Summary: Judgment as Prelude to Eternal Progress 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: You're making me think too of a little bit of a title. I wanted to pause on the title of the book and to have you both talk through why is it The Christ Who Heals? Why does that come forward for you as you're working through what the Restoration actually restores ... in terms of Christ? Terryl Givens: I was reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, which I think is one of the greatest novels of our lifetimes, and there's a line in there where a preacher notes the fact the Greek word for saving, sodzo, can also mean to heal. That was the trigger that got me thinking along these lines, so I went to the Greek text. I looked at how this word is being used in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It turns out that every time there's a healing, the woman with the issue of blood, the girl that dies, the man born blind, it's always sodzo. That's translated as healed. But if you look at every time the word save appears in the New Testament, it's from the same word, sodzo. In other words, you could, with just as much linguistic accuracy, translate the term Jesus Christ, healer of the world. In fact, that's how the word operated in German, das heiland, which means the healing place or the healing one. It seems to us, that there's a huge difference between conceiving of Christ's work as that of saving us from our sinful selves and healing us of the harm that we do to ourselves and to each other through poor choices. I was reading the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon at about the same time and came across what today is 1 Nephi 13, at which point Nephi is talking about the plain and precious parts that have been taken from the Bible. Fiona Givens: It's in verse 32, as I recall, isn't it? Terryl Givens: I think it's verse 32. There's this magnificent promise, which I think is a condensation of the whole Restoration, in this one line, that God will not forever suffer them to remain in their state of woundedness, because of the plain and precious parts that have been taken from the Bible. Fiona Givens: It's changed. Spencer Fluhman: A lot of readers are like, "I don't remember that verse." Terryl Givens: It's changed to “blindness, and then a Book of Mormon scholar thinks that it actually should be wickedness. I'm saying, "No, no, no. You're missing the point. You're going back to the Protestant school of thought." It is a verse of promise and mercy. The Lord is saying, "Look. It's not your fault those plain and precious things were gone." What plain and precious things? We think the plainness and precious things were the true nature of God the father, as a vulnerable God who weeps for our suffering. You take those things out, and we live in a life of fear and perpetual woundedness. The Lord is promising that through some mechanism, which we think is the restoration, "I will bring healing to that woundedness," which is another sign to us. This is what Krister Stendahl said. Krister Stendahl may not be a name familiar to everybody, but he was the Dean of Harvard Divinity School. He was a Lutheran bishop. He was one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century. He said, "Paul's preoccupation was not with his sinful self. It was with his weakness." Spencer Fluhman: Very different sense of the problem for the human condition, right? Terryl Givens: Very different from the Protestant narrative. Exactly. Now, there's this enormous movement of tremendous importance called the New Perspective on Paul Movement, which is coming to realize maybe we've been reading Paul wrong ever since Saint Augustine. Maybe, in fact, Paul wasn't obsessed with this human depravity, but he sees the greater problem as just our incapacity. Christ comes not to remedy this depraved, horrific condition, but to heal and nurture us and restore us to unity with ourselves, with each other, and with our father. Fiona Givens: I know some people are going to say, but I see a lot of that rhetoric in the restoration scriptures. Spencer Fluhman: Sure. salvation from sin. It's a prominent thing. Fiona Givens: Exactly. Then we have ... Is it section 76? 