the weeping god of mormonism

8/2/2019 The Weeping God of Mormonism

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The Weeping God

of Mormonism1

Eugene England

IN THE BOOK OF MOSES,revealed to Joseph Smith in 1830 as part of his re-vision of the Bible, we lea rn of a prophet named Enoch, who is called topreach repentance to his people. He succeeds so well they are called"Zio n" an d are tran slated into heaven. Then, despite his obviously greatknowledge of the Gospel, Enoch has an experience that shocks andam azes him an d comp letely changes his concept of God: He is "lifted up ,even in the bosom of the Father" and given a vision of those he hadtaught who resisted evil and "were caught up by the power of heaveninto Zion." Then, "It came to pass that the God of heaven looked uponthe residue of the people, and he wept; and Enoch bore record of it, say-ing: How is it that the heavens weep, and shed forth their tears as therain up on the m ou nta ins? " (Moses 7:24, 28; my emp hasis).

Enoch is able to focus his surprise at God's unexpected emotion intoquestions which disclose, even after his previous visions and his

achievements as a pro ph et, wha t is for him an entirely new und ersta nd-ing of the nature of God. The answers to Enoch's questions reveal a con-cept of God which, I believe, is the essential foundation of all Mormontheology, one tha t ma kes our theology radically different from most oth-ers. However, it is also a concept which ma ny M orm ons , like the yo ungerEnoch, still have not understood or quite accepted. Enoch asks God inamazement, "How it is thou canst weep, seeing thou art holy, and fromall eternity to all ete rnity ?" (Moses 7:29). In other words , Enoch w on ders,how can an absolute and, thus, all-powerful being do such a human

thing as weep? Humans weep in response to tragic events they cannotchange; God can chang e or prevent them, so wh y shou ld he weep?

Enoch even s ou nd s a bit pu t out with God because of this surprisingchallenge to his traditional understanding as he goes on to remind Godat some length of his infinite po wers. God patien tly resp ond s with an ex-

1. This essay is previously unpublished.


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64 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Tho ugh t

planation of his own limitations: These people in the vision are "thybreth ren" w ho have "agency" (Moses 7:32). I gave them a c om m and m ent"that they should love one another," but "they are without affection, and

they hate their own blood." As a result "m isery shall be their doo m; andthe whole heavens shall weep over them. . . ; wherefore should not theheavens weep, seeing these shall suffer?" (7:37). In other words, agencyis real and cannot be abrogated. God's power to remove sin and othercauses of hu m an suffering is limited. He can send p roph ets like Enoch towarn and preach repentance, and he can send his son to provide thosewho accept him with power to repent: "Wherefore, he suffereth for theirsins; inasm uch as they will repent in the da y tha t my Ch osen shall returnto me" (7:39). But he cannot simply change or do away with his creation,so until his children repent, "they shall be in torment. Wherefore for thisshall the heavens weep" (7:39-40). Enoch here sees into God's heart,changes his concept of God, and, very significantly, is moved to newcompassion himself: He "wept and stretched forth his arms, and hisheart swelled wide as eternity; and his bowels yearned: and all eternityshook" (7:41).

We hav e in this experience of Enoch, of co urse , a vers ion of the basictheological pa rad ox , "How can God be all-pow erful an d still allow ev il?"

Enoch is encountering a completely new theodicy, a "justification" ofGod or explanation of how he can be considered just. It is a theodicywhich, if not unique to Mormonism, makes Mormonism unique amonglarge, growing churches. It is also, I believe, a theod icy wh ich can m ake acrucial contribution to Mormonism's emergence as a mature, compas-sionate world religion, one able to contribu te in impo rtan t wa ys to G od 'sefforts to save all his children, not just through conversion but alsothroug h sh aring our revealed insights into the natu re of God by dialogu ewith others.

Traditional theodicies tend to solve the paradox either by (1) redefin-ing evil as not really evil from God's infinite perspective, as illusory, or"necessary" to build souls, or as merely the "absence of good," the holesin God's swiss-cheese universe, or (2) by equivocating on agency, whichis "given" because for some unexplained reason an omnipotent God"has" to give it in order to have beings who "freely" love him. ManyMormon thinkers have used these approaches, but the theodicy revealedto Enoch and foundational to Mormonism's orthodoxy denies the other

pole of the paradox: G od's om nipotence. God allows evil because there ismuch of it he ca n't prevent or do aw ay w ith. Therefore, like a hu m an , hewe eps. Of course, I do n't m ean that all evil is bey ond G od 's literal po w erto prevent. That would make him impotent indeed. Certainly he can andoften does interfere with evil. The weeping God of Mormon finitismwhom I am trying to describe creates a world for soul-building, whichcan only succeed if it includes exposure of our souls to the effects of nat-


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England: Th e Weeping God of Mormonism 65

ural law, as we ll as ma xim um latitude for us to exercise our agency as welearn how the universe works. Evil is a natural condition of such awo rld, not because Godcreates evil for sou l-building, bu t becau se evil in-

evitably results from agency freed to grapple with natural law in thismortal world. You can't have one without the other, not because Godsays so, but rather because the universe, which was not createdex nihiloand, thus, has its own intractable nature, says so. Thus, God is notomnipotent.

