Two Trees: Lehi on Opposition and Agency
On its surface, Genesis 3 tells a relatable story: two people capitulate to temptation and face the consequences. A serpent in the Garden of Eden persuades Eve and Adam to eat some fruit which God has forbidden (v. 1-7). There is a reckoning, as God asks them to account for their actions (v. 8-13). God then articulates how things will change as a result of their decision: the serpent’s power will be limited, Eve will experience sorrow in raising children, and Adam will have to work hard to obtain food (v. 14-21). Additionally, they are expelled from the garden and blocked from partaking of the fruit of the tree of life (v. 22-24).
The message seems straightforward: beware of temptation, and choose wisely to avoid unpleasant consequences. But Lehi saw much more in this story.
His family had completed a difficult journey in which they had experienced hunger (1 Nephi 16:19-20), the death of a family member (1 Nephi 16:34-35), a furious storm on the high seas (1 Nephi 18:13-15), and extreme contention including violence (1 Nephi 3:28-29; 1 Nephi 7:16; 1 Nephi 18:10-12). Now, as he approached the end of his life, he wanted to help his children make sense of these afflictions and take responsibility for their own decisions. The story of Adam and Eve helps him address both issues: explaining the need for suffering and encouraging proactive decision-making. For Lehi, Genesis 3 does not explain how to avoid suffering, but why suffering is unavoidable and how to choose wisely anyway.
Lehi first frames life as a collection of opposites, including good and evil, life and death, happiness and misery (2 Nephi 2:11). He points out that contrast is educative. For example, sorrow enables us to recognize and appreciate happiness. But then he goes further: Not only does opposition allow us to know; it empowers us to choose. Agency is impossible without meaningful and understood options, and therefore it cannot exist in a world devoid of opposition.
Lehi is quite definitive on this point. He goes so far as to argue that everything falls apart without opposition:
If ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.
2 Nephi 2:13
This is a striking piece of ontological reasoning. The life Lehi has experienced, so unlike Eden, is the kind of life that makes agency possible. Sorrow may not have given way to happiness, but it has made happiness recognizable and choosable.
With this backdrop, Eden looks quite different. Instead of an ideal setting, it now seems sterile and unfruitful. Lehi underscores this interpretation by emphasizing Adam and Eve’s childlessness:
If Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.
And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.
2 Nephi 2:22-23
But there is one element of Eden which generates opposition, and it is this crack in the door which gives Adam and Eve a way out of this perpetual stasis. The author of Genesis identifies two contrasting trees in the garden: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:8-9). For Lehi, this dichotomy is the key to Eve and Adam’s agency and ultimately to their opportunity for happiness:
To bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter.
Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.
2 Nephi 2:15-16
The author of Genesis mentions the two trees but places the serpent at the center of the narrative, framing the decision primarily as a response to God’s commandment. Lehi, by contrast, acknowledges the serpent (whom he identifies as the devil) but shifts the emphasis to the trees themselves: it is the trees that entice, and the decision is between two kinds of fruit. The forbidden fruit is bitter because it introduces sorrow and death into the world, but as Lehi has already explained, without sorrow and death, there is no happiness and life. And happiness and life are the ultimate goal.
The classic argument against the existence of God holds that an omniscient and perfectly loving Being would not create a world of pain and suffering. Lehi anticipates and deflects this argument by asserting both the omnipotence and the love of God:
All things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.
Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.
2 Nephi 2:24-25
Having explained the need for suffering, Lehi now urges his children to use the gift of agency provided by the decision of Adam and Eve. They chose the bitter fruit which expanded humanity’s liberty by expanding its options. Subsequent generations, including Lehi’s children, face a different dichotomy, made possible by the redemption of a Mediator:
The Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given.
Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.
2 Nephi 2:26-27
The opposition required for agency consists not merely of adversity but of optionality. Adam and Eve’s decision introduced the adversity. While Lehi doesn’t elaborate on the nature of the redemption provided by the Messiah, he does characterize it as offering a meaningful alternative to the death and sorrow introduced into the world by Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden.
