I have had a difficult time approaching the very narrow slice of “the laws of the Church of Christ” which I have been assigned–namely, verses 30, 31, and 32 in the present section 42 of Doctrine and Covenants. The terminology used in these three verses is, obviously, closely entwined with concepts discussed throughout the whole section, and most specifically with those verses dealing most directly with matters of consecration, stewardship, and community living (on my reading, that would be verses 30-45, 53-55, and 70-73). Perhaps predictably for those who are familiar with my interest in communitarianism, localism, and egalitarianism, I find the last of those three related topics–what it means, in a socio-economic sense, to live within a consecrated community, and therefore also, what it means to know the socio-economic nature or bounds of said community, so as to determine who (including oneself) is within it or without it–the richest theme to be explored in these particular verses. Obviously, my comments here will not be able to exhaust that theme, not just because of my own limitations but also because of the aforementioned limitation placed upon me by our reading schedule. I am anxious to read, in coming weeks, what Joe and Jeremiah will have to say about the verses immediately following 30-32, where the basic ideas of consecration and stewardship of further fleshed out, as well to read others’ views of how these ideas are touched upon in later parts of the revelation. But anyway, onward.
Given my preferences in terms of themes, it seems most important to me to emphasize the introduction of “the poor” into the revelation in its later versions, and what that introduction may provide us with in terms of reflection. The reference to the poor was present in the earliest, February 9, 1831 version, but it came to play a very different role later. According to Marquardt, the relevant passage of original version contained in the Book of Commandments reads as thus:
The awareness of the poor is obviously present in this early version of the revelation–”him that hath not,” “the poor and needy,” etc. However, the focus is clearly on building a self-sufficient, enclosed, separate, simple, devotional, plain, humble community. The goal is the creation of a covenant people that will be gathered to the Lord’s temple and receive salvation, one that will give all that they have to the achievement of this end–and that giving is an all-or-nothing proposition, one which makes me think of the definitiveness of the parable of the ten virgins: if one disobeys the commandments or otherwise is cast out for unrighteousness, all that has been devoted to the community stays with the community, and any opportunity to benefit from or share in that which had been consecrated is lost. This overarching, communitarian goal does not disappear as time and events led Joseph Smith to re-evaluate and rephrase some of the words and/or ideas which had come to him by inspiration, but it does become complemented with a broader sense of the obligation which the faithful have to deal with the poor, and the complexities inherent in such dealings. By 1835 the relevant portions of the revelation read as follows:
There are, of course, a multitude of ways to read this change. One very plausible (and, it should be noted, non-exclusive) way of doing so is to look at the political, historical, and legal context in which early Saints attempted to interpret and live in accordance with this revelation in the early 1830s in Ohio and Missouri. There was the desire on the part of Smith to make sure the church he was establishing could be distinguished from other communalist and common-stock movements (some of which included early converts to the church) which were committed to essentially holding all property in common. There was the reality that very few members of the community were comfortable with the idea of a complete consecration of properties. And, as this dissatisfaction turned quickly to dissent, this led to the hope of avoiding the sort of legal challenges, brought forward by disaffected members of the community, which demanded a return of that which had been donated to the church. By making use of the greater legal safeguards available to church-administered donations which were used for explicitly (or at least nominally) charitable purposes, as opposed to general community-building (as well as by having the stewardships assigned by church leaders take the form of legal deeds), some of this was hopefully to be avoided. All of this seems reasonable as far as explanations go. But I would like to consider something else along with the above.
Probably no other task occupied more of Smith’s time during the years 1831-1833 than his Inspired Version of the Bible. The bulk of the work on that project was essentially finished by July of 1833, by which time Smith had read back through, and had frequently elaborated at great length upon, numerous scriptural stories and passages. But what I wonder might not be most relevant here was not the changes he made to the Biblical text, but what he got out of that re-reading. As is well known, one of the most common themes found in the Bible, both the Old and New Testament, is the care of the poor. “Remember the poor” is a direct quotation of Galatians 2:10, and the call to remember the poor, to rescue them from oppression, to provide relief for their suffering, is echoed in literally hundreds of verses through the Bible. (This same theme can be also found in the Book of Mormon, though not to quite the same extent.) To think about the needs of those who go without is an arguably related, but still significantly different task than thinking about the needs of the faithful who have accepted baptism and are committed (at least ideally) to the principle of consecration within a closely defined, mutually supportive community; to think about “the poor” as a category of persons obliges the boundaries of the relevant “community” to be reconsidered, and broadened.
Which is, perhaps not coincidentally, what happened with Smith’s thinking; by 1832, he was speaking not just of a New Jerusalem but of “stakes” of Zion, Zion being no longer simply a promised location in Missouri but an elastic concept that would, while still centered in a specific locale, extend and include a far greater range of particular congregations than the original 1831 revelation could reasonably be read to accommodate. I would suggest that Smith’s vision of Zion (which, don’t forget, was defined during this same period of Biblical revision and inspiration–through Smith’s revelation of the Book of Moses as part of his rewriting of Genesis–as a place where people “were of one heart and one mind….and there was no poor among them” (Moses 7:18)) prompted him, along with the aforementioned practical and legal concerns, to re-orient the abiding goal of what became section 42 of the D&C; to make it an outline of an economic order that would conscript all the faithful into joint, charitable project, aimed at providing succor to the poor in general as well as building up the church’s infrastructure. The expanded–perhaps slightly less intensely communal, perhaps slightly more open to individual activity and variation–presumptions behind the kind of community which these verses came to be understood to refer to hints at larger aims for consecration than purely devotional purposes.
(When I say “perhaps slightly less intensely communal,” I mean relative to what appears to me to be the intensity of the earliest version of the revelation; I am not meaning to align the language of these verses in their later forms with non-communalistic, much less liberal, interpretations of the principle of consecration entirely. This may be a pedantic point, but it seems to me to be an important one, as the words one chooses will often guide how one goes one to reason about the implications and consequences of an idea so labeled. For example, of several scholars who have written on these matters, Grant Underwood appears desirous to distinguish “the laws of the Church of Christ” from communalism entirely, dropping out references to the egalitarianism which emerged in later revelations as a necessary byproduct of a stewardship system, and reiterating that said system assumed the continuance of basic free market principles. He has a point, of course; stewardships, and the generation of properties to be consecrated to the church through them, as opposed to a complete communism of all property within a communal living order, depends upon entrepreneurial activity. But he goes too far, I think, in denying the communitarian and egalitarian elements of this system. I confess that I find Leonard Arrington’s communitarian language much more fit to the historical practices being described than that used by those who, as I see it, follow the concerns of later prophets to absolutely deny any overlap between various European and Marxist versions of communism and what was attempted in Ohio and Missouri, and later Utah. Those prophets were not necessarily incorrect, of course, but there is such a thing as protesting too much.)
This strikes me as a promising way to appropriate the message of “the laws of the Church of Christ” for our present moment. As a far-flung “community” of believers, living in the midst of diverse yet (thanks to globalization) mostly market-related economic structures, and surrounded in most countries by huge divides between the rich and the poor, members of the Mormon church today have no truly likely, practical options available to them in terms of socio-economic consecration, enclosure, and community-building. The era of the United Order as it came to be experimented with during the Utah period is clearly past, to say nothing of what the Saints attempted in 1831-1833. However, if we think about becoming a covenant people in terms forming, through our stakes (including primarily our fellow members, but also reaching out to all those who live within stake jurisdictions) local associations and cooperatives that aim to build up public resources and serve the poor, we would be following the path which, upon my reading, captures the heart of what Smith came to insist, through the finalized version of these verses, the Lord wanted his people to do. (The Perpetual Education Fund is an obvious example of this.) Of course, further revelations may, in time, change or re-orient our thinking about community and the power of the church to become fully unified despite the immense growth and change that has been experience sense Smith’s day; and moreover, such thinking obviously doesn’t address how we ought to act as citizens in our respective polities to achieve similar ends, or at least make the achievement of said ends more likely. But I am doubtful that section 42–which even as it has come down to us through revisions is I think overwhelmingly shaped by political-theological position which rejects existing authority and anticipates the construction of something new to receive the coming of the Lord–can be taken to provide such specific socio-economic guidance anyway. The point of investigating the history and language of the revelation closely is, rather, to bring us around to a general perspective (one that, I would argue at least, tends towards the local, the communal, the humble, and the egalitarian). What we do with that perspective is a different question entirely from the one which the revelation was originally presented as answering.
Having laid out some impressions about the evolution and interpretation of these passages, I will conclude by focusing on a few specific matters:
Verse 30: “remember the poor”–
There is probably no way of knowing if Smith was thinking specifically of Galatians 2:10 when he formulated the words this way; interestingly, the LDS edition of the KJV does not connect D&C 42:30 with the Galatians passage, instead referencing in the footnote the virtuous woman who stretches forth her hand to the poor (Proverbs 31:20), King Benjamin’s reminder that we must impart of our substance to the poor if we are to retain a remission of our sins (Mosiah 4:26), and several other passages of scripture. The Greek verb here is mnemoneuo, implying rehearsal; thus do other translations render the verse “continue to remember the poor” or “always be mindful of the poor.” I take this to mean that we are not to allow ourselves to forget the needs of the poor, keeping their condition before our minds whatever decision we make.
