Mosiah & Alma: Missionary Work

Missionaries have existed in every era. For nineteenth-century readers of The Book of Mormon, missionaries were part of the cultural landscape. 

A Little Background

The earliest missionaries for Christianity were in many ways similar to the early Buddhist missionaries: the idea was to run out and tell people about a new freeing, universal way of being. As Andrew F. Walls points out in The Missionary Movement in Christian History, early Christian missionary efforts avoided later "paternalistic" attitudes (which bother us moderns) because Christians themselves were under the same demands for personal growth. Interestingly enough, in The Book of Mormon, Jacob's "y'all are a bunch of jerks" speech to the Nephites relies on this idea. The comparison of Nephites to Lamanites emphasizes the Nephites' failures.

The Nineteenth Century

The evangelical movement in the late 18th century to early 19th century was somewhat different and fell into two strands.

Marriage Proposal from Hell

The first was the idea of converting non-Christians--the late eighteenth century saw a massive increase of Western missionaries to Africa, the Middle East, Asia and, in the Americas, to the Amerindians. Many of these missionaries were celebrities. There is more than a hint of adventuring in accounts of their deeds.

Consider that in Jane Eyre, when St. John Rivers wants to marry Jane so they can serve in foreign climes together, the heroic, self-sacrificing, and grand gesture attracts Jane. However, she opts instead for a domestic life. Although she praises Rivers at the end of the book, she also uses “Dear John” phrases that were not uncommon at the time, such as we’ll meet again in the hereafter. Jane writes, “[T]he good and faithful servant has been called at length into the joy of his Lord.” And...he’s dead.

Pliny Fisk

The second strand was converting other Christians to another form of Christianity or to sincere practicing Christianity (as opposed to apathy). The Burned Over District in New York was home to this type of missionary work.

The first approach tended to focus on finding points of similarity between Christianity and "pagan" or "animistic" religions, as when Ammon informs the king of the Lamanites that the Great Spirit he prays to is the God that Ammon is introducing to him. And many of these missionaries became unintentional anthropologists, especially if they were sincere in their efforts to understand another culture.

The second approach tended to focus more on doctrine, as when Alma and Amulek get into arguments with various Zoramites. This type of preaching would have resonated with The Book of Mormon's first readers. Standing on a street corner or renting a hall/getting invited to a church and preaching a sermon on a particular doctrinal idea was extremely familiar to just about everybody--religious or not--in the nineteenth century.

All approaches brought with them the expectation of cultural as well as religious change. The king stops killing off his servants. Alma and Amulek undermine an entire social caste system. For that matter, Buddhism challenged caste systems in India. The change not only to belief but to culture bothers moderns. It would have been par for the course in the ancient and early modern world.

King Edwin converted--his

successors then repudiated

his conversion.

And, as Walls again points out, such upheavals to culture are never as conclusive as they sound. Saxons "converted" to Christianity when they were forced to by other Saxon groups. They then dropped Christianity when the first group got conquered by someone else. They converted back when it suited their purpose, no one else's. Likewise, Buddhism in China was perceived as adding to Confucianism, addressing what Confucianism left to other disciplines, rather than replacing it.

For nineteenth-century readers, who were constantly hearing about yet another group of Christians going off to set up a colony of believers somewhere, the connection between belief and lifestyle would have been a norm. And American missionary work was quite successful in part due to America's pluralism (although nineteenth-century America may not appear pluralistic by twenty-first century standards, by nineteenth-century standards--especially in the acceptance of different types of Christianity--it was quite pluralistic). 

That is, Americans were used to setting up volunteer organizations, getting them funded, and then dismantling them when necessary. American Christians were also quite used to sending Christianity into their own frontiers by whatever means were available: circuit riders; revival meetings in tents; magazines, and anything else that came to hand.

Alma: Prayer

Background

Tensions inherent in Christian prayer coalesced with the Protestant Reformation. They linger today:

Tension 1: Set prayers versus personal, individual prayers

 

Set prayers--prayers established by tradition or institutions and often, though not always, associated with ritual--evoke the accusation of being "works," actions performed for the sake of gaining favor (points), not for actual communion with God.

 

Philip and Carol Zaleski in Prayer: A History do a decent job of generously allowing for the beneficial experience of both the set prayer and the individual prayer. That is, a set prayer can evoke nostalgia as well as group solidarity. Moreover, the Zaleskis quite openly address the fact that an element of magic flows through all prayer, especially penitentiary prayers. 

 

Tension 2: Magic & prayer

 

The definitions that follow are my own: Magic is the use of actions and words (a spell) to bring about an event. That is, the actual actions and actual words produce a result whatever the character of the petitioner, the value of the result, and, presumably, the desires and wishes of the listening gods. 

 

Magical thinking, for instance, entails the parent saying to a child, "Have a good day today" with the unstated belief, If I don't say it, the child will not be well. The statement has almost nothing to do with whether the child has been sent away safely in a raincoat with enough money to buy lunch...whether the child is being bullied at school...or any other factor. The statement barely acknowledges deity. It is a "spell" set on the child to keep the child safe.

 

An invocation is about what God or the gods will do rather than what the actual actions/words/spells accomplish.

