mrmandias Posted June 21, 2012 Posted June 21, 2012 That is a very interesting interpretation, which I had never thought of, but I'm not sure that Joseph Smith had that in mind circa 1829. Alma 42:9 says that the Fall "brought upon all mankind a spiritual death as well as a temporal." Maybe there is a way to explain that verse consistently with your theory, but I can't think of one. "Temporal death" appears to be death of the body.That said, your theory would be much more compatible with modern science, which tells us that death was billions of years older than Adam and Eve, and that millions of men, women, and children died before the era ascribed to Adam and Eve, many of them leaving behind skeletons. It would be compatible with the idea that Adam and Eve, rather than literally being the first humans, which they were not were the first accountable and sinning humans. They were the first humans to which God revealed himself.In that case, the atonement theory would have to be somewhat modified. It would not be that Adam and Eve caused our corrupt natures by transferring their original sin to their descendants, but rather that Adam and Eve are symbolic of our corrupt natures. Adam and Eve need not even have been real people, although they might have been. As in the temple ceremony, Adam and Eve represent all of us, as do Michael (and I wish they would include Eve as one of the creator gods). We are born with a corrupt nature because we descend from animals where the only law is survival of the fittest. Beginning as just one of the many animals in the Garden of Eden, we lose our natural animal state and become children of God as we are justified by Christ, and then eventually we may become sanctified as gods and goddesses. Jesus would have atoned for our sins not so much to uphold the sovereign justice of a heavenly monarch, but to give us a mechanism by which we may relieve the guilt and fear caused by the fact that we believe we have offended God's justice and thereby separated ourselves from the divine. Joseph Smith did say, in his King Follett sermon, that there is no real hell, and that we are our own tormenters.I'm dubious of this atonement account, because it seems that God simply telling you you were forgiven would be equally persuasive.
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