Continued from Logic III Adam S. Miller . . . From a previous post: In Jesus hands, the logic of the law is clear: not good for good and evil for evil. And, what’s more, returning is not here positioned as an act of mercy that counterbalances justice. Rather returning good for evil is justice. Returning good for evil is how you fulfill the law.
As Jesus describes it, this is how God himself judges. This is how God fulfills the law and accomplishes justice. This is God’s own logic.” Love your enemies . . . that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:44-45). Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Be ye therefore just, even as your Father in heaven is just.
What does this have to do with grace? If we take Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount as our guide, the logic of justice is the logic of grace.
Grace is the art of good for good and good for evil. Grace is the art of giving whatever good is needed. And if justice is the art of giving whatever good is needed—and not, instead, the business of giving only what’s deserved—then justice and grace are two names for the same thing. And, further, if justice and grace are two names for the same thing, then grace is no exception to the law. Grace is the law. Grace is not a way around justice; it is justice. Only grace can fulfill the law, and only grace can justify the world.
In a letter to his son Corianton, Alma takes a different approach to justice. Justice, he says, requires restoration, and “the meaning of the word restoration is to bring back evil for evil, or carnal for carnal, or devilish for devilish—good for that which is good; righteous for that which is righteous; just for that which is just; merciful for that which is merciful” (Alma 41:13).
What should we make of the fact that Alma appears to side with Polemarchus rather than Jesus?
What’s more, in this same letter, Alma also clearly divides the afterlife into only two kingdoms: the traditional heaven where “the righteous shine forth in the kingdom of God” and the traditional hell where the wicked suffer “an awful death” and are “consigned to partake of the fruits of their labors or their works, which have been evil” (Alma 40:25-26).
What should we make of the fact that Alma appears to disagree with Joseph Smith’s stunning vision of the afterlife in Doctrine and Covenants 76?
Of all the answers we might give, I think the simplest is suggested by a talk President Dallin H. Oaks gave in October 2007: while some ways of talking may be good, another are better, and still others are best.5 Alma’s way of talking may be good for his circumstances—and perhaps especially, for his wayward son’s circumstances. But at the end of the day, it seems clear to me that Joseph Smith’s account of the afterlife is better and Jesus’s own account of justice is best. ~Adam S. Miller, Original Grace (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2022) p. 37-39 (continued Logic V
