Alma 32:16-20
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The Book of Mormon > Alma > Chapter 32
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Questions
Verse 17
- "Know of a surety." How would seeing a sign help us "know of a surety"? Know what? Didn't Laman and Lemuel see signs from heaven? If so, what did they know of a surety? Can anything be known "of a surety"? Can knowing "of a surety" be reconciled with being "lowly in heart" (v. 8) and being humble and learning wisdom (v. 12)? If something is known "of a surety" how can learning take place? Is the learning of wisdom described in verse 12 a one time event, a finite process, an eternally recurring process, or something else entirely?
Verse 18
- Faith and belief. Alma seems to implicitly link faith and belief in this verse, and it seems he expects his listeners to already have some sort of understanding of this link. How would the Zoramite poor have understood this link before Alma launches into his metaphor of the word as a seed where belief and faith play such a vital role? Is the phrase "ask in faith, believing that ye shall receive" in mind (see 1 Ne 15:11; cf. Enos 1:15; Mosiah 4:21; Alma 22:16)? Are there other important teachings on belief and faith that they likely would have been familiar with? If they confused the relationship between faith, belief and knowledge, can we reverse engineer how this understanding might've become corrupted?
Verse 19
- "More cursed." What does "cursed" mean? What does Alma's use of the term "curse" elsewhere help us understand about this verse (see esp. Alma 3:6-7, 9, 14-15, 18-19)? How might this be related to the curses talked about in the creation narrative (cf. Gen 3:14, 17), or the curse pronounced up on Cain (Gen 4:11)?
Verse 20
- "One hand even as it is on the other." What does this phrase mean? Is it related to any know expression in Hebrew or Egyptian? (Cf. 1 Ne 14:7.)
- "Now of this thing ye must judge." What does this phrase mean? What is it referring to? faith requiring the absence of knowledge? the relative cursedness of not doing God's will in terms of knowing or merely believing something?
Lexical notes
Verse 16
- "Stubbornness." This word is used four other times in the Book of Mormon, all of which occur in the book of Alma: Alma 44:17; Alma 50:35; Alma 51:14, 21. In each case stubbornness is used in the pejorative. In Alma 44:17, it is used to describe Zerehemnah's defeated army that is not willing to enter into a covenant of peace. This may describe a degree of stubbornness analogous to the possibility that Alma suggests with the word "sometimes" in verse 13 ("for a man sometimes, if he is compelled to be humble, seeketh repentance"). In Alma 50:35, stubbornness is used to describe a battle that broke out that was caused by a group of rebels lead by Morianton. It is perhaps suggestive that stubbornness lead to contention and violence, an extreme form of pitting-of-wills that is the opposite to the contrasting humility that Alma is describing here. In contrast, stubborness in Alma 51:14 and 21 is seemingly used to describe a starkly contrasting situation where Captain Moroni is addressing the kingmen who will not take up arms to defend their liberty. A point of similarity seems to be that, like the Zoramites here, the kingmen there seemed to be separating themselves from their own people.
- "Even." The use of "or even" here is odd. The context would suggest that "or even" would better modify "compelled to know" than "brought to know." With that reversal the sentence would read, "blessed is he that believe in the word of God, and is baptized ... without being compelled to know the word, or even brought to know, before they will believe." more...
- "Blessed." Starting in verse 8, the word blessed is used in this chapter eight times, this being the final occurrence. The word is not used again in Alma and Amulek's preaching to the Zoramite poor, except for Amulek's reference to blessings in Alma 34:38 at the very end of Alma and Amulke's preaching. Alma does, however, describe a process for obtaining fruit from a tree which grows from the word (the word of God, presumably). It may be that the description of the process for obtaining this fruit is effectively taking the place of Alma's repeated affirmation that the Zoramite poor are blessed. Or, perhaps the discontinuance of this phrase on Alma's part is implicitly emphasizing the contingent status of this blessed state, that the Zoramite poor are initially blessed because they are prepared to hear the word, but that blessed state will not last unless last unless they nourish the word that they are prepared to receive (and whether or not they nourish the word is yet to be seen). Another possibility is that this discontinuance is following the shift in Alma's discourse, moving away from a discussion of (individualistic) humilty and toward a discussion of (self-transgressive) faith and knowledge. In this case, the shift seems to suggest a forgetting-of-onself once one has become truly humble (see more on this in the discussion of negation and affirmation in the verse 17 exegesis).
