I have Terryl Given’s landmark book, By The Hand of Mormon (Oxford University Press, 2002), opened in front of me.  He writes,

“Jeremiah is told that before he was in the belly, God knew him and ordained him a prophet (Jer. 1:5).  Joseph fleshes out a concept of premortal existence that encompasses man, fallen angels, Jesus Christ, and mortal existence that encompasses man, fallen angles, Jesus Christ, and Lucifer.  In none of these cases, or a dozen others that could be mentioned, could one make a reasonable, theological defense of Joseph’s ampler enactment of these principles and practices on the basis of the few paltry biblical allusions that exist.  Their insufficiency, their incompleteness is very much to Joseph’s purposes.  They are the feeble fragments that point to an insoluble absence, to frustrating gaps in the historical record, to the poverty and corruption of a text that leaves us in a state of bewildered spiritual deprivation (48).

But you see, the Scriptures did not abandon me to poverty.  Where Givens rashly proclaims the trustworthy Bible is corrupt, I believe what Christ and the apostles say about biblical scripture.  In them is life.  In them, I am enlightened, discovering the answers to all my fundamental questions about life—where I came from, why I exist, and where I am headed.  The gospel of Scripture is unvarnished and sufficient.

 

Yet Terryl Givens boldly asserts,

Joseph Smith is no Luther, poring over the scriptures to provide revisionist interpretations of Christian doctrine, or a King Josiah, rediscovering neglected scrolls of scripture.  He is Moses, bringing down utterly new tablets from the mount, to a people possessed of shadowy recollections of a former, fuller knowledge of Jehovah (48)

So no wonder, he titles his FAIR session, When Souls Had Wings:  What the Western Tradition Has to Teach Us About Pre-Existence, because you won’t find preexistence of mortals fundamentally taught in the traditional scriptures.  Only the uniqueness of Jesus Christ is trumpeted.  He alone shines in His divine pre-human existence.

 

Though Givens doesn’t give biblical proof, he takes you on a journey from Mesopotamian texts and Marduk to Augustine.  After placing Augustine’s four views on the screen, the speaker questions the creationism view.  If God is continually involved in the work of creating ex nihilo spirits, how can a spirit, fresh from God’s hand, have the taint of original sin?  My short answer for tonight would be Romans 5.

But Givens clearly chooses the view that he describes, “Spirits descending from heaven like rain,” (also emphasizing man’s choice so we cannot blame God).  He tries to support how the traditional Christian view of a beginning and no end is arbitrary and asymmetrical.  It is lopsided.  The Christian scheme is inelegant.

 

For the sake of time, Givens fast forwards to the future, quoting Dr. Edward Beecher,

God, in the beginning, created a race of spiritual beings.  These he constituted pre-agents.  In this primal state of affairs, myriads of the race sinned and fell.  Still the Divine Being was inclined to mercy, and of His own sovereign will he fashioned this world as a vast, moral hospital, in which he graciously allowed these fallen and guilty wretches their present state of probation, and gave them mortal bodies corresponding to their material condition.

Philosophically, Givens asks, “If God is ontological distinct, how does He bridge the gap?”  We must be possessed by a spirit that comes from God’s presence.  Going back to the beginning of his lecture, I am assuming that this idea is what he thinks provides the energy for theosis.

 

In conclusion, he suggests that the demise of the doctrine of man’s pre-existence among several things came about with the centering in on grace by Augustine and others.  I smiled.  The one doctrine does indeed crowd out the other.  Whereas, Givens looks to the doctrine of preexistence in satisfying logical, moral, and aesthetical views for the heart, I look to the grace alone doctrine to the glory of God as the continual heart feast.