Re-reading the Plan of Salvation, part 2: Who Gets Saved?

The meritocratic version of the plan of salvation we usually teach is more limiting than you'd expect from an all-loving God.

If you missed it, you might want to start with Part 1: The Diagram.

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When Joseph Smith received the revelation now canonized as Doctrine & Covenants section 76, it was remarkable because of its strong universalist concepts. Universalism, simply put, is the idea that all mankind will ultimately be saved.

The Church’s “Revelations in Context” essay on section 76 describes how the revelation’s text went contrary to prevailing views in early American Christianity, which largely “believed in a strict heaven-and-hell theology of the world to come: those obedient to the gospel of Jesus Christ would be saved, but the wicked would be consigned to eternal punishment.”¹ Some Saints, including Brigham Young, struggled with the idea that God would ultimately save everyone.

But for the record, I did not grow up believing that D&C 76 was a universalist document. We tend to anchor on not only the doctrine of Sons of Perdition—who receive no glory, but instead “outer darkness” (Alma 40:13)—but on the idea that while we are all saved, there is still a tiered system of degrees of glory that differentiate between the exalted Celestial recipients and the lesser-qualified Terrestrial and Telestial recipients. I suppose it depends on your definition of universalism: whether you take it to mean that all mankind will receive God’s fullness, or whether you take it to mean only that all mankind will avoid damnation. The first is not true of D&C 76; the second roughly is.

When I was a kid, the gospel of salvation was simple. If you were Good, you went to the celestial kingdom. If you were Bad, you went somewhere else. The distinction between Good and Bad people wasn’t challenging. Every story had a protagonist and an antagonist; for every Aladdin there was a Jafar, and for every Optimus Prime a Megatron.

But the older I get, and the more I progress in my gospel study, the less sense this makes. We are all God’s children², and He wants all of us back. It is His work and His Glory to bring us all eternal life³. His plan includes a Savior⁴, who saves us from our sins⁵. Jesus Christ’s atonement is infinite⁶. These concepts are not fringe doctrine—the infinite nature of both God’s love and the Savior’s atonement are almost embarrassingly basic concepts.

The scriptural support for not everyone being saved tends to hinge on our obedience; there are many, many references saying that if we keep the commandments, we will be saved⁷. Nowhere is this more clear than in the third Article of Faith (emphasis added):

We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.

D&C 76 adds to this point, by calling out liars, sorcerers, adulterers, and whoremongers as recipients of Telestial glory. It says, without equivocating, that sins disqualify you from Celestial glory.

All right, pause. There’s a dichotomy here. One of these statements is true, and only one:

1. The obedient will inherit Celestial glory, while the sinful will inherit something lesser. Or,

2. Jesus Christ took our sins upon Himself, and we are made clean through His atonement.

What this can’t come down to is a matter of how “strong” Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice was. We’re clear that it was infinite, and that it paid the price for every single sin, committed by every single of the human race, throughout all of history. It was an atonement that only a God could perform. It is by His grace we are saved, in spite of our painful insistence on making mistakes over and over again⁸. There is no possibility that some of us have sinned too much for Christ’s atonement to cover, resulting in us receiving terrestrial or telestial glory.

Is it possible that some of us have not “earned” the right to have our sins absolved by Jesus Christ? That sounds weird, but it’s exactly what we’re taught. Consider this, from the Bible Dictionary:

The Atonement is conditional, however, so far as each person’s individual sins are concerned, and touches every one to the degree that he has faith in Jesus Christ, repents of his sins, and obeys the gospel.

Or elsewhere on the Church website (emphasis added):

Because of His Atonement, all people will be resurrected, and those who obey His gospel will receive the gift of eternal life with God.

This certainly appeals to our meritocratic instincts, and to the rugged American individualism that tends to win the day in the Church. It’s an extension of the narrative that we’re here to be tested. If we pass, eternal bliss is the reward. If we don’t pass, then our eternity is tainted.

We have plenty of references in Church literature to this life being a test, but the test metaphor is problematic. We all start from different places, and many don’t even know we’re being tested. Consider some of the different possible scenarios:

1. Person lives in a place and time where the gospel was not available. They are taught the gospel after this life, but are they judged according to their deeds in the flesh?

2. Person is raised in the Church, but is abused by someone they associated with leadership. They never come to Church again. What are they judged on?

3. Person attends Church every week, serves a mission, reads scriptures every day, fulfills callings, and does everything a good Latter-day Saint does… but their testimony is never more than skin-deep. Did they fulfill the assignment?

Calling this life a test can be useful in teaching about obedience. But ultimately, I’m in need of a new metaphor, and the one that makes the most sense to me comes from McArthur Krishna:

“Our heavenly parents sent us to this earth to succeed. … They didn’t send us here to fail. It’s actually not a test; it’s a school to learn and grow.”

This… this works. There’s something that feels better here, and it’s this: Our Heavenly Parents love all Their children. The way we usually teach the plan of salvation suggests that They created a plan that prevents some of Their children from ever being in Their presence again. I’m a parent, and if you are too, then you know that’s not how the parent-child relationship works. I have to assume our Heavenly Parents want every single one of us back with them.

That’s a plan of salvation that makes sense to me.

Part 3 is coming soon… subscribe to get new posts sent to your inbox:

1. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/revelations-in-context/the-vision?lang=eng

2. Psalms 82:6

3. Moses 1:39

4. John 3:16

5. Romans 6:23

6. 2 Nephi 9:7, Alma 34:10

7. Matthew 24:13, Mosiah 2:33, Alma 3:26-27, D&C 56:3, D&C 93:1, D&C 98:22, etc. etc.

8. If you wanted this to say “by grace we are saved, after all we can do,” check out Dan McClellan’s explanation of 2 Nephi 25:23. Nephi is not trying to diminish the efficacy of the atonement by introducing our own works.