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First Principles and Ordinances: The Fourth Article of Faith in Light of the Temple
Religion is not lived alone. A fresh focus on our relationships with God and other people can transform our understanding and experience of the Latter-day Saint gospel basics of faith, repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. In this book, Samuel M. Brown highlights continuity between the gospel’s first principles and ordinances and the highest ordinances of LDS temple worship. After encountering his tapestry woven of personal stories, scripture, LDS history, and perspectives of other religious traditions, you’ll never read the Fourth Article of Faith the same way again.
167 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2014
23 people are currently reading
200 people want to read
About the author
Samuel Morris Brown
7 books62 followersSamuel Morris Brown (born 1972), a medical researcher and physician, is Assistant Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Associate in the Division of Medical Ethics and Humanities at the University of Utah and attending physician in the Shock Trauma Intensive Care Unit at Intermountain Medical Center. He investigates hidden rhythms in heart function during life-threatening infection. In his limited free time, Samuel studies and writes about the human and cultural meanings of kinship, embodiment, illness, and mortality.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
March 23, 2019
This is a really good book! It looks at the fourth Article of Faith and the connection between relationships and faith, repentance, baptism, the Holy Ghost, and the other temple ordinances. The gospel really is all about relationships and becoming more like our Savior, Jesus Christ. There are some profound and helpful reminders here that point us to Him and more meaningful connection and relationships with Him and all of those around us. Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
"Around midnight I complained to my mother that I had received no answer to my prayers... she reminded me that God was not a vending machine, that he would not do whatever I wanted the moment I wanted it (p. 2)."
"It was my turn, the blessing on the water. My first vocal prayer in months... 'Oh God...' I fell mute. For the first time in memory, my mind was entirely clear of its restless inner voice. In that quiet, I felt the presence of Another. That presence was real to me, though it seemed neither physical nor entirely verbal. The closest I could come at the time or since is the bare term love. Love without eroticism, without direction or restriction. That sense, that presence, overwhelmed my ability to speak. The taste of tears on my upper lip surprised me. I didn't cry often... That experience launched me on a life of believing; atheism has not been an option for me since (p. 3)."
"Is 'I love you' sufficient to the power of the feelings that arise over the course of an intimate relationship? The problems of language affect us all, and they have had an influence on much of human spiritual history (p. 4)."
"Often...familiarity breeds contempt. One important way to keep the fundamentals fresh is to examine them in a new light (p. 5)."
"I believe the first principles and ordinances are much more about relationships--among humans and between humans and the Godhead--than is generally recognized (p. 6)."
"The elements of the fourth article of faith point toward the temple and the grand story of connection that the temple contains (p. 6)."
"In what ways can faith clarify what matters most in life?... A relational faith is the foundation of a life in Christ (p. 7)."
"Doctrine and rituals must speak to our human needs and sole the problems we confront (p. 9)."
"I believe that God employs rituals and doctrines as modes of communication in order to draw us to him and transform us (p. 10)."
"Millions of people have come to faith without spiritual fireworks. They have found God and faith through a thousand simple acts of service, through the love they feel in the presence of the saints, through God's quiet presence in their worship meetings and their scripture study (p. 13)."
"When we allow critics of religion to define the truth, faith becomes a matter of discovering facts and then advertising our ownership of the facts. This narrative says that if only we could discover the facts, we would know the truth immediately (p. 15)."
"Many know gospel truths but then fail to live the truths they know (p. 16)."
"Faith--the knowing that matters-transforms, unites, and heals. Faith is much more than the retention of facts or an endorsement of a particular body of doctrine. Faith is spiritually active, a kind of strenuous commitment that carries us through the vagaries of the fits and starts of our spiritual lives (p. 16)."
"The veracity of particular doctrines is not what transforms us into divine beings. Faith--applied, strenuous faith--is what transforms us.... There is something that changes within us as we live the teachings.... Faith is a lived action made real in the world (p. 17)."
"Faith...involves us, our will, and our best selves. It involves active choosing, commitment, and exercise--an 'experiment'.... getting our hands dirty, moving from the world of theory and abstraction to the world in which we live, testing our convictions and aspirations (p. 19)."
"Faith as hope is a yearning to believe God (p. 19)."
"What we practice seeing is what we become able to see (p. 21)."
"Faith can be the kind of spiritual practice by which we cultivate our ability to see what actually matters in life (p. 21)."
"Ultimately, faith is about commitment and fidelity. By intertwining us in the lives of our fellow saints, faith allows the community of the saints to affect us durably and profoundly (p. 22)."
"A marriage needs love and tenderness, play and satisfaction, to offset the stresses that inevitably come. The same is true of faith: faith is an active relationship that requires attention, effort, and...nourishment.... Over time a healthy marriage relationship settles into mutual commitment and loyalty. This is a love that we choose, repeatedly, over the course of a relationship. Love deepens, supported by commitment and sacrifice (p. 24)."
"Both marriage and faith take work and persistence. They require of us a striving toward our best selves and a willingness to sacrifice some portion of our pleasure or convenience for the benefit of others (p. 26)."
"Faith is conscious commitment, often tedious, stretched over the course of our lives (p. 26)."
"Time together is the currency of intimate knowledge (p. 27)."
"I have come to understand faith...rather like a trained form of seeing. The work of faith involves a transformation in our capacity to see. The new sight comes to feel natural, even spontaneous, but it arises from long hours of work and application (p. 29)."
"As we begin to see with the eye of faith, we start to realize just how weighty is the glory that God has in store for us (p. 30)."
"Direct visual contact is not the only way to see God... We can also see God in the world around us... Faith allows us to see God in the world and its workings (p. 30)."
"The faculties we develop to see God allow us to see as God sees (p. 33)."
"When we allow ourselves to see God in other people, we actually do begin to see God in a very real and durable way. Faith allows us to see the face of God as we love others and enact that love in service (p. 34)."
"Faith-girded relationships represent the promise of a Zion society (p. 34)."
"We have tended to think of good works as constituting the product of Christ's influence on us. But we are the final product, not our good works (p. 34)."
"Faith, true faith, is not believing that God will agree with us about the shape of our lives. Faith is loving and trusting God as he carries us through the process of becoming divine. Trusting God bestows dramatic flexibility on us even as it makes real the likelihood that God will point our lives in directions we would never think to choose for ourselves (p. 35)."
"Faith is not tested when what we want happens. Faith is tested when what we want does not happen. Faith is the flexibility--yearning for God's presence--that allows us to navigate those disappointments (p. 36)."
"Loving and trusting God when we do not see eye to eye, when God appears hostile or distant, is the true measure of faith. God is easy to love and seek out when we see him as a heavenly Santa Claus, filling our stockings with wonderful presents on Christmas Eve. The real God can be quite a bit harder to see and to love. What partisans of the work side of the faith-versus-works argument may fail to acknowledge is that it's not the sum of our little successes that define who we are (p. 37)."
"It may be much easier to believe in God than to believe in the possibility that we may be made whole. But through faith we can see ourselves as God sees us (p. 39)."
"Faith isn't about the specific outcomes of a life. Faith is about the relationship with Christ (p. 39)."
"Repentance and the reconciliation it makes possible are generally brought about by the grace of God and our hunger to experience that grace (p. 44)."
"Our hearts and minds change when we repent (p. 45)."
"Atonement represents our hopes for a better world against the disappointing reality we actually live (p. 45)."
"The bridge between our aspirations and our accomplishments is repentance, and repentance takes place within the context of Christ's atonement.... Both grace and works have roles to play in the construction and maintenance of the sacred relationship with Christ that we term atonement (p. 47)."
"For some of us, the right answer will be an emphasis on grace, while for others the right answer will be a strong emphasis on the need to measure up through works (p. 49)."
"When we place salvation entirely in our own hands, we risk self delusion or grave disappointment (p. 50)."
"Let our own efforts be whatever they may, they will be superseded by Christ's grace... the grace of Christ will save us in the end (p. 52)."
"How much work, or what kind of work it is we will do, is something that will be specific to our relationship with Christ (p. 53)."
"With Christ's call to perfection, he is inviting us into his presence, to stand with him in the Garden of Gethsemane... We often think of judgment as a weighing and hope that our best effort plus Christ's sacrifice will be enough to tip the scales in our favor. But in reality, both our sins and our righteous deeds are swallowed up in Christ (p. 54)."
"Recognizing that the atonement is about our relationship with Christ should draw our attention to the extensions of that relationship into humanity. The project of building Zion can be understood as being caught up in the expanding circle of Christ's love through the entire scope of human society (p. 54)."
"Our failings become most apparent in communities; in relationships our minor foibles become intolerable. We cannot really live or sin or repent all by ourselves (p. 55)."
"Repentance and forgiveness are joint elements of the same underlying process. They are communal: we forgive those who repent, which helps us heal rifts in our community (p. 56)."
"The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners.... It is true that we are all broken in some way, that each of us bears a burden of inadequacy or fear or pain that needs the attention of Christ the Great Physician. That is absolutely and necessarily true. But the church also allows us to rub shoulders with people whose weaknesses are different from ours, a fact with an important implication. Our weaknesses are different from one another's, and so are our strengths. One of us will be kind, another patient, another wise, another intensely empathetic, and another good at organizing or public speaking (p. 57)."