46, where [00:04:30] we have that idea of Christ, of, "I will take the sins upon me. I am the advocate with the father." Terryl Givens: 45. Section 45. Fiona Givens: Is it section 45? Terryl Givens: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Fiona Givens: What verse is it? Terryl Givens: First three verses. Fiona Givens: Okay, yeah. Thank you, darling. This idea ... You do see this idea of Christ behaving as a shield. For me, the restoration scriptures are transitional texts, in that they had to be written in 19th century religious rhetoric. Otherwise, nobody would have understood the language. Spencer Fluhman: Foreign. Yeah. Fiona Givens: They would be completely foreign. They'd be speaking a completely different language, so of course we're going to see remnants in that. Terryl Givens: This is where Brigham Young said, "If the Book of Mormon were translated today, it'd be translated in a different language." Fiona Givens: I was going to say that. There is this wonderful quote from Brigham Young that says, "If the Book of Mormon were written in any other century, it would be considerably different." It was written in the 19th century, in 19th century Protestant America, so we're going to find a lot of that language in there, but this is what is so crucial. We also find those transitional texts. I'm not sure why Joseph took out woundedness. It may have been his advisors were saying, "It doesn't work. It doesn't fit. What does it mean?” That's a 21st century word. We all understand. Spencer Fluhman: Or a knee-jerk reaction to ... It seems odd given its own cultural setting. We don't know. Fiona Givens: Exactly. Terryl Givens: There's a moment like that in Helaman, where Joseph feels awkward about the grammar, and so in 1837, he changes the grammar. We now know that the 1830 language was a perfect replication of Hebraic construction. He was insecure enough about his own grammar, his own language, that sometimes his edits were not always the best. Fiona Givens: That being said, we do have Moses 7. We do have Jacob 5, and those are the longest treatises depicting a vulnerable, weeping God that exists in all of religious Christian religious canon. Those are incredibly important. Then the idea that Terryl was talking about healing, I think, is really important when we see repeated the combination of good and evil. For example, after Adam and Eve partake of the fruit ... Nobody ever reads as far as Genesis three. They all think it's a done deal, but Genesis 3:22, God says, "They have become as one of us, knowing good and evil." If we use that in the Hebraic sense, it's experiencing good and evil. Now, this is the exact passage which western Christianity took and ran with and said obvious this was hubris, that they dared to become like God. Spencer Fluhman: Yeah. This was “the great sin.” Fiona Givens: This was the great sin. We are born into a wounded world, going back to 1 Nephi 13:32. It's not just sinful. It's wounded. Probably the most efficacious analogy, at least for me, is schizophrenia. A child is born. There's no evidence of schizophrenia. He grows up. The schizophrenia grows up with him. There's still no evidence that the child is thus encumbered until he turns 19 or 20, and then he starts hearing the voices in his head. So I think if we look at this ... We are born into a wounded world of wounded parents, that we're all carrying DNA and genetic dispositions that tend to, for example, depression, addiction, and one thing or another. Then I think we get a much greater understanding of what this is all about. This is more about suffering and how suffering sanctifies. We have Christ, this beautiful scripture of Christ, "I come with healing in my wings. Not only have I come to bring life, but I have come to bring life more abundantly, and I have come not to condemn." If he's not coming to condemn, then sin cannot be the major perspective of the theology. It cannot be what we are here for, but we all understand suffering. Terryl Givens: So, you've also raised the topic of judgment? Fiona Givens: Yes. Terryl Givens: So, that's another word that we think needs scrutiny. Judgment is from the Greek word krino, and a fuller, richer definition would be discernment, differentiation, distinction. That's what we see God Himself manifesting in the first days of creation. He separates. Everything is separated, Earth from water, from sky; man from woman, and then he judges it good. He recognizes these differentiations, these distinctions are what constitute divine activity. President Uchtdorf gave a talk recently in conference when he used judgment in a very unconventional way, when he said, "The day of judgment will be a day of mercy and healing." Now, we don't typically think of judgment as a day of healing. Spencer Fluhman: It's striking. Terryl Givens: That's right. Fiona Givens: It is. Terryl Givens: I think the key is in Paul, his epistle to the Corinthians, when he tells us that Jesus will judge us so that He need not condemn us. Judgment, as I understand, as we understand it's being used in both the Book of Mormon and in the New Testament, is that process by which we are brought to recognize distinctions and how they have operated in our lives, and in our character. Judgment, in this sense, is a prelude to further progress, so judgment is that process by which we are made to become aware of where we are, what yet needs to be done, what lies have we been telling ourselves, how have we been alienated from our true identities? Spencer Fluhman: It's self-realization in a way. Terryl Givens: It's self-realization. Yeah, and the Book of Mormon has this