I showed up about 20 minutes late. It turns out that the location was different from the program, putting me even further behind. But the lecture likely had the same intro that his FAIR conference one did. Some things were different from my memory as last time I remember him talking more about the Beecher preacher that got ostracized for writing on a belief in the pre-existence.

I came in when he was talking about Rev. 12. I thought that might be an opportunity to bring up the war in heaven imagery (and tie it in to pre-existence) but instead he talked about the woman representing the Church being driven in the wilderness, rather than into oblivion. The church in terms of priesthood keys was gone, but the church’s  truth was merely driven underground. Givens tied that in with various versions of an early section of the Book of Commandments which talks about calling forth that church from the wilderness. So Givens wants to look at theologians who thought about the pre-existence to see if they have something extra that can add to what he considers Mormonisms under-developed theology on the subject (Nephi Anderson’s Added Upon and Saturday’s Warrior).

Givens showed how some thinkers like Plato, Kant, and Origen logically arrived at pre-mortal existence to solve a problem about free will. In order to be free one must be able to cause ones self. Origen’s stuff on pre-existence was considered heresy, although I do not recall what exactly the grounds were. The idea was dangerous because of an uncomfortable association with deification, but that may have been more of a comment about why it was considered a danger in the 18th century. Givens hopped through so many centuries, I would have had to have paid better attention to keep up. I am sure the book coming out will make things clearer.

Afterward, I asked a question about Christ’s pre-existence fit into the larger framework. He noted the argument–if Christ had a pre-existence, then why not man?– was on the table in the 18th century. It didn’t catch on because a counterpoint was that Christ had a virgin birth and was thus unique.

But what I was really interested in is how it was arrived at that Christ had a pre-existence, but this seemed to be outside the scope of Givens’s study. I mentioned to him that Raymond Brown has a paper about how John was trying to reign in two factions, but didn’t bring up all the details that now follow. One faction didn’t believe in Christ’s pre-existence (while still accepting he was the Messiah and God’s Son) . John 1, John 8:58, and John 14:9 seems to be addressed at convincing this faction of the pre-existence of Christ. The other opponents, who John argues against in his 1st epistle, take the idea of a pre-existent Christ as apart from the mortal Jesus too far. These proto-docetists or proto-monophysites (not too mention predecessors of the gnostics) could believe that Christ could possess Jesus in some fashion, but leave before the going got rough (and hence really didn’t have to suffer for sins.) That is why it was important in 1 John 4:2 to confess Jesus was the Christ, no matter how much one came off as a spiritually gifted teacher.