[Commenting on D&C 45:3-5:]
It appears, at first glance, that this scripture teaches that
the Father must be appeased by the blood of Christ so that the Father can be
glorified. This scripture must be construed to implicitly suggest that the
Father would impose judgment and penalty upon sinning humankind except the Son
has persuaded him otherwise by shedding his blood to propitiate the Father’s
wrath. However, I suggest the advantages of adopting a reading that does not
make the Father appear to be an angry and punitive Go, demanding a pound of
flesh from his Son to appease his anger. It seems to me that this scripture is
better seen as an expression of the love of the Son and of the Father’s love
for the Son in which the Father honors the Son by recognizing him as the one
who intercedes as mediator. The point of this scripture is not propitiation but
the Father’s gift of his Son is that he also participates in the gift of the
Atonement. That is, the focal point of this scripture is the joint gift: “the
blood of him whom thou gavest.” Christ gives his blood to save us—but so does
the Father. The father gave the blood of his own Son to express his love for us
and the unity of the Father and the Son in the Atonement. As any loving father
knows, he would rather suffer the pain and anguish himself rather than have his
son do it. This shared suffering in the suffering of the Son seems to me to be
the point of the scripture. In this way, the blood of Christ becomes a joint
gift to us from both the Father and the Son to express their love to us. The Father
is not propitiated or appeased in his anger—and this scripture says nothing of
God’s anger or wrath. Rather, it is the shared gift of life that they both
offer to us to persuade us to repent, and not to persuade the Father to treat
us with love—for he needs no such persuasion.
Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: The Problems of
Theism and the Love of God (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2006), 268-69
