Dealing with Teleology Again

I recently came across an interesting Honors thesis by Nicholas Masferrer Ramirez, The Limping Violinist: Why Thomson’s Defense of Abortion Does Not Establish the Conclusion that Abortion is Morally Permissible. As the title suggests, it is yet another attempt to refute Judith Jarvis Thomson’s "A Defense of Abortion." Like other attempts, it fails. However, it is an eighty page pdf file, and even skipping over arguments I’ve already engaged, it would still take about forty pages to thoroughly debunk.

Instead, I’m opting to focus on Part IV: The Teleological Objection (55-68). This is the only section where Ramirez is arguing abortion is morally impermissible, rather than simply attempting to prove Thomson’s “Defense” doesn’t show abortion is permissible. Nothing in this part depends of Parts I-III being true, so we’re not missing anything important.

The interesting part of this argument is that it attempts to use teleological reasoning to show that abortion is impermissible. However, he is almost immediately reduced to admitting his argument “would only apply to those who accept a teleological metaphysical view” (55). This in itself seems odd. Ramirez is clear he finds abortion generally impermissible. Making a case only for those who accept a certain worldview will not get to general impermissibility. That would still leave open the question of why abortion would be impermissible to anyone who does not accept that worldview.

This is a problem that affects Ramirez's entire paper. He is attempting to show that Thomson's violinist scenario does not show abortion is permissible even if one is allowed to disconnect from the violinist. As reliant on teleological considerations as his arguments are, they can only find purchase with those who accept his worldview. Thus he fails in his task generally even if he is successful among those who hold to teleological metaphysics.

Nevertheless, Ramirez holds that pro-choice philosophers would do well to “grant an Aristotelian teleology” (56). But why should they? Typically a philosopher arguing for the permissibility of abortion aims to show that abortion is generally permissible, not that it is permissible for a certain subset of the population. If one accepts teleological metaphysics and believes Ramirez's arguments are sound, one is certainly free not to have an abortion.

While I do not fully accept Aristotelian metaphysics, as I mentioned elsewhere, I am inclined to accept as true statements such as “the purpose of uteruses is to gestate prenates.” However, I have serious doubts that such statements can be parleyed into moral obligations. While this may not precisely make me part of the audience Ramirez is addressing, there is enough common ground for Ramirez to work with.

The question before us is this: Even if one accepts uteruses are for gestation, does Ramirez’s argument defeat bodily rights?

Preliminary Clarifications

Ramirez perpetuates some misconceptions about pregnancy. Since the actual facts will have some bearing on my response, I will begin by clarifying those misconceptions.

Ramirez places great emphasis on the fact that uterus bearers can live without their uterus, but fetuses cannot live without them. This is true insofar as it goes, but it is radically incomplete. The uterus is not the only organ that the fetus needs to stay alive. It also needs the mother's circulatory system, respiratory system, digestive system and kidneys to stay alive. Cut off the blood flow to the placenta, and the fetus will not be able to obtain nutrients and oxygen and cannot dispose of carbon dioxide and urea. Therefore it will surely die.

Ramirez heavily relies on an argument by Jim Stone¹ and attempts to rebut criticisms made by David Boonin.² Ramierez responds to only two of Boonin's objections, going so far as to modify Stone's argument to clear the argument from the charge of begging the question. However, Boonin offered other, perhaps more substantial, criticisms of Stone’s argument. As we shall see, Ramirez's modified argument is still subject to the criticisms he ignored.

The Nucleus of the Argument

The basis of Ramirez’s argument is pointing out a disanalogy between Thomson’s violinist and pregnancy. The purpose of filtering kidneys is to filter blood, whereas the purpose of uteruses is to gestate fetusus, i.e., to provide for another person. “Thus, the violinist does not have a right to your kidneys in the same way an unborn child has a right to her mother’s uterus” (55).

The first thing we should notice is that, formulated this way, the argument is invalid. Just because something is meant to benefit someone other than oneself does not by itself give anyone a right to that thing. Apartment complexes are meant to shelter people other than the owner, but that does not mean I have the right to take up residence in a given apartment without the owner’s permission.

There is a missing middle, as it were. Ramirez is attempting to fill the gap.

Filling the Gap

To fill the gap, Ramirez draws upon a thought experiment proposed by Jim Stone. To briefly recapitulate, Stone proposes we imagine an alien species. At the age of seventy, a member of this species splits into two distinct entities and ceases to exist. Both newly formed individuals have an unambiguous right to life. However, the fissioning is not quite complete for an additional nine months. During this time, one of the individuals has fully developed and functioning organs, whereas the other has vital organs still in development. The two are connected by a band of flesh through which a common bloodstream allows the incompletely formed split to use the organs of the other.

Supposing Stone himself is the individual with fully formed organs, would he be entitled to separate himself from the needy offshoot, George? Stone (and Ramirez) say no, using this reasoning:

The principle which justifies such a claim seems to be this: An organism with a strong right to life has a right to the continued use of the biological equipment, the use of which it acquires through the normal process of biological creation typical to its species, upon which its life depends. (qtd at 57)

Having stated the case, Ramirez now turns to respond to two of Boonin’s objections. Remember these are not the only objections Boonin had to Stone’s argument. However, we will leave those other objections aside for the time being and deal with Ramirez’s responses.

Responding to Ramirez’s Argumentum Ad Absurdum

Assuming that it would be morally impermissible for Stone to unplug himself from George, Boonin argues there is a relevant difference between the fissioned individuals and a fetus making use of its mothers body. In the case of Stone and George, they both began using Stone’s organs at the same time. By contrast, pregnant people clearly had prior ownership of their uteruses well before a fetus took up residence in it (DoA 245).

Ramirez responds if we accept this argument, we would have to accept that living organ donors can reclaim their organs even at the cost of the recipient’s life. I am unclear how Ramirez gets this. Possibly the argument is inspired by Boonin's language showing the pregnant people have prior ownership of their uteruses: "The organs inside her body were provided to her by nature well before the fetus began to make use of them" (DoA 245). Ramirez is apparently equating prior ownership with original ownership.

If so, we need only make a slight modification that will have the same result without the implication Ramirez asserts.

Consider Jack and Jill. Jack is a transgender man who for obvious reasons has no desire to be pregnant. Jill does want to have children some day, but her uterus is defective and will not carry any pregnancy. Jack, nice guy that he is, decides to donate his uterus to Jill. Although Jill's uterus was provided to her by Jack rather than nature, nothing has changed. Jill can still claim prior ownership vis a vis the fetus, unlike the case of Stone and George. Even if we were forced to conclude Stone could not disconnect from George, that still wouldn't mean Jill couldn't have an abortion on Thomsonian grounds.

Presumably Boonin never had any intention to imply organ donors could reclaim their donations and would agree with this modification. Regardless, with this modification, Ramirez’s response fails.

Nevertheless, we’re not going to leave things here. The real concern is that Ramirez is trying to assert “prior ownership of an organ is irrelevant in regards to who is entitled to that organ” (59). But even if his counterargument against Boonin could be sustained, this conclusion would still be jumping the gun.

Consider Ramirez’s case of Mary and John. Presumably Ramirez would agree that Mary, the kidney recipient, could be unplugged from Thomson’s violinist. The fact that she is the prior owner of the kidney certainly would be a factor in that judgment.

Indeed, prior ownership certainly plays a role in judgments about who is entitled to what—and usually it is the decisive factor. If Stone and George jointly inherited a house, it is clear Stone could not deny George’s use of it. However, if Stone alone inherited the house, it is just as clear George can claim no entitlement to use it.

It is certainly possible that the pregnant person’s ownership of their uterus is in fact irrelevant to whether the fetus is entitled to that organ. But Ramirez would actually have to make that case.

