If we were to risk definitions of some key terms and then constructed these definitions by referring only to information presented thus far in the chapter, what might we venture?
The Word
The narrative introduction to Alma’s sermon (32.1-7) mentions “the word” on three occasions.
Twice in the first verse – initially qualified as “the word of God” and then simply referenced as “the word.” Here, the word is the direct object of Alma’s preaching.
In verse six we are told that Alma sees the multitude to be “in a preparation to hear the word.” Their preparation consists of having suffered afflictions that “had truly humbled them.”
Alma preaches “the word of God” and in order receive it one must be prepared by true humility.
In the body of his discourse (32.8ff), Alma first mentions the word in verse 14. Here he says that “they are more blessed who humble themselves because of the word.” This seems to indicate that humility may not only precede the word by way of preparation, but follow the word as an effect.
In verse 16, Alma says that “blessed is he that believeth in the word of God . . . without being brought to know the word . . . before they will believe.” Here, the word is identified as the object of belief and/or knowledge.
In verse 22, Alma says that “God is merciful unto all who believe on his name; therefore he desireth, in the first place, that ye should believe, yea, even on his word.” Here, the word is directly identified as the object of belief and indirectly associated with what God desires. God desires us to believe in his word. The possessive “his” suggests that in the phrase “the word of God” the “of God” should be understood not primarily as “the word about God” but as “the word spoken by God.” We might even understand “his word” to refer expressly to a promise (as when one “gives one’s word”).
In verse 23, Alma describes “the word” as something that God gives or imparts: “He imparteth his word by angels unto men.” Here, the word is a gift given by the intermediary of an angel.
Finally, in verse 23, the word is pluralized to refer to the way that “little children do have words given unto them many times, which confound the wise and the learned.” Here, again, the word is described as something “given.” Further, it is associated with that which can confound us – especially if we take ourselves to be wise and learned. Its power to confound is likely what accounts for the necessary preparation of humility in order to receive it and the potential effect of humility that its reception can induce.
We might, then, say something like this: the word is what is preached by God’s angel/messenger to those who are humble/prepared in order to extend to them a promise that will bless them with humility by confounding them.
The content of this promise appears to be most clearly indicated in verse 22 when Alma says that “God is merciful unto all who believe on his name; therefore he desireth, in the first place, that ye should believe, yea, even on his word.” “His word” appears to directly implicate the promise that he “is merciful unto all who believe on his name.”
Given this identification of “his word” with the promise of mercy, we might read verse 13 in a similar way as Alma’s clearest and fullest expression of what he then summarizes in verse 14 with his initial use of the phrase “the word.”
“And now surely,
Whosoever repenteth
shall find mercy;
and he that findeth mercy
and endureth to the end
the same shall be saved.”
Faith
As I mentioned last week, I believe Alma 32 generally uses the terms “faith” and “belief” in a way that is more or less synonymous. This is evident especially in verse 18 where Alma asks: “Is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it.” This verse is, in fact, the first verse in the chapter to use the word “faith.” Verse 16, however, is the first to use the word “believe.”
Verse 18 is also interesting because it appears to provide a relatively stringent, negative delimitation of faith: it is possible to believe “a thing” only under the condition that one does not know it.
If, however, faith is understood to be synonymous with belief then verse 16 pretty explicitly equates belief with humility:
“Therefore,
blessed are they who humble themselves
without being compelled to be humble;
or rather, in other words,
blessed is he that believeth in the word of God and is baptized
without stubbornness of heart.”
I’ve arranged the scansion of this section of the verse slightly different than previously. Here, “humbling oneself” is parallel to “believing in the word” + “being baptized” and “without being compelled” is parallel to “without stubbornness of heart.”
In verse 21, Alma returns from his aside about cursedness to address again what he means by “faith.” He begins by offering a re-statement of his initially negative delimitation: “as I said concerning faith – faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things.” This restatement is less stringent the first description. The mutual exclusivity of faith and knowledge is softened by the inclusion of the modifier “perfect.” This seems to indicate that faith may overlap with knowledge, but not with “perfect” knowledge.
In the second half of verse 21, Alma then offers a positive definition of faith: “if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” This double modification of the “things” for which faith hopes seems to function as a commentary on the first half of the verse. What would “perfect” knowledge be? It would be knowledge that is seen? Faith bears a relation to knowledge of the “things” it hopes for insofar as these things are qualified as “true,” but faith is not knowledge insofar as the “things” are not seen. Sight here operates as the condition for the “perfection” of knowledge?
Thus far in Alma 32 we know several crucial things about faith. The object of faith is God’s word. Believing in the word without stubbornness of heart is equivalent to humbling oneself without compulsion. Faith entails hoping for “things” not seen. If we know something (perfectly), then we have no cause to believe it.
What causes us to believe in “things” not seen? Is the “cause” of faith humility? Also, if the word of God is his promise of mercy, then is God’s mercy what is not seen, but true? In the absence of visible mercy, our humility is what causes faith in the thing unseen?