Verse 17
- "If thou wilt." This exact phrase shows up many times in LDS scripture. It seems that this phrase is used "appropriately" when by a subject to a superior authority. For example, Ammon uses this phrase in Alma 22:3 when he is addressing the king. However, in Alma 18:21 King Lamoni indicates his humility by effectively subjecting himself to Ammon by using this conditional phrase to Ammon who is one of his subjects (cf. Alma 20:23-24 where the king subjects himself to Ammon with this phrase and Ammon uses this phrase in his response to the king). Note also how Alma recounts an angel using this phrase on him in Mosiah 27:16 and Alma 36:9, 11. Perhaps the most interesting use of the phrase, for the purposes of interpreting this verse, is Korihor's use of this phrase in Alma 30:43. It seems there that Korihor is effectively reversing the appropriate subjection of a human creature before the Creator, or a representative of the Creator. Whereas it is appropriate for God to try or prove his creatures, when a creature attempts to try or prove God, such an action is described using phraseology of "tempting God." This kind of reversal of positioning between Creator and creature seems to interact richly with the theme of humility begun in this chapter with the Zoramite poor being put into subjection by the Zoramite priests (cf. Alma 32:5), who are described perhaps quite ironically using the rather egalitarian word "brethren" in verse 4.
Verse 18
- "No cause to believe." See Hel 14:28.
Verse 19
- "More cursed is he that knoweth the will of God and doeth it not." A similar idea seems to be taught in several other scriptural passages. For example, 2 Ne 9:27 says about him to whom the law is given, and in this sense "knows" the will of God, "awful is his state." D&C 82:3 teaches that where "much is given much is required" (this seems to be a quotation of, or at least related to, Luke 12:48). James 4:17 defines sin using a similar notion of knowledge: "to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." Finally, D&C 41:5 teaches that "He that receiveth my law and doeth it, the same is my disciple; and he that saith he receiveth it and doeth it not, the same is not my disciple, and shall be cast out from among you"—interestingly, the "cast out" phrasing used here is also a prominent phrase used in Alma 32.
- "Only hath cause to believe." The word "only" might seem a bit strange here since "only" as used here seems to mean a weaker condition, and yet having a "cause" to believe seems to be a strong condition. However, if "cause" is understood in a way that is weaker than sufficient causation, then this makes sense. That is, if having a "cause to believe" means having "motivation" to believe (see Webster's 1828 dictionary, definition 3), then we can understand this as emphasizing that having a "cause to believe" does not imply that one actually believes. In other words, this phrase seems to preserve room to choose between believing or not.
Exegesis
Verse 16
It is only with this verse that Alma finally brings these questions of humility to bear on the question of faith—or at least, of belief. This change is perhaps signaled by the transitioning word "Therefore" with which the verse begins: the first part of this verse ("Therefore, blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble") seems essentially to be a summary of everything that has gone before. If this is how Alma intended it, it is somewhat peculiar in a number of ways. For example, in the previous verses, there was a clear emphasis on the difference between two types of humility and hence on the relative blessedness of those who come to be humble in these two very different ways. Here, however, Alma reduces this whole discussion to a single point: blessed are those who humble themselves without the necessity of being humble. In fact, if this verse marks a kind of departure from earlier emphases, it might also be read as effecting a retroactive interpretation on the verses that precede it. When Alma introduces the theme of relative blessedness in verse 14, it appeared that he was simply introducing a better kind of humility, a kind of "extra mile" way of becoming humble. But here it becomes clear that he meant something else, really. Now it becomes clear that he meant something like "If one is compelled to be humble, praise the heavens because there is a possibility of repentance; but let's not allow anyone to believe that that is the way things are supposed to go: God's plan is ultimately laid out for those who will humble themselves because of the word!" If this more exclusive view is difficult to read in verses 14-15, it becomes clear at this point. In short, the place Alma has got to by this verse makes quite clear that verses 14-15 are to mark a corrective transition, a clarification of the use of the word "blessed" in relation to those who are humble because they are compelled to be so.