“consecrate of thy properties”–
As I said above, the original 1831 text of the revelation has all properties being consecrated, not just a portion of them. The word “consecrate”in Smith’s day meant “to make or declare to be sacred, by certain ceremonies or rites; to appropriate for sacred uses; to set apart, dedicate, or devote, to the service and worship of God”
“a covenant and a deed which cannot be broken”–
Dean L. May described the deeds spoken of here in this way:
“[The] deeds have their origins in Bishop Edward Partridge, who was the first bishop of the Church and who prepared written forms that were signed by the Saints who chose to consecrate as they came to Zion in Missouri, beginning in 1831. The left side of a large printed form was the consecration agreement, and the right side was the stewardship agreement. They seem to represent Bishop partridge’s honest effort to put into legal language the essentials of what was in essence a religious covenant….The documents begin by making it clear that central to the economics of Zion is the psalmist’s affirmation that ‘the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein’ (Psalms 24:1). That is the starting point of consecration. Men and women are but stewards over earthly possessions, and in recognition of that fact the early Saints were asked to make a legal document giving their possessions to the Church as a consecration when they came to Zion….But the transaction did not end there. In the stewardship agreement–the right half of the form–the Saints were given back their personal property and an inheritance in Zion, which was a plot of land sufficient to farm if they were farmers, or perhaps…sufficient land to build a…shop on. This was not private property but a stewardship, though later, as a concession to secular law, the Prophet ordered that legal deeds be given for each stewardship.”
Verse 31: “impart of your substance”–
“Substance” has a variety of meanings in Smith’s day, as it does today; while it is reasonable to assume that the most applicable definition was “goods; estate; means of living,” thus suggesting a material contribution to benefit the poor, it is worth nothing that substance was also defined as “something existing by itself,” whether “matter or spirit,” as well as “the essential part” of a thing. All of which, along with the line “means of living,” can be taken to imply that it is not just material goods which could be imparted (consecrated) to the poor, but time, talents, and all forms of service.
“the bishop of my church, and his counselors, two of the elders, or high priests, such as he shall appoint or has appointed and set apart for that purpose”–
The office of bishop was introduced to the church at essentially the same time as the original revelation; Edward Partridge was ordained a bishop by Sidney Rigdon on February 4, 1831. At that time, there were no other offices of the priesthood in the church besides “elder.” The higher (later called Melchezidek) priesthood was introduced in the summer of 1831, and by the end of that year, had been codified into the office of “high priest.”
Verse 32: “testimonies concerning the consecration of the properties of my church”–
“Testimony” could be used in a wide range of ways in early 19th-century America, and was in the church; in the case here, the idea is clearly that of “a declaration or affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact.” While I have never used “testimony” to describe my response to the bishop’s yearly question to us during tithing settlement, “Does this represent a full tithe?”, it seems reasonable to suppose Smith would have understood it this way. As the faithful approached the bishop and consecrated of their property to the community for purposes of building up Zion and aiding the poor, they would be, presumably, be understood to be engaging either explicitly or implicitly in an act of bearing testimony; of assuring the community that this is what they were offering to the whole.
“every man shall be made accountable unto me…as much as is sufficient for himself and family”
Again, following the pattern of tithing, there would be yearly meetings (or at least that is how Bishop Partridge institutionalized the practice) at which point accountings–settlements?–would take place. This was, in Smith’s mind, an expression of mutual commitment to the community, with the bishop and the member seeking a consensus on how much would truly be “sufficient.” Smith explained it in a letter to Partridge this way:
“Every man must be his own judge how much he should receive and how much he should suffer to remain in the hands of the Bishop. I speak of those who consecrate more than they need for the support of themselves and their families. The matter of consecration must be don by the mutual consent of both parties for, to give the Bishop power to say how much every man shall have and he be obliged to comply with the Bishops judgment is giving to the Bishop more power than a kind has and upon the other hand to let every man say how much he needs and the Bishop obliged to comply with his judgment is to throw Zion into confusion and make a slave of the Bishop. The fact is there must be a balance or equilibrium of power between the Bishop and the people and thus harmony and good will may be preserved among you.”
June 10, 2009 at 7:44 am
Russell, fantastic discussion here. I want to digest things a bit more before I say anything too substantial, so I’ll offer only a couple brief points for now.
1. I really like the way you’ve tied the New Translation to the changes in the text. I wonder if there are any even closer connections than you’ve realized, though I’m not even sure how to go about looking for those without reading carefully through the manuscripts themselves. This, though, seems to me to be a very fruitful direction.
2. Of course, one of the largest differences between 1831 and 1835 is that Zion had been lost by the latter date. I think that needs to be figured into the changes made to the text.
Well, actually, I guess that’s all for now. I’ll have more to say soon.
June 10, 2009 at 9:07 am
Thanks for the initial comments, Joe.
I really like the way you’ve tied the New Translation to the changes in the text. I wonder if there are any even closer connections than you’ve realized, though I’m not even sure how to go about looking for those without reading carefully through the manuscripts themselves.
One thing that I have not seen in discussions about the creation of the JST/New Translation/Inspired Version (which label do you prefer, by the way? I kind of like the old RLDS “Inspired Version” best, since I think that is the most accurate description of what it actually is) is what Smith learned about the Bible while working on it. Now maybe such scholarship is out there, and I’m just unaware of it, or maybe there just isn’t any available information to support conclusions one way or another. But it seems to me to be something we ought to be thinking about. We all assume that Smith had grown up familiar with the Bible, and of course he was a reader of it. But isn’t it reasonable to assume that in closely reading and working through the text, looking for and praying about things to change, fix, or add to, that he might not also have picked up themes that perhaps had not loomed so large in his thinking before? (Actually, now that I think about it, I have heard a discussion along these lines before, but it was centered on polygamy–that is, the claim that working on the Bible is what planed in Smith’s mind the question of Abraham and his wives and so forth. But that’s an entirely different topic.)
[O]ne of the largest differences between 1831 and 1835 is that Zion had been lost by the latter date. I think that needs to be figured into the changes made to the text.
I do note the many struggles which the early church faced in implementing these ideas from 1831 to 1833, and obviously they loomed large in Smith’s thinking…but actually, I wouldn’t go so far as you and say that by 1835 the original conceptualization of Zion had been “lost.” Yes, the Plat of Zion wasn’t going to be built; yes, the Lord condemned the faithful for their transgressions; yes, the notion of a holy and self-sustaining city of the faithful closed off from a world about to be destroyed was already fading…but there was still Far West. It wasn’t 1838 yet; Missouri as the center place of an American Zion hadn’t been completely lost. The really profound re-evaluation of where the revelations were rewritten to point towards didn’t happen, I think, until Nauvoo; until then, the original remained in tension with the new.
June 10, 2009 at 9:15 am
Actually, one more thing–as I was working on an edit of my post this morning, it struck me that I left out any discussion of love. The whole crucial passage begins with “if thou lovest me…”, which is terribly important, if perhaps a little obvious. This is not a community which is orienting itself towards its ends–whether perfect holiness and self-sustaining on one reading, or the creation of a devotional community capable of generating resources for both itself and the poor on the other–for reasons of, say, justice or ethics. It is doing it because its members love God. This makes me think of innumerable discussions in philosophy and political theory–David Hume, for example, comes to mind–contrasting justice with love: real-world relationships, which will always have to address the human reality of difference and scarcity, can surmount these problems with love or with justice; if you don’t have the former (and we usually don’t), than you need the latter. If you have the former, the latter is unnecessary.
June 11, 2009 at 12:44 pm
I’m way behind on some other things, so most of the thoughts listed below are simply half-baked thoughts that I’d like to think through more carefully at some point. Great job, by the way, Russell.
1. Hermeneutics, theology and application.I esp. like Russell brought up the way that many of these issues might impinge on the way we live our faith as active Mormons today (e.g., your comments on tithing interview as a “testimony”). I’ve been nearly obsessed with questions of hermeneutics these last few years, and what it means for us as Mormons to read scripture carefully and thoughtfully, and what it means to consecrate our minds to the building of the kingdom. My conclusion, in short, is that we must read the texts as carefully as we can, and that we must think about how this inflects the way we live and think as Mormons today—and I think this distance should be bridged with our best theological, philosophical, theoretical, scholarly, intellectual, and existential insights and efforts. My sense is that Joe is a bit less excited about this application-oriented thinking (how is this relevant for us today?!) than I am, but I am hoping that we will eventually get to this kind of thinking, after we do due diligence in terms of studying the text itself, its history, etc.
