God's plan in 2000 words (and the importance of pre-mortal, motal and post-mortal life) - from Elder Robert D Hales

Excerpts:

I have often pondered the hopelessness of God’s children wandering in the dark and dreary world, not knowing who they are, where they came from, why they are here on earth, or where they are going after their mortal lives.

We need not wander. God has revealed eternal truths to answer these questions. They are found in His great plan for His children. In the scriptures this plan is known as the “plan of redemption,”¹ the “plan of happiness,” and the “plan of salvation.

By understanding and obediently following God’s plan, we keep ourselves from wandering off the path that leads back to our Heavenly Father. Then, and only then, can we live the kind of life He leads, which is “eternal life, … the greatest of all the gifts of God.^"

The gift of eternal life is worth any effort to study, learn, and apply the plan of salvation. All humankind will be resurrected and receive the blessing of immortality. But to achieve eternal life—the life God leads—is worth living the plan of salvation with all our heart, mind, might, and strength...

In a premortal council, Heavenly Father explained to us His plan of redemption. The plan was based on doctrine, law, and principles that have always existed. We learned that if we accepted and followed the plan, we would be required to willingly leave our Father’s presence and be tested to show whether we would choose to live according to His laws and commandments. We rejoiced at this opportunity and gratefully sustained the plan because it offered us the way to become like our Heavenly Father and inherit eternal life.

But the plan was not without risk: if we chose in mortality not to live according to God’s eternal laws, we would receive something less than eternal life. Father knew we would stumble and sin as we learned by experience in mortality, so He provided a Savior to redeem from sin all who repent and to heal the spiritual and emotional wounds of those who obey.

 

Once we understand the grand panorama of the plan and see ourselves in it, we gain something invaluable, even essential: eternal perspective. Eternal perspective informs our daily decisions and actions. It steadies our minds and souls. When persuasive but eternally flawed opinions swirl about us, we are steadfast and immovable. 

As Elder Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught: “Without an understanding of the plan of salvation, including our premortal existence and the judgment and the resurrection, trying to make sense of this life by itself would be like seeing only the second act of a three-act play.”

We must understand the first act (premortal life) in order to know how to make the best choices in the second act (mortal life), which will determine what happens to us in the third act (postmortal life).

 From: 

https://www.lds.org/liahona/2015/10/the-plan-of-salvation-a-sacred-treasure-of-knowledge-to-guide-us?lang=eng

Elder Hales is one of the Twelve Apostles of the Mormon church, and somewho whose talks at General conference speak to me in a very direct and personal way. He seems to me a man of great intelligence and ability; and also (which is much rarer and more precious) of great sweetness and simplicity.

https://www.lds.org/search?lang=eng&q=Robert+D.+Hales&domains=general-conference 

My Book of the Year - The Great Gift by William Arkle

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Without any doubt, the most important book of the year for me has been William Arkle's The Great Gift - and also the other works by this theologian, philosopher and artist.

The Great Gift is available online

http://www.billarkle.co.uk/greatgift/text/wisdom.html

But I would recommend buying the book - which is a lovely volume (full of colour plates of his paintings), and still cheaply available.

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What is it that I have got from Arkle's work, mostly from close study of the writings, backed up by meditation on the paintings?

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=arkle

Well, I could summarize by saying that his insights have amplified Mormon theology at a number of crucial points; points which I personally felt somewhat lacking.

The main aspect is in relation to The Plan of Salvation - which is the CJCLDS's basic narrative description of what life is about:

https://www.lds.org/manual/the-plan-of-salvation/the-plan-of-salvation?lang=eng

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/deep-apologetics-what-blocks-repentance.html

Fully accepting the validity of the Plan of Salvation (which I do), what Arkle answers, for me, is why God wanted to establish the Plan of Salvation - specifically, what was God's main motivation?

Arkle answers this by means of his inspired, intuitive, empathic ability to identify-with the mind of the Creator; which he seemed to attain partly by meditation and partly by his own artistic creation - especially painting.

