I plan to grapple with exactly the questions you’re raising about precisely the two texts you mention so soon as I’m done with my series of remnant posts. I want to write a post working through what seems to me to be the development of the idea of “spiritual death.” I think there’s something very interesting going on with Samuel, and then I think that D&C 29 draws on that language. But it definitely deserves the kind of close reading you’re working out here.

So could I take it that in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things we set up the plain to bring Adam and Eve to a cognization or awareness of something. In 26 it points to the Messiah cometh to redeem from the fall. So the awareness the cognization spoken of I think is pointing to redemption from the Fall (or our state). So was the whole fall a carefully designed event then to bring this knowledge to Adam and Eve?

Adam: Gen 3:9
Abraham: Gen 22:11
Jacob: Gen 31:11 and especially 46:2
Joseph: Gen 37:13
Moses: Ex 3:4

Intriguingly, I couldn’t find such language from Isaac except during the deception episode with Jacob posing as Esau.

D&C 29:41, “Wherefore, I, the Lord God, caused that he should be cast out from the Garden of Eden, from my presence, because of his transgression, wherein he became spiritually dead, which is the first death, even that same death which is the last death, which is spiritual, which shall be pronounced upon the wicked when I shall say: Depart, ye cursed.”

“became” suggests that spiritual death was a process as opposed to an immediate consequence of the Fall.

Alma 12:16, “And now behold, I say unto you then cometh a death, even a second death, which is a spiritual death; then is a time that whosoever dieth in his sins, as to a temporal death, shall also die a spiritual death; yea, he shall die as to things pertaining unto righteousness.”

“then cometh” suggests that “if we have hardened our hearts against the word” (verse 13) throughout this life, then spiritual death is what we have to look forward to later; i.e., even one living today with a hardened heart is not currently spiritually dead, but will be later.

Hel 14:16 (which you already brought up), “Yea, behold, this death bringeth to pass the resurrection, and redeemeth all mankind from the first death—that spiritual death; for all mankind, by the fall of Adam being cut off from the presence of the Lord, are considered as dead, both as to things temporal and to things spiritual.”

If we ignore the part about “things temporal,” then this verse suggests that “spiritual death” = “being cut off from God’s presence; i.e., it means exactly what we typically (and according to McConkie) say it does. But the crazy thing about this verse is that it actually says that we are currently spiritually dead only in the same sense that we are currently temporally dead—and we’re not really temporally dead (at least I’m not, anyway; I don’t know if any of the rest of y’all are zombies). So perhaps the best way to read this is that we’re not currently dead in any sense, we’re just “considered as dead.”

What is so different about your reading compared to McConkie’s? If a sinful orientation keeps us separated from God, aren’t you both saying basically the same thing? Are there any particular dangers or problems with McConkie’s view? Or, alternatively, are there any particular virtues to the Book of Mormon view that you are proposing that are not captured from McConkie’s view?

Or so it seems to me. I should probably put together a post on the whole spiritual death business in the Book of Mormon, from the start to finish. Maybe once I finish the last two (or three?) posts on the remnant?

The key points in the text that ground this reading:

42:8 and 42:9 are parallel in their usage of the phrase “reclaim from X death” (where X equals either temporal or spiritual). Alma states that we are not to be reclaimed from temporal death, and this clearly means that we must actually suffer the temporal death, because if Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of life, they would have lived forever and the plan would have imploded. But then that means that when Alma goes on in verse 9 to say that we are to be reclaimed from spiritual death, this clearly means that we do not actually need to suffer the spiritual death. In other words, rather than saying that everyone inevitably suffers the spiritual death simply because we’re out of the presence of God, verse 9 claims that were it not for the resurrection, we would inevitably but only eventually suffer spiritual death. 42:9 is thus an echo of 2 Nephi 9, where Jacob teaches that without the resurrection we would all become devils to an angel, etc.

This is all confirmed in verse 11, where Alma goes on to say that, were the plan not to be there (“setting it aside”), then, so soon as we were (physically) dead, we would die spiritually. Again, it seems quite clear that spiritual death is only a resurrected state in the Book of Mormon.

So I spoke too soon about my having spoken too soon. I’ll state again, as I did in the notes, that the Book of Mormon does not understand spiritual death to be simply “being cut off from the presence of God.” And I’ll state again that our too-easy systematization of the plan as represented in the manual makes it too difficult for us to read the Book of Mormon for what it actually says.

So, back to my original position.

Joe, I really like the things you point out in this section. I think #3 is directly connected with the start of chapter when Adam is sacrificing for an unknown purpose.