"Together, within the body of Christ, our divinity can shine as we love and support and complement each other in our humanity (p. 59)."
"Our job is to work toward heaven with the people whose lives touch ours, not to decide who ought to be there (p. 63)."
"Christ's judgment is righteous; God's judgment is righteous. Rarely, if ever, is human judgment of another human being righteous (p. 63)."
"The judgment of people lies with God alone--righteous human judgment never presumes to judge a person. To put it simply, we are entirely unqualified to judge each other and are not called to do so (p. 64)."
"Ordinances speak to the fragile reality of our physical bodies, of our yearnings to be present with those we love, of the ways our experience is molded by the communities to which we attach ourselves (p. 68)."
"Through ordinances we are transformed in both body and spirit on our path toward the divine. Through ordinances we partake of and participate in the family of heaven (p. 69)."
"God lives beyond the reach of our mortal comprehension (p. 72)."
"Our time on earth is a process of entangling ourselves in each other's lives. And ordinances are God's means for entangling us in networks of relation too strong for even death to break apart (p. 74)."
"Physical ordinances recognize that we can and should devote our whole souls, both our spirit and our bodies, to goodness and to God. In the ordinances, spirit and body are brought together in the presence of God (p. 77)."
"Ordinances are ways that we as individuals and as the body of the saints can maintain our memory (p. 81)."
"Sacred priesthood rites represent times that we rehearse the goals toward which we aspire (p. 83)."
"There is some paradox between consistency and change... that tension is both necessary and fruitful... This mixture of permanence and flexibility is important. God will use both the unchanging and the changing, together, to achieve his work within us. God's goal for our lives is quite clear: He wants us to grow, to progress, both as individuals and as communities. He uses multiple techniques to save us (p. 83)."
"We may be particularly moved to devotion by a church calling at one point in our lives, while at another point, we find ourselves drawing closer to God through a relationship with a friend or through scripture study... His goals do not change; the specific techniques may (p. 84)."
"He is simultaneously trying to save us into the heaven of family, to save us as interconnected groups of people who are connected to him and to each other (p. 87)."
"The clean slate is a very limited view of baptism (p. 94)."
"The idea of a clean slate requires the existence of a surveillance action waiting to fill that slate with misdeeds. I don't think that's the right way to think about the nature of God's intimate knowledge of our entire lives (p. 95)."
"The selfish, petty parts of us can interfere with our full participation in a community (p. 97)."
"A baptism of death and rebirth anticipates our own death in union with Christ. This is the marvelous image of rebirth, of dying with Christ to be resurrected with him (p. 101)."
"Baptism contains the power to create the family of heaven... Paul is teaching the Romans that the old segregation of people based on their lineage, the restriction of God's blessings to only the people of Israel, has been obliterated. Through Christ we are all adopted into the chosen people; through Christ we become the heirs with God (p. 102)."
"I believe that baptism as adoption helps to clarify what it means that this ordinance happens once in our lives. The fact that baptism occurs once represents our earnest hope that a relationship--the relationship between us and Christ--is our salvation (p. 104)."
"Baptism is a physical representation of that ongoing relationship (p. 105)."
"Baptism is a meeting place for time and timelessness, much as the temple is... time is placed in context of and in contact with our Heavenly Father (p. 105)."
"The Holy Ghost represents a kind of spiritual cement that binds us together (p. 111)."
"The testimonies we share can move us from a place of isolation to a place of community (p. 117)."
"We are all enriched and enrich in turn in the presence of the Spirit (p. 117)."
"When we gather as saints to preach and pray and testify and commune together we are inviting a shared spirit to unite us, to seal us to each other in the exquisite sense of belonging to Christ and his church (p. 118)."
"Sometimes...it sounds as if we think of the Holy Ghost as our private genie. The Holy Ghost, including the ordinance by which the gift is bestowed, is much more than a lamp and its genie. Through confirmation we enter into living, breathing relationships with God and with our fellow Latter-day Saints (p. 118)."
"Through the miracle of the atonement and the power of the Holy Ghost, we as saints grow into an organic whole (p. 119)."
"Because depression acts so directly against the qualities we associate with the Holy Ghost, when we struggle with depression we may feel as if God has abandoned us at our time of greatest need and pain (p. 123)."
"Our lives are deeply blessed by the people who carry the Spirit to us at times of great sadness and anxiety (p. 124)."
"We believers are all patients in a hospital, but we are simultaneously the physicians of that same hospital (p. 126)."
"There are times when we will disappoint each other. Those are the real trials of mortality, the trials that make us into beings like Christ... nothing can hurt us the way other people can (p. 126)."
"We can get so wrapped up in seeking the signs of the times that we forget the source of those signs and the Savior toward which they point (p. 131)."
"The temple is more than just its dramatic and carefully protected rituals. The temple is an entire method for understanding the gospel and our relationships to each other (p. 133)."
"In the temple we use our bodies and our minds to participate in rituals that create and sustain a community strong enough to overwhelm death (p. 134)."
"Constant worry about salvation wasn't what God wanted for the saints (p. 137)."
"Endowment is and has always been a story about relationships. Relationships are the solution to death, the bedrock of the gospel (p. 138)."
"The temple sealing acts as the seal of Christ--it marks us as belonging to him. His seal acts as a kind of birth certificate to us (p. 139)."
"In baptism we pass from life to death to new life with Christ, immersed in his water. In the temple we pass through the veil from life to death to new life with Christ, enfolded in divine love. In both baptism and endowment we offer up our tiny wills and fragile agency through covenants that allow our wills to merge with Christ's (p. 143)."
"What we learn from the temple is that the vast assemblage of human beings is itself a kind of map of the universe. As we seal ourselves to God and to each other, we come to constitute elements of that map (p. 145)."
"Relationships are what matter most in life and in the afterlife, just as the temple ordinances suggest (p. 146)."
"Loving relationships were more important than raw immorality... salvation wasn't about single individuals, it was about families and communities (p. 146)."
"Belonging to heaven meant belonging to other people. True conversion was no isolated encounter between a single penitent believer and the mighty God; it was the creation of or integration into a vast family.... Heaven was about the family of Christ (p. 147)."
"We are made whole as we love each other and Christ (p. 147)."
"The salvation of the temple is about a royal dynasty of people who are saved in equality and interdependence. To focus on individual superiority rather than communal salvation is to miss the point entirely. We are saved as we love each other and commit to each other, as we see one another as members of a royal family.... Relationships are our calling and election (p. 148)."
"There is a paradox at the center of the plan of salvation, which fills our lives with meaning. We are called to love things that are temporary... In the temporary we find the eternal, and the eternal is built from our specific experience of the temporary (p. 148)."
"Kingship and queenship are not stories defining who exists in a lower social stratum than we do or whom we are called upon to rule over. It is a story about our family. And this family obliterates the scales of merit and competition that mark mortality... The temple brings us together for our mutual exaltation (p. 149)."
"The temple covenants allows us to see time, our lives, and other people as God sees them. Training that capacity to see through persistent practice is the work of salvation (p. 150)."
"I came to recognize the incredible drive of Joseph Smith and the early saints to forge communities that could endure beyond the veil of death. Personally, I began to see the central role relationships played throughout the gospel. I could not escape from a sense that the plan of salvation was fundamentally about relationships... It struck me that a faith built on commitment and community could provide a powerful language and understanding for moving beyond or preventing many...crises of faith (p. 151)."
"Around midnight I complained to my mother that I had received no answer to my prayers... she reminded me that God was not a vending machine, that he would not do whatever I wanted the moment I wanted it (p. 2)."
"It was my turn, the blessing on the water. My first vocal prayer in months... 'Oh God...' I fell mute. For the first time in memory, my mind was entirely clear of its restless inner voice. In that quiet, I felt the presence of Another. That presence was real to me, though it seemed neither physical nor entirely verbal. The closest I could come at the time or since is the bare term love. Love without eroticism, without direction or restriction. That sense, that presence, overwhelmed my ability to speak. The taste of tears on my upper lip surprised me. I didn't cry often... That experience launched me on a life of believing; atheism has not been an option for me since (p. 3)."
"Is 'I love you' sufficient to the power of the feelings that arise over the course of an intimate relationship? The problems of language affect us all, and they have had an influence on much of human spiritual history (p. 4)."
"Often...familiarity breeds contempt. One important way to keep the fundamentals fresh is to examine them in a new light (p. 5)."
"I believe the first principles and ordinances are much more about relationships--among humans and between humans and the Godhead--than is generally recognized (p. 6)."
"The elements of the fourth article of faith point toward the temple and the grand story of connection that the temple contains (p. 6)."
"In what ways can faith clarify what matters most in life?... A relational faith is the foundation of a life in Christ (p. 7)."
"Doctrine and rituals must speak to our human needs and sole the problems we confront (p. 9)."
"I believe that God employs rituals and doctrines as modes of communication in order to draw us to him and transform us (p. 10)."
