primary focus of Scripture etc.
I think “things” were as I suggest above and yet I’m inclined to see how those “things” have played out since much as LLC describes.
Cindy- thanks my friend. I liked how what you said earlier focused so much on relationally staying connected to God.
Davo- my apologies mate i wasn’t trying to imply you were saying that this life is all there is. i was trying to agree with you about the need to maintain focus on this life as opposed to just letting it go to hell since heaven is what matters. I was also trying to focus on the mistake i think others make to actually believe this is all there is and we should happily accept that. For me, as i said, just too much pain and God acting in too much love for that to be the case. I KNOW you believe more is to come buddy!!! 
I understand that too, Davo, that you don’t believe “this is all there is.” That said, if I had to focus primarily on this life, I’m not sure how I’d carry on.
Robert, Cindy, Thanks for you comments. To elaborate further on the Garden of Eden, I believe that Adam and Eve were renewed in the word of God for several reasons. They were raised in the word of God and made in His image. We know that the word of God ( the seed: Luke 8:11) and the spirit of God never die. Yes, they both had been deceived by the serpent, and in negligence of their duties in tending to and keeping the garden, I would say that the place fell apart (overtaken by “thorns and thistles”), and was destined for destruction. But, God called them forth ( Genesis 3:9).
Again, in verse 21 we see that God clothed them, indicating that they were made clean as in the following verses:
Isaiah 61:10 “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness.”
Genesis 35:2 “Put away the foreign gods that are among you, purify yourselves, and change your garments.”
Exodus 19:10 "The Lord said to Moses, “Go to the people and sanctify them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their clothes.”
In verse 23, God sends Adam out of the garden to till the soil, meaning that he was to make the ground fertile again and plant a new garden (rebuild). I would assume that since the “serpent” and the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” remained in the garden, they then fell to destruction, while Adam and Eve carried the seed ( the word) out of the garden and thus continued on in God’s word. The tree of life is said to have been placed east of the garden of Eden.
Wow, very interesting, LLC. That’s an entirely new way of looking at this story for me. I shall ponder . . . .