I agree that there is some ambiguity to what the covenant might entail for us futurally as it is a covenant we take on faith.

“. . . that they may . . . witness unto the, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to . . . keep his commandments which he hath given them.”

The counter-argument (which I’m more sympathetic to) is that these commandments entail, for example, obeying prophets who are able to receive new revelation, so it seems we’re promising to obey something we don’t know the specifics about yet.

But how is that a covenant, or what is the covenant? It is the covenant made between the Father and the Son: “Here am I, send me.” You covenant to do you know not what. That is, you bind yourself to that person, but not with any foresight as to what that means. Just like the covenant of marriage: you bind yourself to your spouse, though you have no idea what that means yet, nor will you have any idea what that means until things are happening. (Isn’t this part of the implication of Jesus’ surprise in Gethsemane? He didn’t know how shockingly painful this was going to be, but He had covenanted, bound Himself, to the Father, and there was no way out now but to break that bond.) This, at any rate, is how I read covenant. (The comparison to marriage, by the way, I got from Jim F. in a paper he wrote recently.)

Rob #14: I think you’re right in describing the common view in the Church, and there are more scriptures about this than the blog I referred to let on. Thinking about this deepens my appreciation for how uniquely Mormon this notion of making a covenant at baptism is. I think the lack of Paul’s writing on this topic in particular can explain a lot of why the rest of Christianity has differing views on this (incl. infant baptism in particular).

But I’m not so sure about a couple things. First, is this view you describe the way that covenants are described in the scriptures? The Abrahamic “Covenant” for example seems to be an unconditional covenant to me (he didn’t promise God anything in return). Also, I think the NT, Paul esp., uses the term covenant in a way that is a one-way unconditional promise like the Abrahamic Covenant. These scriptural precedents make me question the way I’ve typically read this in the D&C, esp. regarding the new and everlasting covenant… (though the “I the Lord am bound when you do what I say, but when you do not what I say ye have no promise” passage seems to support the view you’ve described).

The covenant we make at baptism is repenatnce and willingness to obey all that God commands us to do. If we end up breaking a temple covenant or priesthood covenant later on in life, all we really do is break our own baptismal covenant. When we are interviewed before baptism, we must come clean of our past sins and be in a repentant state. As we do this we accept the atonement in our behalf. A covenant is really nothing more than a promise. The promise we make to god is that we are willing to give up a sinful life in turn for his atoneing power in our lives. It is a covenant because both sides make promises, either inward or outward, that certain principles will be met. For us it is a promise that we will take upon the name of Jesus Christ. For God it is a promise that he will lift us up at the last day. According to the “guide to the scriptures”, it states that a covenant is “an agreement between God and man”.

What I find interesting about covenants is that all men must enter into covenant with the lord in order to be pulled out of the devils grasp. We don’t just yell help me and suddenly he is going to bring us out of that wrath with no strings attached. He may help us find the way to bring ourselves to the door where he can help, but then we must obey his command to repent and be baptized. This is the covenant that brings us out of the devils grasp, it is the door for which we enter into salvation.

Salvation could not possibly come to us without a covenant made. Or in other words- Salvation could not possibly come to us without reaching an agreement with god as to why he should save us from the devils grasp. The agreement (covenant) is that we will be obedient to god’s commands, which include faith, repenatnce and baptism in turn that god will agree to save us from further wrath.

On a related note, I read an interesting blog post somewhere (I thought it was at BCC but can’t find it…) questioning the notion of “covenants we make at baptism.” I’d be interested in hearing more thoughts on that topic. In short, the idea is that we don’t, for example, nod our head and say yes and agree to do something specific when we our baptized, so in what sense are we really making a conscious covenant?

The next question I’m particularly interested in is Joe’s question #3 about the paired usage of “saving doctrines and ordinances.” To beat Joe to the linguistic-deconstruction punch, it seems historically the Hebrew chuqqah is what is used in the OT to mean ordinances, a word which in Hebrew also can mean “statute, limit, enactment, something prescribed” (I’ll leave the English etymology for Joe or others…). Also, it seems it is often translated “custom” which I think is very intereting b/c it adds an historical-context connotation. All of this, I think, points to trying to understand the meaning of not only what we typically think of as ordinances (sacrament, baptism, temple ordinances, etc.), but also commandments that are perhaps more historically-based than “eternal, unalterable, unchanging” doctrines–like the Word of Wisdom for example, something I don’t think I have a very good handle on the original D&C 89 meaning of (see the wiki for some fairly recent discussion), but I do think there are ways that the Word of Wisdom has taken on cultural and historical meaning (e.g. symbolic of our willingness to do whatever is asked of us, even if we don’t understand all the reasons–I’m thinking/hoping Joe will disagree with me here…).

