1 Nephi: Scripture Reading and the Enlightenment

1 Nephi 3: Scripture Reading

The struggle  over the brass plates, wealth versus inspiration, would have struck home with Joseph Smith, who participated in the popular early nineteenth-century search for treasures and understood the survivalist's need for cold, hard cash. The history behind this trend is covered more than adequately elsewhere. 

Of more interest to me is the definition of the brass plates as "spoken by the mouth of all the holy prophets..delivered unto [the prophets] by the Spirit and power of God” rather than "spoken by God...delivered as incontestable words." 

Bible literalism is a relatively late development in the production, collection, and canonization of scriptures. It popped up throughout the Middle Ages (and earlier), of course, but didn't take off until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The phrases in 1 Nephi--"spoken by" and "delivered unto them"--places the translator, at least here, on the non-literal side of the argument with the addition of a possible compromise. 

Nineteenth-century readers would have been as invested in this issue as modern readers, in part due to the Reformation; in part due to the Enlightenment. 

Martin Luther, for one, was

extremely argumentative.

The Reformation

Luther et al. challenged Rome's authority based on the belief that the scriptures were the only reliable source of God's truth. The matter was instantly made more complicated by not everyone understanding what the scriptures actually said (translations into everyday language were being made but not all translators had the same background in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin). Like all human beings everywhere, both Catholic and Protestant theologians also had a tendency to "translate" in terms of their own opinions. 

So Luther took transubstantiation literally while other Protestants pointed out that Christ was probably speaking figuratively. Okay. Sounds consistent. Except some of the pro-figurative Protestants insisted on literalism regarding Christ's whereabouts ("right hand of God") while some of the literalists insisted that the reference was only figurative. 

Nevertheless, almost all Protestants--even when they violently disagreed with each other--concurred that the scriptures were the source, not the traditions coming out of Rome (which traditions included the Pope).

The Enlightenment

In recent years, some writers have blamed the Enlightenment--empiricism, searching for proofs, separating faith from science--for ruining religion while Enlightenment believers have blamed religion for keeping everyone thinking medievally. 

I think the argument is as pointless as atheists arguing with fundamentalists. The Enlightenment—a highly varied movement itself—underscored the concept of a rational and reasonable deity. The associated assumptions have impacted everything from church organization to charity work to scripture reading. Many things we take for granted—such as forensics as evidence—are both older than the Enlightenment and were encouraged by the Enlightenment. Theology, likewise, has always focused on producing a coherent explanation of God and God's acts.

One of the Enlightenment's ideas was “evidential” religion, 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. 

Not everyone was a fan since there are obviously non-observable aspects of life. But "evidential" religion fit in with the Protestant Reformation's emphasis on going to the scriptures for proof. 

Back to Scripture Reading

Of course, using Bible passages wasn't a perfect solution in the nineteenth century because (a) the Bible’s clarity was being challenged by aforementioned scholars; (b) not every theologian agreed on the Bible’s meaning. An increasing number of Protestants pointed out that Saint Paul was probably speaking hypothetically or metaphorically or specifically or historically when he spoke about “election.”

There were plenty of people in-between. Many in-between religious believers honestly didn’t want to go in either direction. 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.

That is, many nineteenth-century religious communities were perfectly capable of rejecting the logical fallacy of either/or (one must either accept that all scriptural events are metaphors or one must accept that they are meant to mean exactly what a current translation argues, in a one word=one definition sense, without any room for debate or context). 

Nineteenth-century readers were also open to a third possibility: more revelations, more visions, more scriptures, and more to come. 

God may not change. But that doesn't mean that humans fully understand the nature of God. 

1 Nephi 12-13: Catholicism

"Great & Abominable"

1 Nephi 12-13 is a kind of historical overview. It references the "Great and Abominable Church" without any other designation. 

However, in Protestantism and in Protestant America, the term was customarily attached to Catholicism. When I was growing up, there were still church members who linked the Catholic Church to the “Great and Abominable Church” (I grew up in upstate New York, so our congregation included ex-Catholics).

