Dr Rosalynde Welch discusses atonement theology & 2 of the gospels in the Book of Mormon: Gospel of Mary & Gospel of Mosiah. We’ll get into atonement theology and discuss whether Joseph Smith’s world influenced him when translating the Book of Mormon….
Don’t miss our other conversations with Rosalynde: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ih_Fh585xk&list=PLLhI8GMw9sJ7ftt9c-Ndta9jcDH0NOQyr
Copyright © 2023
Gospel Tangents
All Rights Reserved
Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission
Gospel of Mary
GT 00:25 Well, very good. Very good. The first gospel, even though you said it was in 1st Nephi, you actually called it the Gospel of Mary.
Rosalynde 00:35 Yes.
GT 00:36 Can you talk about why that is, instead of the Gospel of Nephi?
Rosalynde 00:39 Yeah, good question, and one of my favorite parts of the book. So, like I said, we felt like it was important to find women’s voices to speak alongside the men’s voices in the Book of Mormon. This has been a precept of Latter-day Saint scriptural exegesis from the beginning. You might remember, D&C [Doctrine & Covenants] 25, when Emma Smith is given the calling to expound scripture and exhort the church. There has been from the beginning of our religious tradition, the necessity of having women’s voices together with men’s voices, expounding scripture. When Adam and I started working together with the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar, it was always important to us and to the directors to have equal numbers of male and female participants there, so that we have men’s and women’s voices together. Then, of course, Adam and I, coming together as co-authors, are modeling the richness that can come from having women’s perspectives, right alongside men’s perspectives. We don’t see our gender as dividing us in any way. But we do see our different experiences in the world as bringing a richness to our analysis. As you’ve noticed, it’s personal. Right? It’s a personal kind of writing. It’s not a scholarly, objective, third person voice. We’re pouring ourselves into this book and into these readings and giving ourselves to each other as we do when we share with each other. So, for all those reasons, we wanted to find, in the Book of Mormon, women’s voices as well
Rosalynde 02:26 I noticed something really interesting about Nephi’s vision of Christ’s life in 1st Nephi 11. There’s this moment, when he’s shown this virgin, this beautiful young woman, and the spirit associates her with the tree, and tells him that this is Mary. Then Nephi, or the text says that Mary is carried away in the spirit. This is a very interesting phrase, and it’s been interpreted in a number of different ways. Sometimes it’s interpreted as a modest veil, over the moment of conception, when Mary conceives the Savior. But there’s really no textual evidence for that. In fact, if you search for this phrase, ‘carried away in the spirit’ to see how it’s used most often, in the Book of Mormon, it’s most often used to describe somebody who’s been given a vision. In fact, that is the same phrase that Nephi uses to describe what he is experiencing.
GT 03:27 Right.
Rosalynde 03:27 He’s carried away in the spirit. So, I started to think, what if that moment is actually describing a vision that Mary herself has had of her son’s life? Nephi is now seeing this, and somehow, Mary’s vision has been blended in to Nephi’s vision. We know that that can happen. It’s unusual to think about, but actually in the book of Acts, we see a moment where a man named Ananias has a vision of Paul. In his vision, he sees that Paul is having a vision of him. So, we know that these intersubjective visions can occur. Although it’s a bit of a conjecture, but we conjectured what would it mean, if part of what Nephi is seeing there in 1st Nephi 11, includes the perspective of Mary as the mother of Christ, blended in there. So that’s why we called it the Gospel of Mary and I, in particular, worked to try to excavate the elements of Mary’s perspective and her maternal experience in bearing the Son of God.
GT 04:44 It’s hard to find women in the Book of Mormon. Right?
Rosalynde 04:46 Yeah, you have to work really, really hard and you have to be responsible about it, but you have to, sometimes, use a little bit of imagination, or being willing to risk a kind of hypothesis. Right?
GT 05:00 Mm hmm.
Rosalynde 05:01 Of course, I can’t prove. I can’t make a hard and fast case for this. But as long as I am clear that this is my interpretation, what happens? What happens if we go down that hole? Let’s follow that and see. And really interesting things can turn up.