This retroactive interpretation Alma offers in clear terms here opens the possibility for a major transition in the discourse, from the question of humility to the question of faith. After reinterpretively summarizing the thrust of the previous verses, Alma announces quite explicitly that he is changing the story: "or rather, in other words...." These two little phrases are of the utmost importance interpretively: Alma is ready to translate this question of humility into another language so to speak, that of "belief" (or "faith"?) and "knowledge." It is significance that any mention of humility drops out of the verse after the word "rather." The new terms will dominate the remainder of the discourse (Alma does again return to the question of humility in verse 25, but only for a moment, and only as a kind of aside that assures that he does not consider all of the Zoramite poor to have been compelled to be humble. Even so, that verse seems somewhat out of place, and it is possible that there is an editing error at work in the text). From the start, it appears that the "translation" being effected is quite simple: "belief" or "faith" replaces "humbling oneself," and "knowledge" replaces "being compelled to be humble." But if this "translation" seems so simple at the beginning, it is not long before it becomes as complex as the previous verses.
It is interesting that baptism appears here in the discourse not only for the first time, but also for the last time! In fact, it is perhaps of vital importance that it only appears here, of all places, at the heart of this major transition in Alma's language (shifting from humility to the question of faith/knowledge). It is perhaps, on this account, also important that the phrase "stubbornness of heart" appears only at this point of the chapter and directly in connection with the question of baptism. But if both "baptism" and "stubbornness of heart" are introduced here, the role they play in the logic of the discourse is hardly clear at first. For example, one might expect them to mediate the "translation" of terms, that is, to come between the question of humility and the question of faith/knowledge. In a broad sense, perhaps they do, but in the strict sense—looking very closely at this verse, that is—they do not: strictly speaking, "baptism" and "stubbornness of heart" are introduced between belief and knowledge. Literarily, one might say that the question of "baptism" and "stubbornness of heart" is stretched out between faith and knowledge, that it is posed by the clash between faith and knowledge, that it forms the very tension between faith and knowledge. And reading the verse quite straightforwardly, this seems precisely to be the point: if one might be "baptized without stubbornness of heart," which would apparently be an active manifestation of one's belief, there seems to be the implication that one might also do so with stubbornness of heart, which would apparently be an active manifestation of one's knowledge.
In fact, this last way of putting things emphasizes what is certainly central to this singular mention of baptism: here—and only here in this discourse—are faith and knowledge, compelled humility and willful humility, translated into action, into something that the believer or knower, the compelled-to-be-humble or the willfully-humble, does. Here, then, at the very heart of the discourse, where Alma can exchange the language of humility (with its individualistic emphasis) for the language of faith/knowledge (with its inter-personal emphasis, that is, with its emphasis on self-transgression), all of these questions surface, as it were, rising up into the level of the active, of the "real." What is fascinating about this "surfacing" is that both faith and knowledge, just as both kinds of humility, (can) result in the same outward, active manifestation: baptism. That only here is there a question of this outward, active manifestation highlights an important facet of Alma's discourse: he is not so much trying to teach the Zoramite poor about what they should do as he is trying to get them to think about the motivations and—more importantly—the relations that underlie or even propel one's doings. At least to some degree, it is this de-emphasis on the active that grounds the Zoramites' question in the first verse of the next chapter. In fact, the way the Zoramites ask the question there perhaps betrays the fact that they hardly understood what Alma was trying to accomplish in this discourse, but that question will have to be explored further along in the text.