Knowledge
In verse 12, Alma introduces the term “wisdom” and connects it with humility: “it is well that ye are cast out of your synagogues, that ye may be humble, and that ye may learn wisdom; for it is necessary that ye should learn wisdom.” Here, both humility and wisdom are described as “necessities” that are given in parallel with one another. We are, Alma continues, “necessarily brought to be humble.”
What is the relationship between this wisdom and knowledge? Is wisdom a particular relation to knowledge? A humble relation to knowledge?
What is the relationship between wisdom and the word? Is wisdom a necessary but uncompelled relation to the promise of God’s mercy?
Verse 16 is the chapter’s first use of the term “to know”: “blessed is he that believeth in the word of God and is baptized without stubbornness of heart, yea, without being brought to know the word, or even compelled to know, before they will believe.” Here, “to know” is introduced as a verb whose direct object is the word. It describes a possible relation to the word that is contrasted with a relation that would be without stubbornness of heart. The intensifying repetition that moves from “to know the word” to “compelled to know” appears to mark the initial difference between belief and knowledge in terms of compulsion. The verse’s earlier use of the word compulsion refers to being humble without being compelled to be humble. There is something about knowledge of the word that compels humility.
In verse 17, Alma reports the received “wisdom” of the crowd/”the many” to be the following: “there are many who do say: If thou wilt show unto us a sign from heaven, then we shall know of a surety; then we shall believe.” Alma doesn’t dispute the proposed connection between knowledge, signs, and surety. He does, however, dispute the conflation of knowing and believing on the grounds that “if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe it.” Again, the key difference appears to be compulsion. In the face of a sure sign, knowing is compelled and in light of this compulsion the “cause” for believing is removed. Belief is “caused” by an absence of compulsion? Belief is caused by a certain kind of lack?
In verse 19, Alma proposes a connection between being cursed and knowing the will of God without doing it. However, he does not contrast knowledge with belief on this point. It is also cursed to “only” believe and not do it. The difference is potentially one of degree: to know and fail to act may be “more” cursed than to only believe and not act. But this, Alma tell us, we’ll have to decide for ourselves. However, the diminuitive “only” associated with “only believeth” and the “more” associated with knowledge indicates that knowledge may differ from belief in its addition of something “more.”
In verse 21, Alma qualifies the kind of knowledge that is exclusive of faith as “perfect knowledge.” This modification, especially in light of its later use (cf. verse 34), appears to put a positive spin on knowledge. Also, as I suggested earlier, the difference between a knowledge that does not exclude the cause of faith and a perfect knowledge seems to turn on the question of hope. Faith must hope and hope involves a relation to what is not seen. Presumably, a “perfect” knowledge would then be one that involves the visible presence of what is not seen in such a way that the need for hope is unnecessary because the hope has been realized. The perfection of knowledge is the actualization of hope?
Finally, in verses 24-25, Alma casts the Zoramites’ request as a desire “to know what ye should do.” Here, knowing is an object of desire and it is that which directs an action. In these same verses, Alma also uses the following interesting phrase: “now I do not desire that ye should suppose that I mean to judge you only according to that which is true – for I do not mean that ye all of you have been compelled to be humble yourselves; for I verily believe that there are some among you who would humble themselves.” The initial statement about “that which is true” may be of note in here in connection with knowledge. Alma doesn’t want to judge them just on the basis of what is true. He wants to additionally take into account what might have been the case (or, what will have been the case?): if they weren’t compelled to humility as they manifestly are, then might have been humble nonetheless. Is the use of the phrase “that which is true” parallel to the use of the same locution in verse 22 where “ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true”? Is Alma invoking the same distinction? It is true/visible that the poor are compelled to be humility, but in order for there to be room for faith we must additionally take into account what is not seen: the humility that they might have had anyway? Otherwise, the situation is literally hopeless and faith is without a cause? In this sense, the “perfection” of knowledge would involve the actualization of the humility that they might have had if they (like all of us?) hadn’t first been compelled to humility?
Tying Knots
Well, I’ve rambled around quite a bit here, not only through my own verses for this week but through everyone else’s preceding verses as well. Nonetheless, some ideas are on the table. At this point in the chapter, we’ve got a constellation of key terms:
The word, mercy, humility, faith, belief, hope, knowledge, and compulsion.
Figuring out how to constellate their relationships is, I think, the key. I’m out of time now (and already late!), but I’d propose the following “activity” for those interested: take each of these eight terms and define their relationship to each of the others only on the basis of what we’ve already been told in this chapter.
Thus:
What is the connection between the word and mercy? the word and humility? the word and faith? the word and belief? the word and hope? the word and knowledge? the word and compulsion?
And, what is the connection between mercy and the word? mercy and humility? mercy and faith? mercy and belief? mercy and hope? mercy and knowledge? mercy and compulsion?
Etc.
(Adam, your html tags were messed up for some reason, so I tried to fix them. So if you notice typos or formatting problems, it’s my fault….)
Thanks, Robert. I’ll check them again. Sorry for the trouble!
Adam, I really like what you are doing here on the whole. I think this “terminological approach” is going to prove quite helpful.