GT 05:15 I’m trying to remember. And hopefully, you know. Aren’t they’re only, like, four women in the Book of Mormon, Lehi’s wife, Sariah.
Rosalynde 05:22 Yeah.
GT 05:23 Mary.
Rosalynde 05:24 Yeah.
GT 05:24 I say Abish. And then I’m trying to remember who the other one was.
Rosalynde 05:28 Yeah, there are a lot of women who are unnamed.
GT 05:31 Right.
Rosalynde 05:31 So, there are more than we might think. But what there are a dearth of, are named, active protagonists.
GT 05:41 Right.
Rosalynde 05:42 That’s what we don’t see.
GT 05:44 We don’t have a Deborah or a Ruth or anybody like that in the Book of Mormon.
Rosalynde 05:47 That’s right. We do have very interesting figures like Morianton’s maidservant. My friend, Joe Spencer, we were just talking about him. He’s just written an incredible paper, excavating everything we can understand about this brief reference to Morianton’s maidservant. So, there is material there, but we just haven’t taken the time to really excavate it. But the reality is, you have to work harder to find it.
GT 06:12 Okay. Well, it’s interesting that you talk about the Gospel of Mary. And I mentioned Val Larsen earlier. He had just come out with an Interpreter article, where he compares the tree of life to Asherah. In your book, you compared her to Mary. And, of course, we know that symbols can have multiple meanings. But I was curious, what are your thoughts on Asherah and Mary representing the tree?
Rosalynde 06:45 Yeah, I remember years ago, Dan Petersen, I’m not super familiar with Val’s more recent article on this, but years ago, Dan Petersen was the first one to draw that connection.
GT 07:00 Nephi and His Asherah.
Rosalynde 07:15 Nephi and his Asherah, yeah. And again, I am not a Hebrew bible scholar by any means. But the Asherah, of course, in the Old Testament was the sacred tree that was associated with the Goddess. And so, in the strict monotheistic Isrealite religion, that was verboten. That was blasphemous to worship the tree. So, often the Israelites were commanded to destroy these female-associated sacred trees or posts. But there may be, I believe what Dan argues is that there is this older and kind of purer form of Isrealite religion where there is a female counterpart to God. We see that reflected in our theology of the Heavenly Father and the Heavenly Mother. So, he associates the tree that Nephi sees, then, with Mary, who is the mother of Christ. So, herself, holds this role and this sacred responsibility and sacred duty and is worthy of our love and our veneration, if not our worship. So, yeah, I mean, yes. Scripture is susceptible to multiple interpretations.
Rosalynde 08:24 Part of what we wanted to do, rather than offering a historical interpretation in the mold that Val and Dan do, which are eye opening and fruitful and wonderful, but we wanted to model a theological reading of the Book of Mormon. So, rather than situating this in any particular historical context, we are looking for its existential stakes. What does it mean for me now, as a disciple of Christ? The Book of Mormon and all scripture isn’t just history. It partakes of history and historiography in ways, but, ultimately, scripture is written for the intent to persuade to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that we find salvation by coming unto Christ. So, it asks us to relate to it very differently than we would relate to history. We can read a history text and say, “Oh, yeah, that’s true,” and then keep on going on our merry way. And we’re not changed one bit by it. But with scripture, if we respond to the invitation that it gives us, we are transformed by it. So, we wanted to read the Book of Mormon in that light, as scripture that invites us into it and asks us to open ourselves up to it, so that we can be transformed in the process. So, we tend to be more personal, existential and more theological in that way.
GT 09:59 Yeah. I remember you shared, being a mother yourself, and how you could relate with Mary. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Rosalynde 10:07 Yeah, so one of the things that’s unique about 1st Nephi 11, is that we have this image that doesn’t show up anywhere else in the Book of Mormon. I don’t think it shows up in any of the four nativity stories in the New Testament. In fact, there is not a nativity story in Mark, so, the three nativity stories in the New Testament. That is the image of Mary cradling and holding the child in her arms. Because that was so unique in Scripture, it really stuck out to me, and, also, because it was so personal. Because I’m a mother of four children, and I’ve held babies. I love children and infants. So, I started to think about what it would mean to take seriously the possibility that Mary’s perspective really was incorporated in this gospel.