The link is far less palatable (and diplomatic) now, of course, and I got tired of it early on. Although some members liked to blame the Great Apostasy on the Council of Nicaea, it is obvious from reading the scriptures and history that (1) any apostasy within the early church occurred within that early church well before the end of the first century C.E. (See all of Paul's letters.)

(2) The Council of Nicaea actually preserved the most orthodox and non-crazy ideas of Christianity. That is, the Council preserved, as best as it was able, the concepts of an invested, non-abstract God and universal grace.

Yet, in truth, many nineteenth-century folks would have associated the “Great and Abominable Church” with Catholicism. Although the Reformation was nearly 300 years old at this point, it was still fresh in the American mind. Puritans left England due to persecution from the remnants of Catholicism, Anglicanism in the form of the Church of England. Europe was still a bastion, in the American Protestant mind, to Catholic influences. Truly radical Protestantism, went the thinking, couldn’t take root until the supposed stain of Catholicism was wiped away. This attitude lingered well into the twentieth century.

In fact, New Englanders got extremely nervous when Catholics, including the Catholic Irish, began to settle in Boston. Joseph Smith and his family left New England before the furor really ramped up but there is overlap. The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, a fictitious tale of scandal in a Catholic nunnery (rape, dead babies, secrets, catacombs) came out in 1836 (and was presented as non-fiction). 

The narrative of 1 Nephi 13 lends itself to an anti-Catholic interpretation but not entirely. After all, to many Protestants in the nineteenth century, Protestantism itself had faltered and gone down the wrong road--hence, the upsurge in Millennial sects. 

Joseph Smith, for instance, appears to have been entirely disinterested in going after Catholics specifically. It’s unlikely that he knew any anyway. Like Paul with The Law & paganism, Joseph Smith’s overall writing focuses on the analogy. Just as Paul continually used various analogies connected to legalism to go after the concept of propitiation (trying to win God or gods' favor), Joseph Smith used various analogies to attack the underlying causes of pride--such as fancy education and wealth and close-mindedness re: the Congregationalists that he grew up around--rather than a specific denomination.

Posts on Penance, Original Sin, and the Trinity to follow...

1 Nephi & 2 Nephi & Jacob: Grace & Works, an Ongoing Issue

The meaning of Eden is part of the struggle.

1 Nephi 14-22: Grace & Works

The Book of Nephi begins a struggle over hell and grace and punishment that continues throughout The Book of Mormon. It was an ongoing struggle in the nineteenth century as well as today! That struggle is arguably part of the human condition. 

Nineteenth-century readers would have had personal contact with this struggle, being familiar with Arminianism—God’s grace is universal—and Calvinism—pre-ordination of salvation. In America, the struggle came down to Methodism versus what had become by that time Congregationalism (the latter term now has a broader use).

So hell as punishment is a given. However, in Nephi’s interpretation of Lehi’s dream, the quality or character of hell is defined: “And I said unto them that the water which my father saw was filthiness; and so much was his mind swallowed up in other things that he beheld not the filthiness of the water” (1 Nephi 15:27, my emphasis). 

Although the passage about hell may seem rather harsh—and a bit skimpy on the grace side—nineteenth-century readers would have seen it as bolstering the idea of universal grace: hell is not the place where people who didn’t complete all the correct rituals or joined the right congregation go (it isn’t group-identity hell). It isn’t a place where people go whether or not they worked hard not to go there. It is the place where individual “filthy” people go.

Religious designation is not a qualifier. Neither is race. Neither is birth. This perspective would have been perceived in the nineteenth century as provocative. (Readers are being prepared for a complete rejection of infant baptism.)

2 Nephi and Jacob: Grace & Works Background Up to the Nineteenth Century

Two problems underscore much religious discourse. Those problems have a long history:

1. The problem of grace versus works—that is, the problem of a deity's mercy versus human merit.
2. The problem of the elect or elite, those who are supposedly entitled to God’s mercy and intervention.

At this point, I will turn to etymology—then I will return to the nineteenth century.

In James’s statement, “Faith without works is dead” the word “works” is based on a Greek word, ergon, which refers to “energy.” The word is connected to the business of agriculture and trade—that is, it is connected to multiple roles that people may take in a community. (I did not know this background information for myself: see this site here.)

