The first five years of the Mormon Church (1830-1835), Mormon Scripture taught the Protestant doctrine of Grace Alone.
The Book of Mormon actually teaches the doctrine of grace in many places. For example, here is 2 Nephi 2:4,6-8 (emphasis added):
4 [...] And the way is prepared from the fall of man, and salvation is free.6 Wherefore, redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth.7 Behold, he offereth himself a sacrifice for sin, to answer the ends of the law, unto all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit; and unto none else can the ends of the law be answered.
[In other words, no one else can perfectly obey God's moral law codes, and will always fail to obey all of God's laws]8 Wherefore, how great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the earth, that they may know that there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah, who layeth down his life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit, that he may bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, being the first that should rise.
[In other words, one's own merits cannot answer/fulfill the ends of the law codes of God. Thus, only through the grace-gift of the redeeming seed of Christ in you (implanted in you) can you be redeemed/exalted]
So the Book of Mormon is clear that one is saved (made immortal) and redeemed (exalted) through the Spirit (Pneuma) of Christ. Pneuma is pronounced "Nooma," and is a fluid substance that enters the body and redeems and glorifies it. For it is the merits of Christ (as lived by the perfect Messiah himself on earth) that makes one perfectly holy, and not through your own merits.
For notwithstanding they [who] die, they also shall rise again, [as] a spiritual body. They who are of a celestial spirit [gifted the pneuma of Christ] shall receive the same body which was a natural body; even ye shall receive your bodies, and your glory [splendor] shall be that glory by which your bodies are quickened [transformed]. Ye who are quickened by a portion of the celestial glory shall then receive of the same, even a fulness. [This "fulness" is God's splendorous omnipresent Fluid Pneuma as explained in the 5th and 7th Lectures on Faith, published in 1835].
Therefore, it [the Fallen/Adamic body] must needs be sanctified from all unrighteousness, that it may be prepared for the celestial glory; For after it hath filled the measure of its creation, it shall be crowned with glory, even with the presence of God the Father; That bodies who are of the celestial kingdom may possess it forever and ever; for, for this intent was it made and created, and for this intent are they sanctified. And they who are not sanctified through the law which I have given unto you, even the law of Christ [meaning the Law of Christ in the Book of Mormon which was simply: believe in Christ and get baptized to receive a celestial glorious body via the baptism of fire through the Holy Ghost] ...
[In an August 2021] Stake Leadership meeting at the Herriman Utah Rose Canyon Stake, Area Seventy Richard N. Holzapfel responds to comments from the youth about being able to recognize the spirit - but also on pornography and body shaming. His comments reflect a significant shift in the framing of these issues for the youth.
[In an August 2021] Stake Leadership meeting at the Herriman Utah Rose Canyon Stake, Area Seventy Richard N. Holzapfel asked a couple of youth how they felt about repentance. He told them to be honest and authentic. His response to their frank answer was a remarkable assessment of the impact of decades of what he described as hurtful teachings about repentance, purity and perfection.
This has been really great … now … let's be honest here these are two amazing young men and young women. I mean really be honest, these are great so if they're telling you this think of what other kids are saying, think about other adults what they're thinking. Unfortunately, some of you know that Elizabeth Smart as a young girl was stolen from her bedroom in the middle of the night by a by a nut and he raped her repeatedly and did awful things, awful things, because Elizabeth Smart grew up on the east bench of Salt Lake in a very wealthy, exclusive Latter-day Saint community in Salt Lake. She had some ideas in her brain and one of them was that she now was like a old piece chewed gum. Who wants a piece of chewed gum? She didn't realize that man could not take her virtue. She wasn't like a piece of wood that the nail was in it and repentance is removing the nail but the hole is still there. Some phrases that we've used in seminary and in young men and young women, in Sunday Schools for decades in this Church that have hurt the rising generation; and so we've got to get this clear about what repentance is and I suggest that we read President Nelson deeply and President Elder Anderson, I think Lihona, I can't remember [if it is the] February issue, I'm not going to promote his book, his book is great though, everybody should read his book but the article in the Liahona which is free you we should read that and we should accept the prophetic teachings of today. We don't want to go back to the to The Miracle of Forgiveness by President Kimball. You know what he said in his diary before he died, [he said] if I could go back I would rewrite that book. So let's let's drop the dead prophets and embrace the living [prophets]! So President Nelson, apostles and prophets such as Elder Todd Christopherson in particular but Elder Anderson, who's really come on strong this last year in teaching … that the number one problem we have is perfectionism, it's among both the young men and young women but principally the young women are struggling with perfectionism; and there's things that we say, do your best. What's the best? I never can do my best, we have to look at our language, how it's being read, how it's been understood.
