The year 2011 has been very eventful.  I was invited to post at Faith-Promoting Rumors—my sort of test run with group blogging.  It’s been great.  I feel good about the posts I’ve written this year.

• The Saint Pauls of Mormonism (technically 2010 but I still snuck it in)
• God, Self and Spiritual Birth: Two Perspectives
• Roberts and Descartes
• Spiritual Birth: Challenges for Historians
• Givens on Atonement, Agency, and the War in Heaven
• Spiritual Birth: Challenges for Philosophers
• After the Lesson: “God Is No Respecter of Persons”
• Reflecting on Two Years of Gospel Principles 2010-2011

Especially with my post on the ending of the Gospel Principles manual, I really appreciate all the comments and people reading my post.

Thankfully, I’ve also found time to continue with my Understanding the Fall in Mormonism series.  This series is not completed yet and I envision at least two, perhaps three, more posts.  This has been a wonderful experience for me.  I was hoping to have this completed by the time Latter-day Saints start thinking about the Fall again this year.

• Understanding the Fall in Mormonism – Part III: Adam to Michael
• Understanding the Fall in Mormonism – Part IV: The Fall of Man Meets the Plurality of Worlds
• Understanding the Fall in Mormonism – Part V: From Sin to Transgression

This year I was invited to participate as part of one of the bloggers for the Joseph Smith Papers Blogging Event.  Blair does an excellent job covering this event.  This led to me being invited to write a review for the Turley and Slaughter volume.  I’m already behind on writing reviews for other books.

• The Unfolding of Revelation: Reflections on the Joseph Smith Papers
• Richard Turley and William Slaughter’s How We Got the Book of Mormon

2011 was a wonderful time of scholarship, navel gazing, and debates about Mormon theology, the beginning of a new academic journal of Mormonism, and several great books, interviews, and other posts.

One of my favorite posts this year came from Ben Park titled Scholarship as “Intellectual Kinship”: Richard Bushman’s Vision for the Academic Community.  I like Ben’s post because, although I’m not a religious studies scholar, I feel I belong to this community of thinkers.

One thing that happened this year was I began to work quite a bit.  It is a great blessing, especially during this time of economic turmoil and uncertainty, but in another respect I’ve missed being able to spend more time engaging in conversations and discussions about the things of greatest import.  I haven’t had time to respond or participate in discussions about Grant Hardy’s Understanding the Book of Mormon, or Taylor Petrey’s Dialogue article, or Adam Miller’s discussions of James Faulconer’s book, or Joseph Spencer’s post on reading the scriptures, or write a review of Charles Harrell’s This Is My Doctrine, or several other books on my reading list.  Not to mention that there have been several really solid podcast interviews, some I’ve just barely gotten around to listening and others still on my list.

This is where I find consolation and comfort in my friends.  Those friends of mine I can call on my way home from work and discuss some new book that has come out or talk about how we find some statement made at church frustrating.  It’s been wonderful.  I can speak with or chat or email with my friends that I’ve met through blogging than I could with people I know in “real life.”  So thank you, and thanks to all who read and lurk out there and to those to make comments and even argue with my reasoning.  It all enhances the quality of life.  I look forward to next year.

The way I see it, every generation seems to have individuals who long nostalgically for a prior age where, it would seem, we were better off economically, spiritually, or culturally.  While perhaps none of us can escape those thoughts from time to time, the present looks mighty good in terms works on the Book of Mormon.

In our age, who is shaping our discourse on the Book of Mormon?  Every voice shapes our discourse, yet there are three scholars in particular whose work seems unavoidable today (not that you would want to avoid them!) and who seem to be instrumental in advancing our discourse in new and fruitful directions.

Terryl Givens, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a World Religion (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Terryl Givens, The Book of Mormon: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2009)

I still remember first reading By the Hand of Mormon.  During lunch with a friend of mine I remember sharing Givens’ argument that early Mormons understood the Book of Mormon’s importance for what it signifies, rather than important for the message it contains.  Living in a Post-Benson Latter-day world, my friend was skeptical of such an argument and was not persuaded.  I, on the other hand, was intrigued by the claim and didn’t need much argument to be convinced.

A couple of nights ago, I looked over the introductory Book of Mormon lesson for Sunday School titled The Keystone of Our Religion and found myself seeing more evidence for Givens’ argument because here we have a whole lesson devoted not to what the Book of Mormon says but what it enacts.[1]  Givens’ recent work, The Book of Mormon: A Very Short Introduction, is a fun read not only because of Givens’ elegant writing (see Blair’s review), but because the Book of Mormon as narrative has been placed first in the book, and the “Book of Mormon wars”—debates about its historicity— placed last.  The mere order Givens places these topics is an invitation to begin with the text itself.

Grant Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Grant Hardy, ed., The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition (University of Illinois Press, 2005).

If Book of Mormon as narrative is what you want, Grant Hardy does not disappoint.  Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide is a tour-de-force look at the narrative of the text itself.  While Hardy fights against an engrained Mormon culture steeped in a century of seeing the Book of Mormon only for what it is and not for what it contains or says, this book is a touchstone of sorts.  Latter-day Saint scholars have been fond of pointing out Thomas O’Dea’s statement “The Book of Mormon has not been universally considered by its critics one of those books that must be read in order to have an opinion of it.”  However, Hardy’s book is a marvelous work and wonder that convinces individuals that O’Dea’s statement is perhaps equally well-suited towards believers of the Book of Mormon.  And if you missed that subtle message, Terryl Givens already said it bluntly.[2]

Royal Skousen, ed., The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (Yale University Press, 2009).

Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 6 parts (FARMS, BYU 2004-9).

Looming large in the background is the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project.  If you have never heard of the project I think Grant Hardy probably sums it up best:

Royal Skousen, building on the foundation of his definitive work on the original and printer’s manuscripts, called O and P, has begun to publish a commentary on the text of the Book of Mormon that will forever change the way Latter-day Saints approach modern scripture. Two hundred years from now—long after people have stopped reading anything on the Book of Mormon now in print—students of the Book of Mormon will still be poring over Skousen’s work. What he has accomplished is nothing short of phenomenal.[3]

Reviewing Skousen’s Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Hardy continues: “Scholars will want to consult these books to make sure that their own analyses of particular passages are not based on copying errors or later editorial changes.”

It is clear that Hardy has taken his own advice and made good use of Skousen’s work. He takes advantage of Skousen’s painstaking efforts to reconstruct the original Book of Mormon text, providing readers with a fresh and insightful approach to the Book of Mormon.

Of Skousen’s work Terryl Givens writes:

One may disagree with individual conclusions. But one cannot come away less than profoundly impressed by the efforts to which Skousen goes to analyze each and every disputed reading. He has provided us all with a model of the best textual scholarship we have seen, and it comes at a fortuitous juncture, when the Joseph Smith Papers Project is about to add further to the critical mass of scholarship that does not just make our sacred texts available to the world, but will testify to the world, by the way we hold them, that they are not accounted by us a light thing.[4]

So there you have it. Even if you never read one book by any of these scholars, your understanding of the Book of Mormon at one point is going to be shaped by something they have written.

________
[1] Terryl L. Givens, By The Hand of Mormon, 64.
[2] Terryl L. Givens, “‘Common-Sense’ Meets the Book of Mormon: Source, Substance, and Prophetic Disruption,” FARMS Review 20.1 (2008):33-55.  (off-site).  He also makes this point in By the Hand of Mormon, pp. 235-236.
[3] Grant Hardy, “Scholarship for the Ages,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 15/1 (2006): 50—51. (off site).
[4] Terryl L. Givens, “The Book of Mormon Critical Text Project,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 15/1 (2006): 35. (off-site).  I recommend the entire issue of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 15.1 (2006) reviewing Skousen’s work.

But aside from all of that, the most interesting phenomena I observed was an extremely large amount of hope that this new and improved Gospel Principles manual was going to solve one of the most deeply problematic issues facing church membership today: the quality of Gospel instruction in Church meetings.   News of the arrival of the new manual became an opportunity (or outlet) for Mormon bloggers to reflect on the fruits of Correlation and the failures of Church Sunday School classes to challenge, engage, and inspire.

After the dust had settled, it seemed to me that the general consensus was that the anonymous and faceless generic Church manual was the culprit. “The Manual”—that relic of correlation was the cause of all of our problems.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m very sympathetic to those who loath horrible Church manuals.  But seriously?  The manual became “the Ring” forged by the Dark Lord Sauron himself in the fires of Mount Doom “into this ring he poured all his hate, his malice, his will to dominate” church classrooms with boredom and infinite frustration.  Members carried this burden around their necks into the classroom, hoping one day for freedom from it, when it could be thrown into the fire and be “unmade.”  Some members even expressed desires that one day we could return to the Golden Age of pre-correlation Church manuals written by real and named individuals, manuals that were engaging and exciting, with cutting edge scholarship, and where a good time was had by all (does anyone really believe this age existed?).

My observation as an amateur sociologist-anthropologist was that targeting the manual was the most cost-effective and convenient way for Latter-day Saints to offer critical opinions about the Church without appearing to be apostates or without being accused of “steadying the ark.”   No one was criticizing the Church, the prophets, or any of the Lord’s Anointed.  Members were merely pointing out that these mass-produced and generic manuals were an impediment to real Gospel learning.  To be sure, a handful of lone gunmen argued that criticizing any manual published by the Church was tantamount, logically equivalent, to directly criticizing the First Presidency since they put their stamp of approval on it—it was produced with no less than the Prophet’s imprimatur, so went the argument.  Suffice it to say, the “correlated manual” became the boogeyman, the scapegoat, the Lee Harvey Oswald of gospel instruction.