That is, faith without energy is meaningless because faith without energy means a person is dead.

We wake up in the morning. We get out of bed, feed the cats, carry out tasks, open mail. Everything is something we do as living people. And during all of that, we ponder stuff, which arguably is also an action in which neurons leap the boundaries between synapses. Faith is, in fact, ongoing agency, a position that The Book of Mormo commits to doctrinally (see 2 Nephi 2:26).

However, by the time the Protestant Reformation was in full force, “works” no longer meant “the decisions I make everyday about my life” or, even, “charity” (which is the context for James). It meant what John McWhorter references when he talks about “performances” by so-called protesters. Since they aren’t protesting anybody who dares to disagree with them—and the so-called authorities applaud them (and sometimes feed them)—and their protests rarely, if ever, end with an actual sacrifice of privilege (few higher educators are giving up actual offices or jobs), much less the adoption of a differing lifestyle—they are, in essence, showing off.

That is, “works” as defined by Martin Luther et al. became actions that by themselves don’t appear to have a moral component but have been turned into a moral necessity: good people jump through these hoops; use these phrases; perform these routines; make these mea culpas.

The issue becomes complicated because not all rituals are meant to be works. Sometimes, they are meant to be reminders of faith or inductions into cultural belonging. A signal of commitment. 

And Protestants rapidly split into those who despised all rituals, including any custom that took place in any church or within any religious group, and those who said, “Uh, you folks are kind of throwing out everything at once.” (Forensic anthropologists are not very happy with Protestant zealots in England who threw out Anglo-Saxon saints’ bones that can now not be tested.)

See the posts Why Choosing the Supposedly Correct Side is Difficult.

To nineteenth-century American readers, “works”—on the one hand—smacked of Catholicism, the corrupt Old World, and stuff like worshiping saints. On the other hand, early Protestantism almost immediately created its own sets of “works.” Good religious people embrace the following lifestyle and use the following language and support the following celebrities/political causes…

And the truth is, every culture, by the nature of being composed of non-dead and human people, is going to have “performances,” stuff that people do because that’s part of being a member of a community. (We even create “performances” in our personal lives/routines.) If we decide that only “meaningful” actions should be carried out, we run the risk of ending up as humorless as, well, a bunch of Woke Puritans who burn Maypoles, close down theaters, get offended over single words and phrases, and lecture others on supposedly bad thoughts.

Joseph Smith was not a guy who lacked a sense of humor.

In opposition to “works” is the principle of grace. Saint Paul argues that we are saved by grace. Full stop. Not “after all we can do.” We are saved by grace. Propitiation is off the table. God doesn’t bargain. And humans aren’t meant to be grifters. Give it up.

Yet even Paul struggled with the reality of communal living and the irritation of people doing petty things like, say, suing each other. And he also had a sense of humor.

In sum, if one sets aside the "performance" side of works, the issue of grace v. works/action/energy still remains: Do humans earn God's attention? Or does God offer attention? Does God react based on merit? Or is merit human wishful thinking?

God is bigger than us and can do what He wishes, so we are saved. But sometimes people are jerks. And sometimes they walk away from God. And sometimes they think they have walked away but they haven’t. And sometimes they think they haven’t but they have. And how fair is it really for a jerk to be saved? (According to Jesus Christ and the parable of the workers, Entirely fair and so not your business.) And since we do get up every morning and do stuff, shouldn’t that stuff be moral? And if we claim to love God, shouldn’t there be a connection between that love and the moral stuff we do? 

Do we work our way towards the infinite by a checklist? Or by learning and growing? Or by being loved and accepted?

I consider Christianity one of the most fascinating religions on record simply because it hauls this problem to the surface and doesn’t fully answer it. The Book of Mormon and its translator, for instance, will return to the problem over and over again. Why not? The Book of Mormon’s initial readers were struggling with it as much as Paul’s audience and modern believers. 

Later entries on this blog will return to the issue of grace & works. 