wonderful language about coming to a perfect knowledge [00:02:00] of themselves, right, and they'll have a perfect knowledge of their happiness is one phrase that is used. We think that judgment is much less threatening. Christ is very emphatic, right? "I don't come to judge the world. I don't come to condemn the world," even the woman caught in adultery. I judge in the sense of, "Go thy way and sin no more." This is a distinction that needs to be made, but it's not tied to condemnation. This isn't to say we don't sin. We're capable of doing really bad things. Spencer Fluhman: I was just going say it. I was just going to say, you're not denying the reality of evil. You're not denying the reality of sin, acting knowingly against God's will for your life. It's not to deny Christ as judge either, but what it does is it re-frames, ... Terryl Givens: Right. Spencer Fluhman: ... re-formats all of those words in that cosmic context of healing, of education, where the atonement is not simply a way to undo your sins and get you back to a kind of starting point. I mean, that's one way that Latter Day Saints could think wrong in a way. Instead it's transformative. Fiona Givens: Yes. Spencer Fluhman: It's educative. It's progressive, and you end the book with a kind of striking crescendo where that educative, progressive, developmental sense of Christ's mission for humanity doesn't end. It's kind of striking. Talk us through that. Judgment is reframed in a particular way, and can be for the Latter Day Saints. Terryl Givens: Joseph F. Smith, as prophet, gives this magnificent expression when he said that, "Christ's work wasn't finished when He died on the cross, and it isn't finished today. He continues His work, and it will continue to go on until the entire human family is fully redeemed." Joseph Smith taught, very clearly and explicitly, that progress is eternal, and there's a marvelous moment that occurs. If we start with Section 76, when he has a vision of the terrestrial world, and he sees the terrestrial world as inhabited by those who received not the witness of Christ in the flesh, those who were not baptized, didn't go through the ordinances of salvation. He had lost his brother, Alvin, in 1823. He never, never fully recovered from that loss, and he knows now there's some comfort Alvin will be in the terrestrial kingdom. Then, six years later, in 1838, he has the vision of the celestial kingdom. Spencer Fluhman: It's a very different picture of Alvin. Terryl Givens: It's a very different picture, and he's shocked, and he tells us in the first verse of the scripture, I was amazed. There's my brother, Alvin, and he's in the celestial kingdom. Spencer Fluhman: How could he be here? Terryl Givens: How could he be here? That's where we believe he first came to understand that progress is eternal. Contemporaries of Joseph Smith recorded him giving public sermons in which he was very explicit about this, that progress is eternal. This is why I think it was B. H. Roberts who first used the term eternal progress, eternal progressivism. Hyrum Smith taught the same thing, Brigham Young, Lorenzo Snow, Joseph F. Smith, they all taught that God never shuts the door on our salvation. Elder Hales, recently deceased, gave a beautiful talk five or six years ago in which he pled with the parents of the church. He said, "Please, never, never, never shut the door of your hearts to your children." Fiona Givens: Elder Packer said that, "There is no sin, no sin that we can commit that is not beyond the bounds of complete, and full, forgiveness." Terryl Givens: We are convinced that ... The historical record makes clear, this isn't speculation. The historical record makes clear that Joseph believed in a God who never shut the door on His children. It would seem that history bears record of every prophet, up through the 1950s, teaching that same principle. In the 1950s and 60s, there were dissident voices on that subject heard in the church, and when the First Presidency was appealed to, on two different occasions, by members of the church to arbitrate the dispute, the Secretary to the First Presidency responded by saying, "This is not a point of settled doctrine." There is no official position as to what is the meaning of final judgment. All we are saying is that the historical record suggests that Joseph's understanding, and as I said that of every other prophet up to the 1950s, was that progress is eternal. Only if we have a complete, and unqualified, knowledge of all things, and in the face of that brilliance of the sun at noonday reject Christ's offer do we qualify to be a son of perdition. Fiona Givens: Most of us are making decisions under incredible duress, and simply ... Terryl Givens: Compromised will. Fiona Givens: ... cannot see. Yes, it is to a certain extent. Then, I think it leads [00:07:00] much greater emphasis to this idea of healing, and of mercy. I was asked once by a