I don’t believe the injunction to preach nothing save faith and repentance means that you are to teach only the SUBJECTS of faith and repentance, but that whatever subject you teach, you must accomplish the sole task of building faith and calling to repentance. I imagine that Alma’s little church in the wilderness didn’t have any manuals, but they did have the scriptures. That is, they did not have a particular subject matter to teach, and they did not have a string of interrelated scriptures they were to draw on (not to mention the stories, the examples, the object-lessons, etc.). As a result, I imagine that his priests and teachers did what most preachers did in the Christian tradition for a very long time: they took up a particular text somewhere in the scriptures, and they explored it in an attempt to build faith and call to repentance.

So when I spent three days teaching the first verse of Nephi, I never at all suggested that we had an absolute knowledge of anything we were saying (in fact, I made the kids to ALL the thinking; they didn’t have answers from me really at all). The point of the exercise was to force the kids to think about the words, to look carefully at the meaning of phrases, to analyze the structure of the verse, to think critically about connections elsewhere in the scriptures, etc. But we never came up with any answers. The three days, however, were very faith-promoting (the kids began to realize that there is a lot more in the scriptures than they had ever thought, and they began to have a very real faith in word: they trusted that the scriptures–that God–had something to say to them and that they should open their ears to hear it), and the kids began to repent (to turn, that is, to the scriptures again, to seek understanding, to change their behavior in class and out of class–as I began to hear very quickly from parents and leaders, even within the first week of teaching). I don’t know that I even had to say “faith” or “repentance,” but the aim of the whole experience was to embody, right in class, both faith and repentance, and the kids grew in faith and repented, though the subject was never faith or repentance.

In a sense, isn’t this tied to the injunction against the philosophies of men, mingled with scripture? If we take as our text “faith” or “repentance” or whatever topic, haven’t we begun with a philosophy, a concept, etc., and then when we go to the scriptures we are mingling those philosophies (which stick around) with scripture. Rather, we should be teaching/learning scripture (the actual text), mingled with the philosophies of men: we should be buried in the text itself, reading it for all it is worth, and then we should be taking up the things we have always been taught, etc., and questioning them according to the text itself. So it seems to me.

The Handbook is not written for the general Church community, only the community of leaders (bishops and stake presidents?). Since I’m not part of that community of leaders, it doesn’t really matter how I think the Handbook should be interpreted. What matters to me is how my bishop interprets that manual, what he thinks is speculative and controversial, and perhaps what other members in my ward think is speculative and controversial. Now, I might be able to change the mind of my bishop or others by appealing to scriptures and what not, but no matter how right I think I may be (or I “actually” may be, if you believe there is such a thing), it is irrelevant: if my bishop and stake president think I am speculative and controversial, I am–in the most relevant, though not necessarily “correct,” sense of the word–speculative and controversial. As a member of my ward community, I think it is very important that I show respect to the recognized leader of this community (and this is where I think there are lots of interesting questions about what the roles of the different ward members in the ward community are).

Regarding “preaching nothing save faith and repentance,” I’m very curious to hear others’ thoughts on this. Should this be applied only to missionaries or to Sunday teachers and speakers also? If it applies to Sunday teachers, how does Joe’s teaching approach of asking why Nephi started with a careful deconstruction of “I, Nephi” square with this? I’m sure there are many who would say asking questions of the text is very speculative b/c we can’t answer such questions confidently–all we have is the text of the scriptures and we should just take the plainest meaning of those words, where plainest can be take as whatever reinforces (or “builds our testimony”) of what we basically already know about faith and repentance. If the goal is to avoid controversy and speculation, it seems it is better for us to stick to General Authority interpretations or Church-correlated material that tells us what confusing scriptures mean. (To be clear, this isn’t my view, I’m just posing the question to hear how others would respond….)

Rob also brings up the question of manuals, which I’m surprised we haven’t come up against, yet. That is a whole different topic for me, one that I deal with far more often than the present one. If there is interest in that topic, it might be worth bringing up the issue on a thread of its own.