I very much like what you’ve done in thinking about the word, perhaps especially the turn toward promise and the way that rehabilitates the question of mercy. I never brought up this thought in the course of our discussion of verse 13 before, but I was struck in my own readings with the essential disconnect between what is sought and what is found in that verse: “a man sometimes, if he is compelled to be humble, seeketh repentance; and now surely, whosoever repenteth shall find mercy.” I think there is a good deal more that needs to be said about this disconnect (does “seeking repentance” entail a kind of profession of helplessness or impotence? and does “finding mercy” mean that one stops seeking repentance at last?), so I find it very helpful that your thoughts on “the word” are pushing us back in that direction, forcing us to give some content to what (I hope) I have laid out structurally in my mathematization of Alma’s model of faith.
I like your analysis of verse 16 in your section on faith, but I think I do want to take some issue with the classification of the second part of verse 21 as being in any sense a definition. That Alma bothers to construct it in terms of an “if-then” statement makes such a categorization somewhat problematic: he is not defining faith, but telling us what follows from faith. As such, I think it is very important to maintain a sharp distinction between faith and hope.
Indeed, in some ways, I think that the simplest way to summarize what is wrong in Derridean thinking (which can often, but perhaps not always, be read back into Levinas) is that it fails to distinguish between faith and hope.
If faith is a question of one’s relation to an undeniably past event (the arrival of an angel, the reception of a word or promise, etc.), then faith cannot be hope, which is always oriented to the future (or at least to something futurial, something still-to-come). Where faith and hope can be disambiguated, they are no longer a pair of intertwined terms referring to what must, structurally speaking, never come (so that there remains to us some kind of present). Instead, faith becomes a subjective position with respect to a past event, and hope becomes a projective “knowledge without knowledge,” a definitively “imperfect knowledge” because it rewrites knowledge without having seen. Inasmuch as faith and hope remain ambiguously unseparated, we are faithful to and hope for only death. But where the two are ambiguated, we are faithful to the word that has promised us life, and we distract death itself in hope.
I have, as well, a good deal to say about “knowledge” and “tying knots,” but am compelled by other things for the remainder of the afternoon….
I think this definitional approach is fabulous; thanks.
A few notes:
(1) V21 (“And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things;”) and v26 (“Now, as I said concerning faith—that it was not a perfect knowledge”) are almost identical and I am wondering why. It almost seems as if Alma heads off on a tangent in v21 and then returns to the main theme in v26, but I hate to then dismiss v21-25 as tangential. What other purposes might the repetition serve?
(2) I can’t help but note the reference to women in v23–a rare event in the Book of Mormon. I wonder why they are mentioned here.
(3) I’m curious about the two references to “desire” in v24. There’s the people’s desire to know what to do contrasted (but yet, compared via the word “desire”) with Alma’s (lack of) desire to want them to think he’ll judge them a certain way. There is also a mention in v22 of God’s desire.
Good stuff, Adam.
Verse 8, however, can easily be read as using teleological causation. If so, then they humble themselves in order to receive the word. But that is a small criticism (perhaps just a supplement rather than a criticism). I particularly like the definition to which you come” the word is what is preached by God’s angel/messenger to those who are humble/prepared in order to extend to them a promise that will bless them with humility by confounding them.”
Your note that Alma uses “faith” and “belief” as synonyms is important because we often overlook that fact when we talk about Alma’s sermon.
Your scansion of verse 18 emphasizes that the answer to our question about being humbled may be answered by Alma’s definition of that term: contrary to much of what we have said, he takes it to mean “to believe in the word of God and to be baptized.” That puts our entire discussion of being humbled in a different light.
I wonder how we should understand “perfect” (verse 21)? Webster’s (1828) says:
PER’FECT, adjective [Latin perfectus, perficio, to complete; per and facio, to do or make through, to carry to the end.]
1. Finished; complete; consummate; not defective; having all that is requisite to its nature and kind; as a perfect statue; a perfect likeness; a perfect work; a perfect system.
As full, as perfect in a hair as heart.
Pope.
2. Fully informed; completely skilled; as men perfect in the use of arms; perfect in discipline.
3. Complete in moral excellencies.
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect. Matthew 5.
4. Manifesting perfection.
Could perfect knowledge be “not defective” or “having all that is requisite to its nature and kind” rather than “complete”? As Adam points out, sight seems to be the metaphor that describes perfect knowledge, but the sight of “what is requisite” is very different than the sight what is “finished; complete.”
The use of “know” in verse 16 is very interesting when compared to its use after verse 18. Is Alma speaking of knowing the word in verse 18? Perhaps not. For those who are humble in verse 16 are those who believe before they know the word, suggesting that they do know the word after they believe. Perhaps verses 18ff. describe the process by which those who are not compelled to be humble move from belief to knowledge, but I don’t read it that way, though I don’t have a good explanation for why not.
Adam, have you thought through the points you make about knowledge enough to give us any kind of wrap-up?