"Millions of people have come to faith without spiritual fireworks. They have found God and faith through a thousand simple acts of service, through the love they feel in the presence of the saints, through God's quiet presence in their worship meetings and their scripture study (p. 13)."
"When we allow critics of religion to define the truth, faith becomes a matter of discovering facts and then advertising our ownership of the facts. This narrative says that if only we could discover the facts, we would know the truth immediately (p. 15)."
"Many know gospel truths but then fail to live the truths they know (p. 16)."
"Faith--the knowing that matters-transforms, unites, and heals. Faith is much more than the retention of facts or an endorsement of a particular body of doctrine. Faith is spiritually active, a kind of strenuous commitment that carries us through the vagaries of the fits and starts of our spiritual lives (p. 16)."
"The veracity of particular doctrines is not what transforms us into divine beings. Faith--applied, strenuous faith--is what transforms us.... There is something that changes within us as we live the teachings.... Faith is a lived action made real in the world (p. 17)."
"Faith...involves us, our will, and our best selves. It involves active choosing, commitment, and exercise--an 'experiment'.... getting our hands dirty, moving from the world of theory and abstraction to the world in which we live, testing our convictions and aspirations (p. 19)."
"Faith as hope is a yearning to believe God (p. 19)."
"What we practice seeing is what we become able to see (p. 21)."
"Faith can be the kind of spiritual practice by which we cultivate our ability to see what actually matters in life (p. 21)."
"Ultimately, faith is about commitment and fidelity. By intertwining us in the lives of our fellow saints, faith allows the community of the saints to affect us durably and profoundly (p. 22)."
"A marriage needs love and tenderness, play and satisfaction, to offset the stresses that inevitably come. The same is true of faith: faith is an active relationship that requires attention, effort, and...nourishment.... Over time a healthy marriage relationship settles into mutual commitment and loyalty. This is a love that we choose, repeatedly, over the course of a relationship. Love deepens, supported by commitment and sacrifice (p. 24)."
"Both marriage and faith take work and persistence. They require of us a striving toward our best selves and a willingness to sacrifice some portion of our pleasure or convenience for the benefit of others (p. 26)."
"Faith is conscious commitment, often tedious, stretched over the course of our lives (p. 26)."
"Time together is the currency of intimate knowledge (p. 27)."
"I have come to understand faith...rather like a trained form of seeing. The work of faith involves a transformation in our capacity to see. The new sight comes to feel natural, even spontaneous, but it arises from long hours of work and application (p. 29)."
"As we begin to see with the eye of faith, we start to realize just how weighty is the glory that God has in store for us (p. 30)."
"Direct visual contact is not the only way to see God... We can also see God in the world around us... Faith allows us to see God in the world and its workings (p. 30)."
"The faculties we develop to see God allow us to see as God sees (p. 33)."
"When we allow ourselves to see God in other people, we actually do begin to see God in a very real and durable way. Faith allows us to see the face of God as we love others and enact that love in service (p. 34)."
"Faith-girded relationships represent the promise of a Zion society (p. 34)."
"We have tended to think of good works as constituting the product of Christ's influence on us. But we are the final product, not our good works (p. 34)."
"Faith, true faith, is not believing that God will agree with us about the shape of our lives. Faith is loving and trusting God as he carries us through the process of becoming divine. Trusting God bestows dramatic flexibility on us even as it makes real the likelihood that God will point our lives in directions we would never think to choose for ourselves (p. 35)."
"Faith is not tested when what we want happens. Faith is tested when what we want does not happen. Faith is the flexibility--yearning for God's presence--that allows us to navigate those disappointments (p. 36)."
"Loving and trusting God when we do not see eye to eye, when God appears hostile or distant, is the true measure of faith. God is easy to love and seek out when we see him as a heavenly Santa Claus, filling our stockings with wonderful presents on Christmas Eve. The real God can be quite a bit harder to see and to love. What partisans of the work side of the faith-versus-works argument may fail to acknowledge is that it's not the sum of our little successes that define who we are (p. 37)."
"It may be much easier to believe in God than to believe in the possibility that we may be made whole. But through faith we can see ourselves as God sees us (p. 39)."
"Faith isn't about the specific outcomes of a life. Faith is about the relationship with Christ (p. 39)."
"Repentance and the reconciliation it makes possible are generally brought about by the grace of God and our hunger to experience that grace (p. 44)."
"Our hearts and minds change when we repent (p. 45)."
"Atonement represents our hopes for a better world against the disappointing reality we actually live (p. 45)."
"The bridge between our aspirations and our accomplishments is repentance, and repentance takes place within the context of Christ's atonement.... Both grace and works have roles to play in the construction and maintenance of the sacred relationship with Christ that we term atonement (p. 47)."
"For some of us, the right answer will be an emphasis on grace, while for others the right answer will be a strong emphasis on the need to measure up through works (p. 49)."
"When we place salvation entirely in our own hands, we risk self delusion or grave disappointment (p. 50)."
"Let our own efforts be whatever they may, they will be superseded by Christ's grace... the grace of Christ will save us in the end (p. 52)."
"How much work, or what kind of work it is we will do, is something that will be specific to our relationship with Christ (p. 53)."
"With Christ's call to perfection, he is inviting us into his presence, to stand with him in the Garden of Gethsemane... We often think of judgment as a weighing and hope that our best effort plus Christ's sacrifice will be enough to tip the scales in our favor. But in reality, both our sins and our righteous deeds are swallowed up in Christ (p. 54)."
"Recognizing that the atonement is about our relationship with Christ should draw our attention to the extensions of that relationship into humanity. The project of building Zion can be understood as being caught up in the expanding circle of Christ's love through the entire scope of human society (p. 54)."
"Our failings become most apparent in communities; in relationships our minor foibles become intolerable. We cannot really live or sin or repent all by ourselves (p. 55)."
"Repentance and forgiveness are joint elements of the same underlying process. They are communal: we forgive those who repent, which helps us heal rifts in our community (p. 56)."
"The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners.... It is true that we are all broken in some way, that each of us bears a burden of inadequacy or fear or pain that needs the attention of Christ the Great Physician. That is absolutely and necessarily true. But the church also allows us to rub shoulders with people whose weaknesses are different from ours, a fact with an important implication. Our weaknesses are different from one another's, and so are our strengths. One of us will be kind, another patient, another wise, another intensely empathetic, and another good at organizing or public speaking (p. 57)."
"Together, within the body of Christ, our divinity can shine as we love and support and complement each other in our humanity (p. 59)."
"Our job is to work toward heaven with the people whose lives touch ours, not to decide who ought to be there (p. 63)."
"Christ's judgment is righteous; God's judgment is righteous. Rarely, if ever, is human judgment of another human being righteous (p. 63)."
"The judgment of people lies with God alone--righteous human judgment never presumes to judge a person. To put it simply, we are entirely unqualified to judge each other and are not called to do so (p. 64)."
"Ordinances speak to the fragile reality of our physical bodies, of our yearnings to be present with those we love, of the ways our experience is molded by the communities to which we attach ourselves (p. 68)."
"Through ordinances we are transformed in both body and spirit on our path toward the divine. Through ordinances we partake of and participate in the family of heaven (p. 69)."
"God lives beyond the reach of our mortal comprehension (p. 72)."
"Our time on earth is a process of entangling ourselves in each other's lives. And ordinances are God's means for entangling us in networks of relation too strong for even death to break apart (p. 74)."
"Physical ordinances recognize that we can and should devote our whole souls, both our spirit and our bodies, to goodness and to God. In the ordinances, spirit and body are brought together in the presence of God (p. 77)."
"Ordinances are ways that we as individuals and as the body of the saints can maintain our memory (p. 81)."
"Sacred priesthood rites represent times that we rehearse the goals toward which we aspire (p. 83)."
"There is some paradox between consistency and change... that tension is both necessary and fruitful... This mixture of permanence and flexibility is important. God will use both the unchanging and the changing, together, to achieve his work within us. God's goal for our lives is quite clear: He wants us to grow, to progress, both as individuals and as communities. He uses multiple techniques to save us (p. 83)."
"We may be particularly moved to devotion by a church calling at one point in our lives, while at another point, we find ourselves drawing closer to God through a relationship with a friend or through scripture study... His goals do not change; the specific techniques may (p. 84)."
"He is simultaneously trying to save us into the heaven of family, to save us as interconnected groups of people who are connected to him and to each other (p. 87)."
"The clean slate is a very limited view of baptism (p. 94)."
"The idea of a clean slate requires the existence of a surveillance action waiting to fill that slate with misdeeds. I don't think that's the right way to think about the nature of God's intimate knowledge of our entire lives (p. 95)."
"The selfish, petty parts of us can interfere with our full participation in a community (p. 97)."
"A baptism of death and rebirth anticipates our own death in union with Christ. This is the marvelous image of rebirth, of dying with Christ to be resurrected with him (p. 101)."
"Baptism contains the power to create the family of heaven... Paul is teaching the Romans that the old segregation of people based on their lineage, the restriction of God's blessings to only the people of Israel, has been obliterated. Through Christ we are all adopted into the chosen people; through Christ we become the heirs with God (p. 102)."
