Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Alma 40-42

NO CLASS NEXT WEEK--HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

 READING FOR DECEMBER 3

 Alma 45-50

ALMA'S DOCTRINAL STUDY

39: 15-19     The Coming of Christ
40: 1-14       The State of the Soul between Death and the Resurrection
40: 15-26     The Resurrection
41: 1-15       The Plan of Restoration
42: 1-10       The Justice of God and Probation of Humankind
42: 11-28     Justice and Mercy
42: 29-31     Alma’s Final Counsel to Corianton

NATURE OF REVELATION 

 “…revelation, ancient or modern, cannot be simplistically equated with ‘factual correctness.’ Rather, we should understand revelation, even canonized modern revelation, as a process, a progression along a spectrum of correctness. Revelation is not static nor even a straight line of upwards progress, but a mediated human-divine dialectic process which sometimes becomes frozen as scripture.  Think of scripture as a snapshot in time of the progress that is being made through revelation at a certain time, place and context. Scripture thus contains human elements and understanding common to the time. This can account for differences between inspired texts, which according to common assumptions should be identical.”

Ben Spackman, https://www.fairmormon.org/conference/august-2019/ben-spackman-2

WHY WAS CORIANTON SO CONCERNED ABOUT THE RESURRECTION?

 “One likely possibility is that Corianton was exposed to religious philosophies that either dismissed or corrupted the true doctrine of the resurrection. Early in the Book of Mormon, Lehi and his son Jacob taught the reality of the resurrection explicitly (2 Nephi 2:8; 9:6).1 It seems, though, that sometime between the death of Jacob and the reign of King Mosiah a portion of the people rejected this teaching.

For instance, the way Abinadi emphasized the resurrection when he confronted King Noah and his priests suggests that this doctrine was not being correctly or sufficiently taught among the people in the city of Nephi. Likewise, when Alma the Elder strove to perpetuate Abinadi’s teachings, many of the rising generation “did not believe what had been said concerning the resurrection of the dead” (Mosiah 26:2).”

“What is more certain is the way that Nehor negatively influenced attitudes toward this doctrine. Unlike Korihor, who completely denied the existence of God, Nehor introduced the concept that the “Lord had created all men, and had also redeemed all men; and, in the end, all men should have eternal life.”. Nehor’s divergent theology obviously had influenced the young Corianton’s views of resurrection and judgment, and yet it conflicted with the eternal laws of justice and judgment embedded in the true doctrine of the resurrection.
Despite his trial and execution, Nehor’s enticing doctrines became popular among the people—so much so that his philosophy was formally designated as “the order of Nehor.” Unfortunately, Nehor’s heresy was promulgated by the Amlicites, who, by the time of Corianton’s ministry, had gained prominent influence.”



ALMA’S TEACHINGS ON THE RESURRECTION
  • No one is resurrected until after the coming of Christ (Alma 40:2).
  • There is a specific time appointed when every person will be resurrected, but only God knows that time (Alma 40:4, 9).
  • There will likely be multiple times of resurrection since there will be righteous people who live and die after Christ dies and is resurrected (Alma 40:5, 8).
  • Alma believed that the righteous till the time of Christ would be resurrected with Him (Alma 40:20).

THE STATE OF THE SOUL BETWEEN DEATH AND THE RESURRECTION

“Many times I’ve heard people interpret this passage this way: “See, it shows in the scriptures there that the righteous are in paradise and the wicked are in spirit prison.” However, you’ll notice that Alma never uses the term spirit prison anywhere. Nor does he define who the righteous are. Yet we often make our own assumptions and say, “Well, those are members of the Church, and it is only members of the Church that can be in paradise.” But Alma doesn’t say that. The point I want to make here is that the words we use a lot when we talk about the spirit world in the context of Latter-day Saint doctrine are paradise, prison, and hell. We create in our own minds clean, clear, and concrete definitions of and delineations among those terms, but the scriptures don’t.”