During this time of great excitement, I argued that the teacher is really the determining factor for the quality of gospel lessons.  Naturally, the make-up of the classroom is also a determining factor.  Ultimately, I believe there is no substitute for artful and committed teachers.  Even the most carefully constructed and well-written manual does not teach itself.  No one has to wait for some utopian future when the world will be united in peace, where children sing, and nations and mankind live in harmony and when we will be provided with stellar manuals that are all things to everyone and can save the world from all that is wrong and evil.

So, with that in mind, I thought I would take some time to reflect on the past two years with the Gospel Principles manual.  I write with full disclosure that I actually did teach during the last two years and was assigned to teach lessons from the Gospel Principles manual.  Was it a bane or a blessing?  Was it the salvation that everyone hoped it would be?  Was it the worst manual on the planet as many people believed it to be?

To be honest, my teaching method and style did not change much between lessons I taught before the manual and lessons I taught after.  For me, the manual is merely a tool.  It set general parameters or the domain of Gospel inquiry, but it did not replace me as the instructor.  All teaching is an act of selection.  We have a limited amount of time and an almost unlimited amount of scriptures related to the subject matter.  Therefore, as an instructor, I still performed the task of determining the needs of my class and being selective in the focus of our lessons.

What about the manual?  Was it really horrible?  Probably yes.  I know full well what it feels like to fight against the manual.  I rarely wanted to ask the questions it suggested I ask.  The scriptures cited for certain propositions were wrong in my opinion.  Some scriptures that need to be used weren’t there at all.   The focus of some lessons seemed to be all wrong.  I disagreed that some topics rose to the level of being considered “a gospel principle.”  I admit that I even switched lessons with other instructors that I simply could not teach in good conscience.  I never teach anything that I am not passionate about.

Like Jacob wrestling and struggling with God during the night, I wrestled and struggled with the manual.  Preparation for teaching is a struggle.  But it was good to struggle with the manual.  It was good to dispute, to argue, and question it.  As I wrestled, insights and ideas came to me.  Sometimes ideas took their time but they did come.

As I reflect over every experience I had as an instructor, I feel good about each teaching moment.  Each lesson was my proverbial baby.  I nurtured, cared for, and watched over it.  I know I could say that the Spirit was the teacher or the Holy Ghost was the teacher in order to score more points with the orthodox and conservative Latter-day Saints.  After all, this is the part where, according to the traditional script of Mormon cultural etiquette, I’m supposed to give all credit to the Spirit as the “real” teacher or else risk being misunderstood as someone who is prideful and who fails to acknowledge God’s hand.  While I agree theologically and doctrinally that the Holy Ghost is the teacher of truth, this doesn’t explain why the Holy Ghost is wholly inconsistent from classroom to classroom, or why the Holy Ghost sometimes chooses not to attend our meetings.  How do we explain that?

I prefer Jeffrey R. Holland’s perspective that:

“[W]e must revitalize and reenthrone superior teaching in the Church–at home, from the pulpit, in our administrative meetings, and surely in the classroom. Inspired teaching must never become a lost art in the Church, and we must make certain our quest for it does not become a lost tradition.”

Our salvation is not in manuals.  Our salvation, in the soteriological sense, is in Jesus Christ.  But the quality of our lessons and the quality of our “revelatory experiences” is irrevocably and inescapably dependent on real people who serve as instructors and who create (yes, create) the environment of Gospel learning.  As difficult as it is to teach, as scary and frustrating as it can be to teach, regardless of how many times we crash and burn as teachers, the teacher makes the class.  It is easier, and certainly safer, to blame an inanimate object as the cause of poor lessons, than it is to blame our brothers and sisters who have full-time jobs and families, and their own problems, but who simply fail to deliver when the bell rings.  It seems mean, it seems uncharitable, and it seems un-Christlike.  Who are we to judge another?  So we hide.  We pretend we are being kind and nice by hating the manual when in fact we simply prize getting-along with other people over honesty.

As I look back over the last years, I’m pleased with every lesson that I’ve taught.  I’ve been edified by those in my classroom who have shared their experiences and testimonies.  I’ve been taught by them.  I’ve tried to create an environment where people could share those experiences and feel they were heard and appreciated.  I also strive to be really honest about what I say.  I don’t walk on eggshells or avoid difficult topics.  I try to use diplomacy and tact as much as possible, but always honesty.  Honesty in teaching has done more to improve gospel learning than anything else.

As this year comes to an end, we will be finishing with the Gospel Principles manual.  We will return to the “not the basics” lessons from the Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: George Albert Smith.  We will continue with a series of quotations taken out of context and grouped thematically into twenty-four lessons.  I predict that once again, people will blog about the deplorable state of affairs of our manuals.  I will probably agree with them as I did before.  But I want to send the message that people shouldn’t feel like they are held hostage by correlation or that they must wait for some time that will never come when some magical manual will change their experience.  Don’t misplace your trust and hope in manuals to change what you experience when you walk through the Church doors.  It doesn’t matter what manual is used in the Church.  The manual will never be a substitute for real teachers.  When you are not the one teaching, I encourage you to make comments, say what you really believe and really think (unless you are one of those people who shouldn’t say anything during lessons and you know who you are).

We have been exploring the development of the Mormon concept of a positive fall.  While some observers point to Lehi in the Book of Mormon as the originator of the fortunate fall, the Book of Mormon, taken as a whole, views the Fall as a result of man’s disobedience and caused by the temptations of the devil.  The Book of Mormon labels the fruit of the tree as “forbidden,” and the Book of Moses spoke of Adam’s actions as “sin.”[1]  The Plan of Salvation as expounded in the Book of Mormon is the response to the Fall.

What I’ve attempted to show is the driving forces or undercurrents developing in Mormonism, propelling it towards a positive view of the Fall.  Such forces include the expanding role of Adam as prophet and patriarch with connections to priesthood, his post-mortal identity as Michael the archangel.  Michael’s role would expand from the traditional archangel role to a joint-creator of the earth in premortal councils.  Once the doctrine of pre-mortal existence developed, the fall of man was seen opening the floodgates; the act that allowed all the billions of spirits waiting in premortal existence the opportunity to experience mortality.  How could that act—so crucial to the salvation drama—be wrong?

In addition, the plurality of worlds would further drive Mormonism to view the Fall as something planned and intentional, rather than view Adam and Eve’s actions as God’s creations gone awry.  Indeed, the Fall begins to become an integrated component of the plan of salvation, rather than something to which the plan of salvation tries to resolve.  All these undercurrents make it difficult for Latter-day Saints to view Adam and Eve’s actions as evil.

A Sin, But a Necessary Sin

“I have no complaints to make about our father Adam eating the forbidden fruit, as some have,” explained the apostle John Taylor in 1853, “for I do not know but any of us would have done the same.”[2]

This statement shows the power of these other forces at work in Mormon theology, so much that Taylor could find no blame in the act of eating “forbidden” fruit.

The question early Mormons wrestled with was how exactly to understand Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden.  If it wasn’t wrong, what was it?

Some may regret that our first parents sinned. This is nonsense. If we had been there, and they had not sinned, we should have sinned. I will not blame Adam or Eve, why? Because it was necessary that sin should enter into the world; no man could ever understand the principle of exaltation without its opposite; no one could ever receive an exaltation without being acquainted with its opposite. How did Adam and Eve sin? Did they come out in direct opposition to God and to His government? No. But they transgressed a command of the Lord, and through that transgression sin came into the world. The Lord knew they would do this, and He had designed that they should.[3]

Early Mormons, as typified by John Taylor and Brigham Young, sensed that there was something qualitatively different about Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden.  Although Young retains the traditional language of speaking of sin, this sin was different from the open rebellion that characterizes the evil and the wicked. As Young explained in 1869, “We should never blame Mother Eve, not the least.”[4]

Of course, Young had good reasons not blaming Adam and Eve in the garden. While Young’s Adam-God theory has been looming in the background of our survey, directly influencing the plurality of worlds idea, one cannot understand Young’s positive view of the fall without understanding his beliefs regarding Adam and Eve.

As early as 1852, Young taught: “When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world.” As we saw in the discussion of Young’s plurality of worlds idea, this was the pattern that all worlds would follow. “Yes, an Adam will have to go there,” said Young, “and he cannot do without Eve; he must have Eve to commence the work of generation, and they will go into the garden, and continue to eat and drink of the fruits of the corporal world, until this grosser matter is diffused sufficiently through their celestial bodies to enable them, according to the established laws, to produce mortal tabernacles for their spirit children.” Under Brigham Young’s cosmology, it would be impossible to regard Adam and Eve’s actions as evil.

One of the more intriguing observations is that the positive view of the fall was not dependent on the Adam-God doctrine. No one rejected Brigham Young’s Adam-God ideas more than the gauge of philosophy, Orson Pratt.

Like Young, Orson Pratt retained the traditional language of Adam’s “sin” and even “original sin” but sought to narrow its application to death only, avoiding drawing implications of a depraved human nature as traditional Christian theology had focused on since Augustine:

This death, or dissolution of the earth is a penalty of the original sin. Infants and righteous men die, not as a penalty of their own sins, but because Adam sinned.[5]

Paul says that sin entered into the world by transgression, and death by sin. Notice that expression. Death entered into the world by sin. If there had been no sin, there would have been no death. If Adam and Eve never had sinned, they would have been alive on the earth at this time, just as fresh and pure as in the morning of creation: they would have remained to all eternity without a wrinkle of old age overtaking them.[6]

So it is with all the posterity of Adam. The consequences of the transgression of Adam and Eve have flowed down upon us; hence we find that all the sons and daughters of Adam have become mortal. The seeds of dissolution are within our tabernacles, because our first parents sinned, and yet we are not guilty of their sins.

