According to Christ’s original doctrine as restored through Joseph Smith, the Fall made both possible and necessary the Savior’s atoning for our sins. Human nature is neither inherently evil nor inherently good. We become evil or good based on interaction between the Lord’s influence and the choices we make-choices unavailable in the garden before Adam and Eve fell and only made possible because of the Savior’s atonement.
In fulfillment of his intended purpose, God expelled Adam and Eve from Eden into a world that was subject to the forces of life and death, good and evil. Yet He soon taught them that “the Son of God hath atoned for original guilt”; therefore, Adam’s children were neither evil nor good but were “whole from the foundation of the world.” (Moses 6:54; emphasis added.) Thus, “every spirit of man was innocent in the beginning; and God having redeemed man from the fall, men became again, in their infant state, innocent before God.” (D&C 93:38; emphasis added.)[1]Elder Bruce C. Hafen, The Restored Doctrine of the Atonement, Ensign, December 1993.
There is another way of looking at this verse, and that is through the lens of Enoch literature. Moses 6.55 is dealing with the things of Enoch, things that have been lost to us since the 4th century CE. Applying this verse to the setting of Enoch’s preaching, Hugh Nibley citing a passage from the Book of the Giants, observes that “the wicked people of Enoch’s day …did indeed conceive their children in sin, since they were illegitimate offspring of a totally amoral society.”[2]See: Bradshaw and Larsen, In God’s Image, p. 48-50. Bradshaw and Larsen explain: The relevant passage in the Book of the Giants reads: (L. T. Stuckenbruck, Book of Giants, 4Q203, 8:6-9, p. 90.) … Continue reading
References
| ↑1 | Elder Bruce C. Hafen, The Restored Doctrine of the Atonement, Ensign, December 1993. |
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| ↑2 | See: Bradshaw and Larsen, In God’s Image, p. 48-50. Bradshaw and Larsen explain: The relevant passage in the Book of the Giants reads: (L. T. Stuckenbruck, Book of Giants, 4Q203, 8:6-9, p. 90.) “Let it be known to you th[at] … your activity and that of [your] wive[s and of your children … through your fornication.”
Any conjectured move toward repentance was temporary, however, and eventually Enoch’s enemies began to attack. The book of Moses reads: (Moses 7.13) And so great was the faith of Enoch that he led the people of God, and their enemies came to battle against them; and he spake the word of the Lord, and the earth trembled, and the mountains fled, even according to his command; and the rivers of water were turned out of their course; and the roar of the lions was heard out of the wilderness. Similarly, in the Book of the Giants, ’Ohya, a leader of the gibborim, gives a description of his defeat in such a battle: (M. Wise et al., DSS, 4Q531, 22:3-7, p. 293. Cf. H. W. Nibley, Teachings of the PGP, p. 269)
Of special note is a puzzling phrase in Martinez’ translation of the Book of the Giants that immediately follows the description of the battle:(F. G. Martinez, Book of Giants (4Q531), 2:8, p. 262.) “… the roar of the wild beasts has come and they bellowed a feral roar.” Remarkably the book of Moses account has a similar phrase following the battle description, recording that “the roar of the lions was heard out of the wilderness.” Both the book of Moses and the Book of the Giants contain a “prediction of utter destruction and the confining in prison that is to follow” for the gibborim. From the book of Moses we read:(Moses 7.38) But behold, these … shall perish in the floods; and behold, I will shut them up; a prison have I prepared for them. Similarly, in the Book of the Giants we read: “he imprisoned us and has power [ov]er [us].” Note that the parallels with the Book of the Giants we have cited are not drawn at will from a large corpus of Enoch manuscripts but rather are concentrated in a scant three pages of Qumran fragments. These resemblances range from general themes in the story line (secret works, murders, visions, earthly and heavenly books of remembrance that evoke fear and trembling, moral corruption, hope held out for repentance, and the eventual defeat of Enoch’s adversaries in battle, ending with their utter destruction and imprisonment) to specific occurrences of rare expressions in corresponding contexts (the reference to the “wild man,” the name and parallel role of Mahijah/Mahujah, and the “roar of the wild beasts”). It would be thought remarkable if any nineteenth-century document were to exhibit a similar density of close resemblances with this small collection of ancient fragments, but to find such similarities in appropriate contexts relating in each case to the story of Enoch is compelling. From my reading of Bradshaw’s analysis, there is a clear indication that those “born in sin” could be labeled as the Giants from this Enoch tradition. |
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