Knowledge does not save us, rather, knowledge is knowing you ARE saved (have eternal life). However, this knowledge comes only after doing things you do not yet understand.
Doing what you do not understand by faith is obedience.
faithful obedience leads to knowledge
knowledge=knowing by the spirit that you are saved.

Therefore, knowledge does not save you, but rather knowledge is that point where you understand what you are doing and why.

And nice comments on the etymology of “naught.” I will definitely be thinking about that when I happen on the word in scripture from now on.

And of course I love how you draw out of this text the difference between theoretically knowing and actually enjoying (I see Alma making the same argument in Alma 32, as I argued at the conference for our Alma 32 Seminar). Interestingly, I think the similar point in 2 Nephi 2 is actually made more poignantly in verses 11-15 rather than in verses 22-25.

Take, for example, just the first line of verse 12: “Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught” (if there were no opposition—that is, no fall, on my reading…). If we follow the OED and understand the word “naught” etymologically as coming from “no” and “wight,” where wight means a living creature (esp. a human creature) and is (I think) related to weight (cf. “glory” in Greek) and even waw (and I wonder if this is related to the Hebrew waw, which has deeply generative connotations, along the lines I was thinking about in my notes on Lesson 5…). So, no life, significance, meaning or value without the kind of opposition brought about and typologized by the Fall.

I’m eating crow. Doing a search for the phrase “spiritual death,” I find that there are two places where the phrase is used to mean “being cut off from the presence of God.” Alma 42:9 and Helaman 14:16 both speak of it in this sense. I had not visited these passages in long enough that I had forgotten they used this phrase this way at all; my focus in my work on these concepts has been focused on 2 Nephi 9 and Alma 12, where the term is used in a quite distinct manner—that is, always as referring to a final state of the wicked after the resurrection (a way it is also used in Helaman 14:18, a passage that deserves closer attention).

So allow me to take back my too-sharp criticism of the use of “spiritual death” in the lesson. I need to do a bit of careful work looking at how the two obviously distinct uses of the phrase in the Book of Mormon are related. I do think it is interesting that the use reflected in the lesson (where “spritual death” has reference to being cut off from the presence of God) is, in terms of Nephite history, a relatively late concept. But I’m not sure what to make of this yet.

So, to all: yikes, I spoke way too soon. I’ll add a note to the beginning of the lesson notes in a moment here.

Thanks for this link. Very informative. Others reading this post ought to follow that link to get both sides of the story.

Along the lines of what Jim was saying, I think these lesson notes get to bogged down with the manuel changes, which then brings you into places that most of us will not (and maybe should not) really get into during PH/RS lesson. Putting so much in the post for the lesson also makes the post very long for the average person just trying to prepare something a bit more simple. And I am not using “simple” as derogatory in any way.

But with that said, I am enjoying it so far and agree with most of what is said! :)

Thoughts so far:

2 Ne. 2:23, Adam and Eve possibly being able to have kids is something I have not considered previous to this point. However, I cannot think of anywhere in the scriptures that would say it was impossible. And at the risk to sounding crude, were Adam and Eve sexual? After all, they were married, so no sin there of course. But on the other hand, they were “innocent.” I only bring that up because if they were then I would say they must not have been able to have children. If they were not then I would say maybe they could have.

I also 100% on all the Mormon Doctrine stuff. Getting that out of the manuals is one of the best choices the church as made.

Hmmm, I think my comments on your notes are somewhat ironic given my earlier suggestions. I do not know that I would bring either of these issues up when I teach this lesson! haha.

You should also know that Prince and Wright, authors of David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, omitted several key elements in their very misleading section about “The Controversy over Mormon Doctrine.”

Since Paul’s notion of spiritual death seems to me to be “alienation from God” (for which “separation from God” is a reasonable substitute) I’m interested to hear more about how you understand the Book of Mormon notion.

As for “spiritual death”: yes, there are places in scripture where it would be reasonable to speak of “spiritual death,” but I think we run the risk when doing so of missing what passages that do use the phrase “spiritual death” have to say. The Book of Mormon has a relatively consistent notion of “spiritual death,” one that is at odds with the way the term is employed in the lesson.

Comment: You say, “There is no place in scripture where spiritual death is defined as separation from God.” I don’t think that is true, except perhaps in the most literal sense. “Spiritual death” seems to be a good description of what Paul talks about in Romans 5-7 (especially 6). If death no longer rules over us after our baptism, then we must have been dead prior to baptism. “Spiritually dead” is a reasonable way to describe that state.

Given that this is a kind of Mormon doctrine for dummies to expect any fine nuances seems a bit naive.