The Book of Mormon

“theology” is a complicated concept in Mormon discourse. It is routine to say that there is no tradition of formal Mormon theology, or even any Mormon theology at all. This is explained by observing that continuing revelation and the multiple genres of Mormon scripture resist systematization, or that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints eschews seminaries and professionalized clergy. Both the perceived need and the space for discussion of what other Christianities consider theological questions is thought to be constrained by institutional and cultural insistence on the prophetic authority of church leaders. Seminarians are not needed to work out exactly how the atonement works or how many angels might dance on the head of a pin, this thinking goes; if there is something worth knowing about things like that, the Prophet has it covered.This view of Mormonism's lack of theology depends on a very narrow notion of what theology is, however. Mormons, like other religious people, reason about God, in a variety of capacities. Mormonism might not have a theology, but certainly Mormons do.The twelve volumes of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute's Brief Theological Introductions to the Book of Mormon bear this out. The books appeared individually throughout 2020 and are now available as a boxed set. Given the general impression of Mormonism's relationship to theology, the title of the project itself could have been a provocation, even coming from an official organ of Brigham Young University. A general introduction from the editors precedes each volume and elaborates a distinction between “theology” and “authoritative doctrine” in an attempt to inoculate the project from questions about authority. Church authorities handle doctrine, the introduction suggests, while theology is “the scholarly practice of exploring a scriptural text's implications and its lens on God's work in the world” (viii, all volumes). The implication is that scholars have room to “explore” within the limits of doctrine. These twelve examples should stand as important primary sources for avoiding the tendency to equate contemporary approaches to Mormon scripture with the predictable and staid proclamations of church authorities.The series features a volume for each book in the Book of Mormon, though Enos, Jarom, and Omni are bundled together, being quite brief, and Alma gets two, being quite long. Third and Fourth Nephi are also bundled together; the Words of Mormon is occasionally cited but does not get its own volume. The authors are all scholars, but they represent an admirably wide variety of disciplines and career stages. They include well-known Latter-day Saint intellectuals: James E. Faulconer (Mosiah), Terryl Givens (2 Nephi), Diedre Nicole Green (Jacob), and David Holland (Moroni). The contributions I found most interesting, however, were from early-career scholars and others with currently less immediate name recognition. These include Sharon J. Harris, assistant professor of English at BYU (Enos, Jarom, and Omni); Kimberly Matheson Berkey, doctoral student in theology at Loyola University Chicago (Helaman); and Kylie Nielson Turley (Alma 1–29), a writer, literary scholar, and longtime lecturer at BYU. In the context of the LDS Church, the difference between theology and doctrine might be most manifest here in the fact that five of these twelve theologians are women.These scholars’ approaches run the gamut from what I would classify as conventionally hermeneutical to philosophical to inventively—even critically, in a few cases—literary. Each of the authors foregrounds the homiletic goal of bringing readers to apply these texts to their own lives and their contemporary circumstances in different ways. For my money—and I should be clear that I am writing as a non-Mormon—the most interesting of these humanize the Book of Mormon prophets while also opening the texts toward questions that contemporary readers are likely to bring to them, some of which require addressing problematic aspects of the texts themselves.Right off the bat, Joseph M. Spencer (1 Nephi), an assistant professor of ancient scripture at BYU who teaches religious education courses, takes seriously the worries that his students report when they read the Book of Mormon: they “worry about the invisibility of the women, wonder whether Nephi deserves his brothers’ resentment, and lose sleep over the circumstances of Laban's death” (4). In faith-oriented studies like these volumes, it is to be expected that affirming solutions will be suggested, and Spencer and the other authors here oblige. However, his Nephi is complex—“There are motes in Nephi's eyes, to be sure—maybe even beams”—and those answers could not be characterized as easy or simplistic (80). Similarly, Turley challenges readers that the work of close reading may require the loss of “a superhuman scripture hero, an idol untouched by doubt or despair and unaffected by circumstances” (4). She provocatively centers Abish, one of only three unique women named in the Book of Mormon, as the hero and even possibly the author of Alma 19:14–32 (119–20). The plasticity of interpretation in these volumes will be of interest to scholars of scriptural usage.The standout volume in the series balances faithful reading with a willingness to apply the ancient text to contemporary circumstances by using a variety of methodologies to think critically about both. Harris had maybe the most challenging assignment: Enos, Jarom, and Omni, what she calls “the flyover books,” often overlooked because they are “itty bitty” (2). She begins by reframing these books as the powerful end of the Book of Mormon, rather than a mid-volume throat-clearing: according to the logic of Mosiah priority, after all, they were the last books dictated and transcribed.1 A literary scholar by training, Harris makes her facility with Christian theology clear as she distills these books to the themes of covenant and inheritance, with a particular focus on kenosis, the act emptying the self in favor of others and of God (27).Harris's argument that these books’ narration of the plates’ transmission from one bearer to the next along hereditary lines means that “this is scripture about families” will be unsurprising to readers. However, her frankness about the major omission that such a reading must work around contains a certain surprising edginess: these books never “mention or even allude to women” (5).Other volumes in the series variously acknowledge and deal with the paucity of women in the Book of Mormon. Harris is, however, unflinching in her criticism and reaches for no exculpatory rationale for the prophets’ misogyny: “The omission is tragic. We and the Nephites are poorer for it, and we must do better in our own preaching and writing” (5). She is equally frank about her power as a reader and a scholar to bring women into discussion of the text even as the text itself silences them: “Women were part of the Lehite story, even if they were left out of the version we have” (5). Even for a nonbeliever, her charge is rousing. “God's covenants are extended to all of his children; if we don't see some of God's children in the scriptures, we have either misunderstood the scriptures that we have, or we can look forward to receiving more” (5–6).Harris connects the history conveyed in Enos, Jarom, and Omni—the processes by which “serious disagreements between brothers metastasized into habitual political violence”—to our own fraught and dangerous political moment: a subtle, and welcome, message (13, 37–38). Likewise, Adam S. Miller's volume on Mormon is perhaps the most poignant and urgent in the contemporary connection he draws. Mormon, he argues, is about the end of a world, and in a moving afterword he makes explicit the connection to climate change that will have been running through many readers’ minds all the way through the volume.It is worth noting, with respect to Miller's volume on Mormon in particular, that the books are beautiful. The covers are embossed with woodcuts by the artist Brian Kershisnik, and inside they are evocatively illustrated, with vivid orange accents and creative layout. In Miller's volume, the verses of Mormon 6:8–22 are sparsely printed in white, a few lines at a time, across sixteen otherwise black pages. It feels, indeed, like the end of a world.Like Harris's insistence on noticing and critiquing the absence of women in the Book of Mormon and Turley's suggestion that Abish may have written part of Alma, Miller's attention to climate change will undoubtedly be bracing to some readers of faith. These volumes’ capacity to be surprising and maybe even contentious, however, is their great benefit to teachers and scholars, for whom they provide some purchase on the varied topography of Mormon theology so consistently obscured by the routinized assurances of official Latter-day Saint doctrine. These pithy, engaging books should be staples of courses on Mormonism as means of introducing students to the continuing vitality and diversity of Mormon thought

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