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)