 

The Zaleskis make the entirely correct point that prayer and magic cannot be un-entwined. An element of magic filters through prayer. And the Zaleskis detail how acts/words themselves can create transcendent moments. That is, communion with God/gods is often set in motion by actions and words that are not inherently religious. (Humans are physical beings after all and react bodily to physical acts, such as meditation.)

The Protestants, specifically the Calvinists, were less than happy with the idea of magic/ritual. Alan Jacobs points out in his tome about the Book of Common Prayer that Cranmer wanted to create a common culture (which the Protestant Reformation both willfully and unintentionally did away with) by instituting the Book of Common Prayer. Moreover, he was (luckily for generations of Anglicans) an artist in his own right, so many of the set prayers are truly beautiful. And he was trying to find middle ground between the "traditionalists" and the Continental Calvinists. Many Anglicans greet the prayers with fondness and nostalgia.

 

The Calvinists were having none of it. Set prayers were popish, anti-Christian, episcopal (reliant on priests/bishops), devilish and part of the lingering rituals that traduced Christianity (it's hard to know at this late date how many Protestants didn't go down the Calvinist route simply because they, like me, rather liked a little bit of ritual in their religion). 

 

Tension 3: Petitionary prayers

 

From a Calvinist point of view, petitionary prayers fell into the "magic" category. They were arrogant, blasphemous and not even religious. First, God is omniscient so He already knows what people want; they don't have to ask, so they shouldn't. Second, asking for things implies that God's mind can be changed. Third, asking for things implies that God's job is to give stuff to humans.

 

In all honesty, the Calvinists kind of had a point when one considers what some people consider to be God's job (as if God were their personal life coach). But the Zaleskis quote C.S. Lewis pointing out that if one starts fussing about whether or not prayer can accomplish anything, one might as well go down the rabbit-hole of fussing whether anything that people do accomplishes anything ("rabbit-hole" is my addition). In other words, asking for stuff is as human as when we "put on boots."

 

My entirely personal view is that God preserves agency to a greater extent than humans can understand or want to understand. Petitionary prayers may be partly for our sakes (to make us aware of our need for God). They could also be for God's sake. In whatever way the relationship between God and agency and human volition operates (and I don't know), prayer could be part of helping God help us.

 

The Calvinists would accuse me of being an Antinomian since after all I am implying a God who either is limited or limits Himself.

 

And, yup, I am implying exactly that!

 

I would answer the Calvinists, "Yeah, well, folks, you're the ones who started this."

 

Tension 4: The intensely private, unquantifiable nature of prayer

 

Catholics in the Middle Ages engaged in private prayers. Augustine's Confessions alone prove that conversion and a relationship with God can be intensely personal. Not-set and unregulated prayers are a human norm.

 

However, the Protestant Reformation made them the only alternative--since set and regulated prayers were not-okay (most of the time). However, the Calvinists then discovered that unregulated prayers were...frightfully unregulated. 

 

As the Zaleskis point out about Pentecostalism: 

 

"[H]ow could one recognize the arrival of this climactic third stage [baptism in the Holy Spirit], of such burning importance to personal salvation?" 

 

The form of "recognition" for the Pentecostals was speaking in tongues. That is, the answer was a group experience that was nonetheless highly individualistic. 

 

Unfortunately, the answer by other religious groups--not just Protestants--has been to become entirely abstract and metaphysical or entirely legalistic (and sometimes, both). That is, many religions/ideologies don't feel comfortable just taking people's word for their communion with God/Truth. 

From an anthropological point of view, the need for some type of yes-we-are-on-the-same-page agreement within the group makes sense. I favor the solution of an individual response to an institutional ritual over the metaphysical-legalistic solution that was unfortunately favored by late Calvinists, as it is by Woke Progressives. That is, the late Calvinists--in an attempt to compete in a changing religious environment--got a little obsessed with how exactly people were confessing their sins...and whether they really meant it...and whether those people had hit all the markers of acceptable confession.

 

And within 70 years, people had deserted Congregationalism for Methodism and other Protestant off-shoots.

 

Prayer in Alma

LDS Church Film

 

In The Book of Mormon, Alma takes a stance against the Zoramites praying in public about how great they are and awful everyone else in (hello, social media). In terms of tensions, the Zoramites uncomfortably mix the doctrine of election with set prayers:  Calvinism gone the (even more) legalistic route. 

 

Alma praises private prayers that occur any time and any place. He is preaching, moreover, to the indigent, who fear for their souls because their (literally) poor credentials keep them from the places where they would deliver set prayers. During his discourse, Alma argues against a tit-for-tat relationship with God and produces a fantastic defense of faith: "If a man knoweth a thing, then he has no cause to believe" (32:18, my emphasis).

 

Alma goes on to connect faith to mercy and humility--"Ye cannot know of [the] surety [of my words] at first"--which leads to one of the most remarkable passages in The Book of Mormon about experimenting upon what one is taught rather than taking it as a given. Agency is paired with personal advancement and faith since the experiment--planting a seed--will produce fruit but the nourishment of the tree that produces that fruit can never end.

 

The link back to prayer occurs in the next chapter. In quite beautiful passages that Alma attributes to Zenos, prayer is presented as communication, a conversation, even experiment, between the praying individual and God: "thou didst hear me." 

