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Without The Fall Of Adam, Where Would We Be?


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Posted (edited)

We Mormons believe the Fall was an essential part of God's plan of salvation.

 

For our non-Mormon friends, what would have happened if Adam and Eve

had not sinned in the Garden? Where would we be now? Do you believe

it was a necessary step in God's plan?

 

Would you agree with the principles in these quotes?

 

“Our first parents are entitled to our deepest gratitude for their legacy to posterity—the means of winning title to glory, exaltation, and eternal lives. But for the opportunity thus given, the spirits of God’s offspring would have remained forever in a state of innocent childhood, sinless through no effort of their own; negatively saved, not from sin, but from the opportunity of meeting sin; incapable of winning the honors of victory because prevented from taking part in the conflict. As it is, they are heirs to the birthright of Adam’s descendants—mortality, with its immeasurable possibilities and its God-given freedom of action. From Father Adam we have inherited all the ills to which flesh is heir; but such are necessarily incident to a knowledge of good and evil, by the proper use of which knowledge man may become even as the gods.” (James E. Talmage, Articles of Faith, p. 70.)

 

 

 

“But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.

“Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.

“And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall.” (2 Ne. 2:24–26.)

 

Edited by Bernard Gui
Posted

Well, I believe, they believe, they'd live in the garden and produce children just like on earth. And just continue onward.

Posted (edited)

Well, I believe, they believe, they'd live in the garden and produce children just like on earth. And just continue onward.

Just as a practical matter, how would we all fit in the garden?

Edited by Bernard Gui
Posted

Just as a practical matter, how would we all fit in the garden?

Well, you know women, always anxious to expand to accommodate the children. And men, always anxious to expand their territory. Then there would be disputes over whether dandelions should be planted alongside the hibiscus, and if garden gnomes were allowed on a front lawn. Nature ( and sin ) would find a way to paradise eventually.

Posted

My personal view is that the eating of the fruit would have happened under God's command eventually, when Adam and Eve were ready.

The issue here is that Lucifer stepped in prematurely in order to cause trouble.

Posted (edited)

As Adam and Eve learned more about the world God would have had to set other rules, which would have eventually been broken. Sin would have inevitably happened at some point.

Edited by altersteve
Posted (edited)

As Adam and Eve learned more about the world God would have had to set other rules, which would have eventually been broken. Sin would have inevitably happened at some point.

 

I'm not so sure. I believe God would never ask us to do something that was impossible. Unlikely perhaps, but not impossible.

 

I have a lot of mixed up thoughts about this issue. I don't think I subscribe to the view that they couldn't have multiplied without falling.

Edited by Alan
Posted

My personal view is that the eating of the fruit would have happened under God's command eventually, when Adam and Eve were ready.

The issue here is that Lucifer stepped in prematurely in order to cause trouble.

 

Agreed.

Posted

My personal view is that the eating of the fruit would have happened under God's command eventually, when Adam and Eve were ready.

The issue here is that Lucifer stepped in prematurely in order to cause trouble.

 

I've posted as much as well a few times on this board. I have found the position recieves rather mixed responses. Alternative views do exist. The book Women in Eternity, Women in Zion goes through pains to explain how Adam and Eve must have been deceived for agency to be preserved (i.e. if they knew too much it wouldn't be a choice -- I don't buy the argument, however). None of the alternatives adequately explain to me the viability or wisdom of a "plan" that relies on the rebellion of one of God's children and for that rebel to think he's opposing God's plan but really actualizing it, especially when the rebel would have had opportunity to see the "failure" of countless satans before him. To me it's a ludicrous position. More plausible to me that our Lucifer is an anomaly but that God was still smart enough to deal with it.

Posted

My personal view is that the eating of the fruit would have happened under God's command eventually, when Adam and Eve were ready.

The issue here is that Lucifer stepped in prematurely in order to cause trouble.

What would have made them ready?

Posted

I'm not so sure. I believe God would never ask us to do something that was impossible. Unlikely perhaps, but not impossible.

 

I have a lot of mixed up thoughts about this issue. I don't think I subscribe to the view that they couldn't have multiplied without falling.

What do you think it means that Jesus was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world? Is the foundation

the pre-existence, the Creation, or the Fall?

Posted

My personal view is that the eating of the fruit would have happened under God's command eventually, when Adam and Eve were ready.

