Today’s post is from Guest Blogger TommyT. We are relieved it’s not about the election!
Alma 39:5 – “Know ye not, my son, that these things are an abomination in the sight of the Lord; yea, most abominable above all sins save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost?”
The predominant LDS theology about sexuality is that anything sexual outside of marriage is a sin nearly as serious as murder. This fallacious interpretation does a great disservice in understanding what is “most abominable.” On one hand this law of chastity theology honors and sanctifies procreation and sexual intimacy between a husband and wife. On the other hand, it also demonizes sexual intimacy outside of marriage as dirty, horrible, abominable, destructive and nearly as serious as murder. This takes something beautiful and divine in one context and associates it with things that are abominable just by changing the context.
But wait, what about Alma 39:5? It couldn’t be more clear, could it? Yes, it could. Alma doesn’t say what happened—just that it was abominable. So, what Corianton did is not known, but we all assume we know what happened. The lessons we hear in Sunday school, talks at general conference, and articles in the Ensign don’t explore the specifics. They refer to the passage and infer that sexual intimacy outside of marriage is what is abominable and above all sins except murder. I am not saying the power of procreation isn’t sacred–it is, but I think we need to revisit the Book of Mormon, find out what could have happened, and talk about what is an “abomination.”
Sexual Sins and Abominations:
So, I think it is important not to lump all sexual sins in the same basket, nearly as serious as murder. For example, there are a lot of things worse than consensual petting. Really, there are. To illustrate that all sins are not equal let’s compare a few examples:
- A 12-year-old boy who looks at a picture of a naked woman is not in the same category as the pornographer.
- Couples who get involved with petting are not in the same category as molesters.
- A couple who fornicates the day before their temple wedding is not in the same category as a prostitute.
Clearly there are differences between each of those situations. So, referring to chastity, where does sin end and “abomination” begin?
The bible dictionary defines abomination as an object that excites loathing like an idol, an immoral practice or the flesh of prohibited animals. The Topical Guide says to “See also Vile; Wickedness.” These definitions are not very helpful. A quick review of the topical guide seems to indicate that generally an “abomination” is a bad “sin.” Still, could we get a clear example of something abominable?
Mormon is more clear about the abomination of the Nephites. Mormon (Moroni 9:9) explains that the Nephites’ abomination “far exceeds” that of the Lamanites’ in “depriving them (the women) of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue.” Mormon doesn’t say rape but that is the vernacular we would use today for what he is describing. Substituting the idea of rape gives a lot of clarity when the Book of Mormon refers to something as an abomination.
So, the clearest example the Book of Mormon gives us (though not graphic) is that a sexual sin is abominable when there is rape. I would assume the actions of sexual predators, molesters and those who sexually assault others qualify in the “abomination” category. So, is petting outside marriage an abomination? No. Is it inappropriate outside marriage? Yes. Do you see the difference?
Corianton and Isabel; what happened and other conjecture
Let’s return to Corianton and Isabel. First, what do we know?
Alma 39: 3- 4
3 And this is not all, my son. Thou didst do that which was grievous unto me; for thou didst forsake the ministry, and did go over into the land of Siron among the borders of the Lamanites, after the harlot Isabel.
4 Yea, she did steal away the hearts of many; but this was no excuse for thee, my son. Thou shouldst have tended to the ministry wherewith thou wast entrusted.
To summarize; Corianton left the ministry and went to Siron after a harlot named Isabel. We like to think she stole his heart, though even that is conjecture.
We don’t know much more than that. We don’t have the full story. We don’t know if Corianton hired Isabel for sex as a whore? We don’t know if Corianton fell in love with Isabel and ran away with her. We don’t know how long this relationship lasted. Was it over a day, weeks, maybe months? What was the nature of the relationship between them? We don’t and can’t know; it is not in the record. We do know that Corianton left and returned home.
I could see a lot of scenarios about how this played out. On an extreme example, it’s possible that Corianton thought prostitution was a good business and left to set up a whore house with Isabel. Another extreme is that Corianton fell in love and went to marry his sweetheart. Since we don’t know, I’d like to imagine a few other scenarios even though they are pure conjecture.
Conjecture
Let’s list a few of the possibilities. This conjecture doesn’t really matter, but it does illustrate some helpful points.