 

In many ways, Alma's position here resembles that of Job, who demands a hearing with God. What God delivers is not necessarily what Job expected. Job's reaction is not to pronounce, "Okay, thanks. I've checked off the appropriate boxes on my path to salvation. I now have an exact comprehension of my status." 

 

Rather, he reacts by going, "Uh, wow. Wow. Okay. Wow."

 

In 3rd Nephi, set prayers are definitively rejected by Jesus Christ (see the Sermon on the Mount). The Lord's Prayer--over which theologians have often argued--is presented as containing the necessary elements of prayer rather than being a set prayer. An example rather than a ritual. Using the KJV, 3 Nephi 13 introduces the Lord's Prayer with the phrase "after this manner therefore pray ye." It is a reminder that the KJV, like many English-produced religious documents, has a wonderful tendency to hedge its bets.

 

Prayer, concludes The Book of Mormon, is never going to be what you think it is. Not tit-for-tat. Not automatic/instant regeneration and knowledge. Not salvation according to a list. It's communication, folks. God can take anything you dish out. Be prepared for anything in return.  

 

From Alma 33:

 

5 Yea, O God, and thou wast merciful unto me when I did cry unto thee in my field; when I did cry unto thee in my prayer, and thou didst hear me.

6 And again, O God, when I did turn to my house thou didst hear me in my prayer.

7 And when I did turn unto my closet, O Lord, and prayed unto thee, thou didst hear me.

8 Yea, thou art merciful unto thy children when they cry unto thee, to be heard of thee and not of men, and thou wilt hear them.

9 Yea, O God, thou hast been merciful unto me, and heard my cries in the midst of thy congregations.

10 Yea, and thou hast also heard me when I have been cast out and have been despised by mine enemies; yea, thou didst hear my cries, and wast angry with mine enemies, and thou didst visit them in thine anger with speedy destruction.

11 And thou didst hear me because of mine afflictions and my sincerity; and it is because of thy Son that thou hast been thus merciful unto me, therefore I will cry unto thee in all mine afflictions, for in thee is my joy; for thou hast turned thy judgments away from me, because of thy Son.

Alma 36 & 46: Exodus and Liberty

Calvinists maintained that although the Old Testament was superseded by Christ’s acts, the Old Testament was still worth reading because of its types and examples.

Types are stand-ins for Christ: that is, they are seen as forerunners to the coming of Christ (and latter-day events).

Examples are lessons about other things, such as leadership.

And, in truth, just about every "Sunday School" in the United States in just about every church of just about any denomination uses these two approaches. The Puritans in New England were more erudite about it and had a better grasp of context. But pointing to a scripture and saying, “Make this about whatever you want” is, let’s face it, way easier than pondering how and why it was written in the first place (and then what that means to a reader).

I personally think the type-and-example approach has gone too far in the navel-gazing-everything-is-relative direction.

However, I must concede that the story of the Exodus is impressively powerful as a type and example. And has been used by multiple American groups over the years, from the Puritans to African-Americans brought over as slaves. 

As a metaphor, it carries, much like Campbell’s Hero Myth. In Alma 36, Alma references the Exodus when he discusses his redemption from a sinful state. He is being literal--"brought our fathers out of Egypt"--while also quite deliberately embracing the image's symbolism: "[God] delivered them out of bondage and captivity, from time to time even down to the present day; and I have always retained in remembrance their captivity; yea, and ye also ought to retain in remembrance, as I have done, their captivity" (36:29).

"Captivity" was a memory for Americans. Release from captivity, for instance, was used by Revolutionary War pamphleteers. Stuart Halpern in “The Exodus: American’s Ever-Present Inspiration” points out that Thomas Paine and various ministers referenced the Exodus. King George was naturally Pharaoh, a viewpoint shared by much of Joseph Smith’s original audience.

The Title of Liberty raised by Moroni in Alma 46 is against a king. Even more importantly, the scene is associated with a piece of land:

[Moroni] named all the land which was south of the land Desolation, yea, and in fine, all the land, both on the north and on the south—A chosen land, and the land of liberty. (Alma 46:17)

Nineteenth century readers would have related--not only because they knew their Bible--and not only because of the Revolutionary War--and not only because nineteenth-century Americans were searching for links between them and the "Old World"--but also because land was still the operating indicator of freedom, as it has been through much of history.  Freedom = you get land for yourself.

Alma 27-30: Korihor & Alma, Atheism & Evidentiary Religion

The story of Korihor resembles many scenes in nineteenth-century America and Britain. Alma and Korihor are not arguing because they are so unlike each other. They are, in fact, arguing from a shared set of references. 

In fact, Korihor argues positions already taken by The Book of Mormon: “a child is not guilty because of its parents"; priests bind “yokes” on others.

So why is Korihor a problem?

He is an atheist. The trouble isn’t his positions but the deductions he forms from his positions.

Atheism in Context

One important aspect of any religion is that what may appear uniform to outsiders and even to future adherents does not appear that way to insiders and believers at the time. The early Christian world split in two over the question of whether Christ was a spiritual manifestation (equal) of God or a son (non-equal) of God. Likewise, Buddhists almost immediately took up different explanations of "rebirth" at the beginnings of Buddhism--what rebirth entails, how it comes about.

The differences may matter. The arguments, however, often appear entirely incomprehensible to everyone else.

