Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Truman G. Madsen (1926-2009) Addressing Christology



The characterization of "pure love" as "bestowed," something with which we may be "filled," becomes personified in the portrait of Jesus Christ in the "Fifth Gospel," Third Nephi. This picture, in fact, is more than a sufficient answer to the query, "Why another book?" For here, surely, is the heart of the Book of Mormon. In this segment of the life of Christ, otherwise unknown, He is a resurrected, composite self (III Nephi 11-26). He has received "the glory of the Father" and dares to apply the word "perfect" to Himself. His is not an abstract, or metaphysical, or "utterly other" perfection. He is, in all the highest senses of flesh and spirit, a personality. He can be seen, felt, embraced--loved. He is the revelation of the Father, not because "two natures" are combined but because He is now exactly like the Father in nature. He is the revelation of man, not because He has condescended to act like one but because He has now become what man may become. He is still "troubled" by the degradations of Israel. He ministers and responds to a multitude who have great spiritual capacities. His heart is "filled with compassion." He kneels with them in prayer, consumed by "the will of the Father." He calls down upon them the powers of the Spirit, first its purifying, then its glorifying, and then, I believe, its sealing powers. He weeps and then weeps again as he blesses their children. He prays in ways that reach beyond mortal grasp, and yet "their hearts were opened and they did understand in their hearts the words which he prayed."(III Nephi 19:33; cf. 17:14-17. [Italics mine.]) This is the highest possible order of existence.

Although they profess monotheism, our Christian creeds actually teach two kinds of God. They retain only shadows of Christ's personality, or, if they seriously affirm it, they likewise affirm that there is an unconditioned, non-spatial Something that is the "real" and "ultimate" Deity. They permit us, of course, to think of God in personal terms, provided we do not assume our images to be literally true (A few contemporary writers have described a more immanent, personal God, but the usual emphasis is still on the transcendence of Deity.). But through Joseph Smith's recovery of this portrait in the Book of Mormon and its confirmation in his own experience, we know that the Living Christ is a Christ of response, who not only feels all we feel, and by similar processes, but wills us to feel all He feels. The spectrum of affection, presently limited in us, is filled out fully in Him, not because He is less personal than we but because He is more. )(Truman G. Madsen, "Joseph Smith and the Sources of Love," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. 1, No. 1 [Spring 1966]:123-24)