Come, Follow Me July 15-21: Alma 30-31
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.
Foolishness and Covenant Knowledge
By Jennifer C. Lane
We often focus on Korihor’s worldview. We zoom in on his shift between agnosticism and atheism. Another way to approach this text is to examine how Korihor frames the church. Paul taught that the wisdom of God is foolishness to the world (see 1 Corinthians 2:14). Seeing what looks foolish in the eyes of the world can help us more fully appreciate that which is wisdom in God’s eyes. When we see the fault lines, we see what distinguishes a life of faith, no matter how foolish it may seem.
It’s striking to consider the verbs Korihor uses. He wants to rile up the believers. When read against the grain of Korihor’s skepticism and resentment, the very terms that he uses to mock the church may, in negative, show us their power. He talks about the people “being bound down under a foolish and a vain hope” and asks, “Why do ye yoke yourselves with such foolish things?” Specifically, “Why do ye look for a Christ?” (Alma 30:13).
Within these disdainful terms, we see key concepts of covenant connection. We do bind ourselves to Christ with covenant. We do take upon ourselves His yoke. Yet this framework for living is easily derided. It is foolishness to the world because being bound and yoked seems to be the opposite of freedom. The paradox of freedom through obedience and service can be known and understood only through experience.
Here we come to the question of knowledge that Korihor raises when he taunts the believers, “Behold, ye cannot know of things which ye do not see; therefore ye cannot know that there shall be a Christ” (Alma 30:15). There is a way to know God, but it is different from sense knowledge, the only kind of knowledge Korihor accepts. Yet the way to know God still is an experiential form of knowledge, one that is pointed to by King Benjamin: “How knoweth a man a master he has not served?” (Mosiah 5:13) Earlier in Alma 30, we are told, “if a man desired to serve God, it was his privilege; or rather, if he believed in God it was his privilege to serve him” (Alma 30:9). Desire and belief lead to serving God and thus knowing God. So, when we come back to Korihor’s strategy of belittling the idea of living to serve God, we see that Korihor is essentially undermining how people could come to know Him.
In addition to undermining a lived relationship of service and obedience to God, other means of knowing God—prophetic teachings and repentance—also come under attack from Korhior. By eroding confidence in both prophets and repentance, Korihor seeks to weaken the means by which people could know spiritual truth and see the falsity of his claims. The prophetic witness of Christ is scorned as a thing “which ye say are handed down by holy prophets, behold, they are foolish traditions of your fathers” (Alma 30:14).
Korihor asks, “How do ye know of [the] surety [of the prophecies of Christ]?” and then inadvertently points to the means by which we can know—accepting the prophetic witness of Christ and its call to repentance. Korihor’s rejection of faith unto repentance ironically points to its importance: “Ye look forward and say that ye see a remission of your sins” (Alma 30:16). The experience of feeling forgiveness and divine love in repentance is one of the most powerful witnesses we have of Christ’s reality. Thus, Korihor has to give an alternate explanation for the experience that brings that knowledge of Christ. “But behold, it is the effect of a frenzied mind; and this derangement of your minds comes because of the traditions of your fathers, which lead you away into a belief of things which are not so” (Alma 30:16).
At that point, we get a summary of Korihor’s teachings, “many more such things did he say unto them, telling them that there could be no atonement made for the sins of men” (Alma 30:17). Korihor sought to reframe life as disconnected from God—without divine help or accountability. Without belief in Christ as our Creator, Redeemer, and Judge, Korihor led people to “lift up their heads in their wickedness,” living a life that wasn’t responsible to God—“telling them that when a man was dead, that was the end thereof” (Alma 30:18).
When Korihor stands before the chief judge, these issues again come to the fore. Alma asks him, “Why do you go about perverting the ways of the Lord?” (Alma 30:22) “Why do ye teach this people that there shall be no Christ, to interrupt their rejoicings? Why do ye speak against all the prophecies of the holy prophets?” (v.22)
By reframing the call to worship as “foolish” rather than loving and inspired, Korihor keeps people from the knowledge of the Lord (see Alma 30:23). He offers an alternative explanation for leaders’ motives: “I do not teach this people to bind themselves down under the foolish ordinances and performances which are laid down by ancient priests, to usurp power and authority over them, to keep them in ignorance, that they may not lift up their heads, but be brought down according to thy words” (Alma 30:23).
Here we come back to the central issue that makes the wisdom of God look foolish to the world: “Ye say that this people is a free people. Behold, I say that they are in bondage” (Alma 30:24). Christ’s deliverance from sin and the fall is rejected as a dream, whim, vision, and pretended mystery (see Alma 30:28). Christ’s offer of covenant freedom is recast as bondage to priests “who do yoke them according to their desires” (Alma 30:28).
Yet what Alma knew, by personal experience, is that it is only by walking in the Lord’s way that we can come to know Him. The prophets’ witness of Christ and their call to repentance is a call to know the Lord.
IMAGES
Joan Layton Merrell, All Things Denote There is a God, 2012. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/all-things-denote-there-is-a-god/].
James H. Fullmer, Korihor, 2004. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/korihor].
Walter Rane, All Things Denote There Is a God (Alma and Korihor), 2003. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/all-things-denote-there-is-a-god-alma-and-korihor/].