Furthermore, Adam and Eve became subject in the spirit to the being that tempted him. The children that were begotten by him, inheriting unholy, fallen tabernacles, also became subject to the same being, on the supposition that there had been no atonement provided. Hence you perceive the baneful consequences of the fall, considered separate and apart from any atonement which was to be made.[7]

Pratt’s formulation is decidedly more grounded in scripture than Young’s. At any rate, this is the kind of understanding that was palatable to early Latter-day Saints.  They could conceive of Adam and Eve’s acts as introducing death, but still not necessarily blameworthy or as indicative of a rebellious nature.

Mormon sermons and writings continued to employ traditional language but always accompanied by an explanation that what Adam and Eve did was necessary. Even the luminary B. H. Roberts (1911) retained the language of sin, writing that “Adam sinned that man might be.”[8]

Orson F. Whitney is to be credited with interjecting legal principles into understanding the Edenic narrative.

Adam’s transgression, though a sin, because of the broken law, should not be stressed as an act of moral turpitude. In human law, which is based upon divine law, there are two kinds of offenses in general, described in Latin terms as malum per se and malum prohibitum. Malum per se means “an evil in itself,” an act essentially wrong; while malum prohibitum signifies “that which is wrong because forbidden by law.” Adam’s transgression was malum prohibitum; and the consequent descent from an immortal to a mortal condition, was the Fall. [9]

Whitney still conceded Adam’s transgression was a sin, but like Brigham Young, argued it was a sin without moral turpitude. Mormon thinkers continued to accumulate reasons for viewing Adam’s or Eve’s or both parent’s actions as sin without the typical characteristics of sin.

It was Necessary, But Not a Sin

This dissonance between language and theology continued until, in the early 1950s, Mormon leaders broke from traditional moorings and began to boldly declare that Adam and Eve did not sin.

In General Conference 1953, Elder Marion G. Romney explained, “I do not look upon Adam’s action as a sin. I think it was a deliberate act of free agency. He chose to do that which had to be done to further the purposes of God. The consequences of his act made necessary the atonement of the Redeemer.”[10]

The following year, Bruce R. McConkie, a Seventy at the time, published Doctrines of Salvation, a collection of sermons of Joseph Fielding Smith, his father-in-law and then-president of the Quorum of the Twelve.  In that book, McConkie published a personal correspondence from his father-in-law: “I never speak of the part Eve took in this fall as a sin, nor do I accuse Adam of a sin.” Smith explains: “This was a transgression of the law, but not a sin in the strict sense, for it was something that Adam and Eve had to do!”[11]

Thus began the “transgression but not a sin” movement in Mormon interpretations of Eden in which it was conceded that Adam and Eve transgressed the commandment not to eat of the forbidden fruit, but maintained that Adam and Even did not sin in their transgression.

Joseph Fielding Smith offered several arguments why it was not a sin despite breaking a commandment, noting that “In no other commandment the Lord ever gave to man, did he say: ‘But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, nevertheless, thou mayest choose for thyself.’”[12]  Incidentally, Smith also taught that the forbidden fruit was not actually forbidden: “Mortality was created through the eating of forbidden fruit, if you want to call it forbidden, but I think the Lord has made it clear that it was not forbidden. He merely said to Adam, if you want to stay here [in the garden] this is the situation. If so, don’t eat it.”[13]

Smith saw signs in the scriptures that this was somehow a different kind of commandment, the breaking of which did not constitute sin.

Perhaps the most innovative rationale was given by Smith’s son-in-law.  Bruce R. McConkie argued that Adam and Eve could not have sinned in the Garden because the commission of sin requires knowledge of good and evil.  Because Adam and Eve could not have knowledge of good and evil before eating the fruit, the act of partaking of the forbidden fruit could never be characterized as sinful.[14]  McConkie, a lawyer by profession, sought to introduce a kind of mens rea requirement to the act of sin in the Garden.  His interpretation has a strong logical appeal but tends to overlook the dire and serious consequences that came as a result of Adam and Eve’s “non-sin.”

In a related vein, Dallin H. Oaks, the apostle-jurist, although he did not cite Orson F. Whitney, drew upon the distinction between malum in se and malum prohibitum:  “Some acts, like murder, are crimes because they are inherently wrong. Other acts, like operating without a license, are crimes only because they are legally prohibited. Under these distinctions, the act that produced the Fall was not a sin—inherently wrong—but a transgression—wrong because it was formally prohibited. These words are not always used to denote something different, but this distinction seems meaningful in the circumstances of the Fall.”[15]

Complicating the Whitney-Oakian interpretation is the fact that the legal concept of malum in se historically appealed to Natural Law or divine law.[16] What could be more “divine” than God commanding Adam not to eat of the forbidden fruit?  How can a direct order by God be given the same status as a municipal ordinance?  This is an odd ripple in a nascent Mormon jurisprudence.

As Mormon thinkers pushed their unique understanding of the fall, this served as yet another means by which Mormons could distinguish themselves from other Christians.  Oaks points out that “Some Christians condemn Eve for her act, concluding that she and her daughters are somehow flawed by it. Not the Latter-day Saints!”[17]  “Moreover, we all owe a debt of gratitude to Mother Eve for partaking of the ‘forbidden fruit,’” taught Joseph Fielding Smith, “It was not a sin, as many Bible commentators would have you believe.”[18] In this way, this unique distinction somewhat served to galvanize Mormon identity vis-à-vis the traditional Christian interpretation of Eden.

In 1980, Andrew Ehat and Lyndon Cook published “Words of Joseph Smith” which contained a statement by the early Mormon prophet that had never been published previously:

Joseph said in answer to Mr stout that Adam Did Not Comit sin in [e]ating the fruits for God had Decred that he should Eat & fall-But incomplyance with the Decree he should Die-only he should Die was the saying of the Lord therefore the Lord apointed us to fall & also Redeemed us-for where sin a bounded Grace did Much more a bound -for Paul says Rom-5. 10 for if-when were enemys we were Reconciled to God by the Death of his Son, much more, being Reconciled, we shall be saved by his Life-[19]

This statement was recorded in William P. McIntire’s “Minute Book” on February 9, 1841.  The month previously (January 5, 1841) the Nauvoo Lyceum was organized for theology and Joseph often answered questions of a doctrinal nature.  However, it should be stressed that this teaching did not influence Mormon thought until Ehat and Cook’s work was published.

Brigham Young, along with the entire Quorum of the Twelve (Parley P. Pratt, Orson Pratt, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff) were in Liverpool England at this time on a mission.  Brigham Young wouldn’t return back to Nauvoo until June 1, 1841.  None of the leading explicators of Mormon doctrine heard or apparently had access to Joseph’s statement. Therefore, the statement is completely absent from the writings of  Joseph Fielding Smith, who would have latched on this statement had it been available to him, and no doubt would have felt vindicated in its finding.

It isn’t clear whether the trajectory of Mormon thought would have changed had Joseph Smith’s statement been picked up by the Twelve. Perhaps the view that Adam and Eve’s actions were not a sin was just an inevitable outcome given the configuration of Mormon theology. Although, as one can see, Joseph Smith’s argument for why it was not a sin, was that God had “decreed” it.  Joseph Smith couched his understanding in the concept of “foreordination.”  While Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, Orson F. Whitney, Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruce R. McConkie, and Dallin H. Oaks would likely agree with the foreordination argument, each contributed their own unique rationale for interpreting Adam and Eve’s actions as blameless.  One might view these additional arguments as the result of Latter-day Saints thinking through the problem of how to understand Adam and Eve’s actions given the Garden of Even narrative as found in scripture and given the theological environment in which these were placed.

In this post, I’ve attempted to outline shifting terminology and trace the development from sin to transgression.  Again, I stress that this is merely one aspect of the story of the positive fall within Mormon thought.  This shift in language was accompanied by yet another innovation in interpretation.  In the next post, we will continue to examine this fascinating development in our exploration of the Fall.

