In the Book
of Mormon, “faith, hope, and charity” are used within close proximity of each
other, such as the following:
And again, behold I say unto you that he
cannot have faith and hope, save he shall be meek, and lowly of heart. If so,
his faith and hope is vain, for none is acceptable before God, save the meek
and lowly in heart, and if a man be meek and lowly in heart, and confesses by
the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is the Christ, he must needs have
charity; for if he have not charity he is nothing; wherefore he must needs have
charity. And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not
puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and
rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things,
believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. (Moroni 7:43-45;
cf. Alma 7:24; Ether 12:28; Moroni 7:1; 8:14; 10:20, 21)
Critics
claim that Joseph Smith was plagiarising from the apostle Paul:
And now abideth faith (πιστις), hope (ελπις), charity (αγαπη), these three; but the greatest
of these is charity. (1 Cor 13:13)
Many
Latter-day Saints have argued that Paul and Mormon are basing their comments on
pre-existing sources, such as the teachings of Jesus Himself. This would not be
unusual; indeed, many of Paul’s teachings elsewhere in his epistles are based
on sayings of Jesus. For a study, see David L. Dungan, The Sayings of Jesus in the Churches of Paul: The Use of the Synoptic
Tradition in the Regulation of Early Church Life (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1971).
4 Maccabees (which was written between AD 18 to 54) has a closely related triad,
showing that the concept pre-dates 1 Cor 13:
O mother, who with your seven sons nullified
the violence of the tyrant, frustrated his evil designs, and showed the courage
of your faith (πιστις)! . . . Take courage (ελπις), therefore, O holy-minded
mother, maintaining firm and enduring (υπομονη) hope in God. (4 Maccabees 17:2,
4, NRSV)
Such triads
appear elsewhere in the Greek New Testament:
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1 Thess 1:13
|
πιστις,
υπομονη, ελπις
|
|
Gal 5:6
|
πιστις,
αγαπη, εργον [work]
|
|
1 Pet
1:21-22
|
πιστις,
ελπις, αγαπη
|
|
Heb
10:22-24
|
πιστις,
ελπις, αγαπη
|
|
Col 1:4-5
|
πιστις,
αγαπη, ελπις
|
In The Jewish Annotated New
Testament (Oxford, 2011), p. 308n re. 1 Cor 13:1-13, we read the following
about the background for Paul's teachings:
1. Love (“agapē”) with righteous
worship (LXX Ps 30.23; 39.16; 68.35; 96.10; 144.20). In Isa 56.6, the likely
background for Paul’s discussion, this worship includes the Gentiles and
Jerusalem’s restoration (1 En. 108.12) . . . 13. Faith, hope, and love will outlast spiritual
gifts, but love is eternal. In the
fulfillment of the kingdom, love will embrace all (see Wis. 3.9; T. Gad 4.7 on love as a gift of
the Spirit). Rabbinic tradition ties faith in God to hope for the world-to-come
(Mek.Beshallah
7 on
Ex 14.31).
Commenting
on Paul's dependence upon pre-existing sources for this triad, Archibald M.
Hunter wrote:
Faith, Hope, Love--A Primitive Christian
Triad.
How many of us realize that 'Faith, hope,
love' is probably a very primitive Christian triad and not the creation of St
Paul?
Firmly linked, as it is, in our minds with
the close of St Paul's sublime hymn in praise of love (1 Cor 13.13) we are
reluctant to admit that this triad is not an inspired ipse dixit, an original collocation of the apostle himself. Yet
several strands of evidence unite to prove that the triad is not Paul's own
coinage, but a piece of pre-Pauline Christianity derived possibly from a saying
of Jesus himself.
The triad is found not only in 1 Cor. 13.13, but
also in 1 Thess. 1.3, 5.8; Rom. 5.1-5; Gal. 5.5-6; Col. 1.4-5; Eph. 4.2-5; Heb.
6.10-12, 10.22-24; 1 Pet. 1.3-8, 21-22, and once or twice in the Apostolic
Fathers.
The following scheme shows how this triadic
formula recurs, in various sequences, throughout early Christian literature.
1 Thess. 1.3. Your work of faith and labour
of love and patience of hope.
1 Thess. 5.8. The breastplate of faith and
love . . . a helmet, the hope of salvation.
Col. 1.4-5. Faith in Christ . . . love to all
. . . the hope which is, etc.
Eph. 4.2-5. Forbearing one another in love .
. . one hope of your calling . . . one Lord, one faith.
Heb. 6:10-12. And the love . . . the fulness
of hope . . . through faith, etc.
1 Pet. 1.3-8. A living hope . . . guarded
through faith . . .whom having not seen, ye love.