Everything Arkle wrote is trying to explain his understanding of God's primary motivations over and over again - in different words, using different analogies, and via different media - and then 'unpacking' the implications of this understanding.  

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Here is one attempt, from the essay Wisdom in The Great Gift:

My understanding of this absolute form of wisdom depends on an ability I believe we have to resonate with the deep heart of our being into the deep heart of the Creator's being and feel, with that very deep sense of in-feeling, how the Creator felt towards creation before it began.

In other words one can learn to feel what it was that the Creator was longing for, aspiring to, or simply desiring, from the great work and the great effort that he has engaged in in what is known to us as creation. Now, if we can feel with all our deepest understanding, our deepest intelligence and our deepest perception, what it was that the Creator looked for, above all else, in creation, then, and only then, shall we be close to the absolute point of wisdom which I believe is in the absolute point of deepest desire in the heart of the Creator's being.

As I myself attempt to do this, I come away with the understanding that the greatest longing that was in the Creator's heart before creation, and which brought about creation and brought into existence the individual beings, who each of us is in the Creator's eyes and to one another, was the desire to have real individual friends, in the deepest possible meaning of that word. Friends to share his understanding, his joy and his wisdom within the context of real friendship, which creates a vital relationship between each friend and the other friend, from which ever-renewing possibilities and responses can grow.

My feeling is that the Creator first of all wished to bring into existence real and individual children, whose nature was based on a part of his own divine nature, but the characteristics of which were to be developed by each of those individual children as they grew up in the universes, or the universities, of his creation. They would develop in the nature of their own individual spirits, so that each of those children would become a unique individual child and then, hopefully, would become more than a child - would wish to grow into a mature condition which was not as a child to the Creator, but was as an individual being to the Creator.

Thus all these beings could each have creative relationships of friendship and gladness with one another and with the Creator. Not with the Creator as a special 'God' individual, who was not approachable as other friends are approachable, but He himself wanted to be able to befriend us and have a creative friendship with us as we befriend one another and have a creative friendship with one another.

http://www.billarkle.co.uk/greatgift/text/wisdom.html

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Global Evil moves from Plan A (totalitarian inversion) towards Plan B (destructive chaos)

My interpretation of present global events (for what it's worth) is that we are seeing further confirmation that Evil Plan A for a global system of totalitarian value-inversion is collapsing. 

Plan A reached its peak of success in early-mid 2020 (before the antiracist, pro-chaotic, turn of that summer) - and Plan A has now failed.

The demonic masters are moving more and more decisively towards Evil Plan B - which is (just) spitefully-motivated destruction and maximum chaos. 

In other words, Plan A was an instance of Ahrimanic evil; and designed to impose by law and saturation-propaganda a value-system of positivism-materialism with the inversion of real-true-divine values. It was intended to make Men choose damnation because they had come to believe evil was good, and good was evil. 

Plan A was mainly concerned to make a world system leading to the greatest quantitative damnation of human souls - and the 'pleasure' of demons, and demon-possessed or demon-serving humans, therefore had to take second place to this strategy. 

Plan B is a much cruder, simpler, more short-termist - but more advanced-in-wickedness - form of evil than Plan A; Plan B is the outcome of that evil I have called Sorathic.

Plan B is mainly motivated by the sheerly spiteful enjoyment of its implementers: their simple 'personal' desire to destroy all that is good, of-God, of-creation, and true. 

Those demons and Men who pursue Plan B are consumed by hatred of divine creation; and are therefore somewhat reckless about whether the people who are tormented and killed by their policies are damned. 

These Plan B advocates enjoy inflicting suffering so much, get so carried-away by the process; that the fact their victims may cry to God from the depths of this suffering (De Profundis) is of secondary interest.  

It is Plan B that has engineered World War III - with its vast potential for suffering and deaths by violence, starvation and disease. 

