Death is The Wages of Sin?

[dan]

A little of over a year ago, I posted a criticism of John Murray's The Imputation of Sin. More precisely, I criticized the doctrine of Federal Headship. I closed with this:

Originally Posted by dan

Death is The Wages of Sin?

Murray also gets things backwards when he refers to Romans 6:23 on page 69:

These conclusions may be correlated with what is implicit in I Corinthians 15:22: "In Adam all die". That death is the wages of sin (Rom. 6:23) and that death cannot be conceived of as existing or as exercising its sway apart from sin is the Pauline principle. [emphasis mine]

Romans 6:23 actually says that the wages of sin is death, not the other way around. Paul essentially said that all who sin will die, not that all who die have sinned. This directly relates to a key point in Federal Headship apologetics - the idea that because some infants die, we know that all infants are guilty of sin. The reasoning is flawed on multiple points, and I hope to cover those points in a follow up.

This is the follow up in which I will explain the flawed reasoning in the Federal Headship apologetic, "Since some infants die, all infants are guilty of sin."

The argument is that since death is the wages of sin, and since some infants die, the only possible explanation for the death of an infant is that infants are judged by God as guilty. I'd like to simplify that a little for analysis as this:

If one dies, then one is guilty.
Some infants die.
Therefore, all infants are guilty.

The easiest flaw to spot is the completely invalid mapping of "some" in the second proposition to "all" in the conclusion. Logically, we can't make a conclusion about "all" from a premise asserting "some." At best, we can draw a conclusion about the "some" of the premise:

If one dies, then one is guilty.
Some infants die.
Therefore, some infants are guilty.

Having corrected that, we'll move on to the second problem.

The modus ponens (If P, then Q) statement of the primary premise does not reflect what Paul wrote in Romans 6:23. Paul did not say that all death is the payment for sin (If Death, then Guilt). No, Paul said that the fair and just payment for sin is death. If someone sins, they have earned death (If Guilt, then Death Earned). After correcting the "If P, then Q" error, we have:

If one sins, then one deserves death.
Some infants die.
Therefore, some infants are guilty.

With the argument reorganized to match what Paul did say in Romans 6:23, we see that "Some infants die" commits the logical fallacy "affirming the consequent." In order to be legitimate logic, the minor premise (Some infants die) must assert the antecedent (one sins), which would lead us to conclude that the consequent (one deserves death) is true. But, in this case, the FH apologist asserts a variation of the consequent (one dies) in order to prove the antecedent (one sins). This logic is completely invalid in its form and the conclusion that infants are guilty can not be derived from the fact that some infants die.

But, there is another problem.

Death by Equivocation

The meaning of "die" changes midstream in the "infant death" argument. We observe that some infants die physically, but Paul was speaking of spiritual death.

Perhaps the FH apologist does not recognize a distinction between physical death and spiritual death, but there quite clearly is such a distinction. If there were none, then those who are alive in Christ would never experience physical death. But, they do. They will not die spiritually, but their bodies will die. One day, their eternal souls will be joined to new physical bodies, but the fact remains, they will still die. If physical death is the wages of sin, as the FH apologist tells us, their physical death tells us they were still considered guilty by God -- their sins were not covered by the blood of Christ.

There are clearly two kinds of death.

Spiritual death is the just payment (Rom 6:23) for individual sin. Physical death is the natural consequence of God having subjected the physical creation to futility (Rom 8:19-23). This futility is a consequence of Adam's sin, born by all of creation, from atoms and bacteria, to man and even stars. The entire creation is running down, breaking down, slowing down, etc. because of Adam's original sin. This explains all physical death, including the physical death of an infant. Thus individual physical death is not punishment for individual sin, but merely a consequence of being part of the physical creation that is in bondage to corruption. Spiritual death, the eternal separation from God, is the punishment for individual sin.

An individual infant's physical death does not prove inherited guilt (or guilt of any kind), any more than the Apostle Paul's physical death proves that he was not really saved. Christ bore the punishment on the cross, so Paul was not, and will not be, punished for his sin. But, he still faced the physical consequence of creation's bondage to corruption.

The physical death of an infant does not prove guilt of any kind, much less inherited guilt.