In chapter 1 of his book Passing the Heavenly Gift, Denver S. came to a similar conclusion regarding the temple ordinances, writing:
Interestingly, the language of [D&C] Section 20 also defines the process for salvation and justification. The doctrine is important still. Quoting from the original published version in 1833 (then Section 24):
And we know, that all men must repent and believe on the name of Jesus Christ, and worship the Father in his name, and endure in faith on his name to the end, or they cannot be saved in the kingdom of God. And we know, that Justification through the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is just and true; And we know, also, that sanctification through the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is just and true, to all those who love and serve God with all their mights, minds, and strength, but there is a possibility that men may fall from grace and depart from the living God. Therefore, let the church take heed and pray always, lest they fall into temptation; Yea, and even he that is sanctified also. [16]
These doctrines of justification and sanctification, along with the church offices which allowed ordinances of baptism, laying on hands and administration of the sacrament were established without regard to priesthood. Priesthood and church office were not originally conflated; they would later become so. But that is a revisionist view of the events.
Denver continues to explain that the ordinances like in the temple are merely symbolic and ceremonial, pointing you to develop your own direct experience of resting in the Lord:
Most of the ordinances of the [LDS] church are not the real thing. They are types, symbols of the real thing. They are official invitations ... The [LDS] church and its ordinations and ordinances does not confer power. They invite the recipients to press forward into God’s presence and receive Him, where the actual endowment of peace, joy, promises of eternal life, and power are conferred by Him [Christ] who has the right to bestow them. The keeper of that gate is the Holy One of Israel, and He employs no mortal servant there.[31] If men could confer more than an ordination, there would be nothing to prevent corrupt, wicked men from selling salvation to their friends, family and those they favor even if unworthy; or from barring salvation to others who are worthy, based on petty jealousies and envy. This idea of men holding God’s power is what led to the corruptions of Catholicism.
The original concept of repentance and confession was along the lines of changing your mind, admitting your fallibility, confessing your misdeeds to those you have harmed -- by apologizing and making restitution -- and publicly confessing your faults in public to those standing before you at the waters of baptism while conveying your commitment to a new life in Christ. In other words, it was the equivalent of an AA meeting and was not a one-on-one "worthiness" interview of sitting before a single male priest behind closed doors.
The Book of Mormon on the repentance process:
The current Utah-based LDS Church (Brighamite sect) has set up gatekeepers to interview you before entering through the gates of the temple into the realm of the Holy One; but in my view this is against Scripture. As we read in 2 Nephi 9: 41 (emphasis added):
O then, my beloved brethren, come unto the Lord, the Holy One. Remember that his paths are righteous. Behold, the way for man is narrow, but it lieth in a straight course before him, and the keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel; and he employeth no servant there; and there is none other way save it be by the gate; for he cannot be deceived, for the Lord God is his name.
Mosiah 3: 13 basically explains in the years before 30 AD, that if people merely believed in Christ before he had come, that they'd receive a remission of their sins. It's basically a born again doctrine of believe and you'll be saved (reconstituted and made holy), resting in the Lord. It is made all the more clear that believing in Christ -- by faith and baptism alone, and taking upon oneself his name and receiving his seed, saves (reconstitutes you) -- because in this case, Christ has not even come yet in Mosiah 3; but just merely believing that he will come, this mere believing (trusting assurance) that he will come and will fulfill the role of the Messiah, will remove sins from them and saves (reconstitutes them with shining bodies). In other words, when you take on the name of Christ, his seed (DNA) is implanted into you and grows in you and swells and reconstitutes you (see Alma 32) forming you into a holy one like Christ who is a holy being (see Lecture 7).
In the Book of Mormon, wickedness has more to do with how you treat people socially: whether or not you give in to classism and elitism or are stiff-necked and pridefully self-centered and contentious with murderous hate. Note as well that the Book of Mormon updates the concept of the atonement in Alma 7:12:
And [Jesus] will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor [1828 dictionary: support; assistance that relieves and delivers from difficulty, want or distress] his people according to their infirmities.