________

[1] 2 Ne 2:19; Moses 6:54.
[2] John Taylor, Journal of Discourses 1:223. April 8, 1853.
[3] Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 10:312.  June 10-13, 1864.
[4] Brigham Young, July 18, 1869. JD 13:145. For an introduction to Brigham Young’s view of Adam-God see Buerger, David John. “The Adam-God Doctrine,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15.1 (Spring 1982).
[5] Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses 1:331 (undated) (emphasis added). Charles W. Penrose (April 25, 1880) also used the phrase original sin: The sin which our first parents committed in the Garden of Eden is called original sin; and the sins committed individually by the inhabitants of the earth, are called actual sin, for “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Journal of Discourses 21:80.
[6] Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses 6:357.  July 24, 1859. (emphasis added).
[7] Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses 7:255.  September 11, 1859. (emphasis added).
[8] B.H. Roberts, New Witnesses for God, Vol.3 (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1911), pp. 202-204
[9] Orson F. Whitney, Saturday Night Thoughts, Part 3 (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1921), p. 82; Whitney published this idea first in Orson F. Whitney, Elias-An Epic of the Ages (Salt Lake City : O.F. Whitney, 1914), p. 128. “The fall of Adam and Eve, while technically a sin because of a broken law, should be stressed as the means whereby God’s children obtained their bodies, rather than as an act of moral turpitude.” See also in Orson F. Whitney, The Strength of the ‘Mormon’ Position (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1917), p. 3. “Adam’s transgression was malum prohibitum, or wrong because forbidden; not malum in se, or wrong in itself. It had a beneficent purpose, but it put the world in pawn, and Death was the pawnbroker, with a twofold claim upon all creation.”
[10] Marion G. Romney, Conference Report, April 1953, p.124.
[11] Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954-56) 1:114-15.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Robert J. Matthews, Selected Writings of Robert J. Matthews: Gospel Scholars Series. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1999) p.152. Matthews cites a transcript of Joseph Fielding Smith, “The Sacrament and the Atonement,” address given at the LDS institute of religion, Salt Lake City, 14 Jan. 1961, 5.
[14] Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine 2nd ed. (Bookcraft, 1966) pp. 735, 804. (Citing 2 Nephi 2:23).
[15] Dallin H. Oaks, “’The Great Plan of Happiness’,” Ensign, Nov 1993. It is not at all clear this distinction is satisfactory. A reasonable consequence of operating without a license is a fine or revocation of a license, not a death sentence. Like McConkie, Oaks tends to downplay the capital punishment that was attached to this mere transgression.
[16] Nancy Travis Wolfe, “Mala in Se: A Disappearing Doctrine,” 19. Criminology 131, 136-138 (1981).
[17] Dallin H. Oaks, “’The Great Plan of Happiness’,” Ensign, Nov 1993. This comparison was also added to Church manuals: “The decision of Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit was not a sin, as it is sometimes considered by other Christian churches. It was a transgression-an act that was formally prohibited but not inherently wrong (see Dallin H. Oaks, in Conference Report, Oct. 1993, 98; or Ensign, Nov. 1993, 73). Preparing for Exaltation Teacher’s Manual (1998), p. 13
[18] Joseph Fielding Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions, Vol. 5 (Deseret Book, 1966):, p.65. Of course as we have seen, it was not just bible commentators, but the entire league of Mormon leaders before him who accepted Adam and Eve’s acts as sin, albeit with some kind of qualification.
[19] Ehat, Andrew F. and Lyndon W. Cook. (eds). The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph. (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 1980) p. 63.  February 9, 1841 (Tuesday) Mcintire Minute Book. This statement seems consistent with another statement that Joseph is reported to have made. M.L. Davis reported Joseph to have said: I believe in the fall of man, as recorded in the Bible; I believe that God foreknew everything, but did not foreordain everything; I deny that foreordain and foreknow is the same thing. … “I believe,” said he, “that a man is a moral, responsible, free agent; that although it was foreordained he should fall, and be redeemed, yet after the redemption it was not foreordained that he should again sin.” Ehat and Cook, p. 63.

Perhaps the most significant impetus to Mormonism’s positive view of the fall is the revelation known as the Book of Moses. This revelation came to Joseph Smith in June of 1830—only two months after the organization of the Church, and three months after the publication of the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Moses is perhaps best described as a prequel to the creation account as given in the Book of Genesis. God shows Moses a piercing vision of the world that increases in resolution as the vision unfolds. Moses

beheld the Earth yea even all the face of it & there was not a particl[e of it which he did not behold & he discerned it by the Spirit of God & he beheld also the inhabitants thereof & there was not a soul which he be[held not & he discerned them by the Spirit of God[1]

Suddenly, and unexpectedly, Moses’s vision radically changes in scope so that “he beheld many lands & each land was called Earth & there were inhabitants upon the face thereof.”

At this point Moses interrupts the vision to ask God “tell me I pray thee why these things are so & by what thou madest them.” God responds to Moses:

For mine own purpose have I made these things here is wisdom & it remaineth in me & by the word of my power have I created them which is mine only be-gotten Son full of grace and truth & worlds without number have I cre-]ated & I also created them for mine own purpose & by the same I created them which is mine only begotten & the first man of all men have I called Adam which is many but only an account of this Earth & the inhabitants thereof give I unto you for behold there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power & there are many that now stand & innumerable are they unto man bu[t all things are numbered unto me for they are mine and I know them.[2]

Here the Lord informs Moses that there are other populated worlds, that have passed away and that now stand. This is a radical vision that has several implications for understanding humanity’s salvation narrative. The Lord explains to Moses that he will receive only an account of this world. Moses agrees and asks the Lord to show him “this Earth & the inhabitan[ts th]ereof & also the H[eavens] & then they servant will be content.”[3]

Despite God’s disclaimer that he will only speak “concer-ning this Earth upon which thou standest” hints of other worlds continue to escape. God explains to Moses, “And Adam called his wifes name Eve because she wa[s the mother of all living for thus have I the Lord God called the first of all women which are many.” This is a deliberate parallel to God’s previous explanation that “the first man of all men have I called Adam.”

The Book of Moses assumes a plurality of worlds reality and builds that assumption into the Mormon corpus of scripture. I argue that this heavily colors, even if subconsciously, Mormon sentiments regarding the fall of man. It is therefore important for us to take a detour in our journey of texts relating to the fall in Mormonism, to carefully consider the impact of other worlds.

Plurality of Worlds in Christian Thought

The idea of plurality of worlds in Western thought has a long and turbulent history.[4] As explained by Erich Robert Paul, many Christians were able to reconcile the plurality of worlds and scientific progress with their concept of the Creator:

The plurality of worlds doctrine accompanied the birth of modern science in the seventeenth century, a time that fostered the growth of Natural Theology, when scientific and religious views complemented mutual intellectual concerns. As a study in rational religion, Natural Theology asserted that the Christian God created a universe in which laws, design, purpose, and harmony were paramount and the scientist, being a Christian, could find justification for his religious convictions in his scientific studies.[5]

Other Christians would not be able to justify a plurality of worlds. Grant McColley points out that the German reformer Philip Melanchthon rejected a plurality of worlds specifically because it conflicted with the doctrine of atonement.

The most vital argument to Melanchthon is his last, wherein he states that there is but one Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who was sent into the world, was dead, and was resurrected. He did not appear in other worlds, nor was He dead and resurrected there. Nor is it to be thought that if there are many worlds, something not to be imagined, that Christ was often dead and resurrected. Nor should it be considered that in any other world, without the sacrifice of the Son of God, men could be brought to eternal life. As Melanchthon reasons, to accept a plurality of worlds is to deny or to make a travesty of the Atonement.[6]

Despite the protests of Melanchthon and others, Christians continued to entertain ideas of other worlds. From 1742-1745, the English poet, Edward Young, penned Night Thoughts, his most well-known poem written in the wake of the death of his loved ones. In his ninth chapter, “Consolations,” Young asks the inhabitants of other worlds concerning their world history.

Enjoy your happy realms their golden age?
And had your Eden an abstemious Eve?
Our Eve’s fair daughters prove their pedigree,
And ask their Adams — ‘Who would not be wise?’
Or, if your mother fell, are you redeemed?
And, if redeem’d — is your Redeemer scorn’d?[7]

Such words reflect the perennial questions raised by a plurality of worlds: Would all worlds be fallen? Would the Adam and Eve story repeat itself?

In his 1794 tract Age of Reason, the great firebrand Thomas Paine attacked Christianity by lampooning Christians who believed in a plurality of worlds.

From whence then could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on his protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple! And, on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the boundless creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a redeemer? In this case, the person who is irreverently called the Son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarcely a momentary interval of life.[8]

Paine’s criticism, a kind of irreverent version of Melanchthon, notes the unresolved questions when combining Christianity with plural worlds. Why then this world? How similar are other worlds?

Some religious Americans, undeterred by Paine, would continue to find harmony in science and faith, such as the Reverend Thomas William Jenkyn:

It is not, I conceive, the philosophy of NEWTON only, that teaches us the doctrine of plurality of worlds; the illustrious President of the universe himself has said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” The “Father’s house” is the vast temple of the universe, and the “many mansions,” are the innumerable stars, and suns, and systems which compose its apartments.[9]

On the other hand, many believed such ideas complicated the purpose of God’s creation. In 1859, the Reverend Charles Louis Hequembourg illustrated the several reasons why a plurality of worlds idea frustrates the Christian gospel:

Theology is fully competent to pronounce against the probability that the universe is generally inhabited. The supposition of there being intelligent inhabitants in other worlds, involves them at once in all the high responsibilities and in the fearful hazards of moral beings. If we suppose that all other worlds are inhabited by fallen or sinful beings, we have the hopeless problem to solve, how sin and misery can be universal in the government of God. It is hard to conceive that Infinite Wisdom should or could originate no better plan than such as would fill the universe with sinful and miserable beings, many of whom could never escape from a condition of wretchedness except by their extinction. A superior plan is conceivable, and has been practicable. And if, on the other hand, we conceive that no other beings have fallen besides those known actually to have done so, we have the still greater difficulty to meet, affecting not only the wisdom but also the justice of God, — why, if it was possible to preserve all other worlds in a state of innocence, two races of beings, men and angels, should have been suffered to fall into sin. Theology, therefore, presents objections altogether insuperable, to the belief that the popular doctrine of millions of inhabited worlds is true.”[10]

Plurality of Worlds in the Book of Moses

Much has been written about the reconciliation between science and faith in Mormonism and typically in terms of how much Joseph Smith was influenced by 19^th science.[11] However, little attention has been paid to the impact that plurality of worlds teaching has had on the development of Mormon soteriology. As can be seen from even the brief sampling above, the doctrine of plurality of worlds has far-reaching implications for the doctrine of the atonement and the fall.

The Book of Moses offered the Latter-day Saints explicit scripture that taught: there is a plurality of inhabited worlds; that all the worlds were created by God through his Only Begotten; the first man and woman of each world is called Adam and Eve respectively. But it did not answer all questions nor did it resolve all tensions. How similar or dissimilar are these other worlds? Do the Adam and Eve of all worlds fall like this one? What will world history look like on these other worlds? The Book of Moses is deliberately silent on all these matters.