In the course of these last comments, a most important aspect of what is at work has emerged: this "translation" of terms amounts to an emphatic shift from the individualistic to the self-transgressive, and this shift remains to be explored. And it will become clear that the transitioning "stubbornness of heart" will lie at the core of this question. It should be pointed out that humility is, of course, always a question of engagement: one only humbles oneself at the call or under the gaze of another. However, whether it is the commanding gaze or the petitioning word that brings it about, humility is ultimately something individual, an act—to some degree at the very least—that one wills to do. Moreover, the word "humility" points more to a state of affairs, to a way of being in the world, than it does to an interpersonal relation. That is, humility remains a question of the individual, though it bears a mark or the trace of an-other. Over against this, however, is the relation of belief/faith, as well as the relation of knowledge. If the former is quite clearly an inter-personal relation in English, the latter certainly is in Hebrew (and in the Indo-European root from which the English comes): one knows someone or something, just as one believes (or has faith in) someone or something. Both faith and knowledge, that is, imply a transgression of the self, a kind of transcendence. The importance of Alma's "translation" here is therefore to be found in the connection between these two forms of self-transgression and the relative marks or traces they leave on the humble individual. Alma draws a connection between humbling oneself by the word and believing, as he draws a connection between being compelled to be humble and knowing. This is made especially clear by the phrases "being brought to know the word, or even compelled to know." The point, in the end, seems to be this: though both knowledge and faith result in humility, the humble knower bears the mark of the violence of knowledge, while the humble believer bears the trace of the revelation of faith. The difference between these two kinds of humility is bound up with one's stubbornness—or greatness—of heart: the hard heart must be broken in the violence of "being brought to know..., even compelled to know," while the soft heart has written in it the lawful word of the other (cf. Jer 31:33).
But if in the previous verses (that is, before the translation) Alma deals only with the distinction between the two kinds of humility, it is only here with the translation of humility into the faith/knowledge distinction that Alma can begin to relate the two to each other productively. That is, in dealing with humility alone, Alma only opposes the two kinds of humility, but here he begins to explore the relation between faith and knowledge. That these two intertwined or are connected is vital, since the interrelation between them becomes the subject matter of the remainder of the discourse. It is probably important to note, on this point, that Alma can only explore the relationship between the two kinds of humility once the common term of "humility" is translated out of the discussion. Though the two humilities are different from each other, Alma has intimated from the start that both are good situations, precisely because they are both humilities. In order to discuss how they relate to one another, or in order to set the one above the other and then explore how one might exchange the one for the other, Alma must translate the two versions of humility into a stronger opposition, an opposition that is not obviously mediated by a shared middle term. The translation of humility into the pair faith/knowledge allows Alma to do this, and it is already in this first verse that he begins to explore the curious relationship between faith and knowledge. The relationship, as Alma lays it out in this first verse on the subject: faith can but does not need to follow knowledge.
Obviously the terms of this first formulation are hardly clear yet (having only just been translated), but perhaps a couple of basic things can be said about this first explanation of the relation between faith and knowledge. To say that faith—or belief—can follow knowledge is to call into question common presuppositions about the relation between faith and knowledge. Alma's very first word on this subject clearly suggests that while faith does not need to follow knowledge, it certainly can. Over against this, one generally assumes that faith is a necessary step on the way towards knowledge, not vice versa. This common view might be confirmed on one level in the assertion that one can believe before knowing, but it seems to be quite clearly contradicted with the assertion that one might be "brought to know... or even compelled to know, before they will believe." There are several possible ways of explaining this difficulty from the start. For example, one might assume that belief or faith is a kind of practical relation while knowledge is a purely intellectual or rational relation. On such a reading, one might point to the example of the person who knows better than to do something, but does it anyway because she does not exercise belief/faith in the practical moment. While there is a certain appeal in this reading, however, it seems to do some violence to the meaning of the word "belief." Another way this might be read is to suggest that Alma is trying to talk about a very unlikely occurrence when he mentions knowing before believing. That is, perhaps he assumes with the rest of humankind that belief generally precedes knowledge as it clearly does in scientific method, but that there are occasions where someone will simply confront something so directly that anything like "method" has been canceled by the suddenness of the knowledge, as when someone experiences a phenomenon before being taught about it. There is perhaps also some appeal in this reading of the situation, but there is obviously some danger in reducing all knowledge and belief relations to a scientific or methodological point of view.
Perhaps the best and most fruitful way to read this curious relation between faith and knowledge is to relegate faith to one kind of experience, something one might call "religious" or even "ethical" (both of which might be summed up in the word "spiritual"), and knowledge to another kind of experience, something one might call "historical" or even "scientific" (both of which might be summed up in the word "temporal"). This reading perhaps has the potential to reduce or even to cancel the implied relation between faith and knowledge, but if it is treated carefully, it will not. But what does it mean to divide things up this way? Perhaps a few words can be said about it even at this early point in the discourse.
