Gethsemane’s Role in Atonement (Green/Huntsman 4 of 5)

Is Gethsemane part of the atonement of Christ? Many LDS say yes, while Protestants generally say no. What do Deidre Green & Eric Huntsman say? Check out our conversation... https://youtu.be/b5UDmyEDQ98 Don’t miss our other conversations about atonement: https://gospeltangents.com/lds_theology/atonement/   Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission Is Gethsemane Part of Atonement? GT  00:47  I want to throw more one more question at you guys, and then we'll dive a little bit more into the book. So, I also spoke with a Lutheran pastor, Willie Grills, and he said, "I have a question for you, Rick." And I was like, I ask the questions. I don't answer questions. But anyway. (Chuckling)  So Willie had read Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine. And he said, "Is it true that Mormons believe," and so I'll throw this at both of you here. You can go back and see what my answer was and see if I got it right or wrong. But anyway, "Is it true that Mormons believe that Christ suffered all of the sins in the garden, rather than on the cross?" How would you respond to that? I won't tell you what I said. Eric  01:38  I think that there has been a pendulum that has swung. I think a lot of it had to do with in the mid-20th century, Joseph Fielding Smith, really taught a lot about Gethsemane, to compensate for an over stress or focus on the cross. Then, his son-in-law, Bruce R. McConkie ran with that. So, a lot of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s, that's what we grew up with. But if you look at the early teachings in the Church, and earlier leaders, it was, he suffered and died and rose the third day. I mean, that emphasis, I think, was more traditional on the cross. Then with Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie it swung to more Gethsemane, and I think in the 90s, and in this century, we have something which I think is more useful, we're in the middle. The way I teach this in a New Testament context is the garden is where he took upon himself the burden of not just our sins, but our sorrows, our heartaches, our afflictions, our sicknesses. That did cause suffering, because it was like the crushing of the olives, etc. But he carried that burden to the cross, where they had an end. So, I think what happens is, not only did we, within the church, I think, perhaps focus too much on Gethsemane, it also gave a lot of ammunition to people outside the church to say, "You Mormons have got it wrong. You think he just suffered for our sins in the garden," when that's never been what our scriptures--I mean, John Hilton has done a lot of work on this. He's actually done, with some of his research assistants, studies of Latter-day Saint conference discourses, etc. And up until about the 1950s and 60s, you did not have a primary emphasis on Gethsemane. And now starting in the 90s and since, you see something a little bit more balanced, both Gethsemane and the cross. Eric  03:28  And so I think it's partly a function of when most of us grew up. We grew up and it was a Gethsemane [emphasis.] And, you know, Bob Millet used to also say that it's natural for us to teach to our distinctives. Because we have an understanding of Gethsemane, thanks to Mosiah 3 and Doctrine & Covenants, section 19, that others don't. We really emphasize that. And I would add to what Bob said, I think sometimes we also react--this is not a positive thing. We react against what we perceive as the excesses of others. We thought people were focusing on the cross and suffering too much. So, we were skittish of the cross, and we wanted to emphasize Gethsemane, because we knew more about that. What I like to teach in New Testament context is it's not a discrete one-time atoning event, it's an atoning journey: Gethsemane, to the cross, and then all the way the garden tomb. In the Book of Mormon, atonement sometimes means atonement for sin,