In a rema rkable p erso nal testimony w ritten to a you ng m an dy ing ofcancer, Reynolds Price explores all the traditional answers to the funda-mental question, "If a loving, all-powerful God exists, why does he let agifted young man be tormented and killed?" Price flirts briefly with thenotion that God's nature itself contains the seeds of evil or at least wasincapable of preventing it, but he finally offers mainly his own undeni-able (for him) experience with a God who has given him moments ofcalm assuran ce a nd an actua l vision of Christ in which he w as both for-given of his sins and hea led of his ow n cancer. Price also pro vides a moreintellectual solace based on his own experience and his reading of thegrea t religious texts, especially Job and the Bhagavad Gita, that "the Godwho is both our omnipotent Creator and the mute witness of so much

agony. . i s w hat is or is in all that exists: that he is our only choice,"2

andthat since "God has made us for his glory and that glorification is pleas-ing to him. . .wouldn't that glory be augmented by a wider spectrum oflight and dark in our own dim eyes if we saw and granted and tried tolive in the glare of a fuller aw areness of his bein g?"3

The articulate and tender testimony of Price is moving and impres-sive, but it seems to me somewhat short of what may be availablethrough the weeping God of Mormonism. That God, like Job's God andthe one in the Gita, sugg ests we wo uld change our perspective on our in-dividual griefs if we could see the grandeur of God's universe and pur-pose s, if we could ha ve been w ith God "w henI laid the foundation of theearth." But when our weeping God, in what seems a similar imperiousgesture, tells us, "In nothing doth man offend God. . .save those whoconfess no t his ha nd in all th ings " (D&C 59:21), w e are not, like Price, leftto struggle to "confess his hand," or express gratitude and acceptance toa God who "is surely the full proprietor or the impassive witness ofAIDS and Bosnia, Oklahoma City and Rwanda,"4 to say nothing of the

Ho locaust. I believe God me ans w e, likeJob, m ust recognize that the uni-verse itself, not a finite God, is the "proprietor" of those things; wecould

2. Reynolds Price,Letter to a Man in the Fire (New York: Scribner, 1999), 76.3. Ibid., 77-784. Ibid.


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not have all the good of it, including the mean s to grow a nd kno w bea utyand have joy and become more God-like, without the evil, not becauseGod is that way, but because the universe , which h e did not m ake, is thatway. Furthermore, because of Enoch, we especially know, as apparentlyPrice does not, that God is not an "impassive witness" of all this: Heweeps.

One of the evidences for me that Joseph Smith was a true prophet,both translating and receiving by direct revelation material from real an-cient cultures and their living prophets, is that he produced material hedidn't yet understand or agree with. A great example, of course, is theclaim in the Book of Mormon that "all are alike unto God," black andw hite, male and female (2 Nephi 26:33), which prob ably no one in Amer-

ica believed in 1830, including Joseph Sm ith, and wh ich many, of course,still don't believe. It's also clear that the Prophet Joseph didn't quite un-derstand the implications of Enoch's experience, which I believe herecorded by direct revelation from God. For some time after that revela-tion, and despite its implications, Joseph apparently took literally thepassages in the Book of Morm on which refer to God as havin g all know l-edge and all pow er (such as 2 Neph i 9:20 an d A lma 26:35). We kno w thisbecause the earliest Mormon doctrinal exposition, the "Lectures on

Faith" (1834-35), uses the traditional Christian categories of omnipres-ence, omniscience, and omnipotence in describing God and claims that"without the knowledge of all things God would not be able to save anyportion of his creatures."5

Joseph Smith's part in authoring the "Lectures on Faith" is still un-certain; they seem mainly the work of Sidney Rigdon, with significantinput from Joseph.6 Obviously, as many readers have suspected, the Lec-tures reflect a very early stage of Mormon doctrinal expression aboutGod, one still heavily influenced by traditional Christian ideas and cate-gories. For instance, God is described as a personage of Spirit, Christonly as a persona ge of tabernacle, and the Holy G host not as a pe rson ageat all bu t a kind of unifying mind of the father and son. Those who teachfrom the Lectures on Faith have had to editorialize and add footnotesand explanations, to make it conform to later orthodox M ormo n thoug ht,which Joseph Fielding Smith, for example, did at the beginning of hisbook, Doctrines of Salvation. This problem can be seen in the inclinationby church authorities to revise the Lectures on Faith in the early 1900s, or

5. Joseph Sm ith,Lectures on Faith (Salt Lake City: D eseret Book Co., 1985),4:11.6. On autho rship and decanon ization, see Leland H . Gentry, "What of the Lectures on

Faith?" BYUStudies 19 (Fall 1978): 5-19, and Richard S. Van Wagoner, Steven C. Walker, andAllen D. Roberts, "The 'Lectures on Faith': A Case Study in Decanonization,"Dialogue: AJournal ofMormon Thought 20, no . 3 (Fall 1987): 71-77.


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England: The Weeping God of Mormonism 67

at least to add a footnote, and also in their subsequent decision to ex-clude them from the Doctrine and Covenants in1921.7 However, JosephSmith never repudiated them, and while it is likely that, had they been

written later as his understanding developed, he too might have quali-fied or explained some of the terms used there, I think he eventua lly sawno inherent co ntradiction between the Lectures and his later un der stan d-ing of God as hav ing "all" kno wledge and power, sufficient to pro vide u ssalvation in our sphere of existence (and thus being "infinite"), but alsoas one who is still learning and developing in relationship to higherspheres of existence (and thus "finite"). God is thus, as Joseph under-stood, redemptively sovereign, not absolute in every way, but absolutelyable to save us.

