Death Does Not Mean Separation In The Bible – Part 2

In Part 1, we went over the meat of why we should deny the claim that death means separation in the Bible. Not that there is never a connection between death and separation, and not that death is never used metaphorically, but that this whole model has both specific problems and a lack of any actual biblical basis to begin with.

The following three passages are the most likely to establish a biblical basis, and so we will look at why they fail to do so.

The Three Passages That Even Could Potentially Give Cause to Define Death As Separation

Passages like Ephesians 2:1, when used to show that death means separation, make no connection between death and separation whatsoever.

None of the following three passages actually show that death means separation when you dig past surface-level arguments that they do. Nevertheless, they do at least have some level of a tenuous connection, and therefore they stand out among the rest.

Note that all three have been addressed in previous articles, with two of them having entire articles devoted to them. Resources will be included for further study.

John 17:3

This passage actually does not mention death or separation. However, it is relevant because it does speak of their opposites: life and relationship.

And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

This verse probably provides the strongest case for a death-as-separation view in the entire Bible. It is the one passage that, at the surface, would seem to explicitly say that life really means having a relationship with God (and therefore death meaning the opposite).

Of course, not everything in scripture or in life is meant to be taken at face value. Also quite importantly, those who make this argument are themselves not taking everything literally. They necessarily are taking “eternal life” metaphorically, because taken literally, it just means to live for eternity.

The question then arises, which part is meant to be literal? Is the literal part that “eternal life” is meant to be defined as knowing God and Christ? Or is the literal part the phrase “eternal life,” as I and many annihilationists would argue? ¹ Annihilationists are a diverse bunch, and there are some who will concede to traditionalists (adherents of the eternal conscious hell view) that life and death language is about relationship and not meant literally. Annihilationism does not rely on life/death language being literal, and there are a number of independent biblical reasons to adopt the doctrine. For a survey of those reasons, see “A Face-Value Introduction To The Biblical Case For Evangelical Conditionalism“.

At the very least, there is a common figure of speech today which the Bible also uses at times. Especially in the Gospel of John. Quite possibly in the Gospel of John more than anywhere else. This figure of speech is when two things are equated that are not actually the same, but are tied together for emphasis.  Something like “X is Y” when X is not literally Y, but when the two are tied closely. Often, though not always, this figure of speech occurs when one thing causes the other.

This is common in English, like with the song “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” by the Beatles. Happiness is not defined as a warm gun, nor is a warm gun just a metaphor for happiness. In context, the gun and happiness are both literal. The point is that a warm gun causes happiness. Same with “Happiness Is A Thing Called Joe.” Similarly, without the element of causation, is the trope of the hopeless romantic reflecting on how “love means letting them have the last piece of pie” or something like that. None of these are literally indicating identity. They identify the two things for emphasis.

This figure of speech also happens in John several times. For example

• “…the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63a).
• “I [Jesus] am the resurrection and the life…” (John 11:25b).
• “I [Jesus] am the way, the truth, and the life…” (John 14:6b).

This following fourth example is especially significant:

And I know that His [the Father’s] commandment is eternal life.

If we interpreted this the way that many traditionalists interpret John 17:3, then we would say that life literally means God’s commands, as opposed to God’s commands leading to eternal life.

When we have this in mind, the idea that “eternal life” is meant literally in John 17:3 makes a lot more sense. Knowing God causes eternal life, and the two things are so closely tied because there is no other way to get it.

I would also point out that a common argument for eternal conscious hell is Matthew 25:46, and how “eternal punishment” must be eternal because the life in “eternal life” is eternal. ²For why Matthew 25:46 does not prove eternal torment, see “Matthew 25:46 Does Not Prove Eternal Torment”, Part 1 and Part 2. See also Chris Date, “Punishment” and the Polysemy of Deverbal Nouns“. It is quite possibly the most common argument made for the doctrine of eternal conscious hell.

