Wrestling the Angel

Wrestling the Angel September 18, 2014

Terryl Givens’s forthcoming Wrestling the Angel is the first of a two-volume study of the foundations of Mormon theology and practice. Givens admits that Mormonism, for all its roots in Christian Scriptures, diverges “radically” from traditional Christianity, and he locates the difference in “a distinctive cosmology and metaphysics” which is developed through an “unconventional narrative of human identity and a re-envisioned divine nature.” That cosmology is the focus of this first volume. The second volume will take up Mormon ecclesiology and sacramental theology.

The divergence from creedal Christianity begins with creation. Though Mormons agree that God is the “supreme intelligence” of the universe, he is not the Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. On the contrary, human souls have existed from eternity, and are shaped into spirit forms by the Heavenly Father and Mother. 

In contrast to other theories of pre-existent souls, Mormons don’t believe that embodiment is a demotion. God himself is embodied, so when the souls take on material bodies, they are becoming more, not less, like God. Embodiment is not a Gnostic fall, nor do Mormons believe in original or inherited sin. But embodiment does present a variety of moral challenges, and the perfection of the embodied human being depends on his or her ability to overcome the challenges of embodiment. Sin is a necessary part of moral formation, but human beings cannot overcome their sin and reach their perfection without outside help. 

Hence Jesus, who rescues human beings from sin and mediates the freedom humans need to “re-choose.” Life becomes a continuous repentance, a process of self-correction that ultimately leads to participation in divine nature and divine indwelling, which is the destiny of embodied human souls. Mormon sacraments – Baptism, the Supper, and especially the eternal binding of the family – are the means for individuals to become full participants in this self-correction and to reach the goal of theosis.

Givens recognizes the roots of this theology in nineteenth-century American Restorationism, but he also places Joseph Smith within the larger currents of his time, claiming that he was most a child of his age in his commitment to a dynamic, “fundamentally Romantic” view of the world.

Givens, a practicing Mormon, presents a clear, relatively non-apologetic account of Mormon theology, one that honestly admits its fundamental divergences from orthodox Christianity. This first volume is a good place to get Mormon theology straight.


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