Review of Fiona Givens and Terryl Givens, All Things New: Rethinking Sin, Salvation, and Everything In Between (Faith Matters Press, 2020). 188 pages. $12.95 (paperback).

Abstract: Fiona and Terryl Givens once again deliver a book worthy of the comparatively wide readership they have gained within Latter- day Saint circles. Their orderly treatment of individual gospel concepts in this book can rightly be seen as a distillation and unification of their previous work, boldly attempting to awaken us from our ignorance of the sheer novelty and vitality contained in the Restoration vision of God and humanity. They convincingly argue that the historically wrought semantic baggage that comes with the most basic religious vocabulary we use must be consciously jettisoned to fully appreciate and articulate the meaning of the Restoration.

The work of Fiona and Terryl Givens — dynamic duo and lay theologians of the Restoration — reaches its apogee in this new volume, ambitious in title and in scope. But one might ask, what need is there for a “rethinking” in the restored gospel? Has not sin, salvation, and everything in between already been rethought and rearticulated in the revelations of Joseph Smith? This volume is the Givenses’ effort to energetically answer in the affirmative but also to move beyond a mere affirmation to outline and illuminate the ways in which the Restoration has indeed made “all things new.”

Referring to the poignant observation of renowned Christian theologian Freidrich Schleiermacher, they write:

[Page 152][He] describes the situation well. He wrote that one can believe and teach that “everything is related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth” and yet that redemption can be “interpreted in such a way that it is reduced to incoherence.” His diagnosis is the subject of this book. (3)

The “incoherence” the Givenses seek to rectify here has much to do with a dilemma nearly as old as Christianity itself: how do we reconcile the idea of a loving, benevolent Father in heaven portrayed in some parts scripture with the despotic, tempestuous, and violent God portrayed in other parts of scripture? How can a God intent on saving His children and desirous to “wipe away all tears from their eyes” (Rev. 21:4) also damn them to eternal punishment? This dilemma has sometimes taken the form of pitting the Old Testament against the New Testament, or as Marcion of Sinope (85–160 AD) thought, a malevolent demiurge pitted against the real, higher God. Others such as famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung perceived a temporal development in God, who, after being morally bested by Job, became incarnate as man in order to catch up with His creature who had surpassed Him in consciousness and morality.1

No 188-page book could think to solve this issue once and for all, and in reality there is no way to harmonize the dizzying variety of the accounts of God given in scripture. It never was and was never intended to be a homogenous corpus. Rather than attempting to take this head on, the Givenses are instead proposing a new hermeneutic — the hermeneutics of a good God, built on Restoration ideals. Their experience with the youth and young adults of the Church across the globe has convinced them that there is a looming problem with the words we use to talk about, as the title would suggest, sin, salvation, and everything in between. It is not that the words themselves are the problem — discarding or swapping them out would be nigh impossible. The problem lies in the thousands of years’ worth of baggage they have accumulated over Christian history. The English language was thorny soil to begin with, and the Givenses propose that careful attention...