2. Why take care of the poor? I like Russell’s comments on “love” in comment #3. I think Russell’s comment is very interesting:
I like Russell’s comment here about the earlier version, “only receiving that which is necessary to their full participation in the work to be done.” I’m not sure that this is a justified reading (not that there’s anything wrong with that—I think often the most productive readings are entirely speculative!), but it makes me somewhat disappointed or nervous to see the shift toward pluralism (as Russell has characterized the shift—again, perhaps a somewhat dubious characterization…). How praiseworthy is taking care of the poor as an “end” in itself? My concern is that this could be construed in a way that “is oriented by death” (as I think Joe would put it—this is an ongoing fascination for Joe). If we are merely taking care of the poor so that we prolong the time of their death, then this seems a fairly weak reason—unless we, consider this in light of the purpose of life, perhaps to have a space of time to repent or something.
In this light, I think the “ye [will] do it unto me” in verses 31 and 38 (might there be structural significance to this repetition? an inclusio perhaps?) might be thought as signifying something similar: don’t take care of the poor just because we should love others and take care of them, but do it unto me. In other words, consecrate these acts of charity, not so you can be seen by others, and not just so that you can stave off the death and suffering of the poor, but so that the poor can be gathered into the larger work of the preaching of gospel, and so that the “one heart and one mind” community might be established (which entails the poor being taken care of, but much more than just that).
3. Intermingling of greater and lesser laws. Although previous comments have pointed out how
verse 29 marks of a kind of break or transition (“keep all of my commandments”), I think it’s worth considering the importance of the relative continuity here also. It’s common to think of commandments like not killing as a “lesser law” and the law of consecration as a “higher law,” but I think the relative side-by-side way in which these commandments are given in this section calls this into question. This might be related to the sense in which the D&C (and Book of Mormon) draws in unique ways on Old Testament and New Testament language, concepts, and portrayals of God. God is a wrathful but also kind God in the D&C. Joseph’s project might be interpreted as a kind of correction of Christianity with a re-emphasis on (certain aspects of) the Old Testament—the re-giving of parts of the 10 commandments might be read as an effort to create a stronger unity between the OT and NT (and I think this relates to my previous point about how we should think about taking care of the poor as it was taught in the OT as well as in the NT).
4. “According to their wants.” Curious addition, indeed. This phrase occurs in the BOM in Mosiah 4:26; 18:29 and Alma 32:5. Do these contexts suggest any distinction between those within the church vs. those without? This seems to be a big question in the OT and I think we need to think about this carefully in light of verse 37: “he that sinneth and repenteth not shall not shall be cast out of the church and not receive again that which he has consecrated unto the poor and the needy of my church, or in other words, unto me.” Does this imply that only the poor within the church are being referred to in the previous verses? If so, I think this suggests something particular about why we take care of the poor (again, in order to fulfill the covenants of the Lord, not just to stave off the death of those who are not in the covenant community). I really want to think about this issue more because it grates against modern, liberal sensibilities regarding the motivations (and more universal injunction) for taking care of the poor….
5. Poor and equality. Again, partly in response to “why take care of the poor?”, I think there are good intertextual reasons (esp. in BOM) to think that class divisions are particularly dangerous because it engenders pride in a way that grates against the inherent equality of all of us “as children of God.” Not taking care of the poor seems to almost always be linked to the sin of pride in the book of Mormon. Alma 32 might be very useful to review as it relates to the question of the poor—the problem is that the rich who do not remember the poor are apt to not be truly humble. Perhaps.
June 12, 2009 at 7:36 am
Russell,
The more I look at these three verses, the more I’m convinced I can’t really make sense of them without looking carefully at the next three verses. Particularly important, I think, is the phrase “this first consecration” in verse 33, a phrase that refers back to verses 30-32. I find this fascinating because in the original version of the revelation, there was only one consecration. But the adjustment to the wording has split the consecration into two, in fact into two relatively unstable or even vague consecrations. I’m trying very hard to make sense of all this, but I don’t know exactly what to make of it all. I’m afraid I won’t know how to approach it until I’ve finished working through verses 33-35 and writing my own post for next week….
June 12, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Fantastic post!! Sorry it’s taken me so long to respond.
What an important question we’ve asked: “Who are the poor, and what is the purpose in taking care of them?” I really appreciate all that’s been said and it’s opened my eyes to what an interesting puzzle we have.
Who are the poor? What makes them poor? If it means not living extravagently then it seems we should all be poor. Yet, if Zion citizens live abundantly, with all their needs met, then it seems the poor are anyone who do not have their needs met. Along the lines Robert mentioned (in his 2nd point), it seems that giving to the poor allows them the time and means to serve God; perhaps we are assuming that they desire to do so and we are allowing it to happen. (Indeed the Lord says giving to the poor is the same as giving “unto me;” if we gave Christ himself money, we would assume He would use it to do something for God’s kingdom, wouldn’t we?)
Another comment, this off of Robert’s point #5: it is interesting to think if “class” structure in this. Giving to the “poor,” if we see them as a group, classed together, can easily cause us to feel “rich” and the ones “above” them to help them out. Better to always be aware and serve anyone who needs help in order to serve God.
Fascinating, fascinating. Unfortunately my three year old doesn’t see it as so fascinating, and doesn’t realize his one year old brother needs to sleep.
More later, hopefully.
June 12, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Robert, many thanks for your comments! A couple of preliminary responses…
I like Russell’s comment here about the earlier version, “only receiving that which is necessary to their full participation in the work to be done.” I’m not sure that this is a justified reading…
It is a textually unsupported elaboration, I’ll admit that, but I don’t think it takes us away from or adds anything substantively different to the plain meaning of the original consecration. If you argee–and I think the best interpretation we can come up with of the words in the 1831 version definitely points in this direction–that the point of the consecration of properties (which, as the following verses make clear, was to be conjoined with plain living, humble foods, and work done with one’s own hands) was to build up an enclosed and holy community of saints, then obviously any stewardship would be expected to be aligned with the work of that community.
…but it makes me somewhat disappointed or nervous to see the shift toward pluralism (as Russell has characterized the shift—again, perhaps a somewhat dubious characterization…).
“Pluralism” is admittedly something of a loaded term, and maybe that’s not the right one to use. And also, kind of in line with my point in my post about staying relative to the actual broad choices in describing things here, don’t think that I am proposing that the changes in between 1831 and 1835 singled the doom of any kind of collective, devotional economics in favor of a more materialistic and individualistic and diverse one. All I mean to suggest is that the original call didn’t seem to reflect much appreciation of the varying needs of the members of the Zion community to be built, or of the different ways said community would relate to or be obliged to serve those outside of it. The greater “pluralism” in the later restatement of the original revelatory principles seems to indicate more thought having been given to such things.
How praiseworthy is taking care of the poor as an “end” in itself? My concern is that this could be construed in a way that “is oriented by death”…If we are merely taking care of the poor so that we prolong the time of their death, then this seems a fairly weak reason—unless we, consider this in light of the purpose of life, perhaps to have a space of time to repent or something.
You’re going to have to explain and/or justify yourself to me here, Robert: exactly why is “prolonging the time of their death”–which I presume, to get right down to brass tacks, means providing better food or shelter or medical care or job opportunities or whatnot to the poor so that they don’t starve or freeze to death on the streets quite so often–a “weak reason”? It seems that to ancient Israel, providing the poor with the gleamings of the field and with regular debt forgiveness was taken as a responsibility of the faitful because a just God commanded it; are such divine edicts, in your mind, similarly “weak”? Similar edicts can be found in the words of Jesus and King Benjamin. I suppose we could get into some speculations about all the good things that could be done with the time the poor have left to them after not starving to death any given week, such as more opportunity to repent and make good use of their mortal probabtion and so forth, but really, isn’t that taking things a bit too far?
(Though it occurs to me that I could take Joe’s idea, and get all Heideggerian here, with a Christian bent: maybe it is exactly the determination to serve the poor, just to keep them alive one more day before they starve, that enables us to experience Sein-zum-Tode, an authentic Being-towards-death that is concomitant with an awareness of finitude, angst, humility, and anxiety which we need in order to be repentant. How does that work?)
June 12, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Joe,
The more I look at these three verses, the more I’m convinced I can’t really make sense of them without looking carefully at the next three verses.
I completely agree. Verses 30-39, and really more than that, are a package concept–you can’t, I think, really address consecration without addressing stewardship, work, roles, community life, love, and more. That’s not to say that taking them apart and dealing with them separately as we are in necessarily misleading; only that I think the next couple of weeks are going to include a lot of overlapping and repetition…
June 12, 2009 at 2:00 pm
It seems to me that this comment of Robert’s…
Not taking care of the poor seems to almost always be linked to the sin of pride in the book of Mormon. Alma 32 might be very useful to review as it relates to the question of the poor—the problem is that the rich who do not remember the poor are apt to not be truly humble.
