Sharon Harris Wonder of Scripture Lecture

Transcript

Thank you Kim and Kristian and everyone at the Maxwell Institute. Thank you for having me. It's a privilege and an honor to be part of this series. I've been very excited that this is happening this semester. I want to just mention that some of the images I'm using come from the Book of Mormon Art Catalog. That's a fairly new online resource, and I highly recommend it to you. And I'd like to start, I'll be getting into sort of a reading of scripture, but I want to start by framing maybe one possible way of how we can think about what scripture is and how it works, versus personal statements of faith. And so maybe this can help us think about how we can make use of Scripture.

Not long ago, on a group chat, let me see I make this all sure I'm ready here. Great on a group chat, somebody asked, doctrinally, what is the purpose of this life? And people jumped in with responses: To prepare to meet God. It's like a sports game. You can practice drills, but you don't really know what you've learned until the wildness of a game. Somebody said, it's to become a person, a family and a sociality for whom immortality, forever families and eternal increase are blessings, rather than curses. The most pithy of the responses was to learn. I found myself I wanted to respond with scriptures.

What scriptures guide me in thinking about the purpose of life? A few that I thought of were Second Nephi, chapter two, verse 25 John 7:17, John 10:10, about the abundant life Moses 1:39, and John 17:3, but answering what the scripture reference is a different rhetorical move than a direct answer that's put into one's own words. What is the value of each kind of response? Scripture is authoritative, durable and canonical. Among believers, it can be a way of appealing to Common Ground. Answering in Scripture alone is difficult to refute, difficult for at least two reasons.

First, it's scripture. It comes from the binding text that 1000s and millions of believers have accepted as the word of God. If you're talking with someone else who believes in that scripture too, then you can hope, or even expect that you share a commitment to what it says. But in practice, it doesn't always seem so straightforward. Many denominations believe in the Bible, but they disagree mightily about what it says.

This leads to the second reason that scripture alone is difficult to refute that is that scripture needs to be interpreted. This could mean that it needs to be understood, lived, applied, synthesized, or mediated in a number of other ways, but keeping scripture on the page and detached from us simply will not work. Personal statements are often where those interpretations of Scripture take shape. We put our own understanding of Scripture into our own words. Personal statements have the benefit that they can be refined through the laboratory of living. They're where the broad potential of Scripture funnels into an individual's empirical experience. And I believe in the law of tithing, because I've seen how year after year I have enough despite sudden expenses. Or I believe in the Sabbath and keeping the Sabbath day holy, because I saw how I was renewed by devoting a day to a different kind of rest. And that gave me strength to trod through years of graduate work, surely personal statements that have been filtered through personal experience account for much of the power of testimony, but personal statements lack the unconstrained transferability of Scripture. They are, at the end of the day, personal not necessarily because they aren't true or because they're not for more than one person, but because each person must come to that conclusion for themselves through their own living, like the five wise virgins in Jesus's parable that oil is non transferable.

So one of the others, I'll say that anyone I'll return to a scripture, anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether the teaching is from God. That's one of the scriptures. I thought of John 7:17, I want to add to this idea of personal statements a general conference address that has been really influential for me. This is from Richard G. Scott in October 1993 called acquiring spiritual knowledge, he taught, "As you seek spiritual knowledge, search for principles carefully separate them from the detail used to explain them. Principles are concentrated truth packaged for application to a wide variety of circumstances. A true principle makes decisions clear even under the most confusing and compelling circumstances, it is worth great effort to organize the truth we gather to simple statements of principle."

At some point, I don't even remember when exactly the spirit nudged me that this council was something that I should remember and live by. And as I've tried to do that, it's blessed me over and over, what I found is that my personal statements of principle come from what I know through the Spirit, through the studying and seeking to live by the scriptures and through the experiences that I have been allotted.

