Book of Mormon Studies Podcast: 3rd, 4th Nephi Scholarship with Jennifer Lane

Rosalynde Welch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Maxwell Institute Book of Mormon Studies podcast. I am Rosalynde Welch. I'm the host of this podcast and I'm joined today by my colleague and my friend Jennifer Lane. Dr. Lane is a research associate here at the Maxwell Institute. In fact, her office is right next to mine. Nevertheless, we're still recording this separately. Dr. Lane is a wonderful colleague and a wonderful scholar. She has studied temples and sacred space, and recently she's been looking into the idea of medieval pilgrimage and Franciscan spirituality. So, we are so, so happy to have you with us today on the podcast, Jennifer, welcome.

Jennifer Lane: Thank you, Rosalynde. It's a privilege to be here. I'm excited.

Welch: Today we are going to be reviewing a few of the most interesting and important, as we judge it, pieces of scholarship on the books of Third and Fourth Nephi. As I've said often on this podcast, when I read academic treatments of the Book of Mormon written by interested and faithful readers of the Book of Mormon, I often find that it opens my mind in new ways. It gives me new ideas, new tools, new lenses on the Book of Mormon in a way that makes it exciting and fresh for me to read as a believer for devotional purposes. And so, my hope with this whole podcast and with this episode is to bring some ideas to your study of third and fourth Nephi in a way that will open your eyes to it and make it more meaningful to you.

So, we're going to start out today with what I think is actually a very, very important reading and treatment of some of these early chapters in the book of 3rd Nephi that can be a little harder to read and a little harder to make sense of. So, Jennifer, I'm going to turn it over to you to walk us through this important book and book chapter.

Lane: Thank you, Rosalynde. So, what I'm going to be discussing here is a volume that came out just a couple of years ago from both Maxwell Institute and Deseret book called, Proclaim Peace: The Restoration's Answer to an Age of Conflict. There you go. And this by Patrick Mason and John David Pulsifer. And I'm gonna focus particularly on chapter seven, “The Conundrum of Divine Violence.” And so, this is Book of Mormon scholarship in this chapter in a pretty focused way because it deals with, as you mentioned, some of the issues surrounding chapter eight and nine leading up to the arrival of Christ, the temple of Bountiful and the destruction, and how do we think about that? How do we make sense of it?

And so, this scholarship is part of a larger work, of course, from the perspective of peace and conflict resolution scholars. And so, they're trying to develop, and I think it's an interesting argument, important argument that they make from scripture for human nonviolence. So, Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’s Answer, that there's a message here for us from scripture. But to do that, they also must wrestle with scriptural accounts of divine violence.

And so of course they start, and I appreciate this, they start the chapter with a very emphatic witness of God's love. God's love for all his children, whether they're children who are destroyed or not destroyed one way or another, this is not in question. And I think for all of us that is a foundation of understanding God's nature. But then they ask the question then, because for them typically love leads to non-violence. And here we have to try to think, well, we know God loves his children. And so not knowing the meaning of all things, like how do we think about this?

So that's sort of their puzzle, because they have this vision of love leading to non-violence, but yet we know God loves his children. And then we have these places where God says that he is acting in a way that seems to them to be counter of this moral obligation to not kill. And so, this is how they frame, this is particular to this discussion where I think a lot of people get--struggle with third Nephi eight and nine. They frame it as the most vexing case of this issue. And they set this up as a contradiction. So, this is again, another quote from them: “such divine violence provides one of the most significant challenges to both the theology of a compassionate and merciful God and a human ethic of nonviolence. So. particularly in this account, the epic scope of the devastation raises epic questions. If God is love, how can he be directly responsible for such cataclysmic and targeted destruction?”

So, they take this chapter to tease out this larger question, but this particular instance in the third Nephi really brings it to the fore. And so they suggest an explanation or what's implied here. And this is, you know, where they're trying to struggle through, these are ways people have framed it, but should we think about it this way? And so they ask, well, mass destruction may prove God's power in life, he should be feared, but is this a God whom we should love and trust? if God can commit violence, can we commit violence? And then, and what I really, having framed the question this way about retributive violence and is this telling us something about the way we should act?

They are really trying to respect the scriptural, the integrity of these accounts, but also think through like what is going on. So, I love this passage here. Um, you know, where they, they speak to people who say, well, would it just throw it out? We don't, it doesn't count as scripture. And this is their response:

While we appreciate the peace loving impulse behind this perspective, we feel that the scriptural record of divine violence is too abundant to simply dismiss, even for reasons we may personally sympathize with. As believers, it is important for us to preserve the integrity of scripture as a faithful, though not flawless”-- and of course, with some accounts in the Old Testament, it's harder to know how historical is it, but a --”faithful, though not flawless, witness of God's character and his dealings with his children. We believe that while not all scripture passages carry equal weight, a serious theological prose must elucidate a set of principles or standards by which readers can determine, based on more than personal preference, which passages are truly determinative for Christian theology.