…and Karen’s…
[I]f Zion citizens live abundantly, with all their needs met, then it seems the poor are anyone who do not have their needs met….giving to the “poor,” if we see them as a group, classed together, can easily cause us to feel “rich” and the ones “above” them to help them out. Better to always be aware and serve anyone who needs help in order to serve God.
…can be put together in productive ways, if we allow for a little bit more speculation. Let us say that not helping the poor is not necessarily a sin which the rich suffer from; it is, rather, a sign of the sin of pride. Of course, the rich are often prideful, but it is not necessarily wealth which makes one prideful and dismissive of the poor, but a love of that wealth, a sense of distinction and separateness and superiority associated with the wealth one has. To constantly “remember” the poor–which I think is rightly taken to mean everyone whose basic needs are not met–will lead to be cognizant of all the endless amounts of service which must be rendered, which will in turn enable us to better combat the pride which we think separates us from the poor; service requires association and familiarity–or at least it should–and that shrinks the distance between the rich and poor, making “there but for the grace of God go I”-type of thoughts more common in our fallen minds. And that’s the kind of humility that comes along with a true Christlike love.
June 13, 2009 at 8:47 am
Getting back to this now that I’ve digested things quite a bit more….
Russell says in his original post:
“[W]hereas originally properties (not just some, but ‘all thy property that which thou hath’) was to be consecrated to the Lord (‘unto me’), the faithful are now being commanded to impart some portion of their property (the revelation no longer speaks of all, but just ‘of thy properties’) explicitly to the support of the poor.”
I think this shift from “all” to “of” is significant, but perhaps a bit misleading. As I read through the 1831 and 1835 texts for all of verses 30-35, I’m beginning to see that there was, in the shift from the earlier to the later text, an interesting translation of sorts. Consecration was initially a single act: one handed everything over and was deeded back whatever property one needed; the excess that was not deeded back was then drawn on twice (“the residue” and then again “the residue”), first to outfit those in the order who needed more than they had to give in the first place, and second to deposit into the bishop’s storehouse for the work of establishing the New Jerusalem. In 1835, however, consecration has been split in two: one first gave all one could see the poor (in the Church?) needed through a “first consecration” (mediated by the bishop), and then one—and the Church!—gave all still remaining that one didn’t need to the bishop’s storehouse (a “second consecration”); hence, in 1835 there is only one “residue” to be drawn on, namely, the residue in the bishop’s storehouse (that will now be used for various reasons, rather than for a single reason).
In short, I think “all” is still required in the 1835 rendering, though it is split into two separable acts of consecration.
Back to Russell’s post:
“There are, of course, a multitude of ways to read this change. One very plausible (and, it should be noted, non-exclusive) way of doing so is to look at the political, historical, and legal context in which early Saints attempted to interpret and live in accordance with this revelation in the early 1830s in Ohio and Missouri.”
Yes, indeed. And I (as I said before) am especially enamored of your insight into the role the New Translation likely played. But let me add yet another important influence that I’ve been forced to grapple with as I’ve continued working through especially verses 33-35: further revelation. The way “the Church” is spoken of in verse 33 clearly (as I will argue next week) shows that the revelation has been adjusted to accommodate the eventual organization (by commandment) of the United Firm (see D&C 70). The talk of “high priests,” “the high council,” and especially these being distinguished from “the bishop and his council,” suggests that the revelation has also been edited to accord with the inspired organization of the high council and the revelations concerning the relationships between the two priesthoods (see D&C 84, 102, and 104). The addition of “building houses of worship” to the list of things the funds in the bishop’s storehouse are to be used for shows that the revelation has further been revised to agree with the revelation concerning the building of temples (see D&C 88). And so on.
Again from Russell’s original post:
“As a far-flung ‘community’ of believers, living in the midst of diverse yet (thanks to globalization) mostly market-related economic structures, and surrounded in most countries by huge divides between the rich and the poor, members of the Mormon church today have no truly likely, practical options available to them in terms of socio-economic consecration, enclosure, and community-building. . . . However, if we think about becoming a covenant people in terms forming, through our stakes (including primarily our fellow members, but also reaching out to all those who live within stake jurisdictions) local associations and cooperatives that aim to build up public resources and serve the poor, we would be following the path which, upon my reading, captures the heart of what Smith came to insist, through the finalized version of these verses, the Lord wanted his people to do.”
I’ll have much more to say in response to this in my post next week, because I will try very carefully to make sense of the sharp differences between the 1831 and 1835 systems of consecration, and that should allow us to see where we fit into things here. Let me say, for now, that I think what Russell has proposed here is an interesting weaving, as I see it, of the two visions. I don’t think these kinds of cooperative endeavors are quite what the 1835 text has in mind, but I do think that it captures the spirit of the 1831 text, and does so in a way that doesn’t militate against the “constraints” of the 1835 text. So let me agree with Russell’s comment if it is taken as a kind of call to work: let’s do this kind of thing!
And again:
“The point of investigating the history and language of the revelation closely is, rather, to bring us around to a general perspective (one that, I would argue at least, tends towards the local, the communal, the humble, and the egalitarian). What we do with that perspective is a different question entirely from the one which the revelation was originally presented as answering.”
This, however, I think I disagree with, or at least want to quibble with a bit. I think I’m fine with the revelation bringing us to a “general perspective,” so long as we are always prepared to allow the text to call that “general perspective” into question. I think the word that concerns me is “general”: I worry that we might use the generality of the perspective as an excuse not to read the text closely enough, not to let the text call our perspective into question, not to let the text demand that we do things in a certain way. So while I agree that we have a situation and a task that differs drastically from the the situation and task of those originally receiving the revelation, I think that the materiality of the revealed word calls us still to read the text as rigorously as possible, always allowing the letter itself to pierce holes in the “general perspectives” we construct.
Now to respond to the comments, rather than to the original post….
Russell, in comment #2, says:
“[W]hich label do you prefer, by the way?”
I like “New Translation” just because that’s the title on the manuscript pages themselves, and because it is becoming the standard term in the historical literature. But I always use “JST” when I’m speaking to my seminary classes. And I like the title “Inspired Version” for the same reasons you do. The title I don’t like is “The Bible Corrected”!
In the same comment:
“Now maybe such scholarship is out there, and I’m just unaware of it, or maybe there just isn’t any available information to support conclusions one way or another.”
There are a few people who have been talking about this. Robert Matthews dedicated a whole half or so of his book on the JST to the “doctrinal restorations,” using an approach that makes me a bit uncomfortable, personally. Much more responsibly done, I think, though still only “on the way,” is Kerry Muhlestein’s “One Continuous Flow: Revelations Surrounding the ‘New Translation,’” in the same Sperry volume that Underwood’s article appears in. But in the end, I agree with you: much more, and much more responsible, work needs to be on this question.
Again:
“It wasn’t 1838 yet; Missouri as the center place of an American Zion hadn’t been completely lost.”
Yes, yes, that’s true. I had in mind, not the loss of Missouri, but the wording of D&C 105 (received during Zion’s Camp), when the “elders of the Church” were told that they would have to “wait for a little season for the redemption of Zion,” something that the Church as a whole took as a savage blow. So let me rephrase my original point: one of the major changes that had intervened between the 1831 and 1835 texts was the revelation of D&C 105.
Now from Robert in comment #4:
“My conclusion, in short, is that we must read the texts as carefully as we can, and that we must think about how this inflects the way we live and think as Mormons today—and I think this distance should be bridged with our best theological, philosophical, theoretical, scholarly, intellectual, and existential insights and efforts. My sense is that Joe is a bit less excited about this application-oriented thinking (how is this relevant for us today?!) than I am, but I am hoping that we will eventually get to this kind of thinking, after we do due diligence in terms of studying the text itself, its history, etc.”
Yes, I am “a bit less excited” about this approach, but for philosophical reasons. I think that any imposed split between the act of reading and the act of application emasculates the scriptures and leaves us floundering in the work. I don’t think we have got first to give due diligence in studying the text, etc., and then to figure out how to act, etc. I think we have got to act while reading the text. We are to be doing already, and always to be trying to allow the text to tell us how that doing (like a rough stone rolling down a hill) comes into contact with the text here and there (breaking of a chunk here, smoothing out an edge there) so that we are constantly at work on the text and in the world. It is not that I think we ought to flee the “real world,” but that the very idea of study-and-then-apply splits the real world into two false worlds, the world of the text and the world of action.
Again from Robert in the same comment:
“In other words, consecrate these acts of charity, not so you can be seen by others, and not just so that you can stave off the death and suffering of the poor, but so that the poor can be gathered into the larger work of the preaching of gospel, and so that the ‘one heart and one mind’ community might be established (which entails the poor being taken care of, but much more than just that).”
Hear, hear!
Again from Robert:
“Curious addition, indeed.”
Yes, and I’ll have more to say about this change in the text next week (since it falls in verse 33). I think there is something very interesting going on here….
