Jesus came to reverse the effects of the fall

I am writing an essay and for part of the paper, I have to state what I believe about the origins of everything/creation. I’m not engaging in argument but rather just stating what I believe with support, which I am discussing why I believe there was [physical] death before the fall of man. So I have a question to anyone really. If Jesus came to reverse the effects of the fall, according to the Young Earth view, wouldn’t Jesus’ death & Resurrection mean that who ever believes in him will basically be immortal physically? Think about it. Paul says many times in His letters that “all are dead in Adam, but alive in Jesus”. So if those of us who are in Jesus still physically die, wouldn’t that mean physical death can’t be an effect of the fall? I better way to say it is, Jesus came to cure us from the curse of the fall. Christians are pretty unanimous on saying He already has at the cross; So if physical death is part of the curse, according to Young Earth Creationists, it would be gone by now, am I right?

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Your logic seems sound to me, but then I’m not your target audience!

I think most young earth creationists also believe it refers to spiritual death in addition to physical death, and would probably plead that Adam began the process of dying when he sinned. Since they do not believe they are physically immortal, they probably also would go back to describing spiritual life and freedom from spiritual death, with the eventual freedom from death through the resurrection. That seems inconsistent with their view of immortality prior to the fall of both man and animal life, which is entirely physical in nature.
Now, personally, I would not hang my view of origins on that alone, but that inconsistency is one of the things that reinforces why I feel it not the correct interpretation.

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I don’t think anyone claims that Jesus’ death totally reverses the effects of the Fall, just that it offers a path of redemption. Eden will never be restored, not even in the New Jerusalem spoken of in the NT. The New Creation is different than the first creation. Obviously sin, sickness, and death still exist for believers and non-believers. This seems like a strawman argument to me to claim that YEC asserts that Fall is totally reversed in Christ.

Also, Paul talks in 1 Cor 15 and 2 Cor 5 about resurrected bodies that are physical, so it is not a crazy theological idea that whoever believes in Jesus will be immortal physically. That is how the promised “eternal life” is described by Paul; it is an embodied, physical existence.

Also, it looks to me like you have a logic problem here:
The fall (p ) implies physical death (q)
Reversed fall (not p) implies no physical death (not q)

You can’t infer the second from the first. It’s called denying the antecedent and is a common logical fallacy. (On the other hand it is true that not q implies not p, when p implies q, or modus tollens)

For example,
“Boy” implies “male” but it doesn’t follow that
“Not boy” implies “not male”
The “not boy” could be “man”.

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I would say as Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18 that this is the resurrection of the body. This is a physical resurrection. The total redemption will be at the Second Coming when our spirits come back (Luke 8:49-56) to enter our bodies in the grave and restore them. We will then go to heaven in our bodies.

Edward Miller

Depending on a physical body for a heavenly existence sounds a lot like Mormon metaphysics.

If angels don’t have physical bodies (of a flesh kind), I can’t imagine why anyone thinks we need to have a flesh-based body in the afterlife.

You should probably start this line of argument with the call of Abraham. For example, NT Wright’s essay Creation and Covenant is a good place to start:

I have argued elsewhere that the book of Genesis demands to be read in this way: the promises to Abraham echo the commands to Adam, and the whole argument of the book, the whole point of the narrative, is that God has called Abraham and his family to undo the sin of Adam, even though Abraham and his family are themselves part of the problem as well as the bearers of the solution…

As has often been shown, the faith of Abraham as spelled out in 4.18–21 constitutes the deliberate reversal of the unbelief of humankind in Romans 1. Abraham looked at his good-as-dead body, but did not grow weak in faith; he didn’t waver in unbelief; he grew strong in faith, giving God the glory, believing completely that God, as creator, had the power to do what he had promised. That is why, as an advance sign of creation’s restoration, and with it the restoration of the male-and-female nature of imagebearing humankind, Abraham and Sarah are enabled to bear a son. Abraham’s faith thus points forwards appropriately to the death and resurrection of Jesus, and this faith becomes the covenant marker, the badge of God’s multi-ethnic people, the sign of God’s renewed humanity. Furthermore, one of the tell-tale signs of what Paul is thinking in this chapter as he expounds Genesis 15 is his redefinition, his broadening, of the promise of God to Abraham. In Genesis, Abraham is promised the Holy Land. For Paul, as for some others in his day, this was to be interpreted as an advance sign of something else. The promise to Abraham and his family, declares Paul, was that he should inherit the world (4.13).

This is very tricky to talk about, isn’t it? The contrast Paul draws is between a “natural” body and a “spiritual” body, and the perishable/mortal somehow “putting on” the imperishable/immortal. The “resurrection body” is undoubtedly “physical” in some sense, but it is also “not physical” in another sense. One could even say that it is an embodied spiritual existence, which I think captures Paul’s duality a little better, although I’m not sure that gets us any closer to imagining what that might be like.

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@Christy

I have already treated 1 Corinthians 15 elsewhere, regarding the chapter’s use of the Greek terms for “raising up”. This is a perfect demonstration of a literal term used in a figurative way! It originally referred to sitting up or standing up. Other writings refer to “the Standing Ones” in God’s presence … which is the literal meaning of the word that is translated to mean “the Resurrected”.

But let’s look at 2 Corinthians 5:8 and its discussion of the future state in the resurrection. I have brought in various bible versions to see how the meanings converge:

Translations for 2Co 5:8

KJV
We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

NKJV
We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

NLT
Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.

NIV
We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

ESV
Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

CSB
In fact, we are confident, and we would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

RVR60
pero confiamos, y más quisiéramos estar ausentes del cuerpo, y presentes al Señor.

NASB
we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.

NET
Thus we are full of courage and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

RSV
We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

This text certainly spells out the idea that whatever body we may have, it is not the “same” body that we had in our first life.

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II Corinthians 5:6-8: That is talking about the spirit of a person between death and resurrection. Our spirits go to heaven until the resurrection. Acts 7: 59-60. His body fell asleep until the Second Coming. See Luke 8: 52-56 and Ecclesiastes 12:7.

Two issues:

  1. The corruption of flesh (my guess would be YEC would lean more strongly to a kind of dualism).

  2. Now and not yet.