Terryl Givens Wonder of Scripture Lecture

Transcript

Thank you for those introductions. I think I prefer Professor Hawes' introduction to being told that we start with the weakest and get to the strongest. Wonderful to be here and really wonderful to be at the Maxwell, one of the greatest gatherings of disciple-scholars to be found on the planet. I have a hobby, which is that I am trying to reconstitute Joseph Smith's library. We have a record of books that he donated to the Nauvoo library before he died. And sometimes I go onto the internet and see if I can find the same editions of the books that he indicated were in his personal collection. And this is one of them, and it is a volume called A Review of Jonathan Edward's Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will by a philosopher named Henry Tappan. We don't know if Joseph actually read this book, but we know that Joseph Smith's writings and views on free will were similar to Tappan's.

Joseph Smith and Tappan were born the same year, in an era when the question of human agency, moral agency, free will, were at the forefront of both religious and philosophical conversations. Tappan was arguing against John Calvin, who had emerged as a leading figure in the 16th century, challenging conventional ways of thinking about human agency and free will. The book, the question that Tappan's book seeks to answer is simply this, is there really freedom of the will? At a historical moment when the question was being widely debated, the restoration, as I hope to indicate, provided a fresh, even revolutionary perspective on the question of moral agency.

In the book of Moses, revealed to Joe Smith only months after the organization of the church, Satan is associated with a specific agenda never before articulated in Scripture. He, quote, "sought to destroy the agency of man." We read a few chapters later, the source of human agency is ostensibly traced to the creation. In the Garden of Eden the Lord says, "gave I unto man his agency." However, Joseph made a terribly important revision to those words which lamentably did not make it into the current LDS edition that you have on your smartphones because Brigham Young didn't want to petition the reorganized church for the relevant manuscripts that Joseph had re-edited. But in those subsequent edits, Joseph revised that first draft to say clearly in the Garden of Eden, man had his agency. That's no minor revision for in restoration cosmology, agency is neither gift nor merely mortal acquisition nor consequence of embodiment. On the contrary, agency is enshrined as the very ground of human existence itself, which existence recedes into a distance, even eternal past. Quote, "all intelligence is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it to act for itself. Otherwise, there is no existence."

Insisting not merely on the importance of agency, but on agency as a precondition for existence itself. Is a claim without theological precedent. In recent years, public attention has shifted with increasing focus towards like-identity, authenticity, individual rights, free expression, positionality, all of which foreground the ways in which the call to freedom and real constraints make competing claims on our agency. At the same time, we've become more aware of the roles of, role of genes, cognitive biases, and both inherited and experienced traumas that shape our judgment and decisions in ways large and small, calling into question the extent to which we are truly agents acting with real freedom. As a result, it's more important than ever to reflect upon the meaning of agency and how modern revelation can illuminate the central question, how can I choose to live my best life? Some of us feel the limitations more than the possibilities of our human predicament.

I want to focus on a statement that Joseph Smith made that I think can illuminate some different aspects of the nature of agency. He said, "All the minds and souls that God ever sent into the world are susceptible of enlargement." I think that phrase is worth parsing carefully. He didn't say all the souls are capable of enlargement. He said they're susceptible of enlargement. Why is that word choice so critical? A key dimension of agency is the power we are given to expose ourselves to the kinds of surrounding influences that we invite or resist. Now, the word capacity would suggest a self sufficient ability arising from within. Joseph's use of the word susceptibility moves us in a different direction, depicting our condition as one of openness, exposure, or even vulnerability to outside influences that can be edifying or stunting. The word points us toward the way in which our agency interacts with that of others to shape and, quote, "enlarge us."

So agency existed in those premortal worlds from which we come, and yet we know that in some essential way, agency became operative with new stakes and new conditions in the Garden of Eden. The Genesis narrative makes clear that human creation is not finished. We do not exist in any complete or perfect way until the first human creation has been differentiated and organized into two human entities. God's statement after Adam's creation, "it is not good that man should be alone" is more than an observation about loneliness. It's rather a recognition of creations incompleteness at that stage, only after the woman and the man are present together, positioned as help meet for each other, is creation declared, not just "good" as in the prior instances, but "very good." We learn here that meaningful existence cannot pertain to solitude, but unfolds in plurality only then is the stage set for the meaningful interactions and subsequent choices that can follow. As Virginia Held writes, "We must challenge the old belief that we are distinct individuals, first and then we form relationships."