"I believe that baptism as adoption helps to clarify what it means that this ordinance happens once in our lives. The fact that baptism occurs once represents our earnest hope that a relationship--the relationship between us and Christ--is our salvation (p. 104)."
"Baptism is a physical representation of that ongoing relationship (p. 105)."
"Baptism is a meeting place for time and timelessness, much as the temple is... time is placed in context of and in contact with our Heavenly Father (p. 105)."
"The Holy Ghost represents a kind of spiritual cement that binds us together (p. 111)."
"The testimonies we share can move us from a place of isolation to a place of community (p. 117)."
"We are all enriched and enrich in turn in the presence of the Spirit (p. 117)."
"When we gather as saints to preach and pray and testify and commune together we are inviting a shared spirit to unite us, to seal us to each other in the exquisite sense of belonging to Christ and his church (p. 118)."
"Sometimes...it sounds as if we think of the Holy Ghost as our private genie. The Holy Ghost, including the ordinance by which the gift is bestowed, is much more than a lamp and its genie. Through confirmation we enter into living, breathing relationships with God and with our fellow Latter-day Saints (p. 118)."
"Through the miracle of the atonement and the power of the Holy Ghost, we as saints grow into an organic whole (p. 119)."
"Because depression acts so directly against the qualities we associate with the Holy Ghost, when we struggle with depression we may feel as if God has abandoned us at our time of greatest need and pain (p. 123)."
"Our lives are deeply blessed by the people who carry the Spirit to us at times of great sadness and anxiety (p. 124)."
"We believers are all patients in a hospital, but we are simultaneously the physicians of that same hospital (p. 126)."
"There are times when we will disappoint each other. Those are the real trials of mortality, the trials that make us into beings like Christ... nothing can hurt us the way other people can (p. 126)."
"We can get so wrapped up in seeking the signs of the times that we forget the source of those signs and the Savior toward which they point (p. 131)."
"The temple is more than just its dramatic and carefully protected rituals. The temple is an entire method for understanding the gospel and our relationships to each other (p. 133)."
"In the temple we use our bodies and our minds to participate in rituals that create and sustain a community strong enough to overwhelm death (p. 134)."
"Constant worry about salvation wasn't what God wanted for the saints (p. 137)."
"Endowment is and has always been a story about relationships. Relationships are the solution to death, the bedrock of the gospel (p. 138)."
"The temple sealing acts as the seal of Christ--it marks us as belonging to him. His seal acts as a kind of birth certificate to us (p. 139)."
"In baptism we pass from life to death to new life with Christ, immersed in his water. In the temple we pass through the veil from life to death to new life with Christ, enfolded in divine love. In both baptism and endowment we offer up our tiny wills and fragile agency through covenants that allow our wills to merge with Christ's (p. 143)."
"What we learn from the temple is that the vast assemblage of human beings is itself a kind of map of the universe. As we seal ourselves to God and to each other, we come to constitute elements of that map (p. 145)."
"Relationships are what matter most in life and in the afterlife, just as the temple ordinances suggest (p. 146)."
"Loving relationships were more important than raw immorality... salvation wasn't about single individuals, it was about families and communities (p. 146)."
"Belonging to heaven meant belonging to other people. True conversion was no isolated encounter between a single penitent believer and the mighty God; it was the creation of or integration into a vast family.... Heaven was about the family of Christ (p. 147)."
"We are made whole as we love each other and Christ (p. 147)."
"The salvation of the temple is about a royal dynasty of people who are saved in equality and interdependence. To focus on individual superiority rather than communal salvation is to miss the point entirely. We are saved as we love each other and commit to each other, as we see one another as members of a royal family.... Relationships are our calling and election (p. 148)."
"There is a paradox at the center of the plan of salvation, which fills our lives with meaning. We are called to love things that are temporary... In the temporary we find the eternal, and the eternal is built from our specific experience of the temporary (p. 148)."
"Kingship and queenship are not stories defining who exists in a lower social stratum than we do or whom we are called upon to rule over. It is a story about our family. And this family obliterates the scales of merit and competition that mark mortality... The temple brings us together for our mutual exaltation (p. 149)."
"The temple covenants allows us to see time, our lives, and other people as God sees them. Training that capacity to see through persistent practice is the work of salvation (p. 150)."
"I came to recognize the incredible drive of Joseph Smith and the early saints to forge communities that could endure beyond the veil of death. Personally, I began to see the central role relationships played throughout the gospel. I could not escape from a sense that the plan of salvation was fundamentally about relationships... It struck me that a faith built on commitment and community could provide a powerful language and understanding for moving beyond or preventing many...crises of faith (p. 151)."
June 22, 2017
A thoughtful and sensitive meditation on the relational nature of faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and temple worship in Mormonism.
May 23, 2016
I read this short book while preparing for a sacrament meeting talk on the Doctrine of Christ. I was looking for fresh insights into our most basic and oft-repeated principles and found exactly that. To summarize, the two greatest contributions Brown makes here are relating faith, repentance, baptism, and confirmation to elements of temple worship, and contemplating these principles in the context of relationships--our relationship with God and with our neighbor. Of the two contributions, I found the relational insights most uplifting and substantial.
Not all of the ideas here are unique--he incorporates insights from other religious thinkers, both LDS and non-LDS--but he successfully weaves them together to further his thesis. I recommend this to anyone, LDS or otherwise, wanting to better understand the most basic of LDS principles and doctrine.
Not all of the ideas here are unique--he incorporates insights from other religious thinkers, both LDS and non-LDS--but he successfully weaves them together to further his thesis. I recommend this to anyone, LDS or otherwise, wanting to better understand the most basic of LDS principles and doctrine.
February 5, 2023
The underlying message for me was that God is in relationships and that a community of saints plays an important purpose in our journey of faith, repentance and ordinances.
Favorite quotes from the book:
FAITH:
"A passive faith driven by external spiritual power is a place to start, not the place to end up." (pg. 14)
"...the veracity of particular doctrines is not what transforms us into divine beings. Faith--applied, strenuous faith--is what transforms us." (pg. 17)
"Based on fairly basic principles of human physiology, we should expect that we will see most clearly the things that we practice seeing. By simple analogy, faith can be the kind of spiritual practice by which we cultivate our ability to see what actually matters in life." (pg. 21)
"Our participation in the church community is an expression of our faith rather than a distraction from it. Faith does not live in the echo chambers an isolated mind. Faith grows strength as we enact it. This close connection and action explains why as we immerse ourselves in the work of the kingdom our faith burns more brightly." (pg. 26)
"The work of faith involves a transformation in our capacity to see." (pg 29)
"The senses with which we can see God and his presence are the senses that are built up in the practice of loving other people." (pg. 33)
REPENTANCE:
"We have generally misunderstood [2 Nephi 25:23: It is by grace that we are saved after all we can do]...We [need to] understand that "all" calls us to offer our whole souls to Christ, to long for the relationship with him as urgently as we know how... Nephi indicates that the all we can do is "believe in Christ" and "be reconciled to God"...Let our own efforts be whatever they may, they will be superseded by Christ's grace....However puny our "all" is, Christ's atonement determines our final salvation." (pg. 51)
"...sin matters to the extent that it estranges us from others, and it is in others that we find our repentance." (pg. 55)
"Our job is to work toward heaven with the people whose lives touch ours, not to decide who ought not to be there." (pg. 63)
"Though Christ taught that we should seek to purify our souls rather than merely our outward behavior, it is nevertheless true that acting on a temptation is worse than merely considering it. Enacting something physically makes it real in a way that was not before. Ordinances are the positive flipside of sin. Through ordinances, we use our body to enact our love of Christ and the saints, our hope for a better world and a better us." (pg. 76)
ORDINANCES:
"When we participate in ritual, we bring commitments outside the walls of our own minds." (pg. 82)
"Ordinances are essential for our salvation not merely in and of themselves but as constant reminders that we cannot save ourselves. In this, ordinances always point to Christ." (pg. 86)
"The baptism taught by John was not just a private observance, but a ritual that brought that believer into intimate connection with other people." (pg. 93)
"There will...be times that God visits us with the grace of his Spirit when we are all alone and struggling or praying fervently...But much more commonly, the Spirit will work with us for the improvement and recovery of those to whom we are connected by love, faith and covenant." (pg. 127)
"The temple is an entire method for understanding the gospel and our relationships to each other." (pg. 133)
"...the real work of salvation [is] the creation and sustaining of relationships." (pg. 137)
"Zion is an eternal community that we are building each time we choose to love instead of hate." (pg. 149)
Favorite quotes from the book:
FAITH:
"A passive faith driven by external spiritual power is a place to start, not the place to end up." (pg. 14)
"...the veracity of particular doctrines is not what transforms us into divine beings. Faith--applied, strenuous faith--is what transforms us." (pg. 17)
"Based on fairly basic principles of human physiology, we should expect that we will see most clearly the things that we practice seeing. By simple analogy, faith can be the kind of spiritual practice by which we cultivate our ability to see what actually matters in life." (pg. 21)