And so, this frames their chapter, and they're then going to try and develop these principles where, like, how can we think about this? And they're starting from the premise that we are going to accept, and this, again, I have to admire in that part, that God does or can employ by all means divine violence. And that if we accept that, then they go on to stress, which I also preach, that does not give humans the license to do the same. So we don't want to encourage people to go and feel like they're this embodiment of the wrath of God, which I think is a misunderstanding with the wrath of God just to start with, but it certainly has led to human action that isn't in harmony with God's will.

So, I just want to bring back to some sort of a key points I think for me that are helpful. One of course is that their key message is how do we live following Christ and the condescended God. And so, their sort of thesis statement at the very end is saying, “We have asserted latter-day Saint theology, ethics, hermeneutics should be centered on the nonviolent life, teachings, ministry, and atonement of Jesus Christ. Any alternative approach has the burden of explaining why Jesus should be decentered and what ought to be put in its place as the lens through which we should read and evaluate all scripture.”

But having done that, again, this is where I do admire their integrity, is that they're not throwing out accounts, but instead trying to find ways to think through. And they list four points, I think, and I'll just end with those four points, in their efforts to reconcile scriptural text with the position they have on violence, which is a very serious commitment to human nonviolence. That point is, and as the way they started this chapter, God always retains a perfect love for his children against whom he acts. So, taking seriously, and I think the Book of Mormon gives us every reason to take seriously, we see 2nd Nephi 26, that everything that God does, he does out of love. He doeth nothing saves be for the benefit of his children. So we have to start with that assumption. This is who God is, that is his nature.

Lane: He's always acting out of love. We may not understand why, but to start with that as a premise, I think, is a good starting point. So that's their first point.

Their second point is that God weeps at human disobedience and death. And of course, we have powerful accounts of that from the Pearl of Great Price. And that human death makes God sad. Human sin makes God sad, things come to the point where humans are dying and even at God's hands makes God sad. So, he's weeping at human disobedience and death.

The third point, and I love this, but I think they could have developed it even more because it's such a powerful point. It's from section 138, the restoration teaching that all who suffer from divine violence, and this is everybody, right? Including those who suffer from divine violence, are not only resurrected through the grace of Christ, but also given opportunities for repentance and redemption after their mortal death. And this is an extraordinary frame of reference, I think, as Latter-day Saints, that it changes our understanding of mortality. I honestly think it changes the meaning of death for us, because we think about our mortal probation, in a sense, it's not just while we're alive--that it goes through our time in the spirit world, that's a continuation of our mortal probation. And so, I think thinking seriously about the opportunity for repentance, for learning the gospel, for change and growth in the spirit world, reframes mortality as the first part of our probation, not the end. And so that we know people are being taught the gospel, they're repenting, they're changing, they're growing. And then the last point they make, again going back to God as a source of life, is where they say, “one solution to the conundrum of divine violence is therefore to acknowledge God's exclusive right to destroy life as a form of judgment or retribution, precisely because God alone can also grant life everlasting.”

Everyone's going to be resurrected, but the really good news of the restoration is that everybody is going to have a chance to receive the fullness, to change, to grow, and if they don't receive that here they will receive it later, and I think that is, that is extremely good news, and it changes the way we think about what happens to people in mortality.

So, I'll end with that, but I think they make excellent points, and I appreciate the work they're doing to seriously engage these texts.

Welch: Yeah, I really agree with you, Jennifer, that the larger Restoration, what we would call as theologians “soteriology” or our doctrine of salvation, it really kind of fundamentally changes the way that we read something like 3rd Nephi 8 and 9 where we see God acting in violence to end the lives of people. Because I think those actions can't truly be understood as retributive in precisely the way that you have been explaining, because we don't believe that is a final ending where they're receiving their just desserts in that moment. On the contrary, it can be seen as a kind of educative movement, right? Moving them to another sphere where in a different situation they may be able to learn and to understand more fully and they will have more opportunities for moral growth. So, I think it--I'm persuaded by what you say that our larger context sort of fundamentally changes the way we understand that.