In other words; we need to recognize that the recent break-up of the projected unipolar world of Plan A; the deliberate provocation of a WWIII; and the calculated, repeated, accelerating measures to escalate and spread this war... 

These actions are motivated by a sadistic desire for human and environmental destruction rather than control; and the progression of WWIII is an evil attempt to destroy, not enhance, the possibility of a totalitarian New World Order. 

This is my interpretation of the Global Establishment's behaviour towards the Fire Nation. 

In the early days of the birdemic-peck; the Fire Nation was apparently on-board with Plan A - the One-World, totalitarian Reset Agenda. But that Plan has not happened; and instead the vision of a single omni-surveillance, micro-controlled world, unified under One World government - has fallen into pieces. 

It seems that the Plan B-ites have tricked the Plan A-ites. 

The Plan B-ites apparently sold their Plan for starting and fuelling WWIII to the Plan A-ites as a mechanism for (quickly, easily) isolating and conquering the Fire Nation, eliminating all Establishment-hostile leadership; and fully-assimilating a broken-up Fire Nation into the New World Order in a subordinate role. 

Or maybe Plan B supporters did not need to mislead the Plan A-ites? 

Maybe the intrinsic processes of evil on Men (and demons) meant that many of the ex-totalitarians had 'progressed' to sheer destructiveness, and the residual totalitarians are reduced to pretending still to be in control by manufacturing excuses for the collapse of their strategy? I believe that this is, indeed, the exact way that evil feeds-upon-itself. 

For instance; some commenters interpret the recent break-up of the world and wildfire descent into multi-location war, as a 'cunning plan' version of Plan A. This would need to be a very long-term plan - still directed at the eventual establishment of the same unitary totalitarian global society described in the Great Reset and Agenda 2030. 

This amounts to explaining destruction as construction, interpreting chaos as order, insisting that fragmentation is just another kind of unity. 

I regard this as a serious misunderstanding. If we are indeed now in Plan B - as I suggest; all we really need to know is that (whatever soothing or 'high-minded' 'strategic'  lies they tell themselves) those who are ruling this mortal world are now, and increasingly, focused on an agenda of torment and destruction, reckless of the consequences. 

However, Plan A is still in place even as it disintegrates; and the globalist, totalitarian bureaucrats of the New World Order still have a great deal of influence and power.

But the direction of change seems to be established; and Plan A can now be regarded as dying.

What is my Christian interpretation of these events? From a perspective of human suffering, Plan B certainly accelerates and intensifies suffering in the short term - albeit maybe not in the longer term. 

But from a perspective of salvation; I think it probable that more souls would choose to be saved in a Plan B (WWIII) scenario; than if the worldwide system of surveillance-and 'thought control' of Plan A had been put into place. 

Conceptualising Heaven (and Hell): salvation- versus theosis-based Christianity

It seems that many Christians are and have been focused on the problem of achieving salvation by faith and right choices during mortal life: this links-up with an understanding of Heaven as a reward for those who have achieved salvation - and Hell as the place of punishment for those who do not.

Mortal life is then seen as a battle to attain salvation and/ or to avoid damnation (the emphasis varies) - and a good life beyond death is the reward for good performance. From this perspective nothing much important 'happens' in Heaven - it is a state of being.

But if we instead take the view that Jesus won salvation as a gift for everyone, by his life and death - then salvation is there for us, and the primary condition is simply that we accept it.

Of course, accepting salvation entails more than merely saying 'yes, okay' - because salvation is into God's world and God's plan, and entails accepting and embracing these. And this is something that, apparently, some people - probably many people - do not want and will not accept.

If salvation is a gift to those who will accept it, then salvation is straightforward and secure (for those who want it); and the main purpose of mortal life is not salvation but theosis - the process of striving to become more God-like; or more exactly the voluntary process of becoming more God-like on the basis that we begin as partly divine (being children of God) and end-up as being brothers and sisters of Christ - of the same nature as him.