Reformulating Stone’s Thought Experiment

In response to Boonin’s charge Stone was begging the question, Ramirez reformulates Stone’s argument as a syllogism:

(1) A person is entitled to use any organ whose natural function is to keep him alive.

(2) A fetus is a person. (Assumption granted by Boonin and Thomson for the sake of argument.)

(3) A fetus is entitled to use any organ whose natural function is to keep him alive. (Follows from 1 and 2)

(4) The uterus of a fetus’s mother is an organ whose natural function is to keep him alive.

Therefore,

(5) A fetus is entitled to use the uterus of his mother. (Follows from 3 and 4). (59-60)

Ramirez claims if Boonin denied premise (1), it would have unsavory implications, such as the state claiming the use of people’s vital organs. But it seems to me that premise (1) as it stands allows that anyway. It would give the violinist a claim to your kidneys because the natural function of a kidney is to keep someone alive. The key point of Ramirez’s formulation is left unstated in premise (1): it is irrelevant whether that organ is internal or external to the person in need of it. Indeed, he asserts that distinguishing internal and external organs is an ad hoc one. So if the fetus is entitled to the pregnant person’s uterus because he needs it to keep him alive, then Thomson’s violinist is entitled to your kidneys because he needs them to keep him alive.

Also remember that the uterus is not the only external organ the fetus needs to keep it alive. It also needs, at a minimum, the pregnant person’s heart, lungs, stomach, intestines and kidneys to keep it alive. Presumably, Ramirez would affirm that the fetus is also entitled to the use of these organs. Otherwise, he would have to agree that an abortion could be performed by a method that cuts off the fetus’ access to nutrients, oxygen, and waste disposal. But if he is unwilling to do this, then it becomes difficult to deny the violinist has a right to your kidneys.

Ramirez also says that if Boonin denied premise (1), he would also have to deny George has any right to use Stone’s organs. Here, it should be pointed out that is exactly what Boonin did. Now we turn to an objection made by Boonin but ignored by Ramirez.

Boonin pointed out that Stone’s principle contains two distinct claims. First, George acquired the use of Stone’s organs through a natural process. Second, that natural process was the normal means of reproducing for his species. Boonin rejects the first claim. It does not follow from the fact that George acquired the use of Stone’s organs through the function of the common band of flesh they happen to have means he has a right to use those organs. Thus, Stone can detach himself from George (DoA 243-244).

To illustrate, let us extend our earlier metaphor of Stone and George jointly inheriting a house. Suppose that instead of jointly inheriting the entire house, Stone only inherits one half the house and George the other. As it so happens, the air conditioning unit is on Stone’s side of the house. Thus, George receives heating and cooling because of the preexisting duct work. George will be able to install an air conditioner, but it will take nine months. Does it follow from these facts that George has a right to use the air conditioner that is clearly on Stone’s side of the property? No. Absent any compelling reason to the contrary, Stone is within his rights to cut off heating and cooling to George’s part of the house.

It is only if the first claim is vindicated that the objection Ramirez is addressing, that Stone is begging the question, comes into play. This means even if Ramirez has successfully reformulated the argument to avoid begging the question, Boonin’s rejection of the first claim still stands. And Ramirez doesn’t even try offering a rebuttal to Boonin’s rejection of the first claim.

Surrogate Mothers and Spaceships

Ramirez can escape the conclusion that you must remain hooked to the violinist by insisting on another unstated part of premise (1), that the use of the organs are acquired through the normal reproductive process. So now premise (1) will look like this:

(1)^c A person is entitled to use any organ, internal or external to himself, whose natural function is to keep him alive if he acquired the use of the organ through normal reproductive processes.

Even Ramirez sees an immediate problem with this formulation: it does not cover cases he wants it to cover. It is at best unclear whether rape is part of the normal reproductive process. And artificial methods of becoming pregnant certainly are not part of the normal reproductive process. Indeed, Ramirez agrees that, at least in the artificially achieved pregnancy, the fetus would not have a right to the pregnant person’s uterus.

Ramirez turns to another argument to establish that even if the fetus has no right to the pregnant person’s uterus, that still wouldn’t necessarily justify an abortion:

Let us return to our spaceship case. Recall in this example, I have a spaceship stocked with enough food for two people on this nine month voyage and I fully own the rights to the spaceship and everything on it. After taking off for my nine month voyage, I discover that my two-year-old son has snuck on board. Let us now ask a similar question that we asked in the original version: do I have the right to kick my son off the spaceship, thereby killing him, since he does not have any right to the spaceship? [cite]

Before getting to my substantial objections, the are a couple things to notice about this argument. First, if this argument is enough to prohibit someone who became pregnant through artificial means from having an abortion, then it is also enough to prohibit you from being unhooked from the violinist. After all, if not having a right to one’s uterus is not a sufficient condition for having an abortion, then the fact that the unconscious violinist has no right to your kidneys is not sufficient reason to demand unhooking. Second, if this argument is enough to prohibit someone from having an abortion, then it no longer matters whether uteruses are for gestating prenates. We are out of the realm of teleological metaphysics entirely.

Now on to more substantial objections. There is a huge difference between Ramirez’s stowaway son and an unwanted fetus using a pregnant person’s body. The stowaway son is violating Ramirez’s property rights, whereas the unwanted fetus is violating the pregnant person’s right to bodily integrity. So it would not follow that agreeing Ramirez may not eject his son means a pregnant person may not have an abortion. Indeed, the right to bodily integrity is so fundamental that we regard killing someone trying to rape or kidnap you as justified self-defense. By parity of reasoning, pregnant people may kill the fetus to end the violation of their bodily integrity.

But suppose Ramirez is willing to concede cases where the fetus did not obtain the use of the pregnant persons organs through the normal reproductive process. We are now confronted with another Boonin objection Ramirez ignored. Boonin asks why it should matter that the use of the organ was acquired through the normal reproductive process (DoA 244-245). Once again, Ramirez doesn’t even attempt to answer that question.

The provision that the organ usage be acquired through the normal reproductive process can only serve one purpose: accommodate the intuition you are allowed to unplug yourself from Thomson’s violinist. But without any reason to believe acquirement through the normal reproductive process makes any difference, we can only conclude it is an attempt to give the fetus special rights. This serves as another piece of evidence that the abortion debate is really about who gets to control the bodies of uterus bearers.

 NOTES

1Ramirez cites Jim Stone, “Abortion and the Control of Human Bodies,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 17, no. 1 (1983): 77-85.

2In A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridgue University Press, 2005): 245-246. Hereafter, A Defense of Abortion will be cited in text as (DoA x), where x is the page number. Boonin also cites the same article as Ramirez. I currently have no access to Stone’s article, and therefore cannot properly evaluate whether Ramirez and/or Boonin have adequately captured Stone’s argument. However, since Ramirez does not allege Boonin misinterprets or misrepresents Stone’s argument, the point is moot.

Appreciating Judith Jarvis Thomson: Revisiting the Responsibility Argument

Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion” is the seminal essay on abortion. Whatever your position on abortion, no one can reasonably argue about it without having some familiarity with this essay. Personally speaking, this was the essay that made me truly understand what is meant by “my body, my choice.” Before reading this essay, I accepted the saying without truly understanding what it meant. I’ve been pro-choice since I first heard there was such a thing as abortion and that there was a massive political debate about it. I was around thirteen years old at the time, and it was my first instinct to side with women in the supposed conflict between their rights and the fetus’ rights. As I would have put it in those days, I can point at a woman; I can’t point at a fetus without a woman getting in the way. It was a somewhat simplistic way of looking at it. At that time I did not have the knowledge I needed to adjudicate the rights claimed for both women and fetuses. Thomson’s essay gave me the knowledge I needed and I haven’t looked back since.

However, it was not a matter of accepting Thomson’s argument because her essay adhered to my already existing bias in favor of women. I thought her argument was so devastating that I searched out counterarguments. The counterarguments did not have to convince me that Thomson was wrong, per se. They only needed to convince me that her resolution of that conflict didn’t fully solve the issue. This would have thrown me back to the fact I could point at a woman and not a fetus, while still acknowledging a genuine conflict was going on.

But none of the counterarguments could even do this much. Not that they tried. But even Beckwith, who I thought of as the premier voice of the anti-abortion movement, couldn’t touch her. So, whereas once upon a time I could have flipped to the pro-slavery side of the abortion debate, it has since became so unlikely that I wound up getting a pro-choice tattoo:

So if Thomson’s argument was so brilliant and so decisive, why did I write “Why Abortion is Permissible”?¹ Obviously I wouldn’t have taken the time and trouble I didn’t at least think I could improve on what she wrote (not to mention all the other pro-choice works I had read to that point). Also, there were some ways that my thinking about abortion evolved beyond Thomson while I was heavily debating the topic in various Internet forums. However, none of that means that I think Thomson’s essay is necessarily flawed. The slavers still have not managed to decisively defeat Thomson’s basic argument more than fifty years after its initial publication. That alone says something about the strength of the essay.

Moreover, my essay benefited from fifty years of people throwing shit at it to see what sticks. I don’t think any of it does, but when I wrote “Why Abortion is Permissible,” one of my goals was to construct an argument that would be immune to the criticisms hurled at Thomson. Object to the weirdness of the violinist scenario? Unfortunately, there is nothing weird or fantastic about rape, kidnapping, and slavery. Hold to the intending vs. foreseeing objection? My argument holds that (within certain limits) even if the death of the fetus is intended, it would still be permissible. Like Thomson, I don’t think that the distinction between direct and indirect killing makes a moral difference. If you feel that way, my argument makes the case that even if abortion is direct killing, it is still permissible.

In short, my essay stands on top of Thomson’s, and would not be possible without it. My argument shifts more to a self-defense model in contrast to Thomson’s right-to-refuse model. Even so, my argument is still rooted in her basic insight that one cannot use a person’s body without consent—even for life itself.

Since writing “Why Abortion is Permissible,” the argument I presented there has been the basis of almost everything else I’ve written on the topic. And I will admit that I derived a certain satisfaction when I could show that standard anti-Thomson arguments won’t fly against my argument.

A few years ago, I learned that Thomson had died. I wondered how well Thomson’s arguments still stood on their own terms. So I pursued anti-Thomson arguments and defended them as much as possible on Thomsonian terms while holding my argument as a backup. I found that I rarely had to use the backup. In fact, I’ve found that more often than not, I could defend Thomson’s work on her terms precisely because her opponents ignored what she said. Mind you, what she had to say may or may not be the best or strongest argument about a given objection. Even pro-choice philosophers have found some of her arguments inadequate if not outright flawed. The problem is that slavers ignore what she said entirely. You can see examples in my responses to Wagner and Lu.

Typically, the anti-Thomson argument focuses on the violinist scenario. They will make their argument that abortion is disanalogous to the violinist scenario for reasons X, Y, or Z. But they ignore the fact that Thomson had something to say about counterarguments X, Y, and Z. In these cases, all I have to do is point out what she did say about those counterarguments. I don’t even have to agree with those arguments (though I usually do). The point is that she said something about it, and ignoring what she said means, at best, the slaver’s argument is intellectually questionable.

In some cases, this might plausibly be attributed to ignorance. If all you’ve heard about Thomson’s argument is the violinist scenario, you may well think pointing out disanalogies is enough to defeat the argument. But let’s face it, Thomson’s essay has been easily accessible on the Internet since at least the 1990s when I first encountered it. To be ignorant of what Thomson said about counterarguments X, Y, and Z is to be willfully ignorant and says you really have nothing to say about her argument. If you know she said something about your argument and fail to address it, then you are just plain dishonest.

This brings me to the so-called Responsibility Argument. I have already done a post on the Responsibility Argument, but I’ve never been totally satisfied with it. Indeed, even after this post, I probably will still have more to say about it. But for this post, I want to focus on Thomson’s remarks about it. A fairly common argument against the violinist scenario is that, while it might apply to cases of rape, it does not apply in cases where the pregnant person had voluntarily engaged in sexual intercourse.

There are some who take the violinist scenario to justify the rape exception, while holding to the Responsibility Argument in all other cases. And they might even cite Thomson herself in this respect. “Can those who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned make an exception for a pregnancy due to rape? Certainly.”

But Thomson does not really give you that option. If you only take the violinist scenario to justify the rape exception, then you are fundamentally missing the point. The point of the violinist example is not to justify the rape exception (though it does that). The point is to bring out the problem of the entire anti-abortion argument. And the problem with the anti-abortion argument is that the right to life does not grant anyone the right to use someone’s body to keep themselves alive.

Those who oppose the rape exception grasp this point. So, for example, Wagner and Lu argue against the rape exception. It is not just a matter of being particularly cruel (though they are). It’s a matter of realizing that the rape exception cracks open the entire anti-abortion argument. In my case against Wagner, I argued that if we could defeat his argument before the “this looks a lot like pregnancy” stage, we’ve defeated his entire argument. Similarly, if the slaver can stop the rape exception, they have defeated Thomson’s argument.

Thus, the Responsibility argument can only come into play if the rape exception is granted.² Thomson herself notes this:

But it might be argued that there are other ways one can have acquired the right to use of another person’s body than by having been invited to use it by that person. Suppose a woman voluntarily indulges in intercourse, knowing of the chance it will issue in pregnancy, and then she does become pregnant; is she not in part responsible for the presence, in fact the very existence, of the unborn person inside her? No doubt she did not invite it in. But doesn’t her partial responsibility for its being there itself give it a right to the use of her body? If so, then her aborting it would be more like the boy’s taking away the chocolates, and less like your unplugging yourself from the violinist—doing so would be depriving it of what it does have a right to, and thus would be doing it an injustice.

…

On the other hand, this argument would give the unborn person a right to its mother’s body only if her pregnancy resulted from a voluntary act, undertaken in full knowledge of the chance a pregnancy might result from it. It would leave out entirely the unborn person whose existence is due to rape. Pending the availability of some further argument, then, we would be left with the conclusion that unborn persons whose existence is due to rape have no right to the use of their mothers’ bodies, and thus that aborting them is not depriving of anything they have a right to and hence is not unjust killing.

Then follows a series of arguments that ultimately Boonin finds unsatisfactory.³ It strikes me that when pro-choice philosophers identify inadequate arguments Thomson made, they fail to appreciate how radically new Thomson’s argument was even when they note it. It must be remembered that when Thomson’s article was published, the abortion debate centered almost solely around whether the fetus was a person that had the right to life. If the fetus had the right to life, then the abortion argument was effectively over. Indeed, even today most slavers and even some pro-choice philosophers argue as if the abortion issue should be decided solely on the personhood of the fetus. Thomson was changing the basis of the debate entirely. Expecting her to have anticipated and responded adequately to all the shit that would be thrown against her thesis would be too much to expect of anyone in her position.

Indeed, the only reason Thomson said anything at all about the Responsibility Argument is because of responses to earlier presentations of her argument before her paper was published. And the first thing she said was “that it is something new.” It wasn’t something she anticipated when she first formulated her argument. She would have had very little idea how the Responsibility Argument would develop, and thus could only speak to it in relatively general terms. In the past, I myself thought she was merely content to muddy the waters as it were. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize I was wrong. Thomson was not trying to muddy the waters. She was throwing down a gauntlet. And it’s a gauntlet the slavers have refused to take up ever since. She was basically saying that we can discuss a person’s responsibility in becoming pregnant, but it needs to be a reasonable discussion. Here are the parameters.

