What’s the role of grace in atonement of Christ? Dr Deidre Green & Dr Eric Huntsman will weigh in. Check out our conversation…
Don’t miss our other conversations about atonement: https://gospeltangents.com/lds_theology/atonement/
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Role of Grace in Atonement
GT 00:36 Since I mentioned Willie Grills being a Lutheran pastor, of course, the subject of grace and works has to come up, especially with a Mormon talking to a Lutheran. How does grace and works fit in with the atonement?
Eric 00:58 Do you want me to start with that, Deirdre? (Chuckling) This is a whole other conversation, We’re going to have to do a lot of Paul and late Pauline stuff. I think it’s actually a false dichotomy, number one. I mean, we’re basing ourselves on a sequence of arguments in Galatians, Romans and then Ephesians. And then we’re using a proof text in James, when James probably didn’t have Paul in front of him. So when James says, “Faith without works is dead,” he’s not responding to Paul.
GT 01:24 Thomas Wayment told me he was pushing back on that, on the grace, on too much grace.
Eric 01:30 In the context of James chapter two, the works there, are works of charity. He’s saying that if someone is naked or hungry, you need to put clothes on him and feed him. So, that’s the first thing I would say. But one of the great things we’re talking about the changes, in the trajectory of the way we’ve described the Book of Mormon over the years, when I was growing up, and Rick, you and I might be closer in age than the Deidre is to us. But, we never talked about grace in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, really. We didn’t. And we started talking about it when President Benson started making us read the Book of Mormon so much. Right? Because you couldn’t get away from what the Book of Mormon was teaching about grace. Back to that earlier idea, we teach to our distinctives, we understood that there’s a reason for ordinances and there’s a reason for obedience. And so that seems like works to us. And we felt like, at least, some Protestants, particularly evangelical Protestants, born again Protestants are emphasizing grace too much. So we shy away from the grace and we emphasize the works.
Eric 02:30 But when we actually got in the Book of Mormon, if grace is what Jesus does for us, that we can’t do for ourselves, it’s a gift. That’s what it means in Greek, or as Elder Bednar explains it from a Book of Mormon perspective, it’s the strength and enabling power of the atonement. I mean, that’s the connection with this topic, it’s the power of the atonement. The most you can come up with–I mean, I know Elder McConkie had a rubric for it. I mean, he had the pure grace, which is the resurrection. And then he had conditional grace, which made all of us just bristle, which is you have to have faith, repentance and baptism to be forgiven for sin. But the Roman Catholics gave me a model for ordinances, which was helpful, since a lot of times–I mean, we have different kinds of works. Are we talking about ordinances as works or are we talking about good deeds as works. Let’s make it ordinances for a while. For the Roman Catholics, their sacraments are conduits of grace. It’s the way God has prepared for the grace of Jesus to flow into us. Well, that’s exactly what we think ordinances are. You put yourself in a position to receive the grace of Christ. In terms of good works, doing good deeds, I mean, if you don’t do them, I guess it’s a sin of omission. So, you have to repent of that. But any number of good deeds, taking casseroles to people when there’s been a funeral or mowing the lawn or doing your ministering, none of that compensates for sin. So, works as good deeds never take the place of grace. But if we’re looking at works as the necessity to conform to ordinances, which God has established for us, that these are vehicles or tools by which the grace of Christ flows into us, that Roman Catholic model of sacramental grace, I think they’re not opposed. The ordinance as works, are the way the grace comes to us. I just said a whole lot of nothing, Deidre, fill me out here.