This complex und ersta ndi ng had been received and amplified over anumber of years before it was most clearly, comprehensively, and pub-licly declared in the famous "King Follett Discourse," which was givenat the April 1844 General Conference a few months before Joseph'sdeath. The King Follett Discourse itself has somewhat questionable sta-tus because it was recorded only in the rather sketchy way possible atthat time: in longhand by four scribes whose work was later amalga-m ated. In the Discou rse, Joseph Smith now here states definitely that G odis "finite" or progressing in knowledge and power, but there and in theDoctrine and Covenants he certainly implies that God is not supremeand does not have all power, by stating that there are Gods above himand by naming specific, substantive things that cannot be done, even byGo d, such as create ou t of noth ing. It seems to me that Joseph Sm ith alsoclearly describes an eternal process of learning and growth by whichGo dhoo d is attained, an d he at leastimplies that this process continues forGod:

First God Himself who sits enthroned in yonder heavens is a Man like untoone of yourselves that is the great secret! . . .The first princip le of truth andof the Gospel is to know of a certainty that character of God, and that wemay converse with Him. . .that He once was a man like one of us. . . .Youhave got to learn ho w to make yourselves Gods. . .and be kings and prieststo God, the same as all Gods have done by going from a small capacity to agreat capacity, from a small degree to another, from grace to gra ce .. .from ex-altation to exaltation. [Jesussaid], "I saw the Father work out His kingdomw ith fear an d trem bling an d I am d oing the same, too. W hen I get my king-

7. In editing the History of the Church, B. H. Roberts noted that the Lectures on Faithwere "n ot of equal autho rity in matters of doctrine," compared w ith the regular sections ofthe Doctrine and Covenants, because, when they were originally presented to the churchfor acceptance they had been separately designated as not inspired revelation, "though ju-diciously writte n an d p rofitable for doctrin e" (Joseph Smith,History of the Church, ed. B. H.Roberts [Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1912], 2:176).


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dom , I will give it to the Father and it will ad d to and exalt His glory. He w illtake a higher exaltation an d I will take His place and also be exalted, so thatHe obtains kingdom rolling upon Kingdom. . . . "

All the minds and spirits that God ever sent into the world are suscepti-ble of enlargement and improvement. The relationship we have with Godplaces us in a situation to advance in knowledge. God Himself found Him-self in the midst of spirits and glory. Because He was greater, He saw pro pe rto institute laws whereby the rest, who were less in intelligence, could havea privilege to advance like Himself and be exalted with Him, so that theymight hav e one glory upo n another in all that kno wled ge, power, and glory.8

Notice the lack of traditional Christian absolutism here. Instead, theemp hasis seems to be on God's similarity to hu m an s, on God as the sam e

kind of being w e are, one who m akes av ailable to us a process of gro wthhe himself has been engaged in and apparently is still engaged in,"whereby the less intelligent. . .could have a privilege to advance likeHimself." (The verb structure implies hestill is advancing.) God is a"greater" intelligence, not absolute intelligence, and he is moving tohigher and higher exaltations, not to some absolute state of the highestpossible exaltation; one glory is added to another "in all that knowledge,power, and g lory" (my emphases).

The concept of a plurality of Gods had been taught by Joseph Smithsince 1835 and was clearly understood by his close associates, such asHyrum Smith and Brigham Young.9 Hyrum himself is quoted in GeorgeLa ub 's Journa l as teaching, on April 27, 1843, tha t there is "a wh ole trainand lineage of gods."10 In fact, in that sermon h e offers th e basic scrip tura ltext for the shift in perspective which makes it possible to talk aboutmany gods, of ascending spheres of power and intelligence, and then,without contradiction, to turn around and talk of one God, our God, suf-ficiently "perfect" in intelligence and power and, thus, able to save his

children on the earth. Hyrum begins his discussion with a quotationfrom 1 Corinthians 8:5-6: "There be god s many and lords many. But to usthere is but one God the Father." Despite the context of this scripture,which is a discussion by Paul of belief in idols, Brigham Young, B. H.Roberts, Joseph Fielding Smith, and many others have used it as a briefexplanation of how it is possible to be both a Christian polytheist (tech-nically a henotheist) and a monotheist. Roberts specifically used it to

8. Stan Larson, "The King Follet Discourse: A New Amalgam ated Text,"BYUStudies18, no . 2 (Winter 1978): 200, 203, 204.

9. Van Hale, "The Doctrinal Impact of the King Follett Discourse,"BYU Studies18,no. 2 (Winter 1978): 209.

10. Eugene England, ed., "George Laub's Nauvoo Journal,"BYU Studies18, no. 2(Winter 1978): 176.


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justify how we can talk sometimes in an adventuresome mode aboutmultiple orders of godhood in which our God is limited and still pro-gressing, and yet at other times, without contradiction, talk in a worship-

ful mode about the one God and his perfect knowledge and redemptivepower relative to our sphere.However, despite Roberts's apologetic efforts to demonstrate that his

belief in a finite, progressing God w as consistent with both the Bible an dorthodox Mormon thought, it seems clear that he simply believed andgloried in the doctrine as delightfully true and as the chief legacy ofJoseph S mith, who m he called "The Prophet-Teacher." In his book of tha tname and in his most important theological work,The Mormon Doctrineof Deity, he expounds and defends what he calls Joseph's "eternalism,"thus, grounding Mormon theology in a philosophical position that is itsmain strength and for many, such as me, its main attraction. Let mequote from Sterling McMurrin's "Introduction" to the 1967 reprinting ofJoseph Smith the Prophet-Teacher, both to honor McMurrin, whom wedeeply miss, and to express with some authority how important thisma tter is:

More than any other, Roberts sensed the radical heresy in Mormon theology,its complete departure from the traditional Christian doctrines of God andm an, its denial of the divine absoluteness, and its rejection of the negativismof the orthodo x dogm a of the hum an p redicament. Roberts was no t a creatorof doctrine, in these matters, but he had a clear vision of what was entailedby the basic ideas already laid down by his predecessors, and he did morethan any other person to set forth the full character of the Mormonism thatfollowed inevitably from the ideas of Joseph Smith, from the doctrine, for in-stance, of the uncreated intelligence or ego and the denial of the orthodoxdogma on the creation of the world. Roberts was not repulsed by the un-orthodox implications of the finitistic conception of God. He delighted in

them , for they made room for a positive doctrine of man. Yet he kept the dis-cussion of the nature of God on a more defensible level than did some whoconfused the old absolutism with the new doctrine. It was a bold and auda-cious religion, wh ich combined elem ents of traditional fund am entalismwith the mo der n liberal doctrine of man and the optimism of the nineteen thcentury, and it required a bold and rebellious and spacious mind to grasp itsfull implications.11

D e s p i t e R o b e r t s ' s a c h i e v e m e n t , t h e " o l d a b s o l u t i s m " M c M u r r i n

refers to has remained a l ive and wel l in Mormonism and now seems on

11. Sterling M. McMurrin, "Notes on a Mormon Philospher-Historian," introductionto B.H. Roberts,Joseph Smith the Prophet Teacher (Princeton,N.J.: The Deseret Club of Princton University, 1967), xvi.


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the ascendant. Joseph Smith seems to have progressed in his under-standing, at least to the point where he could see the absolutistic lan-guage of scripture as metaphorical or only pertain ing to God in a partialdescription of his perfections relative to us. Brigham Young went evenfurther along that path, as did his namesake Brigham H. Roberts. But inthe sam e General Conference of April 1844, where Joseph gave the "KingFollett Discourse," his brother Hyrum Smith expressed a position thathas persisted in the church, especially through Hyrum's own family. It isclear from the context that Hyrum's concern was with the Saints' faith inChrist's power to save, which he apparently felt had been underminedby too literal or exclusive a focus on a limited God: "I want to put downall false influence. If I thought I should be saved and any in the congre-

gation be lost, I should not be happy. . . .Our Savior is com pete nt to saveall from death and hell. I can prove it out of the revelations. I would notserve a God that had not all wisdom and power."12 He apparently couldnot quite see how G od could be both re dem ptively sovereign an d finite,although he had himself earlier recorded the key in his reference to thepassage in Corinthians about many gods and yet one.13

Brigham Young felt that the idea of eternal progression was what hecalled "the mainspring of all action" and acted strongly to assure that thecentral concepts he had learned from Joseph concerning progression inboth humans and a finite God would be kept alive in the Mormon her-itage. He reprinted the "King Follett Discourse" a number of times andengaged in continuing and remarkably public doctrinal disagreementswith the apostle Orson Pratt about these matters. Brother Brigham wasconcerned not only that Elder Pratt wa s wron g in insisting witho ut qual-ification on God 's absolute perfection and the impossibility of his furtherprogression, but also that such an influential speaker and writer wouldconvince many to follow after him, leaving to posterity the impression

that only his view and emphasis were part of Mormon thought. Presi-dent Young felt it so crucial to keep before the Saints Joseph Sm ith's em-pha sis that he pushe d Elder Pratt to a public reca ntation in 1865.14 Thenhe pub lished the recantation in theDeseret News, along with a denuncia-tion of specific absolutistic doctrines of Elder Pratt, signed by the FirstPresidency.

12. Quoted in Joseph Fielding Smith,Doctrines of Salvation, com p. Bruce R. McConkie(Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954) 5; from Joseph S mith ,History of the Church, 6:300.

13. See note 5.14. This experience is thoroughly reviewed in Gary J. Bergera, "The Orson Pratt-

Brigham Young Controversies,"Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 13, no. 2 (Summer1980): 7-49, and in Breck En glan d,The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt (Salt Lake City, Utah:Un ivers ity of Utah Press, 1985) 209-17.


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Part of Brigham Young's concern that caused him to publicly denythe truth of Pratt's ideas was the presumption of actuallylimiting Godwhile seeming to describe him as having limitless power and knowl-

edge. It w as th is concern which m otivate d a statem ent of Brigham Youngthat seem s directly to contradict Hy rum Smith:

Some men seem as if they could learn so mu ch and n o more. They appear tobe bou nd ed in their capacity for acquiring knowledg e, as Brother Orson has,in theory, bounded the capacity of God. According to his theory, God canprogress n o further in knowledge and power, but the God that I serve is pro-gressing eternally, and so are his children; they will increase to all eternity, ifthey are faithful.15

I find this admirably relevant to the irony that many absolutisticthinkers, including Mormons, in trying to exalt God by contrasting himto the mere human, instead begin to demean him as impersonal, pas-sionless, even cruel. We tend to forget that all our attempts to under-stand and describe God are anthropomorphic, originating in our humannotions and comparisons, and that using the more abstract, irrational,supposedly superhuman images may only make God appear moreinhu-man, in the worst sense.

Brigham Young's concern was also with spiritual psychology, the im-portan ce (in motivating m ank ind towa rd salvation) of retaining a certainvision: that what was most rewarding in earthly progression would con-tinue forever and would make celestial life, or Godhood, genuinely at-tractive. God hoo d is not a mysterious stasis or a mere endless repetitionof the same process of creating spirits and saving them. It is most attrac-tive to us, and the best motivator to moral and religious living, when itattracts us for the same reasons the highest forms of human life attractus: learning , creating, experiencing joy and tragedy, even w eeping .

Although Orson Pratt's absolutism about God which harked back tothe Lectures on Faith had been rejected by Brigham Young, and the Lec-tures them selves w ere d em oted in status, President Joseph R Smith, likehis father H yr um Smith, wa s concerned that some in the church were in-clined to reduce too much the distance between God and man and, thus,to undermine the confidence in God's saving power essential for humansalvation.16 (I remember some Mormons in my youth who were socaught up with the vision of eternal progression that they could hardly

wait to die to be like God!)