Thomson’s response to the Responsibility Argument comes in two parts. In the first part, she writes, “And we should also notice that it is not at all plain that this argument really does go even as far as it purports to. For there are cases and cases, and the details make a difference.” She argues that if you open a window to let some air in, it would be absurd to say that this gives a burglar the right to be in your home—even if you open the window in full knowledge of the fact that burglars exist and are liable to enter your house through an open window. And it would even be more absurd to say that the burglar has a right to your home if you had bars installed on the windows and the burglar got in because of a defect.⁴ And it would remain absurd to say an innocent person who blunders into your home has a right to be there because you opened the window.

You might look at this and echo Lt. Elliott in Knives Out: Weak sauce. I am sure it is all too easy to come up with alternative cases where someone does something that leads to someone else having a bona fide claim to your care. Admittedly, this is the reason I thought Thomson was contenting herself with muddying the waters of the Responsibility Argument. Sure, there are cases, and then there are cases. But the problem for the person arguing the Responsibility Argument is not coming up with alternate cases. The problem is that they also have to show what they’re proposing is more like a person having intercourse knowing they might become pregnant, with or without using precautions, than Thomson’s burglar example. That’s not so easy, and partly explains why many of the alternative cases that are offered rely on some form of strict liability. However, Thomson excludes strict liability in the second part with her people seeds analogy and with the argumentum ad abusrdum that even those who have been raped could be held responsible for their pregnancy because they could have gotten a hysterectomy or never left home “without a (reliable!) army.”

Why does the Responsibility Argument almost always come down to some form of strict liability? As Ann Garry pointed out, it is the only model that “has the scope deemed appropriate by many opponents of abortion.” Someone pressing the case that voluntary sex creates the obligation to carry any resulting pregnancy to term needs to be able to accomplish two things. First, they need to explain exactly how having sex creates the obligation. Second, the explanation needs to cover everything except outright rape. Only strict liability models can do this.

Models that rely on some sort of fault cannot cover the scope necessary for the typical anti-abortion proponent. Setting aside all the other problems associated with fault models, they simply can’t cover all the cases the abortion opponent wants to include. For example, it is difficult if not impossible to argue people properly using birth control are being negligent or reckless. Few people who deliberately conceive subsequently seek abortions except for reasons that are more generally found permissible, such as endangerment of the pregnant person’s life or health. So even if it were granted that a person who deliberately conceived has an obligation to carry the pregnancy to term under normal conditions, it would cover far too few cases to satisfy abortion opponents.

With some form of strict liability, all that really matters is the pregnant person consented to sex. The precautions the person takes does not matter. Factors that would otherwise mitigate or absolve a person in a fault model, such as birth control sabotage, do not matter. With some forms of strict liability, one need not even know there is a connection between sex and pregnancy.

Using a strict liability standard has its own problems, but I am going to focus here on just one. Strict liability leaves uterus bearers with only a few ways of escaping the loss of their bodily rights: complete abstinence or having a hysterectomy or bilateral oophorectomy. This is a steep price to pay. No one else under any circumstances would ever have to pay such a high price to avoid losing a fundamental right. That abortion opponents pressing the Responsibility Argument are so willing to impose that price speaks volumes about what they really want—to control the lives of people with uteruses.

NOTES

1I developed the argument presented in that essay through several years of online debate about abortion in various forums. As I mentioned in the essay, my reading on the topic was not comprehensive. Some time after writing that essay, I found references to and finally obtained a copy of Eileen L. McDonagh’s Breaking the Abortion Deadlock: From Choice to Consent (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). McDonagh’s book-length treatment contains far more detail than my essay, but her central point is the same: in an unwanted pregnancy, the fetus is the aggressor and abortion can be seen as an act of self-defense. So my essay should not be seen as completely original. That we came to a similar argument independently speaks to the strength of McDonagh’s argument.

2I have encountered slavers who oppose the rape exception yet also push some variation of the Responsibility Argument. While arguing any version of the Responsibility Argument amounts to slut-shaming, when done by those who oppose abortion even in cases of rape, the slut-shaming is especially egregious. Here is the question I would pose to those who oppose abortion in cases of rape yet still want to push the Responsibility Argument: If you don’t care how the person became pregnant, why should I? If you oppose abortion in cases of rape, you simply have nothing to say about any supposed responsibility a pregnant person has about their situation.

3David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion (New York: Cambridge University Press), 150-152.

4This is an obvious analogy to using contraception. Occasionally, a slaver brings up the point that if a person doesn’t want to get pregnant, they can use birth control. I immediately ask if they allow abortions in cases where birth control fails. To a person, the slaver says no. This raises the same kind of question as in note 2: If the use of birth control doesn’t matter to you, why should it matter to me?

I Have Cancer

 I have been ill for some time. This week, I was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer with known spread to the adrenal glands and brain. I was told my condition is "treatable, but not curable." I am interpreting this to me that, if treatment goes well, I could still live for a long time. However, it is ultimately going to be a losing battle. Until we see how treatment will go, an actual prognosis is up in the air. 

Given the uncertainty and the fact that I still have a lot I want to say, the plan is to put up as many posts about different topics as I can get banged out. There will be more reflection, a little less "pure" scholarship.

I already have two articles on abortion that only needs final edits before posting. Look for those in the next couple days. I have another project, a defense of my belief in the so-called Inspired Fiction Theory for the Book of Mormon and its meaningfulness to believers who hold to it. My friend Trevor Luke reviewed a draft and made several suggestions for improvement. I have not actually finished this project. Nevertheless, I will be posting it soon more-or-less as it is now. The essay as it is already basically says what I want to say about it. So while I'm not completely happy with it, and intend to revisit it if/when I can, I want to get that message out.

After this, I want to write primarily about what my Mormonism means to me. There will be some scholarship, but these essays are meant to be more reflective about how Mormonism has affected me and is bringing me some comfort in this time of trouble. Here are some things you can expect in the upcoming days.

I want to talk about the genius of the Israelite religion, even though that original genius has been somewhat obscured because of modern conflicts with "secular" knowledge. The genius is precisely in historicizing its mythology. That is to say, the Israelites took the myths and legends they told each other to make sense of their world and incorporated it into a history encompassing a saga that begins with Creation and leading to the Babylonian exile. Obviously by modern scientific and historical standards, we cannot judge it to be accurate history. However, I will argue asking whether the Bible is accurate history largely misses the point. In historicizing their mythology, the Israelites weren't really trying to say something about history--they were saying something about God and his relationship to humanity.

This in turn is going is lead to some reflections on the nature of Scripture itself. Historicizing mythology and the process of canonizing the result has certainly led to problems down the road. Once canonized, the point the Israelites were making got lost and believers came to see Scripture as the Word of God to humanity. This seems to be the genesis of the problems of literalism, the conflicts between creation and evolution, and so on. Also, since Scripture is now a diverse set of different writings over time that is particularly given to cherrypicking, there is the problem picking and choosing the things that still appeal while ignoring the things we don't like. Even I would just as soon leave aside the genocide, rape, cannibalism and all the other ugliness we find in Scripture and focus on the higher ideals we find in Scripture and can still inspire us to this day.

But that wouldn't really be taking Scripture seriously. The problem, I think, is that we are now conditioned to see Scripture as the Word of God containing God's record of his dealings with us. Would I would like to do is flip this around. Instead of being God's record of dealing with us, what happens if we recognize Scripture is actually humanity's record of our dealing with God? Whereas it is hard to reconcile the highs and lows of Scripture from a God's eye; recognizing Scripture as humanity's dealings with God may help us make more sense of the ugliness.