"Our participation in the church community is an expression of our faith rather than a distraction from it. Faith does not live in the echo chambers an isolated mind. Faith grows strength as we enact it. This close connection and action explains why as we immerse ourselves in the work of the kingdom our faith burns more brightly." (pg. 26)
"The work of faith involves a transformation in our capacity to see." (pg 29)
"The senses with which we can see God and his presence are the senses that are built up in the practice of loving other people." (pg. 33)
REPENTANCE:
"We have generally misunderstood [2 Nephi 25:23: It is by grace that we are saved after all we can do]...We [need to] understand that "all" calls us to offer our whole souls to Christ, to long for the relationship with him as urgently as we know how... Nephi indicates that the all we can do is "believe in Christ" and "be reconciled to God"...Let our own efforts be whatever they may, they will be superseded by Christ's grace....However puny our "all" is, Christ's atonement determines our final salvation." (pg. 51)
"...sin matters to the extent that it estranges us from others, and it is in others that we find our repentance." (pg. 55)
"Our job is to work toward heaven with the people whose lives touch ours, not to decide who ought not to be there." (pg. 63)
"Though Christ taught that we should seek to purify our souls rather than merely our outward behavior, it is nevertheless true that acting on a temptation is worse than merely considering it. Enacting something physically makes it real in a way that was not before. Ordinances are the positive flipside of sin. Through ordinances, we use our body to enact our love of Christ and the saints, our hope for a better world and a better us." (pg. 76)
ORDINANCES:
"When we participate in ritual, we bring commitments outside the walls of our own minds." (pg. 82)
"Ordinances are essential for our salvation not merely in and of themselves but as constant reminders that we cannot save ourselves. In this, ordinances always point to Christ." (pg. 86)
"The baptism taught by John was not just a private observance, but a ritual that brought that believer into intimate connection with other people." (pg. 93)
"There will...be times that God visits us with the grace of his Spirit when we are all alone and struggling or praying fervently...But much more commonly, the Spirit will work with us for the improvement and recovery of those to whom we are connected by love, faith and covenant." (pg. 127)
"The temple is an entire method for understanding the gospel and our relationships to each other." (pg. 133)
"...the real work of salvation [is] the creation and sustaining of relationships." (pg. 137)
"Zion is an eternal community that we are building each time we choose to love instead of hate." (pg. 149)
February 14, 2017
I really enjoyed how this book provides a fresh and important perspective on basic LDS doctrine. Brown examines faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, and temples through the "relational view," which emphasizes our interconnectedness to each other and God. I thought Brown's discussion of ordinances, and especially temples, was meaningful and helpful. I tend to find the ritualistic aspects of religion kind of weird, and Brown helped me better understand their importance and value. I think a broader understanding among LDS church members of Brown's ideas would improve individuals and the institution by creating a stronger focus on love and community.
May 16, 2020
This book took me forever to finish. I started it over a year ago and then kept coming back because the premise interested me. I restarted it last month and it really touched me. It is smart, thoughtful and a real joy. The emphasis on or relationship with God and the gospel in light of our relationship with the saints was very insightful and rang true to me. I would absolutely recommend this book.
May 25, 2020
LOVED the way Brown frames the principles and ordinances of the fourth article of faith around relationships. Lots of useful reframing of elementary concepts in Mormonism that I found refreshing and insightful.
August 31, 2021
I just finished reading “First Principles and Ordinances” by Samuel M. Brown.
Quick Take: I thoroughly enjoyed the first chapter on faith. Unfortunately, the others chapters seemed convoluted and overly complicated.
Longer Take:
A podcast I enjoy interviewed Samuel M. Brown about his book “First Principles and Ordinances.” I found the interview interesting so I decided to give the book a shot.
Samuel M. Brown is a medical researcher, Professor of Medicine, ICU physician, and historian of religion and culture. So a smart dude. In “First Principles and Ordinances” Brown strives to give a fresh perspective on the foundational principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Faith, Repentance, Baptism and the Gift of the Holy Ghost) in relation to the temple.
“We appropriately spend much of our religious lives with these basic principles; they deserve our ongoing attention and study. Often, though, familiarity breeds contempt. One important way to keep the fundamentals fresh is to examine them in a new light. These foundational principles deserve our willingness to explore them from new perspectives. Such exploration can create greater appreciation for concepts made dull through familiarity.”
The first chapter on faith was amazing. I devoured it. So many interesting perspectives on faith (I’ll highlight some below). But I got bogged down after that. For me, and I may just be a little dumb, the balance of the book seemed to have less continuity and at times felt overly complicated.
But despite my inability to take everything in, there are a few concepts I LOVED and hope to apply to my life.
(1) “For a fortunate few, a dramatic spiritual encounter is in fact the beginning of faith. … But these spectacular experiences are not the whole story. After all, this is a picture of faith that is entirely passive. When a mighty spiritual power is present, there is faith, but when the mighty spirit is absent, faith is gone. Such an approach to faith is not terribly healthy or durable. A spectacular encounter can be a place to start, as it was for Alma. But he went on, after the miraculous beginnings of his faith, to spend his entire life in service, in learning, and in testifying of Christ. A passive faith driven by external spiritual power is a place to start, not the place to end up.”
Drew’s Learning: For those who want a lasting faith, relying on, or expecting, continual spiritual explosions is not the way. Instead, we use those occasional experiences to springboard our worship into the daily “mundane” practices needed to keep our faith growing.
(2) “Faith—applied, strenuous faith—is what transforms us. … The facts or doctrines alone won’t save us. There is something that changes within us as we live the teachings, as we consciously choose to accept doctrines and follow them…”
Drew’s Learning: I’m certain I’d like to change this principle, but most of the time, to receive a witness of a specific doctrine first requires living it. We need to throw ourselves into something before God will give us a testimony of that thing. This will mean walking “a few steps into the darkness [before] the light will appear and show the way before you.”
(3) “…psychologists have suggested a rule of thumb for successful relationships. A ratio of positive to negative encounters higher than about 5:1 is associated with highly successful relationships, whereas relationships with a lower ratio of positive to negative experiences tend to fail. … A marriage needs love and tenderness, play and satisfaction, to offset the stresses that inevitably come. The same is true of faith: faith is an active relationship that requires attention, effort…”
Drew’s Learning: I’ve been married for over 20 years. I’m far from a marriage expert, but the one thing I know is that marriage is a ton of work. It is not something that gets stronger without putting in the work. I know this. But how often do I expect my faith to get stronger without putting in the work? Going through the motions will not suffice in a marriage or our discipleship.
(4) “Too often, people believe that a marriage is over when the romance matures, when in fact marriage has only then begun. It is much the same with faith. There will be time in our practice of faith when we disagree with or find our fellow saints disagreeable. Those down times will come as inevitably as they do in any relationship. In faith, we can balance those negative experiences with more positive experiences.”
Drew’s Learning: As we strive to follow Jesus Christ, difficult times are inevitable. The commandments will feel challenging, we will feel overwhelmed, there will be doctrine we do not fully understand, someone will hurt our feelings, etc. It is not a matter of if, but when. To counteract these inevitabilities, we need to foster and cultivate positive experiences. The positive can then carry us through the difficult.
(5) “Faith is not tested when what we want happens. Faith is tested when what we want does not happen. … all of us are prone to confuse faith itself with receiving what we want, and that sort of confused faith may falter when we are disappointed. … true faith grows in times of disappointment because those are the times we must commit. … Loving and trusting God when we do not see eye to eye, when God appears hostile or distant, is the true measure of faith. God is easy to love and seek out when we see him as a heavenly Santa Claus, filling our stockings with wonderful presents on Christmas Eve. The real God can be quite a bit harder to see and to love.”
Drew’s Learning: I love this! “God is easy to love and seek out when we see him as a heavenly Santa Claus.” My prayers are just loaded with gratitude when life is going exactly as I think it should. My prayers are very different when life seems hard and I’m certain God isn’t helping. But isn’t this the real test? Can we continue to follow when God is not doing as we ask? “Will ye also go away?” (John 16:67)
(6) “I do not mean to suggest that there will never be a time when fervent, private prayer will be met with a visitation of the Holy Ghost, that God will not call to us and reassure us in times of need or yearning. But in my experience, such miracles will be the exception rather than the rule. God loves us deeply, and he wants us to be caring for each other…”
Drew’s Learning: At times, I have felt disappointed that God is not like a vending machine. He does not dispense blessings every time I “put in my money.” I appreciate this reminder that God expects us to be the answer to our fellow traveller’s prayers. “God does notice us, and he watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs.” (Spencer W. Kimball)
www.lookforthegood.me
Quick Take: I thoroughly enjoyed the first chapter on faith. Unfortunately, the others chapters seemed convoluted and overly complicated.
Longer Take:
A podcast I enjoy interviewed Samuel M. Brown about his book “First Principles and Ordinances.” I found the interview interesting so I decided to give the book a shot.
Samuel M. Brown is a medical researcher, Professor of Medicine, ICU physician, and historian of religion and culture. So a smart dude. In “First Principles and Ordinances” Brown strives to give a fresh perspective on the foundational principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Faith, Repentance, Baptism and the Gift of the Holy Ghost) in relation to the temple.