Deidre 04:21 Well, I don’t know that I’ll be any more concise than that. I have a few different points I want to make. The first, and I think I’m indebted to Joe Spencer, if I’m remembering correctly, and maybe Joe will not want to claim this. But I believe I learned this from him. When we think about 2nd Nephi 25 in the Book of Mormon that tells us it’s by grace we are saved after all that we can do. That alludes nicely to what we read in Alma 24 with the anti-Nephi Lehis, where it says it was all they could do to repent. It was all we could do to repent. And so that might be one way of reading what it means in 2nd Nephi 25, to say all we can do is required before grace comes in. But what that means really is repentance. I’ll say that, for me, what I understand the works piece to be is really the willingness to receive the gift that Christ makes possible. One way to think about that, how do I show that I am receptive to the gift? Well, I show that through the way I live my life. I show that through the way I exist, and that humility, that repentance, that constantly viewing myself as utterly dependent on God and utterly dependent on Christ. That that’s the way that I show that receptivity, because I believe that what it means to be Christian, and what it means to be a Latter-day Saint is something that really is not expressed primarily through words, but through the way that we act and the way that we live.
Deidre 05:55 I will say also, King Benjamin gives us this beautiful sermon, about the atonement. And Eric just alluded to that earlier. But part of what I think we don’t always appreciate is that what Benjamin is describing there, when he talks about all these illustrations of the ways that people’s lives transform, is that he’s been descriptive about a Christ-like life that we begin to live as we receive the atonement. I think sometimes we might be tempted to read that list of changes and transformations as prescriptive, that these are the things we have to do to receive the atonement. Instead, it’s a result of how the atonement and grace work on us, that these changes flow out of us. And so, we’ve had a tendency, for a long time within the Church to focus on the works piece, and have this laundry list of things we have to do before the Atonement is really at work or before we receive grace. I think that that’s wrong. I think, really, what it is, what the work for us is to be receptive, to receive the gift of the Atonement, to receive the gift of grace. And what that looks like, is recognizing our utter dependence on Christ and having a penitent way of being in the world, and that demonstrates our receptivity. Then as a result of that, as a result of receiving that grace, receiving the atonement, that is really what transforms us and allows us to live a radically different life than we would have without it.
GT 07:32 Very good. I, personally, like Eric said, I think that there’s way too many arguments about grace and works and they’re just two sides of the same coin. But I had Willie on, so, of course, we’ve got to talk about it.
Eric 07:49 Well, and Joe via Deirdre has given me something really to think about. I mean, we have to make a long list of what works are. If we have the works of repentance, and then we have sacramental works, and then we have good deeds, which I think most Protestants would say flow out of grace, I mean, we’re furnished with good works. I think we throw around works and we don’t always even say what we mean by that. Are we talking about the works of faith and repentance? Are we talking about conforming to ordinances, performing them? Are we talking about the good deeds that flow [when we’re] trying to be like Jesus? So, I think we’re not very thoughtful about what we mean when we have these discussions about works.
GT 08:36 I mean, I know as a missionary in South Carolina, getting called out because well, baptism is a work and we don’t really believe baptism is necessary and all your home teaching and all of the laundry lists that Mormons have a lot of things that were supposed to go to. Those were the things that we got attacked [on.] So, ordinances probably not as much as just like, oh, well, you feel bad because you didn’t bring the casserole because somebody was sick or whatever. I think Mormons can get really get into a checklist mentality. We do try to cover, we do try to get grace because we’re doing all that we can do to get that grace. After all we can do, then I can get the grace. A hardcore Lutheran or born again Christian is like, all you’ve got to do is confess Jesus, you’re good to go.
Eric 09:38 Let me push back on that a little bit, because I don’t think Latter-day Saints are alone in the checklist. Theologically, they may say all you need to do is confess Christ, but it’s, like, the Protestant work ethic, right? I mean, the people who were the greatest examples of the Protestant work ethic were people who believe in grace and double predestination. But they want to assure themselves that they were elected to grace. So you had to show that Christ had changed you somehow. I think it’s a natural human tendency to want to have something verifiable or something that you can recognize. It’s like all these things that are as much about boundary maintenance as they are about obedience. We do certain things, we act a certain way, we dress a certain way to show ourselves and others, that we’re Jesus’ [follower.] And because I did my last few years of high school in Jackson, Tennessee, and I had a lot of friends who were saved by grace, and they were born again Christians. But they were as concerned or more concerned–we were Mormons in those days–as my fellow Mormons were about…
GT 10:40 It’s okay to use on my channel.
