Readings
Learning Outcomes
By the end of class, class members will be able to
- Describe strategies for profitably reading Abraham.
- Evaluate what it means that God knew us before we were born.
Introduction
Eight years ago, I was sitting in a Sunday School class in Chicago with my daughter in my lap. I was probably half paying attention to the lesson, when suddenly the discussion started getting heated. People were arguing that we definitely, most certainly don’t believe in predestination. We’re foreordination people! Then others would pipe in that they didn’t see any substantive difference between predestination and foreordination.
Actually, maybe this is a lame attention-grabber. Because honestly, I don’t know what the end result was; the beauty of having a one-year-old on your lap in a Sunday School class is, there’s always a reason to slip out. And slip out I did. What I do know is, the next week, our ward had some sort of discussion about contention and not having it, a discussion that, iirc, didn’t directly reference the Sunday School class, but everybody knew what it was talking about.
This lesson is entitled “Thou Wast Chosen Before Thou Wast Born,” and spends a lot of time looking at foreordination. But it doesn’t mention predestination at all and, if I were teaching this lesson, I’d probably follow its lead. Why? A couple reasons. One is, as Mormons, we don’t really have a solid grasp about what predestination is. And, in fact, “predestination” is not a single thing; rather, it is a doctrine interpreted and taught differently by different religions (and, likely, within different religions). If we don’t have a solid grasp of what predestination means, our discussion condemning it will be tilting at straw men.
Also, if we believe in the KJV of the Bible, we necessarily believe in predestination. I did a quick search; neither “predestine” nor “predestination” provides any hits, but “predestinate” gives us a couple, in Romans and Ephesians. Meanwhile, “foreordain” gives us a single hit. But here’s the funny thing: “foreordained” shows up in the LDS-written headnote to Rom. 8 (where vs. 29 says “predestinate”) and to Eph. 1 (where vs. 5 says “predestinate”). Which is to say, when the church was producing the new chapter headings in the late 70s, it saw predestination and foreordination as rough synonyms.
God Chose Abraham
The idea of choseness permeates the Hebrew Bible (and, for that matter, all sorts of religious discourse). We often misinterpret what it means to be chosen, maybe in part because of Abraham. Because in the Book of Mormon and the Hebrew Bible, the idea of choseness generally seems to refer to a group of people, not an individual. In Abraham (specifically 3:23), God tells Abraham that he specifically was chosen. And he was chosen, not because of covenant or lineage, or even choices that he made, but because he was a good soul before the world was formed, and God chose him.
So, even though I said I’d skip the predestination thing, the choseness in Abraham looks a whole lot like predestination; God made a choice, not based on worthiness (or, at least, not based on worthiness in this life). And it was a choice God could and did make because He is God.
I actually really like this, because it forces us out of a rote liken-this-to-ourselves hermeneutic of scripture. (That’s not to say that this is a bad way to read scripture, but it’s certainly not the only way.) Because honestly, what’s the point in likening this to ourselves? If God chose Abraham (and other noble and great ones) before they were born, it’s too late. There’s nothing we can do to become premortally chosen. Either we were or we weren’t.
And yet the scripture is here. (Moreover, it’s buoyed by the end of the chapter: in vs. 27-28, God asks who He should send, two volunteer, and God choses one. There’s no reason to believe, based on the text, the He chose the one He chose because of merit; both say precisely the same thing, and neither offers an agency-destroying plan. That all happens in Moses 4, but this is not Moses 4.)
So what does it mean that God makes arbitrary choices, based on things that we apparently did? were? prior to our birth, and perhaps prior to our organization as beings? (N.b.: I don’t think we’ll come to a satisfying answer, because I think it’s a hard question. It seems unfair, right, that it’s already too late to become a noble and great one, and a ruler. But it may be worth guiding the class toward an idea of grace here: we’re not chosen because of what we do in this life, and, in the same manner, we’re not saved because of what we do in this life (even though what we do in this life may have some bearing on our salvation). Rather, we’re saved because of choices God and Jesus made.) (Also, if the class starts trying to assert that we’re the chosen ones, that we were noble and great before this life, and that we’re God’s chosen rulers, I’d probably shut that down. Abraham knows it because God came and told him, face to face. I haven’t been told face to face, and I suspect the vast, vast majority of people in our classes likewise haven’t.)
Contrasting Moses
This may be a nice way to get into the idea that we don’t have to harmonize scripture. Because Moses 4:1-4 tells a similar premortal story: Jesus vs. Satan volunteering to be our savior. But in Moses, Satan’s looking for the glory, where Jesus offers it to God. In Abraham, by contrast, two people say, “Here I am, send me.”
Now certainly we can read Moses and Abraham as telling the same story, just one with more detail than the other. But if we do that, why have the two stories? Why not just delete Abraham 3:27-28, and use the more-detailed version in Moses? The two stories are doing different work, and we owe it to scripture to understand what that work is. (That can profitably go to reading differing versions of history in both the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels, too.)
Hierarchy in Abraham
Abraham 3 gives us a really weird cosmology. It basically creates a hierarchical cosmos, where the Earth is under the moon, which is under the sun, which is under other, greater suns, which eventually are all under Kolob, which is the nearest to God, and governs all of the other stars.
So WTF? (Maybe write the letters “W” “T” and “F” on the blackboard? That seems like an attention-grabbing activity. Alternatively, when you get to this part of the lesson, you could show this video.)
Now, as a description of how space works, this makes absolutely no sense at all. Stars aren’t above each other. They’re not greater than each other, and certainly don’t rule each other. And yet Abraham spends a lot of time assigning names, hierarchy, and even time to these various heavenly bodies. What are we to make of it?
It’s probably worth again contrasting Abraham 3 with Moses; even though Moses 1 was last week’s lesson, you’ll note that God showed Moses the earth and everything on it. He mentions to Moses that He also created the heavens, but is focused on the Earth.
So why does Moses get the Earth, and Abraham the cosmos? And what’s the relevance of a description of the cosmos that’s totally foreign to reality?
Maybe that holds a clue for how we’re supposed to read Abraham. And how is that? It’s a fair discussion for class, but it certainly suggests to me that reading it’s not meant to be taken literally as a description of nature. So the various levels of hierarchy must have some other meaning, and it never hurts to try to tease that out in class.
From the Archives
Steve Evans: Kolob and Kokaubeam
Kevin Barney: Kolob as Sirius
BHodges: Intelligences and the Mythology of Coherence