Getting closer to modern Mormonism and its effect on me, I have three topics I especially want to explore. The first is the Mormon concept of Zion. Anybody who knows me well enough knows I am a political leftist, no matter what label I choose for myself at a given time. For example, some of my political stances could make Bernie Sanders look like a raving reactionary conservative. While the basic trajectory of my life and personality perhaps made it inevitable that I would fall on the left end of the political spectrum even before I became a Mormon, it is hard to escape the possibility that I may not have become quite as liberal as I am were it not for the fact that, as a Mormon, it is my duty to do my best to help bring about Zion. So unlike Sanders, who is still working within the broad world of capitalism, it is my goal to overthrow capitalism altogether. This is at least partly due to the fact that the more I grasped the implications of Mormon Zion the more I realized that Zion is simply incompatible with capitalism. You can have one, or you can have the other, but you can't have both. 

However much waffling the modern LDS Church does around the subject, I think that the ultimate culmination of Joseph Smith's Mormonism can be encapsulated in the Snow couplet: "As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.” For conservative Christianity, this is Smith's ultimate heresy. And indeed, it is a very radical statement. Coupled with the doctrine of eternal progression, this gives Mormonism a basically optimistic view of humanity that is lacking in much of traditional Christianity, and especially in Calvinistic forms which declare mankind is utterly depraved.

It also has implications. In the Bible, we are told, "Whoever does not love does not love God, for God is love" (1 John 4:8, NRSV). John goes so far as to say that he who declares if you do not love, you are still in the darkness (2:9) and are in fact murderers (3:19). It is fair to say that the ultimate ethic in Christianity is to love others as God loves us. But the Snow couplet actually demands a little more than this. In Mormonism, every single human being is a potential god. As such, each and every single human being needs to be looked at with a bit of the awe and wonder we ascribe to God himself. Don't get me wrong. I'm not there--not by a long shot. Hell, even the "simpler" goal of loving everyone with the love of God often proves elusive to me. But as a Mormon, that is what I strive for.

The fact that in Mormonism God is an exalted man has its own implications. Arguably restoring one of the original insights of Israelite religion, Mormonism puts God in our space/time continuum. Crucially, God did not create the world out of nothing; he worked with and organized eternally existent matter which he neither created nor can destroy. In other words, God is not omnipotent in the classic Christian sense. This too has implications, especially for the problem of evil. While I had seen hints in other places, the implication for the problem of evil was most forcefully brought to my attention reading chapter 33 of B. H. Roberts' The Truth, The Way, The Life. I will delve into this further, but the basic thought is that God must deal with two things: the intractableness of the laws of physics and the inability to interfere with man's free moral agency. 

Thus, it is quite possible that we have the best possible world, given the constraints that God himself must act under. When we add chaos theory to the mix, we also have to face the possibility that God has to be very careful about what he does. This is where it becomes very personal. Even a really small act by God can have effects that not even he cannot fully predict. Plunking an asteroid onto the dinosaurs might give room for humanity to evolve, but it certainly did not guarantee we would. So every time God performs a "miracle," this includes the risk that things could go horribly, terribly wrong in the long run. 

For this reason, I have no reasonable expectation that God will miraculously cure my cancer, and I'm not going to bother asking him to do so. I am simply not that important in the overall scheme of things and I certainly don't want God to wind up destroying life, the universe, and everything on my account. But if God is so constrained that he cannot help me with my illness, what can he do? Immanuel--God is with us. I have been thinking along these lines since I read Roberts some twenty-five years or so ago. But here, today, knowing what my likely fate is going to be, it is a thought that has become especially comforting.

So these are the kinds I of projects I have in mind in the immediate future. Let's see how far I can get with them.

David and the Book of Mormon

I’ve been a student of religious studies since I was twelve years old. In fact, I had intended to get a degree in this field, but was unable to complete my formal education. I never lost my interest in the subject. Since I’m also a Mormon, I have a special interest in Mormonism. So, as a member of Academia.edu I frequently get reading suggestions on the topic of Mormonism.

This is how I came to read “Davidic References in the Book of Mormon as Evidence Against Its Historicity” by Kyle Robert Beshears.¹ There is really no way to sugarcoat this. It is a bad argument. It is a really bad argument. In fact, it is such an exceedingly bad argument that I wonder if a thesis like this would be accepted anywhere other than a place like SBTS.

I felt the thesis needed some kind of response. But I didn’t want to duplicate any other efforts, so I inquired if there were any existing responses to the thesis at the Mormon dialogue and discussion board. A fellow board member, Gary Jacobson, referred me to “Too Little or Too Much Like the Bible? A Novel Critique of the Book of Mormon Involving David and the Psalms” by Jeff Lindsay.²

I considered “Too Little or Too Much Like the Bible?” a fairly good response. My thoughts about the thesis tracked so well with Lindsay’s response that I wondered if should still write my own response. Ultimately, I decided that I can still contribute to the discussion. So, here we go.

In contrast to Lindsay, I am going to be tackling Beshears from an environmentalist perspective. That is to say that I agree with Beshears that the Book of Mormon is not an ancient document. So what am I doing “defending Book of Mormon historicity?”

There are a couple reasons. First, as I discussed in my “Environmental Theory” essay, environmentalists, especially religious environmentalists like myself, have a special duty to show our approach to the Book of Mormon is basically positive. Among other things, this means that religious environmentalists should be at the forefront of calling out and disposing of bad arguments, even from those we are in nominal agreement with. This is why I wrote “How Not to Do Book of Mormon Studies” and that is partly why I am responding to Beshears now. In a sense, I feel like I have an even bigger dog in this fight than Lindsay.

Second, I am not defending Book of Mormon historicity as such. While historicists could use the arguments I am going to make, ultimately my conclusion is Beshears’ evidence is not evidence of anything. This is as much an experiment in Book of Mormon interpretation as it is a response to Beshears. Beshears is correct that there are relatively few direct references to David in the Book of Mormon. But rather than being evidence against historicity, the lack of references is an important part of the picture the Book of Mormon paints for itself. As an environmentalist, I would say it contributes to the Book’s verisimilitude. A historicist might rather say that this picture points to historicity. If so, I would not complain.

Lindsay (32) and I are in complete agreement that Beshears neologism mormonic (2 n.2) is too close to “demonic” or especially “moronic” to be seen as anything other than pejorative.³ Beshears uses the excuse that the term “does away with the cumbersome phrasing of ‘Book of Mormon’ to describe its people, narrative, events, theology.” But if “Book of Mormon” is too cumbersome to use every time, there are perfectly good abbreviations that can be used instead. Indeed, Beshears uses one himself: BofM. I’m going to stick with that abbreviation throughout this essay.

Lindsay (32) gives a brief discussion dealing with Beshears’ repeated accusation of plagiarism, to which I have nothing to add.

Lindsay also gives a devastating critique to Beshears’ methodology by, among other things, pointing out that most biblical references to David are clustered in books telling David’s story, and that many books in the Bible don’t mention him at all (37-41). While this is good work, I have an even more fundamental problem with Beshears’ argument. The real problem is that even if the methodology weren’t so flawed, the entire approach is not evidence of anything.