Of course, there's a part in me, even as I articulate it, that's saying, hang on, it seems scary to kind of give license for violent action on, justified by the fact that it may be educative in some way. And so that's why I think their other point is so important, that there is a different set of ethics that apply to a divine being who can give life as well as take it, and a human sphere like ours. So, I think we would be mistaken and wrong, I think, to use God's action there as license for us to say,

Lane: Thank you. Yes.

Welch: I'm just teaching them a lesson, right?

Lane: Yeah, once they'll keep growing and so it doesn't matter if I kill them. No, that absolutely. And that's I think the caution, the severe caution that they give is to say, this is God is God. We are humans. We do not have the right to act and to judge. And the Lord himself is very clear about that. And they restate that where he says judgment is mine, you know, that he is the one that we're accountable to, whether it's a preliminary judgment or a final judgment.

Welch: Yeah.

Lane: that we are not the ones, life and death are not in our hands, they are in God's hands. And to be able to have the humility to accept that is, I think, critical to being able to allow God to be God and to remember who we are.

Welch: You know, something I really respect about this piece of writing, and you alluded to this, is that the authors themselves, Patrick Mason and David Pulsifer, they come to the text with a set of very strong ethical precepts, but they are aware of the temptation to impose their pre-existing frameworks on the text of scripture. So, they come with a strong training and background and kind of set of prior pacifist or nonviolent ethical precepts. And so, you come to a chapter like 3rd Nephi 8 and 9 and you might be tempted, as you alluded, to simply read it away or to try to wrest the meaning of it or in some way not to have to deal with it, not to have to have your own prior assumptions.

But I see these authors coming to the text and saying, I am here to learn from it. I am here to accept what it says, and yet to use all that we know from other places in scripture, and the interpretive tools that I have, to understand most fully and most faithfully what is happening in these chapters. So, I really, I respect the humility that I see in these scholars and their faithfulness to the Book of Mormon as scripture. As scripture, it does have some kind of authority over us as believers in it. Yet the nature of that authority is really, important to understand and we can't jump to conclusions for fear of making a really consequential mistake.

Welch: One point they come back to again and again is that Jesus should be at the center of our focus and Jesus should be the basis of our ethics. And that's a great transition into the next piece that I am going to be talking about, which turns our focus squarely to the figure of Jesus Christ in 3rd Nephi. This chapter that I'm going to share with you is a very important one, it's kind of a classic actually in some ways in the field of Book of Mormon Studies. It was written by a scholar named Krister Stendahl. It's titled “The Sermon on the Mount and Third Nephi” from Reflections on Mormonism: Judeo-Christian Parallels, which is sort of an older book at this point. It was edited in 1978 by Truman Madsen. So Krister Stendahl, the author of this book chapter, is not a Latter-day Saint, but he was an early instance of a scholar, a non-LDS scholar who comes to the Book of Mormon with an open mind and an open heart and with a set of very important textual skills that allow him to read the Book of Mormon in the context of the Bible.

And one of the most important points he makes is that the Book of Mormon's relationship to the Bible is deliberate and it is meaningful. It is not just random borrowings or copying. So, what he does is he systematically compares the Sermon at the Temple in 3 Nephi, so this is 3 Nephi chapters 12 through 14, to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5 through 7. As he reads the Sermon at the Temple, something really jumps out at him, a distinct emphasis in the Sermon at the Temple that's different from the Sermon on the Mount.

And what he notices is, this focus on believing in Jesus as the Messiah and his words, a focus on Jesus's divinity, on the importance of coming to Christ for salvation, and as Christ as a member of the Godhead, right? Christ as the embodiment of God for the Nephites here in 3rd Nephi.

And this is very, very different from what you see in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, according to Stendhal. In Matthew's sermon, Jesus is more like a teacher who's propounding these ethical precepts but is not giving any attention to him or his identity. So with this observation and reading more deeply through the Sermon at the Temple,

Welch: The Christ that we see in 3 Nephi at the Sermon at the Temple, even though he is speaking words which are very similar to the words that the Jesus in Matthew speaks, really he is a lot more like the Jesus Christ who is portrayed in the Gospel of John, the Revealer who points to himself and to faith in and obedience to him as the message.

So, he points out lots of very interesting connections between the Jesus that we see at the temple in Bountiful and the Jesus that we see in the Gospel of John. For one, he notes that this interesting word that we're used to in the New Testament, verily, and verily, oftentimes Jesus will begin his pronouncement with these words, verily, I say unto you.

So, he counts in 3 Nephi 11 through 27, 19 instances of verily and 25 instances of verily verily. And he notes that there are really few instances of this word elsewhere in the Book of Mormon. And this sort of linguistic marker is deeply connected to the Gospel of John. It's in the Gospel of John that we see Christ introducing his words with the Verily, Verily.