“We appropriately spend much of our religious lives with these basic principles; they deserve our ongoing attention and study. Often, though, familiarity breeds contempt. One important way to keep the fundamentals fresh is to examine them in a new light. These foundational principles deserve our willingness to explore them from new perspectives. Such exploration can create greater appreciation for concepts made dull through familiarity.”
The first chapter on faith was amazing. I devoured it. So many interesting perspectives on faith (I’ll highlight some below). But I got bogged down after that. For me, and I may just be a little dumb, the balance of the book seemed to have less continuity and at times felt overly complicated.
But despite my inability to take everything in, there are a few concepts I LOVED and hope to apply to my life.
(1) “For a fortunate few, a dramatic spiritual encounter is in fact the beginning of faith. … But these spectacular experiences are not the whole story. After all, this is a picture of faith that is entirely passive. When a mighty spiritual power is present, there is faith, but when the mighty spirit is absent, faith is gone. Such an approach to faith is not terribly healthy or durable. A spectacular encounter can be a place to start, as it was for Alma. But he went on, after the miraculous beginnings of his faith, to spend his entire life in service, in learning, and in testifying of Christ. A passive faith driven by external spiritual power is a place to start, not the place to end up.”
Drew’s Learning: For those who want a lasting faith, relying on, or expecting, continual spiritual explosions is not the way. Instead, we use those occasional experiences to springboard our worship into the daily “mundane” practices needed to keep our faith growing.
(2) “Faith—applied, strenuous faith—is what transforms us. … The facts or doctrines alone won’t save us. There is something that changes within us as we live the teachings, as we consciously choose to accept doctrines and follow them…”
Drew’s Learning: I’m certain I’d like to change this principle, but most of the time, to receive a witness of a specific doctrine first requires living it. We need to throw ourselves into something before God will give us a testimony of that thing. This will mean walking “a few steps into the darkness [before] the light will appear and show the way before you.”
(3) “…psychologists have suggested a rule of thumb for successful relationships. A ratio of positive to negative encounters higher than about 5:1 is associated with highly successful relationships, whereas relationships with a lower ratio of positive to negative experiences tend to fail. … A marriage needs love and tenderness, play and satisfaction, to offset the stresses that inevitably come. The same is true of faith: faith is an active relationship that requires attention, effort…”
Drew’s Learning: I’ve been married for over 20 years. I’m far from a marriage expert, but the one thing I know is that marriage is a ton of work. It is not something that gets stronger without putting in the work. I know this. But how often do I expect my faith to get stronger without putting in the work? Going through the motions will not suffice in a marriage or our discipleship.
(4) “Too often, people believe that a marriage is over when the romance matures, when in fact marriage has only then begun. It is much the same with faith. There will be time in our practice of faith when we disagree with or find our fellow saints disagreeable. Those down times will come as inevitably as they do in any relationship. In faith, we can balance those negative experiences with more positive experiences.”
Drew’s Learning: As we strive to follow Jesus Christ, difficult times are inevitable. The commandments will feel challenging, we will feel overwhelmed, there will be doctrine we do not fully understand, someone will hurt our feelings, etc. It is not a matter of if, but when. To counteract these inevitabilities, we need to foster and cultivate positive experiences. The positive can then carry us through the difficult.
(5) “Faith is not tested when what we want happens. Faith is tested when what we want does not happen. … all of us are prone to confuse faith itself with receiving what we want, and that sort of confused faith may falter when we are disappointed. … true faith grows in times of disappointment because those are the times we must commit. … Loving and trusting God when we do not see eye to eye, when God appears hostile or distant, is the true measure of faith. God is easy to love and seek out when we see him as a heavenly Santa Claus, filling our stockings with wonderful presents on Christmas Eve. The real God can be quite a bit harder to see and to love.”
Drew’s Learning: I love this! “God is easy to love and seek out when we see him as a heavenly Santa Claus.” My prayers are just loaded with gratitude when life is going exactly as I think it should. My prayers are very different when life seems hard and I’m certain God isn’t helping. But isn’t this the real test? Can we continue to follow when God is not doing as we ask? “Will ye also go away?” (John 16:67)
(6) “I do not mean to suggest that there will never be a time when fervent, private prayer will be met with a visitation of the Holy Ghost, that God will not call to us and reassure us in times of need or yearning. But in my experience, such miracles will be the exception rather than the rule. God loves us deeply, and he wants us to be caring for each other…”
Drew’s Learning: At times, I have felt disappointed that God is not like a vending machine. He does not dispense blessings every time I “put in my money.” I appreciate this reminder that God expects us to be the answer to our fellow traveller’s prayers. “God does notice us, and he watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs.” (Spencer W. Kimball)
www.lookforthegood.me
June 30, 2015
I give this book 4/5 stars because I want 5/5 to mean something exceptional. But this was a great book.
I have been interested in the thoughts and writings of Sam Brown for some time. As both a deep-thinker and an accessible writer, and as one interested in early Mormon theology, he is right at a cross-section of thought that I enjoy. I heard him present a paper at the Mormon History Conference in June, 2015 and found him to be engaging and witty as well.
But really, a book on something so basic as faith, repentance, baptism and the Holy Ghost? What new or original thought can there be on such basic themes? Plenty.
An overarching theme of this book (and a powerful insight into the theology of Joseph Smith that Brown illuminates) is that of the power of community. On page 146 he states, “This was the great secret of temple sealing— loving relationships were more important than raw immortality. In other words, salvation wasn’t about single individuals, it was about families and communities. The Protestant solution had mistakenly placed too much emphasis on the individual at the expense of the community. The temple showed the better way, the path of connection and family.” This is radical theology. Traditional Christian teaching is that salvation is an individual process relying on grace and baptism. In Joseph’s paradigm, we don’t go there alone. We need families and community. Beautiful indeed.
Each chapter provides insights and a fresh perspective. This is a short book but it took me a few weeks to read. I enjoyed following the footnotes, thinking about the concepts and sharing them with my wife in morning discussions.
If your interests are similar to mine, I think you will enjoy this book.
I have been interested in the thoughts and writings of Sam Brown for some time. As both a deep-thinker and an accessible writer, and as one interested in early Mormon theology, he is right at a cross-section of thought that I enjoy. I heard him present a paper at the Mormon History Conference in June, 2015 and found him to be engaging and witty as well.
But really, a book on something so basic as faith, repentance, baptism and the Holy Ghost? What new or original thought can there be on such basic themes? Plenty.
An overarching theme of this book (and a powerful insight into the theology of Joseph Smith that Brown illuminates) is that of the power of community. On page 146 he states, “This was the great secret of temple sealing— loving relationships were more important than raw immortality. In other words, salvation wasn’t about single individuals, it was about families and communities. The Protestant solution had mistakenly placed too much emphasis on the individual at the expense of the community. The temple showed the better way, the path of connection and family.” This is radical theology. Traditional Christian teaching is that salvation is an individual process relying on grace and baptism. In Joseph’s paradigm, we don’t go there alone. We need families and community. Beautiful indeed.
Each chapter provides insights and a fresh perspective. This is a short book but it took me a few weeks to read. I enjoyed following the footnotes, thinking about the concepts and sharing them with my wife in morning discussions.
If your interests are similar to mine, I think you will enjoy this book.
December 11, 2015
I consider this small volume one of the most interesting books I have read in a long time. Because of its scholarly language it is not the easiest book to read. Admittedly, I had to reread some paragraphs to finally catch a particular thought, but it was worth the effort.
I particularly liked the concept that in our eternal existence, our mortal life on earth is our "adolescence". We began our "childhood" as spirit children of God, and now we are here in mortality beginning to mature and exercise our independence, making important decisions and establishing relationships with others that will last eternally, into our "adulthood" of maturity after our resurrection.
All of the insights of the book are summed up in the author's Afterword chapter as, "We are not important or powerful because we are wealthy or smart or good. We all are important and powerful because we are HUMAN. Our purpose in life consists in the development or relationships of service, kindness, and interdependency."
This small paperback book has found an important place in my personal library. It's a good one.
I particularly liked the concept that in our eternal existence, our mortal life on earth is our "adolescence". We began our "childhood" as spirit children of God, and now we are here in mortality beginning to mature and exercise our independence, making important decisions and establishing relationships with others that will last eternally, into our "adulthood" of maturity after our resurrection.
All of the insights of the book are summed up in the author's Afterword chapter as, "We are not important or powerful because we are wealthy or smart or good. We all are important and powerful because we are HUMAN. Our purpose in life consists in the development or relationships of service, kindness, and interdependency."
This small paperback book has found an important place in my personal library. It's a good one.
January 30, 2015
Mormonism is basically a mushy amalgam of primitivism (faith, repentance, baptism, confirmation) and sacramentalism (high-church temple worship). Brown systematizes this fusion by relating them to each other. Both the first principles and ordinances, and the temple, were meant create a cohesive society. There is no "I" in church.