The issue here is that Lucifer stepped in prematurely in order to cause trouble.

The fruit from that tree gave them knowledge of evil, as well as knowledge of what is good.

Now, if there would have been a tree that gave them knowledge of what is good, without the knowledge of what is evil, then things might have turned out a little differently.

My question is why did God have to put a hybrid fruit tree in the garden of Eden? Couldn't he have put in separate trees?

I'm acting as if I don't know the answer but of course you should know that I do.

Posted

My personal view is that the eating of the fruit would have happened under God's command eventually, when Adam and Eve were ready.

The issue here is that Lucifer stepped in prematurely in order to cause trouble.

Without getting into details that is what the LDS Endowment seems to indicate. (Not that I personally accept the LDS Endowment).

Posted

We Mormons believe the Fall was an essential part of God's plan of salvation.

 

For our non-Mormon friends, what would have happened if Adam and Eve

had not sinned in the Garden? Where would we be now? Do you believe

it was a necessary step in God's plan?

 

Would you agree with the principles in these quotes?

What if Adam and Eve never existed and the fall story is a myth? What does this do the Mormon doctrine?

I think non LDS believe if Adam and Eve had not sinned mankind would be living in a paradisal world rather than a fallen world.

Posted

I think non LDS believe if Adam and Eve had not sinned mankind would be living in a paradisal world rather than a fallen world.

Hence no need for Christ or an atonement. No need for a council. Everyone translated in a twinkling of an eye. I wonder why Satan didn't think that far ahead?

Posted (edited)
What if Adam and Eve never existed and the fall story is a myth? What does this do the Mormon doctrine?

Every person born on this planet re-enacts the physical fall - the choice to leave a paradisaical abode without death and progression in God's presence and to begin a life of mortality, sickness, separation from the physical presence of God, and subjection to the laws of nature and atrophy.

 

Every person on this planet who survives to an age where moral reasoning is possible also re-enacts the spiritual fall - actions which place one wrestling in opposition to God's will, and a need to be drawn back into His arms.

 

While we might call the first who did so Adam and Eve, and have presented them as a archetype, I need the plan of Salvation because I personally have made both choices - not because a distant unknowable ancestor did.

 

New falls - physical and spiritual - are happening every minute..

Edited by David T
Posted (edited)

We Mormons believe the Fall was an essential part of God's plan of salvation.

 

For our non-Mormon friends, what would have happened if Adam and Eve

had not sinned in the Garden? Where would we be now? Do you believe

it was a necessary step in God's plan?

 

Would you agree with the principles in these quotes?

 

It really depends on what you think of evolution. 

 

If you buy into the idea that Adam and Eve's bodies were the result of an evolutionary process, then if they had never "fallen" it would seem that they would have remained in the Garden of Eden perpetually, while the other humanoids outside the Garden continued to evolve and build cities, develop writing and laws, make up religions and gods, develop scientific methods of looking at the world, and all those other things.

 

But according to LDS teachings, if they hadn't fallen then they would still be in the Garden and the world would still be a paradise, and the rest of us would still be spirits waiting in the pre-mortal existence for bodies that will never come.

Edited by cinepro
Posted (edited)

 

It really depends on what you think of evolution. 

 

If you buy into the idea that Adam and Eve's bodies were the result of an evolutionary process, then if they had never "fallen" it would seem that they would have remained in the Garden of Eden perpetually, while the other humanoids outside the Garden continued to evolve and build cities, develop writing and laws, make up religions and gods, develop scientific methods of looking at the world, and all those other things.

 

But according to LDS teachings, if they hadn't fallen then they would still be in the Garden and the world would still be a paradise, and the rest of us would still be spirits waiting in the pre-mortal existence for bodies that will never come.

 

Not sure that is supported by Scripture. God made Adam and Eve THEN introduced them into the Garden.

So the Garden is someplace different from where they were made. Whatever the rest of the world was like is not described in Scripture.

Edited by thesometimesaint
Posted

Interesting take on the Fall: http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2010-fair-conference/2010-the-two-trees

by Valerie Hudson Cassler. For the record I disagree with her that Eve acted appropriately in taking the fruit at Satan's prompting but her primary argument survives that criticism if one assumes that Eve (even with Adam) were to partake of the fruit after having received the appropriate tutelage of God.

Posted

My personal view is that the eating of the fruit would have happened under God's command eventually, when Adam and Eve were ready.