I interpret this as Terryl and Fiona Givens do, as Jesus experienced our infirmities (our woundedness, suffering, hurts), but not to simply "remove" them from us. He experienced our infirmities (woundedness), so that he'd gain our experience which he needed in order to support us as a consoling friend when we experience infirmities. In other words, he knows exactly what we are going through and wants us to be healed and empowered. Like a friend dusting us off and picking us up to go on fighting the good fight.
Hence, the emphasis is on the healing Christ, healing our traumas and woundedness, not the "sanitizing" Christ leading to perfectionism and pharasical ideas and "purity policing."
The Doctrine and Covenants on repentance and clergyman getting involved in the process:
In D&C 121: 34-37 we read (emphasis added):
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. That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.
In their book The Christ who Heals, the Givens write on page 74:
“Atonement is primarily about healing the pains and strains of injured relationships.”
A group of "Mormons" who identify as the Restoration Movement, or Remnant Fellowship, have gathered their collective knowledge on a website. After studying LDS Scripture and theology all of their lives, here is what they have concluded. It is no surprise that it differs with the Utah-based Brighamite sect in many regards; mostly in the view that there are no "worthiness interviews" found in LDS Scripture and its original theology. Instead, repentance is about changing your mind and turning toward the path of baptism, taking on the name of, or lifestyle of, Christ; and receiving the Holy Ghost. In other words, Mormon Scripture actually does not support the idea of the atonement as an ongoing psychological tool by clergymen to cause shame in those who make mistakes within a "works-based gospel" of constantly seeking purity-perfection and meriting one's salvation or exaltation. Here is how the Restoration Edition Scripture's glossary puts it (emphasis added):
… The Father’s doctrine is that all men everywhere [must] repent and believe in [Christ] (3 Nephi 5:9). This is what the whole of creation hangs on: the atonement of the Son. It is through the Son’s sacrifice that the Father’s plan became operational. Now, in order to return to the Father, all must do so in reliance upon the merits of the Son (John 2:2).[5]
… It is impossible to become altogether clean in this fallen world. Despite mankind’s best efforts, in the end they’re going to find they are lacking. The [LDS] scriptures admit this. All are in need of redemption from an outside power — someone with greater virtue and power who can lift mankind from the fallen condition into something higher, cleaner, and more godly. This is the role of Christ.
… [Christ] can forgive all men all offenses, but He requires them to forgive others (see T&C 51:3). If they fail to forgive others, they cannot be forgiven (see Matthew 3:30).
Mankind does not move from a state of evil to redemption by Christ’s sacrifice alone. It is required for them to follow Him (see John 6:29). They follow Him when they allow Him to succor them, to impart knowledge to them, and when they forgive others through His knowledge gained from the atonement.
… The atonement is not really a singular event, apart from the completion of the preparation. The atonement process is Christ reasoning with, persuading, and forgiving each repentant sinner on an ongoing basis to redeem them. The atonement (not capitalized) is His great work, while the Atonement (capitalized) is when it is done, finished, and over.[7] See also REDEMPTION.
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In the same glossary under the word Redemption we read (emphasis added):
… Redemption, or atonement, restores one to a former, happier condition…. By redemption, someone has paid a price to get you off.”[2] It is impossible to become altogether clean in this fallen world. Man can do his best, but in the end, he’s going to find he is lacking. The scriptures admit this. …
… How humble it is for the Lord to be willing to accept the reluctant, tardy, and slow to repent. Nevertheless, He is willing to accept even them. He suffered for all and will redeem as many as will come to Him. Ultimately, the outcome will depend upon how committed they are to the process of repentance, for to repent is to come to Him. They decide if His open arms will be where they finally embrace Him.[5]
… In a universal sense, modern revelation confirms that all will be “redeemed,” except the sons of Perdition (see T&C 69:7, 24).
And by Adam came the Fall of man. And because of the Fall of man came Jesus Christ, even the Father and the Son; and because of Jesus Christ came the redemption of man. And because of the redemption of man which came by Jesus Christ, they are brought back into the presence of the Lord. Yea, this is wherein all men are redeemed, because the death of Christ bringeth to pass the resurrection, which bringeth to pass a redemption from an endless sleep, from which sleep all men shall be awoke by the power of God when the trump shall sound; and they shall come forth, both small and great, and all shall stand before his bar, being redeemed and loosed from this eternal band of death, which death is a temporal death (Mormon 4:7).
