All Things New

 

I am currently reading the book All Things New, Rethinking Sin Salvation, and Everything in Between, written by LDS scholars Fiona and Terryl Givens.  As I read, I am going to discuss here some of the ideas that I find interesting and also questions that come to my mind.

One of the scriptures that the book introduces in its introduction and then keeps returning to is 1 Nephi 13:32 about being in a "awful state of blindness", though they prefer they way the verse originally reads in the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, which says "awful state of woundedness".  The cause of this state is the loss of plain and precious truths, and the authors apply this to Christianity in general, as well as the way that doctrines of Christ are often interpreted within the LDS church, and one of the main goals of the book is to suggest ways that we can use the restoration of these plain and precious truths to redefine some of the vocabulary and ideas we use in teaching each other Christ's gospel in ways that help us to more greatly overcome this awful state of woundedness.

As the first chapter, The First Christians, concludes, we read that the two most important of these lost truths are first, the pre-mortal existence - that we are co-eternal with God, and second the divine parentage of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother - that we are their spiritual offspring.  My questions that, at least so far the book has not answered, mostly concern the second concept, the parenthood of God.   If the truth that we have a Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother is so important to our understanding the gospel in a more uplifting way, why do we make so little use of Heavenly Mother in our teachings and practices?  Why did she not appear with Heavenly Father and Jesus to Joseph Smith in hist first vision, which is often held up as important in teaching us of the true nature of Heavenly Father and Jesus?.  I would think that the fact that Heavenly Father has a wife that is our Heavenly Mother would have also been an important point for Joseph to learn at that time.  Or, perhaps She was there, because the Holy Ghost is actually Heavenly Mother?  But again, if that is the case, why are we not taught this doctrine more clearly.  It feels to me like we, as a church, are alway very careful to keep any discussion of Heavenly Mother at a distance in a way that makes it difficult to find any real meaning in the idea that we have divine parents.  It feels to me like we mainly just emphasize Heavenly Father by praying only to Him and almost always referring only to Him in scripture and gospel teaching.  But, I can see that perhaps the authors are suggesting, however subtly, that this almost purely patriarchal focus is one of the false traditions that we need to improve and that as a people, we will find the truths of the gospel more helpful and healing when we more fully embrace both Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother.  From a practical standpoint, I can certainly see how subtlety is often needed when a person (or two people in this case) want to suggest a way that our church could improve without appearing to be calling out our leaders for not having already taught the suggested improvement themselves. 

The second chapter, Double Catastrophe, goes into more detail about ways that these important truths were lost over the years.  One of the points I found most interesting in this chapter is that the authors explicitly disagree with the idea that the Reformation helped to pave the way for the Restoration, suggesting instead that key reformation doctrines actually moved us even further away from key truths in Christianity, increasing the gap between what was taught and what was true, and also laying the foundation for many false ideas who's influences have continued to seep into Latter Day Saint teachings since the restoration.  I find it interesting that the authors seem to want to lay the blame for any harmful or less loving teachings about the atonement, sin, and repentance in our church on false traditions that prevailed following the Reformation in spite of the fact that we experienced a restoration that was supposed to have the purpose of correcting those mistakes.  I guess perhaps they are suggesting that the restoration should and will correct all of those mistakes, but that these ideas are somehow still so clingy that this continues to be a work in progress, and thus the need for this book.

Chapters 3 and 4, Modern Liahonas and A New Language, seem pivotal as they clearly lay out a justification for and then an explanation of the direction for the rest of the book, which will be to redefine our vocabulary around words such as Salvation, Heaven, Fall,  Sin and Atonement, in light of restored truths.  The authors point out the prevailing assumption within Latter-day Saint culture that we can make all scriptures harmonize and that everything in the scriptures is true and accurate, and then point out some problems with that assumption.  The advise us to be more cautious in our assumptions about scriptural inerrancy in light of both explicit statements by modern prophets about errors in the Bible, as well as our understanding that in the restoration, as always, revelation comes to us imperfectly because we are imperfect.  The authors quote B. H. Roberts, who defines two sorts of saints:  those who defend the truths we have, and those who seek to "cooperate in the works of the spirit" in further developing our truths and enlarging our understanding and use of them.  Like B. H. Roberts, the authors are inviting us to become these second sorts of saints, as we seek to find more healing, more clear, and more hopeful ways of defining our language vocabulary around some of our key gospel doctrines.  I found this part of the book very well written and convincing, but I do still question how acceptable this approach will actually be to our church culture in general and specifically to our church leaders.  Certainly there have been many in the past who have attempted to go down similar paths with similar justifications and then found themselves involuntarily losing their membership in a church that has often, at least historically, prioritized unity of doctrine and conformity over individual truth searching and diversity of inspiration.

The balance of the book dives into specific topics and seeks to find ways to contrast views on these topics influenced by religious ideas from the reformation that the authors argue moved us further from original Christianity with views influenced by restoration scripture and thought, with an overriding goal of interpreting these principles focusing on our own eternal nature and potential for eternal progression and on the love God has for all of as because they are our Heavenly Parents.  I found some ideas I liked here:  heaven is divine relationships; sin should be viewed more as mistakes we make while striving to learn; the atonement is more about healing than redeeming, in part because the fall was more about progression than sin; we should focus more on helping others than on our own worthiness;  and, we should adopt truths from wherever we find them.  Also, the chapter on Judgement references The Good Place, so that was fun.  However, overall, I found two main problems that left me feeling that the book did not quite achieve its potential.  One, I did not find all of their ideas compelling in that they often seem to lack a convincing logical or philosophical underpinning.  For example, they want to make the purpose of Christ's atonement mainly about healing, but at least in my view, they never actually explain why he had to suffer or die in order to heal us.  Two, they cling to the idea that there is some sort of inherent flaws in us as humans.  For example, they write:

"We are 'whole from the foundation' of the world.  But as we come to live in a sphere where chaos reigns, ensouled in bodies subject to all that is "carnal" and "sensual", tempted by all that appeals to our biologically inherited natures, we taste the bitter fruit in order to learn to prize the sweet.  This process of reeducating our inclinations is one way to translate very literally repentance."

I find this attempt to divide what is us between our "pure" souls and our "sensual" bodies difficult to accept or use as a basis for any sort of theological conclusions.  I believe that we are, as humans, good both body and soul, and that our desires to learn, to belong, to love and be loved, for physical and emotional intimacy are all key to what makes us who we are.  I don't find it uplifting to take some of those parts of us and try to define them as the world that we need to try to overcome.  I like rather, to believe that we are all progressing, trying to become the best versions of ourselves while also fully accepting ourselves.