1 Nephi: Individuality & The Tree of Life

1 Nephi 8-11: The Tree of Life

1 Nephi 8-11 includes Lehi's version of the Tree of Life followed by Nephi’s personal vision of same.

These chapters would have connected to the intense individualism within American thought in the early nineteenth century. (Although the first image depicts the Norse Yggdrasil, it is doubtful that early ninteenth-century Americans were aware of Norse mythology. Greek and Latin--Greek and Roman--mythology still ruled in Western universities. Norse mythology was not made truly accessible until the mid-1800s and truly popular by Tolkien and others in the mid-twentieth century.)

The nineteenth century is the era of de Tocqueville, who arrived in the United States and observed separation of church and state in action. “Good golly,” he exclaimed (I am summarizing), “when religion is not imposed by the state, people are, what do you know, more religious!”

The American Revolutionary also supplied an ongoing narrative of intense individualism—rebellion against (or exodus from) the corruptness of the Old World. Even Puritan thought, which now strikes modern people as rather dictatorial, was about individual salvation, a single person coming to understand God’s grace through lifelong, intense personal analysis.

It is difficult to entirely capture—we are products of the early C.E. era, after all—the break here from communal sin and suffering that encapsulates social orders in antiquity. That urge remains, of course, what with Witch Trials and their modern equivalents: one bad apple rots the entire barrel! Twitter or whatever it is called now appears to be the ultimate expression of badgering everyone everywhere into some kind of compliant order.

But even Twitter is the product of individual offerings.

Individualism existed in antiquity and forms the basis of most narratives, but the social order—and therefore the social role—of populations was entirely presupposed. Kings were not scribes. Scribes were not peasants. Peasants weren’t anybody. If the king is saved, you are all saved. Might as well get on-board.

The Common Era concept of the individual as agent, who works out an individual salvation, is something that nineteenth-century readers would have entirely comprehended and embraced and that modern folks rather take for granted, even when they criticize the ideology.

Lehi’s Tree of Life rests on the premise of the individual agent. Although the “strait and narrow” path connotatively gives rise to images of intolerance and exclusivity, in Lehi’s dream it is a path that each person must walk alone, even if there are others ahead and behind: each of Lehi’s children and even his wife are referenced separately; at one point, he watches them struggle separately. The path is a person’s integrity or personal path in life—choice of profession, artistic endeavor, prophetic calling (see Joseph Smith)—whatever self-definition a person embraces and endures and sacrifices for.

The “great and spacious building”—on the other hand—is the ultimate collective. People get there individually but they stay in the “safe” Borg-like “in-group” that mocks individuals and scorns the difficult pathway that each individual treads.

Consequently, the “great and spacious building” houses detractors, sneerers, people who love labels, mockers, revilers, obnoxious cliques—those who prefer to watch others drown rather than make a life for themselves. (All members of the great and spacious building point in the same direction, as a mob would.)

There are other possible interpretations, of course, including the search for a single path to God’s grace, a search that was dear to the Smith family and many others. Although communal living was all the rage, early nineteenth-century readers still would have perceived such a search in individual terms, one that this group, this community carries out for the sake of each member. (Despite the Donner party haunting American mythology, most successful pioneers moved west within specific groups—religious groups, town groups, family groups.)

And few nineteenth-century readers would have balked at the fruit of the tree being happiness, love, and joy (as opposed to discipline, humiliation, and subjugation). Gotta love those Americans and their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness mindsets! (Even the Puritans perceived the happiness and beauty of nature as the key to comprehending God’s grace.)

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 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.

Helaman: Manichaeism in America & Satan

Background

The tension between “I am responsible for my sins” and “it isn’t my fault—it’s coming from outside me” never entirely goes away. It certainly didn’t in the nineteenth century.

Calvinists believed in demons. Increase Mather produced the first American (colonial) collection of folklore when he compiled Remarkable Providences, an assortment of tales from the New and Old World about paranormal happenings. The fascinating aspect of the book is that although both Mathers are often blamed for furthering beliefs in witchcraft through their publications, the tales in this particular book come across more as “Woah! Didja hear about that poltergeist who caused all kinds of problems for that family down the block?!”

Two hundred years later, Increase and his son Cotton would be hosting ghost-hunting “reveals” on television.

Jonathan Edwards, who may in fact have believed in Satan less, being a product of Enlightenment thinking, seems more prone to use demons and hellfire as a scare tactic than Increase Mather, who thoroughly believed in them.

I was reminded of an incident in my teen years. I was at a slumber party where the adult leader—who was likely in her late twenties—wanted to tell us teen girls numerous “my roommate who was possessed by an evil spirit” tales. She wasn't doing it in a jokey, storyteller way--she wasn't telling urban legends--but rather as a believer who couldn't wait to relate her adventures. 

Finally, one of the girls said sternly, “I’m not okay with this. Let’s say a prayer.” She said a prayer and the discussion ended.

So modern-day teens who sorta, kinda, maybe believe in demons perceive them more as Edwards did (terrifying threats) than as Mather did (fodder for publication). 

After all, what I remember most was the sheer disappointment on the leader’s face. She didn’t just think she was being entertaining. She wanted to tell stories about devils and demons.

In my novel Saint of Mars, my Catholic priest Rhys remarks to his personal lurking Cubus (an invisible being):

“[People prefer a] world populated by the familiar. You know, when Puritans established the Massachusetts Bay Colony, they left behind a landscape of elves and sprites and goblins. How lonely they were, adrift without their invisible companions. It is difficult to uproot what Father Hadaka calls yokai from place. Cubi [invisible sentient beings] offer a balanced Mars.”

 “Angels as well as demons,” Lider said, and Rhys smiled.

Even if they had to leave their local elves and fairies and sprites at home, the immigrants to New England brought beliefs in such beings with them as well as beliefs in magic. The educated preachers perceived any use of magic as negative—it meant that humans were attempting to undermine the grace of God by taking for themselves what only God could offer. If He wants you to suffer, you should suffer.

But beliefs in supernatural beings--and the methods to corral or at least appease those beings--were prevalent amongst "commoners," and they lingered. Accusations of witchcraft decreased as civil lawsuits became more and more of a norm. However, such accusations and related "news" continued well into the 1800s. The belief in vampires provided communal explanations for tragedy--vampires as responsible for deaths from tuberculosis, for instance--into the late nineteenth century (I would argue that the same tales and beliefs transferred, in part, to space aliens in the twentieth century).

So one answer to why people believe in devils and demons and Satanic forces is for something to blame. Another, as suggested by Rhys, is comfort. Calvinism removed Saints (an entire pantheon of beings between humans and God) from the top-down part of their belief system. Puritans filled that void with demons. In some ways, Calvinist attachment to the less positive denizens of the unseen world fell into the above first category: Demons exist, yes, but one isn't supposed to do much more with them than resist their influence. Magic is wrong, not because it is fake but because it takes one's eyes off God.

The "sure they exist but so what?" approach was emphasized with the Enlightenment. Demons were there but irrelevant and kind of tacky. As Jonathan Edwards preached, a believer should focus on grace, immediate sanctification, and a reasonable God.

I suggest that for many believers, the philosophy of the Enlightenment wasn't an unalloyed good. Beliefs in cosmic evil were passionately revived during the late eighteenth to nineteenth centuries alongside Millennialism. Astrology, magic, miracles, supernatural encounters, visions, dreams—the good and the bad of transmundane beliefs—resurged in a push back against Enlightenment thinking. The feeling was that so much orderliness was stripping humans of the full spiritual experience.

Consequently, in recent years, some writers have blamed the Enlightenment 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 impacted the entire human experience from church organization to charity work to scripture reading. Many things people 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.

On the other side (supposedly on the other side), belief in things beyond the observable senses is part of the human condition. Hence, the Satanic daycare accusations that took off in the 1980s. And I haven’t even discussed The Exorcist! (I’m not going to.) 

There's a reason human beings can imagine and plan and create connections between people and events and objects. They can always imagine more, much more! 

In addition, there are far too many instances of human beings taking observable evidence as the end of a conversation and being wrong for a sensible person not to accept that life is more complicated than what is immediately on the table.

Blaming the Enlightenment OR blaming religious beliefs is a waste of time. Anything can be turned into a fetishistic object of worship, including non-supernatural events and people and things. Better to accept both sides of the human experience--the search for rational explanations; the search for unknowables, including the possible supernatural--and THEN try to come up with a decent solution. 

The Book of Mormon and Satan

A Nephi solves a murder mystery!

Satan/devil is referred to throughout The Book of Mormon but usually as a lone element rather than a being with a court. Demons/devils are referred to approximately 10 times; Satan/devil approximately 100. 

A consistent thread runs through the references. Satan/devil has the ability to tempt, to “lead away,” “to captivate,” “to grasp.”

Agency, however, is continually placed back on the table; the individual may “yield” to Satan and “forget” God. Likewise, in Joseph Smith’s translation of the Old Testament, Pharaoh, not God, hardens his own heart.

The Book of Mormon is tackling an issue that showed up in the Salem Witch Trials. One reason the Salem Witch Trials became such a seminal event is precisely because it was a kind of crossroads. Both older courts and more modern ones would have handled the matter better. But the times created a kind of vacuum. Are demons real? If they are real, how do we know? Who are the actual afflicted? The girls? Or the people they accuse? How do we know the accused aren’t suffering because of their righteousness?

An older court may have wondered who was actually possessed and spent more time parsing neighbors’ testimony. A more modern court would have ignored the spectral evidence entirely. Unfortunately, a confluence of events—some political, some personal—came together to create a storm of irrationality by anyone’s standards, including the standards of people of the day.

The nineteenth century was still grappling with many of the above questions. Joseph Smith, for one, accepts the idea of demons without giving up on human agency. That approach dovetails with the solution to grace and works that pervades The Book of Mormon, coming into focus in Helaman. We are the creators of our destinies—we bring our stories upon ourselves:

“[People] may be restored grace for grace, according to their works. I would that all...might be saved” (12: 24-25).

Supernatural forces are not dismissed. But in the tension between “bad stuff is due to outside forces” and “bad stuff is due to inside forces,” the inside forces are given more weight. So Samuel the Lamanite’s prophecying combines:

 “Behold, we are surrounded by demons, yea, we are encircled about by the angels of him who hath sought to destroy our souls” (13:37)

-with-

“And now remember, remember, my brethren, that whosoever perisheth, perisheth unto himself; and whosoever doeth iniquity, doeth it unto himself; for behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free” (14:30)

In the end, Joseph Smith appears to have found the world of supernatural evil rather dull--the opposite of founding cities and building temples and restoring/creating ceremonies and binding together families and imagining/revealing eternal glorious futures. 

He wouldn't have been offended by the teen leader who wanted to tell stories about possession and exorcism. 

He would have wanted to talk about something bigger and more interesting instead.
 

3 Nephi & Mormon 9 & Ether 12: Nature of God & The Trinity

A great deal of Christian history is groups struggling over the nature of God. That struggle increased when Christianity became the Roman Empire's official religion and the need for an acknowledged and standardized theology arose (Basil Studer does a respectable job balancing political needs against participants' beliefs, pointing out that the resultant dogma was accepted by many congregations for its own sake--though obviously not by all, as the Pelagians and future Millennialists demonstrate). 

The culture of the times and social/political needs immediately provided an outlet for people who like to debate about ideas. 

In many ways, the debates had a point. In many ways, they did not. 

They had a point because what we humans imagine God to be has a great deal to do with how we imagine ourselves to be--a vengeful God, a loving God, an inclusive God, an exclusive God, and so on. 

They didn't have a point because often trying to figure out the nature of God results in putting God in a box. As C.S. Lewis wrote, "He is not a tamed lion." Trying to tame God to a particular mindset or worldview strikes me as somewhat blasphemous. 