King Benjamin's Speech: Revivals

Nineteenth-century readers would have recognized themselves in King Benjamin's listeners.

Towards the end of his life, the good King Benjamin gathers his people together and gives a speech. Near the end of the speech, his listeners cry out, "O have mercy and apply the atoning blood of Christ" (Mosiah 4:2). As a consequence, they are touched by the Holy Spirit.

Revivals in which speakers evoked an emotional crisis, a desire to repent and (re)commit to Jesus Christ, were not only common in the nineteenth century, they were familiar to the previous generation. 

The Great Awakening began in the 1700s before the Revolutionary War. One of the sad (but true) aspects of the Salem Witch Trials is that less than fifty years later, the girls' behavior would likely have been perceived not as possession by the devil but as possession by the Holy Spirit. George Whitefield from England was likely the greatest revivalist of the era, charming even the mostly agnostic Benjamin Franklin. Jonathan Edwards was the New England clergyman who made revivals acceptable. 

Jonathan Edwards

In many ways, revivals were a reaction against a perceived indifference or rote attitude regarding religion. My personal diagnosis is that revivals were a reaction to an upheaval in culture. The Salem Witch Trials were not the ultimate hurrah of Puritanism; they were the last hurrah, the end of a culture in which government and traditions and beliefs converged. The colonies were becoming more and more pluralistic. Revivals were a way to locate common ground and reassurance amid uncertainty.

Jonathan Edwards, one of Calvinism's New Lights, greeted revivals as a solution to apathy though he did not preach in the Whitefield manner. He read "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" without histrionics (he wasn't a histrionics type of guy) but he did it to create an acknowledgment of guilt or emotional catharsis in his listeners. 

"Old Lights" Puritans, on the other hand, objected to the emotional excesses of the Awakening (one revivalist held a bonfire in which sacrilegious stuff was burnt, including--he offered--his pants; at the same time, a number of students accused their professors of not being committed enough to various beliefs: sound familiar?). In response to the Old Lights, Edwards argued that one couldn't divide up the impressions of the Holy Spirit, being okay in one instance but not okay in another. 

Edwards still struggled with the ramifications of the Awakening, namely the "revolution in authority." As George Marsden writes in his excellent book A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards, "For the moment, few evangelicals (and certainly not Edwards) saw such spiritual equality as having implications for social status generally. But in the long run, the implications were there."

Herein lies the inherent contradiction of Protestantism: By stressing the individual's relationship with God, all Protestants, from Luther to Edwards, left the matter open to challengers. "I'll just go start my own religion then," says the challenger. "No, no, no," proclaim the leaders. "We didn't mean THAT." 

Too late.

The Old Lights weren't just offended by the break with past authority. They were also offended by the instant-salvation aspect of the revivals. Marsden states, "[Charles Chauncy] was not against truly transformative works of the Holy Spirit, but he believed they were usually manifested as a gradual process of recognizing and living according to God's grace. 'Enthusiasm'...was a sort of overheated and contagious mental state that led people to mistake their own overwrought passions for the work of God." 

Moreover, ordinary citizens were getting a tad tired of all the unrest. The revivals weren't as horrific as the Salem Witch Trials but the mob-like drop in rational thought wasn't too different. (As Marsden later remarks, "[C]harity...on both sides...was becoming a rare commodity.")

The Second Great Awakening in the nineteenth century was a continuation of the first with a stronger emphasis on Millennialism and Methodist theology. The Burned-over District in New York was so named because so many revivals occurred there.   

As for the attendees/believers, they would have come from varying backgrounds and taken up varying positions: Franklin, non-religious yet friends with the similarly outspoken and bombastic Whitefield; careful, logical Edwards, wholly passionate in his quiet way about revivals; Chauncy, rational and appalled about the fall-out.

And everybody in-between.

King Benjamin's speech supplies several distinctive and familiar revival-type characteristics:

1. It is an organized event.

In the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, some controversy existed over planned, authorized revivals--organized by clergy--versus pop-up revivals carried out by itinerant preachers. People like Edwards naturally favored the former. Civil authorities had reason to be wary of the latter.