Adam and Eve, like any newborn child, appear as fully formed persons already related to other persons. That is a fact of our existence worth pondering. They come from heavenly parents and transition into a human couple anterior to their creation, and as part of the drama of creation, their identity is inseparable from relationship. This is because the very fact of agency is, at its most fundamental level, a power that is grounded in relationality. The father of Western philosophy made this point in trying to define the nature of being itself. Plato held that anything which possesses any sort of power to affect another or be affected by another, if only for a single moment, however trifling the cause and however slight the effect has real existence. In other words, to be an agent is to have the capacity to influence another or be influenced by another. We all come into the world as individuals within a relational field. The very concept of the individual entails an other or multiple others in relation to which our own identity is constituted. Agency is not even meaningful. It has no value or discernible reality, except insofar as it registers in a network or community of other agents. The entire mortal program of agency then focuses on choice, experiencing and discerning and choosing the sweet and good over the bitter and evil.

But we do not choose those categories in the abstract, and we do not choose an impersonal vacuum. We choose in response to words, enticements, counsels, actions of others. A modern physicist even argues that this criterion is what constitutes the essence of life itself. "For something to exist from the point of view of the world," he writes, "it must be able to influence things, and must be able to be influenced by things." Contemporary novelist Marilynn Robinson's character makes the point more simply, "a thing that does not exist in relation to anything else cannot be said to exist." What this means in practical terms is that agency is manifest in how we choose to influence others and how we choose to be influenced by others, in this inextricably, situated in community, agency carries with it communal responsibilities.

We are intrinsically endowed with a power and hence the responsibility to shape our community. Being our brother's keeper is one of the first imperatives of which the human family is made aware. From Cain and Abel to the Good Samaritan, our prime directive, so to speak, is to be a neighbor, to be invested in the well being of those within our orbit, to develop and safeguard these bonds of love at the deepest level. This means that isolating ourselves, striving for self expression as a positive good, thinking of liberty in terms of personal rights, or living in a condition of disregard for others, all these activities are not only selfish, they work to nullify our status as agents. If we make no difference to the other, and the other makes no difference to us in the language of Plato, if by sentiment or action, we build up the cocoon of self concern and make ourselves the focus of our own existence, then we actually cease to exist in any meaningful way. We have ceased to exercise and be responsive to the demands of community, which are the demands of love.

A selfish preoccupation with rights was not the kind of freedom the Christian message heralded, expressive, atomistic, self affirming freedom as a later invention and out of harmony with the way early Christians understood the nature of agency and the burden of freedom. In fact, Christians were conspicuous to an unprecedented degree precisely because their ethos was communalistic, and their identity experienced as corporate rather than individual. Gregory of Nyssa, my favorite writer from the fourth century, was emphatic that salvation could only be an experience enjoyed in common. I've always been moved by the words of Nikolai Berdyaev- of who I think was the 20th century's most daring theologian, "Moral history," he writes, "began when God asked, Cain, Where is your brother Abel? But it will reach its culmination when God asks, Abel, Where is your brother Cain?" As saints, we embody one response to that question by our devotion to the work of saving our kindred dead, one can read that project as at least a partial assent to Berdyaev's claim that the good do not relegate the wicked to hell and enjoy their own triumph, but ascend with Christ into hell in order to free them. What we can do, we do, what we cannot know but hope for, we hope for. When Christ's love takes possession of us, such hope may signal its own variety of spiritual birth.

As Berdyaev writes, "the true moral change is a change of attitude toward the wicked and the doomed, so called, a desire that they too should be saved. Religious morality based upon the idea of personal salvation as a minimum morality, a morality of transcendental egoism." Note how strikingly evocative that claim is of the restoration emphasis on the celestial kingdom as a glorified society. And the program of Temple work is a way of creating a shared heaven. And I'm just going to relate a story that that reminds me of.

Back in 2008 as we subsequently learned, there was a small, little anti Mormon organization that hired a woman to go into the church family history library in Salt Lake and to sneak through the process the name of a holocaust victim, which she successfully did, and then she went to the press and declared, those Latter-day Saints are baptizing Holocaust victims. The news exploded in the press, Elie Wiesel made public statements, there was universal condemnation from the Jewish community. That was back in the day when I used to get calls from the press every now and then to address topics of Latter-day Saint concerns. A Philadelphia radio station called and said, "Would you be willing to come onto a live national radio show and talk about the Latter-day Saint practice of baptism for the dead?" And I said, "Yeah, I'd be happy to" not knowing that the host was Jewish. The first question out of the gate for a live national audience, "what are you Mormons doing baptizing my dead ancestors?" And I said, "Latter-day Saints have a conception of the last day in which our Heavenly Father will gather the human family and a great wedding feast. And it's his desire that we all be present, all men, women and children, past and present. When we baptize for the dead, we're effectively sending out a guest list. We don't think you have to come, but we think everybody should be invited." And he said, "What an incredibly generous conception of God. How do I get my name on that list?" Now he was certainly half joking, but halfway recognizing that this is a God of unprecedented generosity and a conception of corporate salvation unparalleled since the early Christian centuries.