Deists in eighteenth to nineteenth-century America are a good example of the gap between outsiders’ and insiders’ perceptions.

Deists in nineteenth-century America now appear as somewhat bland, honorable, club-attending, gentle Christians. The "Founding Fathers" were largely deists—isn't that nice?

To early Americans, deists were radicals, and it was generally recognized that while not all deists were atheists, many atheists were nominally deists (taking into account that "atheism" has had different definitions in different time periods). No public, publishing colonial writer was obviously atheistic. Thomas Paine, for instance, called what he was arguing for "deism," and he was criticized for it.

Like with most religions of the era, deism rested on “evidential” reasoning—the idea that the natural world and rational argument could prove philosophical and, if necessary, religious truths. The idea influenced generations of believers, from literalists using the natural world and the Bible to prove the equivalent of Creationism to near-atheists using the natural world and Bible studies (coming out of Germany) to prove the non-existence of miracles.

Korihor's Atheism

Consequently, nineteenth-century believers would have comprehended Alma's alarm at Korihor’s contention, “How do ye know of their surety? Behold, ye cannot know of things which ye do not see; therefore ye cannot know that there shall be a Christ” (30:15).

Korihor also proposes antinomian arguments (no moral law exists as a norm), which arguments have haunted religious and philosophical thought since the beginning of time. Jain Buddhists, for example, were concerned that rebirth of a person without a definite “I” soul would result in nihilistic or dismissive attitudes towards current bad behavior.

In nineteenth-century America, everybody was accusing everybody else of antinomian arguments: the Calvinists got accused of it for proposing that God has already determined salvation—therefore, moral goodness of the individual didn’t matter. The Universalists got accused of it for saying everybody would be saved—therefore, God was indiscriminate and didn't care about the morality the Bible appeared to preach.

Evidentiary Religion

Both Alma and Korihor argue from the perspective of evidentiary religion, a perspective nineteenth-century readers would have recognized.

On the one hand in the nineteenth century was the belief that all theological knowledge rested exclusively within the scriptures. On the other was respect for tradition, the analysis and insights of Church theologians over the years. Both sides argued that theology was backed up by external evidence (science/nature) and had to make rational sense (George MacDonald presents a variation of this approach when he argues that any interpretation of doctrine that violates commonsense is probably, you know, wrong; he also refuses to treat the Bible as the final stop). In the meantime, scholars were arguing, "Hey, maybe that interpretation isn't contextually what Paul meant in the first place." 

Congregations split between the revivalist focus on individual testimony and those who thought such a focus was self-indulgent. Nobody was going so far as to say, “God is telling me to create new doctrine" (only the Millennialists). Rather, debates circled around a particular scripture’s original intent followed by evidence for that intent. 

When Alma states, “[B]ehold, I have all things as a testimony that these things are true," nineteenth-century readers would have recognized the statement as underscoring evidentiary proof and as opening the door to revelation beyond the scriptures.

They also would have recognized his and Korihor's use of rational, point-by-point arguments.

So when Korihor is brought before Alma, Alma zeroes in on specific claims—namely, the claims that Korihor makes in reference to the natural world and one’s senses. Alma uses the "evidence of absence" argument: you claim there is not a God but all we have is your word for that. Like Korihor, Alma draws on the natural world and the scriptures to make opposing points:

The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator. (44)

What All These Issues Mean to Nineteenth-Century Readers

The chapters involve remarkably nuanced arguments but ones that early nineteenth-century readers would have related to—this is the tail end of the era in which Congregationalists were still trying to square predestination with free will and works. Many arguments between Protestant sects and, for that matter, between various Calvinists rested on points of doctrine. 

And, as always, there were lots and lots of in-between believers: those who embraced many of the same ideas as Calvinists and Universalists and even Deists while refuting others. That is, they had no trouble embracing grace while admitting, “Yeah, people shouldn’t be jerks.” Nineteenth-century readers would have easily balanced the “same” elements of Alma and Korihor’s arguments against their differences.

In sum, Korihor isn't at fault for arguing. He is at fault for being reductionist and dreary. 

The reaction here is one that underscores Millennialism--namely, many believers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries honestly did not want to take rational "evidentiary" positions to their nth degree. Why should they get rid of miracles? Why should they get rid of Christ's godly nature? Why should they slice up the scriptures into so-called palatable bits like Thomas Jefferson did?

They didn’t want to discard rationality and evidence from the natural world—but why should that mean getting rid of the unseen, unknowable, and unprovable?

Since quantum mechanics hadn’t yet shown up in the sciences, they had a point.

Alma 40-42: God and Fairness, Parts I & II

Resurrection

Nineteenth century readers were heirs to Calvinist concerns about resurrection (the Calvinists produced a disproportionate number of papers and sermons compared to the rest of the American colonies—their impact on religious thought in America was as great as it feels).

When exactly did people resurrect? Some Calvinists believed that they had already resurrected; the change began or definitively occurred with conversion. (Calvinist debate over when precisely conversion takes place could fill several tomes.) Others maintained that a First Resurrection would take place around a Millennium. 

