Premortal Sin
So I admit to reading LDS-Phil and wishing that I had the wherewithal to participate, but alas, I do not. The folks on the list are kind to not spank me whenever I make some sort of wannabe comment. J Wilhelm recently wrote on a thread about sin:
Does it lessen the seriousness of sin to believe that creatures who were holy in the pre-existence chose to come to earth and participate in rebellion against God? In sin that consists of disobeying him and causes him to send his son to die on the cross? What sane personality would leave a life of holiness to participate in sinning?
To which I replied:
Was there no sin before mortality? Was there simply Holiness as you say?
Besides Clark from over at Mormon Metaphysics, there wasn’t much of a response. Clark:
That’s long been a question of interest to me. Given the war in heaven, it would seem Satan, by rebelling against God, sinned. I’m not sure how else to take it. As did the 1/3 who followed him. Exactly how one sins in such a state or even what that state is, is not at all clear to me. Heavens, no one’s even sure how to take the notion of spirit birth or even if there really was such a thing. I think our pre-mortal life is at best glanced in a very fragmentary way and it is hard to say much at all about it. Beyond that there was rebellion.
But I do agree that if we could answer that question it would throw considerable light on both the atonement and repentance.
I want to explore this a little. In George Laub transcription of the KFD, Joseph Smith is recorded as saying:
But Satan or Lucifer being the next heir and had alloted to him great power and authority even prince of power of the eir He spake emediatey and boasted of himself saying send me I can save all [he] even those who sined against the holy ghost and he accused his brethren and was herld [hurled] from the council for striving to breake the law emediatly and there was a warfare with Satan and the gods and the[y] hurld Satan out of his place and all them that would not keep the law of the councill But he himself being one of the council would not keep his or their first estate for he was one of the Sons of perdition and concequently all the Sons of perdition become devils &[c]. The Words of Joseph Smith, pg. 362
Maybe to sin is to break the law and there was not much of a law to keep. From that we could say that the only sin is not keeping the first estate (whatever that is). However, there is no question that our pre-mortal spirits were less than exemplary (Abr. 3:18-19). And I infer from that that we were not completely Holy (depending on what that means).
This posses an interesting problem: We know that no unclean thing can enter into heaven (Moses 6:57), but maybe you can be at once clean, but unholy (or less than holy).
The more I think about this, the more I think that a definition of sin that is limited to breaking the first estate is not correct. Of course, one asks: How else could one sin?
I’m not sure of the answer, but understanding that anything less than perfection is sin coupled with Joseph’s exposition on Christ’s ability to help spirits increase suggests that premortal spirits are not perfect (that and Abr.).
Comment by J. Stapley — 12/27/2004 @ 7:16 pm
What if pre-mortal sin was faith based just as our current conception of sin is? I think not having God around in person telling us unequivically what to do and what not to do tends to put an interesting spin on things.
Comment by chris g — 12/30/2004 @ 10:32 pm
I’m not sure if this is the same wavelength that you are on, but I think that the only explicit premortal sin that we know of (the rejection of the first estate) is definitely faith based. That is to say, whether or not one had faith in Christ was, I imagine, the ultimate predictor of whether or not one kept it.
Also, while we don’t know the details, my current take on premortal life is not to disparate from what we have know vis a vis our daily interaction with God the Father. Faith is consequently a very important premortal trait; One, which, if I read your comment correctly, has drastic implication for the nature of sin and the atonement.
Comment by J. Stapley — 1/1/2005 @ 9:01 am
OK, I’ve never blogged before, but I think this might be a place to get an opinion on the way I see this. In no way is this meant to be doctrine. I’m rather putting this out there to see if anyone can show me doctrinally that this is incorrect so that I can throw it away if it is a false idea. I think Chris is correct to point out that spirits are not perfect. In fact, I think holiness is probably a concept that is foreign to the state of spirits before this earth. We know that only spirit and body united can have a fullness of joy. My idea is this. What if death is necessary precisely because God new we would mess up when he gave us bodies. Thus, though we might do things wrong before this life, they would have no eternal bearing on our fullness of joy in that they wouldn’t have a permanent effect on the union of our spirit and body. However, when we came to earth, our sins became a problem because they had an effect on our bodies and spirits and the way the two interact, even if this is at the level that we would normally consider mental–we do somethign and it affects the way our brains work, neural paths are created that affect the way we think and thus the ways our spritis and bodies interact. Death and ressurection gives us a chance as we perfect our spirits–being both justified and sanctified through the atonement and the holy ghost–to have a second chance at a perfect body so that we can experience that jyo that comes from a perfect spirit and body that God can trust us with. We have learned how not to goof up the combination. Thus it is that death comes upon man to fulfill the merciful plan of our creator. We get to have a temporary union in order to learn to get it right. Then, when we are consigned to a kingdom of glory, we are given the ammount of freedom allowable given our proven ability to not mess up our souls, which, when permanently united would be irreprable. Thus, though in the pre-mortal life, we may have been able to do that which was not right, it would not have been a sin in the sense that it would have the same sorto f affect on us that it would have once we had gained a body. So though we could do what was not right, the only real problem was deciding not to keep our first estate and have faith in the plan of the father which would enable our progression, but had the risky drawback of uniting us wiht abody which would end in a possible restriction of our possibilities if we couldn’t learn to do what would bring us a fullness of joy.
