3 Ne 11:36-41
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The Book of Mormon > Third Nephi > Chapter 11
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Lexical notes
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Exegesis
Verse 36
The word "thus," so early in this verse, points back to the last phrase of verse 35: "with fire and with the Holy Ghost." This is, apparently, the manner in which the Father bears record of the Son, following one's double faith in the Father and the Son. Though the rest of this verse goes on to describe how it is that the Holy Ghost is a record of the Son, the question of fire is passed over in just a word. Perhaps more than a word might here be devoted to it. The reference seems to be 2 Ne 31:13, where Nephi promises those who receive the Holy Ghost consequent to baptism that they will receive the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost. There, the baptism of fire seems to be tied in some manner to the gift of speaking with the tongue of angels. Some connection with the Pentecostal experience of Acts 2 seems implied as well. Whatever "fire" is supposed to mean here, it appears that it would best be explored in other scriptural contexts.
Similar to verse 32, this verse describes the Holy Ghost as bearing record of both the Father and the Son. The implication seems again to be that the Holy Ghost bears in itself--in its very witness--some reference to the relation of Father to Son. But, based on what has been said between verse 32 and the present verse, the phrase has a somewhat more nuanced meaning. The end of verse 32, combined with the first phrase of verse 35, suggests that part of the Father's witness of the Son involves a commandment to all men to believe in the Son, and that part of the Son's witness of the Father is a record borne about that very commandment (or "doctrine"). In short, the record-bearing relation that holds between the Father and the Son is a sort of universal direction of all attentions to the Son by the Father, and a subsequent attribution of the Son to the Father concerning that very direction. The Father's witness of the Son is in the form of a commandment, and the Son's witness of the Father is in the way of attribution. If the Holy Ghost is now said to bear record of the Father and the Son, and these, apparently, in their interrelation, then the Holy Ghost puts on display for those to whom it is sent by the Father this double relation of commandment and attribution. In other words, the primary message of the Holy Ghost seems to be a confirmation or even a presentation of the Father's profferment of the Son (this profferment embracing both the commandment and the subsequent attribution).
All of this suggests, then, that when Jesus concludes this first trinitarian discussion with the rather enigmatic "for the Father, and I, and the Holy Ghost are one," He is first and foremost describing their unified witness of the Father's profferment of the Son, of His offering the Son as the point of all belief and as the meaning of baptism. There are two implications or consequences of all of this that are perhaps the most important to be drawn. First, it is clear that the doctrine of the trinity ultimately focuses all attention on the Christ Himself (the Holy Ghost points to the relation between the Father and the Son, and that relation amounts to the Father's setting forth the Son). But second, it is clear that the Son is the focus of the trinitarian doctrine as--and only as--set forth by the Father and doubly witnessed by the Holy Ghost. The Son is not experienced as the Son without the Father (where was there a son without a father?), and the two together cannot appear without the double record of the Holy Ghost. In other words, the trinitarian doctrine here does not offer itself only to cancel itself in a profferment of the Son, but it is a sort of interpretive necessity that proffers the Son as Son, as related to (with constant reference to) the Father, and always witnessed as such by the Holy Ghost.
In the end, then, it seems that Jesus offers the trinitarian unity ("are one") as a clarification of the broader role of the whole doctrine: the point is hardly metaphysical; it is rather a question of the mode of appearance of the Son, of the possibility of the Son appearing as the Son. The suggestion is that the Son, proffered in the Holy Ghost's witness as the Son, opens the possibility of sonship for all those who might be united to Him in atonement, that the Son, as Son, presents for the first time the meaning of sonship, and that the relation one has to God--the "invisible God" of Col 1:15--is offered for the first time. The trinitarian doctrine is meant, it seems in the end, as a contextualization of the believer's relationship to God, more than it is a question of the interrelationship of the several Gods (or, for that matter, of the several aspects of God).
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