D&C 84:56-60
From Feast upon the Word (http://feastupontheword.org). Copyright, Feast upon the Word.
Doctrine & Covenants > Section 84
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[edit] Questions
[edit] Verse 56
- Which branches of the House of Israel, if any, are exempt from this condemnation?
[edit] Verse 57
- Are the saints under command to create a collective memory of the Book of Mormon?
- Are we being told to feast upon the Book of Mormon collectively, and not just individually?
[edit] Verse 58
- What will this collectively-produced fruit look like and how will it be different from the fruits of our individual actions?
[edit] Verse 59
[edit] Verse 60
[edit] Lexical notes
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[edit] Exegesis
[edit] Verse 56
This further clarification of the "condemnation" that is upon the saints (see commentary on D&C 84:53-55) is crucial in two respects. For one, it is clear that the condemnation is not to be understood on an individual basis, this and that saint being condemned because of their attitude towards the things received. Rather, the condemnation is, regardless of whether the sin is, universal among the saints. The condemnation is, in other words, a corporate condemnation, a condemnation of the whole gathered people. Second, the condemnation is said here to be upon "the children of Zion," rather than the Church. While it is clear that "the children of Zion" means something like "the Church," this alternate name secures the relation between the condemnation under consideration and the broader revelation in which it comes (a revelation concerned primarily with Zion; see commentary at D&C 84:1). This double clarification of the condemnation points toward verse 59: the condemned "children of the kingdom" are unworthy to receive the "holy land" of Zion. This condemnation must not be taken out of context, then: it is to be read in terms of the saints' establishment in Zion and their building there a temple.
[edit] Verse 57
The conditions for release from condemnation are now stated clearly (though they will be reworked in verse 61). First, of course, is repentance, but the repentance--followed as it is by an immediate "and"--seems to be not a separate work from the remembrance discussed so much as a broad way of characterizing the remembrance enjoined upon the saints. In other words, to "repent" here seems precisely to mean to "remember...." The work of remembrance commanded, however, is not so simple.
To be remembered: "the new covenant." Because the Lord goes on to clarify the meaning of "the new covenant," it becomes clear that this "new covenant" (so interestingly absolutized with the definite article) is something never discussed as such elsewhere in the D&C. The new covenant, apparently, consists of "the Book of Mormon and the former commandments." It appears, in other words, to mean the Book of Mormon and the (at this point, printing) Book of Commandments. In short, the saints are to "remember" the several revelations given through Joseph Smith up to the point of this commandment. There is, however, another way to read the phrase, if one re-punctuates the text. Inserting a comma after "Mormon," one might read "new" as structurally parallel to "former": "remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon, and the former commandments which I have given them...." The phrase, "even the Book of Mormon," would then appear almost parenthetical: "remember the new covenant (even the Book of Mormon), and the former commandments which I have given them...." A careful consideration of the interplay of "new covenant" and "former commandments" may well confirm this reading.
The phrase "new covenant" would be a better translation of the title commonly translated "New Testament." Diatheke means, literally, covenant--not testament. If one thinks the parallelism between "the new covenant" and "the former commandments" in these terms, there is a close parallel between the Lord's injunction here and the early Christian interpretation of the Bible's double nature (Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet, Vetus in Novo patet, the New Testament is concealed within the Old, and the Old Testament is revealed by the New). The Lord might well be calling the Book of Mormon a sort of new New Testament here, relegating the Bible as a whole to the position of "the former commandments." The obvious echo here of Isaiah's "new things"/"former things" theme (found throughout Second Isaiah) also might confirm this reading (especially because the Nephite record employs very carefully that double Isaianic theme to read the "new things" as the Christian atonement, the "former things" as the Abrahamic covenant?). In other words, the Book of Mormon seems here to be understood as a "new covenant" that takes up and interprets the "former commandments" of Biblical Christianity, in fact as the new covenant that does so. It is this radical relation between the Book of Mormon and the Bible that seems to be what the saints have missed in their "hope" (see commentary, again, at D&C 84:53-55).