“The hell that Alma is talking about is not experienced by those who have not heard the gospel or haven’t been as faithful to their degree of knowledge as perhaps they should have been. He is talking about the spirits of the wicked who “have no part nor portion of the Spirit of the Lord; for behold, they chose evil works rather than good; therefore the spirit of the devil did enter into them, and take possession of their house—and these shall be cast out into outer darkness” (Alma 40:13). He’s talking about sons of perdition. That verse doesn’t tell us anything about the vast majority of the spirits who have ever lived on the earth. Alma is talking about the righteous (remember he doesn’t define that term for us) on one end of the continuum and the wicked on the other end of the continuum; he’s not telling us anything about those in between. Yet we take this passage in Alma 40 and try to say that it is the definitive declaration concerning conditions of the spirit world. I don’t believe that’s what Alma is saying or intending to imply. I think Alma is only explaining these two extremes. So when we ask ourselves what we know about the spirit world from the standard works, the answer is ‘not as much as we often think.’

“Expressions of the eternal nature of love and the hope for heavenly reunion persist in contemporary Christianity. Such sentiments, however, are not situated within a theological structure. Hoping to meet one’s family after death is a wish and not a theological argument. . . . Priests and pastors might tell families that they will meet their loved ones in heaven as a means of consolation, but contemporary thought does not support that belief as it did in the nineteenth century. There is no longer a strong theological commitment to the modern heaven.
The major exception to this caveat is the teaching of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The modern perspective on heaven—emphasizing the nearness and similarity of the other world to our own and arguing for the eternal nature of love, family, progress, and work—finds its greatest proponent in the Latter-day Saint understanding of the afterlife. While most contemporary Christian groups neglect afterlife beliefs, what happens to people after they die is crucial to LDS teachings and rituals. Heavenly theology is the result not of mere speculation, but of revelation given to past and present church leaders. . . .
There has been . . . no alteration of the LDS understanding of the afterlife since its articulation by Joseph Smith. If anything, the Latter-day Saints in the twentieth century have become even bolder in their assertion of the importance of their heavenly theology. . . . In the light of what they perceive as a Christian world which has given up belief in heaven, many Latter-day Saints feel even more of a responsibility to define the meaning of death and eternal life.” 


RESURRECTION AND RESTORATION


“The twist here is clever: After listing four pairs of terms, Alma pairs two lists of four terms and reverses their order at the same time.” (Welch) Notably, this chiasm focuses mostly on the positive aspects of restoration. It is true that evil, carnal, and devilish behavior will in some way return to afflict the sinner, but in this instance Alma chose instead to emphasize the blessings of goodness, righteousness, justice, and mercy that will be restored to the righteous. Although he was very explicit and emphatic in his denunciation of sin, Alma ultimately wanted Corianton to “let the justice of God, and his mercy, and his long-suffering have full sway in [his] heart”


THE PLAN


“As Joseph found affirmed in the book of Moses, the Fall was enabling, not damning. Needing to pass through mortality as a stage in their internal progress, all premortal spirits ‘were born into the world by the fall.’”

“The universal inheritance of Adam’s choice is death, not sin. Immersion in the world is not punishment, it is education.”

Joseph Smith’s expansive, ennobling innovation was to see our Heavenly Parents’ plan—from the beginning—as being about human elevation rather than remedy, advancement rather than repair, exaltation rather than reclamation.”

“The human condition is one of vulnerability to temptation, susceptibility to the natural predispositions of a human body, and a soul still untried and untested in the crucible of mortal existence. When Paul wrote of his fear lest we be ‘overcome of evil,’ it was likely the world’s pain and suffering, not our personal proclivities, that were his concern. Succumbing to despair, not wickedness, is the temptation of the tenderhearted. In the Mormon thought, humans are neither capable of unaided advancement to godliness nor accurately described as depraved. They are agents made free by Christ’s Atonement, enticed by darkness while yearning for the light.”

Givens, Fiona. The Christ Who Heals: How God Restored The Truth That Saves Us 

“That Day of Judgment will be a day of mercy and love—a day when broken hearts are healed, when tears of grief are replaced with tears of gratitude, when all will be made right. Yes, there will be deep sorrow because of sin. Yes, there will be regrets and even anguish because of our mistakes, our foolishness, and our stubbornness that caused us to miss opportunities for a much greater future.

But I have confidence that we will not only be satisfied with the judgment of God; we will also be astonished and overwhelmed by His infinite grace, mercy, generosity, and love for us, His children.”






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