The Innocence of a Child - Part 1

"Little children cannot repent; wherefore, it is awful wickedness to deny the pure mercies of God unto them, for they are all alive in him because of his mercy" (Moroni 8:19).

Anyone who gazes lovingly at an infant sees a spark of divinity. Not all realize what they see but most recognize the innocence and goodness of infants. Some, however, do not fully understand the power of the Atonement (not that any of us "fully" do or will in this life!) and so do not understand that little children are declared innocent through the blood of the Lamb. They are clean and pure before God and absolved as we are all of Adam's transgression. Little children receive the pure mercies of God. For those of us who are older, we receive the conditional mercies of God. Some parts of the Lord's grace and mercy are unconditional such as salvation from death. On the other hand, even that is conditional because we had to keep our first estates and choose to follow God's plan of salvation and come here to earth. God's mercy is also conditional because it is based on the goodness of the Savior's life. In other words, the mercy of the atonement was conditional on the Savior offering himself as the unblemished sacrificial lamb.

There stands a great balance in heaven. When our lives are placed in the scale to each of us it is said, "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting" (Daniel 5:27). With that we are subject to the demands of justice. Each of us is weighed down with the chains of justice. Justice is not always negative; in fact, justice is what allows us eternal freedom and progression. However, none of us as imperfect humanity can satisfy the demands of justice. We all fall short. We all incur great debt, a debt that none of us can repay. We are all like the servant who owed his master the king 10,000 talents (Matt. 18:23-35). That is an enormous sum none of us can repay. As merciful as God is, He cannot deny justice. Justice is a law that cannot be broken. The debt must be repaid.

There is One who is willing to pay the price of our sins. He not only is willing but also able to pay the debt that hangs in the balance. He is able to pay the price for all of us; He can pay for all of our debts combined, and then some. In this way is the debt satisfied. He fulfills the law of mercy while paying the debt due justice. Jesus Christ was the only One who could pay the price of sin and death. He only could unlock the way to Heaven to let us in. Cecil Alexander wrote of Jesus' sacrifice for us:

There is a green hill far away,
Without a city wall,
Where the dear Lord was crucified,
Who died to save us all.

We may not know, we cannot tell,
What pains he had to bear,
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.

There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin.
He only could unlock the gate
Of heav’n and let us in.

Oh, dearly, dearly has he loved!
And we must love him too,
And trust in his redeeming blood,
And try his works to do. (Source).

Puritanism Parallels with Mormonism: Preparation for the Restoration - Part 4

We read in the Doctrine and Covenants, "Behold, there are many called, but few are chosen. And why are they not chosen? Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world, and aspire to the honors of men, that they do not learn this one lesson—That the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness" (D&C 121:34-36). Fore-ordination does not have anything to do with who will be able to return to live with Heavenly Father again, unlike the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. Fore-ordination and predestination are similar but they do differ by degrees.

The LDS doctrine of salvation is quite liberal, especially compared to the Calvinism of the Puritans - however, it's not our doctrine, it's God's. That is, Mormons did not create the doctrine, God did. We believe that all who have ever lived upon the earth will have the opportunity to receive and accept the ordinances required to return to live again with our Father in Heaven. All people will eventually have the necessary ordinances performed for them but not all will accept (or possibly even be able to accept based on their lives here) the ordinances. We believe that all children who died before the age of accountability (age 8) will return to live with God again - this is because little children are whole and incapable of committing sin (see Moroni 8:8; Mosiah 15:25) because the Savior's Atonement freed them from sin; they are declared blameless by God through the power and grace and mercy of the Atonement.

That is radically different from Puritan beliefs about children; they thought children were full of sin and mischief and evil. Children, to the Puritans, had to be "broken." LDS doctrine holds children to be inherently good. Christ also taught we should become as little children (see Matt. 18:3). While LDS doctrine about salvation is liberal - we believe that most will receive some degree of glory (they at least kept their first estate and chose in the pre-mortal realm to follow our Father's plan of salvation by coming to earth) but not all will live with God forever more - LDS doctrine is not as liberal as some other Christian faiths, such as Universalists who believe that all will be saved; God's power is so great that He will bring all humankind back to Him. On a continuum, LDS doctrine is between the Calvinists and the Universalists.

Calvinism in New England espoused "Five Points" of doctrine, similar conceptually to our thirteen Articles of Faith (i.e., these Five Points are some of the basic and distinctive Puritan doctrines just like the LDS Articles of Faith cover the basic doctrines of Mormonism). These Five Points were: "[1] the natural condition of humanity was total depravity,...[2] salvation was beyond mortal striving,...[3] grace was predestined only for a few,...[4] most mortals were condemned to suffer eternal damnation, and [5] no earthy effort could save them" (p.112). That seems to be quite a depressing set of dogma! However, the Puritans did not live depressing lives - although they were austere in many ways - but they were never sure of their salvation. Their glasses of salvation were never more than half empty. They constantly sought and desired the mercy and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, as we all should. Another quote will further establish the Puritan views of salvation. About one Puritan it is written, "Always before, when [Thomas] wept for his sins, he had kept some feeling of human merit. Now he knows he has none, that the natural man, even when seemingly a good man, is only a beautiful abomination, for the natural man has had no merit since Adam's disobedience, and Hell is his just destination" (Simpson as cited by Fischer, p.116).