A few possible scenarios are:
- Corianton fell in love and fornicated
- Corianton hired Isabel as a whore and fornicated
- Either Isabel or Corianton was a sexual predator
Scenario 1: Corianton fell in love and fornicated
This doesn’t seem to fit in the definition of “abominable” that the Book of Mormon describes. Poor decision making, to be sure, but “abominable”? I think not. Falling in love with a prostitute doesn’t justify the “abominable” title. We don’t even know if Corianton had sex with Isabel. He could have been a poor judge of character who got to Siron, realized what a dumb idea this whole business of running away was, and then got out of dodge. Although we don’t know, I doubt this is what happened.
Scenario 2: Corianton hired Isabel as a whore and fornicated
This doesn’t seem to fit the story line either; maybe it is true, but I don’t think so. Sometimes the scriptures tell us how much a whore is worth or how much someone paid for a whore, yet Alma doesn’t say. The record doesn’t even say if Corianton hired Isabel as a prostitute. Also, if Corianton had a prostitute habit, then Alma might have said something like “Thou hast done this before” or “Again, and again thou goest off awhoring”. Maybe this was a one-off thing, and Corianton just couldn’t get the idea of awhoring with Isabel off his mind. In a free exchange, prostitution is neither rape nor molestation.
But is prostitution “abominable”? Prostitution has a lot in common with one night stands. Either party in this exchange could use prostitution as a sexual predator. A sexual predator is a person seen as obtaining or trying to obtain sexual contact with another person in predatory or abusive manner. That leads me to scenario 3.
Scenario 3: Isabel or Corianton was a sexual predator
As odd as this sounds, this seems like an equally likely scenario as scenario 2. I would lean towards Isabel as the sexual predator because; “she did steal away the hearts of many,” though this is not necessarily the case. Corianton may have been the sexual predator but we know he left the situation. We don’t and can’t know.
I also think sexual predation is a likely scenario because Alma didn’t say; “Corianton! Thou hast fornicated! Thou hast lost that which is most precious and pure!” No, he simply said, “Know ye not, my son, that these things are an abomination in the sight of the lord.” That could be interpreted that as; “Dude, my son! She is a sexual predator! I warned you about that!”
I also wonder what “steal away the hearts of many” means. A couple of options exist. One suggestion is that Corianton fell in love. Maybe Corianton truly fell in love, in that case refer to scenario 1. On a side note, we all know of instances where an innocent person is in love with their abuser. Another suggestion is that Isabel took something that didn’t belong to her, Corianton’s heart. This second scenario could suggest that Isabel was a sexual predator.
That’s it for the conjecture.
My conclusion is this–the “abominable” act Alma was referring to between Corianton and Isabel was some sort of rape, molestation or sexual predation. These actions are abominable because they force, coerce, violate and/or deceive someone into unwanted and harmful sexual contact. Maybe prostitution is “abominable.” It is certainly far from divinely appointed, so maybe this is what Alma referring to. At least now we are trying to be more honest about what happened and not claiming that every act that breaks the law of chastity is “abominable” without nuance or gradation.
Sexuality is a divinely beautiful gift that we should not demean by association with “abominable” acts. These have their own category: abominations. We need to stop looking at the majority of sins that involve sexual intimacy outside marriage as abominable because they are not. There are things worse than NICMO, necking, Levi loving, petting and fornication. These include torture, sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse and abandoning children. At minimum, I think we can all agree on these.
- What do you think is the rest of the story?
- Is all sexual activity outside marriage an abomination or just some? Where do you draw the line between inappropriate acts, sin, and abomination?
- Would the church benefit from more clarity on these points?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
Some actions can be improper without being sinful. Other actions can be sinful without being abominable.
How about this: Corianton and several other missionaries went to preach. He left his young wife at home. He strayed in heart and mind and eventually left the mission to find the other girl. Forsaking his wife and mission was abominable.
Tommy – thanks for the post. I’ve often wondered about the discussion regarding the qualitative aspects of sin. My thoughts are that terms like abominable refer more to our moral objections to a sin rather than the sin itself. I hear this often spoken of about homosexual sin – people are “grossed out” about it and therefore it is worse than other sins. Stealing or lying, on the other hand, tends to “gross out” people a lot less and are therefore lower on the list.