And yet, trying to get closer to God, to commune with God, to understand our purpose through God, is to a huge extent the purpose of religion. Charity can be accomplished through other means (though perhaps not as effectively). The modern era struggles with community to which religion is often a solution, but truthfully, these days, even religions struggle with community. Andy Griffith's churchgoers existed, in part, because the small-town/small-neighborhood world still existed. Cultures change. 

In the end, the consistent focus of religions is thinking and talking and acting on one's understanding of the divine.

Which doesn't mean some of the thinking and talking doesn't go too far. 

The Trinity

Early Christianity was not that invested in the trinity, one way or the other. Robert M. Grant points out in Gods and the One God that God, the Father; His Only Begotten Son; and the Holy Ghost were not originally presented as a trinity but a triad. In the earliest years of Christianity, there was no real attempt to explain exactly how the three beings interacted--any more than there was any real attempt to explain exactly how God created the earth. Basil Studer in his extremely dense tome Trinity and the Incarnation, makes the same point. 

The need to explain the exact relationship between God and Christ grew out of a reaction, in part, to the Arian controversy, whether, in sum, "Jesus and the Father were of 'one substance' [or] three distinct 'persons--Father, Son and Spirit" (Page). The issues are far too complex for me to explain in this post. Nick Page sums up the issues quite well in A Nearly Infallible History of Christianity:

"And what is interesting--and frankly, depressing--about the debate over Arianism is that it is the first major example of theology turning into brain surgery...At one stage, the debate becomes between two Greek words: homoiousios, which means 'similar essence,' and homoousios, which means 'same essence.'"   

I grew up hearing that the "angels dancing on the head of a pin" obsession here was the fault of the Nicaean Council. But, in fact, the Council(s) of Nicea (there was more than one) worked to resolve the matter. The Council ultimately came down on the side that, at the time, I likely would have favored myself. That is, the Council determined that Christ as a deity truly had lived as a human and truly had suffered and resurrected. It wasn't some kind of shell game. The material world did matter.

However, the idea that God would allow Himself or his Son to suffer still bothered people. Theologians also worried about how Christ or the Holy Spirit could save if they weren't God. So Christ became God and the Holy Spirit became God in order to make the matter work theoretically. 

This is where I stop praising the Council and just sigh. 

I suggest one reason early Christianity didn't care about how atonement/salvation works as a system or machine is because those early believers--including Paul--were in essence what I call mythologists. What mattered wasn't HOW God rescued human beings (exact number of blood drops) but the STORY of God's rescue/interaction with humans in mortality. 

In addition, the early Christian world was still thoroughly pagan in its understanding of gods, even within Judaism. The difference between Judeo-Christianity and paganism wasn't necessarily monotheism as moderns understand it. It was the belief (1) this god expects righteousness because this god is righteous and just; (2) this god is more powerful than all other gods and (by the early C.E. era) this god is the god of all people; (3) this god, according to Paul and others, no longer requires propitiation through any type of ritual sacrifice. Humans no longer have to bargain for their birth-rights.

In sum, God being both singular and all-important; God having a Son; the Son having a Mother was not in any way odd to the early Christians. They were quite familiar with Osiris-Horus-Isis.

For any number of reasons, including possibly a desire to break entirely with the pagan past and some of its more (in fairness) unpalatable practices, the need for a single all-in-one God became paramount in the 300 C.E. era. Again, it is to the credit of the Council of Nicea that a God with three faces (three functions that humans can relate to) was retained. 

Protestants like Calvin, however, took the need for monotheism to another level. The world became suddenly somewhat barren of angels and saints and other supernatural beings (except Satan), laying the ground for the Millennialists (post to follow). In any case, by the 1800s, a declared adherence to strict monotheism was a mark of adherence to a set of related beliefs.

The Book of Mormon starts out with a thoroughly monotheistic perspective. It quickly adopts the language of three acting as one. Christ's appearance in 3 Nephi is, like his baptism in the New Testament, heralded by a declaration: 

Behold my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name—hear ye him.

