Review
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Title: Original Grace
Author: Adam S. Miller
Publisher: BYU Maxwell Institute and Deseret Book
Genre: Devotional/Religious
Year Published: 2022
Number of Pages: 115
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN 9781639930241
Price: $18.99
Reviewed by Douglas F. Christensen for the Association for Mormon Letters
Adam Miller’s Original Grace feels like the culmination of much of his work, bringing together various threads woven in and out of previous texts. Therefore, his thesis that the world begins in a state of grace, is created as an act of grace, and is infused with God’s grace from the beginning seems familiar. In these new chapters, he provides clarity and resolution to his general theory of grace in relationship to justice, but he also adds a new dimension to the Latter-day Saint conversation about atonement theory.
Alma complicates a Latter-day Saint conception of justice by framing it as the opposite of mercy when in many other places in scripture, justice is defined as something almost identical to mercy; for example, Isaiah 1:18 says though your sins be as scarlet, they can be white as snow. What we don’t always realize is that these “sins” are outlined in verse 17, “Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” The words judgment and judge in these verses point quite specifically to what today we might think of as social justice, a kind of fairness that Isaiah sees egregiously absent in his day. We could say the same thing about Amos 5 which famously reports on the Lord’s impatience with his children because they “tread upon [and] . . . turn aside the poor.” His solution is for them to “let judgment run down as waters and righteousness like a mighty stream” (See Amos 5:11-12, 24). The nuance in Amos is that judgment equals justice, and justice equals mercy. In his 1992 essay, “Turning the Time Over to Justice,” Cole Capener makes a similar case that rearranged my own thinking about “judgment” and “justice.” Capener relies heavily on Matthew 23:23 where Jesus uses the word “justice” as one of the “weightier matters of the law.” After rethinking a definition of justice, Capener (a lawyer) lays out a vision for a social-justice-renaissance in the restoration tradition. Miller seems to answer this call, whether consciously or unconsciously. But his agenda is a bit different; he concentrates specifically on revising our misunderstanding of big concepts like suffering, sin, justice, atonement, and grace. Miller shows God to be an utter realist, like an ideal, pragmatic parent, on the ready to give you what you need, not what you deserve.
Miller frames his argument using two pillars: his relationship with his father, who passed away in 2020, and Stephen Robinson’s book, Believing Christ. In the case of Robinson’s book, Miller sees it as the ignition switch that brings his concerns with grace into focus as a young missionary. But there is something about Robinson’s way of seeing grace that cannot escape the meritocracy built into the Christian equation of receiving grace. Miller writes:
Believing Christ argues, ‘individuals theoretically could by their efforts and merits make themselves worthy by keeping all the rules all the time. Technically, there was nothing wrong with the old covenant and its law.’ This is exactly the kind of qualification that concerns me (23).
Miller seems to disagree with the impulse in Believing Christ that says on one hand that we need the grace of Christ to save us, but at the same time suggests the theoretical possibility of learning how to free ourselves from sin and mistakes in our mortal lives:
“Here,” Miller writes, “the ‘new’ gospel covenant that offers perfection-in-Christ by way of grace is clearly plan B. Under the old covenant, grace was not God’s original plan. It was only necessary because the original plan—flawless, bootstrapped obedience—failed. And God’s ultimate goal is still for us to achieve a ‘private, individual perfection’ that does not depend on our temporary partnership with Christ” (23).
Recalling his urgent paraphrase of Romans, Miller insists here too, that grace is not God’s backup plan, but instead his “original plan, full stop—not an unfortunate intervention necessitated by my failure to save myself” (23). He declares boldly that there is only one kind of perfection and it is solely located in a relationship with Christ. This kind of perfection results from “growing deeper into the grace of a divine partnership so that, as Christ put it, we ‘all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us'” (23-34).
The sea change Miller proposes to Latter-day Saint understanding of doctrine feels novel, but he argues from restoration scripture the whole way, so it feels obvious too. In Terryl and Fiona Givens’ recent All Things New, they catalogue the prominent atonement theories of the past, beginning with the 4th-century ransom theory all the way to their own present theory which they describe as one of “radical healing” (131-147). Miller’s approach might be inferred in their theory of radical healing, but according to their respective talks at the Wheatley Institute’s commemoration of Believing Christ, Terryl Givens notes his own admiration for Miller’s writing, but also his direct disagreement with his interpretation of grace—seeing it too closely tied to reformation thinking for Givens’ comfort[i]. But I see Miller doing something deliberately different than the Protestant interpretation of grace. The basic concept of this book militates in contrast to original sin and therefore, in contrast to both Catholic and Protestant (as well as most previous Latter-day Saint) views of grace. Miller is not arguing for earned grace or cheap grace, but instead for a grace that coexists with and emanates from God from the beginning, hence his original, elegant title, Original Grace.
Original Grace’s chapters on justice and logic propose at least two important shifts (shifts I first noticed in Cole Capener’s thinking back in 1992, but that get fleshed out and organized so expertly in Miller’s account). First, that justice and mercy more or less add up to the same thing. Second, that the logic of sin “uses God’s law to ask what is deserved,” and the logic of grace “uses God’s law to ask what is needed” (31). The way Miller frames justice seems to contrast with the way Alma characterizes it, but this may just be the difference between one person speaking legalistically and another speaking more philosophically (President Oaks and Elder Uchtdorf sound different even though they would each describe the other as preaching the restored gospel message). Miller suggests that “justice returns good for good and good for evil” (35). Similarly, grace:
is the art of giving 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 (37-38).