In one sense, Lehi is encouraging his children to make the opposite choice from Adam and Eve: life instead of death, turning to God instead of following the devil. But in another sense, he’s urging them to follow their examples. Just as they chose the agency-expanding option which freed them from the immobility of the Garden, Lehi’s children can choose the liberty offered by the Mediator, instead of the captivity and sorrow offered by the devil.
The Primordial Transgression: Jewish and Christian Readings
Most theologians, Christian and Jewish, would agree with Lehi that the story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden serves as an origin story for human suffering. The text of Genesis 3 itself describes the introduction of at least three challenging aspects of the human experience: pain in childbirth, the necessity of labor, and the inevitability of death. But Lehi’s other assertion, that the event expanded human agency, might be more controversial. Interpretations of this event have proliferated over many years, creating layers of commentary about human nature and decision-making.
It’s instructive to notice what’s absent from the account, particularly details that are easy to read into the text because of entrenched cultural assumptions. First, the devil is nowhere to be found. Many readers naturally identify the serpent with the devil as Lehi did, but the Genesis account speaks only of a talking serpent. Second, there is no indication that Adam and Eve become sinful as a consequence of their decision. Their bodies become mortal, the world becomes less accommodating, and the tree of life becomes inaccessible, but nothing in the account indicates a change in their fundamental nature. Third, there is no prediction of rescue. This is their new life; the text is silent about their future.
Noticing these silences does not invalidate subsequent interpretations; it simply clarifies the distinction between the Genesis account and theological developments built on it. It can also help to explain how different religious traditions have arrived at different conclusions from the same foundational text.
For the apostle Paul, though, this story establishes the conditions for salvation through Jesus Christ. In two of his epistles, Paul pairs Adam with Jesus as complementary contributors to God’s plan for all people:
Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
1 Corinthians 15:21-22
If through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
Romans 5:15
Early Christian writers accepted Paul’s pairing of Adam with Christ but differed as to whether the transgression in the garden moved humanity forward or backward. Irenaeus, who served as bishop in Lyons a little more than a century after Paul wrote those epistles, considered Eve’s and Adam’s transgression to be predictable because of their immaturity. He equated it with the opportunity for growth and identified it as an important step in the progression of humanity toward God:
It was possible for God Himself to have made man perfect from the first, but man could not receive this, being as yet an infant. …
Now it was necessary that man should in the first instance be created; and having been created, should receive growth; and having received growth, should be strengthened; and having been strengthened, should abound; and having abounded, should recover; and having recovered, should be glorified; and being glorified, should see his Lord
Against Heresies IV.38.1, 3
About 250 years later, Augustine of Hippo advanced a much more pessimistic interpretation. Taking literally Paul’s assertion that “through the offense of one many be dead,” Augustine held that all people not only commit their own sins, but they also inherit Adam’s sin. This concept, which he called original sin as contrasted with actual sin, signifies that each person is born guilty and must have that guilt removed by Christ. He also asserted that Adam’s nature changed as a result of his transgression and that his descendants inherited from him a propensity to sin.
Man’s nature, indeed, was created at first faultless and without any sin; but that nature of man in which every one is born from Adam, now wants the Physician, because it is not sound. All good qualities, no doubt, which it still possesses in its make, life, senses, intellect, it has of the Most High God, its Creator and Maker. But the flaw, which darkens and weakens all those natural goods, so that it has need of illumination and healing, it has not contracted from its blameless Creator — but from that original sin.
On Nature and Grace 3.3
Through a series of church councils and creeds, Augustine’s interpretation became the predominant view in Western Christianity. The concept of original sin, corrupting humans from infancy, was adopted by both Catholics and most Protestant churches. Eastern Orthodox churches teach a variation of this principle which they call ancestral sin, which signifies that humanity inherited death and a corrupt nature from Adam and Eve, but that they do not inherit guilt.
In traditional Jewish thought, humans inherited neither guilt nor a changed nature from Adam and Eve. Instead, God created humans with a dual nature: yetzer hatov (יצר הטוב), the “good inclination” and yetzer hara‘ (יצר הרע), the “evil inclination.” These two inclinations existed from the Creation. It is up to each person to tame their evil inclinations and to magnify their good ones through the use of their free will. (See “YEẒER HA-RA’,” Jewish Encyclopedia.)