Rosalynde 11:02 The great theology of the gospel of 1st Nephi 11 is the doctrine of condescension, the idea that God loves us so much that He sent His Son Jesus from heaven to earth, to live on earth with us. What would it mean to combine Mary’s perspective as the mother holding the child with this doctrine of condescension? As I thought about it, I started thinking about the way that holding a child teaches you something, not in words, not in ideas, but just in your very body. What it teaches you is that that child is getting heavier every day. As the child grows, [he] gets heavier and heavier in your arms. You start to understand, as a mother, that soon it’s going to be time to put that child down. Where that baby has almost been so close to you, it’s almost a part of you. As the child grows in your arms, you start to understand that this child will leave you and will go out into the world. If we are lucky, he’ll come back and visit his mom. But he’s going to go out into the world and do the work that God has given him to do. That made me think about condescension in a new way. I think, typically, we tend to think of it as a vertical movement, that Christ was in heaven as the pre-existent Christ, and He came to earth. How great is that? I mean, it is amazing and miraculous. But what Mary’s perspective shows is that it wasn’t just a matter of coming down to earth, it was a matter of going forth out among the human family. This is a phrase that shows up in many of these gospels, “go forth.” Christ comes down, and then he “goes forth.”
Rosalynde 12:50 So, he came down from heaven, not just to be here on Earth, but to experience what we experience, to be among us and with us, to live in solidarity with us and have all the experiences that we have. I think that provides a much richer understanding of what condescension is. It’s much more than just being in a location. It’s living with and as a human being, just as Christ did. Of course, he was greater than us, because He was the Son of God. But his condescension was to bring him here with us and among us to experience all that we experience. And so, it was really pondering on Mary’s embodied experience as a mother holding an infant who, from that moment forward, is on a journey away from her. That really helps me to think about condescension in that new way.
GT 13:47 Very good. I want to move on to some of the other ones, but I feel like I can’t leave without saying, let’s talk about the fruit of the tree. What does that represent to you?
Rosalynde 13:59 Yeah, well, I mean, again, it’s available for multiple interpretations. But the fruit of the tree is Jesus Christ. Right? Jesus Christ is the embodiment of the love of God. He’s also the fruit of Mary’s womb. So, we see Mary as the tree, Christ as the fruit. It is Christ in his distinctive form of power. So, Christ came to earth as a God, as a powerful God. But he came exercising the power of love. And the power of the fruit is that it draws us to it through its beauty and through its sweetness, through its shining brilliance. It stimulates our desire and invites us to come to it. And that is the kind of power that Christ exercises. It is not a power of dominion, or of violence or of control, but of love, and of invitation.
19th Century Atonement in Book of Mormon
Interview
GT 14:55 Very good. Let’s move on to the next one. It seems like you said the first one was in 1st Nephi, and then we move into King Benjamin. Can you tell us more about that?
Rosalynde 15:04 Yeah.
GT 15:06 This was the Gospel of Benjamin. Is that right?
Rosalynde 15:07 The Gospel of Benjamin, that’s what we’re calling it. Yes. You know, it’s really interesting. What we started to notice is that whoever the particular speaker or perspective of the gospel was, that perspective was integral to the portrait of Christ that they share. If you picture King Benjamin up on that tower, he had once been a mighty king. We hear about him wielding the sword of Nephi and expelling Lamanites from Zarahemla. Now, we see him as an aged, weak and vulnerable human being. He talks about how he’s trembling, and his voice is weak. He’s kind of clinging to life and being sustained from day to day by the power of God to continue this work. So, we see displayed in King Benjamin, this intense human vulnerability, embodied vulnerability. That is the key attribute of Christ that we see in his gospel. This is something actually that’s widespread throughout each of these seven gospels. But I think it’s especially clear in Benjamin’s gospel, that Christ’s body was as vulnerable as yours and mine. He experiences all of the sufferings and hardships that we do. It’s really striking. Benjamin really enumerates, hunger, thirst, fatigue, temptation, suffering of every kind. So, we see in the portrait of Christ reflected, Benjamin’s own vulnerability. It’s really beautiful to see how the gospel comes to us in our own language, and is refracted through our own experiences. That’s, I think, part of what it means that Christ came to be among us is that his life is visible in our own.
