rickpearce

The reason it’s missing is because they never were given the choice to partake. As soon as they were “caught” the Lord said, “…Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil; and now lest he put forth his hand and partake also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever, Therefore I, the Lord God, will send him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken” (Moses 4:28, 29). If they were given the choice, then the Lord’s word (that they would die) would become void, which, of course, couldn’t happen. “For as I, the Lord God, liveth, even so my words cannot return void, for as they go forth out of my mouth they must be fulfilled. So I drove out the man, and I placed at the east of the Garden of Eden, cherubim and a flaming sword, which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.”

Yes, but we're not talking about the relatively harmless temptation to eat a second bowl of ice cream here. We’re talking about the type of temptation that Satan found necessary to come and beguile Adam and Eve with, and that by yielding to it would cause death and cause them to become “subject to the will of the devil”.

I’m a newbie to the forum and I’ve enjoyed this very thought-provoking thread! However, I’m wondering with all the talk of Adam supposedly knowing the Plan and everything, if someone could explain to me why the Lord Himself describes the cause of the Fall of Adam as the result of Adam yielding to temptation? If Adam chose to partake of the fruit for some wise and righteous purposes, then why doesn’t the Lord commend him for partaking, instead of saying he became subject to Satan’s will by giving into temptation? The Lord says that temptation is a necessary thing for agency but He rightly doesn’t give Adam any accolades for yielding to it. “Wherefore, it came to pass that the devil tempted Adam, and he partook of the forbidden fruit and transgressed the commandment, wherein he became subject to the will of the devil, because he yielded unto temptation” (Doctrine and Covenants 29:39-41) I believe the definition of temptation would be something like “enticement to evil or weakness”. Doesn’t sound particularly praiseworthy to me. With all due respect to Adam, for the valiant arch-angel he was in the pre-existence, and for the great patriarch that he became after the fall, his action in partaking of the forbidden fruit was portrayed by the Lord as a weakness, a yielding to temptation, a transgression of a commandment, all other opinions to the contrary notwithstanding. I believe we do doctrine a disservice when we attribute the central causal element of the Fall to anything other than the weakness and propensity to that is inherent in all intelligences endowed with agency: the ability to yield to temptation. As it turns out, Adam and Eve’s weakness is all of our gain. But still it was their weakness that caused it, not their strength. “…for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” Adam and Eve suffered a lot of woe for their one offence. As do we. But through repentance and through the grace of the atonement it all comes out right in the end.