As to whether other worlds have a different Redeemer, Joseph Smith would later answer in the negative. On February 16, 1832, John Whitmer recorded “A Vision of Joseph and Sidney [Rigdon].”

& we heard the voice bearing record that he is the only begotten of the father; that by him, & through him, & of him, the worlds were made, & were created; & the inhabitants thereof are begotten Sons {of\and} daughters of unto God.[12]

Years later Whitmer’s prose would be converted to poetry, published in the Times and Seasons and signed by Joseph Smith (1843):

And I heard a great voice, bearing record from heav’n,
He’s the Saviour, and only begotten of God-
By him, of him, and through him, the worlds were all made,
Even all that career in the heavens so broad,
Whose inhabitants, too, from the first to the last,
Are sav’d by the very same Saviour of ours;
And, of course, are begotten God’s daughters and sons,
By the very same truths, and the very same pow’rs.[13]

The implications that flow from the few passages in the Book of Moses was not lost on subsequent explicators of Mormon doctrine. A quarter of a century later after its publication, Brigham Young would tell his congregation (1854):

Worlds have always been in progress, and eternally will be. Every world has had an Adam, and an Eve: named so, simply because the first man is always called Adam, and the first woman Eve.[14]

Young continued to be influenced by the notion of a plurality of worlds. In 1870, seven years before his death, Brother Brigham, in words that would make his contemporary Hequembourg shudder, went so far as to tell the saints:

Sin is upon every earth that ever was created. . . . Consequently every earth has its redeemer and every earth has its tempter; and every earth and the people thereof . . . pass through all the ordeals that we are passing through.[15]

For Young, each earth was another iteration—a purposeful repeat—of the plan of salvation. In Young’s mind, the roles of redeemer and even tempter merely pass from one world to the next. All have a plan and a purpose in the grand economy of the Gods.

As long as one sees the Fall of Man as a fluke, as an isolated event, as a one-time event in the history of the universe, it can be more easily regarded as a mistake, as an expression of human weakness or even pride. But once Latter-day Saints have a doctrine where this “mistake” is to be repeated on all other worlds by an all-wise God, it becomes increasingly difficult to accept that this was an error. The Book of Moses suggests that God’s plan had been enacted before—that it wasn’t a one-time tragedy, but rather so by design.

The Book of Mormon’s atonement doctrine was that the plan of salvation was prepared according to the foreknowledge of God as a response to human sin. However, after the plurality of worlds, the plan of salvation would come to mean the plan that is reenacted with every world.

The notion of a plurality of worlds, each repeating an established plan of salvation, forms a very powerful undercurrent in Mormon soteriology that continues to breathe life into the notion of a fortunate and intended fall.

________
[1] Scott H. Faulring, Kent P. Jackson, and Robert J. Matthews, eds. Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2004, p. 85.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] For a general overview of the development of the plurality of worlds doctrine see Grant McColley, “The Seventeenth Century Doctrine of a Plurality of Worlds.” Annals of Science 1:4 (1936): 385-430. In the Mormon context see Robert Paul. “Joseph Smith and the Plurality of Worlds Idea.” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 19.2 (1986): 13–36; Erich Robert Paul. Science, Religion, and Mormon Cosmology (University of Illinois Press, 1992). See also Vogel, Dan and Brent Lee Metcalfe. “Joseph Smith’s Scriptural Cosmology” in Dan Vogel, The Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture (Signature Books, 1990): 187.
[5] Joseph Smith and the Plurality of Worlds Idea, 14.
[6] The Seventeenth Century Doctrine of a Plurality of Worlds, 412-413.
[7] Edward Young. The consolation: Containing, among other things. A moral survey of the nocturnal heavens. A night-address to the deity. London : printed for G. Hawkins. And sold by M. Cooper, 1745.
[8] Thomas Paine. The Age of Reason. Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology. (Philadelphia, 1794).
[9] Thomas William Jenkyn. On the Extent of the Atonement, in its Relation to God and the Universe. (Boston, 1835): 116.
[10] Charles Louis Hequembourg. Plan of the creation; or, Other worlds, and who inhabit them. (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1859): 41-42.
[11] See footnote 4.
[12] Robin Scott Jensen, Robert J. Woodford, and Steven C. Harper, eds., Revelations and Translations, Volume 1: Manuscript Revelation Books. Vol. 1 of the Revelations and Translations series of The Joseph Smith Papers, edited by Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman. (Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2009), 245.
[13] Joseph Smith, “THE ANSWER. TO W. W. PHELPS, ESQ. A Vision.” Times and Seasons vol. 4 no. 6 (1 February 1843), 82-85. Also cited by Paul (1986) and Vogel (1990). Hicks disputes Joseph’s authorship in favor of W. W. Phelps. See Hicks, Michael. “Joseph Smith, W. W. Phelps, and the Poetic Paraphrase of ‘the Vision’.” Journal of Mormon History 20.2 (1994): 63-84.
[14] The Essential Brigham Young (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992): 93. “I Propose to Speak Upon a Subject that does not Immediately Concern Yours or My Welfare” A Sermon Delivered on 8 October 1854.
[15] Brigham Young, “Sin—the Atonement—Good and Evil—the Kingdom of God.” Journal of Discourses 14:72. (Ogden City, July 10, 1870). Here, Young’s readings go beyond text of the Book of Moses, which says nothing about other redeemers or other tempters, but maintains that all worlds were created by the Only Begotten. Young’s views clearly influence the development of temple liturgy.

So begin Richard E. Turley and William M. Slaughter in the Preface of their book How We Got the Book of Mormon. The reassuring tone of the Preface reveals the authors’ perceptions that the general reader is, perhaps, wary of books with citations and references. Turley, in a recent interview states “We feel that general readers can benefit from excellent work done by scholars in recent years, but many general readers won’t approach works written by scholars for scholars.”[2] The reassuring Preface doubles as a challenge. The authors throw down the gauntlet to the adventurous reader and encourage her to “verify facts,” thus raising the bar for books produced for a general audience. Every reader will be better off for having read the book.

For those readers who are more inclined toward academic treatments of the Book of Mormon, How We Got the Book of Mormon, is written in a decidedly devotional tone, and yet, is not overtly dripping with apologetic interruptions. The inspirational pay-off of the volume is not in the standard practice of telling readers the book is true, but rather, in showing readers the human drama and efforts of the individuals involved in the production and transmission of a text regarded as sacred by millions.

The authors’ challenge, of course, is that the story of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon is imprinted into the minds of every Latter-day Saint. We know about the angel, the gold plates and the three witnesses. What facts are there to verify? We already know the story. At least, we think we do. Turley and Slaughter do an excellent job in encouraging Latter-day Saints to re-evaluate and expand the traditional production narrative.

Missing from the book are any illustrations of Joseph Smith tracing his hand over the gold plates, as if he is using reading directly from the metal. Rather, Turley and Slaughter point readers to the historical accounts of Joseph peering into seer stones “blocking out external light . . . placing the interpreters into a hat and putting his face down into it.”[3]

Turley and Slaughter trace the practical and logistical details involved in the production of the Book of Mormon including efforts to obtain a copyright, find a printer, secure funds, and even to fight piracy. Readers learn that the Book of Mormon was not immune to copyright infringement, with pages showing up in a local New York newspaper.

While Martin Harris is mostly known as the man who lost the 116 pages of the manuscript, Turley and Slaughter redeem Martin from traditional narratives by highlighting his contribution to finance the first edition: “Martin’s sacrifice had made it possible to publish the Book of Mormon to the world.”[4] This one sentence paragraph subtly reminds readers that people’s lives are too complex for us to reduce their legacy to one mistake.

Readers are also introduced to Ebenezer Robinson, who received a revelation that provided him with a new approach to printing the Book of Mormon with greater speed. Readers learn of early attempts to produce combination scriptures—a vision that ultimately would not be realized until printing technology advanced years later. Innovative ideas to advance missionary work by producing more portable scriptures are woven into the narrative. The story exudes human ingenuity and American practicality.

The part of history most interesting to this reviewer is Orson Pratt’s hand in dividing the Book of Mormon into chapter and verse in 1879. Perhaps no other act in the transmission history of the Book of Mormon has had more significance on how Mormons actually read, quote from, and study the Book of Mormon.[5]

“I must tell you of a work that has moved quietly in the Church virtually unnoticed.”[6] Those were the words of Elder Boyd K. Packer in the fall of 1982. The work he spoke of was the production of the 1981 edition of the Book of Mormon. In many ways, Packer’s statement still holds true today, but Turley and Slaughter assist readers in appreciating those efforts. The authors utilize the biographies of those involved and make good use of the production The Promised Day: The Coming Forth of the LDS Scriptures.

Consumers of academic treatments of the Book of Mormon will probably want to know if Turley and Slaughter’s volume breaks new ground historically, or perhaps how it treats certain historical moments. Let me suggest that the real contribution of Turley and Slaughter is that they have created a new production narrative of the Book of Mormon.[7] To do that, the story must be compelling and yet brief enough to exist as a narrative. I believe the authors succeed on both accounts.

The selection of illustrations and photographs is impressive and moving. The images are beautifully printed. The photographs breathe life into the story. The printing of the book, the binding, the type selection and design, are all high-quality. The care and attention to detail in this volume is evident. This is narrative creation at its finest.[8]

I wish Turley and Slaughter would have been able to work the translation of the Book of Mormon into foreign languages into their overall narrative. The book is titled how “we” got the Book of Mormon, but perhaps the story of how the Korean saints or the Japanese saints got the Book of Mormon, for example, could have received some kind of mention. Of course, space limitations are always a consideration, and it may have not been possible to work those stories into the narrative and still keep it short enough.[9]

Turley and Slaughter’s genius is in providing an expanded, richer, and more nuanced production narrative, artfully designed, beautifully illustrated, and well-tailored to their target audience. I hope to see more books for general audiences that follow the authors’ approach. I’m confident that this book will supersede prior narratives of how we got the Book of Mormon.