GT 15:23 Of course, this leads into atonement. I think, between the Gospel of Benjamin and the Gospel of Abinadi, this is where we really start to dig into atonement theories and theology. I talked with Terryl Givens a year or so ago about the different atonement theologies. Are you familiar with those?
Rosalynde 17:26 Yeah, I’m broadly familiar with it. It’s not my specialty. {both chuckling}
GT 17:32 It seems to me and more so, maybe we should jump into Abinadi a little bit more, because it seems like you talked more about him with atonement theology. I, personally, don’t know if this is going to get me in trouble. I don’t like penal substitution. {Rick chuckling} I know I talked with Terryl about this, about some of the other ones, Christus Victor, and things like that. Terryl had his own atonement theology, which I thought was wonderful. But it does seem to me, because I know Abinadi talks about the wounds in his hands and everything. Do you see, I guess, penal substitution in those two things? Or can we look at those in more of a Christus Victor type way? I’m trying to remember what Terryl said it was consequentialism, or something like.[1] So, can you talk about that?
Rosalynde 18:38 Yeah, I can talk about it broadly. It is easy to, in multiple passages—well, first of all, I’ll say one thing first. What’s really interesting about these passages, is that in the Book of Mormon, these accounts of Christ’s life come packaged with an already developed soteriology, or theory of salvation. In the New Testament, that’s not the case. The theological unpacking of the meaning of Christ’s life happens in Paul. But in the gospels, themselves, there’s just the faintest hints of a developed salvation theology. But in the Book of Mormon, that’s very different. Each one of these lives of Christ comes packaged as part of a larger sermon, calling and inviting the listener to repent and to come unto Christ. So, we do see a very close relation between the life of Christ and the theory of atonement or the model of salvation that’s being put forth. So yes, it is the case that there are many passages in the Book of Mormon that if you come to them with a penal substitution lens, you’ll find that vindicated there. I, myself, I’m not a partisan. For me, the point is to be transformed in Christ, and the particular model that that takes is fascinating to discover. I feel it fascinating to explore in the scriptures, but I don’t feel compelled to take a stand on one or the other.
Rosalynde 22:22 What I do think is powerful in the Book of Mormon, is the way that our emotions are appealed to. I talked about this a minute ago in the way that the fruit of the tree appeals to our desire. Right? It appeals to us on a level other than just the intellectual. I think we can read some of these passages in the Book of Mormon, talking about the way that Christ has rescued us from our sin and is mercy is robbing justice and all these things. We can see them as an appeal to our emotion, asking us to think back on a time when we experienced something like rescue from an implacable foe, and then drawing on those feelings and using those feelings to help build faith in Christ. I think we might read those passages wrongly, if we look at them as a systematic theology of atonement, when that might not have been what they were meant to be at all. They might have been a pastoral, rhetorical way to invite us existentially to consider our need for a Savior. It is very striking that in Alma 7, in particular, we see something very unlike those other passages that discussed the atonement in the Book of Mormon. I’m thinking about Alma 34 and also, Abinadi in various places. Again, we don’t see anything like penal substitution in Alma 7. We don’t see anything like Christ came and that the meaning of his death was to suffer for our sins, and to take our sins away from us. On the contrary, we are told that He bore our sins. He experienced all that we experienced, so that he would know how to take care of us and how to help us. So, I think that’s a very powerful and really unique take on a formal theology of atonement, there in Alma 7.
GT 22:26 Okay. You said you’re not a partisan. I’m trying to make you a partisan. Do any of those other atonement theories appeal to you? And do you see those in the Book of Mormon as well?