How does the phrase, “All sin is as scarlet” fit with the:
1. Scripture in Alma 39
2. The policies in the CHI that treat different sins differently
3, Recent policy change listing a certain behaviour (SSM) as apostasy when all the others relate to (in some way or another) teaching false doctrine.
I don’t think you can look at verses 3-5 alone to answer this question. The challenge is understanding to what Alma refers when he says “these” things. He then goes on in verse 6 to talk about denying the Holy Ghost and committing murder. And then in verse 11 it speaks of the reaction the Zoramites had when they saw Corianton’s sins: they wouldn’t believe. Perhaps “these” things refers not only to Corianton’s sexual escapades, but also his denial of what he knew was right AND the effect these things had on the people they were teaching.
I’m with El Oso on this one. It was forsaking the ministry and by example leading others to abandon faith was the “sin next to murder”. Sexual sin was just one of the outcomes. Alma used the same words in Alma 36:14 when he realised that leading others away from faith was like murder.
To read into this scripture that sexual sin is like murder is an extreme reading in my opinion which has unfortunately permiated our cultural discourse.
There has been discussion in the past that Isabel was a temple prostitute and that’s what really made things abominable, in adding that idolatry to the mix. See post here, for example: http://mormonuniversalism.com/8612/the-sin-next-to-murder/
One possibility that I come across is whether Alma is speaking here as an upset parent or as a prophet. I doubt we have to go very far into Mormon experience to find many “son is merrily preparing to serve a mission until he meets ‘that’ girl and he decides to not go on a mission and parents are upset by his choice and use these kind of pejorative terms to refer to the young woman and launch into various and sundry lectures to son” kind of scenarios. On many occasions when I read these chapters, I notice Alma’s pain and frustration and (dare I accuse a prophet of it) anger. When I have noticed this, I have sometimes wondered how much of the hyperbole in Alma’s lecture is born from truth and how much of it is the result of Alma’s frustration.
Great post! This is definitely a discussion worth having.
Like Dave and MTodd, I’ve always been in the ‘it was the leading people away from the church’ camp. I don’t think Alma was referring to sex (of any kind) when he said ‘next to murder’ or ‘abominable.’ Aside from textual interpretation, there are a few other reasons why I think this way.
Alma’s sin was leading people away from the church. He was leading them to sin and to die spiritually. He was killing them spiritually. It weighed heavily on him. I can absolutely imagine Alma describing what Corianton did in leading people from the church as “next to murder.’ It was a kind of spiritual murder. Alma even proceeds to talk about spiritual death in the following chapters.
I do think the interpretation is arguable, but I don’t think it was sex. That said, I’ve never thought of scenario 3, but it is also an interesting idea.
I’d add that I think ranking sins is generally not worthwhile. Sin is sin; it all needs to be repented of, and most of us are in more danger from yelling at our kids or swearing at other drivers or even grinding the faces of the poor than we are from murder, adultery, or whatever happened here. I think emphasizing the Sermon on the Mount more than we do would be better than dwelling overly long on Corianton’s sins (not a criticism of this discussion, but I’ve sat through the Alma 39 lesson a lot in church).
Hi Tommy T,
Thanks for a great post. I actually disagree with you a bit, but I really love that you’re taking on this subject. Mormons are just so weird about sex and a misunderstand of Alma 39 is in large part why (the hate- and fear-mongering rhetoric about sex that we constantly hear from our leaders doesn’t help either). My two cents:
The key to all of this actually lies in verse 5:
Know ye not, my son, that these things are an abomination in the sight of the Lord; yea, most abominable above all sins save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost?
To read this closely, the key phrase here is “these things”. Note that it doesn’t say “this thing.” IMHO, the phrase “these things” doesn’t refer to sexual sin at all. There’s no evidence in the text itself to support this interpretation because of the ambiguity of the plural posessive pronoun “these”. I believe the sin second to murder is actually two-fold: 1. forsaking the ministry, which is the first thing Alma mentions, and 2. being seduced to forsake the ministry for whatever reason, not necessarily because of a harlot.
