Summary: Reclaiming Truths Lost to Western Christianity INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT Fiona Givens: This is Fiona Givens. My husband Terryl and I recently sat down in studio with our friend Spencer Fluhman, Executive Director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute at BYU, to talk about ideas and themes from our new book, The Christ Who Heals. We hope you enjoy the conversation. Spencer Fluhman: I'm Spencer Fluhman, Executive Director at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute at BYU, and I'm here with my friends, Terryl and Fiona Givens. We're here to talk [00:00:30] about some important things. They're the authors of The Christ Who Heals: How God Restored the Truth that Saves Us. Terryl, Fiona, this is a beautiful book. Fiona Givens: Thank-you. Terryl Givens: Thank-you, Spencer. Spencer Fluhman: It's a beautiful book. This is not the first book you've co-written together. You wrote The God Who Weeps. You wrote The Crucible of Doubt. What brought about the third? Terryl Givens: The question that really guided the writing in this book was I think best framed by Fiona when we ... We'd been talking about this for a few years, doing a book on the Christ. She said there's a reason question that we need to think about and answer is what does the Latter-day Saint restoration bring to the table when it comes to the Christ? Because if we really worship the same Christ as the Christian world does, then the whole restoration would have been redundant. If all Joseph was doing was tinkering with the details around the periphery. So we had to believe, no, there have to be some fundamental elements of Christology that we're just missing, misunderstood or distorted, that Joseph Smith set to rights. We set about to methodically answer that question, the book took shape. Spencer Fluhman: Give us a little history lesson, would you? 'Cause you start the book with a description of a kind of crisis that divides the Christian community basically in half between an eastern half and a western half. This starts early, it culminates around 1054 formally. But over these years a division happens, and you think this is important for Latter-day Saints to understand. It's not just a history lesson- Fiona Givens: Right. Spencer Fluhman: It has to do with the need for the restoration. Tell us about it. Fiona Givens: It's absolutely essential that we understand. I'm not quite sure where I read this, but the mantra for the eastern Orthodox tradition and actually for all of Christianity in the east was, " For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all made alive." It's made very apparent in the liturgy of the eastern Orthodox church that it was death and resurrection rather than sin and salvation around which the theology formed. There are missteps right at the get-go. We have Irenaeus who lived about 200 AD. The Christians were under attack, literally. They were accused of worshiping two Gods, therefore violating the idea of monotheism. They were worshiping Jesus Christ and the Father. So as to not collapse into this idea of a plurality of Gods, they were forced to save themselves, literally, to adopt the Neoplatonic model of an impassable God, and then a God who didn't mind working with matter. But primarily in the early eastern tradition, we find that the theological discourse resonates so much more with Mormonism than anything in the west, particularly from Augustine on. Would you not agree? Terryl Givens: Yeah, and I think that most Latter-day Saints when they talk about Christianity, what they really mean is western Christianity. To back up even a little bit from what Fiona was saying, what we're trying to point out first of all is “Wait a minute, there were really two Christianities.” There was the western and the eastern tradition. The eastern tradition has just kind of disappeared mostly from our consciousness in the west. What we're saying is that the more you plumb the early Christian Fathers in the east, you find these incredible resonances, and echoes, and similarities to restoration teachings. So what we find is that to read many of these church Fathers, like Origen and- Fiona Givens: Irenaeus. Terryl Givens: Irenaeus, and the Gregorys of Nyssa and Nazianzus, is to hear a familiar voice, and to recognize that the apostasy took much later to take effect and didn't go as far in eastern tradition. So we really find our kindred spirits in Christianity more in the eastern Christian tradition than anywhere else. Spencer Fluhman: Well- Fiona Givens: Sorry. Spencer Fluhman: Go on, please. Fiona Givens: In part it's terribly exciting because some of the quotations and the very positive way in which not only God was viewed by the possibility of mankind to become like God...there are echoes of Joseph, or echoes of the eastern church in Joseph, to such an extent that some of the quotations from Joseph are almost verbatim. It is unlikely, at least we've not seen any evidence, that Joseph had access to the early Greek texts, and yet it's quite extraordinary how closely aligned that the theological thought of early Mormonism and of early eastern Christianity are meshed. Spencer Fluhman: You're pointing to what I was hoping for. Think through, both of you, a couple of examples maybe from each of these