Jacob demonstrates clearly that redemption and living faithfully are necessarily dialogical endeavors. Because all knowledge is situated and partial, individual objective knowledge is not possible. Jacob embodies the belief that knowledge “can never be a relation between one knower and the entire world, for one knower is never located in relation to the entire world.” As a result, he incorporates others’ voices and perspectives into his ministry, thereby showing that remaining in dialogue and laboring interdependently with others is essential to salvation and a flourishing life.
Jacob exemplifies epistemic humility by taking the lived experience of women seriously and making it a central influence upon his ministry (Jacob 2:31–32). Confronted with their devastating and disempowered reality, which does not affect him directly, Jacob resists the temptation to resort to denial, dismissiveness, or getting them to question their own reality. Although the Nephite men are the social group he would most naturally identify with, he responds with empathy and advocacy to the women’s sorrow over inequality and being sexually violated, evincing that he is able to think and feel outside of his own social location. Though it would have been easy for his privileged position as a Nephite male and the highest religious authority to lead him to universalize his own experience—a tendency indicative of social privilege—he resists that temptation and instead enacts the humility to learn from others with disparate identities what existence within his own society is like for them. Through his ministry, he clearly evinces his understanding that his experience—that of the dominant social location—does not constitute all human experience. By refusing to project his orientation to the world and his perspectives onto others, he avails himself of genuinely learning how society must improve and then advocates for change.
Despite having relative privilege, he does not abuse it by letting it shield him from the vulnerable and courageous task of calling out the most dominant group in society. Instead, his empathy for the marginalized impels him to act; this is in part because he bravely opens himself up to how the Nephite women’s story maps onto his own story as a person who was once disempowered and treated unjustly in his family without suppressing this pain or appropriating the women’s story (see 2 Nephi 2:1). By staying in touch with his own vulnerable past, he can empathize with others in their varied and unique forms of vulnerability rather than taking refuge in his present safety and position of power. By remaining open, Jacob demonstrates more than epistemic humility, going to the depths to which the Savior would go to understand others. In the self-emptying acts of incarnation and atonement, Christ “renounces the God’s eye point of view,” taking on a particular body and social location to learn from embodied experience what the divine otherwise only knows cognitively (see Alma 7:11–13). Jacob participates in the epistemic equivalent of what the atonement effects existentially by viewing the witness of others as credible and then doing the work to create the conditions for their amelioration. Jacob’s consecration illustrates that giving oneself and making one’s life sacred includes attending deeply to the lived experience of the marginalized and working for social change (see 2 Nephi 2:2 and Jacob 1:18).
This same humility allows him to see the Lamanites and Sherem as teachers, who like Jacob are crucial sources of truth about what it means for the Nephites to live faithfully. Although Jacob denies that the Lamanites, and likewise Sherem, are completely godly (Jacob 7:23–24), he enables them to function as teachers of godliness, recognizing that because they bear the image of God, they can teach others something about goodness. As one Protestant theologian notes: “If we view ourselves as created beings, we see God everywhere; if not, then we see God nowhere.” To learn from the very other whom we would be inclined to dismiss requires us to remember our equality—to remember that we are all less than dust and are all dependent on Christ’s atonement. Beyond seeing oneself and all others as created, one must see everyone as holy. Paul writes, “Everything is pure for someone whose heart is pure” (Titus 1:15). The humility born of remembering that one is a creature, not the Creator, and striving to purify one’s heart enables seeing all others as potential teachers.
These godly practices equip Jacob to take Sherem seriously, modeling the benefits and blessings that result from doing more than discounting someone with an antagonistic religious viewpoint. Jacob’s written witness culminates in a confrontation in which Sherem seeks to dissolve Jacob’s testimony of Christ and discredit his teachings. Jacob’s treatment of Sherem is unique in the Book of Mormon because, rather than silencing him, Jacob gives Sherem the opportunity to repent and to influence the Nephites for good by testifying of Christ and the atonement. It is Jacob’s humility and love for his neighbor that makes it possible for Sherem to be an instrument of God. Rather than proving his spiritual authority by discounting Sherem, Jacob helps Sherem to recollect and reaffirm the truth he already knows.
Jacob makes himself available to Sherem, not only to protect his people from false teachings or to reinforce his own ministry, but also to respond to Sherem’s need. Implicit in their exchange is Jacob’s underlying belief that Sherem is worth contending with—he is a soul worth saving. Jacob does not exalt himself above Sherem on the grounds of his priestly status or his commitment to Christ. He abases himself and finally comes face-to-face with Sherem in a way consonant with Paul’s vision for Christian community. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Philip. 2:3–4, NRSV). The final result is a dual witness of Christ, made possible as Jacob and Sherem willingly remain in dialogue so that the divine will can work through both of them to accomplish its own pleasure rather than either of the outcomes that Jacob or Sherem anticipated.
Jacob understands that cleaving to God (see Jacob 6:5), which means “to stick fast or adhere” to God in the sense of knowing and carrying out God’s will, entails cleaving to others as indispensable sources of divine truth. It further requires cleaving, or splitting, from erroneous conceptions of himself as an individual capable of obtaining and teaching objective truth independent of others. For Jacob, cleaving from an erroneous conception of himself as an isolated knower and cleaving to others to attain truth and work for justice relies on a communal model for gaining knowledge that includes “elaborate specificity and difference and the loving care people might take to learn how to see faithfully from another’s point of view.” Latter-day Saints can learn from Jacob that faithful and empathic attention to all types of embodied perspectives and experience allows their diverse community to attend to the needs of everyone and better attain a fullness of truth.
Deidre Nicole Green is Assistant Professor of Latter-day Saint/Mormon Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, where she offers courses on Christian theology and philosophy of religion. Her research focuses on constructive feminist theology and philosophy of religion, drawing on the thought of Søren Kierkegaard to respond to contemporary issues in these disciplines. She is the author of “Jacob: A Brief Theological Introduction.”
Art by Brian Kershisnik.