Watch and Learn

Book review of Seven Visions by Adam Miller and Rosalynde Welch

We Homo sapiens are a curious bunch, and one way this manifests is in the variety of things we are willing to watch. Spectator sports have a long history: battles to the death between highly valued fighting crickets in ancient China; folks chasing giant wheels of cheese as they roll down hills in Gloucester, England; sporting events around the globe involving balls and speed and organized violence, along with a tremendous amount of money. On the internet, people watch other people watching video game screens. They watch people take purchases out of packaging. They watch and listen to people chewing, and chewing, and chewing. There appears to be virtually no end to what our species will find entertaining.

While these activities don't exert a strong pull on me personally (though I would show up for a cheese-rolling contest), there are some uncommon things that do draw my attention. For instance, I will lean forward in my chair to watch a philosopher and a literary scholar write letters to one another about the ways they see Jesus Christ showing up in a handful of sections across the pages of the Doctrine and Covenants.

In Seven Visions: Images of Christ in the Doctrine and Covenants, the second volume in a planned four-part series on various works in the Latter-day Saint canon of scripture (the first of which is discussed here), we watch Adam Miller and Rosalynde Welch move deftly between contemplation of big-picture ideas and examination of minute details as they seek understanding and share insights with one another. The authors have chosen seven sections from the Doctrine and Covenants, and their analysis of each section comes in the form of letters shared between them, while we read over their shoulders. The subtitle of the book connects with what Adam and Rosalynde (I’ll follow their lead in using first names) see as a central theme of the Doctrine and Covenants as a whole: Joseph Smith’s quest to see the face of Christ.

Coupled with this quest is an overarching theme of the book: “The journey of seeking Christ’s face in the Doctrine and Covenants should be shared. It should be collaborative. We cannot succeed alone, as Saints or disciple-scholars” (4). Adam and Rosalynde’s letter format creates a pleasing intimacy and makes a nice demonstration of the collaboration they advocate. Even if it’s stage-managed, it works for me. Somehow, having this opportunity to observe a conversation between the authors as they explore together and build upon one another’s ideas—all of this feels a little different than reading an essay by either of them.

For example, in answer to Adam’s focus on a phrase about coveting one’s own property, Rosalynde confesses, “I recognize, in the instant of hearing the words, exactly what it feels like both to know that I am called to give up something precious and to suppress that call covetously. It feels like pulling the blankets over my head, like hiding my candle quietly under a bushel, like stashing my silver under the sofa cushions. I see exactly what you mean: covetousness is a kind of blindness, a kind of darkness” (20).

And it’s also simply fun to hear their voices in the text as they swap mission stories about handling extreme heat and the blessings offered by a generous grandma in New Mexico and a generous fig tree in Portugal (35-40). To see these two friends working together reminds me of what a pleasure it is to make meaning, by study and also by faith, with people I cherish.

In the careful work they do together in the text, Rosalynde and Adam illustrate the value that comes from the minutest scrutiny on the level of a word, and also of stepping back to contemplate the complex context of a verse or passage. Accustomed as we are to proof-texting in Sunday School class, where a particular verse is trotted out to illustrate a specific point in the teacher’s outline, it is refreshing to be reminded that any given verse is surrounded by many neighbors, and that looking at the whole neighborhood can have much to tell us.

In Adam’s letter about section 19, for example, he notes the natural division of the content, with verses 1–19 holding together as a group. That first half of the section provides significant revisions for the meaning of endless and eternal, followed by grave admonitions about repentance and vivid descriptions of sore sufferings, for us if we do not repent; for the Savior as he partook of that most bitter of cups. The remainder of the section concerns Martin Harris, who is much preoccupied with the financial risks he faces. Adam notes that the latter half of the section contains counsel for Martin about the sacrifices that await, which will involve much more than the 150 acres that currently concern him (130).

But Adam isn’t just dividing verses into tidy groups. After helping us see how the first verses connect and are distinct from the verses that conclude the section, he goes deeper, and gathers them back together: “I think they’re actually talking about the very same mystery: how we, as Christians, are meant to emulate Christ in our handling of loss and suffering” (13).

What follows is an insightful exploration of the way that we, and Martin Harris, might be as the goats described in Matthew 25, “blind in mortality to God’s present and pressing reality. God came to [us] in the form of suffering—in the form of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the prisoner,” and we failed to respond, being “blind to God’s presence” (14). This is then wrapped into a discussion of the “endless torment” that awaits those on the left hand of God. Along the way he shares insights that invite more exploration: “Given our blindness, we’ve defaulted to seeing eternity as a kind of future-tense quantity when, fundamentally, eternity is more like a present-tense quality. Or we might say: eternity is less like an endless when and more like an immediate how” (15). I’m left to wonder, what is there about these 196-year-old verses speaking about the meaning of eternal that might influence the way we experience the immediate now?

Where Adam zooms out, Rosalynde zooms in, to salutary effect. To this comparison between two halves of a single section we can add the careful comparison of a single word in various verses with the ways we tend to hear it used in everyday conversation. We have seen this already with endless and eternal. We find it again in Rosalynde’s answering letter about section 19, where she brings our focus to the word glory, a word that doesn’t generally get me to pause. Reading glory, I register the flash of a few images, of magnificence, of praise, and I’m off to consider the rest of the sentence.