Heaven is the not a reward but the place where people who have chosen theosis continue to work on this - Heaven is a place of striving, of change, of work.

Hell, by contrast, is the place for people are are not aiming at theosis - people who are not trying to become more divine, more like Jesus Christ.

Which is the reward and which the punishment depends on what is wanted.

God was creator and has a plan for his creation - this plan includes creating possibilities for those who want-to 'join' God as a god; to become fully-divine sons and daughters of God - being able to 'work on' this goal, co-operatively and with love - partly during mortal life, but also necessarily after it.

By this account, God's main concern is theosis - so that men and women may choose to become divine, and may incrementally (and over a long timescale) achieve this by being born incarnated, dying and resurrecting; and also by learning from their experiences throughout.

Our primary choice is whether to join God's plan - or not. Hell is the place of nay-sayers. Not joining the plan may mean going-it-alone, or it may mean living among the others who rejected God's plan - and seeking what solutions and satisfactions that company may bring in a universe without meaning or purpose.

In sum, since the 'Mormon Restoration' of Christianity, and the change in understanding it brings; there has been a qualitative change in explaining the basic nature and purpose of Heaven and Hell.

(The extent to which Mormonism was a cause of these general changes in understanding Heaven and Hell, and to what extent it was a shared consequence of underlying spiritual causes, I don't know - something of both I expect.)

I don't think many Christians have fully 'taken on board' this change, aside from feeling a deepening dissatisfaction with the idea of Heaven and Hell as merely reward and punishment, and mortal life as merely a kind of qualifying exam.

But if (thanks to Christ) salvation is there for for the accepting, and on conditions no more onerous than repentance; then theosis is the main business of human existence - theosis in pre-mortal, mortal and post-mortal life - then the nature and purpose of Heaven and Hell are profoundly different.

Heaven and Hell are not states of being, but domains distinguished by the positive or negative purpose of those who choose them. Their 'state' is a consequence of this choice, and of the make-up of the populations that result from that choice.   

Heaven is not a fixed state of being, but the place of mutual love where a particular purpose of divine destiny is being actively, voluntarily and joyfully pursued - and Hell is... well, all the rest.

My repentance theory of Christ's Atonement (stimulated by wanting to complete the argument of Terryl Givens's Wrestling the Angel)

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I have been reading Terryl L Givens's most recent scholarly book about Mormonism - Wrestling the Angel - The foundations of Mormon thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity (Oxford University Press, 2015), and my verdict is that the book is simply superb.

By my evaluation; Givens is one of the most sheerly intelligent writers alive, and also a man whose thought processes and evaluations are extremely congenial to me - he is 'on my wavelength' in an intellectual sense, and has a similar set of priorities in the domain of theology and religion.

In general, I find Givens's account and explication of Mormon theology to be completely satisfying; the exception is The Atonement, the various theories of which he explores in a useful and thorough fashion, before concluding that (as a statement of fact) there is no satisfactory and comprehensive Mormon theory of the Atonement - its importance is central to modern Mormonism, but its nature and operations are essentially regarded as a mystery.

While I hope that this suffices for most people, I am continually 'bugged' by a personal need to understand - or at least know more about - the nature of the Atonement; and having finished Givens's book I felt that for the first time I may be able to articulate a theory which satisfies me - which, in other words, satisfies the constraints I understand to be necessary for an adequate theory from a Mormon metaphysical and theological perspective.

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In a nutshell, this theory is the idea that Christ's Atonement was about repentance, rather than sin as such; and that Christ's sufferings (in the Garden of Gethsemane and on The Cross) were a suffering of the agonies of repentance for Man - rather than a suffering of the sins of Man.

By his Atonement, therefore, Christ enabled all Men to repent and be saved - by the simple (and 'easy') act of accepting Christ's supreme act of vicarious repentance - this replacing the 'impossible' demand of Men to repent each and every one of their sins individually and wholly.

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How do I get to this theory?

