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: 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.  

3 Nephi: Atonement Uncomplicated

Jesus Christ descends to the Americas in 3 Nephi. The New World is tied to the Old. 

Linking Europe and the Americas to Jerusalem and the Mediterranean world was part of Millennialism, which movement I will address when I reach the Book of Ether. 

For now, 3 Nephi is notable not only for a recounting of the Sermon of the Mount but for what it doesn't include.

In the early nineteenth century, Reverend Alexander Campbell stated about Joseph Smith:

"He decides all the great controversies--infant baptism, ordination, the trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fasting, penance, church government, religious experience, the call to the ministry, the general resurrection, eternal punishment, who may baptize, and even the question of free masonry, republican government, and the rights of man." (in Harrison 184)

The above passage is correct (though it lacks the caustic bite that surely must have entered the reverend's voice when discussing Joseph Smith; the passage's context is a complaint). However, what I find most impressive is when Joseph Smith goes "off-script." Joseph Smith's step-by-step argument against infant baptism is entirely in keeping with his times (the unorthodox position was becoming rapidly more orthodox). 

Regarding the Atonement, however, his writings and The Book of Mormon evince a remarkable (and blessed) lack of obsession with exactly how it occurs (there is little focus on counting drops of blood). 

Page's points about

Gnosticism are spot-on.

A great many of the theologies running through America's beginnings (and earlier) come down to how exactly God operates. When people blame the Enlightenment for things, they have usually focused on the movement's secular attitudes. But entirely unnecessary and daft religious ideas like Creationism also arose from the Enlightenment. The need to bring God down to a human level, to explain His works/deeds as if they belong in a self-help "you can too" book have resulted in astonishing levels of cognitive dissonance. 

The impulse goes back further than the Enlightenment, of course. Check out Gnosticism, which was not as feminist, edgy, or "advanced" as some modern theologians want to claim. Once the premise "God couldn't possibly like physical matter!" is accepted, the conclusions to that premise (regarding a deity also presented as the creator of physical matter) get stranger and stranger and stranger. 

 

But I am straying into the issue of who or what God is, an issue I will address in a different post. 

 

Here, the issue is what God does, specifically when and how and why God forgives sin. 

 

From a "humans are weird and do dumb stuff" perspective, the issue of sin and, therefore, needed forgiveness doesn't seem that complicated. But theologians immediately made it complicated. What worried them the most was (1) why God would create sin or encourage sin or make sin possible; (2) what happened to humans after being forgiven.

 

If sin is a given, then once He forgives, why would any propitiation (even being sorry) be necessary, especially if He already knows who is saved? And, anyway, why would the elect even be able to sin? They might have tendencies towards sin (though some Calvinists debated this possibility), but they could not have the nature to sin because God would never do that to one of his elect. 

 

Congregationalists spent an unreal amount of time trying to figure out the problem of the above bolded statement and the arguments (because Calvinists loved to argue with each other) often came back to the first problem--that is, was sin something a person did or something a person thought or something a person might do but didn't or something that a person didn't do because that person was one of the elect? And if the person was one of the elect, was that person's behavior not sin because that person was already granted grace? Or because that person was created not to be that way? Was sin the product of choice or the product of inclination/nature and if the latter, where did that inclination come from?

 

My amateur historian's brain suffers a "gap" problem here. I think messing up is natural and human and (mostly) the product of choice. I don't think it needs to be explained. It just is. And I don't see why God has to be blamed.

 

Nor do I see why people need to be lectured about something that seems reasonably obvious. Or, rather, I don't grasp the pleasure such lecturers get out of their self-appointed mandate: "The problem isn't me correcting my faults or trying not to be a jerk today. The problem is what other people are going around thinking about their fault-ridden selves." 

 

I understand the desire to spread "good news." I understand the desire to observe and comment on what is going on in the world. And I'm writing as someone who is literally paid to tell other people how to write better. But I still don't understand the (social media) desire to move from belief or concepts to slamming people's characters. I understand the desire to help people be better; I don't understand the desire to "help" a person by throwing an impersonal, theoretical label at that person's head. ("I don't know you, but I know what's wrong with you!")

 

However much I want to understand Congregationalism, I can't entirely overcome this mindset "gap." 

 

(But, then, I think social media and its accompanying mindset is mostly a waste of time.)

In truth, Congregationalists weren't all of a piece. Some argued against the desire to fix others. Accepting the providence of God meant full acceptance, including the inability to change anyone for the better. However, as the First Great Awakening approached and missionary work increased among Protestants generally, the approach of more proactive (extroverted) leaders took hold. Some of them softened Calvinist doctrines and adopted more Methodist ideas (Congregationalism was conflicted from the beginning by American versus Old World ideals). Some of them honestly saw missionary work as an extension of service--to educate and heal and support abolition because they were called by God. 

 

But some of the die-hards clung to the idea that people needed to be told stuff about themselves even if what they were being told was that some of them were doomed (the non-doomed needed to be awakened: I'm not sure why they needed to be awakened in a system based on election...and neither did anyone else). And they argued over ideas presented earlier in this post: how exactly God could/would let his elect be exposed to sin or the desire to sin or the possible damnation of personal sin or the expectation that anyone could get over sin. If Grace is working, then why is X, Y, or Z happening to us?...was the mantra.

 

Joseph Smith skips all of it. He was fundamentally an active, physical guy. Any theory that somehow dismisses sin *or* regulates it to metaphysical discourse wouldn't have made much sense to him. He seems to have spent little time worrying about the Ransom theory of the Atonement versus the Governmental theory versus the Christus Victor theory (which last I tend towards myself and Joseph Smith seems to have utilized: the primary purpose of the Atonement is that Christ conquered--was victorious--over death, which implies a need to be victorious over sin). 

 

For Joseph Smith, ultimately, the Atonement's purpose is to allow us to do stuff, to move towards something, to be saved (as George MacDonald would state) not in our sins but from our sins FOR something. (See Helaman 5:11.)

 

But, as referenced in earlier posts, to maintain this perspective, it helps to reject original sin or at least to propose that the purpose of life IS for us to mess up.

 

That is, God wants us to experience risk. Knowing that us + risk would result in us doing very dumb things, he provided an Atonement, which makes it possible for us to keep exploring and risking and trying and experimenting rather than turning into, say, Gollum, going round and round and round without stop (hollowness). Grace while we do stuff, not grace + what we do.

 

Joseph Smith was not, in the end, a man to shy from risk. He was also not a man who thought that constantly calculating the cost of sin was terribly useful. His primary response to messing up/sin was harrowing but it was the harrowing of a man who feels that he has disappointed/let-down a loving God, not that of a man who believes he is too low or "other" to be contemplated. 

 

He and Saint Paul (and George MacDonald) would agree.