First Resurrection, which postulates that the righteous will resurrect prior to the Final Judgment, was common currency in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries. Alma 40:15-18 addresses the "first resurrection" while directly refuting that resurrection itself refers to a state of mind. According to Alma 40,

1. The Resurrection is not abstract.
2. Everybody is resurrected (Alma just isn’t sure when).
3. 
   
   There is a time of purgatory, what Tibetan Buddhists refer to as the Intermediate Existence (the concepts are not exactly the same and not exactly different).

Nineteenth-century readers must have found such clarity a relief. Calvinist debates on the topic had reached non-relatable levels of metaphysics, which seems to be a tendency in all religions, abstracting the material world into “meaning” rather than facing its actuality. 

With Calvinists, the problem arose in part because they couldn't square the reason-based arguments of the Enlightenment, what they currently understood about the body after death, with theology. (They didn't know about DNA.) 

Paul warned the philosophizing Greeks that any type of physical regeneration/reality would prove a “stumbling block” and it did—to the Greeks, Christian groups, and to the Mahayana in Buddhism who presented the idea of "mind-only...a form of idealism which sees consciousness as the sole reality and denies objective existence to material objects" (Keown). 

Physical resurrection implies at least two realities that elites within various religions have found unsettling: experience is more important than a feeling of conversion or a set of “known” beliefs; progress is contingent on a physical body carrying out its agency (rather than performing certain tasks as markers of salvation).

Joseph Smith--and his successor, Brigham Young--stuck to a physical restoration/heaven. In many ways, Joseph Smith was attempting to recreate the Calvinist New England covenant society in its person-to-person reality--without all the stuff he didn't like.  

Many of his followers felt the same.

Worries about the Final Judgment accompanied debates about resurrection and the end of times through the nineteenth century. When Alma proposes a judgment that sorts the righteous from the unrighteous (as opposed to the elect from the non-elect), nineteenth-century readers would have recognized his arguments as denying antinomianism, which argues that salvation isn’t contingent on behavior or, at least, a particular type of behavior. (The Calvinist tradition was inherently prone to antinomianism since it was, itself, a rebellious act--which rebellion made its adherents extremely nervous.)

Yes, says Alma 41, salvation is contingent on behavior.

Except the dissonance of a loving yet punishing god--which also troubled nineteenth-century believers--is immediately qualified and transformed in Alma 41 and Helaman 14:30-31. In Alma 41, judgment becomes about "restoration" or, to borrow from Buddhism, the result of "actions driven by intention." Where a person ends up is contingent on behavior because behavior (or works) indicate "[one's] desires of happiness or good" (Alma 41:4-5).

Buddhism addresses the same tension over intention, behavior, and results: Isn’t performing good deeds just a checklist? Can it really ever lead anywhere? Round and round and round we go...Early on, Buddhists determined that more was needed. Virtue, sure, but also wisdom.

Any teacher can point to the difference. The student who has produced an essay isn’t in the same state/condition/learning as a student who understands how and why and when to produce an essay. The same problem underscores all human endeavors. Are people just performing monkeys (put enough monkeys in a room with typewriters...) or are they learning and growing and developing in individually unique ways? 

Likewise, in The Book of Mormon, the solution to the problem of merely virtuous behavior--checklists--is to go beyond that checklist to character: What type of person have you become? What do you care about? What will you be drawn to? What will accrue to you? Where will you automatically sort yourself? 

Joseph Smith likely would have been accused of antinomianism (again, everybody in early America was) when the book he produced declared, 

"Behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves" (Helaman 14:30). 

The caveat that follows, "wickedness never was happiness," is not, in fact, a punishing or warning phrase. It is part of a larger argument, an argument which occupied nineteenth-century theologians:

How fair is God? Really?

Wickedness

 

What constitutes wickedness is connected to what occurs in the Final Judgment. 

Two issues dog the problem of wickedness: 1) What is wickedness? Suppose cultures, religions, time periods don’t agree on the definition of wickedness? 

From my perspective, there is surprising agreement throughout history on the basic notion that harming people (unfairly) for personal gain is wrong. See Hammurabi's Code and The Ten Commandments.

2) Just because behavior upsets humans does that mean it upsets deity?

Nathan assumes a standard

of "good" before God when

he calls out David.

The second issue is surprisingly not as easy to pin down as the first. The idea of fair judgment goes back to the birth of written records and possibly earlier. But the notion of gods as whimsical, power-hungry beings versus the notion of “good” gods/God who expect “good” behavior has a more uncertain history.

Nineteenth-century preachers were well-aware of both issues. They increasingly used “natural law” alongside the Bible and inspiration (the Holy Spirit) to define the expectations/character of God. Antinomianism immediately showed up (again) since feeling the spirit is an entirely personal and non-pin-downable event (which didn't stop people from trying to pin it down).

“Natural law" was also somewhat suspect, but it could apparently be reasoned out using philosophy and observation. The Bible was supposedly clear except (a) the Bible’s clarity was being challenged by German scholars; (b) not every theologian agreed on the Bible’s meaning—an increasing number pointed out that Saint Paul was probably speaking hypothetically or metaphorically or specifically or historically when he spoke about “election.”

A few theologians have always pointed out that whatever the truth about God, it isn't up to individual people to decide whether or not that truth is palatable or how it works. And frankly, these theologians have Jesus on their side since he delivers several parables with the rider that judgment is not up to anybody but God.