Eric 10:42 …not smoking and not drinking, among other things. I mean, so there’s still these–and it’s not just that you were trying to prove to others that you were saved. I think it’s we want to show ourselves. The checklist is useful for ourselves. And yet, this is the beauty of the grace of Jesus Christ. We can come back to this. We’re almost out of time here. But that whole, you’re saved by grace after all you can do, I think has some good arguments. Dan McLellin has looked at this, theologically, and I think I don’t even get to talk on this. You can look at that meaning, after all you can do, it’s grace that saves you. But I love what Joe and Deidre have shared with us, after all we can do, which is the works of repentance. As someone who loves the Gospel of John, “If you love me keep my commandments,” it’s another category of works there. Obedience as a work is because you love Jesus, and He wants you to do this. So I don’t know. This is getting a little away from atonement of Jesus Christ, but it is certainly connected to it.
Deidre 11:41 I mean, I’ll make one last comment about this. I think part of why we’re tempted to lean this way as Latter-day Saints is because we emphasize agency so much. I think overall, that’s a really positive thing. We should be thinking about agency and using our agency well. But, I think, maybe a better way of thinking about this is moving away from an idea that we somehow earn grace, which is completely contradictory to the concept of grace, and that [instead,] we avail ourselves of grace. And as I was saying before, repentance and different actions or ordinances, we might think of more as invitations, demonstrating to God, demonstrating to Christ, that we invite them in, that we’re willing to receive the gift, rather than thinking about it as a way of earning the gift that is already available, that is already ours.
Eric 12:34 That’s lovely, Deidre. I love that idea of receiving. We’re receiving the grace, and most importantly, we’re receiving them.
GT 12:44 Great. Well, what I’d like to do in these last few minutes is, it looks like you have–here I’m trying to look at the table of contents really quickly–twelve people who have written in this book. We’ve talked about you and Deirdre and J.B. Haws. Who were the people that we haven’t highlighted in this book that we should? What are their contributions? And I love J.B., I need to get him on. I don’t know if you guys can help him to say yes.
Deidre 13:17 We can probably help. J.B. was just here in Berkeley giving a fireside based on his chapter for this volume and it was absolutely excellent. So, I think he’s all geared up to talk about it.
Eric 13:29 Well, Jenny Reeder, how can we not talk about Jenny?
GT 13:33 There was go.
Deidre 13:33 We have to talk about Jenny.
GT 13:34 And especially, when I mentioned earlier, it’s one thing to become absorbed as a thinker or talk about Atonement of Jesus Christ theologically, but then it’s talking about experientially, which is what we all want to do. And the reason we invited her–well, there are two reasons we invited her. There is a big lacuna in this work, which is we don’t have atonement in General Conference talks. Right? We have different verses of scripture. We have some historical things and we have theological explorations, but there was no way, in this volume, it would have to be several volumes, that we’ve talked about atonement in Latter-day Saint discourse, official discourse. And so, we knew we couldn’t do that. But we wanted to talk about Latter-day Saints describing atonement, not just what Scripture said, or what theologians say. Of course, Deirdre and I are both feminists and we wanted to privilege or highlight some women’s voices.
Jesus & Joseph Smith Are Feminists!
GT 14:28 Now, is it okay to say you’re a feminist? You work at BYU.
Eric 14:33 Well, Jesus is a feminist, and Joseph Smith is a feminist. I mean, I’m not a political activist. I mean, yeah. There you have it.
GT 14:42 That sounds like a great one liner.
Eric 14:44 But if you know Jenny, you just have to love her work. What she did is she plumbed the archives where she spends her time. And she just gave example after example, of how 19th century Latter-day Saint women experienced and lived atonement. It’s just such a beautiful chapter and they did it through worship, they did through song, they did it through struggle, they did it. I mean we don’t want to just highlight one contributor. But it’s a such a powerful chapter, after Old Testament, New Testament, two on Book of Mormon, Patristic authors and Doctrine & Covenants. But then here is how it actually changed real people’s lives and real people whom we don’t always talk about or read. So, I love Jenny’s chapter.
