Behold, I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I
created the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are. I was with
the Father from the beginning. I am in the Father, and the Father in me; and in
me hath the Father glorified his name. (3 Nephi 9:15)
Commenting
on the Christology of this text, Brant Gardner wrote:
It was obvious to all who heard this voice
that a divine being was speaking. Now the voice declares himself to be the God—in particular, the God of the
Nephites prophets. This is the God who is the creator. This is the God who is
the Son. This is the God who was with and “in the Father, and the Father in me.”
This is Yahweh come down to earth.
Christology: The declaration of identity by the Messiah
provides a turning point in the Nephite understanding of deity. It parallels a
similar theological development after Christ’s ministry in the Old World. In
the New World, the Nephites understood their God as Yahweh and also understood
him as the Atoning Messiah who would come . . . Their emphasis on the oneness
of God is paralleled in the Old Testament by the theological understanding of
the one God. In both the Old World (by this time) and the New, Yahweh’s people
believed in one God (Alma 33:1).
The Messiah’s arrival in the New World
clarifies the Nephites’ theological conception of God. The presence of
Yahweh-Messiah on the earth raised the critical question of the unity of God,
and in both the Old World and the New the Savior made certain to honor his
Father even as he accepted his own magnificent role. The blurring of identity
between God the Father and God the Son that we have seen earlier will no longer
occur (Morm. 9:37). From this point on, the distinction is clear and obvious, a
clarity that comes from the Atoning Messiah himself who declares himself
creator, but Son of God. In 1 Nephi 11:18, which originally read, “Mary the
mother of God,” “son of” was added later to provide the current reading: “Mary
the mother of the Son of God.” . . . The “Son of God” designation is not a
later addition, but part of the original record. Nevertheless, Nephites still
understood Yahweh as God.
Apologetics: The order in which Joseph Smith
translated the plates after the loss of the 116 manuscript pages from the book
of Lehi has generated two possibilities . . . One possibility is that Joseph
started over again with the small plates. The second is that he continued from
where he left off (with Mosiah), then translated the small plates later.
Brent Lee Metcalfe, after presenting evidence
of the second possibility, used it to critique the Book of Mormon as Joseph
Smith’s creation: “From the Lehites’ harrowing escape from Jerusalem to Moroni’s
valedictory, the Nephite storyline is relatively fluid but not without
exception. Occasionally the middle section of the book (Mosiah and Alma) displays
concepts which are less well developed than in the initial section (1
Nephi-Omni). These earlier portions are more congruent with later sections.” He
argues that the Book of Mormon understanding of Jesus Christ developed after 3
Nephi and that this “developed” Christology appears in the 1 Nephi-Omni
material.
This argument is an interesting one, but it
fails on two points. First, the “developing doctrine” theory assumes that the 1
Nephi-Omi material would have been readily available to the middle writers
(Mosiah-3 Ne.), and therefore should have influenced them with this more developed
theology. That assumption contradicts the text, which shows that the 1
Nephi-Omi material (small plates of Nephi) was not only a separate tradition but
was not particularly well known. Mormon was unaware of the small plates’
existence before he came across them while searching among the records (W of M
1:3). The small plate material is not obviously quoted in the later sections,
and references that parallel the material (such as Lehi’s foundational promise)
apparently came from the large plates, not Nephi’s small plates.
More importantly, this assumption of
developmental Christology conflicts with the Book of Mormon’s presentation of
the Messiah’s identity. From 1 Nephi to 3 Nephi, the Messiah (Yahweh) is
consistently identified as God and as both father and son . . . After the Savior’s
appearance, the theological use of father and son for Yahweh falls into disuse
and the Most High God is the Father and Jesus the Atoning Messiah is the Son. (Brant
A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical
and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Volume 5: Helaman Through Third
Nephi [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2007], 316-18)
For a
discussion of the pre-exilic theology of the Book of Mormon and its
relationship to the Christology therein, see Brant’s paper from the 2003 Fair
Mormon Conference talk: