The most obvious objection to this line of argument is an appeal to the sequence recounted in Genesis 3, a sequence Paul later echoes in Romans 5:12. As the Genesis text describes, Adam and Eve’s original disobedience effected a separation from the Tree of Life, and that first sin is what introduced both death and mortality into the world. Clearly, then, sin brings about death and not the other way around. And doesn’t Paul affirm that “the wages of sin is death”? No doubt that in the Genesis story