GT 15:40 Deidre, who else are we not highlighting?
Deidre 15:44 Well, I think we mentioned Ben Spackman. But Ben Spackman is finishing his Ph.D. at Claremont. So, he’s working on Mormon Studies there and he also has a background in Hebrew Bible and Near Eastern languages from the University of Chicago. He just does a really excellent job in helping us get a sense of the view of atonement from the Hebrew Bible, especially given his really robust background in languages. Other authors that we have, we mentioned Ariel Bybee Laughton, who is an independent scholar, specializing in early Christian fathers and their thoughts. And [she] gives us a really wonderful overview of thinking about atonement from the Patristics to the Reformation, and how that influences or resonates with the LDS tradition. We have Benjamin Keogh, who’s from Scotland, also finishing his Ph.D. very, very soon, actually. He gives us a really a beautiful view of the relational side of atonement and thinking about atonement as absolutely, inherently relational on every level. Benjamin just has so much to offer the Church and is such a profound thinker and so innovative.
Eric 17:12 That’s a chapter you have to read three or four times. It’s meaty. It’s meaty.
Deidre 17:14 Yeah. Absolutely. We mentioned Sharon Harris, who is a professor of English at BYU and talks specifically about the Book of Mormon and gives us a new view of atonement there, that Eric’s already described. I imagine your listeners know who Fiona Givens is, and that we don’t need to give a description there.
Eric 17:39 Nicholas Frederick did a chapter on Book of Mormon and because we have the Book of Mormon and its first publication in English, we don’t have it reformed Egyptian. But he did kind of philological study of the word atonement and atone and how it was used. I alluded to this earlier, I don’t think Latter-day Saints realize how frequently we use the term atonement or as President Nelson would say, the atonement of Jesus Christ, but it’s because of its use its frequency in the Book of Mormon, to represent everything Jesus has done for us. Nick has some really interesting and important insights. We mentioned before that atonement is not just a Gethsemane and Calvary. It’s also the empty tomb. He points out that for many Book of Mormon authors, resurrection really is the biggest part of the Atonement. Adam Miller is actually a reprint of something Adam did. Have you had Adam on your show yet?
GT 18:32 I haven’t. Adam must be busy, because I just talked to Rosalynde Welch, because they were co-authors on a book about the Book of Mormon. So he’s definitely been busy.
Eric 18:43 So, it was a reprint of something he did before. But it’s notes on atonement, grace, and… And it’s actually set out 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. But it’s just, I mean, the way he thinks, he just moves from idea to idea to idea. I think readers will just find that fascinating. It’s not your usual, “I have a thesis statement, and then I’m going to lay out the five sections of my chapter, and then I’m going to have a conclusion.” No, you are traveling through the intellectual journey of Adam Miller, which none of us can even aspire to, but he just takes you along from point to point. And that’s fun. It’s a different kind of chapter. I mean, it’s a completely different read.
Deidre 19:19 And he’s specifically looking at sealing and eternal families and covenant making as part of the Atonement. So, who else do we need to name? I had someone in mind. Oh, Joe Spencer, who I mentioned in a different context.
GT 19:37 I need to get Joe on, also.
Deidre 19:39 Yeah, he does some political theology in terms of thinking about two different models of atonement that we get from the Book of Mormon and specifically how that relates to our ideas about violence.
Eric 19:56 And Deidre, do you want to characterize or describe your chapter on Enveloping Grace? I mean, it’s a great way to end this, the anthology.
Deidre 20:05 Yeah, as you would predict, from what I’ve said, so far, I’m very concerned about the possible consequences for women in terms of overdoing an emphasis on violence for the reasons I named earlier, in the podcast. And especially a lot of my work focuses on this idea of the underdeveloped self. One way to think about it is, as one theologian puts it, the soluble self, the self that dissolves into the projects and needs of others, that is excessively selfless and self-sacrificial. And, of course, as I name in the chapter, this is not a problem that’s unique to women. But we tend to think stereotypically about gender. But this might be something that’s culturally conditioned in women to a greater extent than men. But to think about how to give us new imagery and drawing specifically, on the LDS canon to reimage the Atonement, as not something that calls on us to sacrifice or to become dissolved or diffused into the plans and projects of others, to not see all suffering and self-sacrifice as inherently good. But as something that actually embraces us and holds us together as individuals and actually allows us the grace to self-develop against the cultural forces that would discourage people from doing that.