Joe, like you, I am struck by the phrase “seeketh repentance.” We seldom speak of repentance as something we seek. That suggests, however, that it is not something that one merely does. It is something to be desired and sought for, not something over-and-done. Perhaps our thinking about humility and repentance would be enriched by thinking more about what that phrase means.
Must faith always be oriented to the future? I can hope with an orientation toward the past: “I hope that she didn’t die.” Isn’t hope in Christ something oriented to the past as well as the future? By the same token, isn’t faith in Christ at least partly oriented toward the past, toward the event of passion, death, and resurrection?
Julie, I think that verses 21-25 are tangential; I think you are reading the repetition in verse 26 correctly. But it needn’t follow that what appears in the tangent is dismissed when we recognize it as such. The ellipses of 21 and 26 mark off something that is not directly a part of Alma’s main purpose, but they also mark of something that he thought it was crucial that he say.
God desires that they believe.
They desire to know what to do.
Alma desires that they understand he is not judging them.
Their desire is framed by the explanation for why Alma doesn’t answer their question directly, at least not at first. They want to know what to do about their exclusion from the synagogue. God wants them to believe, so Alma is going to teach them what to believe, and he worries that by doing so they will think that he—like the Zoramites—is judging them.
Okay, Adam, getting on to your discussion of “knowledge,” and I’ll try to respond to Jim’s question to me as well in the course o fmy response to you.
I think your analysis of knowledge in the chapter really comes to fruition in the last paragraph of your discussion, where you read Alma’s not judging the Zoramite poor only according to that which is true as his refusing to judge them only according to the canons of knowledge. That this frees up what “might have been the case” or perhaps what “will have been the case” is fantastic: Alma is effectively faithful to them in his refusal to judge only by what he knows, that is, only by what one can see.
Perhaps the phrase “that which is true” should be read with a rather heavy emphasis on “is” (“that which is true”) such that it points to Alma’s judging them rather according to “that which will have been true.” I think you have really opened some rich possibilities here.
And yet, again, I’m concerned about the apparent conflation of faith and hope. But I think that your analysis of knowledge is quite helpful for sorting out the real distinction (and in perhaps less problematic terms than merely temporal ones, to which I’ll return below): perhaps there are two kinds of invisibility, one which corresponds with what is believed, and another which corresponds with what is hoped for.
If what one believes is the word, or even the Word, then faith is oriented by what is invisible by definition, by what cannot be apparent, by what cannot be imagined, imaged, confined to the imaginary, or trapped within an idol. But if what one hopes for is things that can be seen, then hope is oriented by what is invisible only for now, but what can be imagined, etc.
This distinction is of course one Derrida talks about in a number of places, including The Gift of Death, but it is also perhaps the distinction Lacan draws between the imaginary and the symbolic (the former can be “pictured,” the latter “written”—which means that while the imaginary can also be symbolized, the symbolic cannot always be imagined).
If faith and hope are always to be paired, as verse 21 suggests, then one might say that it is actually hope and not faith that takes the place of knowledge for the faithful/humble subject: faith is what roots one in the supplementarity of the Word, but hope is what characterizes one’s rewriting of the (death-oriented) situation in terms of life.
And it would be in this sense that one can speak of faith as being oriented by the past and hope by the future. Faith is oriented by the past in that it is faithful to some real supplement to the situation, something that must have been spoken (in or by the word/Word) in an already past event. And hope is oriented by the future in that it always concerns what remains to be seen, whether what remains to be seen is something that may have become the case some time in the past. Faith is one’s orientation to the invisible word of the past such that one dismisses the present state of knowledge through an orientation to what remains (in the future) to be seen.
Faith as a question of the past; hope as a question of the future; and so, of course, charity/love as a question of the present…
Does that begin to pave the way toward tying some knots? Inasmuch as mercy can be tied to love, I think these further ramblings, working out some of the implications of your own, begin to point the way toward a knotting of at least faith/belief (in the word), hope (as a rewriting of knowledge and thus a dispelling of compulsion), and mercy, the trio of which might be gathered under the title “humility”?
But I’ll do a bit more thinking about knotting, and more elementarily, as you suggest in your post (with the “exercise”).
For what it is worth, I’ve finished my summary of last week’s discussion, and I wonder if the matheme I propose and discuss there isn’t a good place to start a discussion of how to knot the eight terms (plus a few more? such as death and life, rich and poor, angels and preaching, the “without” and the “blessed”/”more blessed,” things and words, etc.) Adam proposes….
Adam, thank you—I appreciate how you’ve focused the discussion here. A few thoughts.
1) Re: the word, the content of the promise, and mercy. I thought the analysis here was very productive. If the promise is mercy given to all who believe on his name/his word, I wanted to explore a bit more what mercy consists of. In chapter 32, we can “find mercy” (v.13), and “God is merciful” (v.22); mercy is both something not immediately seen that may be located/revealed and a characteristic of God.