2. The necessity of the written word is stressed.

Speakers in the past didn't have microphones. Whitefield had the ability to be heard at a tremendous distance--one possible reason he was so popular. But generally speaking, a speech had to be taken down in some manner and passed on. 

3. King Benjamin warns his audience of internal splits and contentions. 

4. The listeners are threatened with judgment.

However, as typical of The Book of Mormon, the judgment is not the wrath of God holding sinners over a flame ("oops, nope, gotcha--just joking") but rather the result of the individual withdrawing from God. "Mercy hath no claim" on the damned because the damned "shrink from the presence of God" (Mosiah 2:38-39). 

5. Salvation is promised to all, including those who "ignorantly sin" (Mosiah 3:11), such as little children. 

6. As mentioned above, while listening to King Benjamin, the people cry out for mercy. 

7. When the people cry out, they are visited by the Holy Spirit. 

8. As a result of feeling the Holy Spirit, they are "filled with joy, having received a remission of their sins, and having peace of conscience, because of the exceeding faith which they had in Jesus Christ who should come" (Mosiah 4:3).

9. King Benjamin then continues his speech, exhorting the listeners, "[Y]e must repent of your sins and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God; and ask in sincerity of heart that he would forgive you; and now, if you believe all these things see that ye do them" (Mosiah 4:10).

Some revivals descended into what can only be called mass hysteria--something resembling concert attendees swooning when the Beatles came to town. Jonathan Edwards, for instance, was unable to finish his famous speech due to mob-like behavior, of which he was honestly not impressed. That mass hysteria does not occur with King Benjamin. See #10.

10. The people enter into a covenant. 

Encountering King Benjamin's speech, nineteenth-century readers would surely have spotted similarities to revivals at the time. They would also have spotted differences. 

They may also have spotted a resolution to the ongoing tension between grace and works.

Both Chauncy and Edwards agreed that a sudden emotional outburst isn't enough. But why not? If there is an elect, why is a manifestation of grace not enough to be going on with? And who is experiencing that manifestation of grace/sanctification anyway? (Edwards warned revival attendees against trying to distinguish "true" sanctification from "false.") For that matter, why do such experiences seem to fade over time, so the experiencer begins to backslide? (Edwards was truly upset by the backsliders.)

The Book of Mormon resolves the issue here--and in other places--by proposing a solution that makes works not a way of illustrating that one has been marked by grace (though that Calvinist concept is definitely present) or a way of carrying out a change in heart (though that more Methodist attitude is also present). Rather, the individual is drawn to grace by the individual's path or preference or even personality: where the individual is headed, what life the individual is trying to form through choices, actions and rituals (works), dreams, plans, objects, people, places...

You reap not just what you sow but what you care about sowing.

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 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: 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.  

Ether: Millenarianism & The Book of Mormon

Background

The best way to understand Millenarianism is to accept that human nature doesn't change, not fundamentally. 

Millenarianism thrived in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries in England and America. Once Protestantism opened the door to ordinary citizens determining their own theologies, they did (much to the consternation of Protestant leaders like Luther and Calvin) and what they determined is that all that cut-and-dried God-is-this stuff pushed on them by religious leaders was just not their cup of tea. (See the history of every pushback against a dogmatic ideology ever.)

In sum (from a religious angle), they wanted their saints and angels back. They wanted the culture and rituals and pageantry of Catholicism without Catholicism plus a whole lot of other stuff, like astrology and fortune-telling. That is, it is no mistake that Millenarianism took off around the same time as Gothicism. As the modern world made greater in-roads into people's lives, people began to hanker for what they imagined the past to be. For some, that imagined past was Gothic. For some, it went back even further. 

Millenarianism's hey day was the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth century but it has lingered. When I was growing up, Millenarianism was somewhat more popular than it is now. Many people at church honestly believed (or spoke as if they honestly believed) that the Second Coming was right around the corner. Food storage was important not as a debt-saving maneuver but as a prelude to building storm shelters from when the Soviet Union invaded.