Now from Karen in comment #6:
“Another comment, this off of Robert’s point #5: it is interesting to think if ‘class’ structure in this. Giving to the ‘poor,’ if we see them as a group, classed together, can easily cause us to feel ‘rich’ and the ones ‘above’ them to help them out.”
Again: hear, hear!
From Russell’s #7:
“All I mean to suggest is that the original call didn’t seem to reflect much appreciation of the varying needs of the members of the Zion community to be built, or of the different ways said community would relate to or be obliged to serve those outside of it.”
I think this is nicely put. One might speak of “the plural” as opposed to “pluralism” (since that “-ism” seems to imply something like la pluralisme pour la pluralisme). But I wonder what the costs of such a shift are, especially in terms of the relationship one bears the capitalism….
From the same:
“Though it occurs to me that I could take Joe’s idea, and get all Heideggerian here, with a Christian bent: maybe it is exactly the determination to serve the poor, just to keep them alive one more day before they starve, that enables us to experience Sein-zum-Tode, an authentic Being-towards-death that is concomitant with an awareness of finitude, angst, humility, and anxiety which we need in order to be repentant. How does that work?”
I’m not sure exactly what you’re trying to say here, and perhaps that is why you have simply to say “How does that work?” at the end. At any rate, the concern I have that Robert is pointing out and which you ask Robert to justify is that if we feel, clothe, and otherwise take care of the poor only in order to give them a longer life—where life, and this is crucial, is defined as dying—then we have given them nothing but a longer time in this miserable vale of sorrow. Which is to say that we have defined the poor (and ourselves, by implication) by death, rather than by life (by eternal life). Our task is both to feed and to “happify” (as W. W. Phelps, writing as Joseph Smith, might say). If I can give a philosophical reference here, then, it would not be too Heidegger, but to Alain Badiou, his book Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. (Heidegger is absolutely necessary reading on death, of course. But I think his authenticity is ultimately just a pagan worship of Mot.)
Now, let me add, finally, a further comment of my own (as if this weren’t long enough already!):
I think we ought to think carefully about this clause from verse 31: “And inasmuch as ye impart of your substance unto the poor, ye will do it unto me.” On the one hand, this is simply a reworking of Matthew 25:40 (“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me”), but, on the other hand, it is profoundly literalized. This becomes clear when the verse goes on to say “and they shall be laid before the bishop of my church,” etc. If I understand the 1835 system correctly, verses 30-32 are describing a “first consecration” that amounts to a direct donation made, according to the needs/wants one identifies on one’s own, to the poor. But so that this donation is registered as a consecration, it is mediated by the bishop. What is interesting is that the language of Matthew 25 is used to mark that shift toward mediation and consecration by equating imparting to the poor and imparting to the Lord. I find this literalized use of Matthew 25:40 fascinating.
I also think we ought to talk more about the idea of stewardship and what relationship it bears to capitalism, something I haven’t the time for this morning (after spending an hour responding to everyone!)….
June 13, 2009 at 11:30 am
Theological hermeneutics: Thanks for your (repeated) clarification on this point, Joe—the division between reading and application is dangerous (for similar reasons that means-ends distinctions are for Dewey and Agamben, right?). I’d like to now restate my previous point by saying that I think it is very important that we read and think about scripture in light of the both the past context and our present context, being careful not to conflate these two, but paying careful attention to both (and letting them interact, so that the past and the present can be redeemed together in our work that is oriented toward the future).
More on why care for the poor
Kristine vs. Nate: I remember, now, Kristine writing this in our pre-seminar discussion:
I think struggling with a similar question, and I’m leaning against the “primarily about the poor” view, and toward the “about the caretakers” view. Now, of course this is dangerous because it risks collapsing into a kind of “egocentric service of the good,” as Kierkegaard aptly put it (in Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing). I would avoid this problem by correcting Kristine’s phrase: instead of “about the caretakers”—which is ambiguous whether an individual’s act of consecration is for her own good or is for the good of the community—I would say “about the (covenant) community.”
I have a related, half-baked theory regarding this “unto me” phrase which I think helps makes sense of things. Since we all take upon ourselves the name of Christ at baptism, when Christ says “ye do this unto me,” there’s a sense in which I think he’s talking about the covenant community as a whole, not just “himself.” So, we take care of the poor, not just to stave off the death of the poor (though that might be a kind of side-effect—but that’s not the whole story, and thus that’s not the main reason to feed the poor), but to help build and manifest the generosity and grace of the covenant, Christ-ian community itself. I’ll continue with a similar idea below.
King Benjamin’s typology: In light of the preceding, I think it’s interesting that King Benjamin talks about giving to the poor in a way that makes this act a typological one reflecting the sense in which we are all beggars before God. This is thus similar to 1 John 4:19: “we love him, because he first loved us.” I’m also thinking of D&C 93:13, “he received not of the fulness at first, but continued grace to grace, until he received a fulness.” What is interesting to me in these passages is the way in which the way we receive God’s grace comes to the for. So, again, we give to the poor, not merely to stave off their death, but in order to typologically reenact the giving of the Savior. In this sense, we receive the image (and/or likeness?) of God (or Gods plural, as in Genesis? or the divine council/community of gods?) by giving graciously as we have been graciously given to.
Preaching and the poor: Joe writes “our task both to feed and to ‘happify’.” In light of this, I think it is, again, very important that this section (or at least vv. 1-69) be thought in terms of the dynamics of different community spheres. Taking care of the poor is, in this section at least, only a part of the larger whole of the council of 12’s instructions to preach the gospel to gather in the elect from the “world,” and the church as a whole (thus the three spheres I was obsessing about in previous weeks: 1 = inner council, 2 = church, 3 = world).
“For ye have the poor with you always”: This phrase can be found in Matt 26:11, Mark 14:7, and John 12:8 and it is asked when Mary anoints Jesus’s feet with ointment, and it is a citation of Deut 15:11 (for some bloggernacle discussion of this, see this post and accompanying links. I don’t remember these discussions well enough to summarize, but I think these passages also point away from a view of taking care of the poor merely for the sake of taking care of the poor. Only by consecrating ourselves to Christ (or the true Christian community—i.e., Zion), is there any real hope of really taking care of the poor—but that is only a positive side effect of a much larger salvific work. (I think I mixed up Deuteronomy 15 with Leviticus 19 a bit in my head in my comment from last week—there is a lot about the poor in the Pentateuch, and OT generally, that I think will be very insightful to thinking through these verses, if only I could find more time!)
June 13, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Ok, some rambling responses:
Joe,
I think “all” is still required in the 1835 rendering, though it is split into two separable acts of consecration.
You make a good case for your reading of the 1835 rendering–I won’t say I’m entirely convinced that the 1831 “all” is still there in 1835, but I’m far less sure of the differences than was when I wrote my first post on Tuesday. Good work.
[A]nother important influence that I’ve been forced to grapple with as I’ve continued working through especially verses 33-35 [is] further revelation.
Excellent point: it’s not just that the years between 1831 and 1835 confronted Smith with a host of legal and economic issues that had to be accommodated, but during those years the ecclesiastical context for the church changed. I think I thought about that before, but hadn’t followed up on it as you have. I look forward to next week to read what you’ve come up with.
I don’t think these kinds of cooperative endeavors are quite what the 1835 text has in mind, but I do think that it captures the spirit of the 1831 text, and does so in a way that doesn’t militate against the “constraints” of the 1835 text.
Well, obviously the “cooperative endeavors” you and I both refer to aren’t what the 1835 text had in mind, but we can’t align ourselves with Smith’s 1835 mind fully, because of close to 200 years of water having flown under the bridge: McKay telling the church to find Zion in their own stakes throughout the world, the abandonment of hospitals and mercantiles and schools and communal apprenticeships and more since over the past century, etc. Capturing the spirit of the text, and making it a law inscribed on our hearts in the lives we live today, is I think the task we are fated with.
I think the word that concerns me is “general”: I worry that we might use the generality of the perspective as an excuse not to read the text closely enough, not to let the text call our perspective into question, not to let the text demand that we do things in a certain way.
You’re reading too much into the word, and/or reading how I use it wrongly. Of course we need to read the text closely, to be called up short by it, and recognize the need to critique our own conventional lives and enter into new ways of life, ways of life that will have very clear priorities and parameters. But does the scripture provide us with specific details of that “calling up” and those parameters? I do not think it does.
[T]he concern I have that Robert is pointing out and which you ask Robert to justify is that if we feel, clothe, and otherwise take care of the poor only in order to give them a longer life—where life, and this is crucial, is defined as dying—then we have given them nothing but a longer time in this miserable vale of sorrow.