15. Journal of Discourses 11 (Liverpool, England:B. Young, January 1867),286.16. See, for instance, his denunciation of those who were denying miracles and, thus,

the perfection of God's power, inConference Report, April 1914 (The Church of Jesus Christof Latter-day Saints, 1914) 5.


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President Joseph F. Smith's son, Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr., took asimilar position. In his influential book,Doctrines of Salvation, he quotesthe passage from his grandfather H yrum abou t not serving a finite G od,and also the passages from the Lectures on Faith on the perfections ofGod. It is clear that his concern, like that of his father and grandfather, iswith God's power in relation to humans. Following the quotation fromHyrum, he asks, "Do we believe that God has all wisdom? . . .Does hehave all power? If so then there is no thin g in w hich he lacks. If he is lack-ing in 'wis dom ' and in 'po w er' then he is not sup rem e and there m ust besomething greater than he is, and this is absurd."1 7 We know JosephFielding Smith is speaking hyperbolically here, and in the single, mortalsphere mode (the one bounded by the idea thatto us there is only one

God the Father), because he obviously knew that both his grandfatherand Joseph Smith taught there is "something greater" than God, thatGod is in fact (if we speak in terms of the multiple, eternal spheres)notsupreme, that there are Gods above God, a Father of God, who gave himsalvation, and a Father of that god and so on, apparently to infinity. ButPresident Smith also shared, it seems to me, his father's concern aboutbelittling God and also his grandfather's concern about the saints losingfaith in God's absolute power to save; he focused his own writing andtalking about God in the single sphere mode, and influenced his son-in-law Bruce R. McConkie to do the same: InMormon Doctrine Elder Mc-Conkie states unequivocally that G od is not prog ressing in know ledge orpower, and references the same passage from President Smith'sDoctrinesof Salvation which I have discussed above.18 In this spirit, both JosephFielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie preferred the L ectures on Faith tothe King Follett Discourse. Elder Smith was responsible for the last-minute excision of the Discourse from the first printing ofB. H. Roberts'sedition of Joseph Smith's History of the Church in 1912 (although he in-

cluded it in his own ed ition ofThe Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith in1938), and Elder M cConkie wro te of the L ectures: "in them is to be foundsome of the best lesson material ever presented on the. . .character, per-fections, and attribu tes of God ."19

The influence of these two highly-respected and prolific Gospelscholars and general authoritiesand the more intangible influences ofour crisis-ridden and anxiety-producing past centuryhave encourageda rather negative, pessimistic neo-orthodoxy in Mormonism generallyand especially in the semi-official Mormon theology taught in the LDSChurch Education System, particularly in the BYU religion dep artm ent.

17. Joseph Fielding Smith,Doctrines of Salvation, 1:5.18. Bruce R. McConkie,Mormon Doctrine (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1958), 221.19. Ibid., 439.


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O. Kendall White has documented these changes most fully,20 andThom as Alexander has given the best historical consideration to wh at hecalls "the reconstruction of Mormon doctrine" away from its original

radical adventuresomeness, as part of the twentieth-century accommo-dation to American culture.21 Robert L. Millett, who later became thehea d of BYU's religion departm en t, sounded in 1989 a note of defiance inthe face of the claims of White and Alexander when he wrote, "[Themovement they describe] is a movement toward a more thoroughly re-dem ptive ba se to our the ology .. .one that may be long overd ue. These re-cent deve lopm ents [neo-orthodox emphasis on an absolute God, hu m andepravity, and salvation by grace] may represent m ore of a retrenchm entand a refinemen t than a reversion [to primitive M orm onism ]."22

But the chief evidence for the desertion of the "weeping God" ofMormonism by some of the most influential LDS teachers of religion isthe pu blica tion in 1997 ofHow Wide the Divide: A Mormon and an Evangel-ical in Conversation, by Evangelical theologian Craig L. Blomberg andBYU religion p rofessor Stephen E. Robinson. This book is a model for r e-ligious dialogue between Mormons and other faiths, as well as dialogueamong Mormons themselves, writ ten by two devoutly believing andthoug htful, gracious m en. The bad n ew s is that Robinson ends u p, I be-

lieve, so un din g m ore Evangelical than M ormon on crucial issues like theinerrancy and sufficiency of the Biblical canon, salvation by grace alone,the "subs titutionary " Atonem ent, andm ost importantly the natu re ofGod. Robinson effectively faults Evangelicals who claim biblical suffi-ciency yet at the same time base much of their thought and language onpost-biblical councils; they are thus "w edd ed to Greek philosophical cat-egories and a ssu m ptio ns." How ever, Robinson seems to accept quite un -critically the unbiblical concept of God which arose in those councils, as"omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent," an absolute being entirelydifferent in nature from humans. As Robinson puts it (and, thus, directlyaddresses perhaps our major difference from other Christians): "ManyEvangelicals are convinced, wrongly, that Latter-day Saints believe in afinite, limited or changeable god, even though that notion is repugnantto us."2 3

20. O. Kendall W hite, Jr.,Mormon Neo-orthodoxy: A Crisis Theology (Salt Lake City: Sig-

nature Books, 1987); "The Transformation of Mormon Theology,"Dialogue: A Journal ofMormon Thought 5, no . 2 (Summ er 1970): 9-24.21. Thomas G. Alexander, "The Reconstruction of Mormon Doctrine: From Joseph

Smith to Progressive Theology,"Sunstone 5 (July/August 1980):24-33.22. Robert L. Millett, "Joseph Smith and M odern Morm onism: Orthodoxy, Neoo rtho-

doxy, Tension, and Tradition,"BYUStudies 29, no. 3 (1989): 49-68.23. Craig L. Blomberg and Stephen E. Robinson,How Wide the Divide: A Mormon and

an Evangelical in Conversation (Douners G rove, IL: InterVarsity Press,1997) 88, 92.