I found the idea increasingly bizarre--and not one that I encountered at home. Reading about the plague in Europe pretty much cured me of being scared into apocalyptic visions by earnest, middleclass, employed, comfortably-situated people who spent most of their time--when not preaching doom--going to work and paying their taxes and sending their kids to college. 

J.F.C. Harrison's The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780-1850 focuses on trying to understand the supposed cognitive dissonance here rather than mocking it. Harrison points out that the adherents and preachers of Millenarianism were not uneducated or slothful or deceitful. They were intelligent, contributing members of society. 

Likewise, many self-styled prophets--such as Joanna Southcott and Richard Brothers--were supported by establishment clergymen, some of whom lost their parishes due to providing that support. Others, however, did not get booted out by their regular members. Those attendees agreed with their leaders enough to sanction supporting Milleniarian outliers. In addition, many Millenarian beliefs were shared by reformers and artists. It was a wide-ranging ideological system. 

Harrison sums up the attraction best: "[I]t provided an explanation of the mysteries of life to [those] who were dissatisfied with both the orthodoxies of evangelical religion and the claims of Enlightenment reason" (229).

Some of the beliefs shared by Milleniarians:

1. Prophets and visionaries

God's words were not confined to the labeled prophets of the past and designated scholar-interpreters of the present. God did deliver visions. God cared about current problems--such as the French Revolution.

William Blake was one of these visionaries. It wasn't an artistic pose (well, not entirely). He truly believed in his visions, as did many people--about Blake and about themselves. 

As Harrison states, 

Given certain common premises, the claims of millenarian prophets were not easy to refute on logical grounds...Few were prepared to deny absolutely that God might still speak to men through prophecy, so prophets and prophetesses could not be dismissed a priori. [V]isions and voices were validated by a great weight of Christian testimony, and could not be simply put down to hallucination. The strength of the inward witness of the Spirit (inconvenient as it always was for orthodox or majority denominations) means that millenarian claims were assured at least of a hearing in certain quarters. If millenarian visions and visitations were to be discredited they had to be shown to be from the devil...rather than flatly denied as having any existence at all. (227)

2. The Gathering of Israel

For Americans, this gathering meant providing a history/story about and to the Native Americans. As David G. Hackett describes one Millenarian leader--

In seeking to restore the ancient government of the judges, [Noah Ararat] looked to a primordial past for guidance. This impulse resembled that of contemporary Masonic ritualists, Christian primitivists, African American race historians, and Native American members of the Keetoowah Society, who all sought an anchoring in ancient wisdom amid the readily changing present. Moreover, like Joseph Smith's restorationist vision for the Latter-Day Saint, Noah's plan called for the gathering of religiously minded settlers from throughout the world in a theocratic refuge governed by Scripture and the contemporary embodiments of biblical leaders. Both men also called for people of Israelite descent, including tributes of American Indians, to populate the new colonies. (202-203).

3. Last Days

Harrison (kindly) points out that Milleniarians seemed far more fascinated by the drama of the possible destruction of everything than its actual occurrence and fall-out. 

I think this fascination is part of the human condition. With most of us, a desire for upheaval wars with a desire for stability--hence books that dwell with loving detail on the Rapture but fail to mention Jesus Christ. Other examples include people who supported both government regulations and riots during COVID lock downs; paranoid trolls on social media trying to destroy rather than create; the exceedingly bourgeois (not a dirty word) church members I knew growing up who liked to trade stories about possible nuclear winter and missionaries being killed in Jerusalem while paying their taxes, etc. And so on. (My mother, who has a vivid imagination, never enjoyed discussions of the Last Days: to her, the fall-out was real or could be real.) 

Consequently, there are amusing yet entirely believable (in terms of human nature) stories of Milleniarians like Ezekiel Hale, who gave up his business to his oldest son when he thought the end was nigh (he didn't simply burn it down); he then wanted to take it back when the final days didn't arrive. Lawsuits ensued.