You’re making a rather large unsupported assumption here: why, exactly, is it that life is “defined as dying”? I can see the sense behind that reading of the scriptures: the sense that the faithful recognize that they are but pilgrims and strangers here, looking towards the next life, condemning earthly things as dross and so forth. I am quite partial to much of that language…but I do not take it to mean, as you seem to be doing, that therefore this “miserable vale of sorrow” is therefore necessarily a “weak” support for the call to aid the poor. Again, why, exactly, in principle, should that possibly be the case? What, in principle, is the reason why we should assume that God’s call for us to remember the poor (don’t forget about them! rehearse them in your mind!) couldn’t be just about their survival? Maybe you’re right, but you’re simply stipulating that something couldn’t possibly be the case, and thus proceed to look for some other explanation.
(I should make clear my own thinking here, and the best way I can do that is to refer back to an old post of mine which Nate will remember, a post which in some ways echoes the “Nate vs. Kristine” debate which Robert mentions. It’s five years old, but still worth a read, I think.)
Our task is both to feed and to “happify” (as W. W. Phelps, writing as Joseph Smith, might say).
I don’t get this. Are you quoting Smith? Or Phelps? Or imagining something Phelps would say if he were speaking as or for Smith? And for all that, in what sense doesn’t feeding the poor make them happy, assuming they had no food before you fed them? And how about God’s happiness? I tend to believe that He is made happy when one of His children is fed, whether of not it builds the community of the faithful; do you agree? (Though, please note, I suspect the feeding of the poor always does build the community of the faithful, only not always directly or immediately.)
Heidegger is absolutely necessary reading on death, of course. But I think his authenticity is ultimately just a pagan worship of Mot.
I think you’re very wrong there, but that would require a discussion that would take us great distance from the topic, so we may just have to agree to disagree.
I’ll try to make a few responses to Robert later, if I have the time. I’m leaving for Girls Camp early next week, and I need to pack!
June 13, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Two brief comments in response to Russell, one justifiably brief, the other unjustifiably so.
(1) Thanks for clarifying your meaning of “general perspectives.” I think we are on the same page, and that I was reading too much into your words. I’ll stand behind my concern about the word, but I see that you’re not using it in the way I’m concerned about.
(2) As for the question of life-as-dying and my interpretation of Heidegger, I realize that I’m making unfounded claims, primarily because I’m making shorthand references to work I’ve done elsewhere in much greater detail, and to work I’ve done only in spoken word. Death is the central problematic of most of my philosophical thinking, and I have a lot to say about it, but I realize that I would have to write several posts (not comments, posts) on it before I would be making a whole lot of sense.
I would apologize for having brought it up, but I can actually defer apologies to Robert, who brought up my ideas.
June 14, 2009 at 6:14 pm
A quick thought on “why to take care of the poor:”
I started out on one side of the debate and I’m coming to the other. Perhaps I’m too “Platonic” in assuming that this mortal sphere can’t serve for an end in itself. But there are so many things that point otherwise. I am thinking of D&C 59, for example:
“Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart…”
I also think of how many people Christ healed of their physical maladies while he was on the earth. I’ll admit I’ve wondered about that as well: why so many stories of those healed physically, and not more of those healed spiritually? We are so apt to put what we term the “spiritual” over the “physical” – but perhaps we are not so justified in doing that. This earth is an eternal place, and there are certain joys which come only when this body and spirit are “inseparably connected.” Perhaps our debate here on the merits of physically helping the poor show us we have a lot of thinking to do about this physical state in which we abide.
June 14, 2009 at 9:23 pm
A few thoughts only very vaguely related to Russell’s and to the rest of this excellent discussion.
I’m stuck on one of the first words: “remember.” Why remember the poor? Why not exalt them? Or convert? Or feed or succor or attend to? Why this verb remember? It’s impossible to read this injunction without thinking of Christ’s puzzling dictum that we have the poor always with us. Why? If God intends to send the rich empty away at some point, why not now? Why should we not help with that project? (she asks, full of anticipatory glee
)
I can think of a couple of possible reasons, one having to do with the early Saints, one with us now. It seems to me that remembering the poor is very different in terms of motivation for giving of one’s own surplus than just feeding or sheltering them–remembering, that is, the act of calling the poor into consciousness, will tend to make them real persons whose poverty is the result of real and known conditions or events. The “there but for the grace of God” understanding of *oneself* as essentially similar to “the poor” regardless of one’s current (and temporary)position of relative wealth comes by obeying the commandment to remember in a way that it does not necessarily follow from simply helping. It seems to me that this single word tends to strengthen my position in the old Nate v. Kristine dispute
Moreover, it occurs to me that the instability of relative economic positions would have been much more readily available to the consciousness of the early Saints who came from agrarian/frontier cultures, with fledgling economic and capital systems that did not yet reliably preserve wealth in the way that we 20th- and 21st-century types (until quite recently!)had as the background of our thinking about where we fit into the schema of rich and poor.
And precisely those tidy financial systems and institutions make the injunction to “remember” absolutely crucial for us now. It is quite easy nowadays to be truly generous, to meaningfully help people without ever seeing them, knowing them. And certainly without ever believing or fearing that one could be in their place tomorrow. It seems to me that perhaps some of that sense of the precariousness of our state and stations is wrapped in the word “remember”–that this willful calling to mind of our fellow beings is as important to the creation of Zion as provisioning for their needs. Perhaps that is the difference between welfare as a project of justice and welfare as the work of love.
June 14, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Also, another argument hung flimsily on a single word:
The only time I heard Gene England speak, he made much of the phrase “according to their wants.” His reading of that word choice was that if it said “according to their *needs*”, we would be called on to pass judgment about what was really necessary for them. But because it says “wants,” we are free to respond to *their* sense of what is appropriate and freed from the duty of judging.
I’m not sure I buy it–”want” can easily (and often, more properly) be translated into contemporary English usage as “lack” or “deficit”, but it’s a nice idea, and I certainly wish it were true. It supports my regular contention that if someone is in desperate enough shape to think that begging as a con is their best hope of getting along, they’re badly enough off to need whatever change I can spare.
(Yeah, I know…)
June 15, 2009 at 10:05 am
Some random, concluding comments (before I leave for Girls Camp tomorrow morning):
Karen,
I’m not sure I understand the point you’re making. When you write that…
I started out on one side of the debate and I’m coming to the other. Perhaps I’m too “Platonic” in assuming that this mortal sphere can’t serve for an end in itself. But there are so many things that point otherwise.
…are you saying that you do or don’t think this world can “serve for an end in itself? Your meaning is probably obvious, but for some reason your phrasing is confusing me. The passage from the D&C you cite clearly seems to fall on the “end in itself” reading; God seems to consider it to be a worthwhile thing to “please the eye and to gladden the heart” of His children, in a very material, mortal, physical sense. Providing food and clothing and shelter and fixing broken bones and resoting sight and removing leprosy all seem to fall into this category. (Note also that Jesus did not revoke the healing of the nine who did not return to Him; He was saddened by their choices, but He did not make their healing, at least in that case, contingent upon such choices.)
Kristine,
It seems to me that remembering the poor is very different in terms of motivation for giving of one’s own surplus than just feeding or sheltering them–remembering, that is, the act of calling the poor into consciousness, will tend to make them real persons whose poverty is the result of real and known conditions or events. The “there but for the grace of God” understanding of *oneself* as essentially similar to “the poor” regardless of one’s current (and temporary) position of relative wealth comes by obeying the commandment to remember in a way that it does not necessarily follow from simply helping.
Yes! This is exactly the point I had in mind when I wrote, in response to a comment by Karen above:
To constantly “remember” the poor–which I think is rightly taken to mean everyone whose basic needs are not met–will lead to be cognizant of all the endless amounts of service which must be rendered, which will in turn enable us to better combat the pride which we think separates us from the poor; service requires association and familiarity–or at least it should–and that shrinks the distance between the rich and poor, making “there but for the grace of God go I”-type of thoughts more common in our fallen minds.
I think God wants us to help the poor, but even more than that I think He wants us to remember them, to call them to mind, to put ourselves in their shoes, to make them as much part of our daily lives as any other type of person we interact with, because we all, at one time or another, in one way or another, in need of the same succor and assistance–we are all “beggars,” dependent upon contingency and circumstance and grace and the generosity (time, talents, money, assistance, love, etc.) of others, as King Benjamin put it. This is a point which Robert made in a comment above, and I agree with it, with one caveat.
Robert, you say…
King Benjamin talks about giving to the poor in a way that makes this act a typological one reflecting the sense in which we are all beggars before God….So, again, we give to the poor, not merely to stave off their death, but in order to typologically reenact the giving of the Savior. In this sense, we receive the image (and/or likeness?) of God (or Gods plural, as in Genesis? or the divine council/community of gods?) by giving graciously as we have been graciously given to.