And a few theologians, like Joseph Smith, have gone the mythic route: what is the STORY of God, heaven, hell, and the afterlife?

Nevertheless, a great many theologians in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries were extremely fascinated by the anatomy of salvation--its inner workings--including wickedness. That fascination often culminated--even for those believers who eschewed works--in observable results: Who comes to church? Who ought to come to church? Who should be accepted into the church? What does membership look like? If members are judged, why are they judged?

For Calvinists, membership often came down to a moment of “true” conversation. But what IS a moment of “true” conversion? How is it brought about? What does it look like?

One approach in New England Calvinism to separating the good from the bad (saved from the non-saved, elect from the non-elect) was to define a believer’s moment of “true” conversion (keep in mind: not all Calvinist theologians argued that figuring out “true” conversion was necessary). And the way to define that moment was…

To scare the snot out of people.

I’m not kidding! It wasn’t hellfire and brimstone cloaked in “better you than me” self-righteousness. It was “you better feel that hellfire and brimstone—we all have—and you must before you can take the next step.”

The Amish concept of shunning is in line with this idea: individuals must be horrified, NOT to be scared into compliance but to be scared into a full realization of the actual state of their souls.

Compliance versus realization may seem a distinction without a difference--but in fact, when tied to its theology, this awareness or awakening constitutes a distinction. Jonathan Edwards' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God aimed at this idea: once you have a catharsis of how sinful you are, then you will wake up:

O Sinner! Consider the fearful Danger you are in: 'Tis a great Furnace of Wrath, a wide and bottomless Pit, full of the Fire of Wrath, that you are held over in the Hand of that God, whose Wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the Damned in Hell: You hang by a slender Thread, with the Flames of divine Wrath flashing about it, and ready every Moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no Interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the Flames of Wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one Moment.

As Edward Ingebretsen, S.J. points out in Maps of Heaven, Maps of Hell: Religious Terror as Memory from the Puritans to Stephen King, horror in America has very deep roots. (Witness the behaviors and attitudes of modern protesters and politicians attempting to frighten Americans into compliance.)

By the end of the eighteenth century, scaring true conversion into people was running up against competing/contradictory ideas: (1) God is rational; (2) God wants humans to be happy; (3) God loves humans and doesn't threaten them.

And Jonathan Edwards did believe in a God of love. The effort of late Calvinists to square evidentiary scriptural proofs, beliefs in happiness, and respect for beautiful nature with a God who (still) scares the snot out of people explains...a great deal about late Calvinism.

Nineteenth-century readers would have been exceedingly familiar with the horror version of Christian "awakening" (which, again, was conflicted since it existed side by side with personal, positive spiritual outpourings). Consequently, nineteenth-century readers would have recognized the thrust of Jacob's passage:

And according to the power of justice, for justice cannot be denied, ye must go away into that lake of fire and brimstone, whose flames are unquenchable, and whose smoke ascendeth up forever and ever (Jacob 6:10)

And they would have recognized the doctrinal concept presented in Alma 42:16:

Now, repentance could not come unto men except there were a punishment, which also was eternal as the life of the soul should be, affixed opposite to the plan of happiness, which was as eternal also as the life of the soul.

Just about every part of the above passages will be heavily qualified by Joseph Smith at a later date, starting in Doctrine and Covenants 19 in which "endless" punishment is clarified as referring to God's punishment, NOT to a punishment without end. Three kingdoms of glory (Doctrine and Covenants 76) will later further qualify the idea of endless or eternal punishment/damnation. 

Wickedness and punishment occupied nineteenth-century religious minds. Both issues come back to the problem of fairness: Would God have set us up to fail? The conundrum is more than “why does evil exist?” becoming “why does evil exist within humans?”

 

Alma 42: God and Fairness, Part III

Original Sin

Original Sin gets a bad rap, in large part due to its (later) ties to sex. Although Augustine often gets blamed, the gnostics were equally if not more responsible. Augustine perceived life as beautiful but confusing. That is, creation was beautiful. Human beings were something else. 

A great deal of gnosticism, however--despite contemporary efforts to paint it as some kind of non-sexist, life-is-beautiful 1960's forerunner--was about as anti-the-physical-experience as intellectuals can (and still do) get. Gnosticism could also get intensely elitist.

Original sin, as Alan Jacobs points out, had the merit of at least being universal. Everyone--kings to peasants--was so tainted. And early Christianity was far less obsessed with the supposed logical ramifications (why would God allow us to be evil?) than later Christianity. Most people, from Paul to Erasmus, accepted that humans just, well, made mistakes and did dumb things. Of course, they required salvation!

The Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment brought about an almost obsessive need to explain the origin of bad behavior in humans. The world seems to have split into those who said, "Well, sure, humans do bad things. Welcome to being human. Why else would we need grace?" and those who said, "But it doesn't make sense that a perfect pure God could allow so much nastiness. Therefore..."

And entire generations of believers tied themselves into knots. 

It occurred to some people to separate outcome from intent (transgression versus sin). But they were often shouted down by people who praised the majesty of God and then behaved as if God was something they had tucked into their back pockets (this blogger takes the view of C.S. Lewis: Deity is not a TAMED lion). 