In chapters 30-35, Alma quotes Zenock saying that the Lord is angry “because they will not understand thy mercies which thou has bestowed upon them because of thy Son” (33:16); Amulek explores the relationship between mercy and justice in chapter 34 (the sacrifice is “to bring about the bowels of mercy” [15], “thus mercy can satisfy the demands of justice, and encircles them in the arms of safety” [16], “that he would have mercy upon you” [17], “cry unto him for mercy” [18]). Mercy is a plural gift/honor/right given by God because of his Son, it is the innermost seat or quality of/resulting from Christ’s atoning sacrifice, it provides legal satisfaction, it is active and acting, it is held by God and placed upon man, and it is what we petition from God in prayer.
Although it’s a different section of text, Alma’s wording in 36:18 is interesting: Alma asks Jesus to “have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death.” The contrast between Amulek’s conception of mercy as that which encircles in the arms of safety (34:16) and Alma’s experience with sin as that which encircles him with eternal death is striking. In a way, the imagery suggests a conception of repentance and the resulting promised mercy as the exchange of an embrace: the binding, damning embrace of the devil is released and replaced by the supporting, protecting embrace of God.
Mercy is conceptualized through oppositions: it is lost and found, it is of God for man, it is the gift we must ask for, it is singular/one and plural/many, it acts and yet requires others’ actions (God’s giving, man’s seeking repentance). In other words, can we think mercy not as a static, singular, qualitative event or thing, but rather the gap or space between death turning to life?
2) Re: Julie’s second point (4.2) regarding the mention of women in v.23. Her question caused me to re-read the verse in a different way. I see two sections:
he imparteth his word by angels unto men,
yea, not only men but women also.
Now this is not all;
little children do have words given unto them many times,
which confound the wise and learned.
I think I’ve typically read these sections as three variations on the theme of God giving his word via angels to mankind, where the distinctions are drawn along traditional societal roles/lines: men, women, and children as members of the family. But in dividing the verse into its two constituent parts, it seems like men and women are grouped together and that children occupy a distinct space.
In the first sentence, men and women are interchangeable: God communicates his word by angels to both men and women. But the children are both similar and different. The phrase “Now this is not all” could refer to the fact that angels also communicate with children, but it could also indicate a new type of communication.
In fact, it the second segment seems to indicate several qualitative differences: the children are given words (multiple words versus the singular word given to men and women); while the givers may also be angels, that fact is not explicitly stated and thus leaves open the possibility for other givers (God? Parents? Teachers?); children are given words “many times,” an indication that the frequency of the gift may be increased for children; finally, the children share the words given to them with others, and in doing so, those shared words (or perhaps the act of the children sharing the words itself) confounds “the wise and the learned.”
The relationship between the children and the words seems much more active and full. It also seems to have interesting parallels with Adam’s study of the word: “the word is what is preached by God’s angel/messenger to those who are humble/prepared in order to extend to them a promise that will bless them with humility by confounding them.” Can we see the children acting as angels/messengers sharing the words they’ve received in order to extend a promise that blesses through confounding the wise and the learned?
If so, then it might be worthwhile to recast our social/biological definitions of “men,” “women,” and “children” and instead re-read them as types of preparedness/humility before God. Men/women being, then, the position we all find ourselves in—compelled to be humble, confounded by the words given to us by the messengers of God. And children as the position to which we aspire through faith/repentance/humility/endurance—humble without compulsion, obedient without stubbornness, freely and bounteously receiving and sharing the words, messenger, giving the gift of a promise, blessing others with humility that results from the confounding.
As I was working this out, Matt. 18:3 came to mind: “except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
I’ve been stewing on all these great comments, but have become quite distracted trying thinking about various structural patterns in this chapter. Here’s the only pattern I’ve found that I deem worth sharing (at this point):
The “perfect knowledge” phrase in verses 21 and 26 that Julie and others mentioned is suggestive enough that I played with many different ways to think about their relations here and later in the chapter. One pattern that strikes me as interesting is as follows:
_”perfect knowledge” (v. 21)
__”all” (v. 22)
___”desire” (v. 22)
____”imparts word” (v. 23)
___”desire” (v. 24)
__”some” (v. 25)
_”perfect knowledge” (v. 26)
If there’s anything to this pattern (I still have my doubts…), then it’s interesting that, firstly, verse 23 is the center of this chiastic structuring (which adds importance to Jenny’s thoughts on this; the emphasis also fits Joe’s matheme/diagram well, which I think also fits the rest of the chapter’s emphasis quite nicely); secondly, I think the switch from the claim in verse 22 that “God is merciful unto all who will believe on his name” to the claim in verse 25 that “for I verily believe that there are some among you who would humble themselves” is very interesting—reminds me of “many are called but few are chosen” passages (even though the idea seems to be the same in verses 22 and 25, the different way of expression strikes me as potentially significant…).
Jenny, these thoughts on verse 23 are remarkable! I want to think them over very carefully. Thank you.
Robert, I think working toward a genuine structuration of verses 21-26 is a very good idea, since I still see them as relatively scattered. Very helpful.
Jenny,
Very helpful thoughts about how (1) mercy must be “found,” which implies that it is in some way “not seen/invisible,” and (2) that the men/women vs. children grouping can be read as an exemplification of the two kinds of humility earlier differentiated.