The basic 'set-up' is my conviction that human agency (or free will - the ability of all men to be a 'first cause' or 'unmoved mover' - i.e. genuinely to choose from within ourselves and not as a consequence of prior causes) is due to our eternal pre-mortal existence and primary autonomy.

In other words Human agency is not from God, not a gift from God - it is a given fact of reality; which God must work-around, and which God cannot overwhelm or obliterate (even if He wanted-to - which I do not think he does).

Agency just is a fact of existence.

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So the Atonement takes place against a back-drop of ineradicable agency - God's 'problem' was to advance Men towards divinity in this context. It seems that incarnation and mortality are absolutely necessary for Man to make spiritual progress towards divinity - therefore I infer that the single most important thing about incarnate life is death.

Death is the gateway to incarnate immortality.

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I accept that we all, as pre-mortal spirit, volunteered to undergo life on earth and death. But the big problem anticipated for this 'plan' would have been that mortal life of earth entails sin (we are too weak, temptations too numerous and strong), and sin renders us unfit for resurrection to immortality.

(If we - as we are in mortal life - were resurrected to immortality, then that would be a kind of Hell; to benefit from resurrection our souls must be purified and our bodies perfected and yet we remain our-selves - and this process of pre-resurrection purification and perfection can only be done with our consent.

This is salvation - being saved to eternal life ('life' referring to incarnate immortality, as our-selves).

Resurrection to happiness depends on repentance - and that is all it depends upon. 

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My understanding is that nobody - none of the pre-mortal spirits which we were - would be so reckless and foolish as to volunteer to risk mortality under such difficult conditions unless there was special provision that salvation would be easy and straightforward.

If our individual salvation required recognition, acknowledgement and repentance of every single sin; then salvation would be a rare occurrence - perhaps nobody would ever be saved.

Thus, provision was made that mortal men should be saved by the vicarious Atonement of Jesus Christ - He would save us; and all that each of us would need to do would be freely to choose to to accept Christ's act on our behalf.

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So the divine Son of God was incarnated and died - and by this account Christ's death was the single most important thing he did; but his death would not have been efficacious unless he had also performed the Atonement; and the Atonement must be about repentance.

Without Christ's Atonement, repentance would be de facto impossible - since there is too much to repent, and because our knowledge of what needs to be repented is partial and distorted.

So, as mortals, we could never know the full extent of our transgressions - and therefore we would not even know what had to be repented.

And while we were 'working through' discovering and understanding all the multitude of things that needed repenting, then we would be accumulating more sins...

Because the nature of repentance is recognition and acknowledgement - repentance is knowing that we have objectively sinned which is vital; and knowing how so many of our attitudes and actions are at-odds-with the divine plan.

In a nutshell, full repentance requires a full knowledge of reality, and knowledge of our denials of reality (denials by thought and deed).

Since this is impossible, it can only be done for us. And it was done, by Christ's Atonement.

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I take it as axiomatic that for a Christian,  Christ's Atonement must be absolutely necessary. That is, necessary to the salvation of Men.

Since repentance is a psychological act; then this psychological act must be made effective.

Since specific repentance for each and every sin is impossible, effective repentance absolutely requires that repentance be simplified to a single decision that encompasses all other decisions. 

It was Christ's Atonement that made repentance into a single decision. 

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My understanding is that before He died, Christ repented all the sins of everyone who had lived and died up to that point - all who lived before Him - and it was the pain of this vast act of Atonement which he apparently underwent mainly in Gethsemane and on The Cross.

After His death and resurrection, Christ continued, and He continues, to repent the since of all who lived and died after He did, and those live and die now - and He continues to suffer for that reason.

So Christ's Atonement made effective repentance possible - from this act, we may by a single choice accept that God loves us, that He is wholly good; and that God's plans are for our benefit - and by repentance we permanently ally ourselves with these plans.

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The Atonement gave mortal life on earth a fail-safe mechanism. 

