Lesson 3 of 12, Oct 11
The plan, part 1: before birth, the Fall, and why you have a body
From Preach My Gospel, Lesson 2; Gospel Foundations, Your Body Is Sacred
Anything with a plus sign opens for more: the full verse text, the history behind it, and what a Catholic or Protestant friend would actually say back.
Follow up
Last time the invitation was to pray to God as your Father, specifically, and to tell Him one thing you want to become like Him in.
That invitation only makes sense if two things are true: that you are His child, and that you were made to grow. Today's lesson is about where both of those ideas come from, and why the rest of Christianity mostly lost them.
The unanswered question
Where was I before I was born, and is my body a gift or a problem?
Every religion has to answer where you were before you were born. Most of Christianity answers: nowhere. God created your soul at conception, from nothing. The follow-up question is harder: if God made you from nothing and put you in a body that gets sick, tempts you, and dies, is the body a gift or a problem?
A lot of Christian thought has treated it as a problem to be endured. The scriptures below say something else.
Hold the question. The scriptures answer it next.
Scriptures
Read in class. Someone reads it aloud; then we ask what it means for someone sitting here.
- Job 38:4–7
- 2 Nephi 2:22–25
- Moses 5:10–11
God is answering Job out of a whirlwind, and His first question is: where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Then He answers it. The morning stars sang, and all the sons of God shouted for joy (Job 38:4–7). Somebody was there to shout. Job does not remember it. Neither do we. But the Bible says we were there.
Lehi, dying, tells his son Jacob the thing almost no other Christian text says. If Adam had not fallen, he would have had no children, and no joy, because he would have known no misery (2 Nephi 2:22–25). The Fall was not the plan breaking. It was the door into it. Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy. What does it change to hear the Fall described as a door rather than a disaster?
Then the passage Genesis does not have: what Adam and Eve said after they left the garden. Adam blesses God because of his transgression. Eve says they would never have had children or known the joy of their redemption without it (Moses 5:10–11). Eve is glad. She understood the plan before anyone wrote it down.
Sent to you this week
Open any of these for the text and a note on why it is on the list.
- God knew Jeremiah before Jeremiah had a body.
- The clearest scripture we have on life before birth.
- Two claims that set us apart from almost every other Christian tradition.
- Most Christian usage treats soul as the immaterial part of a person, the part that is not the body.
- Paul to the Corinthians, a city famous for treating the body as disposable.
- Paul again, and even more direct.
- The commandment and its consequence.
- Read the whole chapter, but linger on verse 22.
- Alma to his son Corianton, who has been sinning and is now worried about justice.
What we believe
The answer to today's question
Where was I before I was born, and is my body a gift or a problem?
You lived with God before you were born, and you chose to come. The earth was made so you could get a body and be tested. The Fall was the doorway into that, not a catastrophe; Adam and Eve rejoiced in it. Your body is part of becoming like a God who has one.
- We lived with God before birth. He knew us, and we chose His plan.
- The earth was created so we could gain bodies and be tested.
- The Fall was not a disaster; it was the doorway. Adam and Eve rejoiced in it.
- We are accountable for our own sins, not Adam's (Articles of Faith 1:2).
- The body is sacred. It is part of becoming like a God who has one.
Where "created from nothing" comes from
The idea that God created each soul from nothing at conception is not from the Bible. It is from the early church's argument with Greek philosophy. Origen, one of the most brilliant Christian teachers of the third century, believed souls existed before birth. In 553 anathemas issued in connection with the Second Council of Constantinople condemned that teaching, and from then on the standard Christian position became that the soul is created fresh with each body. The Catechism of the Catholic Church still says it that way (paragraph 366).
Once souls are created from nothing, the Fall has to be read as a catastrophe, because there is nothing before it to give it purpose. Augustine, writing around 400, drew the conclusion: Adam's sin is inherited by every person, so every baby is born guilty. That is original sin, and it shapes how most of the Christian world reads Genesis 3.
The Restoration reverses both moves. You existed before, so the Fall has a purpose, and you answer for your own sins, not Adam's.
Words worth defining
Premortal life. Our life as spirit children of God before birth. Scripture calls it the first estate (Abraham 3:26). Older Christian writers called the idea preexistence.
The Fall. Adam and Eve's transgression and its results: physical death, spiritual separation from God, and a mortal world with pain and opposition. In Restoration teaching, a necessary step, not a disaster.
Transgression vs. sin. Adam and Eve broke a law, which is a transgression. They did not rebel against God in the way sin usually means. That is why Adam blesses God afterward (Moses 5:10) and why the second Article of Faith says we are punished for our own sins, not for Adam's transgression.