Consider the structure of Beshears’ argument:

1. If the Book of Mormon has numerous references to David, this would be evidence for its historicity.

2. If the Book of Mormon does not have numerous references to David, this would be evidence against its historicity.

3. The Book of Mormon does not have numerous references to David.

4. Therefore, the evidence points against historicity.

Premise 1 is wrong. To demonstrate this, let’s look at Beshears’ own example of how historicists use thematic similarities in the Bible to “corroborate the anticipated continuity between Old and New World Jewish cultures”: Noel B. Reynolds’ “The Israelite Background of Moses Typology in the Book of Mormon.”⁴ First, notice Reynolds never said that the Moses typology was evidence of BofM historicity. The closest he came was to say that if Joseph Smith did it based on what was understood in the 1820s, “he probably would have gotten it wrong” (5). Also note that saying “it would make sense to criticize the Book of Mormon” for not having the typology is an entirely different thing than saying that would be evidence against historicity. Beshears is already trying to prove too much.

If you are a storyteller, and you are going to tell a story about, well, an exodus, you’re not going to go wrong by modeling the story on the Exodus. Regardless of the state of biblical scholarship at the time, it can’t be denied that the material was available to Joseph Smith. If Reynolds said the Exodus typology pointed to the historicity of the Book of Mormon, it would be all too easy to simply respond Joseph Smith drew it from the Bible.

Likewise, even if the Book of Mormon bristled with Davidic references, and those references reflected everything Beshears said it should, it still would not be evidence of anything. Whatever use the Book of Mormon made of David, it still couldn’t be denied that the material was available to Joseph Smith. Therefore, it can’t in itself be used as evidence of historicity.

It should go without saying that if the presence of something is not evidence of anything, then the absence of that that thing is not evidence of anything either.

If we can’t say the lack of Davidic references don’t prove anything vis a vis BofM historicity, is there nothing that can be said about this? To use Reynolds’ term, could we justifiably criticize the Book of Mormon for not having them? I propose this is going to depend on two factors. First, is the Book of Mormon really lacking in references to David? If so, does the Book of Mormon have a reason to avoid mentioning David?

Beshears is correct the Book of Mormon only directly mentions David seven times. I confirmed this by doing a search on a PDF version. In contrast, my preliminary⁵ counts yielded twenty-three references to Joseph, forty-nine mentions of Jacob, and seventy-five references to Moses. Beshears counted twenty-seven references to Abraham (19). Mentions of David certainly do pale by comparison.

Direct mentions probably don’t fully do the job, however. We should also take into account allusions as well. For example, Ben McGuire makes a case that the killing of Laban (1 Ne. 3:31–4:19) has several deliberate allusions to the story of David and Goliath (1 Sam. 17).⁶ If this deliberate modeling does not count as a reference to David, then naming a land after him (Morm. 2:5) probably doesn’t either. There may well be more of these types of allusions to David, so this is a subject that could use further exploration. Even so, I don’t think we will find enough such allusions to say the Book of Mormon is under the long shadow of David, especially not in the way we could say this of Moses.

Should we count quotations or allusions to Psalms attributed to David as Davidic references? Beshears asserts there are no direct quotes from the Psalms⁷ and that possible allusions to them are problematic at best (41-44). So answering this question requires delving into at least one controversy.⁸ Even if we resolve the question of whether the Psalms are quoted or alluded to,⁹ that still would not necessarily mean they should count as Davidic references. Since the argument I’m going to make could account for such quotations or allusions (assuming they exist), I will set this question aside for now.

Especially when setting aside that question, I think it safe to say David is not emphasized in the Book of Mormon. That answers the first question. Now let’s turn to the second. Does the Book of Mormon have a reason to avoid mentioning David? I think it does.¹⁰

The Book of Mormon begins in “the first year of the reign of Zedekiah” (1 Ne. 1:4). Zedekiah was installed by King Nebuchadnezzar after a disastrous battle with Zedekiah’s nephew Jehoiachin. Besides installing Zedekiah, Nebuchadnezzar exiled at least ten thousand people to Babylon, leaving only “the poorest of the land” (2 Kgs. 24:10-20).¹¹ Among these captives was the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek. 1:2).

For Jerusalem, this was just the latest in a series of disasters. First, King Josiah was killed in battle with Pharaoh Neco (2 Kgs. 23:29). Then Neco subsequently dethroned Jehoahaz, imposed a heavy tribute on Jerusalem, and installed Jehoiakim to the throne (2 Kgs. 23:33-34). Jehoiakim. either by choice or by force, switched allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar, only to rebel with calamitous consequences to Jerusalem (2 Kngs. 24:1-7).

Since these disasters all occurred in a space of no more than twenty years, this is the environment the Book of Mormon portrays Nephi and his brothers growing up in. And it is in this environment that Lehi began prophesying.¹² However, unlike Jeremiah (26:16-24; 36:11-19; 37:16-21, 38:1-28), Lehi did not have any protection from institutional sources. Lehi was on his own against those who mocked him and “sought his life” (1 Ne. 1:19-20).

So on the eve of Lehi’s departure from Jerusalem, no one in his party had reason to hold the Davidic monarchy in high regard. For all their complaints and desire to return to Jerusalem, Laman and Lemuel never said a word about its leadership. There are some clues in the Bible that the sentiment was widespread. The final four kings of Judah are not compared to David (2 Kngs. 23:31-24:20). Jeremiah clearly rejected the monarchy of his day, instead promising the Lord would raise a “righteous Branch” after the coming exile (22:24-23:6). In the aftermath of Jerusalem’s destruction, Ezekiel affirms the Davidic covenant (34:24), but the role and power of the “prince” are greatly reduced in his vision of the restored Israel (45:7-46:18). The book of Nehemiah, set during the post-exilic Persian period, identified David only as “the man of God”(12:24); Solomon is identified as “king” while emphasizing his sin in taking foreign wives (13:26).

Let’s back up a little. Nephi was originally commanded to start making his record between thirty and forty years after he left Jerusalem (2 Ne. 5:28-34). Within a few leaves of this record, we are told he received a revelation telling him he would “be made a ruler and a teacher over thy brethren” (1 Ne. 2:22). This revelation was later confirmed to Laman and Lemuel by an angel (1 Ne. 3:29). Despite this, a recurring complaint made by the two brothers is that Nephi was taking it upon himself to be a ruler over them (e.g., 1 Ne. 16:37-38; 18:10). Nephi’s final break with his brothers was precipitated by yet another such jealous outbreak (2 Ne. 5:3-5).

As noted above, the story of the killing of Laban seems deliberately modeled after the story of David and Goliath. When the people desire that Nephi be made a king, he tries to demur but humbly says “I did for them that which was in my power”¹³ (2 Ne. 5:18). Nevertheless, he could not seem to resist the impulse to note this was in fulfillment of prophecy (2 Ne. 5:19). Whatever reluctance Nephi had about being king did not prevent him from anointing a successor “according to the reigns of the kings”(Jacob 1:9). As Beshears himself notes, three of the references to David occur in the extensive copying of Isaiah in 2 Nephi. We can agree with him that “had Isaiah not mentioned David in those three verses, one wonders if Nephi would have ever mentioned the king at all, and the near-absense of Davidic references outside of this section in the BofM inclines one to suppose he would not have” (37). Interestingly, one of those mentions, 2 Ne. 19:7 (Isa. 9:7), does affirm the Davidic covenant, but as Beshears notes, Nephi makes nothing of this (37). This someone trying to establish his legitimacy to the throne.

As Nephi (and probably Zoram and Sam) die, a new problem arises. Nearly everyone in the budding Nephite community was either born in the sojourn out of Jerusalem or in the promised land. No one had any memories of Jerusalem in the final years leading to its destruction. What they did have were the brass plates.

