Talk:1 Ne 3:1-4:38

Verses 4:13

Sterling, the exegesis here almost sounds like we are saying that the Lord is a type of utilitarian. Do we want to make this type of claim? I am certainly comfortable saying that everything the Lord does is good. And it would be blasphemous I think to claim that we would all be better off if God had chosen to do something better than he actually did. We are at times given a picture though of a God who changes his mind.

The picture of God "weighing his options" and choosing the "greatest good" to me makes God sound like a big calculator. I don't feel like that is consistent with a God that has empathy, listens to our prayers, is angry at times, and weeps for our iniquities.

Thoughts?

--Matthew Faulconer 08:44, 12 November 2007 (CET)

Matthew, you raise some good points. I think you have some valid examples. However, I am unsure how to explain things that God has done without assuming that he making some sort of calculations. Should we come up with more examples of what each is talking about?

--Sterling 19:54, 12 November 2007 (CET)

I'm also uncomfortable with this picture of God, but I think it is inevitably one of the pictures that emerges from the one-many language of the commandment. I wrote a bit about this in my book, but the passage is several pages long and I can't excerpt it here. I'll summarize it thus: this entire two-chapter narrative (chs. 3-4) revolves around two terms, "commandments" and "seed." Nephi's rationalization in the verses immediately preceding this odd constraint from the Spirit has centered only on the word "commandments," but this further word from the Spirit shifts the emphasis to "seed." This is confirmed by Nephi's further thoughts in the following verses. What this also does is shifts the all-too-mathematical reading of this passage—which would reduce it to an atemporal or static affair, the strict atoning logic of the scapegoat—to a thoroughly temporal reading which gives itself to the future: Nephi is, by this word from the Spirit, opened to what is to come (seed), while Laban's grip on the plates opens only onto the past, which is about to be closed. Though this might still be called a kind of calculation, it is one that works otherwise because it computes incalculable numbers: Lehi's innumerable seed obliterates any kind of caculus and the calculator or computer will only be able to show an error screen. --Joe Spencer 17:44, 13 November 2007 (CET)

Thanks for sharing Joe. I think I see the logic of what you are saying. Perhaps it is my training as a historian that causes me to think the way I do. Would you two look over the question I posted at 1 Ne 17:6 and tell me if you think it is relevant to this discussion? It seems to me that the Lord's timing is one way of measuring his decision-making process. In other words, it seems to me that God waits until certain moments in time to do things because that is when he is able to maximize the goodness of what he wants to do; if he performed the thing before or after this moment in time it would lead to less good. Does that make sense? --Sterling 18:12, 13 November 2007 (CET)

I'm not sure I quite follow you. In one sense, I see historicity as such opening around Nephi in light of the constraint of the Spirit: while Nephi has to this point understood the covenant of 1 Ne 2:19ff to be essentially a question of immediacy (whatever the Lord commands this very minute is to be obeyed), that immediacy is replaced by a kind of temporal mediation that allows it to become so much richer in that he is turned to the past ("commandments" as the law) and the future ("seed" as children still to come). I'm not sure to what extent the imposition of this temporal mediation draws on the ripeness of a particular moment (to be honest, I think that would have to be more a narrative question than anything else here). But perhaps it is my training as a philosopher that makes it difficult for me to follow you here. :) --Joe Spencer 22:50, 13 November 2007 (CET)

Maybe a more famous example will illustrate the timing thing I am talking about. Here is a quote from Gordon Wood that appears in the Institute manual for Church history:

According to one historian, there was a special timing to when the Restoration took place:

“Its timing in 1830 was providential. It appeared at precisely the right moment in American history; much earlier or later and the Church might not have taken hold. The Book of Mormon would probably not have been published in the eighteenth century, in that still largely oral world of folk beliefs prior to the great democratic revolution that underlay the religious tumult of the early Republic. In the eighteenth century, Mormonism might have been too easily stifled and dismissed by the dominant enlightened gentry culture as just another enthusiastic folk superstition. Yet if Mormonism had emerged later, after the consolidation of authority and the spread of science in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, it might have had problems of verifying its texts and revelations.”

--Sterling 18:28, 14 November 2007 (CET)

I'm not sure if this belongs in the exegesis, but I noticed an interesting correlation in the logical/revelatory nature of the drama being laid out. Nephi, in verse 11, receives a direct command from the Lord. The command does not waiver, but Nephi's understanding and personal rationalization does seem to. He at first gives reasons not to follow the commandment, then gives reason to (all different than the direct reason given by the Lord). This (sort of) correlates to the experience with L&L in 1 Nephi 3:15-20 (and concluded in 21). A direct command was given to L&L, and they didn't want to follow through, but were persuaded by Nephi. He follows much the same pattern here. --Document 12:04, 14 December 2009

Verses 4:30-38

re: the question on covering their tracks. Do we know that this is a desert with sand? Maybe we need to look at how the word desert is used in the Book of Mormon. I don't think of sand dunes but maybe I'm wrong... thoughts anyone? --Matthew Faulconer 08:06, 6 January 2008 (CET)