… The spirit is the guide which will lead back to the Lord’s presence. Without the guide, the doctrine of Christ is incomplete.[8]
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Note that in a careful study of all of LDS Scripture, Remnant Restorationists conclude that repentance and Atonement/Redemption is not fulfilling a laundry list of do's and avoiding don'ts, but is an ongoing process of theosis: a turning away from bad habits and toward a new life as a disciple of Christ. The only one who can forgive sin is Christ. The Remnant group mentions confessing publicly but not to clergymen.
How is it that such an intelligent group of Smith-Rigdon Restorationists could study all of LDS Scriptures and come to this conclusion?
It is my view that the Remnant Fellowship glossary is in fact correct in summarizing LDS Scripture on the subject of repentance and atonement.
Christ Alone is your Bishop:
For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.” —1 Peter 2:25 KJV
The Greek word for Bishop is episkopos, which means 'overseer,' an office or position of responsibility. Other translations render the word Bishop as "Guardian."
I believe that the Brighamite sect has added a kind of Tradition of the Elders which Jesus rejected in the New Testament. Jesus accused the Pharisees of adding an oral tradition to the Scriptures of his day; and thus overloading the Jewish people with a heavy load of dogmatic formalism that contradicted the "spirit of the Law (Torah)."
Consider these scriptures from the Book of Mormon (words in bold my own, emphasis added):
Moroni 10:32-33:
32 Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him [meaning to be in Christ as Paul puts it], and deny yourselves of all ungodliness [meaning, choosing to be baptized which is the context of the entire Book of Mormon and the meaning of repentance unto baptism]; and if you shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength [in the process of repentance and baptism and the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit], then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace you may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God you are perfect in Christ, you can in nowise deny the power of God.
33 And again, if you by the grace of God are perfect in Christ [i.e. made perfect through the perfect faithfulness of Christ], and deny not his power [to save and exalt], then are you sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that you become holy, without spot.
Note that you become holy, a holy one, through the perfect merits of Christ. It's very clear that you are without spot and holy through covenanting with the Father in getting baptized, and receiving the sanctifying fire of the Holy Spirit.
Consider these verses for reflection:
Alma 22: 13-14 (emphasis added):
13 And Aaron did expound unto him the scriptures from the creation of Adam, laying the fall of man before him, and their carnal state and also the plan of redemption, which was prepared from the foundation of the world, through Christ, for all whosoever would believe on his name.
14 And since man had fallen he could not merit anything of himself; but the sufferings and death of Christ atone for their sins, through faith and repentance, and so forth; and that he breaketh the bands of death, that the grave shall have no victory, and that the sting of death should be swallowed up in the hopes of glory; and Aaron did expound all these things unto the king.
2 Nephi 10:24-25
Wherefore, my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves to the will of God, …; and remember, after you are reconciled unto God, that it is only in and through the grace of God that you are saved.
Wherefore, may God raise you from death by the power of the resurrection, and also from everlasting death by the power of the atonement, that you may be received into the eternal kingdom of God, that you may praise him through grace divine. Amen.
Helaman 14:
13 And if you believe on his name you will repent of all your sins, that thereby you may have a remission of them through his merits. ...
29 … whosoever will believe might be saved …
Repentance in the Book of Mormon simply meant confession to Christ alone and/or apologizing for your mistakes publicly in front of the church (meaning the whole assembly) and committing to re-choosing the Christ-Path prior to your baptism.
In his article, 2 Nephi 25: 23 in Literary and Rhetorical Context, author Daniel O. McClellan concludes his article saying:
The original intended sense of our clause in 2 Nephi 25: 23 was “it is by grace that we are saved, despite all we can do.” “After all” was an idiom with an established meaning in circulation at the time Joseph Smith was translating the Book of Mormon. Its usage in that translation fits seamlessly into the literary and rhetorical contexts provided by the eighteenth and nineteenth-century texts shared above, as well as into those found in the Book of Mormon itself. Our phrase is most accurately interpreted according to its usage in those contexts, which is the clear and consistent interpretation to which early informed readers would have appealed. The Book of Mormon did not appropriate contemporary conventions from the broader literary environment only to furtively reverse their meaning.