So today, with Elder Scott's teaching in mind, I want to explore how we find personal statements of principle and the role of studying the scriptures as we try to do that. This will be more exploratory than conclusive, but perhaps it points to how the scriptures are a model for living more than they are ossified propositions. So to do this, I'm going to turn to a personal statement from Alma, the son of Alma. This passage is familiar. It has been variously called a lament, a psalm, a rare breed of prophetic temptation, and it has been touted as earnest missionary zeal. It's even been set to music. As a little girl, I remember being captivated by my great grandmother, Emma Rigby Coleman, singing this, her white hair, wreathing her head like an angel's halo. By the way, that music has been in my head for days while I'm preparing this talk.

This, this scripture I'm thinking of, the opening verse reads, "Oh, that I were an angel and could have the wish of mine heart that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with the voice to shake the earth and cry repentance unto every people." The verse just before this, the final chapter of Alma, 28 reads, "and thus we see the great call of diligence of men to labor in the vineyards of the Lord," excuse me. "And thus we see the great reason of sorrow and also of rejoicing, sorrow because of death and destruction among men, and joy because of the light of Christ unto life." Now, if this is the verse that comes before this one from Alma it sounds as though Alma's famous longing, "Oh, that I were an angel" very well could be a call to missionary work, to labor in the vineyards of the Lord. But I'm an English professor, and it is my occupational hazard, I mean obligation, to watch for multiple readings.

Today I'd like to propose a different way of reading and understanding the openings of Alma 29 one particular clue is that there's another, that there is another way to hear this verse comes a couple verses farther down, so we'll take a look at verse three. Whoops, I've got one through four, but that's one through three. "Oh, that I were an angel and could have the wish of mine heart that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with the voice to shake the earth and cry repentance to every people. Yea, I would declare unto every soul as with the voice of thunder, repentance and the plan of redemption, that they should repent and come unto our God, that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth. But behold, I am a man and do sin in my wish, for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me." If this is solely a yearning for missionary work, why does Alma say that he did sin in his wish? He went on to say that it's because he should be content with the with his allotment in life, yes. And for a long time, I thought of this as a kind of self deprecating technicality of sin, as though Alma is so righteous that he has to really rummage around to find a sin, and the best he can manage is just being a little extra about how bad he wants to be a missionary.

Now, I'm inclined to say that that's not it. No, this is an actual sin. Why? To figure out why his wish to declare as an angel is a sin. Let's review more of Alma's history and ministry. We'll find that by the time he wishes to be an angel, he is loaded with griefs and sorrows. To begin, Alma admitted what his heart wished for once before that time, too, he hoped for repentance. Alma was teaching Zeezrom, Antiona and others at Ammonihah, and he unfolded the scriptures to them. As he concluded several times, he emphasized that the Lord was sending His Word by the mouth of angels. Three times, Alma presented this as glad tidings that were made known in plain terms, that angels were giving this message, even then, unto many at this time in our land, and that they waited to hear the joyful news the angels brought.

Then Alma divulged his heartfelt wish. "And now my brethren, I wish from the inmost part of my heart, yea, with great anxiety, even unto pain, that you would hearken unto my words and cast off your sin. And not procrastinate the day of your repentance." Preaching at Ammonihah, Alma paired his deep hope for the Nephites repentance with a message from angels. He casted in jubilant, expectant terms, the hope of salvation and his earnestness, even with great anxiety, even unto pain. Leaps off the page. You got to admire his faith. These are his words during his second attempt to preach at Ammonihah, after he was thrown out and told by an angel to return, he rallied. He tried again, Now with Amulek bolstered by the angels commands and his newfound companion, maybe Alma anticipated that it would be different this time, it was different, but not in a good way. Alma testified, Amulek testified. They took on the lawyers and judges and elites of the city, calling out their wickedness and pleading with them to repent. They warned the people of spiritual death that their torments shall be as a lake of fire and brimstone whose flames ascendeth up forever and ever. It didn't go well. The people of Ammonihah exiled the believing men from the city. They burned all the women and children who were taught to believe, as well as their records in scriptures, and they made Alma and Amulek watch.