________

[1] Turley, Richard E Jr. & Slaughter, William W. How We Got the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011): vii-viii.
[2] Stapley, J. “How We Got the Book of Mormon: An interview with co-author Richard E. Turley Jr.” By Common Consent, August 19, 2011. http://bycommonconsent.com/2011/08/19/how-we-got-the-book-of-mormon-an-interview-with-co-author-richard-e-turley-jr/
[3] How We Got the Book of Mormon, p. 13.
[4] How We Got the Book of Mormon, p. 36.
[5] While exegetical history is beyond the scope of the Turley and Slaughter volume, it should be pointed out that the Book of Mormon is not only an object or artifact, but an interpretive tradition. That interpretive tradition required the instrument of chapter and verse to thrive. In addition, Orson Pratt provided the first footnotes.
[6] Boyd K. Packer “Scriptures.” Ensign, November 1982.
[7] By “production narrative” I don’t mean a treatment of the production history, but rather the “story” that is passed on within a community about how the Book of Mormon came to be, a story that families tell each other, etc.
[8] I wish the publishers would have included a Works Cited page. It’s oddly missing from the otherwise useful reference materials.
[9] An appendix with information about foreign language translations would have been a welcomed addition.

Some time ago I was sitting in Sunday School and the lesson (New Testament Lesson 30) covered Acts 10. As I read Acts, something about the Lukan account of Peter bothered me. Luke has Peter relate to Cornelius and those that were with him the details of his ‘trance’ and subsequent understanding of its meaning.

But Peter said, ‘By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.’ The voice said to him again, a second time, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ (Acts 10:14-15).

You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean. (Acts 10:28).

Did not Jesus already provide this kind of instruction to the apostles? For example, Mark and Matthew have Jesus tell the apostles:

And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved. (Mark 16:15-16a).

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19).

Neither Mark nor Matthew record the apostles as resisting or questioning this injunction. Going to all the world, would include teaching, consorting, and baptizing Gentiles.

Furthermore, Mark provides a radical depiction of Jesus as challenging Jewish dietary law, which plays a prominent role in Peter’s vision.

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’ When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, ‘Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?’ (Thus he declared all foods clean.) (Mark 7:14-19).

While one might argue that the context only supports deviation from washing one’s hands before eating, Mark’s language makes it clear that he understands Jesus to be directly overturning Leviticus 11 by his commentary: “Thus he declared all foods clean.”[1]

How does Matthew retell this story?

Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, ‘Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.’ Then the disciples approached and said to him, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees took offence when they heard what you said?’ He answered, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.’ But Peter said to him, ‘Explain this parable to us.’ Then he said, ‘Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.’ (Matthew 15:10-18).

Matthew incorporates Peter into the story and highlights the expected reaction by the Pharisees, who are understandably offended by Jesus’s apparent rejection of Leviticus 11. But Mathew stops short of Mark’s interpretation by concluding “These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.” Matthew does not repeat Mark’s commentary “Thus he declared all foods clean.”

How does Luke tell the story?

He doesn’t. We know that Luke had access to Mark’s account. While Matthew retells the story in a way not to make Jesus a heretic of Jewish law in the sense Mark does, Luke decides to omit the story altogether. Nor does Luke tell the story of the Great Commission the same:

“Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” (Luke 24:45-48).

Luke downplays the Great Commission to baptize the Gentile nations.

If Luke had incorporated the Markan tradition, then his account in Acts would lose its dramatic effect. God’s vision to Peter would be less potent if Jesus had already “declared all foods clean.” Luke makes deliberate decisions as to what to include in his narrative, always monitoring the internal coherency of his account.

It is possible Luke could have solved the problem as Matthew did, by preserving the account, but retooling it as limited to the washing of hands and not as a rejection of Leviticus 11. In fact, it may have fit nicely since this would have been the second time that Peter would be questioning Leviticus 11. Thus, Luke could have solved the issue by introducing Peter’s concern twice, the first as preparatory to the second. Luke could have even had Peter recall the words of Jesus perhaps unlocking its meaning and finally understanding that Jesus was preparing him for a future mission. However, this is not the tradition we have received. Rather we have a Jesus who declares all foods clean (Mark), a Jesus whose teachings were misunderstood by the Pharisees but were not intended to reject Leviticus dietary law (Matthew), and a Jesus who never said any such thing (Luke).

At any rate, we can learn much from the difference between the Gospel accounts. It is important for Matthew and Luke to depict Jesus and his disciples as law abiding Jews. In fact, this is a constant concern of the Gospel writers, and each author varies in how much Jesus and his disciples depart from Jewish piety.

Finally, I feel we need to be more sympathetic to how the changes were perceived by the Jewish Christians. Most people tend to hear the phrase “God is no respecter of persons” and immediately agree with it. It fits with our modern sensibilities of equality and emotions concerning racism. Yet, it completely rejects the God’s instruction in Leviticus.

I am the Lord your God; I have separated you from the peoples. You shall therefore make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean, and between the unclean bird and the clean; you shall not bring abomination on yourselves by animal or by bird or by anything with which the ground teems, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean. You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy, and I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine. (Leviticus 20:24b-26).

Because God made a distinction between his people and other people, the Jews were to make a distinction between the clean and unclean. When Peter reveals this is no longer the case, does this mean that the Jews are no longer separated by God to be his? Peter’s revelation is inextricably linked to a loss of Jewish identity.

The Book of Acts continually illustrates the tension and concern among the Christian leadership not to alienate the Jewish Christians who are zealous for the law (see Acts 21:20), and not to burden Gentile Christians (see Acts 15:6-21). It’s a difficult balance. The Book of Acts details the growing pains of the early Church and how they dealt with being faithful to their religious tradition, the teachings of Jesus and the radical new revelations that sought to overturn their very identity.
________
[1] For a helpful overview of the issues see James D.G. Dunn, “Jesus and Purity: An Ongoing Debate,” New Testament Studies 48 (2002): 449-67.

1. Early Mormon thinkers believed that our spirits are fashioned from spiritual element or spiritual matter. Thus, God has complete control when he configures each of our spirits. Parley P. Pratt and Orson Pratt understood intelligence as an attribute of spiritual element. Thus, given this metaphysics, God is the one who determines the intelligence of our spirits, and therefore the question arises as to how fair it is to judge us according to our intelligence when this is predetermined by God when he creates us. Parley P. Pratt recognized this dilemma and argued that God does not create this intelligence. The level of intelligence, rather, is a function of the particular element used to form our spirits, and element differs in its level of intelligence. Pratt should be credited with acknowledging this dilemma even if his solution doesn’t quite solve the problem. One can presume that God still has control over the particular element used in the organization of our spirits. Isn’t there some consequence in how God creates our spirits? Is there any significant difference between God creating our spirits from preexisting spiritual element and God creating our spirits out of nothing? Doesn’t this lead to a kind of determinism?

2. Other Mormon thinkers emphasized that God doesn’t create us as much as he begets us. By God begetting our spirits, we “inherit” divine traits and attributes from God. This is couched in decidedly biological terms. Joseph emphasized the shared eternality between God and man. Thus, as the Word was “with God” in the beginning, “man also was in the beginning with God.” In contrast to this view, the model that traits are inherited via spiritual birth borrows from our scientific understanding of genetics. Yet, it isn’t clear exactly how or what we are inheriting.

3. Early Mormon thinkers, like Parley P. Pratt, believed the “spiritual body” was an exact facsimile of the mortal body, including all organs and anatomical structures. Yet, given our understanding of the function of human anatomy—taking the act of respiration for example, drawing oxygen from the atmosphere in order to oxygenate the blood—it isn’t clear exactly how an immortal spirit functions outside of a mortal environment.

4. Yet another problem is this: if our spiritual body looks exactly like our mortal body, and our mortal body is the result of specific combinations of genetic material, how does our spiritual body know what it is supposed to look like before we are born? This leads to a situation where if spiritual bodies are exact replicas of what our physical bodies will look like, and if what a physical body looks like is the result of unique gene combinations from our parents, then we are faced with a situation where God must predetermine every sexual union in the universe, or to put it in other words, that the future has already been decided, once more leading to a kind of spiritual determinism.

5. Early Mormon understanding of a “spiritual body” was that it was an organization of spiritual element that either is calculated to receive intelligence (Brigham Young) or reflects the attribute of intelligence in greater or lesser degrees (Orson Pratt). After B.H. Roberts redefined intelligence to mean a personal entity, the spirit body was re-conceived as a receptacle for this intelligence. Roberts explained that “Spirits are uncreated intelligencies inhabiting spiritual bodies,” but intelligences “pure and simple” is without a spiritual body. Roberts’ project was to attribute to intelligences essentially every power that a spirit has minus a “spiritual body.” Unfortunately, Roberts never explained the nature of a spiritual body or its function. Indeed, his project was not to formulate a coherent doctrine of spirit bodies but to infuse Mormon theology with personal eternalism.

Terryl L. Givens, professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond, published two articles in Meridian Magazine early this year, taking up the perennially problematic topic of divine justice.[1] Givens ends part one with this promise:

I believe what will provide greater clarity on [the problem of suffering], as well as greater clarity about LDS conceptions of the war in heaven, the purpose of mortal life, and the nature of the atonement, is a more coherent account of the meaning and role of moral agency. So in what follows, I want to make some very tentative efforts in that regard.