Original sin. The traditional Christian teaching, from Augustine, that Adam's guilt is inherited by every person at birth. We do not believe it. We do believe the Fall left every person with a fallen nature that needs Christ (Mosiah 3:19), which is a different claim.
Probationary state. Alma's name for mortality (Alma 42:10): a time to prepare and to be tested, with a beginning and an end.
Why it matters
The Catholic Easter Vigil hymn, the Exsultet, contains the line "O happy fault" (felix culpa). It is a flicker of the truth Lehi teaches plainly in 2 Nephi 2.
Watch a short clip: What is the purpose and meaning of life? (about three minutes)
What would your life look like if you believed the body was a prison instead of a temple?
If you were created from nothing and dropped into a body that fails, then the body is the problem and the goal is to get out of it. That is how a lot of Christian history has read it, and it shows up in how people talk about heaven: leaving the body behind, becoming pure spirit, finally free.
If you chose to come here, and the body was the point, everything flips. Sickness, temptation, and death are not evidence that something went wrong. They are the test you signed up for. And the body is not the obstacle to becoming like God; it is a step toward a God who has one.
How the Fall came to be read as a catastrophe
- c. 230Origen teaches that souls existed before birth and chose their circumstances. It is one live option among early Christians.
- c. 400Augustine formulates original sin: Adam's guilt is transmitted to every person at conception. Infant baptism becomes the remedy.
- 553Anathemas issued with the Second Council of Constantinople condemn the preexistence of souls. Historians debate whether the council formally adopted them; the church treated them as binding either way. From here on, mainstream Christianity has no life before birth.
- c. 700sThe Easter Vigil hymn, the Exsultet, sings of Adam's fault as felix culpa, a happy fault, because it brought so great a Redeemer. A flicker of what Lehi taught, kept alive in liturgy.
- 1530–1646The Augsburg Confession and the Westminster Confession restate original sin for Protestants. Westminster adds total depravity: every part of a person is corrupted from birth.
- 1830The Book of Mormon is published with 2 Nephi 2 and Alma 42: the Fall as a door, mortality as a probationary state.
- June 1830Joseph Smith begins the Book of Moses. Chapter 5 restores Adam's and Eve's own words about the Fall.
- 1842The Book of Abraham is published in Nauvoo, with the premortal council of chapter 3.
Notice the order. The doctrine of a life before birth was not invented by Joseph Smith. It was believed by some of the earliest Christians, condemned by a council, and restored.
The hard part: where the Book of Abraham came from
Abraham 3 is our clearest text on premortal life, so it is worth being honest about the book it comes from, because you will hear this from critics.
In 1835 Joseph Smith bought several Egyptian papyri from a traveling exhibitor, and he produced the Book of Abraham in connection with them. Most of the papyri were thought lost in the Chicago fire of 1871. In 1967 some fragments turned up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and were returned to the Church. Egyptologists, including faithful Latter-day Saint ones, agree that the surviving fragments are ordinary Egyptian funerary texts from a period long after Abraham, and that the characters on them do not translate to the English of the Book of Abraham.
The Church published a Gospel Topics essay on this in 2014, and it does not dodge. It lays out the evidence and offers two ways faithful members think about it: that the papyri were a catalyst for revelation rather than a source text, or that the relevant portion of the papyri was lost. It also notes what the Book of Abraham gets right that Joseph could not have known from his environment, and that the book's truth is ultimately known by the Spirit, not by Egyptology.
Two things worth holding at once. The Book of Abraham's origins are the hardest question in Church history, and honest people in the Church say so. And the doctrine it teaches is not isolated: Job 38, Jeremiah 1, D&C 93, and Alma 42 all point the same direction. The essay is linked below. Read it before a critic summarizes it for you.
In their own words
Eve, after leaving the garden:
"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."Moses 5:11
God, to Abraham:
"Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born."Abraham 3:23
And the Catholic liturgy, on the same night every year, in a line that would fit in 2 Nephi 2:
"O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer."The Exsultet, sung at the Easter Vigil
Across the Christian world
Each column is that tradition's own answer, from its own sources.
Catholic
The soul is created by God at conception; there is no life before birth. Adam's sin left every person born with original sin, which baptism removes.
Catechism 366, 403–405
Protestant
The same: no premortal life, creation from nothing, and inherited sin. Reformed churches call it total depravity.
Westminster Confession 6; Augsburg Confession II
Restored
We lived with God before birth and chose to come. The Fall was necessary and good. We answer for our own sins, not Adam's.
Abraham 3:22–26; 2 Nephi 2:25; Articles of Faith 1:2
What the Restoration adds: Without a premortal life there is no answer to "why am I here" beyond "God decided." Without a fortunate Fall the body is something to escape. We know we chose to come.