This was necessary.

Many or most - or perhaps all - people who are incarnated as Men, and who volunteered to be incarnated as Men, lead terrible lives which render them in need of repentance on an epic and virtually impossible scale.

But this need will have been fore-known, and our Loving Father who wants everyone to be saved (that is, everyone who will consent to be saved - He cannot force anyone to be saved - nor would He wish to compel them even if He could)... our Loving Father made provision for this outcome; so that we would be saved anyway by the shortest and simplest and most-accessible of acts: the simple acceptance of the gift of full-repentance which Christ did for us, and which He offers to give us. 

Because of the Atonement we have nothing more to do than recognise the nature of this gift and accept it; and our reward is the happiness of eternal incarnate life as our-real-selves (with a purified soul in a perfected body).

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Even the weakest person born into the worst circumstances can achieve this acceptance of a gift - when each of us was and will be presented, after death, with a restoration of our pre-mortal state of full understanding of the divine plan.

Of course, we will (as free agents) be able to reject this gift - and to choose damnation.

This is why mortal incarnate life was and is a real risk, and why it was essential that all who underwent it (all of us,that is) were volunteers who knew the risks.

Mortality offers the possibility, even the probability, of spiritual progress towards divinisation; it also contains the ineradicable risk that at the end of it all, we might reject salvation and damn-ourselves.

Our loving Father would not have set up this plan of salvation unless the odds of salvation were stacked in our favour; so the odds are indeed stacked in our favour - and to do this was the work of Christ's Atonement.

But no matter how favourable the odds of salvation - salvation cannot be guaranteed, because of the primary reality of agency.

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Mortal incarnate life is about TWO things: Salvation and Theosis (The primary focus of God's plan was *not* you and I.)

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The purpose and function of mortal incarnate life is not reducible to one thing - mortal incarnate life is not reducible to salvation unless salvation is given a dual meaning, in which case the duality of purpose is being covertly (and often insensibly) smuggled-in.

All Men live and die - that experience is common to all Men and to Jesus Christ - and that is the 'mechanism' of salvation. All that humans need to do is accept Christ's offer and gift of salvation (although that acceptance may not be as easy as it sounds given the corruptions of a long life in this world; and certainly acceptance of Christ's work cannot be assumed to be universal.)

But most Men are incarnated and die either in the womb or at or soon after birth; and more die while innocent babes or young children. These all experience the essential experience which is necessary for salvation.

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The basic experience of mortal life is that our pre-mortal eternal souls are clothed in a body, then die and become separated from that body - but not only the 'physical' body. Our souls also experience dwelling within a personality, a specific set of dispositions, abilities, motivations etc. You could summarize this by saying our souls dwell inside a mind, and the characteristics of that mind - and the mind is not the soul.

This 'personality' or mind is also part of the body (that is it depends on the body - especially the brain) and the soul also separates from the mind at death.

So, during mortal life the soul and personality/ body are in a state of necessary disharmony (this is what some Christians call original sin) but after resurrection the soul is perfectly in harmony with the body/ personality.

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Spiritual progression is linear and sequential, like Time. The primary aim of mortal incarnate life is salvation - which is first the experience of the soul dwelling in a state of disharmony with a personality/ body and then dying to be resurrected to the condition of a soul dwelling in harmony with personality/ body (unless the soul refuses the resurrection to harmony - unless the soul refuses to let go of the conflicted aspects of the body/ personality).

The aim of resurrection into harmony can only be achieved via the experience of mortal incarnate life and death, and via the work of Jesus Christ who underwent these experiences.

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All this is salvation - but theosis refers to the degree of progress towards divine-nature achieved during mortal incarnate life; and this depends upon length of life and circumstances and opportunities of life - as well as upon choices, will, and other personal factors.

A long life (i.e. to maturity, to include more primary experiences such as marriage and children, creative work, friendships, self-sacrifice etc) offers more possibilities of theosis - of a higher degree of advancement, and more possibilities of corruption.