The issue here is that Lucifer stepped in prematurely in order to cause trouble.

 

Respectfully disagree.

 

The issue here is that we chose to participate in a highly risky life in a highly risky world before we were ever born.

 

Not satisfied that this would be sufficient to make clear to us here that we are, by our choice, responsible for our milieu, G-d ritually reminds us by having us place ourselves in the place of Adam/Eve, that we choose our fate here as well.

 

Thus, we were given two chances to turn down our lot:  before we ever got here, and after we got here.

 

We choose twice, and are thus doubly responsible for our own lives.

Posted (edited)

Whatever the rest of the world was like is not described in Scripture.

 

Sure it is.  Just read the creation account in Genesis and the 10th Article of Faith. 

 

The only question is whether you believe God created the world in a fallen state (with plants and animals living, dying, reproducing and evolving) or in a paradisiacal state.

 

Here's what the college kids are taught in the Church's Doctrine and Covenants Institute Manual:

 

 

 

“This earth was created in a new or paradisiacal state; then, incident to Adam’s transgression, it fell to its present telestial state. At the Second Coming of our Lord, it will be renewed, regenerated, refreshed, transfigured,become again a new earth, a paradisiacal earth.Its millennial status will be a return to its pristine state of beauty and glory, the state that existed before the fall” (Mormon Doctrine,795–96; italics in original).
Edited by cinepro
Posted (edited)

My personal view is that the eating of the fruit would have happened under God's command eventually, when Adam and Eve were ready.

The issue here is that Lucifer stepped in prematurely in order to cause trouble.

 

I agree.  This is a subject that has always fascinated me and I have spent much time in meditation on this subject.  I have a theory that goes a little beyond what you have posted here and am writing a paper on it.

 

Here is a little teaser for anyone interested:

 

 

“And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Gen 2:8 ).

 

Naked, Adam stood in the midst of the Almighty with light’s pleasant rays meeting his fleshy frame and parts. The canopy above threw shadows dancing upon his skin from the recoiling branches in the gentle, warm breeze.  The lips of the sun’s beam and the breath of the garden were his only clothing. 

He walked exposed to the eyes of Holiness and knew no shame.  He had no fear, nor inhibition.  There was no need that was not attended to.  He knew neither predator nor prey, but was nourished by the fruits and herb of the field which blossomed in bounty. All things were prepared for him from the foundation.  

He was as pure and undefiled as the garden that he was placed in; as unexploited and organic as the majesty of pure nature in its paradisiacal glory.  Innocence radiated from all of creation and God smiled and said, “It is good.”  “Good?” Adam must have thought, wondering curiously at that empty and incomprehensible word, “what is good?”

 

“And the Lord God commanded the man, saying,  Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it…” (Gen 2:16-17).

 

Nourishment strengthened Adam as he partook of the tree of life.  The sustaining flesh and juice filled his soul like a sacrament, giving him life, for so is the love of God.  “…and I also beheld that the tree of life was a representation of the love of God” (1 Nephi 11:25).

Adam and Eve knew neither good nor evil.  Though they partook of God’s love, they were not and could not be intimately and thoroughly acquainted with its goodness, which brings “unspeakable joy”.   Though they were surrounded by God’s love, they knew not the emotional comfort of its embrace.  Though they were filled with His love, they were not satiated; nor could they be.  Their hearts longed for something more, and the adversary knew it.  Their patience would be tried. 

Love without the knowledge of good or evil was for Adam and Eve like eating flesh for life and sustenance without the ability to taste and savor of its sweetness and goodness.  Their eyes had not yet been opened, and thus their hearts remained untouched.  There was an all-encompassing empty numbness which consumed them, keeping them from the nuanced delicacies and, at times, fervent flavors of joy and the opposing misery.   

Adam and Eve knew a peace beyond words with no misery, sorrow, or regret; yet a peace without joy is perhaps closer to an empty numbness rather than a satisfying peace.  The fruit of the tree of life offered them immortality, yet eternal life evaded them.  Though they knew no sin, innocence was insufficient to qualify them for eternal life.  Something was lacking yet. 

 

Be fruitful, but don’t eat of the fruit – two seemingly simple commandments.  To Eve, however, there was nothing simple about it.  The result of not partaking of the fruit of knowledge, as far as Eve was concerned, was fruitless.  Literally!  She could neither eat of the fruit of knowledge, nor rejoice in the fruit of her womb, leaving her unable to fulfill the first commandment.  