We do not have an exact picture the brass plates’ contents. We can only assemble this picture through what the Book of Mormon specifically tells us and what is quoted or clearly alluded to. One of the things it tells us is that the brass plates contained “a record of the Jews from the beginning, even down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah” (1 Ne. 5:12). This would appear to mean they had something like 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 2 Kings up to chapter twenty-four.¹⁴

Again, exactly what is in the version of these books is unknown. However, it does seem that the Book of Mormon pictures the Nephites having some version the Davidic Covenant as presented in 2 Samuel 7. This will bring us to the three clearest mentions of David other than the Isaiah quotations in the Book of Mormon.

2 Samuel 7 starts with David proposing to build a temple for the Lord (v. 2). The prophet Nathan originally approves (v. 3), but then has a dream where the Lord tells him it will be David’s son that will build the temple and specifically says of this son, “I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me” (v. 13-14). Moreover, the Lord adds “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever” (v. 16).

This seems particularly important for a couple reasons. First, it inextricably binds David and Solomon together. Second, it raises a note of illegitimacy to the Nephite kings.¹⁵

The Nephite community clearly regard David and Solomon as role models. It’s hard to think of them justifying their polygamous practices because of them otherwise. It is also hard to see any other place in the Bible that the Nephites would have had that so inextricably bind David and Solomon together. This would explain why the next few BofM Davidic references we are going to consider (Jacob 1:15, 2:23, 24) put them together.¹⁶

Note how Jacob sets the stage leading into the references to David and Solomon. First, he writes that Nephi anoints a new king before dying (Jacob 1:9). Next he comments that the people held Nephi I in such regard that subsequent kings (up to the fourth as of the time Jacob wrote) had Nephi as their regnal name (Jacob 1:10-11). So Jacob is writing well after the time he presents the sermon in Jacob 2-3. A dynasty has been established, which will last until the death of Mosiah₂ (Mosiah 29:38ff).

After relaying this information, Jacob discusses the circumstances of the sermon he gives in Jacob 2-3. He backs up to the “reign of the second king,” and discusses how he became concerned with “wicked practices, such as like unto David of old desiring many wives and concubines, and also Solomon, his son” (Jacob 1:15). And when Jacob discusses David and Solomon, he lets loose:

For behold, thus saith the Lord: This people begin to wax in iniquity; they understand not the scriptures, for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son.

Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord. (Jacob 2:23-24)

Looking at the sermon’s placement in the Book of Mormon, Jacob seems to be trying to kill two birds with one stone. The first, of course, is to record the start of his campaign against Nephite polygamy. The second is to help establish the legitimacy of the Nephite kings by castigating David and Solomon.¹⁷

Fast forward a couple hundred years or so. Warned to leave the land of Nephi, Mosiah₁ leads his people through the wilderness until they discover the people of Zarahemla. The people of Zarahemla are described as leaving Jerusalem in the wake of Zedekiah’s final defeat (Omni 12-14). The leader of this party is later identified as Mulek, and specifically called “the son of Zedekiah” (Hel. 6:10). The people of Zarahemla and the people of Mosiah₁ come to an accommodation which results in Mosiah₁ becoming the king of both (Omni 19).

However, this presents another problem. Now the Nephites have legitimate heirs to the kingdom of the house of Israel among them.¹⁸ Furthermore, the text later notes that: 1) the Nephites are a minority in Zarahemla and 2) the combined population of Zarahemla was less than half that of the Lamanites (Mosiah 25:3). This puts the Nephite monarchy in the horns of a dilemma. Emphasize David too much, and Mulek’s descendants might start getting ideas. But they definitely need the people of Zarahemla, so outright badmouthing Mulek’s ancestor would not be wise. Better to avoid mentioning him at all. Might that explain how the small plates seem to have gotten lost (W of M 3)? 

Fast forward another couple generations. Mosiah₂ has come to a point in his reign where it time to appoint a successor. The problem was that none of his sons wanted the throne (Mosiah 29:3). Rather than anointing one of his brothers (Mosiah 1:2), hypothetical nephews, or even someone outside the family (Alma₂ would have been a popular candidate, as shown by Mosiah 29:42), Mosiah proposes a radical change in government.

Instead of continuing the monarchy, Mosiah proposes that instead of continuing the monarchy, the people themselves should choose judges. In making his argument, Mosiah attacks the very idea of monarchy. Acknowledging that if the people always had a “just man” ruling over them, monarchy would be an “expedient” form of government (Mosiah 29:11), Mosiah emphasizes that the consequences of having a wicked man on the throne are too great:

And if my son should turn again to his pride and vain things he would recall the things which he had said, and claim his right to the kingdom, which would cause him and also this people to commit much sin.

…

For behold, how much iniquity doth one wicked king cause to be committed, yea, and what great destruction!

Yea, remember king Noah, his wickedness and his abominations, and also the wickedness and abominations of his people. Behold what great destruction did come upon them; and also because of their iniquities they were brought into bondage.

…

And behold, now I say unto you, ye cannot dethrone an iniquitous king save it be through much contention, and the shedding of much blood.

For behold, he has his friends in iniquity, and he keepeth his guards about him; and he teareth up the laws of those who have reigned in righteousness before him; and he trampleth under his feet the commandments of God;

And he enacteth laws, and sendeth them forth among his people, yea, laws after the manner of his own wickedness; and whosoever doth not obey his laws he causeth to be destroyed; and whosoever doth rebel against him he will send his armies against them to war, and if he can he will destroy them; and thus an unrighteous king doth pervert the ways of all righteousness. (Mosiah 29:8, 17-18, 21-23)

The people ratified Mosiah’s proposal, and the era of judges began. But within five years, Amlici had gathered enough of a following that he was able to force an election for his effort to be declared king. In what appears to be a fairly close vote,¹⁹ Amlici lost. Instead of accepting the voice of the people, Amlici started a civil war, which ultimately led to his death (Alma 2).

Less than twenty years after that, Amalickiah and his followers aspired to kingship in the wake of a dispute with the high priest Helaman₂. This time, there would be no election. Under the leadership of Moroni₁, the Nephites immediately took up arms against Amalickiah and his followers, forcing them to flee. Amalickiah himself made good his escape, but many of his followers were captured and forced to swear allegiance to the existing regime on pain of death (Alma 46).

They evidently did not keep this oath. Within a few years, they were attempting to change the government into a monarchy yet again. Again, this was put to the voice of the people. This time, the vote was so overwhelmingly against the king-men they were forced to keep their peace. However, in the face a Lamanite invasion, the king-men refused to be conscripted. Moroni₁ in turn diverted resources to root out a potential fifth column (Alma 51).

During the course of the war, it appears another group managed to force the chief judge, Pahoran, out of power and out of Zarahemla.²⁰ This group installed Pachus as king of Zarahemla. Again, Moroni₁ had to divert forces back to Zarahemla in order to deal with the problem (Alma 61-62).

The final attempt to establish a king over the Nephites was both a success and a failure. A complaint against lower judges was brought to the chief judge in Zarahemla. These judges were brought to Zarahemla to stand trial. However, their supporters formed a conspiracy overthrow the government and establish a king. They were successful in murdering the chief judge. This caused the entire government to collapse.

However, the conspirators were unable to take advantage. Instead of getting behind the conspiracy’s leader, the people simply divided into tribes. The leader was proclaimed king of his group, but realized he did not have enough power to unite the tribes under his leadership. As a result, his people migrated out of the land. However divided Nephite society had become, it was clear the last thing they wanted was a king (3 Ne. 6:25-7:14).

This review of the BofM’s plot suggests there are good reasons why it doesn’t mention David very often. The political situation described throughout the narrative militates against it. Lehi’s party had personal reasons not to be too enthusiastic about the Davidic monarchy. The Davidic covenant attached a note of illegitimacy to the entire Nephite monarchy from Nephi to Mosiah, such that Nephi had to justify his rulership and Jacob bolstered the monarchy by castigating David and Solomon. Later, Nephite society included legitimate Davidic heirs and the monarchy could not afford to give them ideas but also could not afford to badmouth David either. After transitioning to a more democratic form of government, Nephite society became plagued with demagogues seeking to become kings. This is not a society that is going to promote David—the paragon of Israelite kings.