Even this early in the discourse, one can delineate the difference between knowing the word and believing the word. To believe something—to trust something, to have faith in something—is to give oneself to it without reserve. That is, it is not to count the cost, not to subject the thing in question to a kind of economic test. Rather, to believe is simply to give onself over, for better or for worse. On the other hand, to know the word is to appropriate it. If faith is a handing over of oneself, knowledge is a grasping, a taking, a kind of conquest. To know the word, one must be able to define it (that is, to finitize it), to label or name it, to explain it. To trust the word, one needs merely to fall before it, to give it full sway. It seems quite clear, then, what it means to say that faith can be called "religious," "ethical," or "spiritual": to believe is to sacrifice oneself in the name of the trusted, in the name of the other, of God. And it seems quite clear what it means to say that knowledge can be called "historical," "scientific," or "temporal": to know is to draw the other into one's own history, into one's own way of thinking about the world. But what is most important about the way this verse says things—and from the very beginning—is that faith and knowledge both center on the word. The word is, of course, the very mainstay of the scientific (from nomenclature to the published paper); but the word is just as much what the calling God and the petitioning sufferer speaks (from "be ye perfect" to "help!"). In short, the word can play two very different roles, and the remainder of this discourse is to work out these interrelations.
"Without being brought to know the word, or even compelled to know." It seems curious that Alma seems to be describing here a state which does not apply to those whom he is addressing. That is, if he is addressing the poor who have been compelled to be humble, why does he mention the possibility that they could've humbled themselves through the word of God without being compelled? It may be that Alma is describing a process which will apply to them again in the future sometime—that is, just because they're currently humble, does not mean that they will remain humble. This idea seems to be supported in verses 24-25 where Alma elaborates on what he may've been intending here. It may also be that that Alma knows that his words will be heard by those who have not humbled themselves and so he is mentioning this for their benefit.
Verses 17
"Yea." The first word of the verse seems a bit strange since it seems that Alma is, rather than affirming what has been said in the previous verse, taking up a position contrary to the one he has been advocating. But perhaps this is not so strange since he has been describing his position in a negative way, underscored by the word "without." The word "yea" calls attention to this negative description affirmatively, deepening the sense of contrast with the ensuing description of sign-seekers. In fact, the play of negation and affirmation is quite rich in this verse. In the last verse, the believer (without positive knowledge) was described negatively, drawn out in contrast to the negative position of the knower. But at the heart of this negative affirmation was a double negative: the affirming, positive word was obviously at some distance from would-be-knower, who was thereby marked as a negative. That is, the negative description of the one who affirms her belief is grounded in the undeniable negativity of would-be-knower, she who seeks a sign and is for that very reason cut off (negatively) from positive knowledge. Because of the play of the word, only the believer can affirm anything. If this verse opens with a blatant affirmation ("yea"), it goes on quickly to present the would-be-knower again as pretentiously negative: the would-be-knower seeks "a surety" but can never have it, even by "a sign from heaven." That is, if it appears that the would-be-knower is positive in some sense (asking for a positive sign), the absence of the sign ironically dispossesses the would-be-knower, and hence negates the positivity of knowledge. Only the believer can affirm, and that positively. And yet—and this point cannot be missed—the affirmation of the believer is necessarily founded on a profound negation: the believer must negate herself (her stubbornness) and her knowledge (any compelling sign) in order to affirm her faith. In the end, the whole movement of positivity and negativity in these two verses is profoundly paradoxical, but based on a paradox familiar to any reader of the words of Christ: one must lose one's life (negativity) in order to find it (affirmation), but if one seek's one's life (positivity) one will inevitably lose it (negativity).