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74 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Though t

"Repugnant" to Mormons? What about Brigham Young: "TheGodthat I serve is progressing eternally [in knowledge and power] , and soare his children"?24 Or the twentieth century apostle, John A. Widstoe:"If the great law of progression is accepted, God must have been en-

gaged, and m ust now be engaged,in progressive development"?25Yes, I know these are what Blombergand even Robinson would call

"non-canonical" sources,and literal interpretations of certain scripturesdo support an all-powerful, absolute and static God. But that shows pre-cisely how dangerous scriptural literalism is. The three "omni's" directlycontradict wh at m odern revelation and com m on sense tellus about God,and w e have no need to be bound to literal interp retation of their scrip-tural use. The scriptures, including the Bookof M ormon, say that Godis

"all-powerful" and "infinite," but they also say "God is love" and God is"a consum ing fire." These are all hyperbo lesor metaphors and not to betaken as literal doctrine.

Let's consider what seems more reasonableand consistent with thescriptures taken as a whole and with what should be our touchstone ofinterpretation, the fundamental teachings of Christ. The Evangelicalun-derstanding seems to be that God is an absolute and infinite being, per-fect and self-sufficient in every way, existing "before" an d, therefore,un-conditioned by time and space and material and law, or by us as agents."He" decides for some unaccountable reason (he certainly doesn't needanything, by definition) to create being s to love him m akes them out ofnothing and thus wholly determines w ha t they w ill be. Yes,I know thearguments that he then "gives" them agency, but that is certainly onething that can't, logically or meaningfully, be created out of nothing: Tothe Evangelical, w hat God makesof you is all there is, including whateverin yourself or your environment goes into your "decisions,"and God is,thus, unavo idably responsible for the results of those decisions.

Then, the Evangelical posits, God puts bil l ions of us in a worldwhere the huge majority endure mainly painand sorrow, comes amongus as Christ, and rewards those who believe on him with eternal bliss,punishing those who do n't (including the huge m ajority w ho have nev erheard of him!) with eternal torment, all without shedding a tear. Nowonder many good and intelligent people in our century have decidedthat such a God is at best absurd and at worst a cruel monster and haveturned in droves from the churches to some form of agnosticism. If he

was already perfect, whydid he

"need"to

create this messat

all,and if

he's all-powerful, why couldn't he just make an Adam and Eve whowould have done things right in the first place, or (since they were m ade

24 . Journal of Discourses 11:286.25. John A. Widstoe, A Rational Theology (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1915-1965),

30-31.


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out of nothing) destroy them and start over, again and again until he gotthe world he wanted, or at least just send those sinners who fail his planback into nothingness rather than to eternal torment (or make Christian

teaching available to more than ten percent of his children, or preventthe Ho locaus t, e tc., etc.)?W ould you really prefer that to a concept of God as an exaltedperson,

existing in time and space with a real environment of matter and energyand law which can be organized and created within but cannot be calledinto being or destroyed or absolutely controlled, and which thereforem ust be we pt over? Co nsider the rational and experiential attractivenessof a Being who exists with other eternal beings whom it is his work andglory to help develop in the ways he himself has developed, so they canenjoy his work and glory, too. This God sacrifices his son in an atone-ment of infinite love, powerful enough to resurrect us all to immortalityand to mo ve those of us whowill to repent and imp rove u ntil we becomelike him, with the same joy and creative and loving powers. This Goddoes not punish with hell nor reward with heaven, but makes his teach-ings and atoning power available to all his children on equal conditionsand unendingly: He loves and helps them throughout a pre-existence,mortality, and post-existence until all have the same opportunity to be-

come m ore like him and enjoy his creative, progres sive e ternal life. Eventhen, rather than punishing those who don't fully measure up, he simplylets those beings experience the results of what they have become or canstill become, in infinite variety, rather than consigning them absolutelyand irrevocablyand thus unredemptivelyto pain.

I know my Evangelical God is somewhat of a caricature, but there isenough truth in it to worry me, especially when it seems that popularMormon theology may be slipping toward such a conceptand there issufficient evidence in How Wide theDivide to justify such a worry. W hilereading the book, I found myself, despite the intelligence and gracious-ness of Blomberg, increasingly depressed by the dreary, even mean-spir-ited, implications of his theology ("[Although] it is not fair to imaginethe. . .Adolf Hitlers of this world experiencing the same punishment asthe friendly, hardworking non-Christan homeowner down the street. . . .they will spend an unpleasant eternity apart from God and all his peo-ple").26 A nd I found myself, despite my personal knowledge that Robin-son is an affable, generous Latter-day Saint, offended at his similar ac-ceptance of a scriptu ral literalism that m akes God into an unre dem ptivepunisher: "After the resurrection. . .those who are filthy still. . .are casteternally into the lake of fire."27

26. Blomberg and Robinson,How Wide the Divide, 174.27. Ibid., 151.


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76 Dialogue: A Journal of M ormon Th ou ght

Such notions certainly fail the marvelous test Joseph Smith sug-gested for his revealed claims in the King Follett Discourse about God'sfinitude and man's potential deification: "This is good doctrine. It tastes

good. . . .[W]hen I tell you of these words of eternal life that are given tome by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the revelations of JesusChrist, you are bound to receive them as sweet. You taste them and Iknow you believe them."28 Joseph certainly didn't mean that mere emo-tional preference is an adequ ate test for tru th . He me ant som ething like adelighted, inspired response of the human spirit to what is simply andobviously good.

