What Doctrines Are Taught by the Second Article of Faith?

            Have you ever considered the doctrines taught by the Articles of Faith? I did not until I took a class on them, and I am amazed at the number of doctrines taught in the simple statements that make up the Articles of Faith.


            Articles of Faith 1:2 states: “We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.” That simple statement means that we are born innocent and into innocence and are responsible for only the things that we do wrong. Three doctrines taught by this statement are The Fall, Agency, and Personal Accountability.


            As I studied the three doctrines associated with the second Article of Faith, I gained much more understanding about it. Here are a few of the insights that I gained.


            I will first discuss The Fall. I appreciate the way that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that The Fall was a part of God’s plan for His children. This tells us that it was not an accident or just a happenstance but was meant to be. The Church of Jesus Christ also teaches that The Fall happened in two directions (True to the Faith). The earth and everything on it fell downward to a telestial level and were no longer in God’s presence. In other words, The Fall brought both spiritual and physical death into the world. However, mankind fell forward in that we received the opportunity to come to earth to gain physical bodies and to learn and progress to become like Heavenly Father. 

In 2 Nephi 2:25 Lehi taught that Adam fell to give mankind the opportunity of a mortal life and to have joy. We know that joy comes from working and progressing toward a goal. We also know that we receive joy from our family relationships. Even though we live in a fallen world and are constantly “tested by the difficulties of life and the temptations of the adversary” (Gospel Topics), we can use our mortal lives to work toward our full potential as divine sons and daughters of God. This means that The Fall was a good thing and that we should be grateful to Adam and Eve for making such a difficult decision. 

The more I learn about the Fall and it being a fall forward, the more I love Adam and Eve for making their difficult choice. Many people blame Eve, but I honor her courage. I also honor Adam for thinking through the problem and making the correct choice. Eve understood that the fruit was good for food and that it looked good. She believed that the fruit would give her wisdom (Moses 4:12). We do not know how much Eve understood before she partook of the fruit, but we know from her statements that she soon gained great understanding about the importance of what she did. We know also that the ability to know good from evil (Moses 4:28) is important to our growth.

The second doctrine is agency. I find it amazing that Heavenly Father trusted us enough to give us the gift of agency prior to our proving ourselves worthy of it. It is a gift that was given to us in our pre-mortal life. It is gift that is ours to use in our daily life no matter where we live or in what the conditions. Even in the German concentration camps, some of the people understood that they could still choose their attitude about being there. Satan understands the importance of this gift for our eternal progression and continually seeks to destroy it (Moses 4:3).

Jacob taught the importance of agency when he said that there must be “opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11). He also taught that Adam had some understanding of the importance of the Fall and partook of the fruit that he might have posterity (2 Nephi 2:25).  Jacob states plainly that we can use our agency to choose to follow the Savior to “liberty and eternal life,” or to follow Satan to “captivity and death” (2 Nephi 2:27).

As a parent, one of the most difficult things that I did was to allow my children to use their agency. It was not too difficult when they were choosing their pants and shirts because it did not matter whether they chose as I would choose. However, they did not stay little for long, and their choices became more important. Thus, allowing agency became more difficult.

The more I learn about agency, the more I marvel that Heavenly Father trusted us enough to give it to us. Usually people are given great gifts after they have earned them in some way, but Heavenly Father gave us agency before we had proven ourselves. We were given agency in the pre-mortal world, and we brought it with us to this world. We know that we exercised our agency wisely because we are here on earth in physical bodies (True to the Faith). We are told that those who used their agency to rebel against Heavenly Father were cast out without physical bodies. He is so committed to allowing His children to use agency that He allowed one-third part of His children to rebel and receive much less than He desired for them. 

We learn in 2 Nephi 2:27 that we can use our agency to “choose liberty and eternal life” or to “choose captivity and death.” That choice is so much greater than choosing the color of shirt to wear today or what meal to order at McDonalds. Even though agency was given to us freely, we can lose it by the choices we make. We lose agency in many ways, such as going into debt and losing financial freedom, but we lose agency in more important ways by breaking the Word of Wisdom, the Law of Chastity, and other commandments.

The third doctrine is personal accountability. God gave us agency in our pre-mortal life, and The Fall gives us many opportunities to use it in this fallen world. However, we have full accountability for the choices that we make. We are accountable for choices that lead us into sin, and we are also accountable for how we use our abilities and time (True to the Faith). Abraham 3:25 tells us that God created the earth and gave us agency in order to “prove” us. This is the reason why He gave us agency before we earned the gift. We must have freedom to choose for ourselves before we can be held accountable for our choices.

Heavenly Father allows us to make choices and to act as we choose. However, He cannot change the consequences. We will move toward “happiness, peace, and eternal life” when we make good choices, and we move toward “heartaches and misery when we choose to sin” (True to the Faith). I will close with a powerful statement made by Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles about personal accountability.

[Personal accountability] has been under assault since before the creation. We must defend accountability against persons and programs that would — sometimes with the best of intentions — make us dependent. And we must defend it against our own inclinations to avoid the work that is required to cultivate talents, abilities and Christ-like character….

Who bears responsibility for what happens in our lives?

When things turn bad, there is a tendency to blame others or even God. Sometimes a sense of entitlement arises, and individuals or groups try to shift responsibility for their welfare to other people, or to governments. In spiritual matters some suppose that men and women need not strive for personal righteousness because God loves and saves us ‘just as we are.’

[God intends for us to use the moral agency given to us in our pre-mortal lives.]

 It is His plan and His will that we have the principal decision-making role in our own life’s drama,” he said. “God will not live our lives for us, nor control us as if we were His puppets, as Lucifer once proposed to do. Nor will His prophets accept the role of ‘puppet master’ in God’s place.