After the play of the positive and negative are introduced, Alma concretizes what has been, to this point, perhaps abstract. Rather than speaking simply in terms of differences, and hence of concepts, he now turns to the concrete situation by describing "many who do say." The hypothetical air that has prevailed to this point suddenly collapses, and Alma sets before his hearers the "actual" words of many "actual" people. That the first two words of the "quotation" are "If thou," and that the speaker of the quotation uses the plural first person ("we"), suggests that Alma is doing one of two things: either he is (1) drawing on an actual concrete example from his own past preaching experiences, one (or many) in which a whole crowd rejected him specifically, his message specifically (perhaps even his only just past preaching to the rich Zoramites); or he is (2) phrasing this concrete example in terms of the actual situation in which he now stands, the Zoramite poor being the "we" and Alma being the "thou." Either one of these ways of reading the text is rich: on the one hand, we find Alma hoping that the Zoramite poor will be other than what he has yet experienced in preaching, and his passion therefore enriches the encounter; or on the other hand, we find Alma trying to place the Zoramites into an uncomfortable role, one he is precisely condemning, in order to help them to see where they might be standing. Again, both of these possibilities are quite rich: if, on the one hand, Alma is drawing on the past, and that past is the preaching to the Zoramite rich, he is being quite brave, since the Zoramite rich are apparently still standing behind him while he delivers this sermon (and whether or not he meant this, they probably understood it this way); and if, on the other hand, Alma is casting the Zoramite poor in the role he is presenting, he offers a kind of pre-judgment before they have spoken the word clearly enough to be judged, giving them thereby the opportunity to change things before the evidence has to come in. However it is read, this concretizing of the abstract is fascinating and rich.
If Alma is describing, in his quoting those "who do say," those who are "brought to know the word, or even compelled to know," it is wonderfully ironic that they begin by saying "If thou wilt...." Those who are compelled, apparently against their wills, can only place themselves in that position by underscoring the will of the believer: "If the believer will," she can show a sign, while the would-be-knower can only depend upon the believer. If this again summons the interplay of the positive and negative, it enriches it as well, adding to it the question of will. Curiously, the would-be-knower specifically affirms the will of the believer (of her will-to-believe?), and thereby negates her own will. And this play of wills perhaps introduces into Alma's discourse a kind of play between determinism and freedom, which might, all over again, be called the contrast between the historical, scientific, or temporal and the religious, ethical, or spiritual. In the movement of faith, one freely gives oneself to the other (religiously, ethically, spiritually), while in the movement of knowledge, one's activity is determined from the start (historically, scientifically, temporally). All of this is confirmed all the more ironically in the last few words of Alma's "quotation": "then we shall believe." The faith or belief that the would-be-knower is to achieve beyond knowledge (a knowledge brought about by the sign) is in itself determined: "shall," not "will." That is, if belief is, for the believer, an act of will (a giving over or negating of one's will in the most profound affirmation of one's will), for the would-be-knower, belief is—and can only be—a determined, historical, scientific, temporal occurrence, something that "shall" happen.
Of course, all of these comments do not yet even begin to think about the meaning of the demand for a sign specifically, which is perhaps the richest part of this verse. It is significant that, from the very beginning, the question of signs is raised in terms of the concrete encounter, one Alma and the Zoramites are presently engaged in. In abstract terms, the "sign" is never mentioned, but only now that the concrete is the scene of further thinking. But the significance of this can perhaps only be worked out in retrospect, after the most important question has been asked: what is a sign? Of course a full answer to this question would require something of a tour through much of twentieth century philosophy, but perhaps a few words can here be said that will open up the meaning of the present passage. The word itself, "sign," comes from an Indo-European root meaning "to cut," suggesting that the sign introduces a kind of split or division into the thing it stands for (being cut off, to some degree, from the thing it stands for). The sign inevitably directs the beholder to some actual thing, though this direction is based at the same time on a profound misdirection: the sign, by drawing attention to itself (emphasized here by the word "show"), reorders the thing it signifies according to its own logic. That is, inasmuch as the thing appears in the sign, it appears according to the ramifications of the sign: because the thing becomes a signified, it has been organized according to the logic of the signifier. At the very least, a sign is a doubling of the thing in question, a doubling that amounts to a reordering of the thing, and this reordering is entirely dependent on the internal nature of the signifier.