First off I like the paragraph you cited from the handbook of instructions. There is an issue though of how we distinguish between something that is in the scriptures and what is in say a manual. The manual is not scripture even though it may highlight what past and living prophets say. The problem arises when we discuss the saving principles of the gospel fromt the scriptures only to be refuted by the manual itself! For instance-

In deacon’s quorum about a year ago or so we were talking about sin and it’s consequences. I drew a simple diagram on the board showing a simplified version of the saving plan of salvation and that all sin must be conquered. God does not allow sin. I then spoke that if one hasn’t repented of his sinful things, great or small, he must be cast off into outer darkness. This “is a saving doctrine” as found in the scriptures. But then it was also brought up that there would be a different salvation for those who could not live worthy to perfection. The problem is though, that doctrine of salvation (differing degrees) is not found in the scripture, in fact there is only “one type” of salvation spoken of and it must include “ordinances”.

One of my complaints has always been that if a person is saved from the devil, but is not saved into the Celestial kingdom, exactly what are the “saving ordinances” for those people. I have heard answers from everything like “well they suffer for their own sins and become cleansed that way” or “well they did accept the gospel, but only after seeing that there was no other way in spirit prison, therfor they will still be damned”. Neither of those two “doctrines” are found in the scriptures. In fact, to some, they could be considered a “speculative or controversial” teachings.

One of the most common things that is almost “always” left out of teaching the plan of salvation, is that in order to receive “salvation” from the devil for anyone, spirit prison included, one “must accept the gospel” and show obedience to “saving ordinances” like repentance and baptism! There is no other way that man can be saved from the devil an his eternal doom. Problem is though, I can’t teach that doctrine because it is not what we of the church have generally “interpreted” to be true. But in so doing, we unknowingly contradict ourselves and our very guidelines for teaching itself!

It is definatly a mind boggling paradox that we have created for ourselves- teach only what the scriptures say and what the prophets teach even though they might not always mesh with each other and end up being a thing of genuine speculation and controversy!

I am in favor of just teaching out of the scriptures as a collective whole rather than rely on what others have said or what might be in the teaching manual when it doesn’t jive with the scriptures!

First, that the paragraph does not mention “in official publications” is precisely the sort of ambiguity I am talking about. For that matter, it does not say “presidents of the Latter-day Saint Church,” so that “prophets” is itself ambiguous. I think Douglas is right ask what the parameters are.

Second, I am convinced that kids (especially 14-18 year olds) “turn on” precisely when the scriptures are taken seriously. My experience with youth (a couple of years of teaching seminary students, two years in the YM program, etc.) is that they “turn off” when the scriptures are treated marginally, are treated as a source for the same old ideas they have heard. Try this sometime: have your students open their scriptures to 1 Nephi 1:1. Have someone start reading. They pick up that droning voice they always get and the class begins to stare at the wall. As soon as the student has read “I, Nephi” say abruptly and quite loudly: “Stop!” Follow immediately with a series of questions about those two words: “Why mention his name?” “Why would he begin with ‘I’ when almost no one does that in the Old Testament?” “Why does Nephi both to summarize his life when he is writing about God?” etc. Reject simplistic answers, force them to think. Then let the student begin reading again, “having been born…” “Stop! Why would he tell us about his birth?” “Why does he say ‘having been born’ instead of ‘I, Nephi, was born’?” And on and on.

When I taught the Book of Mormon to an all-senior early morning class (all 17-18 years old, and the class that had driven out a dozen teachers in three years; I was told, by the way, that they hated the gospel, the scriptures, etc., and the only way to teach was to play enough games that they didn’t hate you), we spent the first three days on this first verse, picking apart every word. The rest of the year was golden (I think I did have to say “Please you two, quiet down” once during the year), and they were so involved in the scriptures. We never played a single game, did only one “activity,” had no handouts, or anything like that. We came every morning and buried ourselves in the scriptures, picking apart everything.

If this was an isolated incident, I’d pass it off as such, but this has been universal. I think the scriptures are precisely what the kids want.

But I probably should have posted this to the other thread (what does a 16-17 year-old mean…).

A challenge I have, and hope to overcome this year is that opening the scriptures in my class
(16 to 17 year olds) is tantamount to self destruction, as the kids seem to “turn off” when we do this.

Can you provide a link to the new cool thang discussion? I’ll look for it myself but a link is always welcome.

We resently had a discussion of what doctrine is over at New Cool Thang. I learned alot.

Probably yes.