Rosalynde 22:49 Yeah, so I approach these, this in two ways. One is as a scholar, and the other is as a disciple. Ultimately, we want them to be integrated. As a scholar, it is interesting to trace the ways that ancient Israelite cultic practices of sacrifice are transmuted and reimagined and remixed in the New Testament as early Christians are trying to make sense of the meaning of Christ’s life and death and what it means for Christ to be our Savior. I think scripturally speaking, there can be a good case for a lot of these different atonement theories. I don’t think we can settle it by saying, let’s look to the Bible, and we’ll follow what the Bible or the Book of Mormon says. Let’s look to the scriptures, because the Scriptures speak with many different voices. That’s part of the point of this book, is that our perspectives, and our frame of reference, our experience, all of those influence the way that we express who Christ is. So, we can look to the Scriptures. That’s fascinating. I like to do that systematic work, myself, sometimes, and really tracing a theme through and seeing how it’s used and trying to put it forward in a formalized way.
Rosalynde 24:17 As a disciple though, that’s not at all the way that I experience the atonement. I can’t imagine like going to a book of theology and reading about it there and then being like, okay, I’m going to apply this in my own spiritual life and now I experienced the atonement in this way. That’s just not how it works for me. For me, it’s much more like what we see in, for instance, Mosiah 5, where after King Benjamin’s address to the people, they experience a new birth, a renewal in Christ, a transformation of their self. What is the formal mechanism, objective mechanism behind that? Is there one? I don’t know. All I can say is what I’ve experienced existentially as a disciple of Christ. My experience is that I have been transformed. So, for me, there’s, as I said, there’s a a disconnect. Again, I think there’s value in understanding and formalizing the teachings that we see in the scriptures. But in the end, as a disciple, what I’m looking for is a new birth and a new life in Christ.
GT 25:34 Very good. Now you said something else that I thought was very interesting. You said in the New Testament, there isn’t a well-defined theology of atonement, let’s say, until you get to Paul. Then Paul starts to assign it a little bit. But my question is, could it be that Joseph Smith as translator of the Book of Mormon, because he was influenced by 2000 years of Christianity, or 1800 years. I guess. This is hard, because, how much did he translate? How much did he absorb from his environment? There are people who say, “Well, there’s obviously some 19th century theology in here.” Can you talk a little bit about that, as far as, could it be that because the atonement theology is more developed in the Book of Mormon, it was because of Joseph’s environment? Is that a possibility?
Rosalynde 26:43 Yeah, there’s no doubt that a prophet brings his own, or her own mental machinery to the labor of prophecy. Actually, we see that in the Book of Mormon, itself. It’s striking that Samuel, as he is prophesying of Christ to the Nephites, he repeats a long formula, word for word from King Benjamin. And I’m sorry, maybe in your show notes, I can’t remember off the top of my head exactly which verses they are, but it’s a naming formula for Christ. He reproduces this, a long, long string of words, word for word, as King Benjamin did. So, somehow, some way, Samuel had as part of his mental machinery, this formula. Perhaps it was a liturgical formula. My father-in-law, John Welch has speculated that this was a formula that got incorporated in a sort of liturgy or the ordinances and rituals of Nephite Christianity that then were transferred to the Lamanites. That this is how Samuel has this in his mind. God uses that, uses what’s available in Samuel’s mind, to facilitate Samuel’s own witness and testimony of Christ.
Rosalynde 28:03 And in the very same way, I have no doubt that Joseph came. We know that he came to the project of translating the Book of Mormon, with the language of the King James Bible, as an integral part of his mental machinery. Those phrases and those models were always there. There’s pervasive intertextuality between the Old and New Testaments and the Book of Mormon. For me, that actually validates the work that Joseph did as a prophet, because that’s how I understand the work of a prophet is to testify of Christ in a given moment, with the materials that are at hand, making Christ relevant and present to the listeners of a given moment. So, it makes complete sense to me that a prophet at any given moment in time, would be using the materials that will speak the discourse and the words and the phrases and the ideas that will speak to his or her audience in that moment. So, again, this isn’t a work of history. I’m a believer in the historicity of the Book of Mormon, myself. Te book gives itself to me in its textures, and its flavors, and its complex layering. It just reads to me like an extremely complex textual work of redaction that combines multiple strata and layers in these really complex human and divine ways. So, I read the Book of Mormon, and I believe that it is historical. At the same time, I don’t feel threatened by people who are saying, “Well, the Book of Mormon was relevant to the 19th century in this way, these ways, these ways.” I say, “Yeah, that’s what it was meant to do. That’s what a prophet does.”