The Chief Judge confronted them afterwards, slapped them in the face and sneered, "After what ye have seen, will ye preach again unto this people that they shall be cast into a lake of fire and brimstone? Behold, ye see that ye had not power to save those who had been cast into the fire, neither has God saved them because they were of thy faith, and the judge smote them again on their cheeks and asked, what say ye for yourselves?" Kylie Turley, the author of Alma, a brief theological introduction writes, "This is not a random question. It is targeted at Alma, aimed to damage him as much as possible. The judge and the people of amaniha guarantee that Alma sees friends die, bound with strong cords and brought to the fire while the flames are blazing, Alma and Amulek are forced to witness women and children, most likely, including Amulek's, family be burned to death, still not content. The Chief Judge ensures that Alma understands the brutal irony at the heart of this horror.

Alma’s unfortunate gospel metaphor about a lake and fire of fire and brimstone prompts the literal lake of fire and brimstone that burns before his eyes. After this highly personal attack, Alma never seemed quite the same. He and Amulek made no response to the chief judge's questions, but were silent." Turley notes that after this the record of Alma's preaching in the Book of Mormon is also silenced for five years, and when he does preach, he will never again say the words "lake of fire and brimstone." Turley observes further these events redefine his vocabulary. Moreover, they redefine the vocabulary of the entire Book of Mormon. After people burn women and children alive in a lake of fire and brimstone, the words "lake of fire and brimstone" are never spoken again by anyone in the Book of Mormon.

The trauma Alma experiences at Ammonihah silences him. This scene reverberates across the rest of the Book of Mormon, and its fiery image becomes unspeakable, taboo in subsequent preaching. Shocking Alma into silence is one takeaway I want to draw out of his account of preaching at Ammonihah. Another is the particular taunt the judges and lawyers used against him. Alma and Amulek were denied food and water for days and continually ridiculed specifically about their lack of power, their captors jeered. "If you have such power of God, if you have the power of God," excuse me, "if you have such great power, why do you not deliver yourselves, and if you have the power of God, deliver yourselves from these bands, and then we will believe eventually Alma and Amulek were given power to break their bands and walk free." The prison miraculously crumbling behind them and crushing the chief judge, lawyers, priests and teachers who mocked them, but this is cold comfort. They escaped, but they were rejected. Instead of repentance, they brought death.

Ammonihah had gives some longer term context for Alma when he expresses his wish to be an angel in Alma 29 the city of Ammonihah and his preaching there gives that context. More immediate circumstances are a strong influence as well. The chapter Alma 29 appears as a reflection on events of the 15th year of the reign of the judges in Alma 28. Textually and contextually, the two chapters are related. So here are some of the textual connections. First, our customary chapter numbers aren't the original chapter numbers from Joseph Smith's translation. In 1879 Orson Pratt created the chapter and verse divisions we use today, but they used to be longer on average, and they lacked verses. All that is to say that chapters 27, 28, and 29 of Alma are part of the same original chapter, and they can be read as a unit. Secondly, as Joe Spencer has shown, Mormon carefully organized the book of Alma into four quarters and two halves, the first quarter and third quarters parallel one another, as do the second and fourth. Alma 29 is the end and culmination of the first half of this meticulously sequenced book, a capstone rumination on Alma's experiences in the first 15 years of the reign of the judges, and the biggest battle the Nephites and Lamanites had ever seen.

Alma 29 marks both a break and a turning point, after which Alma takes up his preaching and ministry anew among the Zoramites in Alma chapter 30. These are some of the connections about the structure of the text. What about how Alma 29 relates to its historical context, we can consider what happens just around the 15th year of the reign of the judges. For one, the Anti-Nephi-Lehis fled for refuge because they refused to fight after their conversion, when Nephite dissenters incited the Lamanites against them, the Anti-Nephi-Lehis were slaughtered in mass. Over 1000 were killed before the Lamanites turned instead to destroy the city of Ammonihah in revenge. When the Nephite dissenters provoked the Lamanites against their kin, the Anti-Nephi-Lehis, a second time, these pacifist followers of Ammon decided it was time to leave. They went to Jershon, land that the Nephites gave them note that the Nephite dissenters who spawned this migration hailed from Amlici. He was the dissenter who wished to be king and who battled face to face with Alma. These dissensions fractured the church and caused Alma to give up the chief judge's seat so that he could devote himself entirely to preaching in an attempt to shore up and save the still fairly new Nephite church.

