Figuratively Dead

 

Elder Mark Green


"The sinner is said to be dead, and he is, in a figure; and Cayce says he cannot hear. But he can hear politics; he can take part in all the affairs of this life; still he is figuratively dead. The word “dead” is used figuratively. Cannot he hear God and obey him? The gentleman does not know what spiritual death means."   [F.B.Srygley, a Campbellite minister, from his debate with Elder C.H. Cayce in 1911]


Mr. Srygley admits that the sinner is dead, but it is difficult to tell exactly in what respect he thinks he is dead. If he argues that the dead sinner can see, hear, follow, accept, and do any and all of the things that please God, then in what aspect of his abilities is he dead? Deadness must in some respect denote inability; but if the sinner has the ability to do anything and everything, then how is he dead?


He belittles Elder Cayce for saying that the dead sinner cannot hear God. The Lord told some wicked Jews, “Why to ye not understand my speech? Even because ye cannot hear my word” (Jn. 8.43). Either they could hear his word or they could not. Jesus said that they could not, and we believe that what He said was correct, Mr. Srygley's arguments notwithstanding. That they were able to hear the Lord's speech from an audible standpoint is obvious, for they were carrying on a conversation with him and became angry because of what He said. What they could not understand was the spiritual importance and meaning of the words, for they found no resting place in the hard stony hearts of those men.


He says that men can hear politics and take part in all the affairs of this life. Certainly they can, for those are natural affairs and natural men can take part in natural affairs. However, Brother Paul tells us that the things of the spirit of God are spiritually discerned, and if a man has not by regeneration been made a partaker of the Spirit of God, then he remains a natural man, who is not able to discern or understand spiritual things. To say that he cannot “discern” them is all the same as to say that he cannot hear them.


Mr. Srygley accused Elder Cayce of not knowing what spiritual death means. He may or may not have known what it meant according to Srygley's definition. The Scriptures do not use that exact term, and so we are left to conjecture what he may have meant by “dead in trespasses and in sins,” and we are satisfied that Mr. Srygley did not know the meaning of that term as the Bible defines it. If he meant by “spiritually dead” that men cannot take part in politics or other natural affairs, then we see nothing in the Bible that would in any wise bear out his definition. Those who are dead in trespasses and in sins cannot please God. Those who are corporeally dead cannot do anything. Mr. Srygley would have to pick some sort of contrived definition in between those two types of disability if his definition of “spiritually dead” were to be different from them. If by that term he meant that such individuals cannot act according to the indwelling Spirit, then we would agree with him; but we feel very sure that that was not what he meant by the term.