King Benjamin: The Natural Man
These interpretations demonstrate the richness of the Eden narrative. The plain text as it appears in Genesis 3 speaks of mortality, hardship, and separation from the tree of life. Interpreters of the text from multiple religious traditions have drawn far-reaching conclusions from the story about human nature, the origin of sin, and the need for redemption. With this interpretive backdrop in place, we are better prepared to examine how subsequent Book of Mormon prophets, beginning with King Benjamin, engage with the story of Adam and Eve’s transgression and its implications for humanity.
“Dust thou art,” God said to Adam, “and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:19). Whatever happened to make Adam and Eve mortal, it accentuated their earthiness. Instinctive constraints, driven by primal needs such as survival and procreation, would fundamentally affect their mortal experience.
As King Benjamin prepared to address his people near the end of his life, he received good news from an angel. Very soon, God, the Creator of all things, would come to earth and “dwell in a tabernacle of clay.” He would suffer “pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death.” His death and resurrection would make salvation available to everyone (Mosiah 3:5-10).
After affirming these prophecies, which must have been familiar to Benjamin from the writings of his ancestors, the angel proceeded to explain the interaction between this redemptive sacrifice and Adam and Eve’s transgression.
First, the blood of Jesus “atoneth for the sins of those who have fallen by the transgression of Adam, who have died not knowing the will of God concerning them, or who have ignorantly sinned” (Mosiah 3:11). This appears to be what Augustine would call actual sin—wrongful deeds committed by individuals—not original sin—guilt inherited from their progenitors. Either way, it’s gone, eliminated by the sacrifice of Jesus.
Second, little children are not culpable. “If it were possible that little children could sin they could not be saved; but I say unto you they are blessed; for behold, as in Adam, or by nature, they fall, even so the blood of Christ atoneth for their sins” (Mosiah 3:16). The angel makes room for children to make wrong choices but again affirms that the Savior has removed accountability for those mistakes, which arise from their mortal tendencies.
Finally, everyone else—all those who know right from wrong—must intentionally overcome these inborn tendencies by allowing Christ to change them:
For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.
Mosiah 3:19
This description does not invalidate humanity’s divine origin; it describes their quandary when clothed in mortal bodies with improper inclinations (yetzer hara’). The individual is still the agent, as evidenced by their ability to “put off the natural man.” In fact, the Holy Spirit entices them to do so, counterbalancing inborn impulses and thereby placing them in a position to choose. But the character traits which enable the person to do that consistently are not a product of their efforts alone. They are available “through the atonement of Christ the Lord.” Like the ignorant, those who have knowledge are saved by Christ, but not automatically. For them, overcoming the natural man is a deliberate choice.
Carnal, Sensual, and Devilish
Speaking to a receptive audience, Benjamin described human nature soberly and relatively objectively. In contrast, Abinadi used emotionally forceful language to describe fallen humanity to King Noah and his priests. “They are carnal and devilish,” he declared, “and the devil has power over them.” Like Benjamin, he ascribed this condition to Adam and Eve’s transgression, but without naming them. His focus is on the third character in the drama:
…yea, even that old serpent that did beguile our first parents, which was the cause of their fall; which was the cause of all mankind becoming carnal, sensual, devilish, knowing evil from good, subjecting themselves to the devil.
Thus all mankind were lost; and behold, they would have been endlessly lost were it not that God redeemed his people from their lost and fallen state.
But remember that he that persists in his own carnal nature, and goes on in the ways of sin and rebellion against God, remaineth in his fallen state and the devil hath all power over him. Therefore he is as though there was no redemption made, being an enemy to God; and also is the devil an enemy to God.
Mosiah 16:3-5
Stark words from the uninvited prophet! His core message—that our natural bodily tendencies are inimical to God’s purposes—is the same as Benjamin’s, but the devil looms large in Abinadi’s version, collaborating with those inborn inclinations to keep people separated from God. In Benjamin’s telling, the task is to “put off the natural man” and develop positive attributes with God’s help. Abinadi, in contrast, sees people persisting in their carnality, intentionally doing wrong. Ironically, he characterizes those stubborn people as having relinquished their agency. They are the devil’s willing subjects, and he wields “all power over them.”