Very nice!
Allow me to post a final mess of notes here in preparation for a summary that I’m sure will fit all the pieces together with neatness and precision :)
These are in no particular order.
1. Humility is a necessity (“ye are necessarily brought to be humble,” v12). It is a necessity not just for those who wish to have faith. Rather it is a necessity, period. Like the poor, we might be compelled to acknowledge it. Or, like the rich, we might be compelled to acknowledge its necessity all the more by trying desperately to cover it up with clothes, baubles, honor, etc. But the humility is unavoidable. The question is our relation to it.
Humility experienced as a compelled necessity is humiliation? Uncompelled humility is humility “without” humiliation?
2. Mercy = uncompelled justice?
3. The word causes humility (“they are more blessed who truly humble themselves because of the word,” v14).
4. Believing = humility without compulsion.
5. If you have a perfect knowledge, you have no cause to believe.
6. The cause of belief/uncompelled humility = the word.
7. The cause: the “without” of the “without compulsion”?
8. Faith is the cause of hope (“if ye have faith [then] ye hope,” v21).
9. We hope for things which are not seen. Their being “without” visibility withdraws them from knowledge, allowing them to act as a cause?
10. Knowledge compels humility. This compulsion is a necessity (it is “that which is true,” v24), but faith is a question of what “would have been” true if we had humbled ourselves.
11. The “would have been” is what is not seen. The subjunctive world of possibility is what withdraws, it is what the situation of sin is without?
12. The unseen is what enables us to act/do (“what shall we do?”)?
13. God is merciful, therefore he desires our belief (cf. v22). God’s mercy is the cause of his desire for our belief.
14. God desires. He desires what he is without. It is God’s mercy that causes a desire (i.e., a “without”) that sets in motion the entire process? In relation to what is necessarily true, God initiates the subtraction of something, a lack, that opens a space for what “would have been” true if we had humbled ourselves rather than been compelled to humility and, thus, he makes room for faith/action?
15. Mercy must be found because it is not visible when we experience our humility as a compelled necessity. Humility as compelled necessity is justice without mercy. Compelled justice renders mercy invisible. Mercy is justice experienced without compulsion. The subtraction of compulsion (the “without” that God’s desire sets in motion) renders mercy visible.
16. When mercy is found/seen, we experience our humility as “what would have been” other than compelled. When it is seen we have perfect knowledge. When we have perfect knowledge we have “true” humility.
15. Note that the word “true” is used on multiple occasions to describe “humility” (v14, v15, cf. v7). If “truth” is a quality of humility, then is there an inherent connection between humility and knowledge (truth being a modality of knowledge)?
Fascinating and provocative notes, Adam. “Mercy is justice experienced without compulsion.” That needs to be scrawled on the walls of every building in the Church.
Ugh, so much I wanted to say last week, yet I never had a chance to sit and collect my thoughts. For now, a couple of intertextual thoughts on hope:
* The discussion on hope got me thinking about a couple verses in Moroni 7. In verse 40, it seems that hope is needed in order to have faith (“How is it that ye can attain unto faith, save ye shall have hope?”) whereas in verse 42 it seems faith is needed in order to hope (“for without faith there cannot be any hope”). I think this circularity/dialectic is very provocative (I know these are Mormon’s words, not Alma’s, but still…). I think this points to an understanding of the word/s as brought to us by messengers/texts, and initiated by God’s desire (cf. 1 John 4:19 where God “first loved us”) as initiating an event that sets both faith and hope in motion simultaneously.
* I also did a bit of study on Hebrews 11:1, provoked mostly by Joe’s comments above. I think a decent case could be made for reading this as “Now faith is the real of hope, the divinely given conviction of things unseen.” (I’m taking “the real” basically from William Lane’s Word Biblical Commentary and “divinely given conviction” directly from the TDNT.) In this vein, and following above discussion, I’m inclined to think of faith as contentless/propositionless (but based in Christ), whereas hope has a symbolized content (hence the common phraseology, faith in Christ, but hope for salvation…).
Also, Adam, regarding your comments on justice, if you don’t have Alma 34 explicitly in mind here, I think your thoughts (and Joe’s previous comment somewhere about this compelled humility being like the law without Christ) match up nicely—and make for an interesting reading of—Amulek’s follow-up remarks (esp. 34:15-18). I think this casts the meta-theme of prayer in an interesting light: Amulek admonishes the true order of prayer, in contrast to the apostate Zoramites’ manner of praying, and echoing Alma’s prayer in ch. 31, as a response to—and call for—God’s mercy….
This also highlight for me, in response to Jim’s question about the sense in which Alma doesn’t directly respond to the question of what to do in ch. 32, the response that is eventually given by both Alma and Amulek, namely to pray. More and more, I think prayer should be seen as the main overarching, structuring theme of chapters 31-33. I see this as feeding into Adam’s comments about lack and desire above. Even Amulek’s eventual discussion of charity seems to fit well in this yearning-for-justice/atonement/mercy as expressed in prayer as a response to God’s word way of reading these chapters. Salvation is nothing more (though also nothing less) than giving space (and nourishment) for this desire-filled word of mercy to sprout and grow in our breasts, increasing(/participating) in us this desire to overcome injustice, sin, pride, etc., etc.
