Imagine you’re sneaking a smoke out behind the barn (back in your misspent youth) and your grandfather comes around the end of the barn. He has warned you about smoking before, but really, what can he do?
Imagine you come around the end of the barn and there’s the grandchild you’ve warned repeatedly about not keeping the Word of Wisdom. What are you going to do? A severe punishment might build resentment, but you remember something about the power of the word to affect people.
And now, as the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just—yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them—therefore Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the word of God.
–Alma 31:5
Perhaps you could try the virtue of the word of Deuteronomy, then the word of Isaiah, then the word of Revelation. Your reading takes all night, and you don’t let your grandchild fall asleep.
At the end of the Apocalypse, reading the warning that “if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book,” you add, “No man has added to that Book, but God has, through men. Here, open this to the 89th Section and read it again,” during which reading you gradually drop your head to the side and start snoring softly.
Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Revelation. The Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel. I like the way you worked that all in.
What? my father said, looking puzzled. He hadn’t written “Grandfather Clocks” for the scriptural symbolism, apparently. It was from a book called Morgan Triumphs, a collection of funny stories about jokes and pranks he had played with his friends, stories he told us often growing up, but now they carried an edge of pain, seen from the vantage of someone the age of those who had received the pranks.
He lifted an episode from his brother Harlan’s life for this story, in which he was trying to capture his grandfather’s sense of time, how he would drop in on the Morgan family, taking some time off from the Bear Lake family, his first wife’s family, trying to capture a sense of what it was like to be a patriarch to a family that had initially had to be hidden.
My father probably was not thinking about Grandpa’s words “No man has added to that book, but God has, through men” as summarizing the Mormon attitude toward scripture, but they form a nice summary, and a nice example of rhetoric.
Rhetoric can have a very broad definition, including not just the words we speak and what we mean by them, but how we deliver them. As Grandfather reads his voice develops a hypnotic, reverent rhythm.
Grandpa slowed a little, lovingly, over another passage familiar to all Mormons: “And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach. In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit . . .”
“Don’t you dare go to sleep, Morgan.”
“. . . of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel.” Grandpa had hardly broken the rhythm to give me that stern warning. But he had certainly jarred me back awake.
(p. 21)
Rhetoric also involves what the scriptures mean to us as we read them. As I’ve suggested before Christians developed a new rhetoric of reading scripture as they split from Jews, which eventually became quite literalistic in taking scriptures at face value, that is, in ignoring the rhetorical element.
I’ll end with a passage which contains an explicit invitation to consider the words in a rhetorical sense rather than the sense we would usually attach to the words.
4 And surely every man must repent or suffer, for I, God, am endless.
5 Wherefore, I revoke not the judgments which I shall pass, but woes shall go forth, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, yea, to those who are found on my left hand.
6 Nevertheless, it is not written that there shall be no end to this torment, but it is written endless torment.
7 Again, it is written eternal damnation; wherefore it is more express than other scriptures, that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men, altogether for my name’s glory.
8 Wherefore, I will explain unto you this mystery, for it is meet unto you to know even as mine apostles.
9 I speak unto you that are chosen in this thing, even as one, that you may enter into my rest.
10 For, behold, the mystery of godliness, how great is it! For, behold, I am endless, and the punishment which is given from my hand is endless punishment, for Endless is my name. Wherefore—
11 Eternal punishment is God’s punishment.
12 Endless punishment is God’s punishment.
–D&C 19:4-12
This is a deeply intriguing passage, because the Nevertheless in verse 6 doesn’t have a preceding clause to take exception to. The precedent doesn’t come until verses 11 and 12, where they stand as examples of express expression expressed in such a way “that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men.” Not to leave them hopeless and condemned, but “for my names glory,” which glory is to bring about repentance and redemption.
We’ll talk more about the rhetoric of redemption and scripture later. And the rhetoric of rebellion in passages like “my father chastised you with whips but I shall chastise you with scorpions.” (Along with a consideration of why the Chronicler of the Kings of Judah omitted certain facts about this speaker’s grandparents which the writer about the Kings of Israel did not.)
So what is your favorite piece of scriptural rhetoric?
One thought