Abinadi’s trio of descriptors emphasizes this collaboration. Carnal means “fleshy,” emphasizing our earthy physical constitution. Sensual emphasizes our instinctive perceptions and reactions to the world. Devilish describes the nature of our consequent decisions and perhaps of our allegiance.
It’s a striking pivot for Abinadi, who entered the scene with a call for collective repentance to avoid collective punishment. After providing a detailed explanation of a passage from Isaiah at the request of the priests, and after defying the king’s demand for his removal, he is no longer urging Noah and his people to repent en masse. He is now issuing a more personal warning, a warning that is heeded by one of the priests in the room: Alma, who would preserve and share Abinadi’s words.
When Alma’s son, also named Alma, later experiences a miraculous conversion, he uses Abinadi’s words to describe what he has been saved from:
Marvel not that all mankind, yea, men and women, all nations, kindreds, tongues and people, must be born again; yea, born of God, changed from their carnal and fallen state, to a state of righteousness, being redeemed of God, becoming his sons and daughters;
Mosiah 27:25
The younger Alma’s close friend, Aaron later uses the same terminology as he preaches to a Lamanite king:
Aaron did expound unto him the scriptures from the creation of Adam, laying the fall of man before him, and their carnal state and also the plan of redemption, which was prepared from the foundation of the world, through Christ, for all whosoever would believe on his name.
And since man had fallen he could not merit anything of himself; but the sufferings and death of Christ atone for their sins, through faith and repentance.
Alma 22:13-14
And when Alma urges his own son Corianton to change his behavior, he characterizes humanity using Abinadi’s three descriptors: carnal, sensual, and devilish (Alma 42:10).
Abinadi’s description of human nature offered an interpretation of the Fall which not only explained humanity’s condition but also motivated individuals to seek God’s help to rise above it.
Alma, Probation, and the Tree of Life
The tree of life makes another appearance at the end of Genesis 3. After pronouncing the consequences of Adam and Eve’s transgression, God prevents them from accessing the tree, ensuring their mortality:
And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
Genesis 3:22-24
On its face, this passage makes God sound exclusive, even vengeful. “The man is become as one of us” suggests a desire to retain distance and protect divine status. But a reader who assumes that God loves His children would naturally look for a more generous interpretation for a seemingly harsh action.
Writing in the late second century, Irenaeus rejected the notion that this denial of access was motivated by rivalry:
Wherefore also He drove him out of Paradise, and removed him far from the tree of life, not because He envied him the tree of life, as some venture to assert, but because He pitied him, [and did not desire] that he should continue a sinner for ever, nor that the sin which surrounded him should be immortal, and evil interminable and irremediable. But He set a bound to his [state of] sin, by interposing death, and thus causing sin to cease, putting an end to it by the dissolution of the flesh, which should take place in the earth, so that man, ceasing at length to live to sin, and dying to it, might begin to live to God.
Against Heresy III:23, 4
Like Irenaeus, Alma assumes a loving God who acts for the benefit of His children. Building on earlier interpretations of the Fall, he characterizes the exclusion of access to the tree of life as a temporary measure.
As the keeper of the Nephite record, Alma would have been familiar with Lehi’s dream, which presents the tree of life as the goal of mortality. Lehi described the fruit of the tree, which he tasted in his dream, as “most sweet, above all that I ever before tasted,” and added, “it filled my soul with exceedingly great joy” (1 Nephi 8:11-12). Alma himself used the tree of life as a metaphor for the maturation of faith in his sermon to the Zoramites, telling them that if they would nourish the word of God in their hearts, with diligence and patience, they would eventually partake of the fruit of the tree of life (Alma 32:40-41).
For Alma, patience and diligence are the key to the story. This fruit isn’t immediately accessible; it becomes available only with sustained effort over time. So when Antionah, a “chief ruler” in the city of Ammonihah, uses this Genesis passage as evidence against life after death, Alma responds with a concept that Lehi had introduced in his own discussion of the Garden of Eden: probation. (See 2 Nephi 2:21.)
Here’s Antionah’s question, which comes laden with his own interpretation of the passage:
What does the scripture mean, which saith that God placed cherubim and a flaming sword on the east of the garden of Eden, lest our first parents should enter and partake of the fruit of the tree of life, and live forever? And thus we see that there was no possible chance that they should live forever.