Also, regarding Adam’s pointed-to emphasis on “truly humble” in vv. 14-15, it seems that thinking about this in terms of desire is helpful: to be truly humble is to not wish that you were not in your humble situation. To be truly humble is to be true to your humility, true to the humbling word and/or situation by seeing things (to put it tritely, again) from an eternal/divine perspective—that is, reordered and restructured by the word via faith and hope. So the hearts of the Zoramites that are “swallowed up in their pride” (31:27) and “hardness of their hearts” (33:20, cf. 33:21) is dramatically (chiastically?) contrasted with the “lowly in heart,” “without stubbornness of heart,” “plant[ing] in your heart,” and “swell[ing] within your breasts” of ch. 32….
Stumbling around a bit in trying to write up some thoughts on Alma 32 as a whole thus far, I realized that the sudden and so remarkably uncharacteristic expression of sexual difference in verse 23 is situated in the middle of Alma’s shift from faith-as-against-knowledge (in verse 21) to faith-as-on-the-way-to-knowledge (in verse 26). We have something like this, then:
faith —> sexual difference —> knowledge …
Or, in terms of Badiou’s gamma-diagram:
event —> love —> science …
At any rate, the subjectivity of the event/faith is radicalized by this reference to gender: the event splits the one into two, and real progress in knowledge/science depends on the love that the two calls for (though we so often miss it).
In a word: inasmuch as verse 23 here calls for a thinking of gender issues in the Book of Mormon gender, and inasmuch as it cannot be disentangled from questions of the event, faith, and the Word, does this odd placement not begin to suggest something about how helpful Marion/Badiou might be in their thinking about love/eros in terms of events, fidelity, and the unnameable?
Joe, fascinating. Especially given the thematic connections of the second half of the chapter to reproduction, growth, and birth. And the linguistic ties between v.42 and 1 Ne. 11 (for specific ties see vs. 8, 9, 13, 15). I’ve been playing with these connections for a while, and your reading of v.23 as splitting ch. 32 on the axis of sexual difference is very helpful.
Am I just a curmudgeon? I don’t see what Joe does in #18.
I don’t read verse 21 as “faith-against-knowledge.” Faith is not perfect knowledge; it is hope. But that is a redefinition of knowledge, isn’t it? I don’t see that it sets faith against knowledge.
I think it is very interesting that Alma introduces gender in verse 23, and I also think that Jenny’s parsing of the verse into two groups–men & women; children–is right. However, sexual difference doesn’t seem to be the point. As Jenny’s parsing points out, the division is not between men and women so much as it is between men and women, on the one hand, and children, on the other.
I’m generally with Jim on this one (curmudgeon that he is).
Jim, I know your question (20) centers more around Joe’s phrasing, but it made me think about why I’m reading sexual difference thematically in verse 23. I worked out my thoughts a bit and am putting them here for future reference (hope that’s ok).
I’m fairly certain sexual difference is not the point—that’s why I parsed the verse as I did. As a reader of the entire Book of Mormon text, however, the phrasing here is interesting. For the most part, when women and men are mentioned together in the Book of Mormon it is normally in the phrase “men, women, and children,” used to a create a sense of “everyone in the community” (as in everyone was killed, or went into battle, or Christ will suffer for everyone).
Verse 23, however, is markedly different: “he imparteth his word by angels unto men, yea, not only men but women also.” Alma could have just left it at “unto men,” and we would (at least today) read that as a general reference to mankind. However, Alma continues to clarify his words. The addition of “not only men but women also” foregrounds women as a distinct group—the difference is not in who receives the words of angels, but rather that men and women are different. Given the information we have before us in the text, the most logical difference between men and women is that of gender.
Alma’s intent was not to address the fact of sexual difference between women and men. However, his phrasing is unique in the Book of Mormon as far as I can see (in my admittedly cursory search), and as such calls attention to itself and the underlying understanding of sexual difference that allows for the clarifying comment to be made in the first place.
I’m interested in the placement of the verse structurally (whether intended by Alma or not) in that it is after this verse that Alma is able to get underway with his extended comparison of the word/seed and its relationship to faith and knowledge. I think you’re right, however, to question what Joe means by “faith-as-against-knowledge”—I’d be interested in having that unpacked a bit more.
I think Jenny has nicely articulated the question of sexual difference. I entirely agree with her citing children as being the particular focus in the verse, but, as she says, the separating out of women and men is (to my knowledge also) entirely unique to this text, and I suspect that there is something remarkable happening there.
My burden is apparently to sort out my reading of verse 21 for everyone.
If anyone goes looking in the Book of Mormon for a definition of faith, s/he usually ends up in verse 21 here: faith is “hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” However, the verse does not say what faith is, but what faith does: “if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” Rather than claiming that faith is hope, the verse tells us that faith is coupled with hope, that it is the faithful who hope.
