State of nature

State of nature names the condition of human beings when they remain governed by the fallen, carnal self rather than transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. In this state, people are described as enemies to God, subject to bitterness and bondage, and deprived of true happiness; yet the narrative repeatedly places that condition beside repentance, redemption, spiritual rebirth, and communal renewal, making it a starting condition that can be overcome rather than an irrevocable destiny.

Definition and Moral Condition

State of nature is explicitly identified with a carnal state. Alma teaches that people in this condition are “in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity”; they are without God in the world, and their misery is inseparable from the disorder of their desires and conduct. The condition is therefore both spiritual and moral: it describes alienation from God while also naming the habits and attachments that keep people bound to that alienation.

The condition reaches back to the Fall of Adam. King Benjamin teaches that the natural man has been an enemy to God since the Fall and would remain so forever unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, puts off the natural man, and becomes a saint through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. The language makes the state pervasive and enduring in its unaltered form, but it also places its transformation within a definite process of yielding, surrender, and sanctification.

Abinadi presents the same condition in darker, more juridical terms. Those who remain carnal and devilish are under the power of the devil, whose deception of the first parents caused the Fall; because they continue in that condition, the Lord does not redeem them from its consequences. State of nature thus involves not merely ignorance but captivity: the fallen person is subject to powers and patterns that oppose divine life.

The Passage from Nature to Spiritual Life

The book’s central counterimage to state of nature is the mighty change of heart. Alma the Younger recalls that his father, Alma the Elder, believed the words of Abinadi, and that according to this faith a mighty change was wrought in his heart. The change is not described as a minor adjustment of opinion. It marks a reorientation of the person’s inner life, converting belief into a new moral and spiritual identity.

Alma the Younger later describes his own transformation in equally direct terms. After repentance, he says that he was redeemed by the Lord and born of the Spirit. His statement defines the opposite of natural existence through action and condition: repentance interrupts the old life, redemption restores the person, and birth of the Spirit establishes a new beginning. The movement away from nature is therefore both painful and constructive, involving the abandonment of sin and the reception of spiritual power.

The transition also depends on prayer and divine response. When Alma the Younger is troubled by the sins and disorder among the people, he pours out his whole soul to God, fearing that he might do wrong in God’s sight. The narrative places this full appeal before the Lord’s answer, showing that escape from a merely natural or carnal condition is not achieved by self-reliance alone. The person must turn outward and upward, submitting judgment and action to divine direction.

Faith, Community, and Repeated Renewal

Faith becomes publicly confirmed when the people hear the words of King Benjamin and cry with one voice that they believe them. They also testify that they know their truth through the Spirit of the Lord. This response shows that the passage out of state of nature is not only an isolated inward experience. Doctrinal hearing, collective confession, and spiritual confirmation join together to form a community whose identity is changing at the same time as the identities of its members.

That change must then be maintained through covenantal practice. Those received into baptism are cleansed by the power of the Holy Ghost and are expected to take upon themselves the name of Jesus Christ, with a determination to serve him to the end. Baptism therefore represents more than removal from the old condition at a single moment; it establishes a continuing obligation in which transformed people preserve their new identity through service, endurance, and remembrance.

The later account of the people in the days after the appearance of Jesus Christ provides the clearest communal contrast. They no longer walk after the performances and ordinances of the Law of Moses but walk after the commandments they have received. The narrative presents this as a sustained way of life rather than a temporary emotional response. The natural condition is opposed by a community whose practices, worship, and collective direction have been reordered around the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Conflict, Reversal, and the Possibility of Change

State of nature also clarifies why conflict repeatedly returns when spiritual transformation is rejected or weakened. Among the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, hatred becomes exceedingly intense under the influence of the Amalekites and Amulonites, and the people begin to rebel against their king. Their former patterns of hostility threaten to reassert themselves precisely where a new covenant identity is under pressure. The crisis demonstrates that conversion does not erase history or remove the possibility of relapse; the old condition can return through anger, provocation, and collective memory.

The king responds by thanking God for having sent their brethren to them and by addressing the crisis through the language of faith rather than retaliation. This response stands against the cycle of violence associated with the natural and carnal state. The community’s moral test is not simply whether it can defeat an enemy, but whether it can refuse to become again what it has renounced.

The narrative offers another contrast through the courage of Helaman’s young warriors. Their courage is reported as surpassing anything seen among all the Nephites. The detail matters because it locates moral strength in embodied action and disciplined loyalty, not in inherited status or abstract profession. Against the fearful instability of the natural state, their example shows a formed character whose commitments have become durable conduct.

Narrative Significance

State of nature is a baseline against which the book measures conversion, social renewal, and apostasy. It explains the need for the Atonement, the Holy Ghost, baptism, repentance, and enduring service, while also giving moral force to the repeated phrase that wickedness never was happiness. Happiness is not available through the unchecked fulfillment of carnal desire; the natural state promises freedom but produces bitterness, bondage, and separation from God.

At the same time, the concept prevents the book’s account of sin from becoming a claim that people are permanently fixed by their beginnings. Alma the Elder’s belief, Alma the Younger’s repentance, the people’s collective testimony, and the later covenant community all demonstrate reversibility. A person or society may stand in a state of nature, but the story’s decisive question is whether that condition will be accepted as permanent or answered by yielding to the Spirit, receiving redemption through Jesus Christ, and remaining faithful to the end.