Latter-day Grace, part 2: "After all we can do"
Latter-day Grace, part 2: "After all we can do"
Nothing has set back the Latter-day Saint discourse on grace more than the phrase "after all we can do."
See part 1 in this series on grace.
Discussing the Latter-day Saint theology of grace begins and ends with a single verse: “…for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.” (2 Nephi 25:23)
The qualifier “after all we can do” is deeply embedded in our vernacular. It’s our pat response to the question of whether we are saved by grace or works—grace, but after our works have been exhausted. We use “after all we can do” as a way to introduce a theology of collaborative salvation: we do part, and God does part.
But we tend to get ourselves into trouble when we house a theological tenet on the foundation of a single verse, especially when that verse seems to fly in the face of larger scriptural themes. There will always be verses that disagree. For example, how different would our discussions of grace be if, instead of Nephi’s verse, we used one of Paul’s1:
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— (Ephesians 2:8)
Paul, and the New Testament more broadly (of which Paul is a principal author), support this doctrine of grace. Would we act differently if, instead of “after all we can do,” we anchored on Paul’s phrase, “it is the gift of God”? How would it affect us if we believed and understood that our Heavenly Parents want all of us back, and not just those who meet certain criteria? Would we prioritize the hustle less, and our relationship with divinity more? Would we judge others less for what they do (or don’t do), and focus on loving God and our neighbor?
The works-based understanding of the “after all we can do” phrase is not a new concept in LDS theology—clearly the verse is as old as the Book of Mormon itself—but our reliance on it has increased in the last few decades. The phrase “after all we can do” has been spoken over the pulpit roughly the same number of times from 2000 to the present (~24 years), as it was in the 150 years before that.2
Which means that walking back the effect this verse has had on our Church culture doesn’t happen in one fell swoop. To do so, we need to first understand this verse from a linguistic and rhetorical perspective, and then from a theological perspective.
Understanding what the term was intended to mean
We generally understand “by grace we are saved, after all we can do” to be sequential. In this reading, we must first do everything we possibly can, and once we’ve done that, grace will fill in the remaining gap. Envision a ladder that should have 100 rungs, but is missing the top one; our job is to climb the first 99 rungs on our own, after which grace bridges the gap of that missing top rung.
This view, again, takes a very different stance than much of scripture, and that should be a signal that we may be understanding it incorrectly. While in modern English we take the word “after” to mean “at a later time,” it appears to have idiomatic meaning that we are overlooking. Stephen Robinson, who I was privileged to have as a professor while I attended BYU, described it this way3:
At first glance at this scripture, we might think that grace is offered to us only chronologically after we have completed doing all we can do, but this is demonstrably false, for we have already received many manifestations of God's grace before we even come to this point. By his grace, we live and breathe. By grace, we are spiritually begotten children of heavenly parents and enjoy divine prospects…
It therefore belittles God's grace to think of it as only a cherry on top added at the last moment as a mere finishing touch to what we have already accomplished on our own without any help from God. Instead the reverse would be a truer proposition: our efforts are the cherry on top added to all that God has already done for us.
Actually, I understand the preposition "after" in 2 Nephi 25:23 to be a preposition of separation rather than a preposition of time. It denotes logical separateness rather than temporal sequence. We are saved by grace "apart from all we can do," or "all we can do notwithstanding," or even "regardless of all we can do." Another acceptable paraphrase of the sense of the verse might read, "We are still saved by grace, after all is said and done."
The good news is that this interpretation—understanding the phrase to mean “apart from” or “regardless from” all we can do, instead of the sequential “after”—is not rhetorical gymnastics to try to change a scripture to mean what we want it to mean. There is a sound basis for it, which is that this particular “after all we can do” phrase used to mean just that, at the time Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon.
Dan McClellan, an LDS scholar, explores the usage of this phrase in other texts in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, in his paper “2 Nephi 25:23 in Literary and Rhetorical Context.” The point here is that the English in common usage in Joseph Smith’s time was different than it is today, and that the meanings of some words and phrases have drifted. So, to understand what “after all we can do” means, we need to look at what it would have meant to Joseph Smith.
McClellan identifies an “unambiguous pattern” in writings from the time, that the phrase “after all we can do” would have meant “despite all we can do” to Joseph Smith and his contemporaries. There are examples in both religious and non-religious texts, but the most compelling are those that also deal with grace; see the text of McClellan’s paper for examples, and much more detail than can be provided here. McClellan’s conclusion goes like this:
As it turns out, the construction “after all (that) [NOUN/PRONOUN] can do” occurs a number of times between 1710 and 1840, and those occurrences clearly occur in contexts that demand the sense of “despite all (that) [NOUN/PRONOUN] can do.”
Or, in layman’s terms:
…"After all we can do" was a phrase commonly used by English-language writers discussing grace in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, and it always and only meant "despite all we can do."