And what Stendhal argues is that this stylistic device is very, very meaningful. By appending Verily, Verily at the beginning of his statements, the teaching of Jesus has actually changed from moral and religious teaching into a proclamation and an explicit revelation of divine truth.

So, when you open a statement with verily, which means truly, what you're signaling is that what's about to come next is not just good advice or wisdom. It is revelation. It is truth from God. And so the whole speech he argues has thereby changed its character.

Welch: The Gospel of John, in fact, is famous for the fact that it mostly consists of these revelatory speeches and revelatory discourses.And that rings true to me of the Christ that we see in the book of third Nephi. Everything does seem a little more miraculous. After all, he is the resurrected Lord, and he works many wonders and miracles among the Nephites there. And it really does seem like everything is taken up just a bit and his divine identity is made clear from the very beginning.

So, he goes on, Krister Sandal goes on to suggest that the message of the Savior in 3rd Nephi and in the Gospel of John is that He is the Redeemer. He is the I Am. I am the life. I am the way. I am the seed that falls into the ground. And the message to us is to come unto Christ and to believe in Christ and that salvation can be found in Christ.

I found this to be a very insightful reading of who Christ is in the book of 3rd Nephi.

Welch: The Nephites don't have the same job that those who knew Christ in his mortal ministry did. They had the job to recognize him and come to know that he was the Messiah and to gain that conviction of his divinity. For the Nephites, they know that, because he's descended to them from heaven as the resurrected Lord and they've seen, they've felt the prints in his hands and in his side. So that work is done, and now they're learning about what it means to receive salvation in him as our Lord and Redeemer.

So yeah, like I said, I found it to be remarkable both for its insightful portrait of Jesus Christ and for its very, very careful reading and comparison of the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon at the Temple, but also just for the great gesture of generosity and friendship that I feel like was embodied in this book article itself as this eminent theologian, long before we saw much of this kind of work, took the time to read the Book of Mormon as a sacred text and to give the gift to the Saints of his best thinking about the text that we hold sacred as scripture.

Lane: He really is an extraordinary man. He, Krister Stendahl , is the one who, I don't know if he coined the term, but the idea of holy envy as a Lutheran bishop. He appreciates goodness other places, and I think that he really does model for us how to see God's revelation in friends of other faith.

Welch: Yes.

Lane: I think his insight about is such a great reading because my own work on the Gospel of John, part of what is extraordinary there is from the very beginning there is this very clear sense of Christ as this sort of, as God coming down among his people that he tabernacled with them. We see that in chapter one of John and that that's a parallel to the Lord Jehovah coming and tabernacling with his people among the Israelites.

And so, there is a really clear sense in the Gospel of John that Christ is Jehovah and that you don't have that as clearly in the other Gospels. And that is actually precisely what 3rd Nephi testifies that Jesus is, that he is Jehovah coming down and that he came as Jehovah as a mortal and now he's coming to his people in the Americas but that is his identity. And I think that he captured something that lines up between the Gospel of John and 3rd Nephi really powerfully.

Welch: Yeah, I thought from time to time that the whole of Restoration Scripture, the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine of Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price, can be seen in some ways as just a beautiful and glorious elaboration of the first 15 or so verses of the Gospel of John, what scholars call the Johannine prologue. Those, the set of images there about darkness and light and about God coming down to be with his people and dwelling among them so that they could be themselves made the sons of God. It kind of encapsulates so much about the Restoration and the archetypes and images that structure our own scripture. So, yeah, it's wonderful to see how Stendhal has drawn that out for us here in Third Nephi.

Lane: precisely. It’s a great article, I think, to bring back to people's attention, the one that's definitely stood the test of time through the decades from his good reading and just wonderful insights.

Welch: Well, let's think more now about Jesus Christ and about His ministry here in Third Nephi among the Nephites at the temple in Bountiful. You're going to lead us now through a really wonderful article by somebody who's very dear to me, “Seeing Third Nephi as the Holy of Holies in the Book of Mormon” by John Welch. So, I'll let you take this away now, Jennifer.

Lane: Well, thank you. This is really, I think, a great follow-up on Krister Stendahl's insights. Jack Welch has done very close reading. Of course, the theme of the Sermon on the Mount is something he's worked on in many areas. And here he brings it some fresh new readings with this nuanced and extensive connection between Third Nephi and the temple.