The expulsion from the Garden of Eden consequently became a more and more contentious issue. While Early Christianity argued fiercely over the nature of God (half-human/half-God or all-human/all-God or something else), later Christianity was more concerned with the nature of humankind and that issue was heavily complicated by the problem of free will. Free will was always on the table. Paul takes it for granted. Later Christians, however, wanted to square it with a whole host of other ideas. 

Calvinism in America threw itself into the deep end by wanting to apply fate to people's souls beyond birth while embracing free will as well as rational explanations for stuff. And one of the easiest rational explanations (on the surface) has always been to figure out who is to blame.

Adam as the guy at fault (humanity would be so happy if only Adam and Eve hadn’t…) was omnipresent enough as a theological argument in the nineteenth century for the 3rd Article of Faith (written down by Joseph Smith and his early followers) to state, “We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.” 

Because, of course, blaming Adam didn’t really help matters either since, as mentioned earlier, Why would God allow Adam’s fault to impinge on us? Why would God set up humans to fail? Why would he give them natures that couldn’t get better? How far does grace go to wipe all that out? Is it fair to override people’s bad actions? Do murderers go to heaven? Why not? Doesn’t God want humans to be happy? (Happiness is a big issue in the nineteenth century.)

In Alma 42, Joseph Smith attempts to solve the problem of blame and the Garden of Eden, an approach that he brings into focus in the Book of Moses. 

To be continued...

Alma 42: God and Fairness, Part IV

In Alma 42, Joseph Smith attempts to solve the problem of blame and the Garden of Eden, an approach that he brings into focus in the Book of Moses. 

It may be an ideal--it is an extraordinary one.

Joseph Smith's Mythology

Joseph Smith’s approach to the problem of God, original sin, free will, and judgment is to do the following:

(1) Take free will to its logical conclusion: in sum, the whole point of life is for humans not just to have free will but to exercise it as a reflection of each human's individuality (to be "agents unto themselves");

(2) Negate the idea of inherited sin and define sin as contingent on knowledge (hence, all children are saved);

(3) Distinguish between “sin” and “transgression.” Adam and Eve didn’t yet know good from evil so they transgressed when they ate the fruit; they didn’t sin. They left the Garden of Eden because they needed to go. As mortal beings, they did eventually sin. But they weren’t inherently corrupt and neither are we. Messing up is normal. God already figured that out.

Hints of the above approach appear in Alma 42. 

Alma 42 first addresses antinomianism, likely because it is about to present what others would call antinomian arguments. So it first argues that God is just (fair) and consistent. Mercy can't override justice. 

The chapter goes on to present in outline, material that will appear in the Book of Moses, presented by Joseph Smith in the 1830s. In Alma 42,

• Adam and Eve become “as God,” knowing good from evil.
• They are “sent forth” from the presence of God, so they will die physically, which requires (“it was expedient”) a universal resurrection.
• They are separated temporally and spiritually from God, which requires an atonement.
• Sins arise from specific decisions made by individuals as they, expediently, “follow after their own will"—not from God’s punishment.

A VERY Mormon view of Adam and Eve

There is more than a hint of “it had to happen this way, so it could happen this way, so God could reveal His power”--a not unusual argument in the nineteenth century (and earlier). Joseph Smith's approach to the Garden of Eden will later be brought more in line with 2 Nephi 2:25 (hinting at Adam as Michael and ultimate hero): 

“Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy.”

“And now,” Alma writes his son, “I desire that ye should let these things trouble you no more” (Alma 42:29).

When Joseph Smith can side with actual reality over theory, he usually almost always does. After all, telling God who and when and why He can save is completely unnecessary. And possibly blasphemous.

On the other hand, having a story about God (myth = story; theology = argument in a positive sense) does influence HOW people carry out their beliefs in actual reality. Joseph Smith splits the difference.

Alma: Secret Combinations

Background

The Book of Alma is filled with mention of secret combinations associated with kingmakers and related plots.

I personally find conspiracy theories as boring and pointless as Sherlock from Elementary does. However, a fascination with conspiracy theories is part of the human condition. Nineteenth-century readers were quite familiar with the so-called Burr conspiracy which occurred in the century's first decade. It was reported in multiple newspapers. It was likely the most famous national event of that time.

 

In sum, Aaron Burr, after he killed Alexander Hamilton, started gathering supporters to create a country out of the Mississippi Valley. Within fifty years, the United States would be divided North versus South. But at the time, the divide was between the Atlantic states and the states/territories to the West. The perception was that the Eastern states were run by elite politicians and moneymakers who wanted to rob farmers and ordinary people of their goods and money and land, a perception that was fueled, in part, by the Whiskey Rebellion (and yes, that perception lingers).

 

Burr's rhetoric and his behavior (which may have been part of a kind of Ponzi scheme) were reported--in part by people who claimed to have joined the conspiracy (see Sherlock's point above). And he was ultimately found not guilty since his behavior seems to have fallen into blustering bombastic populist egotistic self-flattery that didn't result in any actual violent military action. He did leave the United States after his trial, however.

 

It is entirely a matter of speculation whether the average citizen, for whom Burr claimed to be acting, would have favored Burr in the long run any more than any other high-handed self-appointed autocrat. The Book of Mormon, for one, pairs elitism with local kingmakers. Captain Moroni heads to the country's capital to restore the government there, an act that many nineteenth-century readers would have endorsed. (In 1814, the Burning of Washington resulted in the president being temporarily ousted from the capital.) 

