Articles of Faith: What Do Latter-day Saints Believe About the Fall of Adam 6?

Article of Faith 2

   We believe that men will be punished for their own sins,

                    and not for Adam’s transgression.

This essay is the sixth and final one teaching about the Fall of Adam and Eve as stated in the second Article of Faith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The first thesis discussed moral agency, or the freedom to choose good or evil. The second treatise discussed sin and punishment for sin. The third essay discussed Satan. The fourth paper discussed the creation of Adam and Eve and Satan’s great temptation. The fifth essay discussed the tree of life and the immediate result of the Fall. This thesis will discuss how the Atonement was provided for because the Fall did not come by chance, using the words of Elder James E. Talmage (The Articles of Faith [1890], 66-68).

Atonement Provided for – God did not leave His now mortal children without hope. He gave other commandments to Adam, requiring him to offer sacrifices in the name of the Only Begotten Son, and promising redemption unto him and all his descendants who would comply with the conditions prescribed. The opportunity of winning the victor’s reward by overcoming evil was explained to our parents, and they rejoiced. Adam said: “Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God.” Eve was glad and declared: “Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.”

The Fall came not by chance – It would be unreasonable to suppose that the transgression of Eve and Adam came as a surprise to the Creator. By His infinite fore-knowledge, God knew what would be the result of Satan’s temptation to Eve, and what Adam would do under the resulting conditions. Further, it is evident that the fall was foreseen to be a means whereby man could be brought into direct experience with both good and evil, so that of his own agency he might elect the one or the other, and thus be prepared by the experiences of a mortal probation for the exaltation provided in the beneficent plan of his creation [emphasis added]: “For behold, this is my work and my glory – to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Pearl of Great Price, Moses 1:39) spoke the Lord unto Moses. It was the purpose of God to place within the reach of the spirits begotten by Him in the heavens the means of individual effort, and the opportunity of winning not merely redemption from death but also salvation and even exaltation, with the powers of eternal progression and increase. Hence it was necessary that the spiritual offspring of God should leave the scenes of their primeval childhood and enter the school of mortal experience, meeting, contending with, and overcoming evil, according to their several degrees of faith and strength. Adam and Eve could never have been the parents of a mortal posterity had they not themselves become mortal; mortality was an essential element in the divine plan respecting the earth and its appointed inhabitants; and, as a means of introducing mortality, the Lord placed before the progenitors of the race a law, knowing what would follow.

Eve was fulfilling the foreseen purposes of God by the part she took in the great drama of the fall; yet she did not partake of the forbidden fruit with that object in view, but with intent to act contrary to the divine command, being deceived by the sophistries of Satan, who also, for that matter, furthered the purposes of the Creator by tempting Eve; yet his design was to thwart the Lord’s plan. We are definitely told that “he knew not the mind of God, wherefore he sought to destroy the world” (Pearl of Great Price, Moses 4:6) [Emphasis added]. Yet his diabolical effort, far from being the initiatory step toward destruction, contributed to the plan of man’s eternal progression. Adam’s part in the great event was essentially different from that of his wife; he was not deceived; on the contrary he deliberately decided to do as Eve desired, that he might carry out the purposes of his Maker with respect to the race of men, whose first patriarch he was ordained to be.

Even the transgressions of men may be turned to the accomplishment of high purposes. The sacrificial death of Christ was ordained from before the foundation of the world, yet Judas who betrayed, and the Jews who brought about the crucifixion of the Son of God, are nonetheless guilty of the awful crime.

It has become a common practice with mankind to heap reproaches upon the progenitors of the family, and to picture the supposedly blessed state in which we would be living but for the fall; whereas 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 form 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.

 

Why Does DEI Still Have Life?

The federal government banned “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or DEI, and public opinion of it has dropped. However, elite educational institutions still have it. Jarrett Stepman discussed the situation in his article published in The Daily Signal. 

DEI may be crumbling in the federal government and waning in the public esteem, but it is still going strong in elite educational institutions despite popular and legal headwinds against it.

Aaron Sibarium at The Washington Free Beacon dropped a report on Monday about how one prestigious law school journal often made race a deciding factor in the submissions it would accept.

Sibarium wrote that the prestigious California Law Review, the University of California at Berkeley School of Law’s top journal, brings on editors aggressively dedicated to promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

This group of editors used an increasingly common set of procedures that let it create more racial diversity without directly saying, “Whites need not apply.”

The Free Beacon reported that it “reviewed 14 applications for the committee submitted between 2023 and 2026,” as well as internal announcements about which applications were ultimately accepted.

The pattern that emerged was clear.

“The documents offer a window into how editors at a top law review … are using personal statements to bypass bans on affirmative action, giving race as much weight or more than what one former committee member, Clemencia Garcia-Kasimirowski, dubbed ‘seemingly objective’ standards.”

One of the members of the California Law Review’s selection committee was former Politico Deputy Director Maya Parthasarathy, who came aboard in 2025.

Parthasarathy, according to the report, had previously used her position at Politico to aggressively promote DEI.

First, Parthasarathy dropped grade considerations for new hires, then she created a “holistic” review for new job applicants which apparently included an editing test. But even that test didn’t seem to be too important to the eventual hiring decision.

“For candidates on the borderline of a passing score on our test, we considered strengths they showed in other parts of their applications, and experiences they would bring to the table,” Parthasarathy wrote in her application to the California Law Review admissions committee, “At the end of my tenure at Politico, our team had grown from just one person of color – me – to fifty percent hires from underrepresented backgrounds.”

So, the objective hiring measures were effectively dropped. Then there was a flood of people hired from “underrepresented backgrounds.”

The thinly disguised form of racial hiring Parthasarathy described became ubiquitous in media, in corporate America, in law firms, and certainly in academia before the “vibe shift” and President Donald Trump’s election in 2024.

Practically every elite institution of every type grabbed hold of the “racial reckoning” and committed to hiring practices of dubious legal merit. But many of them got cold feet when the Department of Justice made it clear they would begin to enforce civil rights laws against them. However, as we’ve seen in many such cases, higher education just can’t give up what’s become its central reason for being.

It has shown a remarkable willingness to throw away notions of merit and credibility to continue the DEI racket, even in the face of legal threats.

And that was clearly the case at the California Law Review.

It wasn’t just one submissions editor who perfected the art of racist, “antiracist” dog-whistling to bring in artificially created diversity.

Previously mentioned Garcia-Kasimirowski blasted standardized testing as “created by a eugenicist” and denounced large scale lectures as “proven to disadvantage people of color.”

Two more editors explicitly said, according to Sibarium, that they joined the submission committee so they could boost Native American applicants.

One editor pledged that she would ensure that “students like the girl from my tribe can look to law review journals and feel represented.”

The submissions process was heavily skewed toward the personal statement, which, Sibarium noted, was often a deciding factor in whether an applicant was accepted or not. And the personal statements that were most likely to be accepted were clearly weighted toward students who demonstrated how they would fit the goals of DEI.

When you see story after media story complaining about how the Trump education department is waging a war on “education,” or how conservatives want to defund “research,” think of this report.

Our nation’s top schools have replaced merit with the ultimately shallow but ruthlessly discriminatory demands of DEI. This report on the California Law Review doesn’t shock me. What would shock me at this point is if any top law review didn’t use DEI in some way…..

It’s an important lesson to keep in mind going forward. They’ll never give it up, but they’ll keep you down if you don’t have the right skin color and don’t bow to the same gods of DEI that they do.