The question I want to turn to now is so how does modern revelation enhance our understanding and exercise of agency that is directed to such an end? In the model I am suggesting, and I believe that modern revelation illustrates agency is primarily manifest as it willingly and lovingly registers the influence of the other, or as it freely offers such influence upon another individual or community. Agency unfolds then in the act of receiving as much as in the act of giving. In a future place and time where this is perfectly understood, Scripture describes the realm this reciprocity creates. A revelation of Joseph Smith provides us the ideal toward which all agency builds and the metric against which we should measure all our striving. It is for this reason, perhaps scripture's most potent discourse on this subject, "the Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter, an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth. And thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means, it shall flow unto thee forever and ever." This scripture exemplifies how agency ideally operates, describing a kind of apotheosis, kind of perfect fulfillment of human agency as God intends for it to develop and unfold, and it is framed in language that subverts all our preconceptions about worldly influence, power and authority.

First, we find ourselves in perfect companionship with God, the Holy Spirit. Second, we will have power and influence--scepter--but it will be predicated not on an influence exerted outwardly, but on other receptive hearts that flow inwardly. On neither side does agency take the form of or submit to compulsion. Holy power respects, rather than overrides agency. The dominion that exists is not hierarchical, but reciprocal and pervades an entire community of sanctified individuals who are naturally inclined toward one another, drawn by mutual love. The scriptural vocabulary of words such as "flow" and "draw" differentiate godly relations is emphatically consensual and non coercive. They are the product of the choice to give and the choice to receive an outpouring of love. Christ seeks to quote, "draw all men unto Himself" through His love offering, we read repeatedly. He invites us to draw near to Him, and He will draw near to us any relationship this Scripture warns that is predicated on the claim to authority in order to maintain power or influence, even if that authority is priesthood, is a disruption or distortion of the kind of relationship in which divine beings share. God's own power, Joseph had learned months after the Fayette organization, is not that of a sovereign imposing his will. What power He has is in the loving, willing assent of those who choose to reciprocate the love and devotion He offers. This was the apparent misreading of Lucifer, who did not understand the principle that God's power was rooted in the honor elicited willingly from his children.

Those in the school of the prophets aspired to just such an Enoch-like society based on love rather than hierarchy or the imposition of authority. In his 1832 Olive Leaf revelation, Joseph was instructed to organize a School of the Prophets to be held in a temple built for that and other purposes. In January 1833 on the second floor the Newel K. Whitney school restored, the school commenced operation, and those cold, drafty chambers, 14 elders and high priests undertook to study things in heaven and in earth and under the earth. But each session began with a ritual that articulated the kind of community, community predicated on mutual reception of the power of love. "I receive you into fellowship in a determination that is fixed, immovable and unchangeable, to be your friend and brother through the grace of God, in the bonds of love," in this same Olive Leaf Revelation, we are promised that our relationship to Christ is constructed on the same terms, "pray always that ye may not faint and lo, I will come quickly and receive you unto myself." With these scenarios as the end goal, we can detect in the Doctrine and Covenants a central theme of agency as the wise and loving receptivity of one being to another.

If Section 121 offers a preview of a fully and righteously realized agency. Section 88 provides a vision of the role that our capacity to receive plays in fitting us for eternal life. We learn that what Joseph called susceptibility can be a divine gift. Those unprepared for life in celestial community, quote, "shall return again to their own place, to enjoy that which they are willing to receive because they were not willing to enjoy that which they might have received." In the language of this particular scripture, the impediment to our happiness is not unworthiness or lack of merit. Considering the giftedness of all that Christ offers us in our opportunity to receive those gifts, we fail in that regard. If salvation is predicated on our will, if we are "free to choose eternal life," the operative choice is in this scripture distilled to choosing to receive. The entirety of the scriptural corpus. And doctrine make clear that reception is not as for some people a simple one time verbal pronouncement. Rather, we might more fruitfully look upon the capacity to receive, openly, generously and gratefully as a lifelong project. William Blake understood this when he said, "we come from premortal realms to learn to bear, that is to receive the beings of love."

The Doctrine and Covenants enumerate numerous gifts that are paired with the counsel to receive in a remarkably consistent pattern. These are all quotations from the Doctrine and Covenants "his words ye shall receive," "receive my gospel," "receive my servants," "receive my counsel," "receive His will," "receive the oracles of God," "receive my instruction." In this last instance, the additional direction is given, "prepare thy heart to receive." And those words drive home the point that receiving is no passive activity. In another version of the principle, we are invited to open our hearts and give ear. To give ear, or prepare one's heart to receive presupposes a labor of humility, of laying pride aside, of presuppositions, habits and prejudices. We have all known individuals who think they are listening, when in reality they are merely waiting to respond. To receive in the fullest exercise of agency is to make one's heart soft and one's mind open and malleable, malleable to the shaping influence of the other, that this is so that we most effectively employ our agency in the act of willing receptivity is explicitly caught in Section 93 "behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man that they receive not the light."