A Catholic or Protestant friend will tell you that you did not exist before you were conceived, that Adam's sin is on every person from birth, and that baptism, or faith, is what deals with it. That is a serious position with fifteen hundred years behind it, and it is worth understanding before you disagree with it.
Here is where we agree: the Fall brought death and a fallen nature into the world, and no one gets out of that without Christ. Here is where we differ: you existed before, you chose to come, the Fall was the door into a plan rather than the wreck of one, and you will answer for what you did, not for what Adam did.
The Catholic view, and what a friend would say back
The Catechism teaches that each soul is created immediately by God at conception (paragraph 366), that the Fall is a real event described in figurative language (390), and that Adam's sin is transmitted to all his descendants as original sin, a deprivation of original holiness, removed by baptism (403–405). Catholics do not believe infants are personally guilty; they believe infants are born without the grace Adam lost.
The strongest thing a Catholic friend will say: Romans 5:12 says sin entered the world by one man and death passed upon all men. Psalm 51:5 says David was shaped in iniquity. The Bible teaches that we inherit something from Adam.
A fair answer: we agree that we inherit something from Adam, namely mortality and a fallen nature (Mosiah 3:19 calls the natural man an enemy to God). We deny that we inherit guilt. Ezekiel 18:20 says the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father. And Moroni 8:8 says little children are whole, and need no baptism for something they did not do. The Catholic Church's own instinct points our way: it has never defined that unbaptized infants are damned, and in 2007 its theological commission expressed hope for their salvation. Then agree warmly about the Exsultet. A Catholic who sings felix culpa every Easter is closer to Lehi than they may realize.
The Protestant view, and what a friend would say back
The Reformers kept original sin and sharpened it. The Augsburg Confession (Article II) says all are born with sin and without fear of God. The Westminster Confession (chapter 6) says the guilt of Adam's sin is imputed to all his posterity and that we are wholly defiled in every part: total depravity. Most Evangelicals hold some version of this, though many soften it in practice.
The strongest thing a Protestant friend will say: Ephesians 2:3 says we are by nature children of wrath. Jeremiah 1:5 only means God foreknew Jeremiah, not that Jeremiah existed. There is no life before birth in the Bible.
A fair answer on the first point: yes, by nature. That is the fallen nature we agree on. Being a child of wrath by nature and being guilty of Adam's act are two different claims, and only the second is original sin. On the second point, ask them to read Jeremiah 1:5 aloud and then Job 38:7. Somebody shouted for joy at the creation. If those were angels, why does Job 38 use the same phrase, sons of God, that Genesis 6 uses for beings who later came to earth? And why did Jesus's own disciples ask in John 9:2 whether a man had sinned before he was born blind, a question that only makes sense if life before birth was an ordinary idea in first-century Judaism? Then say what we owe them: the Reformers took the Fall seriously, and they were right that no one climbs out of it alone.
What the councils and confessions say, in their own words
The anathemas against Origen, issued in 553 alongside the Second Council of Constantinople, first anathema: If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema. That sentence is why almost no Christian you meet believes they existed before birth. It was decided by vote.
Westminster Confession, chapter 6, section 3: Adam and Eve being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed; and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity.
Articles of Faith 1:2: We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression. One sentence, written by Joseph Smith in 1842, that quietly sets aside fourteen hundred years of Western theology.
Testify, invite, share it
Consider reading all thirty verses of 2 Nephi 2 this week, slowly, and writing one sentence in your own words about why the Fall had to happen. Not Lehi's sentence. Yours.
Men are, that they might have joy. That is what the Book of Mormon says you are for. Not to endure, not to be tested and discarded, but to have joy, in a body, forever.
You existed before you were born. You chose this. The body you have is not a cage; it is part of the soul, and part of becoming like a Father who has one. Adam and Eve were glad. You can be too.
If a friend pushes on this
The natural pushback: "If the Fall was good, why do we need a Savior?" Do not flinch from it; it is the right question. The answer is that the Fall did two things at once. It opened the door to bodies, children, and growth, and it closed the door to God's presence. Christ opens the second door. Lehi says both in the same chapter: Adam fell that men might be, and the Messiah cometh to redeem the children of men from the fall (2 Nephi 2:25–26). A door that needed a Redeemer is still a door.
Will you read all of 2 Nephi 2 this week and write in one sentence why the Fall had to happen?
The promise: "Men are, that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25).
Watch and study this week
Short clips, two to four minutes
Full talks and reading
Five quick questions
Who shouted for joy at the creation of the earth, according to Job 38?
Finish the verse: "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have…"
Which Article of Faith says we are punished for our own sins and not for Adam's transgression?
Which early Christian teacher taught that souls existed before birth, a view a council condemned in 553?
Alma 42:10 calls mortality what kind of state?