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...

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.