So let me just run through some of the subsections which illustrate this temple theme. So, he develops the presence, silence, timelessness, the word of the Lord, high priesthood, covenant, commandments, the showbread, the divine name, purity, prayer, holiness, perfect order, unity, whiteness of garments, joy, awe, the house of Israel's God, hidden things, prophecy, healing, children, sending forth, consecration, transfiguration.

And so, you have these rich, rich temple themes where he teases out what's going on in Christ among his people in this temple context. I think he's come to his temple. This is not a coincidence that he's appearing to the temple. He's appearing to people that are worthy and that are prepared. And I think this big picture for me that really comes out from this article of seeing Third Nephi as the Holy of Holies in the Book of Mormon, that what Jack Welch does is he helps us get back, I think doing two things, one into an ancient context, where the idea of all throughout the Old Testament that the Holy of Holies is a place of such holiness that it can only be accessed by the High Priest, only on the Day of Atonement. So this idea, this image of a whole group of people coming into the presence of the Lord is coming into the Holy Holies, frames their experience with him in an ancient framework of holiness.

And so, all throughout the Old Testament, a major theme with God's revelation to his people is the separation of clean and unclean. And that's built into the structure of the temple, that you move from being separated from the presence of God to gradually step by step being able to move through these layers of holiness into the Holy of Holies, which is where the fullness of the presence of God can be experienced.

And so, this understanding of Christ's appearance in 3rd Nephi as sort of coming down, thinking of that, sort of pushing us to think about this in a temple context, it is consistent with this Book of Mormon witness all the way through, as we saw with Stendhal's observation, that Jesus Christ is divine. He is Jehovah, the being who Moroni describes as the eternal God in the preface to the Book of Mormon. And so, I think this is actually a big part of what the Book of Mormon as a whole does is to give us an integrated sense of who Jehovah is and that the city of Jesus Christ as the God of the Old Testament is giving us a witness of him always his consistent acting in love. And so, but also being one to whom people are accountable. And so, it's particularly the covenant people. And this is a theme, I think, that is a big shift for a modern audience. And so, we have to kind of get into the world of the Book of Mormon, in which from the very beginning, we have this sense, go back to Lehi, and he hears prophets say that Jerusalem's going to be destroyed because they're not repenting.

And so, this is the Lord is holding covenant people accountable and saying, I, this is the temple and Jerusalem is my home. I cannot be with you. I cannot have my presence with you if you are unclean, that it's this deep sense and that, that it's going to lead to the lack of repentance, lack of making the temple holy, lack of being a holy people, is going to lead to the destruction. I mean, this is the whole book. We're going to start to that premise that is why Jerusalem is being destroyed as people are not listening to the voice to repent.

And so that, I think we then get to 3rd Nephi, and we see leading up to from 3rd Nephi 1, 2, 3, 4 leading up to 8 and 9, we see prophets doing the same thing. So, this is this parallel from chapter 1 of the Book of Mormon to 3rd Nephi where prophets are seeking to call the people to repentance and inviting them to be, to live up, to not bring unholiness.

Welch: And can I share something there, Jennifer? This was an insight that came to me last year that's been so powerful, that yes, God requires cleanliness to enter His presence in the temple. And yet, He also provides the means to become clean right there at the temple. So really all it is a desire to come to Him and He will do the rest.

That insight, that realization that the way to get clean was also at the temple helped me understand in a different way. So, it can feel a little bit exclusive, right? Like I'm only going to let certain people who are good enough in to be with me but realizing that he provides everything that we need. In fact, he washes our feet for us so that we can be worthy to enter his presence. That's been a powerful realization for me.

Lane: I'm so glad you brought that up because that I think summarizes like we think of the Old Testament temple and even modern temple but in terms that are like exclusive and off-putting like you're in or you're out but the whole point of ordinances.

They're all designed to allow Christ to prepare us. And the entire journey of the endowment itself is a journey of becoming more and more holy through Christ so that we can be in the presence of Lord, so we can enter into the celestial room. So the temple was always designed, and that is absolutely true going back to the Old Testament temple as well, even though it's under, it's a Levitical temple, but it's still pointing to that same truth that you pointed out. It's designed precisely to make us clean, that we come with broken hearts, contrite spirits, we want to come close to the Lord. We bring what we have, and that then he provides the means for us to make the journey from being separated from the presence of the Lord. He is reconciling us to himself if we want to be reconciled. And so the invitation to repent is just choose to be reconciled, want to be closer. And when that's what we want, he will make it possible.

Welch: Yeah.