BYU student...we had been discussing Julian of Norwich, who is one of my greatest heroines, talking about God's absolute love, her absolute love. In fact, "It's so absolute," she says, "it does not matter whether we be foul, or clean, God loves us with absolute love equally." This young man put up his hand and he said, "Well, what about judgment?" I paused, and I asked him, I said, "How do you feel when you hear the word judgment?" He says, "I feel fear. I am afraid." I responded by saying, "If you feel fear that is not God speaking." This is what is so beautiful about our theology is that we worship a God who chose to love us absolutely, and made Himself vulnerable, and it is through this vulnerability and loeve that He has the power to draw all mankind to Him. That I find is so beautiful, radically resonant. Terryl Givens: We sometimes use the analogy of the school teacher, and we think that Latter Day Saints have too often been misled into thinking there are only two options, right. We believe in the sweet schoolmarm ... Spencer Fluhman: Who Let's anything go. Terryl Givens: ... who lets anything go. "I'm gonna pass you all." Give everybody a pass (the false universalism identified in the Book of Mormon) or you've got the strict disciplinarian school teacher who, "No, you studied to take the exam, and if you fail, you fail, and you're out." We believe there's a third way, and that is the God who's the ever-patient tutor, who commits to us and says, "I will never forsake you, and I will do whatever it takes until you master this material, and are transformed by it." That's the God that we believe Joseph Smith restored. Fiona Givens: I think this sort of emphasizes our point that given all of these handicaps, so-to-speak, with which we are all working, then judgment cannot be final. If we consider our spirits to be eternal, to be coexistent with God, and for us to become like God, then there have to be many, many stages. This is one of them. Mortal life is a particularly brutal stage, which is why God promised, "I'll make sure it's short," because it's particularly painful. It's also a crucible. Our daughter, Rachel, quoted this, this idea of this crucible being able to refine. What is her exact quote? Terryl Givens: Alchemized. Fiona Givens: Yes. Terryl Givens: Our suffering can be alchemized into something sanctified. Fiona Givens: That the Godhead has the power to alchemize our suffering into something beautiful, so it is only by our patience being challenged, our love being challenged, our mercy being challenged in very real, and personal, and painful ways that we can actually learn what it means to be patient, loving, and merciful. That's going to take a long time, far beyond, far beyond ... Terryl Givens: James Talmage in The House of the Lord, he said, "If we believe in eternal progression then we have to believe in eternal repentance," because that means to continually revise our conduct, our attitude. Fiona Givens: It's not repentance in the negative way, it's education, you know. Got that sum wrong so let's try a different equation. It's never under threat, and it's never under coercion. I think that hangs over us, definitely as Protestants but, unfortunately, even as Mormons, this idea that there's this almost coercive element that if you don't do exactly what I say ... Again, Elder Uchtdorf was so brilliant. He said, "Obedience for obedience sake is not a thing.” Terryl Givens: That is why we love Kenneth Kirk, who's my favorite Anglican theologian. He said, "Three things are true of God's love ..." He said, "First God's love frees the giver," because you give without expectation of return. "It frees the recipient," because you're under no contractual obligation. But he said, "Most importantly, the third thing that is true of love is that in the end it's irresistible. Nothing can withstand the force and power of an overwhelming love." That's why we think it's very, very deliberate, and inspired that the Book of Mormon uses the word “draw” so often. We are drawn to Christ. We are drawn. Fiona Givens: In section 121, you know, the power of the Priesthood, which is ... Spencer Fluhman: Not coercive. Fiona Givens: Yes. Spencer Fluhman: It's not about dominion. Fiona Givens: It's not about dominion. It's not coercive. Spencer Fluhman: The power rests in ... Christ's power has everything to do with me wanting to follow. Fiona Givens: Exactly, exactly. If Christ's power is that way then so is God the Father's, and so is God the Mother. It is not a coercive power. It's a drawing, eventually, of all their children back home to them. I don't think any other religious text has that quite so unambiguously as ours does, particularly [00:12:30] section 121. In fact, you know, amen to the priesthood of that person who attempts, even attempts, to coerce one of my children. Anyways, that's what we found so absolutely beautiful is finding these resonances. What