 

In other words, the Federal government was perceived by many groups, including what became the Mormons, as a necessary check to what James Madison called "the spirit of locality," that is, the bullying that can occur in a pure democracy (the inevitable bullying here is why the electoral college is still a decent form of democracy). The attitude of the Federal government at that time, however, was to restrict Federal involvement, as demonstrated in Barron v. Baltimore, in which a property owner's loss of income was not (fully) redressed despite the state violating the owner's rights; the Supreme Court determined that the problem was between the owner and the state. The issue wasn't a Federal one. 

The problem of rights and the individual is complex and indicates that libertarianism is not automatically a state v. Federal issue, at least not historically. Utah Mormons would later have a fraught relationship with the Feds. Some of the seeds of distrust were sown in the Nauvoo years when petitions for Federal protection against state harassment were, from the view of Joseph Smith and his followers, ignored. 

 

That disillusionment was to come. Early readers of The Book of Mormon would have encountered a more optimistic solution in The Book of Mormon's Captain Moroni. And it is notable that despite the time period's Millennial fever, many low to middleclass Americans were not interested in revolutions of the messy kind (however proud they were of their own revolution) but, rather, in balanced and rational governments so they could get on with life. 

 

I highly recommend!

Freemasonry & Themes in The Book of Mormon

 

Any discussion of Mormons and conspiracies brings up freemasonry. 

Nineteenth-century Mormons, including Joseph Smith, were well-aware of the inherent tension of freemasonry.

On the one hand was the desire for secret or gnostic knowledge separate from philosophical, "educated" theoretical blatherings amongst Eastern elites. Freemasonry returned rituals to Protestantism as well as the mysticism and active participation that not only the Enlightenment but late Calvinism seemed to be wiping out (aside from revivals, of course, but even revivals maintained a kind of top-down expectation of "correct" performance--see "confessions" on modern social media). The desire for knowledge and ritual is arguably a human one. Freemasonry likely mirrors the Ancient Roman soldier's interest in Mithraism. Like the Ancient Roman soldier, many non-educated (and educated) Americans wanted something real and powerful and non-labelly yet profound--something other than country club religion (which frankly, Ancient Roman paganism rather resembled for the elite).

Freemasonry appeared to deliver. (It also filled a gap in American culture as church and state increasingly separated after the American Revolution.)

 

And yet, on the other side, was an intense dislike of secret societies, which dislike often expanded to include a dislike of elites making backroom deals at the expense of the "common man" (see above). In the early 1800s, the "common" citizen was a farmer while Masons were often merchants and professionals. Not wealthy earners from our modern point of view. But not "common" enough. (However, that image is complicated by the sheer number of social organizations, freemasonry and otherwise, within the United States at the time.)

 

The tensions here resided in Gothicism, which began in the eighteenth century, and go a long way to explaining the popularity of Ann Radcliffe oeuvre and Stoker's Dracula.

 

On the one hand was a yearning for the ritualistic, knightly Catholic past, including its buildings and Saints and priests.

 

On the other was a dislike of Catholic doctrine (as understood by Protestants).

 

On the one hand was a desire for supernatural romanticism, elements of the human experience that the carefully constructed arguments of Protestantism and the Enlightenment seemed to be eliminating.

 

On the other was a paranoid dislike of secrecy and stuff happening behind closed doors (see pamphlets about Maria Monk).

 

So, on the one hand, The Book of Mormon promises that more mysteries are forthcoming. On the other, it contains an ongoing worry about conspiring groups.

 

The text continually marks the difference: namely, positive communities want to expand rights while negative societies want to remove them. The problem is arguably more difficult. But the characterizations remain consistent within the text.

 

The problem, eventually, in Nauvoo, was that Joseph Smith perceived polygamy and its rational outgrowth, temple ceremonies, as positives that joined more and more members together--while others saw such things as violations of basic Christianity and therefore, negative and destructive (and secretive) influences.

 

I am reminded of a scene in That Hideous Strength in which the main character, Mark, who has always wanted to be in "the know" of a secret society doesn't even recognize when he becomes part of one with the ragged beggar man.

 

C.S. Lewis returns here to an idea that he raises in Surprised by Joy. He paints in an entirely positive light the boys' secret brotherhood at the worst private school he attended. Yet the later "in-group" mentality of intellectuals and poseurs and social climbers, he paints wholly negatively. The first group didn't set out to be a society. The boys were merely trying to survive and helped each other out ("we few, we happy few"). The second group, however, could only exist if "outsiders" were torn down; they couldn't advance unless others were put in their place.

 

As definitions--society that joins people together through ties of fellowship is good; society that bands together to mock and find things wrong with others is bad--these are quite usable even if the events to which they are applied can be quite complex. Such definitions appear in The Book of Mormon over and over again. 

 

Regarding freemasonry and the temple, Joseph Smith borrowed from whatever was to hand--as did lots of people. Like with most human institutions, one monolithic freemasonry organization didn't exist in the United States, especially since women, Native Americans, Jews, and Blacks created their own lodges. 

 

"Borrowing"--even appropriation--is not the same as a conspiracy.