The Fall of Adam and Eve

President Michael J. Preece

#Introduction

The second item I want to talk about is the Fall. This is vital material, so I hope you’re taking basic notes — if you get these facts firmly cemented in your mind, your study of the Atonement will be exciting and meaningful.

#The Four Conditions of Adam and Eve in the Garden

Let’s start with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There are four conditions that characterize their state there, and it’s essential that you understand all four.

1. They were immortal. They were not subject to pain, disease, or death — they would have lived forever. This doesn’t mean they had resurrected, glorified bodies of the celestial, terrestrial, or telestial type; but they had bodies that would not die.

2. They were in a state of innocence. This means they had very little knowledge of good and evil. We know they had some knowledge, since they were told not to eat the fruit of a particular tree, and so understood that doing so would not be good — but their knowledge was very limited. Because of this, they could not experience a fullness of joy (since they knew nothing bad to compare it against), nor could they experience a depth of sorrow. They also lacked sufficient moral agency — the capacity to make the kinds of decisions necessary to progress and become like God.

3. They walked and talked with God. They lived in His presence in the Garden of Eden.

4. They were not able to procreate.

Those are the four conditions: immortal, innocent, in God’s presence, and unable to have children. It’s essential to remember all four.

#The Dual Nature of the Fall

The Fall has two distinct parts.

The Fall of Adam. As a result of Adam’s fall, all four of those conditions reversed. Adam and Eve were cast out of the presence of God — what we call spiritual death. They became able to have children. They became subject to death — that is, they became mortal. And they gained the capacity to distinguish good from evil, gaining moral agency.

A bit of scriptural trivia: the spiritual death brought upon mankind by the Fall of Adam is referred to in scripture as the first death. (See Helaman 14:16–18 and Doctrine and Covenants 29:41.)

This raises a question tied to the second Article of Faith, which states that we believe men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression. Are we then suffering for Adam’s transgression? In a sense, yes — we die, we’ve been cast into a difficult world of toil and hardship (“in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children,” as the scripture says). But the key distinction is that this suffering is temporary. It will all ultimately be removed. We do bear real consequences of Adam’s transgression, but not eternally — only for a time.

The Fall of You. The second part of the Fall concerns your own sin. When you commit a sin, you fall — and this exclusion from the presence of God is permanent unless remedied. This is your own spiritual death, caused by your own sins, and scripture refers to it as the second death.

#The Effects of the Atonement

Now to the Atonement itself, which — once you understand the Fall — is fairly simple.

Unconditional effects. These are the effects of the Atonement that apply to everyone, regardless of their choices. Everything that resulted from Adam’s transgression will be automatically removed for every individual. Specifically:

• Physical death will be reversed for everyone through the resurrection.
• The spiritual death caused by the Fall of Adam — being cast out of God’s presence — will also be reversed for everyone.

This does not mean that everyone will dwell in God’s presence forever. There is a common but mistaken idea that only those who repent and obey the gospel will ever return to God’s presence at all. This misses a central and fundamental point of the Atonement: Jesus Christ has redeemed all mankind from all the consequences of the Fall of Adam. Scripture teaches that every person — saint or sinner — will return to the presence of God after the resurrection, even if only for a temporary reunion, because justice requires that everything lost through Adam be restored through Christ. Every person will stand before God, behold His face, and be judged according to their own works. Those who have obeyed the gospel will be permitted to remain in His presence; all others will once again be shut out of His presence — undergoing what is called the second spiritual death. (This teaching draws on the work of Robert J. Matthews, former head of the Department of Religion at BYU.)

So the unconditional effects of the Atonement are the reversal of physical death and the reversal of the first (Adam’s) spiritual death — not the reversal of all four original conditions, since, for example, not everyone will be granted the power to procreate eternally.

Conditional effects. These depend on individual repentance: the second death — your own personal spiritual death, caused by your own sins — is reversed only if you repent.

#Summary

To pull this together: because of the Fall of Adam, all four conditions of Adam and Eve in the Garden were reversed. Because of your own fall — your own sin — you experience an additional, second spiritual death, which is remedied only through repentance and the conditional effects of the Atonement. The unconditional effects of the Atonement reverse physical death and the first spiritual death for everyone; the conditional effects reverse the second, personal spiritual death for those who repent.

#Discussion and Questions

Did the Fall of Adam change the whole earth? Yes — this raises the question of why it’s called the Fall of Adam and not the Fall of Eve. The distinction between the two isn’t really meaningful; Adam and Eve fell together, as a complete unit. Referring to “the Fall of Adam” is understood to mean the fall of both together.

Why is it called “the Fall” at all, rather than simply Adam’s “misdeed”? There are a few reasons. First, Adam and Eve fell out of the presence of God — a fall in the most literal spiritual sense. There’s also a broader question of whether Adam and Eve were “favored” by falling out of God’s presence, since it was only by leaving that presence that they were able to progress — God loved Adam, but Adam could not progress while remaining in the Garden.

There is also a more literal, cosmological reason for the term “the Fall.” Latter-day Saint teaching holds that before the Fall, the earth existed in a different location — near the great star Kolob, close to the dwelling place of God. At the time of the Fall, the earth physically fell from that location to its present place in the universe. In that sense, the Fall was a literal, dramatic astronomical event.

Will the earth eventually return to that place? The earth, like us, will ultimately be resurrected and receive a celestial, eternal body. Where it will then be located isn’t something we know for certain — the scriptural and doctrinal record is ambiguous on this point. Kolob is understood to be a star, located near where God dwells, though whether God’s dwelling place is literally on that star isn’t something we know for sure. That much remains an open question.

Were Adam and Eve heroes or transgressors? A few concluding thoughts: first, Adam had to fall by his own free choice — he could not have been coerced, since moral agency was essential to the whole process. Second, when all the details are considered, Adam and Eve are likely best understood as highly sophisticated and perceptive individuals who made a conscious, deliberate decision — heroes rather than villains in the story. Where much of Christian tradition regards the Fall as a tragic step backward, this view holds it as a necessary and even heroic step forward, taken so that mankind as a whole could progress. There is more nuance here regarding Satan’s role — the mixture of truth and falsehood in what he told Eve — that goes beyond what can be fully addressed here. But the overall sense is that Adam and Eve will ultimately be regarded as heroic figures, even if they didn’t fully understand at the time the full weight of the choice before them — something we may come to understand more completely in the future.