I will be heading off on a temple trip in August (there is no temple in Ireland so I will be jetting off to London for a few days), so I decided to re-read Blake Ostler’s Fire on the Horizon, a wonderful volume on the theology underlying the endowment (I highly recommend it, as with all of Blake's books). Here is a wonderful insight into the Fall:
For Joseph Smith, we are all Adam and Eve in a deeper sense than the tradition grasped. The universal human experience is prefigured by Adam and Eve not only because we too have become mortal, but because we were all once in God's presence and freely chose to leave His presence--to experience a broken relationship amounting to spiritual death. Yet to mortal eyes it may seem like madness to choose spiritual death by leaving God's presence--just as it seemed to Augustine that Adam's choice was a disaster. The central challenge for the Augustinan way of looking at things is to explain how a creation which God created to reflect His perfection could suddenly and inexplicably go wrong. However, in Joseph Smith's writings the choice made by Adam and Eve in the garden was not a wrong; it was simply a choice. For Joseph Smith, the so-called "fall" is not a disaster but an opportunity--and literally the only way that we can progress in our relationship with God to be as He is. Rather than frustrating God's plan as Augustine saw it, Adam simply chose to grow and learn through experience. We are seeking to expand our capacities here while in this mortal coil and to increase the level of light which we are capable by experiencing this world through the bodies we received. No matter what the form or capacity of our bodies may be, they are a beautiful present to us as a necessary condition to further progress and learning. The only way forward was through the senses of our bodies. For Joseph, mortal life is a no-lose proposition, for all of these things give us experience and are for our good (D&C 11:7).
The inner logic of the Edenic story precludes the conclusion that Adam "sinned" in a morally culpable sense--for a morally culpable act can occur only where the person so acting knows the difference between good and evil. As Alma stated, "he that knoweth not good from evil is blameless; but he that knoweth good and evil, to him it is given according to his desires" (Alma 29:5, emphasis mine). Yet Adam and Eve did not know the difference between good and evil until after they partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Their eyes were "opened" only after the decision had already been made. It follows that when Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit, they acted in the state of moral innocence not knowing good and evil. Their act is consistently called a "transgression" in Mormon scripture, implying that Adam and Eve violated a non-moral directive-an act that is malum prohibitum (forbidden only because it is prohibited) and not malum in se (evil by its very nature). Adam and Eve did not "sin" until after their transgression had been discovered. Lehi in the Book of Mormon is emphatic that when they eat the fruit, Adam and Eve are in a "state of innocence doing no good, they knew no sin" (2 Ne. 2:23). They were like little children. Thus, the sin could not have been consisted in eating fruit of the tree of knowledge. Rather, the sin was their first judgment after they could discern between good and evil--a judgment that they were not worthy to be in God's presence, thus choosing to hide themselves. In hiding, they chose to cut themselves off from God's presence and alter the type of relationship they had with Him in the garden. They engaged in the first act of sin when they freely chose to hide from God, for all sins consists essentially in breaking or injuring some relationship. (Blake T. Ostler, Fire on the Horizon: A Meditation on the Endowment and the Love of Atonement [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2013], 50-52; emphasis in original)