Harrison suggests the focus on Last Days is about a larger idea or problem:  

[The sub-culture of millenianism] prominent in Millerism...presents a peculiar psychological problem: how to prepare for the Last Day? Familiar as one might become with scenes from romantic painting and with the imagery of the Book of Revelation, it is difficult to take in such a stupendous idea as the sudden appearance of the Divine Being and the complete ending of the world in its present form. Just how to act and speak in the presence of the Lord, whom one is expecting shortly to meet face to face, presents thoughts which could (or should) have enormous implications for each believer. From accounts of the Millerites one is left with the impression that they struggled hard to comprehend their situation and made the appropriate responses in words, but that they were so bogged down the literalness of their interpretation as to be incapable of grasping the full meanings of the End of Time. (196-197)

Millenarianism & The Book of Mormon

One idea common among Millenarian groups is a chosen land/group. 

Both Britishers and Americans expanded Bible applications beyond the Mediterranean world. The scattering and gathering of Israel was the means for promoting and defending that expansion. It also dovetailed with other ideas, such as the existence of scriptures--including the ten commandments--on American soil (and Joseph of Arimathea's visit to English shores).

The Book of Ether addresses the idea of a chosen, promised land more than other books in The Book of Mormon. (See specifically Ether 2:9-10.) 

However, in truth, The Book of Mormon is extremely diffident about Millenarian ideas. The Millennium is never mentioned. 2 Nephi refers to Satan being bound for a period. 3 Nephi refers to Christ's day of judgment. No reference is made to the number of years involved or the order of events. 

This diffidence is less apparent in Joseph Smith's day-to-day speech and revelations--and could be the product of common cultural discourse (what is accepted as a given doesn't need to be explained). Still, The Book of Mormon makes little effort to prophesy the exact end of times with definite dates or astrology-based explanations. It is remarkably rational in comparison to a great deal of Millenarian discourse (though, again, that discourse is wide-ranging). 

Joseph Brickey

In addition, a deep antipathy for destruction runs through The Book of Mormon, despite the tragic ending. Moroni's sheer despair is enough to lift the book out of Millenarianism's rather unlikable pleasure in catastrophe to something closer to poetry: 

And my father also was killed by them, and I even remain alone to write the sad tale of the destruction of my people. But behold, they are gone, and I fulfill the commandment of my father...I am alone. My father hath been slain in battle, and all my kinsfolk, and I have not friends nor whither to go; and how long the Lord will suffer that I may live I know not. (Mormon 8:3,5)

Moroni's final words in his own book are generous in the extreme, reflecting the transcendent magnanimity of which Joseph Smith was capable.

Harrison sums up the inherent tension here (end of times, sure, but no, no, not yet!) very well:

If, however, the Book of Mormon had been no more than another speculative account of American Israelism, it would not have made the impact that it did. Its themes were essentially the age-old problems that have perplexed men in all generations: the nature of God's revelations, good and evil, personal salvation. These were the problems which agitated many people in western New York (the Burned-over District) in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and the Book of Mormon can be seen as a projection of the beliefs and attitudes of post-revival sectarian religion...

One of the problems of popular millenarian religion is that it has to handle complex theological and philosophical issues at a level which can be generally understood; but the level must not be too simple or it will not satisfy those seekers after salvation whose rejections of their earlier beliefs is the motive for their turning to the next prophet. 

Joseph Smith's solution to this problem was extremely well-tuned to the needs of labouring people in American and England in the 1830s and 1840s. He did not offer an allegorical or abstract interpretation of the Bible in place of earlier and now unacceptable formulations, but added his own scripture which was to be taken literally. He rejected the harshness of Calvinism and the emotionalism of revivalism, while retaining the Puritan work ethic and direction by the inner light of the Spirit. He was as Arminian as Wesley (salvation was offered freely to all who respond to Christ's call): but he spoke with the authority of God's prophet. (Harrison 183-184)

An unapologetic extrovert, Joseph Smith seemed to want to gather people for the sake of gathering people. Gathering people/binding them together = fun and exciting and expansive. Leading them out on a hill to get consumed or gathered up or saved or, in any case, taken away = not so much.  

Bibliography:

Hackett, David G. That Religion In Which All Men Agree: Freemasonry in American Culture. University of California Press, 2015.

Harrison, J.F.C. The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism 1780-1850. Rutgers, 1979.