This is a serious claim. In this post, I would like engage Givens’ ideas, explore whether the article delivers on its claim, and offer a tentative critique of my own.

One of Givens’ central arguments is that human agency cannot exist unless every choice is linked to its natural consequence. For example, if an ice cream parlor offers several choices of ice cream, but everyone is served the same flavor no matter what they order, Givens might point out that in reality there was no choice. Merely providing choice is not the essential ingredient of freedom—it is guaranteeing that choices have predictable consequences. Otherwise, we end up with, in Givens’ words, a sham, “a mere pantomime of decision-making.” From here, Givens discusses the true nature of Satan’s alternative plan—a plan not brought about by coercion—but brought about by the seductive delinking of choice from consequence.

The problem arises when Givens takes up the theme of Atonement. Indeed, there can be no better example where the consequences of our moral choices are, in fact, abrogated, interrupted, even denied. The Atonement is the Great Plan to avoid the consequence of our actions, to escape the ‘exquisite’ suffering of divine wrath (D&C 19:15-17). Thus, according to the logic Givens puts forth, the Atonement—that great system par excellence for erasing the horrific consequences of our choices—must inevitably and irrevocably result in the complete and total decimation of human agency.

Fortunately, Givens recognizes this dilemma and asks:

How can another agent (Christ) bear the consequence of all human actions, without compromising our agency? How can he suffer in our stead, without sacrificing our accountability and therefore our moral freedom? … If we don’t receive what we chose to receive, how can our freedom be intact?[2]

Like most readers, I continued to read, expecting Givens to sever the Gordian knot. Can he explain how the Atonement could possibly function given the fact that it should compromise our agency? Could he deliver on his introductory promise to provide “greater clarity” on the nature of the atonement through a “more coherent account of the meaning and role of moral agency”?

Givens responds as follows:

And what is the role of Christ in this conception? One might posit in this scheme of things that Christ bears the consequences of all the wrong choices that have ever been made, to assure, to guarantee, the principle of moral agency, maintaining the law of restoration and the equilibrium of choice and consequence, thereby permitting an errant human kind to repent, or as the word signifies, to re-decide, to choose afresh. The law of agency requires that choices of moral moment eventuate in their decreed consequences. But so many of our choices, made in our frailty, entail catastrophic pain and suffering. Christ is willing to bear that pain and suffering in our stead, that we may re-employ our agency to better ends. The atonement, then, does not eliminate or override individual agency; it reaffirms its status as the precondition for all meaningful existence.

Givens tells us that Christ bears our consequences without destroying agency. Even though our choices should ultimately end in pain and suffering, Christ abrogates those pains, but apparently without destroying our moral freedom. Unfortunately, this explanation, however, begs as many questions as it attempts to answer.[3]

II

It’s useful to consider the Merdian articles in light of Givens’ larger body of work. He first published his theory of agency—that agency is only guaranteed when natural consequences flow from choice uninterrupted—in his 2002 opus, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World.[4] There, he first explored Book of Mormon atonement theology, probably weighing into LDS discussions on atonement theory at that time.[5]

Givens continued to think of such issues as the war in heaven and Lucifer’s competing plan of salvation. In 2007, he briefly broached these topics in People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture.[6] He writes:

According to this scenario, then, the first cosmic conflict on record is between the principle of agency and the threat of compulsion. Whether we see that attempt at coercion as the first form that evil took, as an evil secondary to a dissent from God’s proffered plan, or, more radically, as preceding revolt and rebellion—and thus the primal evil itself—it is clear that Joseph [Smith] is making moral agency the locus and origin of the moral dualism of the universe.[7]

Here, Givens perpetuates the common characterization of Satan’s plan as compulsory. While he does introduce some nuance into Satan’s actions, Givens retains the language of coercion and describes Satan’s actions as evil.

However, he seems to have re-conceived some of these ideas.

Givens brought together his writings on atonement and the war in heaven in an address given May 7, 2010, titled Moral, Responsible, and Free: Mormon Conceptions of Divine Justice, which talk, by the way, was expanded for the Meridian articles.[8]

Whereas in Paradox Givens describes Satan’s actions as evil, he now writes “[I]n the logic of the scriptural narrative, [Satan's] proposal was not obviously and self-evidently evil.” Whereas in Paradox he describes Satan’s plan using terms like “coercion” and “threat of compulsion” he now distances himself from such ideas:

Many Mormons have long assumed, evident in a pervasive cultural grammar, that Lucifer’s plan involved coercion. That he would simply ‘force’ people to be righteous, or to keep the commandments. There are several problems with such a reading.

I like knowing that Givens is evolving as a thinker on these issues. The incremental, accretive and condensed nature of the Meridian piece, however, inevitably left some of Givens thoughts cryptic.

As I explained above, Givens argues that agency cannot exist unless choices have consequences. He acknowledges the problem and asks how the atonement can “bear the consequence of all human actions without compromising our agency” but then concludes that God affirms our choices and does not negate the consequences of our actions. This naturally leads the reader to ask what role Christ plays or what the atonement even accomplishes. Anticipating this response he asks what role Christ plays, but concludes that Christ bears the consequences of all human action while at the same time maintaining agency. But he doesn’t seem to explain how that can follow given what he has been writing all along.

III

In By the Hand of Mormon, Givens offer a more substantial explanation:

[N]o escape from the consequences of law is possible without destroying the entire moral order of the universe and both the human agency it grounds and the status of the divine guarantor of the whole system (“God would cease to be God”). As long as the penalty is executed, law is safeguarded. As long as man chooses to undo the effects of his decisions and then chooses anew (repentance), agency is safeguarded. So Christ offers himself as ransom to the demands of law, as the only being capable of paying a cumulative penalty as “eternal as the life of the soul” (Alma 42:16). The consequence of unrighteous choice unfolds as it must, but the pain it inflicts is vicariously felt. Therefore, “justice exercises all his demands, and also mercy claimeth all which is her own; and thus, none but the truly penitent are saved.” (Alma 42:24).[9]

This seems to be Givens’ response. This may be difficult to follow, but here it goes. When man repents, the natural consequence that flows from this decision is to escape the penalty that naturally flows from his sin, which consequence, according to Givens, cannot be altered without rendering human choice meaningless and destroying the entire moral order of the universe. However, when a person chooses to repent, abrogating the natural consequences of sin does not render his initial choice meaningless and does not destroy the entire moral order of the universe. Apparently, the natural consequence of repentance seems to trump the natural consequence of sin.

It isn’t clear, however, that Givens can escape his own critique of traditional atonement theories. Of such theories he writes:

Since punishment—but not punishment of the guilty—is required, the impersonal demand is in accordance with some abstract calculus that has no earthly counterpart. No terrestrial magistrate would allow an innocent person to die for a guilty one and consider justice to be served. Peculiar, second, because Justice here usurps the place of God, as a principle before which he himself seems to bow. A wise father, given appropriate extenuating circumstances, or the timely and efficacious exercise of mercy, may remit altogether the punishment of a guilty son. God, apparently, cannot. Explanation of atonement in terms of a Platonic absolute called Justice, in other words, begs as many questions as it answers.[10]

What I hear Givens saying is that God is punishing the Son not because he must satisfy a Platonic notion of Justice, but rather, God must punish “somebody” otherwise agency can’t exist. This seems novel. But is this supposed to make us feel better? The very notion of vicarious punishment is the problem, regardless of the reason. How is this just or fair? How is the principle that choices must have consequences for freedom to exist not also be a principle before which God himself must bow?

Givens’ argument seems to invite several critiques.

First, Givens says that consequences are chosen in the moment of choice, but I think this view relies too much on an absolute foreknowledge model. Is it truly the case that “Consequences are chosen at the time actions are freely committed”? Wouldn’t it make more sense to say that those consequences are not yet vested, but could vest if not superseded by making additional choices (i.e. repentance)? This discussion of choices having predictable consequences works so long as we stay within the realm of a divine punishment linked to an identifiable sin. But so many consequences of our choices are unpredictable and impossible to foresee. We simply do not always make choices with the full knowledge of what we are choosing.

Second, Givens equivocates on “pain and suffering” in a way that severely weakens his articles. In part one of his article, he discusses “the reality of a world drenched in pain and suffering” and the “pain, the trauma, and the horror in the world.” For example, Ivan in the Brothers Karamazov cares nothing about hell but wrestles with the pain and suffering of tortured children in this life. But inexplicably, in part two, Givens subtlety switches gears and defines pain and suffering much too narrowly as only that which occurs after this world ends. He considers consequences in terms of the eternal punishment that is affixed.[11] Givens focuses on the conscious choices and consequences of those choices as they affect the person making those choices. But this simply doesn’t reflect our reality. It is often the choices of others that reap horrific consequences upon us, or non-human causes such as the trauma of natural disasters. For this reason, Givens does not sufficiently engage the problem of evil.

Yet even if the atonement allows one to escape the eternal torment, individuals still suffer in this life as a result of choices, whether they later repent or not. The Sons of Mosiah continued to suffer “much anguish of soul” even after they repented of their sins (Mosiah 28:4).[12] Mortals do not often lament that God doesn’t prevent eternal pain and suffering, but rather they question why God doesn’t prevent mortal pain and suffering, whether caused by their own actions, the actions of others, or the pains that come with living in a fallen world of disease and death. Givens raises the problem of earthly suffering in part one, and then offers the solution that Christ bears the consequences of our actions in part two. The reader is unable to know whether Givens is saying Christ bears our mortal pains not. It would seem there is a double suffering. We experience mortal suffering in this life, plus Christ suffers our eternal consequences.