early church Fathers who aren't recognized in the west. What are these resonances? What are some examples that you could provide for us of kindred spirits that Latter-day Saints might sense in some of these early eastern Fathers? Terryl Givens: Okay, I'll start with Origen. He's sometimes called the very first theologian or systematic theologian in the church, writing in the first couple centuries. He taught, for example, that the spirit of man is eternal. That we lived in a premortal state with God. That we come here for purposes of education. He taught that the fall was part of a divine plan. That sin is more collateral damage than a sign of catastrophic failure. Of Adam and Eve being in the garden. He taught that God had in mind to find a way to redeem and save the entire human family, and that God would find a way to bring all people back to his immediate presence. He was hugely influential in the first five Christian centuries. Then it wasn't until the sixth century that he's declared heretical and anathematized for his teachings on pre-existence and on God's generous and inclusive heaven. Joseph Smith seems [00:08:30] almost to be channeling Origen in his teachings on both topics. Fiona Givens: It's interesting that most of Origen's works were destroyed along with anathema. It's only through one of his disciples that we have these sort of scattered remnants of his thoughts. For me, I've been particularly influenced by Irenaeus. The traditional western conception of the fall is that it was a tragedy starting from Augustine onwards that we suffered from this hubris and wanted to become like God. So we were cast out and we fell. Essentially, Christ came in to repair the damage of fallen humanity, whereas in the east it was very different and very Mormon in fact. I'd like to quote from Irenaeus about the experience, particularly of mortality. So he says, "How could mankind have discerned the good without knowing its opposite? For its first hand experience is more certain and reliable than conjecture. The mind acquires knowledge of the good through the experience of both, and becomes more firmly committed to preserving it by obeying God. First, by penance...metanoia, change of heart. He rejects disobedience because it is bitter." That has really struck me because in Moses 6:55, that is exactly [ how God defines sin. They need to taste the bitter in order to prize the good. It's extraordinary. Then he talks about, "This, then, was the great-heartedness of God. He allowed humankind to endure all things and to come to know death so that mankind might come to the resurrection from the dead. That humankind might learn by experience what it had been freed from, and be always grateful to the Lord." It's just extraordinary. The other thing that I think is so important for us is that he recognized that Adam and Eve were young, that they were children in the light of the fact that they didn't understand deception. They had never been exposed to deception or lies. That mortality was a season for them to progress, to develop the maturity to return them to God in a more godly form than they were in the Garden of Eden. Terryl Givens: This is almost like that familiar spirit speaking out of the dust that we usually associate with the Book of Mormon. But we hear that familiar spirit. It's beautiful because it's so resonant coming from these early Christian Fathers of the east. Spencer Fluhman: I'm struck that what this presents for Latter-day Saint readers is a very ... It's a recognizable story in a way. There's something lost here. There's something lost, there's a need for a restoration. Spencer Fluhman: It's not like at a certain point you say, "Well, the lights went out, and it's all wreckage after that." What you show is this kind of layered, and kind of complicated story of some ideas rising and falling in others. One of the things you both write that I wondered if you could speak to, is that, in a way, you say, It's not just that individual doctrines somehow get corrupted, but you say that there's a cosmic context for all sorts of doctrines that gets skewed through these historical processes of some teachings lose out. What happens? Terryl Givens: This is one of our major ambitions, really, in this book, is we're trying to kind of reset the narrative. We feel that we have been so much raised, indoctrinated, in the protestant heritage that we still think very much in terms of protestant models and understandings of our place here on Earth, and the nature of salvation and Christ in our lives. We're saying we've got to scrap all of that. Grace, for example, erupts not on Calvary, when Christ decides to right a broken covenant. From a Mormon perspective, grace erupts in the universe when Christ emerges in the preexistent Council in Heaven, and says, "I will step forward and make possible this planned ascent of the human family to Godliness." In that context, then, death becomes a necessary part of the process. In fact, it's significant, and in the 1851 edition of the Pearl of Great Price, the wording indicates that by the fall of man came human life. That's a paraphrase, but it's not death that’s introduced, it's human life, because Adam and Eve's decision makes possible the entry of the entire human family into mortality. It recalibrates everything, and