If God allowed Adam and Eve to choose, I wonder … could they have stayed in the Garden forever? The story is, of course, metaphorical, and we should think about the application to our lives. Is it possible that some of our spiritual siblings, though on the side of God in the War in Heaven, have chosen not to pursue the plan in toto? Is it possible that some of those spirits will remain spirits forever, living with God, but never obtaining His full glory? (This is not one of those questions that implies that I know the answer. I just wonder about such things.)

Similarly, we now have an idea of the War of Heaven that involves only two sides–the Devil’s and the Deity’s. Were some on the Lord’s side there only halfheartedly, willing to not serve the Devil but not willing to wholeheartedly serve God? I don’t know.

I’m not sure that the knowledge would make any difference, except in one circumstance. Such an idea might explain the existence of animals. Animals clearly are ontologically different from people. Why? Either the difference must be inherent, meaning that different classes of intelligence have existed from all eternity, or else these intelligences have made choices that somehow permanently lock themselves into a lesser existence. Realizing the possibility of complex choices before the earthly existence may make the second possibility more likely.

http://www.libertypages.com/clark/Intros/AdamEve.html

It’s actually pretty rough. I’ll probably rewrite it a bit over the next while. Jim Faulconer’s paper is quite good on this as well:

http://www.philosophyandscripture.org/Issue1-1/James_Faulconer/james_faulconer.html

I used to be on the religion message board at classmates.com. I posed a question once, asking what people thought of Adam and Eve. Since this board had people from every school of religious thought you could imagine (save the non Internet using Amish), I was prepared for a variety of answers. What amazed me was how many people said they hated (yes, that’s the word they used) Adam and Eve for ruining perfection for all of us.

What if the commandment not to eat of the tree isn’t really a “commandment” as we normally think of them. What if God was just explaining a principle of actions and consequences? Maybe the concept was roughly analogous to the law of gravity, such as, “if you jump in the air, you will come back down.”

This is what I think of when the Lord points out that they can choose for themselves. Obviously, it is up to us to choose whether or not to obey any commandment, but here God specifically spelled it out, as though it really was a valid option. It’s just that if they ate from the tree, they would surely die, and He wanted them to understand that.

I don’t think it’s too radical to say that there seem to be different kinds of commandments in terms of how best to be “obedient” to them. For example, some seem to have exceptions (although extremely rarely) from time to time. If that weren’t the case, then the prophet Nephi would have to be considered a rather “disobedient” person, as in 1 Nephi he killed Laban, lied to Zoram, and stole the brass plates, all in one night. The way I reconcile this is that there were higher principles that Nephi was abiding by, which required him to “break” what we normally consider as comandments. The important part is that he was in close communication with the Spirit, which helped him find his way through the seeming contradiction. On the other hand, it’s hard to think of even theoretical exceptions to commandments such as “Love the Lord thy God.”

Also, in a sense, all commandments simply spell out consequences to actions. We are “commanded” to pay tithing. Or else what? Will it put God in a bad mood? Maybe we’ll be struck down by lighting or spontaneously grow a big “S” (for Sin) on our foreheads. No. What will happen is that we’ll miss out on the promised blessings (that is, the consequences) that go along with paying tithing, which include spiritual development, temple worthiness, and an “opening of the windows of heaven.”

Looking at it from that perspective, I don’t have a big problem thinking that the commandment not to eat the friut was along those lines.