This clarification suggests in turn that this particular phrase of verse 21 does not at all offer a definition of faith, but rather assumes one: if you have faith (defined elsewhere), then you do the following.
Of course, there is a negative definition of faith earlier in the verse: “faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things.” I see two ways to read this. On the one hand, it can be read: “Faith is: not to have a perfect knowledge of things.” (More clearly, one could split the infinitive: “Faith is to not have a perfect knowledge of things.”) On the other hand (since the Book of Mormon seems at least on a few occasions to be quite unashamed of splitting infinitives), it can be read as simply saying what faith isn’t: “Faith is not: to have a perfect knowledge of things.” (An added phrase makes this clearer: “Faith is not the following: to have a perfect knowledge of things.”)
Either way this is read, there is an important disconnect between faith and “perfect knowledge.” What that disconnect amounts to remains to be worked out.
The “therefore” at the center of the verse is of much significance: the disconnect—whatever its nature—between faith and (perfect) knowledge implies that faith is coupled with hope. And the “therefore” would also seem to imply that wherever “perfect knowledge” is had, “hope” is not, whether because every hope has either been dashed or fulfilled, or whether because one dwells in undeniable despair.
Now, I’m not sure what else can be said “non-speculatively” about verse 21 (and perhaps I’ve said quite a bit here that could be called speculative). It thus seems to me that one is faced with a number of questions that verse 21 raises but does not answer:
(1) What is the character of the disconnect between faith and (perfect) knowledge?
(2) What is faith?
(3) What is hope?
(4) Why are faith and hope coupled, and what does that coupling have to do with the lack of (perfect) knowledge?
It is primarily the answers that I have worked out in this chapter and elsewhere in Alma’s discourses to questions (3) and (4) that have guided my obviously speculative answers to questions (1) and (4). I don’t at all see how faith and hope can be justifiably collapsed into a single term, textually or philosophically. Indeed, it is the conflation of faith and hope in what I’ll broadly call Derridean thought (though I hardly mean to limit it to Derrida himself: I have reference to perhaps all of Western philosophy that does not break rigorously with him) that effectively undoes hope: I find that inasmuch as faith and hope cannot be disentangled from one another, hope becomes despair or hope without hope (because one believes ultimately only in death).
The scriptures on the other hand—and I mean primarily Alma, really—ties faith to the past event of having heard the word from some angelic messenger (whether heavenly or earthly) and gives hope as an orientation to possibility and hence to the future (even if in the shape of the future anterior: I hope I will not have broken my arm, etc.).
Does that help?
This is helpful. I don’t believe there’s anything I disagree with here – particularly the critique of what might be read as a Derridean conflation of faith/hope.
Joe writes, “the separating out of women and men is (to my knowledge also) entirely unique to this text”
I think the same thing happens in these texts, unless I’m missing something that makes them different from our verse here in Alma:
Ether 14:22, 31
2 Ne 9:21
Mosiah 24:22
Mosiah 27:25
Alma 30:18
Hel 1:27
3 Ne. 17:25
Ether 6:3
Ether 15:15
Moro 9:7
Julie,
I’m not sure I’ve got much of a response to you. Only two of the passages you’ve listed are at such pains as Alma 32:23 to draw out sexual difference (Mosiah 24:22 and Alma 30:18, the latter of which deserves more thought!), but they do all at least imply it. (Indeed, this list might be reason enough to suggest that when the Book of Mormon says “men” or “brethren,” it really does mean “men” or “brethren”….) In other words, I had none of these passages in mind because I was so struck by Alma’s “now this is not all” kind of language in 32:23, whereas most of these pass over the difference so quickly, perhaps lightly.
Whatever should be said of these cross references, it is clear that Alma 30:18 deserves attention. Korihor leads women, and then men astray (with much the same explicit differentiation we find in 32:23), which is reversed in the instance of Alma 32:23. What is to this intertextual connection?
Joe, Adam is right: your critique of the conflation of faith and hope is good, well worth expanding. I think that the Western tradition as a whole has often conflated the two. Doing so they have often misunderstood both.
Nevertheless, in verse 21 Alma connects the two very closely, in at least a relation of implication: if you have faith, then you have hope. Specifically, if you have faith, then you hope for truth that is not visible truth. (The truth revealed by interpellation?) Is Alma conflating faith a certain kind of hope there, or is he still understanding this as only a relation of implication? Is the relation of faith in God to hope for truth best represented by the operator –> or by ≡ ?
My argument is that the operator -> obtains here, though it would require a bit of argumentation, perhaps especially with reference to how Alma uses these terms elsewhere, etc. As such, while faith and hope (and love, I would argue) cannot come independent of one another, they are not, for that reason, the same thing. The confusion of faith and hope (and love, I would argue again) in Derrida is a perfect example of how seriously far astray such a failure to disentangle can lead one.
Did Joe really just say that Derrida went “seriously far astray?” :)
I think he did, but I’m trying to recover from shock, so until I do I won’t be able to say for sure.