A chapter on parables drives both points home by reminding readers that in the parable of the Prodigal Son, the “father acknowledges all the good the elder son has done and promises good in return. And too, the father acknowledges all the evil the younger son has done—and still promises good in return. This is the logic of justice. This is the logic of what is right or necessary or needed: good for good, and good for evil” (47). Framing this old parable in this new way gives the reader something substantive.
This new way of reconciling justice and mercy, works and grace, changes our relationship to sin and therefore to Christ’s atonement. Miller argues that the model of original sin pits God’s mercy against God’s own justice, providing Christ to mediate between the two, but only because, without Christ, the two aspects of God are otherwise incompatible. Miller fleshes out several reasons this original sin perspective on atonement needs revision, and he also provides constructive maps or diagrams to show the difference between a model based on original sin versus one based on original grace. Since pain is not in any way constructed or purposely imposed upon humans from outside sources, since suffering is, on Miller’s account, never deserved because it is naturalistic and therefore neutral, Christ’s magnanimous gifts come as a source of peace, empathy, and healing. As Miller puts it:
Christ suffers with us to meet the law’s demand for compassion and grace . . . whereas in the first case justice demands the evil we deserve, in the second case justice demands the good we need (58).
He points out, further, that Christ’s atonement solves a fundamentally different problem under the logic of original grace:
instead of suffering punishment to reconcile God’s justice with God’s grace, Christ’s vicarious suffering now works to reconcile us to the root logic shared by both God’s justice and God’s grace. Christ’s atonement directly addresses a problem internal to my own nature as a sinner, not a problem internal to God’s nature. He bridges a gap caused by my rebellion against justice and grace, not a gap between God’s justice and God’s grace (59).
With additional justification for his perspective on the logic of original grace, Miller concludes his chapter on atonement by suggesting that original grace allows Christ’s atonement to decouple “the material order from the moral order, and in this way, he saves them both” because “[d]ecoupled from the moral order, the material order is innocent. Decoupled from the material order, the moral order no longer needs to justify suffering as a punishment required by God’s law” (62).
In the remaining chapters, Miller pours deep concepts of nothingness, death, creation, time, and forgiveness through the sieve of original grace. The outcome makes for a capacious sense of God’s law and God’s love. He carefully shows the reader a more pragmatic, less abstract approach to grace, almost like the law of the harvest. This is not to say that the grand theory is easy to digest, but Miller succeeds at simplifying our relationship with God, placing the responsibility to receive his grace onto each individual’s shoulders. At the same time, his way of viewing the self in relation to God’s original grace reveals the decadence of previous theories, pregnant with self-loathing and unremitting accusations, presupposing that life can either be won or lost—zero-sum. In Miller’s reading, “life cannot be won. It can only be loved” (80). Thinking holistically about grace as part of God’s ongoing creation he writes:
When sin comes first, God’s grace shows up only as a localized effect, as an exceptional case, as a special atoning response to a narrow set of sinful problems. Governed by original sin, we only get a special theory of grace. . . When grace comes first, it shows up as a fundamental force that is original, global in scale, and universal in impact. Instead of being a special name for a rare kind of divine intervention, grace becomes a general name for how God, as a rule, continually acts in the world. Grace, rather than being an exception to the rule, becomes the rule (81).
You might gather from the length of this review that this is the kind of book where you want to underline practically every line, highlight every passage. Miller weaves in the account of his father’s final years and finally his death to humanize both Miller and his theory, grounding these heady concepts in the grit and grime as well as the charm and loveliness of daily life. There is something profound in weighing two of Miller’s lifelong relationships—trying to appreciate the father who gave him enough grace to traverse life’s exigencies somewhat in-tact and this second relationship that readers have been able to watch come into full fruition, Adam Miller’s concept of grace. I am not arguing that this is the final stop along the track for him or for his audience, but there is something satisfying and cohesive about the shape of this book. If you read his work you are bound to pick up many if not most of these ideas here or there, but Original Grace brings the doctrine of grace full circle toward a comprehensive shift in Latter-day Saint atonement theory.
In the final “Forgiveness” chapter, I am reminded of the project of Emanuel Levinas, who described one of his keywords, “alterity” as the dream of pure non-violence. At the funeral of Levinas, his philosopher friend Jacques Derrida said in his Eulogy:
Levinas and I were once sitting together talking and he said, ‘You know, one often speaks of ethics to describe what I do, but what really interests me, in the end, is not ethics, not ethics alone but the holy, the holiness of the holy’ (Derrida 4).
In a related vein, Miller writes:
Because grace always shows itself both in what is given and what’s needed, every revelation of grace is accompanied by a moral imperative to be grateful and give succor. Every revelation of grace is accompanied by a moral imperative to forgive all things (105).
Original Grace opens the door toward a realistic account of human experience, it makes way for our humanness while also encouraging our aspirations toward health and happiness, toward healing, wholeness, and holiness. It recognizes human brokenness and welcomes our desire to give and receive grace.
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Works Cited
Capener, Cole R. “Turning the Time Over to Justice.” Sunstone Magazine, August 1992, pp. 15-18.
Derrida, Jacques, and Vangelēs Bitsōrēs. Adieu Emmanuel Levinas = Epikēdeios Gia Ton Emmanuel Levinas. Athēna: Ekdoseis Agra, 1996. Print.
Givens, Fiona, and Terryl. All Things New, Rethinking Sin, Salvation, and Everything in Between. Faith Matters Publishing. October 2020.
[i] These talks have recently been removed from the Wheatley Institute’s website, but according to the Institute, they may be re-released by the Maxwell Institute at some future date.