GT 29:51 But that does lead to another question that you’re probably not going to want to answer, but I’m going to ask it anyway. {both chuckling} Because John was very into Book of Mormon geography, and you said that you believed it was historical. So, where does it take place? {Rosalynde laughing} And realize you’re talking to the Book of Mormon geography expert here.
Rosalynde 30:17 Yeah, I, honestly, I haven’t approached this in a scholarly way, whatsoever. I read the work of other scholars, and I am persuaded by the work of John Sorensen, and others who have advocated for the limited geography model. But I have mostly just inherited that. Again, it’s a fascinating, scholarly question for me. But it doesn’t really influence the way that I approach the Book of Mormon as a disciple, as I tried to articulate earlier. I come to the Book of Mormon because I want to find new life in Christ. That’s what it’s about for me. And so, these other questions are interesting, but secondary. I simply don’t have the scholarly expertise to, in any original way, weigh in on that question. But I would largely subscribe to the Mesoamerican, limited geography model that I’ve inherited from other scholars.
GT 31:15 That doesn’t surprise me.
Pre-Jewish Christians in Book of Mormon
Interview
GT 31:19 I know another critique by say, Protestants, with regards to the Book of Mormon is this idea that why do we have baptism, Nephi, 600 years before Christ was doing it? Why is there so much Christology in the Book of Mormon? From a Protestant point of view, they would say, well, that proves it’s a 19th century work. Do you have a response for that?
Rosalynde 31:43 Yeah. Well, I mean, I don’t have to have a response for that, because the Book of Mormon gives its own response to that; which is that these, the Christian gospel was prophetically given to the Nephite people. The Book of Mormon, itself, has a very clear explanation for the presence of Christian doctrine in it, pre-Christ. That is that angels came and delivered the gospel to the Nephite prophets. Then the Nephite prophets proclaim this gospel. It was practiced on and off by large or small sectors of the society and then transferred to the Lamanite people who, themselves, practiced it for a time and then Christ came. So really, we don’t have to—now the question, of course, is, “Do you buy that? Do you take the text on its own terms? Some people don’t, but I do. So, for me, there’s really no problem at all. Because I accept what the text says for itself, which is that, that the gospel was angelically delivered, before the fact, to the Nephite people.
GT 32:50 Yeah, because I think Nephi even quotes Paul. Doesn’t he?
Rosalynde 32:55 Yes, exactly. Once again, the intertextuality is pervasive. Yes, the Book of Mormon quotes from the New Testament all the time. There’s various different models of why that is the case.
GT 33:09 Or should I say Paul is quoting Nephi?
Rosalynde 33:13 Who knows? It could go that way too. The Book of Mormon exists, to confirm, affirm, supplement, and stand beside the Bible. So, the Book of Mormon was never meant to stand independently of the Bible, unlike the Bible, which did stand independently for millennia. So, there’s not a fully symmetrical relationship between the Bible and the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon, as I said, was never meant to stand independently of the Bible. It sees itself always in relationship to the Bible. And that’s reflected at the most granular level of word choice, and at much higher thematic and theological levels where it’s solving a puzzle in the Bible, or clarifying something in the Bible or expanding a really tantalizing hint in the Bible. All restoration scripture stands in that deeply intertwined relationship to the Bible. What is the origin of that intertextuality? Again, to me, these aren’t the most compelling questions. The most compelling questions are, what does it actually mean? What is the Book of Mormon saying about the Bible? That’s more interesting. But we could postulate various things: that this was introduced by Joseph Smith’s mind, that it was introduced by the spirit in some way, or that there’s some complex textual relationship behind the text, we would say. But we can’t know for sure any of those. And in the end, we just go, if you’re a believer, you rely on what Joseph said, which is that the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God.
{End of Part 2}
[1] Terryl referred to it as consequential substitution.
Copyright © 2023
Gospel Tangents
All Rights Reserved
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:26 — 33.4MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Email | | More