Let me close with just a few thoughts about one particular form that our capacity to receive might take. It's what the Scriptures call metanoia, repentance. The original Greek word "news", is more commonly translated to non biblical texts as mind or intellect. Given how colloquial expressions change from culture to culture, changing one's heart is not an inaccurate rendering of the biblical phrase metanoia, which means literally change your noose, your mind. Yet it may be worth exploring the denotation that lingers at the periphery of the original root word. Imagine John the Baptist preaching, "change your mind, change your mind, for the kingdom of heaven is near." Unless we're undergoing a brain transplant, changing one's mind like changing one's heart is a metaphorical expression. Neither one perfectly captures the original Greek. And notice that both English expressions have some overlap. When we overcome a negative first impression of a person and open ourselves to loving them, have we changed our mind or changed our heart? When we decide science is not our field of dreams and decide to major in engineering instead, have we changed our heart or our mind? What about canceling our wedding or a dinner engagement?

My point is that both expressions, changing mind, changing heart, are inadequate to capture precisely the nature of those transformations, those reorientations within that alter the paths of our lives by shifting our relationship to persons, to ideas and to future ways of engaging the world. And yet the phrase change your mind is seldom associated with spiritual renewal. Perhaps it should be, because, as my examples are meant to remind us, mind and heart are overlapping domains that cannot easily be teased apart, and both may be integral to discipleship. "The highest ethical calling," writes Brian Christian, "is curiosity." Curiosity? As an ethical calling? That claim is true if we think of agency in more expansive ways as I've tried to suggest. We inhabit a world of other agents, as well as objects. We are biologically engineered and socially conditioned to make ourselves the center of our universe. For Augustine, who was actually correct this time, self love preoccupation is the default condition of humankind, though evolution, not Eve, is to blame.

The disposition to decenter the self in this context might be exactly what Brian Christian meant in his reference to curiosity as an ethical calling. We are invited by the lure of love, to be open to the world and to the other with genuine interest. That is the true meaning of curiosity, and it is an ethical stance, because it is decision fraught with moral value. Asking questions is a gesture toward connection and commitment to the value of what lies outside and beyond ourself. "If our questions are genuine," Hans-Georg Gautamer taught, "then they are laden with risk. Our own prejudices are always properly brought into play by being put at risk." Perhaps that is why repentance might be related to changing our mind and not just our heart. Repentance requires us to be moldable, open to being changed by what the universe and its inhabitants have to teach us, receptive.

In the earliest Christian communities, notes a historian of the era, individuals are not defined from within, but by means of their relationship to Christ and to one another. Another scholar reminds us that the first Christian martyrs did not die for an idea, they died for a person. All relationships are vulnerable to the emergence of new realities that are constituted when we expose ourselves to love. Unlike many Christians, we believe God is included in that web of reciprocal influence. Through love, we escape the boundedness of time, inviting an unformed future that is richly and eternally open with possibility. When Joseph recorded, in reference to the dead, "they without us, cannot be made perfect, neither we without them," he extended just such interdependence across the veil. Even chance encounters with fellow travelers at service stations and country inns have gladdened my soul as well as unsettled me by the rapidity with which profound feelings of connection emerge, as if in medias res, like an interlude that flashes into the light between darkened acts of a human drama both passed and yet to come. This love, this discovery of community, is the fullest expression of agency, the end toward which all earthly striving should tend. "Even while it is alive in the body," Emanuel Swedenborg writes, "our soul is in community with angels, although it does not realize this." He doesn't mean that in some vague sentimental way. Swedenborg means that those beautiful and holy forms of the good that we love are also loved by many that have passed before.

Belief that an actual, invisible church is constituted of such love as more than an appealing idea, it is one to which Joseph Smith was deeply committed, and of which God spoke to him numerous times, calling it the church of Enoch, the General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn, the Church of the Lamb, or just My church, referring to a community which preceded the 1830 organization. And one of God's most direct pleas to expand our communities, He asks us to enlarge the borders of Zion in the only way that matters, "I know thy heart and have heard thy prayers concerning thy brethren. Be not partial towards them and love above many others, but let thy love be for them as for thyself, and let thy love abound unto all men and unto all who love my name." May we be more curious about the world and about each other, that we may employ our agency in such a way that we are susceptible to all that is good and beautiful and remember that it is in the questions we ask that we respond with love to the world and all who inhabit it. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.