Yes i am familiar with the incorrupitbles but i( guess my question is regarding the type of death that entered the world through Adam’s sin. The Church teaches that we die due to Original Sin. Would you say that this is physical death or agonizing death? Would Adam and Eve had still died or remained immortal?
Without sin, Adam as a whole in his physical body would not die. His spirit had the power to maintain his body indefinitely. But because his spirit was wounded mortally, (because of sin), Adam’s spirit could no longer hold his body alive indefinitely – incorruptible.
That, in my mind, however – is a separate issue from whether or not it was possible for Adam’s body to die partially before the fall; or whether he
could in any way suffer physically or mentally.
In the garden, pre-fall, there clearly was fruit, with it’s seed in it; a living thing, which could die by being consumed. The seed too, could die to spring forth a new tree. The body of Adam, itself, was made to consume fruit – his body was to accept changing material/substance into his mouth which his spirit would then form into himself; into his physical soul / his “own” substance – but then, in addition, some of this substance (slime of the earth?) would pass on.
I see no reason to believe that the body itself, as we have it, was transformed into something entirely different during the fall – but I know it was damaged.
Adam’s seed (sperma) too, was to be given to his wife – and it would no longer be his immediate body, it too would die as a sperm – a living soul in it’s own right, but doomed to dissipate once outside his body (also his wife’s) –
Sperm, on it’s own – has only an animal soul. It has only one radical possibility for new life
inside Adam’s wife. Inside her body.
The seed, as matter becomes a new sprit’s first body; it’s first substance to consume from it’s parents. (Not to mention breast milk a little later…).
This is one reason that I think procreation is meant to be in the body – and not a glass dish.
Jesus himself, in his glorified body, after the resurrection, (which surely surpasses that of Adam!!!) – Ate fish and bread. (Luke 24:41-44, John 21:9, etc.) Jesus took a substance from outside his body, and made it into his body.
(The fish died, it’s shape disintegrated … no?
)
The is true even in the Eucharist – in which Jesus transforms bread into his living body, formed by his spirit – miraculous precisely in that he does not do it the normal way (as we do) by eating it – but otherwise, the trans-formation/substantiation has the same significance. No time machine is necessary to find the substance of the Eucharist which becomes his body – it is his Spirit which gives the matter of today his life.
Spirit + matter = body/soul. The flesh (itself) is useless:
The bread’s atom’s sameness before and after the transubstantiation are irrelevant – the crucial issue is what holds them in existence and form; he forms them with his Spirit is what it means that they are his body.
Consider also, that we too are his living body by communion – and that even at the crucifixion – his body lived on in those who had
already received communion previously (before his physical death and suffering).
His spouse the Church, the apostles, the twelve, etc. did not simultaneously die physically when Jesus did – but they did become a living sacrifice because they are his.
St. Thomas, IMHO, went
nuts trying to figure out what Jesus body’s death meant in detail; was it alive physically, but in stasis? What does it mean, that the crucified body is the Eucharist? Is this dead (?) different from all other times when he moved about?
Which body and bodily state do we receive in the sacrifice of the mass?
These questions, I find most easily answered in recognizing that the body (soul) is not primarily that which was or passed on before, it is what the spirit is forming in the present; and is forming if in the resurrection. The body may even cease to exist for a time, here on Earth; So long as the spirit can form it anew.
IF you like the time machine view of the Eucharist, that’s fine – I’m just saying – it isn’t necessary; awe inspiring, but not as helpful in unifying ideas.
I think your question would best be answered by focusing on what it means that Jesus should say (John 6:33, 50 “The bread which comes down from heaven is such that he who eats of it
will never die”, and then consider that we still “fall asleep” as St. Paul puts it.
CCC 388 … We must know Christ as the source of grace
in order to know Adam as the source of sin.
Now: Can you accept reading these things we are discussing backward in time into Adam who couldn’t die ?
Chirst (unqualified) merely means king, ruler, anointed; in this sense, Adam too was a christ, a shadow of Christ. But – The CCC (386), says in addition “We must therefore approach the question of the origin of
evil [comment: AKA death] by fixing the eyes of our faith on him who alone is its conqueror”; footnote Luke 11:21-22.
“When a strong man,
fully armed, mounts guard over his own palace, his goods are left in peace; but when a man comes who is stronger still, he will take away all the armor that bred such confidence, and divide among others the spoils of victory”
There is sometimes mentioned by Catholic Apologists of acute perception, that Adam was to do what Jesus Christ did – and failed.
How exactly this relates to Christ (who without sin) suffered death, I don’t know. But I do know that there was a fallen angel, which as an angel was stronger than man (man, recall, was made a little lower than the angels).
The devil was found in the garden before Adam ever sinned.
Q: What then if Adam had not sinned? A: I don’t think Adam without assistance could have withstood a direct attack unharmed; not that the harm would have been permanent or capable of destroying Adam in the sense of eternal complete slavery or corruption – but in outward physical appearances, I am not sure that it wouldn’t (or rather couldn’t?) have resembled death, or at least sleep of a non-natural kind.
The power of death consists in the body & spirit being held captive for all eternity; That is something Adam could not have suffered, nor Christ; As St. Paul says, “it is impossible that the power of death could hold him” (Nor Jesus momentary body, evidently…)
At the time of Adam; What “would” have happened, or how or when God “would” have intervened (or perhaps, merely how/when the good Angels would have defended us) is something impossible to know – as it didn’t happen. Man’s natural state, in friendship with God, was capable of maintaining a natural body indefinitely; Therefore – Man would not have died on his own; But there was an external threat of significant potency.
I hope this helps; perhaps your own priest – or bishop – may have insights that I am unaware of; This is (of course) merely my best understanding of scripture and Tradition, and my own attempts to harmonize them. A simplistic view is to just assume the devil couldn’t have even killed the body of Adam temporarily, or held it at all. In that case, the answer to your question is “No: he wouldn’t have died”.
Your brother in Christ,
–Andrew.
).