But this becomes problematic when we bring John 17:3 into the equation, There, the argument is that “eternal life” is not literal, and instead it is a term of art that has nothing to do with eternal length.

So which is it?

This creates an inconsistency in the case for eternal torment itself, one that isn’t present when we just take “eternal life” literally and interpret Jesus’s statement in John 17:3 the same way we take his very similar statement in John 12:53.

For more on this, see: “John 17:3 Does Not Change The Meaning of ‘Eternal Life’“.

Genesis 2:17 (cf. Genesis 3)

Another passage sometimes pointed to is Genesis 2:17 and God’s warning about sin:

…but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die (emphasis added).

God told Adam and Eve that they would die “on the day” when they sinned. They did not physically die on the calendar day that they sinned. Therefore, they must have died in another way that day. Since they were kicked out of the garden, that means that they “died” by being separated from God.

I must point out that even with this connection between death and separation, the whole idea that them being cut off from God is the “death” in view is still based mostly on assumption. It is not as though the text ever tells us that this is what God meant by dying. Interpreters, already believing that death means conscious separation from God, read that back into the passage. They wouldn’t have come to that conclusion without already having that metaphorical definition of “death” in mind.

Beyond that, there are numerous other weaknesses to this interpretation. For brevity, I will give just a handful of them here.

• Other curses happened that day. Most notably, man became condemned to having to toil for food. Why isn’t that the definition of death? Why didn’t Adam “die” that day because he had to do hard labor for life? That literally has as much textual support as “death” referring to their being separated from God’s presence.
• God never even specifically mentions separation from him as a curse. But he does include Adam and Eve’s physical death as part of the curse (Genesis 3:19). Is it not odd that the so-called spiritual death that supposedly fulfills God’s warning isn’t even mentioned by God among the curses that resulted from their sin, but their eventual physical death (which supposedly did not fulfill Genesis 2:17) is mentioned?
• The Bible speaks of things occurring “on that day” that did not literally happen that day. The Hebrew is somewhat flexible, and it was a common way to simply frame that something would happen as a result of another event. We even see a similar warning of death “on that day” in 1 Kings 2:37, but it didn’t literally happen the day that the man (Shimei) committed the crime that brought him the death sentence. Rather, they day he did the act, he became doomed to die. Put another way, it was spoken proleptically.
• Along those lines, no one thinks the tree of life is the tree of fellowship-with-God. In the midst of the garden, the tree of life is the source of ongoing physical life. They are cut off from God, but this being cut off from God leads directly to their physical death (Genesis 3:22-24). So it is not as though their conscious separation from God was independent from physical death in the first place.

And these are only some of the issues at hand. There is good reason that this interpretation of Genesis 2:17 is by no means universal even among traditionalists, and is probably even the minority view overall. It certainly should be.

I also want to emphasize that traditionalists cannot claim that their view is superior because it takes the text literally. Neither side typically does. Interpretations like prolepsis take the timing element less literally (or at least less woodenly, based on some ambiguities in the Hebrew). But the traditional view requires coming up with a new, metaphorical meaning of death itself.

For more on this. see Peter Grice, “Muerte Espiritual Una Concisa Explicación de la Muerte en Génesis 2.17 y Romanos 6.23“. See also “More Reasons Why Genesis 2:17 Is Not Good Evidence For ‘Spiritual Death’“.

Luke 15:24 (The Parable of the Prodigal Son)

Some argue that this passage shows concretely  that death can be used in scripture as a metaphor for separation. Therefore, we have reason to interpret death passages that speak of hell in similar ways. Here, the father in the parable of the prodigal son says the following when his younger son returns:

‘…for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’ And they began to celebrate.

The fact that this is among the top three passages for the death-as-separation view is quite telling, because it isn’t very strong at all.