Wow, that was incredibly disjointed and probably impossible to understand, but I hope someone can set me right where I need to be as I work through some sort of way of looking at the material through the benefit of the gospel.
Thanks,
Steve
Comment by S. Hancock — 1/2/2005 @ 11:21 pm
Mr. Hancock (this is not an affectation, I really call him this…though now it should be Dr.) Thanks for weighing in, I’m honored. Since this is the first week of this blog, it might not see the traffic that other more well known (and reputable) blogs might see, but I hope we can carry this forward.
You are coming at this from an interesting perspective that I will have to ruminate over for a while, but here are my first impressions:
Steve said, speaking of the resurrected body that “ We have learned how not to goof up the combination… to not mess up our souls, which, when permanently united would be irreparable.” And antecedently of accepting the plan that “… had the risky drawback of uniting us with a body which would end in a possible restriction of our possibilities.”
I think this could be an excellent position, but I see two possible sticking points. 1) Do we truly learn how not to goof up the combination? I realize this is a fruit of the atonement (sanctification), but that almost seams ancillary to the concept that we are trying to learn (we all fall short, so we all don’t learn) 2)While we don’t understand it really, there is the materialism of spirits within the Mormon tradition. But to be frank, I don’t really know what that means so I can’t speculate as to the effect of our choices on our material spirit body (though, I assume that there is an effect, else we would follow the traditional concept of a Cartesian mind).
Steve: “I think holiness is probably a concept that is foreign to the state of spirits before this earth.” and later that choices made as a spirit “would have no eternal bearing on our fullness of joy in that they wouldn’t have a permanent effect on the union of our spirit and body.”
I think this is also interesting. You essentially state that spirits do not fit within the categorizations that we traditionally apply top God and Men because they are not comparable. The drawback here is that we have examples of spirits being both Holy and Evil. We have the premortal Christ that was/is God and we have the Devil who is unholy and evil. I do recognize that the bulk of what we have on these to archetypes is after the 1st estate, though and I don’t know how that may play into Steve’s perspective.
Comment by J. Stapley — 1/3/2005 @ 1:05 pm
I just came upon this from the KFD that makes it sound as if Joseph believed there was premortal sin, speaking of the grand council:
Comment by J. Stapley — 1/25/2005 @ 1:46 pm
Lots of comments, but, mixing mortal experiences with premortal reality is only going to get you half way there. In the premortal existence we were children of our heavenly Father as was Jesus. He being the first born spirit of the father and we subsequently being the brothers and sisters of Jesus or as he is known in the preexistence, Jehovah.
Lots of comments, but, mixing mortal experiences with premortal reality is only going to get you half way there. In the premortal existence we were children of our heavenly Father as was Jesus. He being the first born spirit of the father and we subsequently being the brothers and sisters of Jesus or as he is known in the preexistence, Jehovah.
Our Father (Elohim), wanting only the best for His children, as all fathers do, and wanting His children to have and be as He is, called a council in the preexistence, I will not refer to this as heaven because heaven is a word we use for convenience. This council was called prior to the creation of the earth, so that our Father could provide a place for his children to be tested, as we were not able to increase our knowledge living in a perfect place. Not perfect from the stand point of nothing going wrong but perfect from the stand point of having our Father and brother, Jesus, there to help and guide us.
To be properly tested we had to leave where we were now residing and having no memory of our preexistence but having prophets, scriptures, and eventually a Savior to provide us with a choice or agency to choose good or evil.
Satan, the second born of the Father, said he would be the Savior and that not one of Fathers children would be lost and he would receive the glory. This was in direct opposition to our Fathers “Plan of Salvation” and would deny agency to His children. For how can we grow and increase in knowledge and become as our Father is if we are not allowed to make our own choices, to know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, sorrow and happiness.
Jehovah, Jesus, said He would go and He would honor the Fathers plan and the Glory would belong to the Father.
Jehovah was chosen and Satan rebelled and we chose sides. Father’s children who are on this earth with bodies of flesh and blood choose to follow Jehovah; those cast out for rebellion did not receive bodies of flesh and blood and therefore have lost their first estate.
Jesus being the first resurrected immortal personage of flesh and bone as is the Father, notice how now we have gone from spirits to immortal personages is why we are here. After we have done all that we can do and kept our first estate our brother Jesus will be the intermediary to the Father on our behalf.
May we all come unto Christ, and be perfected in Him, and deny ourselves of all ungodliness; and if we deny ourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all our might, mind and strength, then is His grace sufficient for us, that by His grace we may be perfect in Christ, and if by the grace of God we are perfect in Christ, we can in no way deny the power of God. If we by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not His power, then are we sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of our sins, that we become holy, without spot.
What a great and marvelous thing our Father has done for us, because He loves us as we love our earthly children and want them to be as we are.
Comment by Harry Meadows — 5/19/2005 @ 11:31 pm