Adam nor Eve ever had access to “The Tree of Life. Error one. Christ “did have a fallen nature”. Error two.
A bold and arrogant man who is fool enough to slander a celestial being and brag about it.

I agree with your assesment of differance between the sin nature and fallen nature. As I understand Paul “all of creation” was made subject to the fall because of Adam’s rebellion.
I am not sure if I agree with your assesment of the trees. The way that I have read the seperation in the garden was that if adam ever once took of the tree of life there would no longer be a possibility of death; either before or after the tree of knowledge. Imo the trees were a choice, trust God and take of the tree of life or call God a liar and take of the tree of knowledge.
Bodily resurection of lost does have some sticky problems to it. I have been taught that it would happen and that they would be in a continuous state of decay (the image of a zombie with body parts falling off always came up) but you have given me more to think about.

Michael,

I appreciate your comments, especially your distinguishing between
the fallen and sinful natures and I will heed your warning and
take it under advisement.

You’ve touched on an issue that I’ve been wondering about and
hope that you can shed some light on. I have been hanging with
friends from a denomination that adheres to the doctrine of
conditional immortality – the belief that, at Christ’s second coming,
believers receive eternal life and unbelievers “suffer complete
extinction of being”. I’d be grateful for your thoughts on this
matter.

One thing I have learned, (as a result of interacting with humanity) is not to jump on the band wagon or the train, with out first understanding all the issues.
That is really what is being discussed here issues about whether or not Christ would have died had he not been killed.
Just a side note, some times I wonder and I do this daily it seems of late, do we as people, as believers in a non-believing world. Search for things that will do nothing to usher in new Christians? I understand in the 21st century we are becoming techno-literate of all things, including the ability to dissect religion in consumable bits that makes our understanding an easier pill to swallow, to appease our appetite for knowledge.
Ok I am getting carried away with another subject, sorry for that.

But I think it does have some merit as we try to understand this issue about Christ living beyond and dieing a natural death or even another attempt on his life.
I just do not know, even if it were possible would it have been allowable. After all, the whole purpose was to die that we may live, and the text also said of a virgin birth implying without a man’s input if you will (I believe somewhere else there was a topic about sin being passed down thru the man).
Now this may conflict with the tree of life both in the garden and hence later in the end of time in the new earth.
The Tree has purpose, but IMO is not tied directly to Christ in that, Christ was no mere mortal man and had no need to be part of that which was purposed for humanity. I will have to admit I have not thought this thru as to how the tree plays the role in the end (will we be human in some fashion or of spiritual dimensions and why the tree if the latter?).

I would speculate that Christ would have not died had he not been put to death that is, his purpose would have been contaminated and the saving effect, they all Christians revere would have been for naught.
He very well could have left the plain of this earth within a blink of an eye never to return and curse us and started over again from scratch, and then maybe not, just set back and let humanity weed itself out, through whatever mechanism, i.e. nuclear war, natural disasters such as asteroid impact, global warming and you get the idea, in the end the strong will have survived.

Another thing though, if we put to much focus on this we really do miss the mark, life naturally or spiritually lived. God would have had no reason to allow himself in a triune sense to carry on what had already been destined from the beginning.
And that is another subject, which until the end of my life I will truly never understand, why do anything at all? Why create man in the first place? Sometimes this type of questioning and trying to answer sessions, makes me feel like we are in one giant lab experiment under God’s microscope.

Sorry Michael, I’ll stay off the train this go around, could not happen, Jesus is 100% man yes and also 99.999 % God. I will bow out and use my escape Deut. 29:29.
Thanks for letting me post. I had the day off!!!!

Hi Michael,

Every time I try to blog I end up deleting what I’ve written because my thoughts sound better in my head than on paper, but here it goes anyway. This is a really interesting question. I’ve thought about the dual nature of Christ, but never exactly from this perspective. I feel that Christ would have died if he wasn’t killed simply because he was human while on earth. If he did not have the capability of dying physically, he would not have been able to represent humanity. As humans we have dual natures in the sense that we are both good and evil. In order for Christ to be our representative, he needed to be of a dual nature as well….human in order to represent our human/sinful nature and God in order to represent our “godly” nature and to have power over our sinful nature. If Christ were not able to suffer and die physically then his suffering would not have been the sacrifice that is was.
My thoughts on “the consequence of sin is physical death”. I used to believe that physical death was a punishment for sin, but recently I’ve started thinking it’s more of a blessing. Though aspects of this life are great, living with our sinful nature and its’ consequences for all eternity would in a sense be “hell”. So, upon physical death we either “shed” our evil nature and live with God for all eternity or “shed” our good nature and live in “hell”. So, if we chose to follow Christ, then physical death is not really a punishment, but an opportunity to live in our godly natures for all eternity.

Claudette

Hey Michael,

I agree that the Lord may have encountered colds, cuts, sprains and scapes like all humans do. I do have a problem seeing that as having a fallen nature. If the fallen nature is a result of sin then how can Christ be the “Spotless lamb who takes away the sin of the world”?

It is not an impossible thing or far fetched to have a human being without a fallen nature. Adam was given a crack at it and he failed. Christ is the second Adam and where the first failed Jesus did not.

The scripture states ” He made Him who {knew} no sin..” (2 Cor 5:21) the word used there for know “carries the idea of knowing on the basis of some sort of intimate or personel relation..” does it not?

I have a few other thoghts but this is the first one and I will post them but I want to give the floor to you or others.

Michael,

You certainly raise some interesting and valid points. I’m not sure that I agree with your distinction between the sinful and fallen nature but I don’t believe that any distinction is technically necessary in order to posit that Jesus would have died physically.

I believe a very common misconception is that Adam was created either immortal or perfect–I don’t believe either to be true. I agree with your assessment that being restricted access from the tree of life is what ultimately caused physical death but I believe that this physical death was always impending even while Adam had access. As I’m sure you are aware, the phrase translated “you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17) is the Hebrew “mot tamut” which is intensive and that translation is certainly accurate, but there is another way the phrase can be translated and one that makes good sense in the context of the Genesis 2-3. We could also render it to say, “dying you shall die” which would lead to a conclusion that Adam was already dying but disobeying the command of God would either A) Certainly result in physical death, B) Result in spiritual death, or C) Result in both. I take C. to be the best explanation as we see that Adam was both separated from the presence of God (spiritual death) and ultimately died physically.

This understanding eliminates the need to posit that Jesus would have lived physically forever had he not given his life as a ransom because it eliminates the idea that sin as the cause of physical death.

One question I’d like to ask concerning your definition of ‘fallen nature’ is if it extends to all of creation (e.g. animals & plants)?