Rosaynde admits she has sometimes treated it as a filler word, too, but she shows us here what can happen when we stop for a closer look. She asks questions: How does the word’s use in Romans 6 help? What about in Doctrine and Covenants 76? She consults the Bible Dictionary and uses a version of its definition: “When I try to mentally substitute the word for the more specific meaning—‘the sign that God is present in this place’—I’ve found that a passage can come to life for me” (24). She goes on to enlist the aid of verses from Deuteronomy, Acts, Joseph Smith—History, and Revelation. With each new instance, Rosalynde isn’t just making tally marks keeping track of how many times she’s seen this word. She’s building something, forming insights, crafting ideas that she can call upon to further understanding of other passages. Her tour of uses of the word glory brings her to this assertion:

...the scriptures pinpoint a particular way in which glory is mirrored between heaven and earth. God is the source, of course, because he is the source of divine presence. But he shares himself with his children in the act of creation, and thus we carry glory within us in the very fact that we have been created. It’s a little like this: when I think about myself as a daughter, my father and mother automatically become a part of that self because I am a daughter inasmuch as they are my parents. In the same way, my createdness folds the Creator into my being—or, better, the other way round: I am glorious inasmuch as I am his. (25)

Not all the sections that Rosalynde and Adam examine are of the majestic variety. Adam describes the “modest, miscellaneous quality” of section 130, and asserts that it reads like “a collection of orphaned footnotes. It has the look of something secretarial. It has the feel of something scrawled hastily on the back of an envelope when William Clayton, patting his pockets in search of a pen, decided he’d really better be writing some of this stuff down” (104).

Yet such a humble collection provides many deep things to explore. In responding to section 130’s questions about reckoning time for God, angels, prophets, and man, Adam reads verse four as asserting that “temporality is real but relative” (112). He then calls on insights from one of his previous letters to further the project of understanding how time works, noting that “section 19 invited us to think about eternity as a divine dimension of time, a qualitatively divine way of handling time that blesses and redeems time, even as time continues to flow. And helpfully enough, I think section 130 also includes an excellent example of this way of handling time—of ‘coupling’ eternity with all the troubles and blessings of time” (113).

The image Adam conjures makes a striking picture. We see William Clayton’s envelope full of scrawled notes about the nature of time in different parts of the universe, and then watch those ideas being brought into conversation with section 19, in which the Savior of the world appears to overwrite our understanding of the concepts of endless and eternal. Adam ends his letter by bringing the concept of glory back into the conversation. In referring to the way that the Lord doesn’t directly answer Joseph’s specific question about how much time is left, he himself is somewhat cryptic: “Here, eternal glory doesn’t stop time or supplant time or allow us to escape time. Rather, eternity shelters and blesses it” (115). Rosalynde takes up the question of time in her response, with fascinating results:

Both reason and personal experience suggest that the vision of eternal life drawn in this section—eternal life as our continued material association with one another and with the material God in whose image we are made—requires the flow of time. Without time there’s no possibility of change, and without change there’s no possibility for genuine relationships that are at the heart of the Restoration’s doctrine of salvation: relationships of mutual giving and receiving that change us over and over again.

So if eternity is not our liberation from time but the “qualitatively divine way of handling time that blesses and redeems” as you suggest, then what is the quality with which God handles time?... I think God’s characteristic trait in handling time is generosity, or grace (122).

There’s clearly more to be explored here, yet while we can hope for further insights, we aren’t presented with nor are we meant to find a single definitive conclusion about what a given thing means. Rosalynde shares a valuable insight about the ambiguity in section 130:

It’s quite possible that a clearly explained, transparently sourced, systematic version of these teachings, if we can imagine such a thing, would actually be less engaging as scripture—that is, as a place to see Spirit-aided experiences with divinity. The purpose of canonization, under this model, is not to guarantee a text’s doctrinal inerrancy, because scripture is not inerrant. Instead, to designate an inspired text as “canonized scripture” is to set it apart as a holy place in which to share our lives with God and to make it available as common ground for shared exploration with our fellow Saints, a project that has the side effect of bonding us as a people. (119)

With this passage I see Rosalynde inviting us to turn our backs on any regrets we might have about the circumstances that have landed us in our current scriptural landscape. We need not pine for those discourses of Joseph’s for which no transcript is available. We need not regret the loss of the 116 pages or the absence of the gold plates. Rather, in the spirit of a theme that runs throughout the book, she asserts that we don’t need to be waiting for different, better circumstances. God is already here: we can conceive of scripture “as a holy place in which to share our lives with God,” and the common ground upon which our shared exploration can build bonds among us as Saints.

Overall, Seven Visions showcases an inspiring collection of insights coming from the authors’ attention at many levels and their skillful use of a wide range of techniques for analysis. It’s a pleasure for me to watch these two friends perform, but I don’t think I’m meant to remain a simple spectator. While Adam and Rosalynde don’t admit to an explicit pedagogical purpose for their efforts, the way they unfold their observations and ruminations invites us to try our hand at close, collaborative reading of scripture. The enjoyment they exhibit in their work together makes me want to join in. So, while we wait for the next volume in the series to appear (focused on poetry in the Old Testament, I’m told), we might leave off being spectators, and join with friends, including other Saints and disciple-scholars, as we, too, seek for images of Christ.

Listen to Adam and Rosalynde discuss their book here. You can also purchase a copy of Seven Visions here.

Lori Forsyth is Wayfare’s managing editor. She’s happiest when connecting ideas and discussing them with friends. She edits in several places and writes in a few (often LoriNotes.wordpress.com). She has a hard time passing up a good analogy.

Art by Fra Angelico.