Eric 21:33 And her chapter, actually, addresses that earlier issue we were talking about works and grace. I mean, in fact, her title is Enveloping Grace. But I think your concluding section is Enveloping and Encircling Grace and How the Atonement Makes Us Whole, and particularly, not just women, but she uses that as the example.
GT 21:55 Cool, cool. I think this is a great topic as we lead up to Easter, which is just a few weeks away here. And I’m hoping that people will go out and get Latter-day Perspectives on the Atonement. I think it’s a wonderful book. Are you guys, do you have any works together or separately? What upcoming projects do you have?
Deidre 22:22 Eric, go ahead. You were just naming your current project.
Eric 22:27 Well, I’ve done a lot on–New Testament Gospels is what I do. But, in terms of family and personal practice, I just love Christmas and Easter. So, I’ve actually written quite a lot on Advent and on the Infancy Narratives of the Gospels and a lot on the passion narratives and Trevan and I did this rework of an earlier book expansion, an earlier book on the Holy Week. But my big project, which will absorb the next few years, except for when I’m in Jerusalem, is I’m doing a full commentary on the Gospel of John right now. So, that’s a big, big project. But I’ve written quite a lot on John, so I’m trying to pull that together and do an actual line by line. So that’s what I’m doing. Deirdre is doing many things. Deidre, you tell us what you’re doing.
Deidre 23:06 So, my current project related to Mormon Studies, specifically, is to write on the theology of Eliza R. Snow, for the Mormon Thought Series, in University of Illinois press, that Joe Spencer and Matt Bowman are editing. And then, in addition to that, I work largely, as we’ve said now multiple times, on contemporary feminist thought. I’m currently working on a constructive theology on human flourishing and especially attending to the widespread suffering and injustice and sense of precariousness that we face in the 21st century, and to think about a socially responsible notion of joy and flourishing against that backdrop. So, that’s where most of my energy is going these days.
GT 24:01 I feel bad. I go to Mormon History Association and Book of Mormon Studies Association, but I don’t think I’ve seen you guys at either of those conferences. Where do you guys hang out when you’re not teaching?
Eric 24:13 Society of Biblical Literature, I mean, because I’m a New Testament geek.
GT 24:18 I need to go to that one, I guess.
Eric 24:22 It’s so huge, and it usually holds its meetings in November with the American Academy of Religion. So, that makes it even huger. But almost everyone’s there. But you just have to look for them, because it’s such a big conference.
GT 24:34 Where’s that this year?
Eric 24:36 Oh, gosh, I didn’t sign up for this year because I thought I was in Jerusalem.
Deidre 24:40 It’ll be in San Diego this Autumn.
GT 24:43 Oh who wants to go there? (tongue in cheek)
Eric 24:44 [Sometimes it’s in] Denver, it bounces back and forth.
GT 24:49 Okay.
Deidre 24:49 I’m often on the other side of that at the American Academy of Religion. I am on a steering committee for the Kierkegaard Religion and Culture Group. I specialize in the thought of the 19th century genus philosopher Kierkegaard. And so I’m often at conferences in Copenhagen and other conferences, largely related to his work, as well.
GT 25:09 Copenhagen is harder to get to than San Diego.
Deidre 25:13 Well you should come, that’s a good excuse.
GT 25:15 I should come. I’d like to go. I’ve never been. Alright, well, Eric Huntsman and Deidre Green, I thank you so much for being here on gospel tangents. Everybody, go out and buy your Latter-day Saint Perspectives on the Atonement. Thanks again for being here on Gospel Tangents, I really appreciate it.
Eric 25:32 Thank you, Rick.
Deidre 25:33 Thanks so much. Take care.
GT 25:36 Thanks.
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