And never have I showed myself unto man whom I
have created, for never has man believed in me as thou hast. Seest thou that ye
are created after mine own image? Yea, even all men were created in the beginning
after mine own image. (Ether 3:15)
Commenting on this verse, Joseph M. Spencer wrote that:
Interpretation of Ether 3:15 in the literature has
largely focused on the apparent contradiction between the Lord’s claim in this
passage that he had never “shewed [him]self unto man” and passages elsewhere in
uniquely Mormon scripture that refer to antediluvian (and therefore
pre-Jaredite) appearances of the Lord to mortal human beings. Primarily
concerned to reconcile passages from distinct scriptural texts in the name of
doctrinal consistency, interpreters have largely overlooked that seems to be
the primary point of the Lord’s words—namely, that his appearance was unique in
responding to a unique sort of faith. This latter interpretation has, however,
been set forth by at least two readers of the Book of Mormon: Daniel Ludlow and
Jeffrey Holland. The latter makes the case especially forcefully, paraphrasing
Ether 3:15 as follows: “Never have I showed myself unto man in this manner,
without my volition, driven solely by the faith of the beholder.” Holland
explains:
As a rule, prophets are invited into the
presence of the Lord, are bidden to enter his presence by him and only with his
sanction. The brother of Jared, on the other hand, seems to have thrust himself
through the veil, not as an unwelcome guest but perhaps technically as an uninvited
one. . . . The only way that faith could be so remarkable was its ability to
take the prophet, uninvited, where others had been able to go only with God’s
bidding. (Jeffrey R. Holland, Christ and the New Covenant [Salt Lake
City: Deseret Book, 1997, 23; emphasis in original. See also Daniel H. Ludlow, A
Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon [Salt Lake City: Deseret
Book, 1976], 318)
This interpretation helps reveal the stark
contrast between the brother of Jared, the father of the noncovenant people to
which Moroni would draw the attention of his gentile readers, and Abraham, the
father of the covenant people on which the rest of the Book of Mormon focuses.
Where Abraham is definitively the called one, the one who—unlike Adam before
him—responded to God’s call with “Here am I!” (see especially Genesis 22:1, 7,
11), the brother of Jared is the uncalled or unbidden but nonetheless
faithful one. As a model for the similarly uncalled Gentiles, the brother
of Jared displays a sort of non-Abrahamic faith that, if imitated by Gentiles generally,
can result in “the unfolding [of] all [of God’s] revelations” (Ether 4:7).
According to Moroni, it might be noted, the
prospects are bleak for the Gentiles if they refuse to follow the revolutionary
religious pattern established by the brother of Jared. While a remnant of covenant
Israel remains at the end of Nephite history—the remnant to which the Book of
Mormon itself is to be delivered to inform them of their covenantal status—nothing
of the noncovenantal Jaredites remain at the end of their sad history. For the
Gentiles, it seems, Moroni sees two options: faith like the brother of Jared or
annihilation without survivors. Indeed, Moroni states this point straightforwardly
at the outset of his abridgment of the Jaredite record: “This cometh unto you,
O ye Gentiles, . . . that ye may not bring down the fulness of the wrath of God
upon you as the inhabitants of the land hath hitherto done” (Ether 2:11) (Don
Bradly suggested to me that this message would have been all the more stark had
the book of Moroni had not been—expectedly, according to the text [see Moroni
1:1]—added at the end of the volume. Had the original plan been followed, the
Book of Mormon would have concluded with the utter annihilation of the gentile
Jaredites). (Joseph M. Spencer, The Anatomy of Book of Mormon Theology,
2 vols. [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2021], 1:283-4)