Brown attended Harvard Medical School, and although this book is not about the nexus of science and faith, his scientific worldview is evidence throughout. Mormondom may have found its Alister McGrath its scientifically trained theologian.
This is something I'm gonna read over again.
Brown attended Harvard Medical School, and although this book is not about the nexus of science and faith, his scientific worldview is evidence throughout. Mormondom may have found its Alister McGrath its scientifically trained theologian.
This is something I'm gonna read over again.
January 27, 2015
The author is a physician as well as a student of the Gospel and brings a fresh perspective to the basics of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In this slim volume he examines Faith in Jesus Christ, Repentance, Baptism and the Gift of the Holy Ghost in terms of the relationship they forge between God and us and the relationships they create among us, the human family. He further examines how these First Principles and Ordinances relate to the ordinances of the Temple, where these relationships are enhanced to transcend time.
July 5, 2015
A beautiful devotional book about lived faith, the basic principles and ordinances of the gospel of Jesus Christ and how they bind us together and build durable communities that make real differences in peoples' lives. It has deepened my understanding of my faith and solidified my commitment to it. Recommend it to all LDS, practicing and not, to gain a renewed look at the LDS faith, both personally and as a whole.
April 25, 2015
I read the paperback, but I don't know how to add new editions. This was a little book, but it got into deep territory. I love theology and seeing basic ideas in different perspectives. Brown's way of showing faith, repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost in terms of relationship (with God and our fellow humans) is theology with a heart!
July 28, 2015
A Fresh Look at Familiar Doctrine
I just finished this book and I feel renewed and invigorated to live in the community of faith Mr. Brown describes. He takes simple, familiar concepts and teaches them in a new way. I couldn't help but read passages out loud to family and friends as I found little gems.
I just finished this book and I feel renewed and invigorated to live in the community of faith Mr. Brown describes. He takes simple, familiar concepts and teaches them in a new way. I couldn't help but read passages out loud to family and friends as I found little gems.
January 14, 2015
One Sentence Review: the first principles and ordinances of the LDS gospel as well as the temple teach the importance of a universal relationship.
April 22, 2018
Very good! Brown takes apart each principle and dives deep into the gospel truths around them -- historical and spiritual. Maybe I didn't understand or follow every line of thought, but I really loved the explanations of the Sacrament, baptism as a community covenant in the Body of Christ, and a better understanding of the Holy Spirit, to name just a few. Took me awhile to get through it, even though it's not that long, only because it does take concentration and study. Not a light read but a good read!
"We are made whole as we love each other and Christ. That love, interdependent in complex was on priesthood, binds us to each other and to Christ in a way that overcomes all human frailty."
"We are made whole as we love each other and Christ. That love, interdependent in complex was on priesthood, binds us to each other and to Christ in a way that overcomes all human frailty."
November 12, 2019
I like the idea that basic gospel principles have an essential relational aspect to them, that principles like faith, repentance and baptism are not just principles learned apart from our relationships with God and other people. It was obvious the author has thought deeply about the topics. Unfortunately I felt that sometimes the ideas were not written in a way that made sense to me. They felt underdeveloped in the sense that I often felt like I wanted to see where he was going with an idea but often didn’t quite get there.
I did appreciate the blood pressure analogy he used—how if a patient is suffering from one of the extremes of blood pressure such as shock or malignant hypertension, the treatment is different depending on the problem. In like manner, sometimes people need a message of grace and sometimes they need a message of works—it depends on what they are suffering from.
I did appreciate the blood pressure analogy he used—how if a patient is suffering from one of the extremes of blood pressure such as shock or malignant hypertension, the treatment is different depending on the problem. In like manner, sometimes people need a message of grace and sometimes they need a message of works—it depends on what they are suffering from.
January 29, 2023
I thought this book was AMAZING! Maybe it’s just where my mind has been lately but I found what he talked about so relevant. (And it was written almost 10 years ago??)
This idea of looking at these first principles and ordinances as relational seems so natural, yet I had not thought of that.
Some of my favorite things I learned were about turning thoughts/feelings into action through physical ordinances, and how he discussed each temple ordinance in particular, as well as the idea of community running through everything. I found this highly inspiring. I will definitely read it again!
This idea of looking at these first principles and ordinances as relational seems so natural, yet I had not thought of that.
Some of my favorite things I learned were about turning thoughts/feelings into action through physical ordinances, and how he discussed each temple ordinance in particular, as well as the idea of community running through everything. I found this highly inspiring. I will definitely read it again!
December 18, 2017
This is an interesting book about the temple, faith, and relationships. In part, this book is one of the fruits of the Maxwell Institute's attempts to publish more books about LDS theology. Brown is thoughtful and sensitive in his perspectives here. I'd like to hear the meditations on theology here more rooted in the words of other LDS thinkers and leaders, personally. Still, it presents an interpretation of the gospel that is enriching and interesting.
May 1, 2018
4.8 stars! Like most, I underline books as I read, but this one was a different animal. I would have underlined the whole book! It's deeply profound and rocked me to the core with nearly every page. I'll be returning to this book frequently.
April 25, 2019
Wow is all I can say.
January 6, 2018
So good. There is gold in here as Sam Brown meditates on faith, repentance, and ordinances. I love his idea that our task is not achievement of righteousness but striving for it. I don’t feel that the subtitle fits - tying these things to the temple didn’t work - but the rest is really good.
September 9, 2015
While the general concepts presented in this book piqued my interest, I didn't feel they were fleshed out enough to appreciate. There was a lot of gesturing toward and talking around the key ideas, but too little in the way of detail. I often felt slightly confused or unsure of what precisely Brown wanted to say or was thinking in his own head. As an example, here is a quote from page 83:
"Because ordinances are simple and clear, they are some of the few times that we are truly, entirely obedient to the will of God. In that way they can prepare us for those times in our lives when the will of God seems less clear, when there is more room for us to misapprehend instructions or fail to measure up. There is a quiet strength in knowing that in at least some parts of our lives, we have been and are perfectly obedient to the will of the Father."
I am left wanting Brown to say more about how the pure obedience associated with performing ordinances can buoy a person in times when God's will is difficult to discern. The reader has to grasp to make sense of this. Is the point merely that we needn't chastise ourselves if we're getting God's will wrong when we're not performing ordinances, because at least we know that when we are performing ordinances, we're being perfectly obedient? That is my best take on it, but it feels like an idea that begs for more to be said. Is Brown saying that we should worry less than we do about discerning God's will in those difficult times? Is he claiming only that God won't condemn us if we goof up after striving earnestly to discern God's will? And how exactly does the performing of ordinances at one time genuinely absolve us of any degree of responsibility at a later time? Or does it not, and Brown is simply pointing to a psychological trick that can allay fears that were never justified to begin with? All I can do is shrug in response to these questions. Whatever the point, Brown presumably assumes that ordinances themselves are perfectly prescribed to us, otherwise his point becomes even more obscured. What if we don't perform an ordinance exactly as God wants it done? Does that still count as perfect obedience on our part? If the answer is no, Brown's point is lost. If the answer is yes, then why can't a person demonstrate perfect obedience even when that person is simply doing her/his best to decipher and act on God's will in times that don't involve performing ordinances? In the end, I walk away feeling less than confident that I know what Brown is trying to say, and I believe it is the lack of detail in the writing that is responsible.
In conclusion, Brown draws some broad strokes with this book. They are intriguing enough that I want to stop and look at the picture he is painting, but I also wish he would come back and paint a bit more.
"Because ordinances are simple and clear, they are some of the few times that we are truly, entirely obedient to the will of God. In that way they can prepare us for those times in our lives when the will of God seems less clear, when there is more room for us to misapprehend instructions or fail to measure up. There is a quiet strength in knowing that in at least some parts of our lives, we have been and are perfectly obedient to the will of the Father."
I am left wanting Brown to say more about how the pure obedience associated with performing ordinances can buoy a person in times when God's will is difficult to discern. The reader has to grasp to make sense of this. Is the point merely that we needn't chastise ourselves if we're getting God's will wrong when we're not performing ordinances, because at least we know that when we are performing ordinances, we're being perfectly obedient? That is my best take on it, but it feels like an idea that begs for more to be said. Is Brown saying that we should worry less than we do about discerning God's will in those difficult times? Is he claiming only that God won't condemn us if we goof up after striving earnestly to discern God's will? And how exactly does the performing of ordinances at one time genuinely absolve us of any degree of responsibility at a later time? Or does it not, and Brown is simply pointing to a psychological trick that can allay fears that were never justified to begin with? All I can do is shrug in response to these questions. Whatever the point, Brown presumably assumes that ordinances themselves are perfectly prescribed to us, otherwise his point becomes even more obscured. What if we don't perform an ordinance exactly as God wants it done? Does that still count as perfect obedience on our part? If the answer is no, Brown's point is lost. If the answer is yes, then why can't a person demonstrate perfect obedience even when that person is simply doing her/his best to decipher and act on God's will in times that don't involve performing ordinances? In the end, I walk away feeling less than confident that I know what Brown is trying to say, and I believe it is the lack of detail in the writing that is responsible.