instead of seeing Christ's work as an attempt to recuperate an original condition of bliss or righteousness, we see Christ's role as that of shepherding us along the process which was planned from the beginning, is still intact, and still unfolding according to his designs. That's what we mean about the larger cosmic narrative, understanding that the new and everlasting covenant is a wholistic covenant that begins in the premortal councils in heaven, and continues until the end of time. Fiona Givens: The wonderful thing about Mormonism... the term “saviors on Mount Zion, is quite familiar to us, and I think that's very helpful for what Terryl and I have been exploring in this particular part. I understand that in the early church, the baptismal covenants of Mosiah were actually articulated aloud, and I rather wished they still were. Terryl Givens: At the time of baptism? Fiona Givens: Yes, at the time of baptism, because they are so powerful. For me to have been able to stand and say, " I covenant with you, that I will carry your burdens. I covenant with you that I will mourn with you when you mourn. I covenant with you that I will comfort when you are in need of comfort," and then we read that as we make these covenants, then we become adopted by Christ. But when we're adopted by Christ, we're adopted by Christ's family, and then when one looks at the three members of the Godhead, they are all present in that covenant: The God who weeps (Moses 7:29), many of holiness: God the Father. The God who carries our burdens is Christ carrying our sufferings, and being the co-sufferer, and the God who comforts is the Holy Spirit. For me, this makes this divine plan so much more universal, and so much more powerful than any other theology I have encountered. Terryl Givens: We think one of the disasters of reformation thought was that God becomes sovereign, and this is one of Carolyn's favorite words. He is the author of everything that exists, and everything that happens, and Christ increasingly becomes relegated for the role of defending us against the Father's wrath. Spencer Fluhman: Kind of a buffer. Terryl Givens: Yes, the buffer. Fiona Givens: Exactly. He's the shield. Terryl Givens: So as Fiona said, what is so beautiful about Mormon thought is that the three are recuperated into this collaborative entity, where they all work together, contributing toward the same end, rather than positing this radical dichotomy, where we're protected by Christ from the Father's wrath, which is a terrible way to think about the Father, but it's the God of Jonathan Edwards that in some way still infiltrates Mormon thinking about judgment, and hell. Fiona Givens: Which is unfortunate, because I think it's a beautifully elaborated in the Pearl of Great Price, and the book of Moses, and particularly in Abraham, where you have this idea of councils, and it's emphasized again and again, I think, in two verses, four times. "As we counseled, as we counseled, as counseled," so this idea that Christ and God could not possibly be working against each other, this idea that God is holding us like spiders, he can't wait to throw us all into hell, and Christ is fighting against his Father desperately to save us. Terryl Givens: Just today in a class that I was visiting on campuses, a student objected to what I was saying, and he said, "But Jesus does save me from the Father's wrath. He does protect me from His justice," and I thought, "Well, that's not my God." Fiona Givens: That is very protestant, Puritan. One of the reasons why we wrote this book is that we feel that we are almost saturated, if not indoctrinated by this protestant view, because Mormonism was birthed in radically protestant America. Spencer Fluhman: Yes, the air that they all breathed, right? It's the language. Fiona Givens: It is exactly. I think it's very interesting, that very few Catholics joined Mormonism. It was primarily protestants, and they brought with them ... Unfortunately, it's still in our sensibilities, this idea of a wrathful, vengeful God, that judgment is something absolutely awful, and that we might be separated from those whom we love the most. When our children are singing in primary, “families can be together forever.” I think it creates this dreadful, cognitive dissonance, which could easily be displaced if we understood that there was another theology that was much more optimistic, that talked about man's eternal progression to become like God, and that God's continual working with us so that we pass through each schoolroom, rather than this idea of this wrathful, vengeful God, who can't wait to deposit us all into some very uncomfortable realm, and Christ acting as a mediator, but often failing in the end. Spencer Fluhman: I'm struck, too, by the way in which you've shown us how a larger restoration frame for understanding some of these doctrines, not only repositions baptism as adoption, that this really comes forward, but it also, by emphasizing the collaborative nature of individual divine beings, we actually get a clearer sense of their unity. We weren't expecting that emphasis on collaboration and individual identities within the Godhead would end up resolving that problem of pitting the Father and the Son [against each other, in whatever metaphor we want to make of that.