Not many years later, what did Alma have to show for his sacrifice? Nephite dissenters turning Lamanite converts into refugees. The city of Ammonihah had destroyed, but the worst was yet to come. Having chased the fleeing Anti-Nephi-Lehis into the wilderness surrounding the Nephite territory, the Lamanite armies attacked the Nephites. It says there was a tremendous battle, yea, even, such an one as never had been known among all the people in the land. From the time Lehi left Jerusalem, over 500 years. 10s of 1000s of Lamanites were killed, and it seems many 1000s of the Nephites as well. Still, many 1000s more were in mourning. "And now this was a time that there was great mourning and lamentation heard throughout all the land, among all the people of Nephi, yea, the cry of widows, mourning for their husbands and also of fathers, mourning for their sons and the daughter for the brother, yea, the brother for the Father. And thus, the cry of mourning was heard among all of them mourning for their kindred who had been slain. And now surely this was a sorrowful day, yea, a time of solemnity and a time of much fasting and prayer. And thus endeth the 15th year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi."

With all of this background in mind, is this the moment when Alma would exaltly dream of being a victorious, super missionary angel? He wants to cry repentance, yes, but perhaps not with the vibes that we typically think of. This is not wide eyed, buoyant aspiration. What is it then? I propose that we consider the specifics of Alma's wishes for angelhood. He emphasizes that he would "have the wish of his heart go forth and speak with the trump of God, a voice to shake the earth and cry repentance unto every people. Yea, I would declare unto every soul as with the voice of thunder, repentance and the plan of redemption, that they should repent and come unto our God, that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth." After the initial statement of his desire to be an to be an angel. We can parse this with a handy who, what, why, how formulation. So who does he want to address? Every soul. What? He wants to preach repentance in the plan of redemption. Why? Two reasons: that they repent and come unto God and that there might not be more sorrow.

To summarize, Alma wishes to declare this repentance to every soul so they repent and pointedly, given what he has seen, to stop the sorrow. Why would he say that he sins in this wish? I suggest that the sticking point is with the how. How? To speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth as with the voice of thunder. Alma is more familiar with angels than many of us. When he had been trying to destroy the church, an angel called him and the sons of Mosiah to repentance. That angel spake as it were with the voice of thunder, which caused the earth to shake upon which they stood. So potent was the angel that his address knocked Alma and his friends flat. Alma was out for the count of three days. He knew what it felt like to be on the rebellious side of repentance and be utterly upturned by an angelic messenger. It seems that this is the effect he wanted to have now. When the angel came to Alma after he was kicked out of Ammonihah, he heeded the instruction and returned speedily. Likewise, when an angel told Amulek what to do, Amulek obeyed. The angels that Alma knows have a way of making people obey.

Additionally, Alma said he wanted to speak with the trump of God. What did Alma know of trumps, especially angelic ones? Alma's father, the founder of the Nephite church, prayed to know what to do about wayward and unrepentant people of the rising generation, and the Lord responded, when the second trump shall sound, then shall they that never knew me come forth and stand before me. Notice that God said nothing of the first trump that would call forth the righteous. He only spoke to Alma of the second trump, the one that calls those who never knew the Lord to stand accountable. Another example comes from the record of the Jaredites. Alma would have known this one because he discussed it with his son Helaman. In Ether 14:28, the armies of Coriantumr invite the armies of Shiz to inescapable, severe summonings that heralded foreboding news. To summarize, Alma is familiar with angels who shook the earth and were speedily obeyed. Sometimes they threatened destruction and carried trumps that called their audience to final, eternal reckonings. Through it all, Alma has wished for repentance. This is what has motivated his ministry. But since his impassioned second attempt at Ammonihah, he has seen so much wickedness and pain. In the wake of unprecedented war, death and grief, perhaps with the derision of those at Ammonihah still haunting him and ringing in his ears, ye see that ye had not power to save them.