In conclusion, Brown draws some broad strokes with this book. They are intriguing enough that I want to stop and look at the picture he is painting, but I also wish he would come back and paint a bit more.
November 21, 2015
This book was great in that it brought an often missed perspective to Latter-day Saint theology. The book's sub-title "The Fourth Article of Faith in Light of the Temple" is somewhat misleading in that as a reader I expected elements of the temple to be used to inform the understanding of the fourth article of faith. A more direct sub-title would have been "The Fourth Article of Faith in Light of Relationships" or perhaps "Eternal Relationships". The emphasis here is on the relationships that are formed with our family, community, and with God. How those relationships are the driving factors of the principles and ordinances of the gospel.
A couple quotes I loved:
Because those failings of mine are absorbed into our relationship, because what God wants from me is my sonhood. Baptism is the physical representation of that ongoing relationship. It's not an eraser intermittently wiping a slate clean but a birth certificate announcing these are my parents, and I am their child.
-p. 105
A relational view disrupts many of our usual ways of thinking about faith. Most of the time we think of faith in terms of simple, positive outcomes. We hope and pray for a desired blessing, and we have faith that we will receive it. We often think of faith as belief that God will come though for us, hat what we want is what God will deliver to us. Again and again we hear and tell stories about God granting a wish, an earnest, fervent wish. Faith in this view becomes a story about miracles that happen the way we want them to. There is nothing wrong with finding pleasure and comfort in moments of grace that follow the expected course of "ask and you shall receive." When our yearnings align with God's will, we should be pleased. But we should not mistake these occasional blissful moments for the meat of faith. Faith, true faith, is not believing that God will agree with us about the shape of our lives. Faith is loving and trusting God as he carries us through the process of becoming divine.
-pp. 36-37
I am not arguing for a position of extreme moral relativism, which is a caricature and distortion of God's intense regard for the specifics of individual lives. The truth that will never change is Christ and his atonement. But union with Christ is a relationship and relationships are built of people. They grow through time and are marvelously specific. When I say that the details of grace
and works are specific to an individual's life, I do not mean that moral truth is relative. There is one great standard, and because that standard is merged with Christ and his mission it is beyond the reach of any actual mortal. Our paths to that truth may vary some, but more to the point, salvation is as specific as we are.
-p.50
A couple quotes I loved:
Because those failings of mine are absorbed into our relationship, because what God wants from me is my sonhood. Baptism is the physical representation of that ongoing relationship. It's not an eraser intermittently wiping a slate clean but a birth certificate announcing these are my parents, and I am their child.
-p. 105
A relational view disrupts many of our usual ways of thinking about faith. Most of the time we think of faith in terms of simple, positive outcomes. We hope and pray for a desired blessing, and we have faith that we will receive it. We often think of faith as belief that God will come though for us, hat what we want is what God will deliver to us. Again and again we hear and tell stories about God granting a wish, an earnest, fervent wish. Faith in this view becomes a story about miracles that happen the way we want them to. There is nothing wrong with finding pleasure and comfort in moments of grace that follow the expected course of "ask and you shall receive." When our yearnings align with God's will, we should be pleased. But we should not mistake these occasional blissful moments for the meat of faith. Faith, true faith, is not believing that God will agree with us about the shape of our lives. Faith is loving and trusting God as he carries us through the process of becoming divine.
-pp. 36-37
I am not arguing for a position of extreme moral relativism, which is a caricature and distortion of God's intense regard for the specifics of individual lives. The truth that will never change is Christ and his atonement. But union with Christ is a relationship and relationships are built of people. They grow through time and are marvelously specific. When I say that the details of grace
and works are specific to an individual's life, I do not mean that moral truth is relative. There is one great standard, and because that standard is merged with Christ and his mission it is beyond the reach of any actual mortal. Our paths to that truth may vary some, but more to the point, salvation is as specific as we are.
-p.50
September 16, 2016
We liked this book so much that we reviewed it twice!
Spunky: ....The benevolence in which Brown reminds all of us to be gentle on ourselves, and those who are suffering from mental illness, is one of the best examples of Christlike love I can recall. I found this to be equal to the sense of my own responsibility to be more patient, trusting and loving as a source who might be in position to “bring the Holy Ghost,” to another (an important visiting teaching reminder for me). These two concepts make this a powerful resource for those who are dealing with or are supporting loved ones who suffer from depression or anxiety..... to read the rest of this review, visit the Exponent blog here:
http://www.the-exponent.com/book-revi...
Rachel: [This] is not a very big book, but it took me a big time to read, and a bigger time to think about. This is in part, because I could only read in little bursts of time confetti, one page here, three pages there, on walks to the water with my daughter, or at the nearby park. But, there is a another important part: it’s pages contain multitudes. For me, this meant that it benefited from a slow read, and also that every time I turned to its pages, I felt better–not just about Mormonism, which I might have expected, but about marriage, relationships, and community... to read the rest of Rachel's review, visit the Exponent blog here:
http://www.the-exponent.com/book-revi...
Spunky: ....The benevolence in which Brown reminds all of us to be gentle on ourselves, and those who are suffering from mental illness, is one of the best examples of Christlike love I can recall. I found this to be equal to the sense of my own responsibility to be more patient, trusting and loving as a source who might be in position to “bring the Holy Ghost,” to another (an important visiting teaching reminder for me). These two concepts make this a powerful resource for those who are dealing with or are supporting loved ones who suffer from depression or anxiety..... to read the rest of this review, visit the Exponent blog here:
http://www.the-exponent.com/book-revi...
Rachel: [This] is not a very big book, but it took me a big time to read, and a bigger time to think about. This is in part, because I could only read in little bursts of time confetti, one page here, three pages there, on walks to the water with my daughter, or at the nearby park. But, there is a another important part: it’s pages contain multitudes. For me, this meant that it benefited from a slow read, and also that every time I turned to its pages, I felt better–not just about Mormonism, which I might have expected, but about marriage, relationships, and community... to read the rest of Rachel's review, visit the Exponent blog here:
http://www.the-exponent.com/book-revi...
June 20, 2015
This is a complicated book to review... The author he accurate, and thoughtful... However his depth is unclear - the reader can tell that he comes from a place of knowledge and thoughtful consideration of deep connection - but fails to write in a way that the concepts are actually teachable and therefore receivable. He makes thoughtful points but fails to connect them in explanation and application. He makes meaningful points like - baptism and the Holy Ghost is a community experience but fails to clearly explain how to give backing to his consideration (few scriptures cited, and even fewer experience - just philosophy). It is not missing to the point that you challenge the truth of his statement - but missing to the point that you don't connect with his writing or his points. You leave the book thinking - he has depth and connection in his faith - but unfortunately doesn't connect with increasing my faith. I leave the book at three stars - it accurate but not something I would expect many people to connect with it get anything applicable out of.
October 25, 2016
A powerful re-evaluation of the first principles of the gospel. Every primary kid can recite them to you: faith, repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. The problem? Sometimes, these become so commonplace that we lose their significance. My mission was one moment where I re-discovered the beauty of the principles of the gospel. Here's another chance for you to discover the beauty in the simple aspects of the gospel.
The central thesis of the book is that the gospel is entirely about relationship. Brown looks at faith as a trust in God rather than embracing a set of beliefs. He looks at repentance as reconciliation with both God and community. He shows how ordinances are a communal remembering as well as a reminder that physical and temporal things ARE important in the grand scheme of things.
The central thesis of the book is that the gospel is entirely about relationship. Brown looks at faith as a trust in God rather than embracing a set of beliefs. He looks at repentance as reconciliation with both God and community. He shows how ordinances are a communal remembering as well as a reminder that physical and temporal things ARE important in the grand scheme of things.
April 4, 2015
This is a work of "personal theology," analogous to personal essay but with a focus on religious principles. The author brings enough personal experience to ground the theorizing, and purposefully takes a back-to-basics approach, showing the Mormon temple's connection to "first principles and ordinances (faith, repentance, baptism etc.).
My three stars reflect how hard it is to write a good book on theology. Brown's personal/devotional approach is probably the best bet for a general reader, yet still, the book fell flat for me. Just not enough profundity or novelty to get invested or excited about. Sad - I wish I could return to "the basics" and feel renewed - not this time.
My three stars reflect how hard it is to write a good book on theology. Brown's personal/devotional approach is probably the best bet for a general reader, yet still, the book fell flat for me. Just not enough profundity or novelty to get invested or excited about. Sad - I wish I could return to "the basics" and feel renewed - not this time.
May 28, 2016
I live a three hour drive each way from the nearest church branch, so we have ecclesiastical permission to share the sacrament at home as a family. I am not officially in any branch, I have no official calling, and am far enough from a temple that regular attendance is impossible. Yet I found Samuel Brown’s Mormon communal exegesis as one of my favourite parts of the book. He refers to the church a community of saints who strive in varied pulses creating an interdependent ‘body of Christ’ that is in need of all of the variations of church goers...
To read this entire review, please go to the Exponent blog at: http://www.the-exponent.com/book-revi...
To read this entire review, please go to the Exponent blog at: http://www.the-exponent.com/book-revi...
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