So I’ve always thought this passage was about taking care not to forsake one’s sacred church duties regardless of cause. THAT’s the sin that’s second to murder: betraying/forsaking God by abdicating a position of responsibility regardless of the reason. I think the whole sexual aspect of the passage is incidental, though given Mormonism’s fear of the body in general and the sexual aspects of physical existence in particular, it makes sense that the church would interpret things that way. More’s the pity. The way we view sex is incredibly damaging and shame/guilt-inducing when it need not be. And it causes a great deal of pain and distress for our single members (gay and straight), who are taught, wrongly, IMHO, that they must suffer through a life without any form of physical intimacy unless it’s within marriage; an impossibility for our gay brothers and sisters, and an increasingly unlikely possibility for the single folk once they’re past a certain age, especially women, given the skewed gender ratio of active single adults in the church that exists, particularly outside of the Mormon Corridor.
So that was my long-winded way of agreeing with Dave-oz.
Could it be that Alma just simply over reacted? I think about all the times that I have blown a situation with my children out of proportion. Perhaps this was Alma’s first reaction when he heard about the issue.
I have long suspected that Isabel is called a harlot because of disapproval of her rather than her actual profession. “Stole away the hearts of many” could simply mean she was attractive. Patriarchal societies like those in scripture love to cast attractive women in the role of seductress rather than taking the blame on themselves as men. It’s a hallmark of hostile sexism and the BOM people were so filled with testosterone, hostile sexism is a given.
The fact that he ran off after her to me makes it plausible he simply had a girlfriend (incuding an alluded to sexual relationship) when he was supposed to be focused on a presumably celibate mission life. That’s partly reading it with modern eyes. There were missionaries who did this from time to time when I was a missionary.
But how we get from there to abominable is hard to see. Hyperbole? Rape? Exploitation? Leaving one’s mission = fewer converts = spiritual murder?? It’s anyone’s guess.
Totally speculative, but “stealing away the hearts of many” doesn’t sound like a common prostitute to me. Also, Isabel is one of the very few women named or mentioned in the Book of Mormon, and it seems pretty odd to name some random girl that Corianton slept with. Most of the other women who get specific mentions in the BOM have some political significance (and are usually Lamanite, incidentally). The chapter also goes on to refer to “those wicked harlots” in the plural.
It seems plausible to me that Isabel was the leader of some kind of radical social, political, or religious movement that was significant enough to be discussed in more length elsewhere in the Nephite records. The “harlot” label may be less about her personal relationship with Corianton, and more about her history (maybe she had been a harlot previously), or a way of characterizing her movement (maybe she espoused liberal sexual mores), or maybe it was just a way of demeaning somebody that the religious or political establishment didn’t like (“that evil slut Isabel”) even if it wasn’t technically true. In this interpretation, Corianton wasn’t necessarily fornicating at all, he was just falling in with a social movement that was apparently “abominable” in some way.
In these verses, the Book of Mormon has done it’s job…to get people to think and to have discussions on things important in our lives and with God.
Specifics are all speculative, which is what the discussions contain…our perspectives on a subject…our ideas and faith…how we interpret it, or how we use them to support our opinions.
To take the scripture literally as if it happened exactly how we have it through the peep stones, seems a waste of time for me. They didn’t have FSOY pamphlets back in Alma’s day. They didn’t have temple recommends. They didn’t have church handbooks outlining sins. Scriptures are not about specifics. Who knows what Corianton did or touched or thought or looked at or whatever.
Sins are what we agree upon as a group to call them that. Coffee is sin. Sex before marriage is sin. Sex outside marriage is sin. There are degrees of sin, and rape and molestation is not the same as other sexual sin. These are the things modern prophets outline for us to follow in our day regardless of what others did in the past, and we use our own reasoning to apply…not because the scriptures prove them to be true…but because the scriptures outline the teachings that support those rules that we agree upon as a group.
Book of Mormon is teaching that whatever sin is….don’t do it or it displeases the Lord. The hyperbole around “next to murder” is in the same ball park as the youth leader telling youth “you’re a piece of gum”.
It’s not literal. It’s metaphorical to raise a point. And sometimes I cringe at church at the points being made, and teach my kids at home what I think so they are not left to the ideas of others who are doing their best to conjecture about scriptural interpretations.
And I would never write letters to my children telling some of them they are righteous and the others are not. What parent does that? (none…it’s not a literal history of events).