Come, Follow Me January 22-28: 1 Nephi 11-15
In 2024, the Maxwell Institute will offer a weekly series of short essays on the Book of Mormon, in support of the Church-wide Come, Follow Me study curriculum. Each week, the Maxwell Institute blog will feature a post by a member of the Institute faculty exploring an aspect of the week’s reading block. We hope these explorations will enrich your study and teaching of the Book of Mormon throughout the coming year.
Questions, Answers, and the Condescension of God
by Kristian Heal
A central theme of the small plates of Nephi is that God speaks to his children. The plates are filled with the ministering of angels, prophecies, and revelations. Appropriately, the last writer on the plates, Amaleki, ends the record by exhorting all “to come unto God, the Holy One of Israel, and believe in prophesying, and in revelations, and in the ministering of angels, and in the gift of speaking with tongues, and in the gift of interpreting languages, and in all things which are good” (Omni 1:25).
Perhaps the greatest revelation in the small plates is Nephi’s panoptic vision—the vision of all—recorded in 1 Nephi 11-14. This vision is an exegetical elaboration given to Nephi in response to his desire to “see, and hear, and know” for himself the things that his father saw (1 Nephi 10:17). The vision is a glorious description of the coming of Christ to the old world and the new, and of God’s work of salvation on the American continent up to the life of Joseph Smith. Two narratives intertwine. The first is about the condescension of God, and the second is about the scattering and gathering of the house of Israel and the salvation of the Gentiles. The first relates to the beautiful tree that Lehi saw (1 Nephi 8:10-12; 1 Nephi 11:13-25), the second is the allegory of the olive tree (1 Nephi 10:11-14; 1 Nephi 13:38-14:17, and explained in 1 Nephi 15:12-20).
The condescension of God is first mentioned in 1 Nephi 11:16-17, part of the exchange between Nephi and the angel: “And [the angel] said unto me: Knowest thou the condescension of God? And I said unto him: I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.” The angel uses an unusual phrase in his question, “condescension of God,” one that only occurs in this chapter of the Book of Mormon (Nephi picks up the idea again in his eponymous psalm but does not use this precise phrase; see 2 Nephi 4:26). This phrase would have resonated with the first readers of the Book of Mormon. As one contemporary author wrote, “If there be any pre-eminent indication of the heavenly origin of the Gospel, or if there be any attribute of the Deity which is there manifested with more glory than another, it is that of the love and tender condescension of God in the mysterious work of redemption.” (A Summary of Christian Instruction [1826], 95).
What strikes me, though, more than the interesting phrasing of the angel’s question, is Nephi’s answer. Nephi is being asked a tricky and seemingly unfair theological question. He surely is not expected to know the answer. The question, rather, has the rhetorical effect of focusing Nephi’s attention and preparing him to hear about “the goodness and the mysteries of God” that he desired so much to learn (1 Nephi 1:1; 1 Nephi 2:16). Nephi does not offer his own theological speculation in response to the angel’s question. He states what he is sure of—”I know that he loveth his children”—but he is also willing to confess his ignorance: “Nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.” This double confession helps prepare Nephi’s mind to receive greater light and knowledge from the angel. Each part of Nephi’s response is epistemically valuable, meaning that they each contribute to his acquisition of truth and knowledge. It is almost impossible to introduce new knowledge when someone is convinced they know the answer already. So, in confessing his ignorance, Nephi indicated that he was ready to learn. There are certainly times for theological speculation, and we even see it in the Book of Mormon (2 Nephi 2:17), but when we are in the presence of angels (or prophets), then the best state of mind is one of openness, of a willingness to learn.
However, I think there is even greater epistemic value in the first part of Nephi’s response. Nephi is not simply making a profound theological statement when he confesses that, “I know that [God] loveth his children.” It is not even that this is, indirectly, part of the answer to the question that the angel is asking—the beautiful tree and the condescension of God are, after all, about love (1 Nephi 11:21-22). What I mean by emphasizing the epistemic value of Nephi’s confession is that confidence in the love of God is crucial to recognizing and understanding God’s work in the world, especially the greatest work of all (John 3:16; Moses 1:39). Nephi’s confession of his knowledge of the love of God was not simply a nervous answer to a puzzling question. I see it more as Nephi’s declaration that he was ready to see and hear and know for himself God’s plan to save Lehi’s posterity and the whole world.
Ultimately, Nephi’s double answers point to a kind of theological negative capability. John Keats coined the term negative capability in a letter to a friend, defining it as that state when a person “is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” [1] For example, he considered it the state that enabled Shakespeare to produce such works of genius. I think that Nephi exhibits a theological negative capability because his confidence that God’s work of love was in action enabled him to persist in his uncertainties, to allow for doubts, and to accept that there were mysteries as yet unknown to him (“I do not know the meaning of all things”). And because Nephi was able to remain in this state of theological negative capability, the angel was able to teach him something entirely new and remarkably glorious about God and His work.
Sometimes certainty is a virtue. But a close reading of this section of scripture suggests that there are times when greater knowledge lies on the other side of uncertainty, mystery, and doubts. Following Nephi’s example, as we grow in our confidence in the love of God, we can develop a kind of theological negative capability. This will allow us to remain open enough for God to reveal further light and knowledge to us. This would seem to be a desirable capacity for a people who believe “all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God” (Articles of Faith 9).
[1] The classic discussion of negative capability is found in the tenth chapter of Walter Jackson Bate, John Keats (Harvard University Press, 1964). For a more recent study, see Li Ou, Keats and Negative Capability (Continuum, 2009).