Further references to "my Father and I are one" can easily be interpreted as "one in purpose." Ether 12 references "the grace of God the Father, and also the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost."

In the end, Joseph Smith halved the difference between the Nicene Creed and the Arians. Everybody (gods and humans) is eternal and has always existed, including Jesus Christ and Mary and the Holy Spirit. God didn't "create" them or us. God "organized" them and us.

That is, Joseph Smith promoted a mythology rather than a theology. The mythology borrows from Arianism but avoids the dreary ex nihilo business of God creating stuff out of nothing as well as the underlying boredom of trying to put God in a box, tidy up a deity who is supposed to have agency.  Mormon 9 argues, "[W]hy [would] God [have] ceased to be a God of miracles and yet [continued to] be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so, he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles” (19). 

In Joseph Smith's hands, God deals with the world all the time--as much as He can. Personality and change is the unchangeable constant.

In sum, a deity who has His own agency is the point--but then, like Joseph Smith, I'm a mythologist to my bones.

Moroni 10: Grace & Works Again, Joseph Smith's Triumph

My overall argument is The Book of Mormon tackles issues that directly applied to nineteenth-century readers. One could argue that these issues are universal and timeless. One could argue that Joseph Smith is working out his religious ideas in a single book. One could argue that a translator always translates from within his own understanding. 

Ultimately, I don't think it matters. The Book of Mormon has a job to do. One of those jobs is to resolve the problem of grace versus works. 

Some theologians and apologists like C.S. Lewis have argued that the tension between grace and works is rather pointless. As mortal, physical beings, we have no choice but to be the instigators and recipients of works, whether we like it or not. Grace is a given. So is action.

If one translates "works" as the early Protestants did, however, the tension or problem becomes a little more understandable. Do we earn our way into heaven? Do we earn our way to a certain point and then God bridges the gap? Or is the gap so large, we can never get to a specific give-me-hand-up rung? Or, even if we could, is trying to get to that rung rather missing the point?

And if works--performances of certain rituals--take over, what is the cost to internal progress and beliefs? Won't the works become prideful performances? Virtue-signaling run amuck? Empty dogma that signals belonging in a clique, not a relationship with deity?

On the other hand, being the human and mortal creatures that we are, don't we need certain rituals to help us acknowledge our internal progress and thoughts and beliefs, including our goals? Even Luther and other early Protestants were unwilling to throw out baptism, even as they threw out various other sacraments. And Luther, at least, never lost his positive attitude towards the confessional. 

I maintain that with The Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith successfully (as far as success is possible) melded grace and works by turning the matter on its head--and turning it on its head, moreover, in ways that later apologists like C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald worked out. For that matter, Joseph Smith is echoing Dante (whom he would not have read): in the afterlife, we gain what we love, what we invest in, what we have pursued.

In sum, grace is something that God extends--all the time, indefinitely, mercifully. It is up to humans to do something with it. 

That is, we are the dwarfs in C.S. Lewis's stable, willing or unwilling to hear and taste and touch. 

Take the following passages from Moroni 10:

remember how merciful the Lord hath been (verse 3).

ask of God..he will manifest the truth (verse 4).

nothing that is good denieth the Christ, but acknowledgeth that he is (6). 

deny not the gifts of God, for they are many (10). 

every good gift cometh of Christ (18). 

Wherefore, there must be faith; and if there must faith, there must also be hope; and if there must be hope, there must also be charity (20).

lay hold upon every good gift (30).

love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God (32). 

Despite the obligatory warnings regarding sin, Moroni 10--if combined with prior passages about treasure and grace and works and agency--describes a relationship between God and humans based on growth, progress, reaching, learning, and making choices. What we value becomes where we end up. God makes all things possible. Humans don't always want all things to be possible; we are fragile, incomplete, hampered by limitations. So God through Christ makes it possible for us to think bigger, to keep trying. 

In the end, despite the sad ending, The Book of Mormon is about hope. 

No wonder its early readers valued it so highly.