However, I have to recognize that, in another way, the attractions ofa weeping G od may be mostly a matter of basic tempe ram ent rather thanoverwhelming rational evidence or even authority. Some of us in eachage seem genuinely attracted to the securities of an absolute, sovereign,justice-oriented God and some to the adventuresomeness of an open,progressive universe and a limited but infinitely loving God workingwith us eternal mortal agents. I remember how shocked I was when Ifirst read the great Evangelical divine, Jonathan Edwards, tell how he,after previously being "full of objections" to what seemed "a horribledoctrine," became converted to "God's sovereignty, in choosing whom

He would to eternal life, and rejecting whom He pleased; leaving themeternally to perish, and be everlastingly tormented in hell." From thetime of his conversion, his "reason apprehended the justice and reason-ableness of it" and "the doctrine has very often appeared exceedinglypleasant, bright, and sweet."29 I was appalled; such a horrible doctrinedid not, and does not, taste sweet to me at all. But I could see, and accept,that a good, intelligent person could feel that way and I might havesomething to learn from him.

The bad news for me is that those (both Evangelicals and Mormons)with the absolutistic temperament seem so unwilling to tolerate andlearn from those with the finitistic, and that partly through that influ-ence, Am erican culture and now o ur Mo rmo n culture seem to be increas-ingly intolerant of others, even within our culture, both politically andtheologically. There seems to be a tendency for those who believe in anabsolute, sovereign, all-determining an d p un ishin g God to have absoluteassurance that he has given them (perhaps through an "inerrant" Bible)absolute tru th, which they are justified in us ing an y means, including the

law and even illegal force, to impose on others. A few years ago I con-fronted some evangelical "Ex-Mormons for Jesus" who, in an effort to

28. Journal of Discourses 6: 7.29. Jonathan Edwards, "Personal Narrative,"Jonathan Edwards: Basic Writings, Ola

Elizabeth Winslow, ed. (New York, Signet New American Library, 1966), 83.


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England: Th e Weeping Go d of Mormonism 77

embarrass the church, had dishonestly obtained and then circulated apriv ate letter. They claimed they ha d a perfect right to doanything to de-stroy Mormonism since their absolute God had told them it was evil. I

worry that Evangelical Mormons may incline to the same "end-justifies-m ea ns " thinking a nd that they also seem unwilling to allow both the ab-solutistic and finitistic strains of Mormonism to continue, as BrighamYoung so mu ch desired.

The unspoken premise ofHow Wide the Divideseems to be that wehave to believe more alike in order to be more tolerant. I'm sorry, buteven if Blomberg and Robinson are totally wrong and we really do havevery different beliefs, we shouldn't be treating each other the way wedoas Evangelicals and Mormons, absolutists and finitists, conserva-tives and liberals. There is a spirit of "no com prom ise" und er Blomberg'surbane, well-informed politeness. He and other Evangelicals "hope andpray that influential modern LDS authors likeProf. Robinson are indeedshifting the balance back toward grace,"30 and they are already startingto call such people, in print, "Evangelical Mormons," apparently theonly Mo rmon s thu s acceptable as Christians.

Robinson and others may indeed be shifting the balance of popularMormon theology because many of them are influential Church Educa-

tion System teachers and popular speakers. This is not necessarily badnews. Perhaps it is just an historical shift in temperament or a responseto our terrible, anxiety-producing century or even, as Millett suggests, auseful "correction" to an over-emphasis on salvation by works or God'sfinitude. But if, as our experience with Evangelical Christians suggests,"Evangelical Mormons," rather than following the example of Robin-son's book, are more inclined to be intolerant of those who differ withthem to ostracize or belittle or, especially, to attem pt to use their pow erover the official and semi-official press and their authority as ChurchEducation employees to silence othersthat would be very bad newsindeed.

Finally, if believing in an absolutistic, punishing God tends to makeus more judgmental and punishing, does believing in a weeping, gen-uinely compassionate God tend to make us more compassionate? Notnecessarily, of course, but as Blomberg points out, the Evangelical con-cept of an abso lute, sove reign G od is crucial to their concept of a "substi-tutionary" atonement sufficient to save, and that concept, I believe, has

very different effects on believers from the Mormon concept of a weep-ing God. The Evangelical imagines Christ's suffering as a necessary andsufficient substitute for our sins, demanded by God's justice and avail-able to those whom he chooses to save into eternal bliss while the rest

30. Ibid., 177.


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78 Dialogue: A Journal of Mo rmon Th ou gh t

burn in hell, quite independent of our actions and state of soul; the Mor-m on concept of a "participatory" Ato nem ent im agines that suffering as anecessary and sufficient expression of God's unconditional love, which

"appeases the demands of justice" and provides "means unto men thatthey may have faith unto repentance" (Alma 34:15). Ironically, whileH yru m Sm ith and his son Joseph R Sm ith were conce rned a bout finitisticconcepts undermining faith in the Atonement, these concepts insteadprovide the strongest possible support for the Atonement as a powerful,mercy-generating, influence in our religious lives.

A related concern is social action. Blomberg and Robinson end theirbook with a call for greater "cooperation" between Evangelicals andM orm ons in social and political action. That seem s to me to trans late intoactive social conservativism, which in recent times has meant, in myjudgment, mainly negative and divisive activities: pro-family throughnarrowing our definition of family, anti-pornography through censor-ship, anti-abortion through restricting choice, anti-gay rights, anti-affir-mative action, anti-gun control. It's certainly fine for Mormons to chooseto engage in such activities, but it is a tragedy that, increasingly, thoseare m ade to appear as the official and only ap pro pri ate forms of politicalaction for Mormons. They seem to me the very forms which tend to re-flect the absolutistic temperament, which seems on the ascendant.