Well, Jennifer, I love the way you put that, that in a way we can see the Lord saying in those difficult chapters eight and nine, you're not in a place where I can reach you. Let me bring you more fully into my presence. Let me bring you into the spirit world where some of these other distractions are a way you can be somewhat more fully in my presence.

Because of course, that is kind of the structuring insight of Jack's article, John Welch's article here, is that the temple is the place where we are in the presence of the Lord, where we symbolically approach the Lord and are qualified to enter His presence. And so, these people here in Third Nephi, they're at the temple, but literally in the presence of the Lord. They are in a temple setting right there. And there's something transformative that happens to our very character and disposition when we are in that proximity to the glory and the presence of God.

Lane: and that they weren't perfect. That it was not like a celestial world that's being established, but that they were those that chose to listen. They were choosing that wanted to repent, that wanted to be better. And so, it's like the Lord could work with them face to face at that point. Whereas the others were, I mean, there's still hope for them. There's absolutely, but it's just, at this place, they're not ready for this level of, to be able to come up, they're not ready and willing to come unto him and to be healed right yet. And so, I think that that's a way of the Christ is truly, these people are coming and they're part of the temple, but they're there precisely to be healed because they're people who are ready and wanting and willing to be healed at that moment. And so, it's this particular, it's a snapshot of time and it's not like this sort of, but what it is extraordinary is that then it illustrates for us

Welch: Yeah.

Lane: as we want to be healed, as we want to more fully come unto Christ, we can see in these chapters that being part of his covenant people is part of that growth and is part of that more fully coming unto him. And so that sense of

Lane: And again, it's the exclusive club that everyone's invited to. That's what the church is, is this invitation that we have to just use to separate ourselves from things that are unclean. There are standards for the baptismal interview, there's standards for the temple recommend interview, but it's always this interview of come, Christ's arms are open, he's inviting everybody to come and so the invitation to come to his presence and it is, this is the theme that I've just, I can't stop thinking about is holiness.

Welch: Yeah.

Lane: because that is the piece that just from the level of human moral, it's a different frame of reference because holiness is to enter into God's world, into the divine realm, and that the process of entering in actually has a cleansing, sanctifying dimension to it.

It's coming to more fully be integrated into our nature, which is ultimately divine, that to be happy, to be whole is to be holy, that holiness is happiness. I think that's one of the deepest teachings of the Book of Mormon and that we see, and I guess that kind of leads us into 4th Nephi a little bit, but it is this beautiful message of Christ wants us to get there and he as you so beautifully testified, he is there to get us there. He's going to make up the difference. He's going to provide the cleansing and the healing as we keep coming unto him.

Welch: Well, it does make a wonderful transition to the last piece of scholarship that we wanted to discuss today, and that is a chapter from Daniel Becerra's brief theological introduction to the books of 3rd and 4th Nephi. And I wanted to focus on his 4th chapter that touches more on 4th Nephi, since we haven't really focused on that yet so far in our conversation.

But it's worth maybe just for a moment comparing his approach to Mason and Pulsipher's approach. Both pieces of scholarship bring an ethical lens to the Book of Mormon. So they're reading the Book of Mormon to help us understand what we should do and what are the frameworks that should govern our actions.

One thing that makes Daniel's approach a little different is that he is very focused on our moral formation. In other words, how it is that our dispositions and our natures are formed. As Daniel sees it, and he's read deeply in early Christian fathers, the right formation of our disposition is at the basis of all ethics. So, if we can get our natures to be made right and to be regenerated and sanctified in Christ, then we'll find that our behaviors are correct as well.

So that is the sort of ethical approach that he brings to these scriptures here in 3rd and 4th Nephi. Throughout the whole short book, it is a brief book, but throughout the whole book, he focuses on its portrayal of Christ's nature, of human nature, and how humans can develop our own Christlikeness. I really liked that word, Christlikeness.

And he argues that Christlikeness finds its fullest expression in community, collaboration, and collectivity. So, there's individual work that we have to do to get our own dispositions right, but when we do that, it naturally turns us outward to be in community with other people. And when our dispositions are right, then our communities will be right as well. So, if that's the case, he asks, then how might we work toward

Welch: a more ideal society based on the teachings of third and fourth Nephi. So, he identifies three characteristics of an ideal society as he sees it portrayed in 4th Nephi. And the first one is that the members of the society have all things in common. So, wealth, goods, riches and substance are distributed so that there are no rich and no poor in the society. Everybody has sufficient for his or her needs. Everybody deals fairly and justly with each other. It looks something like the early Christian practice in Acts. And as we saw, the early Christian practice in the Church of Alma that we saw way back in Mosiah, where they share their material resources to support one another so that nobody is in poverty.