1 Pet. 1.21-22. So that your faith and hope .
. . unto unfeigned love.
Heb. 10.22-24. Fulness of faith . . . the
confession of our hope . . . unto love.
Gal. 5.5-6. By faith wait for the hope . . .
through love.
1 Cor. 13.13. And now abideth faith, hope,
love.
Rom. 5.1-5. Justified by faith . . . the hope
of the glory . . . because the love.
Barnabas i.4. Because great faith and love
dwell in you in the hope.
Barnabas xi.8. In faith and love and hope for
many.
Polycarp ad Phil. iii.2, 3. Into the faith
given you . . . when hope follows . . .and love of God and Christ and neighbour
goes before.
N.B. In the last five passages culled
from the New Testament, the same sequence of the graces is observed by three
different writers.
All of this is surely not fortuitous. It
strongly suggests that the triad in Paul is not his own creation, but something
common and apostolic, perhaps a sort of compendium of the Christian life current
in the early apostolic church.
Some incidental features in Paul's method of
quoting the triad lend colour to this conjecture.
1. Consider how it crops up in 1 Cor. 13.
Three points deserve notice. First, why does Paul drag in faith and hope at all
at the end of his hymn in praise of love? The earlier verses of the chapter do
not prepare us for their appearance here. The inference is that the mention of
love suggested the other two members of what was already a traditional triad.
Second, Paul does not as a rule bracket faith
and hope as of equal importance with love.
Third, the words 'these three', following the
mention of 'faith, hope, love', suggest that it is a familiar triad. It is as if Paul says: 'Faith, hope, love--you
know, the well-known three.'
2. Very significant is the almost tell-tale
way in which Paul quotes the triad in 1 Thess. 5.8, 'Putting on the breastplate
of faith and love, and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.'
The figure of the spiritual warrior, and his
panoply is, of course, old and Jewish. Compare Isa. 59.17, 'He put on
righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head.' (Cf.
also Wisdom of Solomon 5.18.)
Now notice (in the Greek) the double genitive
after 'breastplate' in 1 Thess. 5.8. The figure, to be perfect for Paul's
purpose, would have named three pieces of armour--say, the breastplate of
faith, the buckler of love, and the helmet of hope. Not finding the second
piece of arour in the old metaphor, yet desiring to work in the three elements
of his triad, Paul has to write, 'the breastplate of faith and love', and keep
his second piece of armour for 'hope'.
But the phrase 'for an helmet, the hope of
salvation' points to the same conclusion. The original figure spoke of 'a
helmet of salvation' (as indeed we find it in Eph. 6.17). To complete the triad
Paul had to work in 'hope'. He did so, quite patiently, by writing 'the hope of
salvation' and putting 'for an helmet' in apposition to this phrase.
In fine, we have found that Paul combines the
old Jewish figure with the pre-Pauline Christian triad, 'Faith, hope, love',
and that it is only with some difficulty hat he achieves the combination.
Our last problem is this: Where, if St Paul
did not invent the triad, did it originate?
Most scholars are content to call it
traditional and speculate no further. But there is, in my judgment, some reason
for thinking that the triad was inspired by a saying of our Lord.
Macarius, in one of his Homilies (xxxvii),
has preserved a remarkable agraphon
in which I may translate: 'Hearing the Lord saying, Take care of faith and hope through which is begotten the love of God and of man which gives eternal life.' It is rash to
find in this uncanonical saying of the Lord the original of the triad?
We do not find anything in the synoptic
gospels quite parallel to this saying. There αγαπη (love) occurs only twice.
But its use in these two places (as Resch has pointed out), though probably
quite accidental, is nevertheless interesting. In Luke 11.42 we find η αγαπη
του θεου, love in its Godward aspect, which answers exactly to η φιλοθεος
αγαπη, the phrase in Macarius. In Matt. 24.12 we find η αγαπη των πολλων, love
in its manward aspect, which again recalls η φιλανθρωπος αγαπη in Macarius.
This is only a coincidence. I do not press
it. But I do think that the twofold chain of evidence formed by (1) the
recurrence of the triad in Paul, Peter, Hebrews, etc., and (2) the remarkable
saying attributed by Macarius to the Lord, strongly suggests that this triadic
formula is not only a bit of very early Christianity, but may very possibly be
derived from a logion of Jesus. (Archibald
M. Hunter, Paul and His Predecessors
[Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1961], 33-35)
As we see,
the claim that Paul is using a pre-existing triadic formula that originates with
Jesus (or an even earlier source) strengthens the claim by LDS apologists
and scholars that Moroni 7 and other texts with this triad is not based on
anachronistic pilfering of Paul’s writings, but both the Book of Mormon and the
apostle Paul are dependent upon an older source.