But does not that passage sound a bit like King Benjamin? "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father" (Mosiah 3:19). There are similarities between Puritanism and the first part of King Benjamin's statement but there is a key difference. King Benjamin stated that we need to become as a child in order to overcome the natural man!

Children are naturally good; the natural man is a learned and developed state, not an inherent state. We learn to be natural men and women! We all give in to the natural man at some point but we all start out good and clean and pure. I do have to point out that it is only through the atonement of Christ the Lord that we become saintly, or saved and sanctified. Again, as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we believe that people are inherently good - the Puritans did not. The Savior's Atonement freed us from the transgression of Adam. Joseph Smith wrote, "We believe that man will be punished for his own sins, and not for Adam's transgression" (Second Article of Faith). I believe Joseph wrote that in part because it was different from the prevailing beliefs of many of the religions of his day.

Reference

Fischer, D. H. (1989). Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

On Grace

Clean Cut has a new post about grace. I think it is a wonderful post that we all should read. Historically, we as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints placed more emphasis on works than grace, or least to much of the world it appeared that we did. In the mid-1900s the LDS Church redesigned its logo to place more emphasis on the words "Jesus Christ" in the name of our church. This was not done because we previously did not emphasize the Savior, it was done so that all people (including all of us as members of the LDS Church) better understood the centrality of the Savior and His Atonement in our lives and to our church. It wasn't a shift in focus or doctrine, it was just a subtle way to remind us and all the world that we do believe in the Savior and His Atonement and grace.

With this emphasis of the Savior in the LDS Church's logo came an increased discussion and clarification about LDS doctrines about grace and works. Again, it was not a shift in doctrine, there was simply an increase in the dialogue with people of other Christian churches about LDS doctrines about the Savior. What some members of the Church started doing was trying to make sure members of other Christian churches (and our own!) correctly understood our doctrines. It is in light of that background that I believe Clean Cut wrote his post (if I can ascribe motive to him); in other words, I believe he wrote his post to help members of the LDS Church as well as other Christian churches better understand the role of grace in all our lives.

Clean Cut wrote:

The other day I read an article titled "How to become a Christian" by Billy Graham. I was actually quite impressed. I thought it was good and I couldn't find a single thing I disagreed with. (This must mean I'm a Christian after all, despite the fact that some probably think Billy Graham should have inserted a disclaimer: "unless you're a Mormon, in which case this won't work for you").

I especially liked how he described Christ's free gift of salvation. Naturally, we don't pay anything when we receive a gift. The giver of the gift pays for it and we receive it joyfully, ever grateful for the giver of the gift. Graham writes:

"The word grace means 'undeserved favor'. It means God is offering you something you could never provide for yourself: forgiveness of sins and eternal life, God's gift to you is free. You do not have to work for a gift. All you have to do is joyfully receive it."

He then goes on to talk about how to demonstrate commitment back to Christ as a response to the free gift of grace. (We Latter-day Saints would also have more to say about how to appropriately respond to Christ's grace, namely, through covenant). But in short, I think it was simply an excellent article.

I wrote a comment to his post, which you can read on his site. However, I felt that the topic warrented a post on my blog. I'll use my comment as a basis for my post. To fully understand my comment in its context it is best to read Clean Cut's post first. :)

What I wrote was (with some mild editing):

Great post. I think the only quibble, and it's a very small one (and I even hate to quibble [or use the word quibble] because I don't want to come across as pedantic or dogmatic), we as Latter-day Saints might have with Billy Graham's statement is that we do not have to work for the gift of eternal life.

As Mormons our definition of eternal life is a bit different from our definition of salvation, although the two are highly related (salvation is essentially a superordinate category with eternal life a subset of that category; all eternal life is salvation but not all salvation is eternal life). For most other Christians, they are not different.

While we do not earn the gifts we receive from the Lord, we do need to place ourselves in a position to receive the gifts. Firstly, we all chose to come here to earth and support the Plan of Salvation. Coming to earth is a wonderful blessing we did not earn, per se, but by our choices to come here, we were placed in the condition where we could progress further along the road to salvation.

Similarly, we do not earn forgiveness but we do place ourselves in a position through repentance in which we can receive forgiveness. Further, we do not earn resurrection but we did make the decision to come to earth, which decision placed ourselves in a position where we could receive the blessing of resurrection. That decision also places us in the position where we can additionally all receive some measure of glory in the next life - but again, we did not earn it.

It's the same with eternal life. Those who are faithful in receiving and keeping the necessary covenants and ordinances place themselves in the position where they can receive the gift of eternal life. Did those who receive this gift earn it? No, that's the grace of God, but they did expend the effort, however large or small, to receive that "bicycle."

So, my quibble is with the statement that we don't have to work for the gifts. We do have to work for them but that does not mean that we earn them; that does not mean that we purchase them. We give our hearts, as Clean Cut said, which means we give our wills to our Father in Heaven. That is work but it's not earning salvation. It's like standing out in the sun rather than hiding in the shade. Do we earn the light? No, but we did walk out of the shade.

The Lord gives us everything; all we are required to give in return is our all, especially our wills. That may seem like we are "purchasing" our salvation; we are not. The Lord gave us everything, all we are doing is giving Him what is rightfully His. His grace is free; of the Lord it was written, "Behold, doth he cry unto any, saying: Depart from me? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; but he saith: Come unto me all ye ends of the earth, buy milk and honey, without money and without price" (2 Ne. 25:26; see also Isa. 55:1 and 2 Ne. 9:50). Is there anything more beautiful than that beckoning call?