However--this sounds great, right? But it raises this kind of interesting conundrum in the Book of Mormon because throughout the Book of Mormon, we see that poverty itself, sort of like fasting and prayer, can actually dispose us towards humility and lowliness of heart. So, it's the poor who are often portrayed as the righteous ones in the Book of Mormon. And we could point to many examples of that throughout the whole book.

So, if we're trying to do away with rich and poor, how do we then be, how are we formed morally to be lowly and humble and to rely on Christ? And therefore, he argues what he does, which is that proper use of wealth requires a particular disposition of the soul. So, it's not so much that you have to be poor to be righteous, but being poor,

Welch: gives you the proper relationship to material goods. You have to prioritize the kingdom of God. You have to think of yourself as a steward, not an owner. You have to be oriented towards care for others and giving more generously than is asked of you. You can't use your wealth for status. You have to do everything with humility and with justice and with generosity.

So, the big question that I think the Book of Mormon as a whole asks, and that in 4th Nephi in particular, we have to ask is, how can we remain faithful when we are prosperous, when things are going well? Is our wealth a blessing or is it a test? And I think we see that it really is a test. And in the end, you know, the Nephite pride cycle can only get broken by that exposure to the presence of Christ. And in that moment, the dispositions of the people are changed. And then, and only then, do they have the natures that they need to handle wealth with the proper disposition.

If you can get to that place, though, Fourth Nephi shows, where wealth is handled with the proper moral orientation, then it has wonderful results. It yields a society of freedom, of equality, justice, unity, peace, humility, righteousness where everything is motivated by love. And this is the Zion society that we see in 4th Nephi, where “there was no contention in the land because of the love of God, which did dwell in the hearts of the people. There was no envying, nor strife, nor tumult, nor whoredoms, nor lying, nor murders, nor any manner of lasciviousness.”

Welch: So, another aspect of this ideal society, this is something that actually I hadn't thought about and I was really grateful to Daniel for pointing it out, is that an ideal society has equal access to learning for all people. As I already alluded to a bit, the Book of Mormon makes a distinction between religious and spiritual understandings--and often it is the poor who have easier access to that kind of proper religious and spiritual understanding of our relationship to God--but there's also another kind of learning that matters, and that might be called something like vocational education or the training that you need to become a merchant or a lawyer or a judge.

And so Mormon laments earlier in 3rd Nephi that “the poor were ignorant because of their poverty while others did receive great learning because of their riches.” So this is another inequality in Nephite society that Daniel sees as rectified in the Zion society of fourth Nephi. But once again, this puts a dilemma for us, right? We have this dilemma here because wealthier and more educated Nephites in the whole prehistory of the Book of Mormon were failing as leaders because they lacked virtue. While the more virtuous Nephites could not lead because they lacked education.

So, it was the unlearned who possessed the virtues of leadership, like faith, humility, soft heartedness and obedience, but they didn't have access to governance roles. So this has been the conundrum that Nephite society has found itself in. But as I said before, in the same way that their dispositions were healed and sanctified by exposure to Christ in their handling of wealth, the same in their access to education.

And so, we see that in fourth Nephi, knowledge gained through education is intended to be shared, to be made intelligible and constructive, and to be consecrated to the betterment of others.

And then finally, he ends by talking about maybe what most of us think of when we think about the ideal society of fourth Nephi, and that is unity. The people were united. And he makes an important caveat here right off the bat. Not all unity is good, not all diversity is bad.

Welch: We see that the relative unity in wickedness of the Nephite governing class before the coming of Christ was a kind of unity, but it was not a good kind of unity. So, what kind of unity is good? And he reads in the history of 4th Nephi that

Welch: that's founded on civility and mutual respect independent of wealth or education. He sees that unity in a kind of social cohesion or a lack of tribalism, sort of overly identarian tribalism. We of course saw prior to Christ's coming this rapid fragmentation of Nephite society in 3rd Nephi chapter 7, where everybody divided up into smaller and smaller tribes fighting for their own well-being over and against the well-being of other groups. After Christ comes, on the contrary, in this famous verse, verse 17, “there were no manner of -ites, but they were in one, the children of Christ and heirs to the kingdom of God.”

The final aspect of the ideal society that we see in 4th Nephi is a communal worship. All are alike unto God, all worship together, and he denied none. It's also important that we worship together because discipleship requires serving others and being served. Service is not optional as a part of Christian discipleship. I love how Daniel puts this: “Worshipping God is a commitment to consistently confront the needs of others in all their sanctifying inconvenience.”