Alma may have wanted to be a thunderous, inescapable force, an angel that could not be resisted or argued with. Maybe he harrowed up a desire to compel people to obey, to be righteous, to stop destroying themselves and others. It's a relatable desire, the burden of a disciple who can see how it could and should look otherwise, who knows that so much anguish is so avoidable. Now I want to bring us back to the work of crafting statements of principle, the one that Elder Scott discussed. We can see Alma doing this work in additional verses of Alma 29. After wishing to be an angel, the kind with a trump, the kind that shakes the earth, he catches himself. It is as though he can feel that something about this, even this righteous desire for repentance, is not completely right. "But behold, I am a man and do sin in my wish, he attempts to identify why, for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me." This is a start. Maybe he can be more precise, I ought not to harrow up in my desires the firm decree of a just God.

Dropped in the middle of his thoughts we don't know exactly what that firm decree is yet, but we see him working to understand, to refine his wish to be an angel. He continues by listing what he does know. "For I know that he granteth unto men according to their desire, whether it be unto death or life. Yea, I know he alloteth of unto men, yea, decree unto them, decrees which are unalterable according to their wills, whether they be unto salvation or unto destruction. Yea and I know that good and evil have come before all." Alma knows, among other things, that neither he nor even angels can force anyone to repentance. My husband says, of Satan's plan, it's not just that it's a bad plan, it just doesn't work. In the six years or so since Alma gave up the Chief Judge seat to devote himself full time to preaching his hope in the success of his message, has taken a beating, a fundamental, disorienting beating. When Alma plead with those at Ammonihah and expressed the inmost wish of his heart with great anxiety and even pain. He did so with full conviction, drawing on his own repentance after great wickedness, the witness of the high priest a testimony one through prayer and fasting across many days, as he says in Alma chapter five, he knew what he was taught. Talking about.

And then he gained more experience, more gutting, heart wrenching, traumatizing experience he has to wrestle to find out if there is room in his faith for this. Is it big enough? Even more critically, is God big enough for this? What he has seen, what his people have seen, the people that they have lost. It's enormous. All he wanted was to preach repentance. Part of the work of developing statements of principle and growing faith in general, is revision. When we acquire additional knowledge and experience our faith must, must expand to. And so in Alma's cognitive dissonance and the dissonance of his soul, he studies himself with what he knows. And as he does, he can say "Now, seeing that I know these things, why should I desire more than to perform the work to which I have been called from there?" Alma can reconstruct and reaffirm his faith, even returning to the joy and glory he expressed before. If you look at the rest of Alma 29 it gathers momentum in rejoicing and faith and hope. For example, He says, "When I see many of my brethren truly penitent and coming to the Lord their God, then is my soul filled with joy. Then do I remember what the Lord has done for me." Or he says "that same God hath given me much success in the which my joy is full." One of the gifts of Scripture is that in it, we can watch others do their work of discipleship.

Across Alma 29 we see Alma face the limits of his faith and his faithfulness, and we see him find and reaffirm his convictions as it were, in real time, he testifies of what he wishes and what he knows through his own study experiences and the witness of the Spirit, we should do the same. What Alma knows about angels and God and God's decrees is vitally important. It is scripture. But Alma knowing those things through the refining experiences of his own life is not the same as what I know from my own lived experience. I take the scriptures and the spirit and my beloved little allotment, and I find God and His principles in my own words, in my own holy relationship with Him. For example, here are a few statements that I have learned for myself. Jesus loves and honors something fierce, self designed and self embarked initiatives for good. They are often holy to him.

Here's another one. Jesus loves study and intellectual rigor, and he's not afraid of the truth, including a knowledge of things as they are, things as they were and things as they will be. Number three, God is faithful. Jesus cares about my learning and growth more than my performance. He will stick by me even if I choose a more painful, foolish route, and I can count on that, especially as I stay in covenant with him. Our testimony and our statements of testimony come through this trial of living. Like Alma I have wishes for others. I wish for my students, my children, my family, my neighbors, my brothers and sisters in the gospel and many others. I wish that we give serious attention to the Scriptures. I wish that we come to know God individually and collectively. As for Alma after a few more years of preaching, it says that he departed out of the land of Zarahemla as if to go into the land of Melek, and it came to pass that he was never heard of more. As to his death or burial, we know not of perhaps he became an angel. Perhaps he got the wish of his heart. I leave this with you in the name of Jesus, Christ, amen.