User talk:RobertC/Fall
Here is a thought question related to this discussion. Imagine that all people on the earth were just as righteous as Jesus. I believe that such a world is logically possible. If for any particular sin it were not possible to avoid it then there would be no agency. But where there is no agency, there is no sin. So since all sins are possible to avoid, you could imagine a world where everyone was as righteous as Jesus. This world would have opposition. There would be free agency and temptation to do evil, but no one would ever give in to these temptations. Everyone would always be obedient to the commandments of God. No doubt such a world would be better than our own. Since God has prepared a way for us, sinners, to have eternal life, I can't imagine that God wouldn't prepare a way for such people to have eternal life.
Think about this particularly in the case of Adam and Eve. If Jesus were in Adam's or Eve's shoes, he would have been obedient to God in a way that Adam and Eve were not. And, as noted above, it is hard to imagine that people would be worse off for obeying God. Some might dispute the claim that Jesus, in Adam or Eve's shoes would have chosen differently. Two points support that claim. 1) Jesus never sinned, nor did he do anything which required forgiveness. But Moses 6:53 tells us that Adam was forgiven for his transgression in the Garden of Eden. Surely Jesus, were he in Adam's or Eve's shoes, wouldn't have acted in such a way that he needed to be forgiven. 2) Jesus's complete submission to the will of the Father (i.e. his obedience) was a very important component to saving us from the affects of our own disobedience. I don't pretend to understand why the atonement had to work the way it did, but if Jesus's obedience is important (which it is), it is important not because Jesus has less difficult situations under which obedience is required, but because Jesus is the type of person who would be obedient regardless of the circumstances. We shouldn't think that the case of Adam and Eve is some odd exception where atonement wasn't required because of the odd circumstances inside the Garden of Eden. As the first act of disobedience it is not surprising that there is some odd stuff going on that makes their disobedience a bit different than the acts of sin we commit. However, odd or not, the scriptures use this example as a very important example which shows the need mankind has for the plan of salvation and the atonement. The need began as soon as their disobedience entered the world. Drawing then on the principle stated earlier--that Jesus's obedience was important because Jesus was someone who would always be obedient, not because Jesus was in an easier situation--for Jesus's obedience to work to save Adam and Eve from their disobedience, Jesus could not have been the type of person who, in Adam and Eve's shoes, would have chosen to be equally disobedient.
--Matthew Faulconer 17:24, 24 Jan 2006 (UTC)
Matthew, I really like your thought experiment here, and the exegesis you posted on 2 Ne 2:22, thanks. I'm still chewing on your first assumption, whether it really is possible to conceive of a world where everyone is as righteous as Jesus. Really, the question I have is whether Jesus could've been perfect if he did not have an extra-mortal father. Since I believe he was the only person who has actually lived that has not needed forgiveness for anything (I'm not sure how well I can support this belief...), and I believe he was the only person to have an extra-mortal parent, I think this is a natural question to raise (and hopefully not blasphemous or irreverent!).
The implication is that if Jesus had been in Adam and/or Eve's shoes, perhaps he would've done the same thing. In other words, perhaps the fall was an inevitable consequence of agency (and therefore not really worthy of condemnation--though I'm not sure this explains why it might have been a praiseworthy act). In the same sense that God cannot help us progress without giving us our agency, perhaps it is not possible to have agency without transgressing at least at least once [I can't help but think of all the "almost surely" convergence theorems (converges with probability measure 1) I learned in my grad school stats class...].
More precisely, perhaps it was inevitable that Adam and Eve would give in to the enticing of Satan (that is, agency alone does not imply inevitable transgression, but first-time agency plus enticing implies inevitable transgression--there should also be a clause here about having a mortal father or something to exclude Jesus, but I guess Adam didn't really have a mortal father so that clause might get really wordy...). The next natural question to my mind is whether it was then somehow inevitable that Satan would entice Adam and Eve to partake of the fruit? If so, this raises questions about Satan's agency (though perhaps his rebelling and not choosing God's plan make him a slave so-to-speak of his own selfish desires, and hence his actions inevitable) and has implications regarding the sense in which God causes evil (that is, God does not create evil per se, but knows it is truly inevitable and allows it). If not, then we are back wondering if there could've been some other way for all this to play out.
--RobertC 13:13, 25 Jan 2006 (UTC)