David Hare is probably England's finest contemporary playwright(author of the award-winningAmy's View)and certainly one of the mostclear and trenchant critics of English society and cultu re. He is an agn os-tic, bu t in 1996 he was invited by an old school friend w ho is no w an An-glican priest to give the annual memorial lecture at Westminster Abbeyin honor of the former Dean of the Abbey. H e spoke w ith g reat respec t ofthose with a religious calling, especially those he saw working in per-sonal poverty and at great personal risk to improve the lives of the poor

and dispossessed and discriminated against. But he pointed out rightly, Ithink, that even such people have a kind of escape clause because theybelieve in an absolute, all-powerful God, who will somehow, sometime,make everything rightor worse, they try to tell others that "the suffer-ing we endure here in this world is somehow justified, that it even hasm eaning because it is part of an absent Go d's large plan and pu rpo se."3 1

He believes, after careful observation, that such a belief tends ultimatelyto limit the quality and persistence of Christian service, that justice onthis earth matters less if justice will one day be delivered by another. Idon't know how you could prove this either way, but I have noticed acertain tendency in Mormon absolutists to finally throw up their hands

31. David Ha re, "When Shall We Live,"Via Dolorosa and WhenShall We Live (London:Faber and Faber, 1996), 62.


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in the face of our huge social problems and leave things to God. It seemsto me that those w ho can believe in the weeping God of M orm onism can-not escape. They must stand with David Hare and with the compassion-

ate, passionate agnostics of the world in making it better, confident thatGod is doing and will do all he can, but that what we do and don't dohas irrevocable, sometimes tragic, consequences. As David Hare asks,quoting Seneca, "When shall we live, if not now?"32

These, then, are some reasons the weeping God of M ormonism mu stsurvive the assaults of the neo-orthodox, Evangelical Mormonism that isbecoming almost official because of the influence of the Church EducationSystem: to keep alive a concept of the Atonement which emphasizesChrist's mercy and our own response to it in becoming new creatures; tokeep before us the concept that moved Enoch to compassion "as wide aseternity" and might also move us; and to stem our inclinations to variousforms of violence with each other. There currently seems to be no one likeBrigham Young at the highest level to ensure that such a God survives.Ironically, although Orson Pratt's absolute, non-progressing, certainlynon -we eping God was condem ned by Brigham Young and the Q uoru m asheresy, even in the form of Official Proclamation#3 in 1865, it has wo n outin BYU's College of Religion and increasingly in popular Mormonism.This seems to me a bad case of loss of nerve, of preferring negative, safereligion to the positive, adventuresome kind. Sterling McMurrin con-cluded that the ascendency of neo-orthodoxy in this century was becauseMormons had come, like many others, to "prefer the comforts of resigna-tion to the dangers and uncertainties of crusade and adventure." He hadearlier pointed out the main problem with a weeping God theology, "It'shard to take your problem s to a God who m ay have pro blems."33 He nev-ertheless remained hopeful that the orthodox Mormonism of JosephSmith and Brigham Young and B. H. Roberts would survive:

Today religious liberalism is largely spent and the facts of life too often failto su pp or t its claims. . . .We prefer the comforts of resignation to the dan gersand uncertainties of crusade and adventure. But however sanguine itsclaims and extravagant its vision, there is something noble and heroic aboutthe authentic M ormo n orthodo xy which Roberts and his generation believedand defended, and which is still the religion of the uncorrupted Mormon.For it joins faith in God with faith in m an, and u nless this can be d one effec-tively not only in theology but as well in the minds and experience of men,

religion in any viable and acceptable form may not prevail.34

32. Ibid., 72.33. Sterling M. McM urrin,The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion Salt Lake

City: Un iversity of Utah pres s, 1965), 35.34. McM urrin, Notes on a Mormon Philospher-Historian, xvi-xvii.


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80 Dialogue: A Journal of Mo rmon Th ou gh t

My heart says McMurrin is right, but my head recognizes that it isMormonism in its absolutistic form, and also the absolutistic Evangelicalchurches, which are growing most rapidly in many places in the world.My belief in a weeping God who can't solve our pain and problems orpromise to make everything right in the end, who calls us to live withhim in a tragic universe, makes life at tim es very difficult. M uch of bo thmy private reading of the scriptures and my public religious life is filledwith stories and testimonies about how God has intervened in people'slives, destroying their enemies, helping them find a coin, protectingthem from accidental injury or death, putting a book or person or divinevoice in their w ay that led to their conversion. But while I ten d to believesuch witnesses because I too have experienced what I believe is such in-

terven tion from God in my life, I increasingly ex perience those stories astragic. Each one reminds me of the innumerable occasions when myweeping God does not intervene, when a Hitler is not destroyed, a cru-cial passport is not found, a faithful missionary is killed, a young manpleads with God for a witness of the Book of Mormon and hears silence.At such times God seems too limited, too finite, too powerless in hisweep ing. It is a tragedy to believe in such a God; it w ou ld be a trage dy tolose such an unde rstandin g of him.

At the very end of the Bible, John the Revelator is given a visionmuch like Enoch's; in fact, he sees Enoch's holy city, the New Jerusalemin the latter days "coming down from God out of heaven. . .And I hearda great voice out of heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is withme n, and he w ill dwell with them, an d they shall be his people. . . .AndGod shall wipe away all tears from their eye" (Rev. 21:3-4). This is thegreat hope and consolation for all believers. For Mormons, it has theadd ed poignance that as he wipes aw ay those tears, God himself w ill beweeping for the residue of his children who are not there.

the weeping god of mormonism

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