Let me quickly introduce this middle part of the book before we dive into the chapter content. This invitation to sink down, and relax in, truly can be the catalyst for you to know God. As we know God, we can then be on His errand on behalf of others more readily and effectively. Part 2 of the book will address the patterns that will prepare you to minister to others around you.
We must commit to a serious understanding of the Fall in order to properly understand the Atonement. The following is one of my favorite quotes. I can attest firsthand to the truthfulness of it! President Ezra Taft Benson made this observation, “Just as a man does not really desire food until he is hungry, so he does not desire the salvation of Christ until he knows why he needs Christ. No one adequately and properly knows why he needs Christ until he understands and accepts the doctrine of the Fall and its effect upon all mankind” (emphasis added).
We will break down each aspect of the Fall by covering the body, the mind, and the spirit in this part of the book. Our intention in taking a thorough look at the Fall is to accomplish what President Benson just laid out. By having a deeper understanding of the Fall, we will be able to see where Christ and His Atonement fits in more clearly.
Robert L. Millet said, “Indeed, serious and careful study of the Fall in the Book of Mormon can drive people to their knees, bringing them to acknowledge their own weaknesses and thus their need for the Lord’s redemption. The Atonement is necessary because of the Fall, and unless people sense the effects of Eden---both cosmologically and personally---they cannot comprehend the impact of Gethsemane and Calvary.
“...The gospel or plan of salvation is designed, according to President Brigham Young, for ‘the redemption of fallen beings’ (Journal of Discourses 1:1; hereafter JD). The existence of a plan of deliverance indicates that there must be something from which we need to be redeemed. This is a hard doctrine, one which strikes at the heart of man-made religions and suggests the need for revealed religion. People too often attempt to temper the doctrine of the Fall, to soften its effects. Yet the Fall is a companion doctrine to the Atonement. In fact, there are no serious or extended treatments of the Atonement in the Book of Mormon that are not somehow connected, whether directly or by obvious implication, with the Fall.
“...Joseph Smith wrote to John Wentworth, ‘We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression’ (Aof F 2). The Lord affirms this proclamation in his statement to Adam: ‘I have forgiven thee thy transgression in the Garden of Eden’ (Moses 6:53). This declaration must, however, be understood in the proper doctrinal context. Although God forgave our first parents their transgression, although there is no original sin entailed upon Adam and Eve’s children, and although ‘the Son of God hath atoned for original guilt, wherein the sins of the parents cannot be answered upon the heads of the children’ (Moses 6:54), we must not conclude that all is well” (emphasis added).
I know you may feel a bit uncomfortable with how direct I am speaking about this. It was definitely uncomfortable for me the first few times it really began to sink in! Despite the discomfort or our desire to add in our “...buts” to the doctrine of the Fall, we must understand that each one of us has been affected by the Fall (see Mosiah 16:4). Did you catch the two ways we must understand the Fall? We must understand what the Fall means both “cosmologically and personally” or else we “cannot comprehend the impact of Gethsemane and Calvary” (I would add cosmologically and personally here as well). I cannot understand how I need the Atonement until I understand how the Fall has affected me. I’m not talking about just some vague concept. I am talking about understanding personally. I will leave the “cosmologically” study mostly up to you. By “cosmologically,” I mean how the Atonement fits into God’s plan collectively for all His children. It is into the "personally" that we will plunge deeply as we go through part 2 of this book together.
Although far from being completely comprehensive, I am confident I have given you enough resources throughout this book to start or expand an earnest cosmological study of the Fall. We must spend the majority of our time together instead examining what the Fall means personally. It will require your best efforts and that you be willing to dig deeper than what is here in these pages. That is the only way to understand. (Remember - 10,000 hours to be a master. Why not a master in your understanding of the Fall?) Nobody can do this for YOU. This is a personal process.
Let me quickly make one more thing as clear as I possibly can. Because of the Restoration, we have more pieces of the puzzle than any other religion as to what really happened in the garden of Eden. We need to be careful to avoid the voices of the world that tell us what the Fall is or isn’t. Millet continues, “To say that we are not condemned by the fall of Adam is not to say that we are unaffected by it. Jehovah explained to Adam, ‘Inasmuch as thy children are conceived in sin, even so when they begin to grow up, sin conceiveth in their hearts, and they taste the bitter, that they may know to prize the good’ (Moses 6:55).
“We do not believe, with Calvin, in the moral depravity of humanity. We do not believe, with Luther, that human beings, because of intrinsic carnality and depravity, do not even have the power to choose good over evil. And we do not believe that children are born in sin, that they inherit the so-called sin of Adam, either by sexual union or by birth. Rather, children are conceived in sin, meaning first, that they are conceived into a world of sin, and second, that conception is the vehicle by which the effects of the Fall (not the original guilt, which God has forgiven) are transmitted to Adam and Eve’s posterity. To be sure, there is no sin in sexual union within the bonds of marriage, nor is conception itself sinful. Rather, through conception the flesh originates; through the process of becoming mortal one inherits the effects of the fall of Adam---both physical and spiritual.
“Again, conception, which clothes us in the flesh, is the mechanism of transmission, the means by which Adam and Eve’s fallen nature (both physical and spiritual death) is transferred from generation to generation” (emphasis added).
Although we don’t believe in original guilt as many other Christians do, we are still affected by the Fall. One reason the Fall is vital to The Great Plan of Happiness is that because of the Fall, we inherit mortal bodies. Conception is the vehicle for us to experience the perfect conditions to have the opportunity to progress in our eternal journey. We will examine these conditions one at a time.
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