Moreover, there is a crucial insight in Mormon theology about the educative nature of pain and suffering. Pain is a form of knowledge. (Alma 7:12; D&C 122:7). Our pain often makes us who we are. Indeed, for Christ to rob us of our pain would be to deny the experiential purpose of the plan of salvation. (Abr. 3:25). The Book of Mormon teaches that Christ came not to prevent our pain but to “succor his people according to their infirmities.” (Alma 7:12).[13]

Third, if agency can exist so long as Christ suffers pains that flow from decisions, why doesn’t he just suffer for everyone and allow universal salvation? Under Givens’ explanation, universal salvation is theoretically possible. I see no reason, so long as consequences flow to someone, why agency could not be maintained. I suspect Givens would argue that this cannot be since a person cannot receive a reward he or she hasn’t chosen (i.e. salvation). Yet, wouldn’t it have held true for those that chose Lucifer’s plan that their choice too was a choice for salvation?

Fourth, what is the difference between Lucifer’s plan (negating the consequence of our actions) and God’s plan (negating the consequences of our actions when we repent)? In both scenarios the consequences of our actions are negated.

Fifth, I would like to see more exploration as to why creating a law of repentance (choice with a consequence) can override the effects of sin (choice with a consequence) without apparently “destroying the entire moral order of the universe.” Why does it not destroy agency for Christ to vicariously suffer due to our actions? If something like the Atonement doesn’t destroy agency, then should we really believe that abrogating the consequences of our actions will destroy agency?

________
[1] Terryl L. Givens. Part 1: “What is Man, that Thou Shouldst Set Thine Heart upon Him?” Meridian Magazine, February 16, 2011. off-site; Terryl L. Givens. Part 2: “Agency and Atonement.” Meridian Magazine, March 09, 2011. off-site. Originally given as a JRCLS presentation titled Moral, Responsible, and Free: Mormon Conceptions of Divine Justice, May 7, 2010.
[2] This is new material not found in his earlier 2010 address or published writings.
[3] Readers found Givens’ explanation less than satisfactory. See Matt W. “A Critique of Terryl Givens’ Theodicy.” New Cool Thang, March 19, 2011. Accessed June 3, 2011 from http://www.newcoolthang.com/index.php/2011/03/a-critique-of-terryl-givens-theodicy/2633/
[4] Terryl L. Givens. By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World. (Oxford University Press, 2002): 204-207. While this material finds its way to the Meridian articles largely unmodified, I recommended this original material as the most coherent articulation of his views.
[5] See R. Dennis Potter. “Did Christ Pay for Our Sins?” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 32.4 (1999):73-86. Potter writes “Indeed, it strikes me as right that God can decide to forgive without punishment” (p. 82). Givens, as if responding to Potter’s article, writes: “If humans can remit a penalty out of compassion or mercy, why cannot God? Because, as Alma continues, such apparent generosity would undermine the essence of that agency on which moral freedom depends.” By the Hand of Mormon, 206.
[6] Terryl L. Givens. People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture. (Oxford University Press, 2007): 3-5.
[7] Paradox, 5.
[8] Terryl L. Givens. “Moral, Responsible, and Free: Mormon Conceptions of Divine Justice.” May 7, 2010. Accessed June 3, 2011 from http://terrylgivens.com/addresses-and-essays/. This was expanded and divided into two parts for the 2011 Meridian articles. Part two includes some early Mormon views on the subject, probably culled from Givens’ latest project on the history of theology in Mormonism.
[9] By the Hand of Mormon, 207.
[10] By the Hand of Mormon, 205.
[11] By the Hand of Mormon, 206.
[12] Alma seems to have had a different experience from the Sons of Mosiah. Mosiah 27:29; Alma 36:19.
[13] This insight no doubt rings true for many, although it doesn’t answer the existence of pain and suffering that seems to go above and beyond any conceivable educative value.

By a series of fortunate events, I found myself with the unique opportunity to attend. At the appointed time I logged into the video conference software on my laptop, where I was instantly greeted by a view of the Cumorah Room on the fourth floor of the Church History Library, the editors, local attendees, and fellow “virtual” participants. The default setting of the video conference software displayed the webcams of participants in what reminded me of the opening blue box credits of The Brady Bunch, except populated, thankfully, with friendly faces from the blogging world—each one anticipating news of the new volume and many coming with questions.

Assistant Church Historian Richard E. Turley, Jr. began by providing an overview of The Joseph Smith Papers project.

We think it is important for people to see Joseph Smith through the papers that he and his associates left behind, hence the desire to allow people to see the papers without that filtration. . . . With the published revelations book and this larger one, the manuscript revelations books, members of the Church and scholars and other interested parties around the world can have this kind of first-hand access to Joseph Smith and his revelations that we have wanted to give people.

I remember when I received the first volume. I opened the book and saw the facsimiles of the original handwritten manuscripts of the revelations for the first time. By seeing the originals, I felt an intimate connection with the revelations, a closing of the distance—I could see scribes hand-writing the script in ink by whatever light was available at the time, whether lamp or sunlight, and wondered what it would have been like to have been there.

I had always seen the revelations in the printed word, in the familiar two-column arrangement divided into chapter and verse with footnotes. A long textual history, however, stands between us and the originals.

Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, in a talk tracing the history of attempts to publish Joseph Smith’s primary source material explained that “in a certain sense, we can say that until recently, we’ve had a lot of people between me and Joseph as interpreters, and what we are trying to do is get beyond those people to the primary sources as best we can.”[1]

Turley, and the other editors, expressed this intent during question and answer:

We’re trying to remove the intermediary between the scholar and the actual materials, by providing the materials directly to you in this form. With the last volume, the manuscript revelations book volume—in this large format or in the new small format—plus this published revelations volume, you have the two pieces that you need from the Joseph Smith time period to evaluate the unfolding of revelation during the Joseph Smith period, extremely helpful work.

This unfolding of revelation occurred in several ways. Obviously, new texts were continually added to the revelatory corpus. Perhaps less conspicuously, however, but no less important, prior revelations underwent expansion and evolution over the years as evidenced in later reprints.

As editor Riley Lorimer explained, this is the rationale for the inclusion of the several editions of the Evening and Morning Star reprints in Volume 2.

A lot of the changes that were made were the result of further revelation that was received in the intervening years, this is a really wonderful resource for seeing how this young church was growing up and seeing how things were evolving over the course of these four years or so.

What was the nature of these changes? When were they made? Why were they made? And perhaps most importantly, how best to understand and tell this story?

These Joseph Smith Papers volumes will help us answer the when and where, and are intended to provide the primary source material to allow scholars to generate answers to these later questions.

“In order to enhance the production of these volumes and get them to the public faster,” Turley noted, “one thing that we have tried to do is not try to answer every question that these volumes raise, but allow that work to be done by the next wave of work that comes using these as a product.”

Following this general approach we have recently seen a slew of primary source projects including work on the Book of Mormon, the New Translation and most recently the Book of Abraham. The timing of these valuable resources could not be better for studies in early Mormonism. For example, the editors of Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts point out the possibilities:

We could gain a clearer, richer, and more comprehensive understanding of the way our doctrine unfolded if we were to take the revealed passages of the New Translation and place them in their proper chronological order between the sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. For example, Moses 1, from the JST, would be just before section 25; Moses 2-5 would be just before section 29; Moses 6 would be just before section 35; and Moses 7 would be just before 37. Before we had access to the original JST manuscripts, this arrangement was impossible, because we did not know the dates that are written on the documents. Seeing the originals changes our perspective.[2]

The caveat, of course—well-illustrated by Revelations and Translations, Volume Two: Published Revelations—is that these sections themselves have a rich and complex textual history that needs to be taken into account: Book of Commandments (1833), Doctrine and Covenants (1835, 1844), Evening and Morning Star (1832 and 1833 in Missouri, reprinted in 1835 and 1836 in Kirtland), etc. Taken together, all these sources make possible a more accurate revelatory chronology, which in turn will allow for better histories of the development of doctrine, church government, and so forth.

While some of these sources have been previously available, Volume 2 brings these many materials together in one place, providing scholars with convenient access and quality images. The volume includes additional goodies such as Oliver Cowdrey’s marked up copy of the Book of Commandments. The editors also include a proposed “six gathering” of the Book of Commandments, material that was intended for publication before being interrupted by the destruction of the printing press.

This was a surprising and exciting development to learn about. Lost books and resurrected texts are appealing themes in Mormon history. Lorimer explained the nitty-gritty of the analysis involved and editor Robin Jensen added “We make it absolutely clear that this is our proposed six gathering, that as scholars I think that would be useful as kind of the intent of the leaders of what would have been in the Book of Commandments. Clearly it wasn’t published, it wasn’t printed, people didn’t use it. It really gets at what the final intent was, rather than what actually exists.” And by so doing, the editors go above and beyond a typical documentary editing project to help us reclaim an important part of early Mormon history.

I appreciate all who made the event possible. I found the editors excited about their work and forthcoming on all questions raised. This volume is a serious contribution to our understanding of the revelations and I look forward to the forthcoming volumes.

“In some ways,” as Holzapfel suggests, “we might know more about Joseph than those who lived during the time his ministry occurred, given the intimate look we will have in his diaries and letters.” An intriguing and sobering thought. Clearly more meaning yet exists in W.W. Phelps’ words that “millions shall know Brother Joseph again.”
________
[1] Richard Neitzel Holzapfel “1805-1819: Joseph Smith, The Early Years” in Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, ed., “Joseph Smith’s Prophetic Ministry: A Year-by-Year Look at His Life and Teachings.” Compact disc. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2009. Several speakers in the series are part of the Joseph Smith Papers Project.

[2] Scott H. Faulring, Kent P. Jackson, and Robert J. Matthews, eds. Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2004, p. 19.