What makes a sign so peculiar, however, is the "internal nature of the signifier." A signifier, as has been pointed out time and again in the twentieth century, derives its meaning only in relation to other signifiers. That is, the logic according to which the thing signified is to be reordered is the logic of the differences between so many signifiers, so many signs, all of which are already present to the beholder. In other words, to see a sign is to subject the thing the sign signifies to the broader sign system (presuppositions, etc.) of the beholder. In terms of the present verse, to demand "a sign from heaven" is to subject the word—or God Himself—to the sign system of the demander, that is, necessarily to reduce the word to the contemporary philosophy or theology, one that is apparently fixated on the visible ("show"). In fact it is precisely here that we might make a transition from these abstract comments to the particularities of the verse. The (hypothetical?) crowd Alma here quotes is obviously very visual by nature: knowledge comes by seeing, by being shown so many signs. Over against that, of course, Alma presents those who would hear, who would believe. But in demanding a sign, this quoted crowd essentially demands a reordering or reorganization of the audible in terms of the visible, of belief in terms of knowledge. What Alma begins to point out here—and what he makes absolutely clear with the next verse—is that to make such a demand is not to do things backwards, but to try to mix two things that are very different from one another by nature. The world of visible signs is being privileged beyond its capacity, and it is—in the demand for a sign—being given to overthrow completely the audible world of the spoken word.
All of this must be absolutely clear before the rhetoric Alma employs in the following verse can be engaged: the demand of the would-be-knowers is to allow the invisible to be subjected to the visible so that the invisible can be regarded visibly. But what all of this works out to in the end can only be thought through in verse 18.
"Show unto us a sign." The word show presages the famous phrase in verse 21, "things which are not seen." In building to that positive example of faith, Alma is giving here a negative example of someone who positively asks for a sign. The seeing-before-believing demand seems to follow a pattern of pride described by Alma and numerous other prophets that entails being prideful and making demands of God before first humbling themselves (for example, in Alma 5:54 those who suppose that they are better than one another are first described and then contrasted with those they persecute that "humble themselves"). Diachronically, the sequential emphasis here may also be related to the ordering described in Moses 3:5 where the creation occurs spiritually before it occurs "naturally" and the Word of creation is spoken before anything is seen.
Verse 18
Alma begins this verse with explicit reference to himself: "Now I ask." This confirms a kind of identification between the "thou" of the quotation in the previous verse with Alma himself in some situation. That he goes in this same verse to say, "Behold, I say unto you," seems to confirm that the best reading of the quotation is that Alma is casting the Zoramite poor as the speakers in verse 17. That is, Alma prejudges them on purpose (notice that Alma seems himself to admit this in verse 24), in an attempt to bring them to the crisis of faith. Before looking, then, at the actual content of this verse, one must recognize that Alma has existentially placed the Zoramite poor in the situation of judgment, and they have been condemned: they are judged to be seeking after signs in some kind of attempt to derive faith (the audible) from knowledge (the visible). What is still more interesting about the situation is that Alma returns to the concrete here precisely by returning the use of rhetorical questions, something he had abandoned for the past half dozen verses. The meaning of this return is vital to understanding what Alma is trying to accomplish here.
In the first verses of the discourse, Alma uses rhetorical questions while making absolute references to the concrete situation of his preaching, apparently to introduce a kind of tension between the pretension of absolute knowledge on the one hand (the absolute appeal to reason implied in the rhetorical question) and sheer mystery of the concrete preaching situation (the mystery, that is, of the face-to-face encounter). Here he does this all over again, albeit in a rather short question: "Now I ask, is this faith?" But if with these six words Alma has returned to the tension between the concrete and the absolutely abstract, he does so in order finally to begin to answer the questions he is raising. When he uses rhetorical questions before, he allows them to remain unanswered, but now he answers this rhetorical question immediately: "Behold, I say unto you, Nay." Curiously, he answers the rhetorical question with the same double appeal, on the one hand to reason, and on the other hand to the concrete face-to-face encounter. This tension is maintained throughout the discourse, and it of course is closely tied with the tension already discussed at some length: between knowing and believing, between seeing and hearing.