…and I have to say that I think you’re reading the typology backwards. If we are all beggars before God, then I would suggest that the primary typological message is not that we are, in serving the poor, taking on the likeness of the Savior. Of course, we are also doing that through our acts of charity; the refrain of doing things “unto me [Christ]” makes it clear that God counts our acts of giving as a loving re-enactment of that giving which He modeled for us originally. But I think the primary point of serving the poor–through acts of charity and service, obviously, but perhaps primarily through remembrance–is not to situate ourselves, even symbolically, amongst the community of Gods, but rather to situate ourselves as beggars before that community. The consecrated community–which is not yet Zion, but only aspires to become such–is therefore, I suspect, one made up of people who have jointly embraced their own powerlessness and dependence, and commit themselves to serving the poor and one another because that is how they are all so served by a loving God.
I like Kristine’s use of “precariousness”; I see fitting in with the same existential senses of finitude and dependence and anxiety which I mentioned before. Not that God, I think, wants the consecrated community to be a place of mournful, Lutheran sorrow; but I do think the by calling us to remember, to rehearse, to be called out and called down by the beggars (who are we all, sometimes, in some way), God is instructing the community in the kind of humility that is a sine qua non of real love (pride and distinctions being the enemy of such trust and love).
One last point for Robert, in regards to the line “for ye have the poor with you always.” Robert, you say…
I think these passages also point away from a view of taking care of the poor merely for the sake of taking care of the poor. Only by consecrating ourselves to Christ (or the true Christian community–i.e., Zion), is there any real hope of really taking care of the poor–but that is only a positive side effect of a much larger salvific work.
…and I feel obliged to respond, exactly where is the point of distinction here? Why may it not be that “taking care of the poor [remembering them!] merely for the sake of taking care of the poor” is itself a conscecration of ourselves to a Christian community and a part of a larger salvific work? I mean, presumably there is some sort of work or action or distinguishing that would arise here to separate the “mere” labor for the poor from the “salvific” labor for the poor, but I’d need to have spelled exactly what that would be and at what point it would arise. Do we not give welfare checks to couples living in sin? Do we not feed Jews? Do we insist that the homeless we open our doors to attend sacrament meeting with us, or else they will be booted out? I don’t mean to be tendentious here; these may seem like silly examples, but they are–as I’m sure you all know–reflective of exactly the sort of hard, practical questions about tithing dollars and such which bishops and Relief Society president’s everywhere face on a weekly basis. And, as I said above, I don’t think at all that D&C 42 provides a detailed guide to how to respond to such practical questions. However, I do that taking up a line about the poor (which–again–is I think all of us!) always being with us, and making that part of an argument about how there must be more to serving the poor than, well, serving the poor, amounts to kind of an odd distraction. Serving the poor, being humbled, giving to the beggar, taking turns at the soup kitchen or the cannery, being reminded to the arbitrariness in any distinction between those on top and those on bottom…don’t all of these things, in themselves, make for a more righteous people, a more teachable people, a people more willing to commit themselves together to God’s words? I think they do, and I think an awareness of that is at least part of why the revelation ended up being worded the way it was.
June 15, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Russell, thanks for defending your position over and over again. It’s been great to see differing views and it’s caused me to think more carefully about my own understanding.
Now, have fun at girls camp.
June 15, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Thanks, everyone, for these last few comments. I think Kristine’s self-suspension from the singular idea of remembering may well get at what I was unsuccessfully trying to say (because I was trying to say it by making obscure references to my own theoretical work).
A first “precarity” that makes giving to the poor a dangerous thing is the possibility of its being a means to an end. On the one hand, there is the constant threat that we are only giving to the poor in order to secure our position among the rich. And on the other hand, there is the constant threat that we are only giving to the poor in order (by en-debting them to us) to secure their attention for purposes of indoctrinating them.
I think we’ve all been agreed that the first of these two means-to-an-end approaches to charity is problematic. And I think that those who have expressed concern about the feeding-and-happifying approach to charity are concerned that it is, in the end, just the second of these two means-to-an-end approaches. If what I was arguing for does reduce to that, then I agree that it should be thrown out. But I think there is something else I was getting at. In order to make this clear, though, I’ll need to spell out a second “precarity” about giving to the poor.
The second “precarity” in giving to the poor is the possibility of making charity into an end in itself. Here, I think the danger is that food or substance or property becomes, somehow, good apart from God or regardless of the truth. But I think this falls, as Robert has pointed out, into an obsession with, or definition of the world in light of, death—death takes the place of God or truth. Again, I’m saying this without philosophical foundation because I haven’t the space to argue for this position in detail, but I think the argument (when it is spelled out) is quite convincing. (I’ll point again to Badiou’s Ethics.) At any rate, it is this that I’ve been concerned about.
Here, then, we have three approaches to charity that I find problematic. What I think is wrong with them all, in the end, is that they all entail forgetting the poor. One who makes giving to the poor either a means-to-an-end or an end-in-itself, I think, actually ends up being blind to the poor—defining them by their class, their religion, or their mortality, and hence, overlooking what is most essential about them.
So what formulation might be put in the place of means-to-an-end or end-in-itself? I like Giorgio Agamben’s notion of means-without-ends. To feed the poor is to provide them with means, but without having an end (mine, ours, or theirs) in view. To remember them is to recognize that it is their prerogative to do with the means I can provide whatever they see fit.
And this means that to feed and to happify—inasmuch as this is a double act of remembering them—means to sit down to meal with them rather than to drop a few bucks on them in passing or to pledge a donation to a national drive.
Of course, I will continue doing these other versions of gift-giving. But I’m beginning to see the word “remember” as calling us to do, as Kristine very nicely points out, something much more substantial.
June 15, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Really quickly…
Karen, you probably didn’t mean to imply anything like this, but in case I did come off like I was hammering the same point over and over again, please accept my apologize; any condescending and/or lecturing tone that came into my posts and comments wasn’t at all intended, as such would be inappropriate for a seminar like this. Maybe it’s just an occupational hazard of being an academic, but it’s something I need to watch out for.
Joe, maybe this is beating a dead horse, but I have to admit that as I read you, I can discern no difference whatsoever between the “end-in-itself” formulation you decry, and the “means-without-ends” formulation, I presume taken from Agamben, which you praise. In every kind of philosophical line of argument I am familiar with (Aristotelian, Kantian, etc.), when you speak of something being an “end-in-itself,” you are speaking of an action or principle being entirely self-justifying or sustaining, without any reference to an outside telos or goal. And I am at a loss to understand how that at all differs from your statement that need are being called to remember and serve the poor in such a way as to “recognize that it is their prerogative to do with the means I can provide whatever they see fit.” Isn’t that exactly what Kristine said when she confessed that she didn’t feel it appropriate to interrogate and judge the wants of the beggar? Isn’t that pretty much exactly the point of my saying that, perhaps, we are not to remember the poor so as to save their or our souls, but that the service to the poor (whom, I’ll say it again, appears to include all of us), in itself, without any purposeful alignment with an explicit salvific goal, may well work towards the establishment of a community of the saved regardless?
No doubt there are distinctions here which I might be able to pick up on if I was more familiar with Badiou or Agamben, but as things stand, I’m just missing it. So you may just have to explain it, in greater detail.
June 16, 2009 at 7:55 am
Russell,
I think we are, in the end, saying the same thing. What I think I’ve struck on here is a way of highlighting the dangers in our different formulations of that same thing, and perhaps a way of saying something that we both feel quite comfortable with. That is, I think you were uncomfortable with my pairing “happifying” with giving because it sounded like giving was a means to the end of didacticism. I think that is a real danger. I think I was uncomfortable with your language of “end in itself” because it sounded like the poor (and everyone!) were being defined by their deaths or their mortality, rather than the immortal mind or spirit that inhabits them. I think that too is a real danger.
In the end, though, I don’t think either of us was saying what it looked like we might be saying, and I was trying to find a language that would avoid the problem, a language that would bring out the sameness of our position.
As for the distinction, in the end, between an end-in-itself and means-without-end: I think there is an important distinction here. A pure end is self-justified, is justified by its inherent goodness. Pure means are, in the end, not justified, because they can make no appeal to an end that valorizes them. By displacing the gift from pure end to pure means, I think we might dispel the constant temptation to pat ourselves on the back or to despise the poor for their poverty.
I might put it this way: to say that giving is an end in itself is the Buddhist way, but I think to say that giving is a means without an end is the Mormon way.
Maybe.
June 16, 2009 at 6:57 pm
There is a kind of parallel discussion to this caring for the poor question at the Square Two ezine between Ralph Hancock and Valerie Hudson regarding the telos of marriage (why care for the poor? ==> why get married?). The latest installment is here.
Valerie essentially takes the position that gender equality is the main, underlying good enacted in marriage, whereas Ralph essentially argues that the family is the main, underlying good. I’ll probably have more particular comments regarding this debate as it relates to the questions of this project, but I’ve got to run now….
