You fail to deal with the context of the origin of man. It is the body that came from the ground not the plural "lives" (lit. Heb) that came from God.
I don't have to deal with arguments which have not been made. Make the argument, and I will deal with it. Don't make it, and I cannot "fail".
In Genesis 2, God states that He made "man" (or "Adam") from the dust, and He told Adam "you will return to dust." God did NOT say He made Adam's body from dust; He says He made Adam. And He did not say "your body will return", but "you." The distinction you're attempting to make is putting more weight on what is NOT said than what God directly speaks.
Moreover, Solomon says the body returns to the earth but the spirit returns to God. So you have no point as your point is a total disregard of the immediate and overall context of scripture.
I have always affirmed to you that the spiritual component of man is held by God -- we know that it's held for the resurrection and judgment. But contrary to your "total disregard" claim, I'm teaching exactly what Solomon taught there and ignoring nothing -- he says the essence of death is what it LOOKS like, not that the essence of death should be ignored and go look at another verse instead of this one. And God teaches the same thing in Genesis 3; your attempt to pretend that you can ignore the entire verse doesn't make you a good exegete, but a non-exegete.
Again, you fail to interpret according to the over all context. Ecclesiastes also says the spirit of man returns to God
Unbelievable -- you are so allergic to this verse you have to flee to chapter 12 in order to save your precious doctrine. What you're doing is not "interpreting according to the context"; it's ignoring one verse and substituting a different one.
God takes the spirit so that He can judge our works at the Day of Judgment. This doesn't force Solomon to contradict himself; you don't get to ignore chapter 3 merely because it doesn't fit your doctrine.
thus physical death is a SEPARATION of the immaterial aspect of man's nature from the material aspect (which returns to dust). Thus again, physical death is SEPARATION.
You pick and choose which verses you'll pay attention to. I'm following them ALL, and accepting that death is accompanied by a separation; but this doesn't contradict the clear Biblical teaching that death is an end to animating life, as depicted for us by God's design for the body He created for us. That is the essential nature of death as a concept; and it's also what the word "death" means in every language including Greek.
Moreover, you fail to take in the truth that God said that man would die "IN THE DAY HE ATE" and thus there is a spiritual SEPARATION from God "in the day he ate" DUE TO SIN just as Paul explains the "dead" condition of the physically alive Ephesians due to sin. Your position simply will not stand the test of proper exegesis.
You are not doing "proper exegesis." All you're doing is overinterpreting the one Hebrew word "b'yom" ("on the day"), and taking that as a licence to insert whatever meaning you want, in spite of the passage's own self-explanation as being about death in every respect.
And of course, the meaning you want to insert is a "spiritual death" when all of the Biblical texts that discuss Adam's fall make it clear that Adam brought death as a whole, not just whatever you define as "spiritual death." No, it didn't all happen on one day -- but your assumption that it must is purely a foreigner's overreading of a routine Hebrew threat. Solomon gave the same threat in 1Kings 2 against Shimei, and he made no attempt to enforce the death on the same day either.
But even if Solomon was misusing Hebrew when he did that (no), you still don't get to creatively alter the curse to NOT mean the death of the body as well as the death of the person. The point of the curse passage isn't that Adam was separated; separation is never mentioned as a punishment. The point is that he would toil, struggle to survive, and DIE.
Genesis 3:22 does not help your position at all. Adam had sinned and he had died spiritually "in the day he ate" and now by partaking of the tree of life he would continue physically alive forever in a spiritually SEPARATED state from God, thus in an irrecoverable condition.
I see that now you're inserting the word "physical" into the passage, denying the simple and plain meaning of the text as it stands -- man cannot LIVE FOREVER. Not "live forever physically." Just live forever, full stop.
I said in the final analysis your "ash" finality is "cessation of all personal existence"
Being reduced to ashes in body and soul -- as Matt 10:28 and 2 Peter 2:6 confirm -- surely is enough to call "cessation of all personal existence." But I don't call this "death" -- it's destruction, not death. God uses many different words for His different works; we don't get to sandblast them all into one blob. Let God tell us what He'll do, and listen.
2 Peter 2:6 says no such thing about the "second death" or about "Gehenna" but is speaking of the time of Lot and what happened to the physical structures and persons.
What? No. "if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly..."
It's speaking of the time of Lot as an example of what WILL HAPPEN to the ungodly. That's not about the time of Lot; it's about the Day of the Lord. It is specifically the reduction to ashes that this passage calls out as an example of what will happen to the ungodly. (Are you claiming this will happen to ungodly buildings?)
First, you don't understand the fact that Adam was given plural "lives" (Gen. 3:7 lit. Hebrew) and so with your forced limitations on "life" you cannot possibly understand, much less, interpret correctly the Biblical application of life.
You meant to say Gen 2:7, not 3:7. And that isn't a plural; it's singular. Look it up in any dictionary, or just do a form search in your Bible; you'll see that it's simply the way to express the concept of "having life". It's spelled as a plural, but it's singular in use. And it's incredibly common -- since you don't recognize it I can see you've never read Hebrew, but you should look it up.
You claim to be a dualist correct? So think about your own position concerning physical death! You admit that man cannot kill the body correct (Mt.10:28) and so the soul survives the death of the body. So physical death is not all about the body but it is obviously and clearly a SEPARATION of the body from the soul.
To "survive" -- which you claim the soul does -- means to remain alive. You do not believe the soul dies when the body dies. Yet both separate. There's a difference: the soul separates so that God will preserve it for judgment. The body He does not preserve, but lets die, so that we can see its death and know what death is.