We've been talking about what it means to be sanctified and what is sanctifying. And one of the things that is sanctifying is service to other people in ways that stretch us and that demand a lot of us and that are hard and that are inconvenient and frustrating sometimes.

Welch: a Christ-like fashion, it's sanctifying to our own souls. And as we see, Christ is finally able to break the Nephite cycle of wealth-based pride and contention and inequality by changing the hearts of the people, by sanctifying them, making them holy and pure, by bringing them into his presence. So in a way, it connects really nicely to our previous discussion about who Christ is and what it means to be in his presence in the sacred space.

Lane: It is powerful. And I have one little gem, one passage from Daniel's book that I love. And I think it speaks to this question of, like, we sometimes fear that if we become more holy, we become less of us. And, you know, like all the same.

He says, “this is not to suggest that God does not want people to be themselves. Rather, he says, Mormon would argue that being true to ourselves is a viable principle for safe self-government only we are, we are living quote unquote in Christ, “authenticity in this sense is relational, not individualistic. It is a partnership. The authentic self must reflect the indwelling Christ. Or as Christ teaches in Nephites, hold up your light that it may shine into the world. Behold, I am the light which ye shall hold up.” From 3 Nephi 18. I think that captures, this is the invitation. Christ wants us to be our best selves and he is going to help us get there.

Welch: Well, Jennifer, this has been such a great discussion. As we're coming up now towards the end of our time together, I wanted to extend to you the invitation to share with us a scripture that is meaningful to you from the books of 3rd and 4th Nephi.

Lane: It's a privilege. There's so many to pick from But I'm going to go to from what for me is like the epicenter, which is where Christ starts with his introduction of who he is to the people who are gathered at the temple and just a few verses but in them I think it just is the source of power of this witness of who he is and I think was we feel that witness that It can change who we are. So, I just I love this so where he starts to speak and he says, “Behold, I am Jesus Christ, whom the prophets testified shall come into the world. And behold, I am the light and the life of the world. And I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me. And I have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world, in the which I have suffered the will of the Father in all things from the beginning.”

And so, at that point people fall to the earth and he speaks to them again, because they're remembering these prophecies. Like it's all starting to connect. And then he continues, and he invites them. And “rise, come forth unto me, that ye may thrust your hands into my side and that you may feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that you may know that I am the God of Israel and the God of the whole earth and have been slain for the sins of the world.”

And that witness just reaches to my heart and that gives me hope that because of who he is, that as I choose to try to be his, that he can extend his power and his healing to me and that, and hopefully each of us, as we connect with him, we can not only flow into our lives, but can flow through us to bless others. And so, I'm grateful. I'm so grateful for the Book of Mormon Witness of Christ and this, I don't know how to put it in words, but this amazing witness of his divinity, of his atoning sacrifice and his love, and that he truly is inviting everybody to come unto him and to have life in him. And I'm so grateful for that.

Welch: And it's a witness that changes us, right? It's a witness that changes us into his likeness and his image. That it's a perfect connection to the scripture that I wanted to share, which is from 4th Nephi. And it's a couple of verses that had sort of slipped by me in the past, but they had extra meant this time as I read them. So, this is verses two and three from 4th Nephi.

“And it came to pass in the 30 and sixth year, the people were all converted unto the Lord upon all the face of the land, both Nephites and Lamanites, and there were no contentions and disputations among them, and every man did deal justly one with another, and they had all things in common among them. Therefore, there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free and partakers of the heavenly gift."

It's a beautiful description of what it looks like to live together in community with Christ. But I was really struck by these couplets: “Therefore, there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free.”

And it echoed to me across the text of the Book of Mormon all the way back to 2 Nephi 26, verse 33, which is a favorite verse of many, I'm sure. “The Lord doeth that which is good among the children of men, and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness, and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female, and he remembereth the heathen, and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile."

So I noticed how it is that the people were changed to be in the image of God, to be in the image of Christ in their dealings with one another. The reason why there were no rich and poor, were no bond and free, why they were all free is because of their Christlikeness that came from allowing themselves to be changed by his witness. Because our God, our Savior is one who denieth none. All are alike unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female. So to get to this ideal society and community that we want to live in together, Christ is our guide. In a way, that's been our theme throughout this discussion. And of course, it's at the center of what it means to read third and fourth Nephi and be changed by its witness to us. Jennifer Lane, thank you so much for joining us today on the Maxwell Institute Book of Mormon Studies podcast.

Lane: Definitely. Thank you, it's been a privilege.

Welch: Bye, bye.