The consequence for not fulfilling the first commandment to be fruitful was never specified in scripture.  The consequence for disobedience to the second, however, was clear: “…thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17).   “How?” they must have thought. “How do we fulfill the first without disobeying the second?” or, “how do we remain true to the second without leaving the first undone?”

In a later answer to a similarly difficult question, Adam revealed his devout and doubtless trust in the Lord when he said, “I know not, save the Lord commanded me.”   Only, this response was to the question “why obey?” instead of “how?”  Either way, Adam’s patience in obedience was unquestionable…so long as his wife was by his side.   Surely, Adam would have answered this problematic and faith-shaking question as to how to keep both commandments in similar fashion: “I know not, save the Lord commanded me.”

Similar patience and trust was found many generations later in a prophet who was equally troubled at the “how” of obedience.  After trying and failing twice to retrieve the brass plates from Laban, Nephi acted on his previous words, “I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commanded them” (1 Nephi 3:7).  Like Adam, Nephi responded, and I paraphrase -I know not how, I know not why, but the Lord will always provide the way, the means, and the blessings of obedience.” Of such was the faith of both Adam and Nephi.

For now, Adam was to wait upon the Lord.  In similar fashion, the Lord declared to the prophet Joseph Smith in the latter days, “Stop, and stand still until I command thee, and I will provide means whereby thou mayest accomplish the thing which I have commanded thee” (D&C 5:34).  

From these three prophets, we learn that the “how” of obedience is not always clear; nor is it immediate.  However, two things are clear: Patience on the Lord and trust in his word are both required for perfect obedience.  Patience to endure and withstand the desire for immediate gratification of the fruit, whether it be good or evil, and complete trust that the Lord giveth no commandment save he shall prepare a way to fulfill it. 

There was a lot Adam did not know at this point.  He had no knowledge of good or evil, and he knew not how to fulfill both commandments.  All he was left with were two seemingly conflicting commandments, but he was also given a key and a promise that the Lord would return and give further instruction. 

 In the meantime…

 

“And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:  For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5).

 

We all know the results of this temptation.  To me, sin requires moral agency, which Eve did not have at the time.  She did not yet know good or evil and therefore could not possibly choose between the two with any degree of capacity for understanding which choice was good and which choice was bad.  It was not therefore a moral or spiritual decision - it was simply an intellectual, and to her, reasonable decision based on the facts presented to her from both sides.  The serpent’s words were more subtle and intellectually enticing and stimulating to Eve because he offered her immediate answers.  With God…there were no obvious or immediate answers, yet.

 

The tree of knowledge of good and evil is one of the oldest stories presented in Christian writing.  It makes its appearance in the very heart of where it all began - the Garden of Eden.  While the tree of life sustained life, the tree of knowledge of good and evil was responsible for propagating it.  Everybody knows of the tree, yet so little is known about it.   There is very little written about this tree, in both ancient and modern times. 

The tree of knowledge, for me, has always evoked unsettling and contrasting emotions, as is inherent in its name.  I’ve never really known quite how to feel about it and have struggled to understand its nature.  In the scriptural world of black and white, light and dark, good and bad, right and wrong, it is difficult to classify this tree.  It has always seemed to embrace both the light and the dark.  In my mind, it was not necessarily good, yet it was not necessarily evil either - it somehow was both.   It was the only entity in scripture that harmoniously embodied the qualities of good and evil, light and dark, right and wrong in its nature.  Partaking of the fruit was the only action that has ever been seemingly both right and wrong in the eyes of God.  The partaking of it was the transgression of God’s law and yet seemed to be the fulfillment of His will at the same time.  It brought both light and darkness into the heart and life of man…or at least made them aware of it. 

The effects and consequences inherent in the tree were both great and terrible.  The fall of man, the birth of mankind, and the beginning of moral agency all came about because of the fruit of this tree.  There is so much mystery that encompasses the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so much power and consequence, that one cannot help but wonder at its significance and symbolism.  It was a game changer for better AND worse, it was the beginning of joy and the reason for sorrow.  It brought about earthly mortality and spiritual death and made possible celestial eternal life - It precipitated death to life and life to death.  Its fruit brought to light the opposition that exists in all things.  It was the original eye opener.    

Edited by pogi
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