The value of a long life may be remedial in some instances (a chance for those who most need it; pre-mortal spirits who are significantly deficient), or to enable a more advanced level of spirituality (a chance for those best able to make the most of opportunities). Or mixtures.

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Most of religious discourse which purports to be about salvation is really about theosis - it is about that small minority of humans who have lived a long life.

We should never forget that God's plan will very probably have been focused primarily on the majority of Men who never made it out of the womb, or early childhood. The plan was mostly about them; and only secondarily about us, about you and I - part of that tiny minority of long-lived Men whose business ought to be theosis.

(Although, tragically, many of us who live in the secular West explicitly state that we fully intend to reject salvation - and actively aim to persuade others to do likewise. But, fortunately, this madness has not afflicted the mass of men in history and does not afflict the majority alive today.)

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Mormonism and the old Christian problems of what happens to unbaptized children and virtuous pagans

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From very early in the history of Christianity and right through the middle ages, two of the biggest problems for loving Christians were:

1. What happens to unbaptized children? Do they go to Hell?

and

2. What happened to the pagans who lived before Christ - do they necessarily go to Hell? 

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Both of these are linked, and both were a problem because it was assumed that there was no possibility of salvation outwith the sacraments administered by the church, and no possibility of salvation without knowledge of Christ.

This inference has always been resisted by many Christians, since it would imply that God was more cruel, less merciful than ordinary human beings.

But the reason we know about all this, is that the problem was felt particularly acutely among Christian intellectuals who greatly valued - indeed venerated - the Classical learning of the ancient Greeks and pre-Christian Romans - especially the Emperor Trajan who was variously asserted to be in Heaven.

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It seems evident that the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith also felt these problems acutely, and (by his revelations and by logic) inferred that the problem was an artificial one produced by:

1. The false understanding of original sin.

2. The false assertion that there was no salvation outwith the church (specifics depending upon which particular denomination was doing the asserting).

3. A false understanding of the role of sacraments such as baptism and holy communion.

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The different take of Mormonism can be seen from two striking passages in the Book of Mormon (taken from http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm?lang=eng ). 

Alma 39:

15 And now, my son, I would say somewhat unto you concerning the ^acoming of Christ. Behold, I say unto you, that it is he that surely shall come to take away the sins of the world; yea, he cometh to declare glad tidings of salvation unto his people.

 16 And now, my son, this was the ministry unto which ye were called, to declare these glad tidings unto this people, to prepare their minds; or rather that salvation might come unto them, that they may prepare the minds of their ^achildren to hear the word at the time of his coming.

 17 And now I will ease your mind somewhat on this subject. Behold, you marvel why these things should be known so long beforehand. Behold, I say unto you, is not a soul at this time as precious unto God as a soul will be at the time of his coming?

 18 Is it not as necessary that the plan of redemption should be ^amade known unto this people as well as unto their children?

 19 Is it not as easy at this time for the Lord to ^asend his angel to declare these glad tidings unto us as unto our children, or as after the time of his coming?

This passage is a key one in understanding the distinctive doctrines of Mormonism. The idea that it was as easy for people before the coming of Christ to attain salvation as for people after the coming of Christ.

That pre-Christians knew enough for salvation; and that therefore (from the perspective of salvation) the problem of the virtuous pagan disappears.

(This is assuming that there is no such thing as original sin as conceptualized by the medieval church - for which see below.)

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This becomes more apparent in what seems to be the most vehemently argued of any section of the Book of Mormon - Chapter 8 of the Book of Moroni:

4 And now, my son, I speak unto you concerning that which grieveth me exceedingly; for it grieveth me that there should ^adisputations rise among you.

 5 For, if I have learned the truth, there have been disputations among you concerning the baptism of your little children.

 6 And now, my son, I desire that ye should labor diligently, that this gross error should be removed from among you; for, for this intent I have written this epistle.