In the years following the publication of the Book of Mormon, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gravitated toward a more orthopraxic soteriology, likely as a result of developing ideologies and practices related to the nature of God, to priesthood and its associated ordinances, to industriousness, and perhaps also in reaction to anti-Mormon polemic on the part of mainstream Protestantism. [50] By the time we find Church leaders interpreting this passage in print, the intended sense seems to have given way, thanks to ideological boundary maintenance, to decreased engagement with Protestant literature, and to the natural ambiguity of the idiom, to the long-normative notion that we must exhaust every last effort before God’s grace is activated. This reading became a firmly entrenched identity marker for generations of readers of the Book of Mormon, but its retirement is long overdue.
Footnotes [50]: Grant Underwood observes: “Throughout much of Mormon history, there has been a tendency to stress the human contribution. This seems to be the result of several factors. First and foremost is the stunning potency of the idea that human spirits are God’s literal children, endowed with seeds of divinity. This elevated anthropology has been reinforced by the way in which the practical demands of colonization and community-building in the second half of the nineteenth century infused Mormon preaching on spiritual growth with a pragmatic, ‘can-do’quality. Moreover, an early revelation counseled the Saints to be ‘anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; For,’ the revelation affirmed, ‘the power is in them’ (D& C 58: 27–28)” (“Justification, Theosis, and Grace in Early Christian, Lutheran, and Mormon Discourse,” International Journal of Mormon Studies 2 [2009]: 219). For perspectives on the development of concepts of grace and salvation, see Blake T. Ostler, “The Development of the Mormon Concept of Grace,”Dialogue 24/ 1 (1991): 57–84; Paulsen and Walker, “Work, Worship, and Grace,”83–177; Matthew Bowman, “The Crisis of Mormon Christology: History, Progress, and Protestantism, 1880–1930,”Fides et Historia 40/ 2 (2008): 1–26.
LDS scholar Don Bradley in an interview said something like the passage, “for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23), is best understood when you look up the phrase “after all we can do” in the early 1820s and learn it doesn’t mean works-based righteousness. I then read this on a Forum:
My Journal of Book of Mormon Studies article, "2 Nephi 25:23 in Literary and Rhetorical Context," is now digitally available on JSTOR ...
My paper demonstrates that "after all we can do" was a phrase commonly used by English-language writers discussing grace in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, and it always and only meant "despite all we can do."
If you don't have access, message me and I'll be happy to send you a PDF.
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The article, Why Does Nephi State that We Are Saved by Grace “After All We Can Do"? by BMC Team
(October 10, 2017) KnoWhy #371, states:
BYU Professor Stephen Robinson explained, “At first glance at this scripture, we might think that grace is offered to us only chronologically after we have completed doing all we can do, but this is demonstrably false.”[1]
… Jacob had explained that “after ye are reconciled unto God, that it is only in and through the grace of God that ye are saved” (2 Nephi 10:24).
Benjamin Spackman, an LDS scholar, argued that comparing these two passages implies that Nephi’s clause “after all we can do” parallels Jacob’s phrase “after ye are reconciled unto to God.” The comparison suggests that being reconciled unto God is all we can do.3 This conclusion is supported by other passages in the Book of Mormon which use the phrase “all we can do.” For example, in Alma 24:11 the king of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, after their conversion, claimed that “it was all we could do to repent sufficiently before God that he would take away our stain.”[4] …
… [Moroni] declared that it is “through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father … that ye become holy, without spot” (Moroni 10:33, emphasis added).
It is clear that the focus of Nephi’s teaching in 2 Nephi 25:23, like that of Jacob’s in 2 Nephi 10:24, is on remembering that we are saved through the grace of God. As Joseph Spencer concluded, “Regardless of what actually has been done, grace is what saves—and that remains true even after all that can be done."[5]
If “all we can do” is “be reconciled unto God,” then we, as Ben Spackman noted, “commit to doing God’s will and trying to change when we fail to do so.”[6]
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In other words, later man-made traditions changed the original meaning of being "saved by grace despite your own merits," for one is made holy through the merits of Christ alone.
Joseph Smith never corrected the original LDS doctrine of grace in Mormon Scripture, which was that you achieve entrance into God's celestial Kingdom through Christ's merits alone and not through your own merits.
All that Joseph Smith was doing with temple work was focusing on what kind of being you would be in the heavens after being saved by Christ. Even Paul says that Christians would eventually be above the angels and even judge the angels. So what kind of beings or body would Christians be? To understand why Joseph Smith implemented plural marriage and why I believe it was only meant as a temporary solution to expiate puritanical Augustinianism from the consciousness of the saints, see my blog post here.