Alma 12:21
Alma responds that this interdiction served a more tactical purpose: upholding the established consequence for partaking of the forbidden fruit:
If it had been possible for Adam to have partaken of the fruit of the tree of life at that time, there would have been no death, and the word would have been void, making God a liar, for he said: If thou eat thou shalt surely die.
Alma 12:23
But this does not imply that eternal life was permanently inaccessible, only that it would be preceded by physical death.
And we see that death comes upon mankind … nevertheless there was a space granted unto man in which he might repent; therefore this life became a probationary state; a time to prepare to meet God; a time to prepare for that endless state which has been spoken of by us, which is after the resurrection of the dead.
Alma 12:24
Later, speaking to his wayward son Corianton, Alma develops this concept further, describing what would have happened if Adam and Eve had been permitted to eat the fruit of the tree of life immediately:
Now, we see that the man had become as God, knowing good and evil; and lest he should put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever, the Lord God placed cherubim and the flaming sword, that he should not partake of the fruit—
And thus we see, that there was a time granted unto man to repent, yea, a probationary time, a time to repent and serve God.
For behold, if Adam had put forth his hand immediately, and partaken of the tree of life, he would have lived forever, according to the word of God, having no space for repentance; yea, and also the word of God would have been void, and the great plan of salvation would have been frustrated.
Alma 42:3-5
By preventing access to the tree of life, in other words, God gave Adam and Eve a period of time to change, to mature. Like a clay pot that is fired too soon, if they had eaten the fruit immediately, they would have lost the malleability associated with mortal life. They would have settled too soon, losing the opportunity for growth and progression which mortal life affords.
So in Alma’s reading, Genesis 3 ends with a firm but loving gesture from God. Adam and Eve are blessed with time to grow. The cherubim don’t diminish or destroy Adam and Eve’s happiness; they enable it.
Genesis 3 in the Book of Mormon
As we’ve seen, Book of Mormon prophets drew practical lessons from the story of Adam and Eve. Lehi learned that agency requires enticing options. Benjamin recognized that mortal bodies have improper inclinations which must be intentionally discarded. Abinadi added that the devil collaborates with those improper inclinations to reduce people’s agency. And Alma identified mortality as a time of probation and preparation to return to God’s presence.
The story as it appears in Genesis is sparse and subject to multiple possible interpretations. How did these individuals approach the story which enabled them to extract so much meaning?
- They applied the passage and its symbols to their current circumstances. Lehi found lessons about agency in the two trees because that’s what he wanted to teach his sons. Benjamin addressed the natural tendencies of mortality to identify why his people needed to be saved. Abinadi focused on the influence of the serpent as he addressed people who he perceived to be under the influence of the devil. Alma explained to the people of Ammonihah that the cherubim had given them a gift—a finite period of time in which to repent.
- They used the text as a launching point for personal inspiration and insight. Genesis 3 doesn’t say that Adam and Eve couldn’t have children in the Garden of Eden. Lehi likely learned that truth some other way, and it dramatically affected his reading and his conclusions. An angel described to Benjamin the nature of humanity after the Fall and the reach of the Savior’s atonement, specifically clarifying that small children and others who don’t understand right from wrong are not accountable for wrong decisions motivated by their natural tendencies.
- They read the story in light of what they already understood about God. Alma disagreed with Antionah’s interpretation of the final three verses in the chapter because Alma believed in a loving God who wants what is best for His children. Alma also recognized that the tree of life appears in other scriptures as the goal of mortality. Reading the passage with that understanding allowed him to see the exclusion from the tree as a temporary measure, intended to facilitate growth and progression.
All four of them explore the text creatively, looking for implications and new meaning. However, they all remain anchored to the text and to its symbols. Their readings are therefore both flexible and disciplined, willing to fill in the gaps in the text but committed to do so conscientiously, in a way that is both truthful and useful to their listeners.
With the foundation provided by the Book of Mormon understanding of the Fall of Adam and Eve, we are ready to turn our attention to God’s primary tool to help His children overcome “the natural man”: covenants.