Perhaps the strength of this is only quite visible when one takes Alma's rhetorical question and his rhetorical answer as a response to the petition of the would-be-knowers. But looking carefully at that will take some work. Alma has made of the Zoramite poor a group of would-be-knowers who are asking for a sign, and he responds with a rhetorical question, and then with a rhetorical answer. These two rhetorical moves accomplish something very specific in relation to the petition of the last verse: the concrete situation of the sign-asking is maintained in the "I" of "Now I ask" and in the "I" of "I say unto you," but the concrete is also transcended in the universal appeal to reason. This has the effect of rerouting the petition: Alma never responds directly to the petition by saying yes or no. They ask for a sign, and he does not really respond. Rather he distracts the petition by moving the discussion to another level. His question (and its answer, therefore) is, technically speaking, theoretical: "is this faith?" Here he seems to be picking up only on the last four words of the petition ("then we shall believe"). Essentially, then, Alma is questioning the very nature of their promise: the sign is, for the Zoramites, a pre-requisite to faith (belief), but Alma questions whether faith that comes after the witness of a sign is ultimately faith in any real sense. Not only does he question this, but his rhetorical answer confirms quite bluntly that it is not faith.
And then Alma moves into a rather abstract discussion. After his "Nay," any concretizing rhetorical elements disappear for the remainder of the verse and for the whole of the following verse. In order to ground his rhetorical question and its rhetorical answer, Alma moves into the realm of reason—of definition. It is this claim that ultimately deserves the most attention here. The claim: "if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it." Alma seems here to revert to a rather common way of thinking about the relation between belief and knowledge: the latter is a stronger version of the former. That is, it sounds here as if Alma is putting belief and knowledge on a continuum, suggesting that they are fundamentally related. This stands in opposition to the tenor of the discourse to this point, because faith has been fundamentally opposed to knowledge throughout. Two questions, then: first, why does Alma recast the nature of belief here? and second, what is it he is ultimately saying here about belief/faith?
In answer to this first question, one might suggest that he is conceding the Zoramite belief, something everyone would agree with, in a kind of Socratic move (Socrates always agreed with the presuppositions of those he spoke with, but he would help them to see how their presuppositions conflicted one with another according to the strict laws of logic). That is, though Alma himself understands faith to be something fundamentally different from knowledge, he recognizes that the Zoramites (or most people) do not so think, and so he meets up with their thinking here to argue from their point of view. Really, a better way to approach this problem is to seek to answer the second question first, because it is not clear really what Alma is saying about faith/belief here, and it will only be possible to think about the first question once that is clear. Hence, we turn to the second question.
"Is this faith?" In answering his own rhetorical question, Alma does not dispute the claim of the sign-seeker that he will "know of a surety." Instead, Alma simply disputes that this is faith, leaving open the possibility (but only a possiblity) that knowledge "of a surety" can indeed be gained this way. In fact, Alma goes on in verse 19 to discuss the damning effect knowledge obtained this way can have, a move on Alma's part which seems to further suggest that seeing a sign can indeed lead to knowledge. This strongly suggests that the goal of the subsequent discussion is not about obtaining knowledge per se, but the manner in which this knowledge is gained. It seems that knowledge, even perfect knowledge, is not beneficial unless obtained by faith.
Verse 19
"Knoweth the will of God and doeth it not." Later, Alma will talk about obtaining perfect knowledge by what seems to be a growing process of faith. But here, Alma seems to be suggesting (this ambiguity is highlighted in verse 20) that knowledge is potentially undesirable because it can have damning effects. The tension between these alternately negative and positive views of knowledge seems to be predicated on whether or not faith accompanies(/precedes) knowledge or not. It seems that for knowledge to be a desirable thing, the knower must not be at risk of failing to do God's word. This suggests, then, that the increase in faith described by Alma later should somehow be related to a decreasing risk of failing to do God's will. Alma later mentions a "desire to believe" (verse 27)—perhaps this kind of desire should be thought in relation to the damning effect of knowledge, or vice versa.
"Or only hath cause to believe." This phrase seems to suggest the possibility of having cause to believe but not believing. This seems similar to the idea expressed by the word "sometimes" in verse 13: there, those who are compelled to be humble only sometimes repent; here, those that have cause to believe only sometimes believe. The word "cause" then seems analogous to the way the word "compelled" is used above, but seems to have softer connotations here. That is, having a cause to believe is not the same as being forced to believe, but it opens the possibility of belief—or even more, the call to belief.
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