Given the peculiar relation between the Book of Mormon and the Bible in the (radical?) interpretation above, the word "remember" becomes significant. The word is of peculiar importance in the cultus of the Old Testament, and it therefore becomes the focal point of the New Testament cultus. In other words, that the Lord here employs the word "remember" already seems to suggest a rather cultic setting in which to understand the injunction given to the saints. The Hebrew zkr is the word translated in terms of remembrance in the Old Testament, and its meaning seems to govern the concept throughout the scriptures. The word means, not just to bring again to mind, but to bring again to reality, to re-enact, to re-commemorate, in short, to bring again into presence. Thus the most important New Testament instance of the word is in the Last Supper: "do this in remembrance of me," bringing the Christ's death/resurrection back into presence so as to experience it (and its healing power) again and again. Feeling these overtones here, to "remember the new covenant" is suddenly recognizable as an even more direct allusion to the Eucharistic themes of the New Testament: "this is my blood of the new testament [or covenant]" (Matt 26:28). But even with all this contextualization, it is not exactly clear what it would mean "to remember" the Book of Mormon (and, apparently through it, the Bible).
Most helpful, then, is the Lord's own clarification of the phrase: "not only to say, but to do according to that which I have written." The Lord Himself introduces the polarity of what Paul Ricoeur calls "manifestation and proclamation," the word and the sacrament (the latter term understood in the broadest sense). Such a polarity was introduced (or, at least, radically emphasized) by the Reformation: sola scritura (the word) was pitted against a sort of obsession with "the sacred" (the sacraments). Such a radical distancing of the two poles is ultimately damaging, and the Lord seems here to be destroying the dichotomy: a return to--a remembrance of--the Book of Mormon and the Bible is to be marked both by the rigor of the protestant student of the word and by the ritual, even existential attendance of the Catholic worshipper. To "remember": study as obedience, obedience as study. Again, to "remember": works as grace, grace as works. Again, to "remember": not only hope (a ceaseless talking, "saying," about a "better world"), but charity (a ceaseless working, "doing," towards a "better world"). In other words, and in short, the hope (a hope that draws vanity; see commentary at D&C 84:53-55) of the saints is to be doubled with charity.
In the end, then, a remembrance of the Book of Mormon (and the Bible "through" it) is what will lift the condemnation, a condemnation that was specifically a result of the saints' directedness away from the world (a sort of Mormon neo-Platonism). To return to those sacred texts is, in the end, to return to the earth, to, as verse 58 puts it, "bring forth fruit meet for their Father's kingdom," a kingdom to be built on the earth, and at a very specific place according to the revelation that opens this very section. The specific "doing" to be undertaken becomes clear with the remainder of the section: in verse 61, the saints are told they will be forgiven if they will bear "testimony to all the world of those things which are communicated unto you," the new covenant and the former things (hence, "proclamation"), all the while remaining "steadfast in your minds in solemnity and the spirit of prayer," attending constantly to the sacraments of a sacred God (hence, "manifestation").
A brief excursus might conclude this discussion. The call to remember is often a call to faith, a call to trust the historical events (or texts, or commandments) that have gone before. If the commentary presented here and at verses 53-55 are correct, this call to remembrance might well be a petition on the Lord's part to ground hope with faith. The vanity for which the saints are condemned seems to be a sort of hope without faith--and certainly, as argued here, a hope without charity--that must be regrounded in faith. If hope is an orientation to eschatological possibility, then the Lord seems to be pointing out the saints that such an orientation must arise out of and remain grounded in a historical faith if it is not to become a sort of vanity. Or, in other words, vanity seems to be a movement towards hope from faith that leaves the latter off, and precisely for that reason, never attains to a real hope: neither real faith nor real hope, one hovers between them in pure frustration (even boredom?). That the Lord goes on to clarify the means of changing this situation as a focus on charity (the doing, not just the saying) suggests that the limbo state between faith and hope can only be overcome when one is transfigured by charity: in love, one grounds hope in faith. To remember: faith, grounding hope, opens onto charity.
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