What does this change of focus mean to you? What does it mean if we understand the verse to mean, “by grace we are saved, despite all we can do?” This certainly aligns better with the New Testament assertion that grace is a gift of God, given freely and unmerited. That’s the best part of understanding the linguistic context of this phrase; it contributes positively to our theological understanding of grace.
Understanding the theology
The phrase “after all we can do,” read in a modern context and without the understanding of Joseph Smith’s day we’ve just outlined, suggests that there are prerequisites to God’s grace. This is incompatible with traditional definitions of grace across Christianity, variously stated as (emphasis added, in each case):
The free and undeserved help that God gives us
Undeserved favor… cannot be earned; it is something that is freely given
etc.
While a primary characteristic of the definition of grace, broadly, is that it is unearned, undeserved, and unmerited, as Latter-day Saints we tend to bristle at that idea. We love things to be earned. It makes more sense in our honeybee, hustle-based culture to have to earn grace, and “after all we can do” is the one-liner license to back that up.
However, a better theological understanding backs up what the linguistic understanding laid out. Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf takes apart the supposed “cause and effect” concept of 2 Nephi 25:23 in his talk from April 2015:
Grace is a gift of God, and our desire to be obedient to each of God's commandments is the reaching out of our mortal hand to receive this sacred gift from our Heavenly Father…
I wonder if sometimes we misinterpret the phrase “after all we can do.” We must understand that “after” does not equal “because.”
We are not saved “because” of all that we can do. Have any of us done all that we can do? Does God wait until we’ve expended every effort before He will intervene in our lives with His saving grace?
Going farther back, Elder Bruce C. Hafen wrote something similar in 1989, suggesting that we are understanding “after all we can do” incorrectly4:
The Savior’s gift of grace to us is not necessarily limited in time to “after” all we can do. We may receive his grace before, during and after the time when we expend our own efforts.
Both of these support the idea that we might have misunderstood this verse, for a long time.
These explanations also invite another interpretation of this verse, which does speak to the undeserved, unmerited definition of grace that we find in other faiths. If we are, in fact, saved despite all we can do, that means all we can do, good or bad. This is a little bit counterintuitive, because we think of grace being a reward for those who do good works. But in addition to being saved despite our good works, it also means we are saved despite our constant mistakes, our frequent failing to love God and our neighbor, and our seeming inability to change for the better. Despite all we can do to stop it, grace still flows to us.
It’s worth noting that so far we’ve been pretty zoomed in, focusing solely on the “after all we can do” phrase. This is the full verse written by Nephi:
For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.
When we back up and read the full verse, we start to see why Nephi is talking about this at all; which is to persuade his posterity and his brethren to believe in Christ. It’s not to put the burden of works on their back. On the contrary—the traditional reading of “after all we can do” minimizes the need for Jesus Christ, as His grace only fills in the gaps. But Nephi is focused on Christ here, and the enormous gift of His saving grace.
What if we back out further? In chapter 25, Nephi describes a Savior who redeems Jerusalem twice, even after the people reject Him. He describes Jesus Christ coming “with healing in His wings.” He teaches about Christ’s atonement, from which His grace flows, which is “infinite for all mankind.” In one of his last chapters, Nephi isn’t talking about works, he’s talking about the grace that none of us has earned, that is a gift given to all of us by Jesus Christ.
And if we back all the way out, the central message of the Book of Mormon is to convince all people that Jesus is the Christ. There’s more to the gospel, of course, but at its core is a Savior who atoned for each of us, and whose grace is free to each of us; not based on our merits, but as Nephi says, “relying wholly upon the merits of him who is mighty to save.”
As Susan Hinckley puts it:
The first part of that sentence, "We are saved by grace," is where the hope lives…
That is the good news.
That’s the point. We can get hung up on the particulars of specific commandments, or if we’re ever doing “enough.” But the good news is that there is no “enough.” Grace is for all of us.
Despite all we can do.
See also 2 Corinthians 12:9, Acts 15:11, Romans 3:23-24, or another of a variety of other verses that support the notion of salvation coming by grace, as a gift freely given.
The phrase “after all we can do” is so pervasive in LDS culture that it has also been co-opted into other doctrinal contexts, that don’t deal with grace at all. Consider these references from General Conference (not a comprehensive list):
Ultimate victory is 100 percent certain, “after all we can do,” through the might, merits, and mercy of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. (Michael A. Dunn, October 2021)
…the holiness we seek is a gift from a loving God, granted over time, after all we can do. (Henry B. Eyring, October 2019)
We also know that charity is a gift bestowed upon us after all we can do. (Henry B. Eyring, April 2018)
When the lost one is your son or your daughter, your brother or your sister, and he or she has chosen to leave, we learned in our family that, after all we can do, we love that person with all of our hearts and we watch, we pray, and we wait for the Lord’s hand to be revealed. (Brent H. Nielson, April 2015)
Robinson, Stephen E., Believing Christ (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft Pubs, 2010), 91–92.
Hafen, Bruce C., The Broken Heart (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1989), 155.