exactly is it that Joseph is restoring, because when we go back in the Western tradition, none of it's very happy. I mean, we start off with this aside with Augustine. There's no free will, and there's only imputed grace. There is nothing you can do of yourselves, good or bad, and then it's like Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli are Augustine on crack. It's like God plans everything, the good, and evil, so suddenly we've turned God into a monster. I think with all of these competing ideas in our minds, for me, especially, it was so beautiful to discover the early Greek church fathers, the early church fathers. They are post-apostolic, immediately, and the Christian church was birthed in the East, not in the West. We tend to think it's in the West, but in the East, and find those radical resonances with Mormonism. It gave me a greater understanding, "Okay, this is what Joseph is restoring." It is magnificent. It is empowering. It is all-embracing. Terryl Givens: If I can just circle back by way of conclusion to the first question, what generated this book? What did we hope to achieve with it? We live in the midst of a great series of forces, and influences, hostile to faith. We are in the midst of many thousands of people struggling with their testimony and their spiritual journeys, and we believe that Mormonism is so rich, so interesting. It's got so much stuff going on, gold plates, and angels, and meso America, and books of Abraham, and we can get distracted from the foundation. It's our belief that to come to know the true Christ of the Restoration is to have the only testimony that is absolutely impregnable to the assaults of secularism and the modern world. We were trying to rediscover for ourselves the Christ of the Restoration. Spencer Fluhman: Terryl, Fiona, we've talked about some rich theological perspectives. You've given us a kind of history lesson from a very complex past for the Christian tradition. You've shown us how the Restoration does just that, restores some things that are beautiful, shown us all sorts of ways that this can enrich our approach to the scriptures, our own approach to the atonement. I'm wondering if you could each think and briefly give us a thought on, in practical terms, Latter Day Saint picks up the book, reads it, what do you hope they take away practically from these ideas about Christ as healer, etc.? Practically, what do you hope they take away from it? Terryl Givens: As a parent, I think that all those in the church who have experienced parenthood know, there's no way on Earth that a repentant 25-year-old son would come begging at their home's door to be greeted with the words, "I'm sorry, you had your chance, and the door shuts." I think that what we have tried to rediscover is the reality of a Christ who could no more do that to His children than we could to ours, and that the Christ of the Restoration resonates with those experiences that we actually live through, as parents, and children, and a test to the reality of the nature that we have tried to recuperate through Joseph Smith's teachings. Spencer Fluhman: Fiona? Fiona Givens: Joseph once said that he was empowered to be better, to do better when people treated him with kindness, and gentleness, rather than when he was rebuked, or admonished severely, and I feel the same way in my life that ... When I think of us all struggling under the crosses, which we all bear, to be greeted with absolute love. "I know you're struggling. I am here." I was in Italy last week and [00:17:30] this beautiful institute instructor, Ugo Perego, talked about comforter, and he said, "In Latin it's come cum forte--with strength." For me that was so lovely. It's like I come with healing, and that healing is strengthening. It will strengthen you to take that next step forward, and that next step forward. Not only will it do that, but it will empower you to be able to see in times of your lives, sometimes our pain is so deep that we cannot see anything around us, but when those times come when it is not so that we turn and we reach out to each other as we're struggling beneath our crosses under that absolute love, and that constant, "Well done, my good and faithful servant. Keep trying. Keep trying. Keep coming. Keep coming." Those resonate really beautifully for me, those words. Spencer Fluhman: Beautiful. Thanks to you both. Fiona Givens: Thank you. Terryl Givens: Thanks, Spencer. Fiona Givens: Thank you, Spencer. Fiona Givens: We hope you enjoyed this conversation. Over the coming month, Terryl Givens will be sitting down with some of the most fascinating and influential people in Mormonism. To watch or listen in on those conversations, please be sure to subscribe to the Conversations With Terryl Givens Podcast on iTunes, or [00:19:00] wherever you access podcasts. You can also visit faithmatters.org and subscribe to this and other fascinating podcasts there.