June 16, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Since the website’s a bit difficult to navigate, I should at least post the page with the comments that the “latest installment” link that I posted above is referring to:
http://squaretwo.org/Sq2AddlCommentarySherlock.html#hancock2
I think this link can be clicked on first without reading the previous articles, and the conversation will make sense. These are relatively long discussions, however, so I will add that I think Ralph gives a very nice explanation (and in a more subtle way than Valerie’s writing) of his concerns with the term “equality”—that it is so easily appropriated to take on a kind of individualistic, liberation sense that he thinks is counter to the gospel. Here is Hancock’s concluding paragraph:
I think Valerie does a reasonable job arguing for an idea of equality as explicated in scriptural texts, and Mormon doctrine more generally (see the link in my parent comment here), though I confess that I think I’m more sympathetic to the idea than her actual arguments (and this is probably due to things I’ve read by Jacques Ranciere which take the idea of equality as foundational…).
June 17, 2009 at 10:43 am
I’m sorry that I didn’t particpate in this dialogue as it was unfolding last week. Let me merely throw out a couple of observations.
As to Joe, the poor, and death, I have to confess that I am both at a loss as to what he is saying and as to what advantage is derived from using the rather obscure and paradoxical circumlocutions that he does. Clearly, however, this is in large part a product of my ignorance of the texts in which he is in dialog with, and in part, I suspect, that it is simply a matter of having a rather more Anglo-Saxon intellectual temperament that is less patient with such Gallic or Germanic obscurities.
That said, I am extremely suspicious of arguments and theories that denigrate the value of alleviating the material want of those in poverty (Full Stop). In this, I think that I am much more in sympathy with Russell. My suspicion comes from two sources. The first is that I believe that poverty is responsible for a great deal of human misery, even if that misery is “merely” mortal and even if its alleviation places an unseemly and perhaps bourgeois emphasis on material comforts. Second, I worry that discomfort with the “mere” relieving of material poverty rests on a kind of Platonized hierarchy of the mental and spiritual over the material and the practical, of the timeless over the time-bound. I take it that one of the things that Mormonism is doing is trying to break down these dichotomies and hierarchies, dichotomies and hierarchies that have had a less than salutary effect on western thought and action. I think that we ought to have less intellectual and spiritual guilt in affirming the value of material abundance and the flourishing that it makes possible. In this, I think that the Old Testament’s approach is actually quite sensible. It is extremely harsh in its denunciation of the pride and wickedness of the rich. On the other hand, in stories from Eden to Abraham to Job it makes clear that the enjoyment of abundance can be a blessing.
All of this means that I am actually willing to accept a much more straight forward reading of the injunction to remember the poor. Russell traces the term back to a Greek root, one that suggests continued mental focus on the topic. The term “remember” however also appears repeatedly in the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon where the root term is — one assumes in the BOM case — “sakor.” As I understand it this term is not actually about mental recapitulation as much as it is about habitual action. One remembers the commandments of the Lord not be continually recalling them to mind, but by steadfastly performing them. Indeed, I remember the commandment to wear my garments, for example, even when I have entirely forgotten the fact that I am wearing them. Likewise, I think that we may be justified in reading the injunction to “remember the poor” less in terms of constantly recalling them to mind but in terms of engaging in consistent and steadfast action for the alleviation of their poverty. This is not to denigrate the important ancillary benefits that come from ministering to the poor, but such ministering is ultimately — I believe — more about their suffering than our souls. In that sense I think that charity is mainly a means-to-an-end. Indeed, I think that there is a kind of dangerous spiritual narcissism involved in prioritizing the charitable experience of the giver over the effect of the gift on the condition of the recipient.
To switch gears entirely, I think that one thing that has not gotten sufficient attention in this discussion is the inegalitarian relations created by the law of consecration. In particular what I have in mind here is the creation of an ecclesiastical hierarchy, and with it what amounted to a de facto aristocratic element within the envisioned Mormon community called forth by these laws. To be sure, this was ideally a humble and righteous aristocracy, but it is, I think, nonetheless an aristoracy. I’ve been reading Russell Kirk of late so the topic is much on my mind, but I wonder what we are to make of the way in which the “remembering of the poor” in this section becomes involved in the creation of an elite. As the reference to Kirk should make clear, I don’t think that this is necessarily pernicious, but I do think that in our rush to praise the egalaterianism of the Zion imagined by this revelation we miss something if we don’t think about this non-egalitarian element. Unfortunately, at this point I have to run to a lecture so that I can’t actually do any thinking about the non-egalitarian element.
June 17, 2009 at 11:33 am
“That said, I am extremely suspicious of arguments and theories that denigrate the value of alleviating the material want of those in poverty (Full Stop).”
Nate, I think I might finally be understanding why you and I have seemed to be at odds about this. When I talk about the importance of transforming the giver’s consciousness as well as doing something to alleviate suffering, I tend to think of meeting material needs as generally the necessary precondition for that transformation, and I don’t mean at all to denigrate the “mere” alleviation of material want.
Still, I do wonder about situations like that described by King Benjamin, where one does not have the ability or capacity to help the poor, but can still be judged righteous on the basis of righteous intent. So it seems to me that there are twinned dangers–righteousness requires navigating past the Scylla of “spiritual narcissism” and the Charybdis of mechanical or impersonal material donation. And I think that middle way requires exactly the collapse of the distance between material and spiritual that you describe.
And, wow, those are some hopelessly mixed metaphors. Sorry, all.
June 17, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Nate,
To some extent, I want simply to stand behind Kristine on this point. Everything I’ve argued in the course of this discussion is either (1) built on the presupposition that one is already giving all one can to the poor, regardless of what the means are ultimately used for, or (2) meant to ground the need to give to the poor materially, regardless of what the means are ultimately used for.
In other words, though I recognize that my arguments could be used to justify not giving to the poor, it is only with violence that they can so be used. In that sense, I see what I’m arguing for aligning with, say, grace: a soteriological model in which we are saved by grace and grace alone (like that, on my reading, in Paul and the Book of Mormon) can be used to justify not doing works, it is only with massive violence that it is so used. Indeed, the very purpose of speaking of grace is to get people working! The same holds here: the only reason for talking about the wrong way of giving is to get us to give more.
The plague I suffer from, of course, is that I can’t say much without a Gallic or Germanic accent….
June 17, 2009 at 6:46 pm
“Everything I’ve argued in the course of this discussion is either (1) built on the presupposition that one is already giving all one can to the poor, regardless of what the means are ultimately used for, or (2) meant to ground the need to give to the poor materially, regardless of what the means are ultimately used for.”
Yes, but this is precisely what I object to. First, I don’t think that we are commanded to give with indifference to what effect our giving has on the recipient. I think that this is a misreading of King Benjamin’s injunction in Mosiah 4:17-18. As I read it, Benjamin is saying that it is illegitimate to withhold one’s substance on the the ground that the poor person deserves his poverty or braught the poverty upon himself. I don’t see why this implies a rejection of giving that is attentive both to what the person actually needs, all things considered, or what effect the giving will have on the person. Hence, I think that it is entirely legitimate to refuse to give money to a pan handler if one believes that he will simply use the money to buy booze. On the other hand, it is entirely illegitimate to refuse to give money to the poor because one believes the poor deserve their poverty. Another way of putting this is that I think that the approach of the church welfare system, which is both open handed and generous, but also rather hard headed and practical, far from being an embarrassing intrusion of bourgeoisie or capitalist or corporate ethics into what ought to be a less teleological understanding of charity, is actually focused on exactly the right thing: Relieving poverty and want through concrete improvements in the material condition of the poor. To be responsible for our actions with regard to the poor means that we cannot treat their poverty or our charity as a spiritual play thing divorced from its material consequences. Indeed, inattention to those consequences strikes me as a kind of forgetting of the poor in our own spiritual narccicism.
I also disagree with your second point in that I do not think that we have an obligation to impart of all of our substance to the poor. I do not believe that the enjoyment of abundance is sinful. I believe that excess, avarice, and greed are sinful. I believe that refusing to impart of our substance to the poor is sinful. I do not, however, believe in asceticism or the inherent virtuousness of poverty.
June 17, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Kristine: It seems to me that the transformation of the consciousness of the giver may come in precisely the process of contemplating the particularities of the person to whom one is giving. In other words it is through the process of giving with an eye to its material consequences that we truly engage the poor. That said, as between spiritually sensitive but materially insensitive or pernicious giving, and thoughtless but steadfast giving in an institutional context that is likely to consistently improve the material condition of the unthought of poor, I think the steadfast thoughtlessness is more laudable.
June 18, 2009 at 8:16 am
Just a quick response, and only on the second point (because I think you misunderstood me on that one; I assume we’re just going to disagree on the first point, and I’d rather spend the precious few minutes I have this morning reading the comments on this week’s thread!):
I didn’t at all mean to imply that abundance is sinful. I’m not sure how you read that into what I was saying. My point was simply to say that all I’ve been arguing was not to suggest that we should give less than we usually feel compelled to give, but that we should give more than that. I said nothing about all.
June 18, 2009 at 9:58 am
Fair enough. For what it is worth, I didn’t understand you to be opposed to giving, only giving with an eye to the material consequences of our giving. My apologies if I have misread you…