First off, it is not impossible that, like most of these situations, it is meant proleptically. I actually don’t think that is what is mean in this case, as I think the context indicates that the statements of being “dead” and “alive” have to do with the father’s perspective and feelings in that moment. This differentiates it from passages like Ephesians 2:1. But a proleptic use is possible.

That said, the perfectly normal and natural way to read this is that the father in the parable is simply speaking of his son having been as good as dead to him because he thought he would never see his son again. Of course, you would rather your loved one be alive rather than dead, even if you never see them again. But if you expect to never see them again, the kind of heartbreak involved would be comparable to if they had died. In addition to the objective horror of human death, what makes the death of loved ones specifically so tragic is that we won’t ever see them again (at least not in this life).

So for this father to see that is son is not only literally alive but now is coming back, to him, it is as if his son had come back from the dead.

The question then arises, why should we go with the figurative use of death that I am proposing? The biggest reason is that the figurative use actually has some connection to what death is. It’s natural to think of someone who you expect to never see again as being (as good as) dead to you. It is a figurative use tied to the literal meaning, and it fits the context perfectly.

Also, it allows the passage to make sense without the not-so second death problem that I discussed in Part 1.

Furthermore, as is so often the case, only one party of the separation was referred to as dead. The father did not say “we were dead”. Yet if there was ever a time in the Bible to metaphorically speak of both separated parties as dead, it would be here. Unlike the life support machine that is separated from the dead human, here the father suffered greatly as a result of the separation. He was directly affected by it. He was just as harmed by it as his “dead” son.

But it is his son who he said was dead, not himself. Because he wasn’t using it as a metaphor for conscious separation, but was just reflecting on how he had to grieve as if his son were literally dead – and now he no longer has to.

For more on this, see: “Prolepsis and Hell: A Matter of Life and Death – Part 3“.

Conclusión

At times it probably seemed like I was repeating myself, but that is what happens in cases like this where different angles of a proposed doctrine fall victim to the same set of problems. This idea that death is a metaphor for separation, and consistently as conscious separation when applied to hell, just isn’t a sound doctrine. You really have to read it into every text, with just a small number being less egregious than the rest.

I understand the necessity of an approach like this, because this really is not an even playing field. It’s not a mystery what death means, such that we need the Bible to define it or otherwise every possible meaning would be equally likely. The Bible often uses words and ideas that people already know in order to convey its teachings about the divine and unknown. The Bible doesn’t have to define what a fish is, what water is, what a tree is, etc. And even with death, it doesn’t have to define what it means when it tells us that animals died – or that Jesus died on the cross.

As such, we would not expect the Bible to so frequently speak of hell being death (and destruction) if hell was a place for “immortal souls.” You can’t torment corpses, and since we know corpses are normally what death results in, there must be another meaning of death at play.

And as is so often the case with arguments for eternal conscious hell, it is not as though there is no basis to the traditionalist case at all. Granted, the annihilationist is in a far better position here, even just at a surface level, but I did have to respond to several different points, after all.

If you haven’t taken a deep dive yet, it can sound very convincing to hear that dead people (i.e. their souls) are still conscious after death (of the body, not the soul), so therefore death is a conscious experience. Because no one can take passages like Ephesians 2:1 totally literally, the separation from God explanation sounds like it makes good sense – especially since we would all agree that the unsaved are currently cut off from God in some sense. The part in question is whether or not the text ever alludes to this state of affairs being what it means by being “dead.”

All of these things sound like good arguments when you already have eternal conscious hell in mind as the default view. But it also didn’t require digging all that deep to find their flaws.

And while not everything in the Bible is meant to be taken at face value, I’m not even the one arguing that we have to take all of this in a special, Bible-only way that happens to fit with the doctrine I support. I’m literally doing the opposite; it is only annihilationists who can just let death mean death and let life mean life. ³ For more on the life side of things and how interpreting life literally does not turn heaven into a gray, brute existence, see “The Eternal Joys of The Life To Come Do Not Change The Meaning of ‘Life’“.

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