This does not mean that Nephite society had no regard for David. They did name a “land” after him (Morm. 2:5), which suggests, contra Beshears, that the Book of Mormon does not merely fixate “on the ancient monarch’s practice of polygamy as a sinful abomination” (45). Even ignoring his status as king, David’s accomplishments were such that he was more than worthy of having a land named after him. In fact, we can’t even be certain from the text whether Jacob’s sermon circulated widely enough for this to be a major part of the way the Nephites thought of David.

This argument extends to the BofM’s utilization of the Psalms. One can admire David the psalmist while also retaining a hands-off attitude toward David the king. We moderns can acknowledge someone’s achievements and art even while recognizing they weren’t very good people.

Beshears believes the Book of Mormon can be criticized for not saying anything about David’s role as the messiah’s progenitor. But such a criticism would still be misplaced. As Beshears himself points out, the Book of Mormon presents an “uncanny level of propehtic insight that these [BofM] prophets practiced is breathtaking in comparison to the shadowy predictions of the biblical prophets. While the Old World Jews yearned for a vague, future Davidic messiah, the New World Jews eagerly awaited Jesus Christ by name and date” (22-23). This is reason enough not to expect Nephite prophecy and preaching would discuss David as Jesus’ ancestor.

Consider what it means to predict the Messiah will be the son of David. It gives the hearer something to look for to and/or a means of testing a particular person’s claim to be the Messiah. But the Nephites knew that Jesus’ entire mortal life would be lived in the Old World. That disqualifies everyone in the New World, including the descendants of Mulek, who are portrayed as sons of David. Emphasizing Jesus as the son of David would literally have no meaning to the Nephites.

To sum things up, Beshears’ basic argument is not sound. Davidic references would not show anything about BofM historicity, so lack of such references would not show anything either. Even a softer version of his argument, that it could be justifiably criticized for lacking those references, would not work very well either. Given the BofM’s dominant anti-monarchical theme, mentioning David too frequently and too approvingly would be contraindicated. In fact, doing so would actually be too jarring in its narrative. Instead of being a shortcoming, the lack of Davidic references contributes to its verisimilitude precisely because the lack of such references contributes to the development of one of the Book of Mormon’s major themes. 

NOTES

1(master’s thesis, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2016).

2Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 29 (2018): 31-64. Page references are to the PDF version available on the website.

3I frequently found myself eliding the second m and reading “moronic” time and again while reading the thesis.

4BYU Studies 44, no. 2 (2005): 5-23.

5I have to emphasize preliminary. Joseph and Jacob are both mentioned in the Book of Mormon, but the Book of Mormon also has other characters named Joseph and Jacob. I could have easily erred in counting or discounting references. Likewise, many mentions of Jacob and Moses occur in the formulaic forms of “God of … Jacob” and “law of Moses.” I counted them, but an argument could be made that I should not have.

6Ben McGuire, “Nephi and Goliath: A Case Study of Literary Allusion in the Book of Mormon,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 18/1 (2009): 16–31.

7Notably, Lindsay does not dispute this. For the purpose of this essay, I’ll take this to mean Beshears is correct.

8Another source of controversy would be the fact Beshears obviously assumes Davidic authorship of the Psalms attributed to him. I do not.

9For the record I think they are. But whatever problem Beshears thinks using the King James Version wording has for BofM translation and/or historicity, it is not a problem for the Book of Mormon itself. If it made deliberate allusions to the Psalms, as pictured in the Book of Mormon the characters had access to them. That in itself would answer Beshears argument they did not.

10Compare Lindsay’s explanation in “Too Much or Too Little?” 56-63. I draw on some of the same facts as Lindsay, but I’m taking an entirely different approach.

11All biblical quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted.

12We should not discount the possibility the Book of Mormon pictures Lehi having his own grudge against Josiah, whether or not we accept Lindsay’s argument he was “at odds with the Deuteronomists and their scribes” (58). Given Lehi’s probable age and the fact he was a Jospehite (1 Ne. 5:14), he may have been at least indirectly affected by Josiah’s invasion of Samaria (2 Kngs. 23:15-20).

13Compare 1 Sam. 10:20-24.

14Responding to an earlier version of this essay, Ben McGuire reminded me that these books were actually post-exilic and could not realistically be on the brass plates. I am aware of this, but I have other reasons for being tentative here. Even from an environmentalist perspective, it is difficult to ascertain what Joseph Smith imagined was in the brass plates. I personally think Smith had some kind of ur-text of our present books in mind without worrying overmuch about the exact contents.

15Alexander Campbell seemed to have sensed the problem: “He [Joseph Smith] has more of the Jews, living in the new world, than could have been numbered any where else, even in the days of John the Baptist; and has placed them under a new dynasty. The sceptre, with him, has departed from Judah, and a law-giver from among his descendants, hundreds of years before Shiloh came….” Campbell is alluding to Gen. 49:10. Alexander Campbell, Delusions. An Analysis of the Book of Mormon with an Examination of Its Internal and External Evidences, and a Refutation of Its Pretences to Divine Authority (Boston: Benjamin H. Greene, 1932), 12.

16Interestingly, Solomon himself is only mentioned six times in the Book of Mormon. The first two come in the same verse describing the first temple the Nephites built—the very temple Jacob will be preaching at (2 Ne. 5:16). The next three references are in the passage we now considering. The final reference (3 Ne. 13:29) is a quotation of Matthew 6:29.

17Compare/contrast BMC Team, “What Does the Book of Mormon Say About Polygamy?”

2 Sam. 12:8 specifically says God gave David at least some of his wives. This fact seems to have escaped Jacob’s notice, but exactly why this is so is unknown.

At the meta-narrative level, perhaps Joseph Smith didn’t know or recall this fact when writing the Book of Mormon. However, the Joseph Smith Translation passes over the verse without modification, so he may not have sensed a contradiction.

How this plays out in the Book of Mormon narrative is another matter. Perhaps the verse was not present on the brass plates. Or perhaps Jacob deliberately ignored it, but this opens the possibility of the Nephite polygamists throwing the verse back at him. Later, King Noah and his priests are portrayed as having multiple wives and concubines, but this is blamed on Noah’s own lust without reference to David and Solomon (Mosiah 11:2-4). So it would appear Jacob’s denunciation had some effect.

Ben McGuire suggested another possibility to me, that Lehi’s commandment of monogamy superseded the practices of the Old World. In this context, see Jacob 3:5, where the Lamanites are praised for keeping that commandment.

18It should be remembered that though 1 Kings 12 presents Jeroboam’s rebellion as authorized by God, Israel’s kings were never truly considered legitimate. Visions of the restored Davidic monarchy always portray its rulership of the reunited house of Israel.

19It is difficult to believe that both members and non-members of the church would be so alarmed by Amlici’s campaign (Alma 2:3) unless it had a real chance of succeeding. The church members’ alarm is explicitly identified as caused by Amilici’s “intent to destroy the church of God” (Alma 2:4). The cause of the non-members’ concern isn’t specifically identified. The fact Amlici was able to form his followers into an army suggests both he didn’t lose in a landslide and he thought he could win through force of arms. Compare the parallel story in Alma 51, where the king-men are reduced to simply refusing military service in the face of a Lamanite invasion.

20Pachus and his followers are pictured as a distinct group than the king-men of Alma 51. Alma 62:9 notes the “men of Pachus” being tried, “and also those king-men who had been taken and cast into prison” during Moroni₁’s purge.