 7 For immediately after I had learned these things of you I inquired of the Lord concerning the matter. And the ^aword of the Lord came to me by the power of the Holy Ghost, saying:

 8 ^aListen to the words of Christ, your Redeemer, your Lord and your God. Behold, I came into the world not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance; the ^bwhole need no physician, but they that are sick; wherefore, little ^cchildren are ^dwhole, for they are not capable of committing ^esin; wherefore the curse of ^fAdam is taken from them in me, that it hath no power over them; and the law of ^gcircumcision is done away in me.

 9 And after this manner did the Holy Ghost manifest the word of God unto me; wherefore, my beloved son, I know that it is solemn ^amockery before God, that ye should baptize little children.

 10 Behold I say unto you that this thing shall ye teach—repentance and baptism unto those who are ^aaccountable and capable of committing sin; yea, teach parents that they must repent and be baptized, and humble themselves as their little ^bchildren, and they shall all be saved with their little children.

 11 And their little ^achildren need no repentance, neither baptism. Behold, baptism is unto repentance to the fulfilling the commandments unto the ^bremission of sins.

 12 But little ^achildren are alive in Christ, even from the foundation of the world; if not so, God is a partial God, and also a changeable God, and a ^brespecter to persons; for how many little children have died without baptism!

 13 Wherefore, if little children could not be saved without baptism, these must have gone to an endless hell.

 14 Behold I say unto you, that he that supposeth that little children need baptism is in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity; for he hath neither ^afaith, hope, nor charity; wherefore, should he be cut off while in the thought, he must go down to hell.

 15 For awful is the wickedness to suppose that God saveth one child because of baptism, and the other must perish because he hath no baptism.

 16 Wo be unto them that shall pervert the ways of the Lord after this manner, for they shall perish except they repent. Behold, I speak with boldness, having ^aauthority from God; and I fear not what man can do; for ^bperfect ^clove ^dcasteth out all fear.

 17 And I am filled with ^acharity, which is everlasting love; wherefore, all children are alike unto me; wherefore, I love little children with a perfect love; and they are all alike and ^bpartakers of salvation.

 18 For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is ^aunchangeable from ^ball eternity to all eternity.

 19 Little ^achildren cannot repent; wherefore, it is awful wickedness to deny the pure mercies of God unto them, for they are all alive in him because of his ^bmercy.

 20 And he that saith that little children need baptism denieth the mercies of Christ, and setteth at naught the ^aatonement of him and the power of his redemption.

 21 Wo unto such, for they are in danger of death, ^ahell, and an ^bendless torment. I speak it boldly; God hath commanded me. Listen unto them and give heed, or they stand against you at the ^cjudgment-seat of Christ.

 22 For behold that all little children are ^aalive in Christ, and also all they that are without the ^blaw. For the power of ^credemption cometh on all them that have ^dno law; wherefore, he that is not condemned, or he that is under no condemnation, cannot repent; and unto such baptism availeth nothing—

 23 But it is mockery before God, denying the mercies of Christ, and the power of his Holy Spirit, and putting trust in ^adead works.

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For Mormons, the powerful moral intuition that it would be a vile injustice for young children to be condemned to eternal Hell because they were not baptized is, in effect, taken as a reductio ad absurdum of traditional Christian theology - especially the most prevalent 'mainstream' understanding of original sin, which was/is that OS implies a default destiny of Hell for all humans. 

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So what happens to the theological status of the sacraments? As so often in Mormon theology, qualitative distinctions are made quantitative - and matters of salvation become matters of theosis/ sanctification or spiritual progression.

For Mormons, baptism is not a matter of salvation; rather it is a necessary step in spiritual progression, and a matter of the provision of objective, supernatural help and assistance in progression. 

Likewise the sacrament of the Eucharist/ Holy Communion/ Lord's Supper is transformed into an objectively-valuable and supernaturally-administered help and assistance in the main business of life: which is resisting corruption and moving closer to God. 

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