The other thing often not brought up is the relationship between Lehi/Nephi’s visions and the vision of John in the NT. This is made explicit in Nephi’s vision but it really raises the question of this feminine in both visions. For instance in John you have the woman fleeing into the wilderness (Rev 12) Verse 5 is very similar to the image of Mary in this chapter. While that relationship seems clear, the other imagery of John (largely borrowed from Daniel) is harder to figure out.

The idea of both human ascension and divine descension is the key imagery I think. I also love how it’s when Christ allows God to descend into him (grace by grace, as D&C 93 adds) that Abinadi sees Christ able to break the bands of death. Mosiah then, doing this exegsis of Isaiah 53, the suffering servant poem. Of course Isaiah 53 is usually dated to post-exile so I suspect what we have is some proto-text in the brass plates that then becomes Isaiah 53 with later modifications in the exile or thereafter. Typically the suffering servant in Jewish exegesis is seen as Israel itself rather than Christ. The suffering is the pain and persecution of the exile. The support for this is that there are four servant poems/songs with the others more obviously being Israel. (i.e. 41:8-9; 44:1; 44:21; 45:4; 48:20; 49:3) That said fairly early on Rabbis associate this with the Messiah although there was also a move to differentiate it from Christian use.

My own sense is that how the Messiah is seen is complex, and that how Nephi reads Isaiah especially in 2 Nephi should be seen through the lens of both his and his father eschatological vision.

In any case, I agree with you that Nephi’s vision points to an expansive notion of God’s condescension.

My comment about the remnants of Christian theology are with regard to how we today read and understand this passage. Again, I find it common for to relate the meaning of the condescension as merely about Jesus — who was pre-birth God — condescending to be born. In the background, I think there’s usually a traditional Christian metaphysics about the wholly other nature of God, and consequently the awe-inspiring mystery of the incarnation. I don’t think that move’s open to us as Mormons (nor would I personally want it to be). My point is simply that I think this passage demands a different and more expansive notion of the condescension.

Of course the Book of Mormon later discusses Babel with the Jaredites. It’s worth noting that in most models of the translation of the text, Ether is translated before 1 Nephi. If one buys, as I do, that the translation is making use of Joseph Smith’s experiences, then that might be significant. (Admittedly the visions were almost certainly mentioned in the lost 116 pages too)

The other reading of Babel, one that’s become more popular of late in scholarship (from my admittedly outsider view) is that the story is about cultural difference and the spread of people after the flood. In this interpretation Genesis 10 and 11 are different accounts of the same events. I’d add this can be reconciled with Ether 1:33-34 by noting the strong paralells between the Jaredites & their language with the Nephites and getting the brass plates. i.e. the typical reading due to the traditional literalist reading of Gen 9 is that God magically changed everyones language. In this case it’s more about losing the scriptures and the traditions of God. That is Ether 1 and 1 Nephi 1-6 share a common type setting. Also note that in this case the tower of Babel and its destruction parallels the Egyptian favoring King of Judah and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by Babylon. (It’s probably no accident that this is an inversion of the tower of Babel traditionally tied to Babylon or at least Assyria)

In this case the people in the tall and spacious building literally are the people associated with Zedikiah and his group making alliances with Egypt and persecuting Jeremiah and the other prophets.

I like the way you put it of succoring union, although it seems more than that. The way in which Christ and the Father are one and the way we are is one of the most underdeveloped parts of our theology. Some take it very nominalistically as just having common goals and beliefs. Others take it more mystically in an almost platonic way. I do think, despite my qualms with Orson Pratt, that his idea of the spirit as enabling something more to happen is probably the best model.

The great and spacious building is such a great imagery. (As an aside I kind of laughed when FPR recently suggested Joseph got the idea from the Reynolds Arcade) I confess I’ve always read it as a kind of allusion to the Tower of Babel or even a false temple. I’ve mentioned at various times the many parallels and the Babel one in particular seems pronounced.

My suspicion, perhaps wrong, is that some of these images likely were common in the pre-exilic period. (I don’t have a lot of evidence to support this – but it’s just a guess that the Babel narrative in Genesis likely is a remnant of earlier periods)

Whether or not you equate Jesus and Jehovah (we do today, but Brigham Young perhaps most famously, did not), Nephi (and others in the Book of Mormon, perhaps most explicitly Abinadi) is pretty clear that Jesus himself is God. Identifying him as Jehovah is consistent with that, but it is not necessary, because regardless of whether Jesus is Jehovah, he is God in and of himself in the Book of Mormon. So in context it seems to me that Jesus’ incarnation and death are the condescension of God. (There’s the other, more speculative strain that says the condescension of God is the that of the Father himself coming down to physically inseminate Mary, but that doesn’t seem to me to be what Nephi is talking about.) That’s what Nephi sees when the angel says “look”: Jesus’ birth, ministry, death, and resurrection. But the vision doesn’t stop there; it keeps going, and there isn’t a clear division between “behold the condescension of God” and all the scattering and gathering stuff that comes after, so maybe that suggests that while the condescension of God begins with Jesus’ incarnation, it doesn’t end with his death, but continues through his resurrection and with his continued involvement in the scattering and gathering of his followers up through the end of the world. So, while it may be broader than that, I agree with you that the condescension of God is, in this vision, primarily about Jesus being “willing to come down incarnate among mortals.”

But it doesn’t seem to me that the condescension of God is primarily about the “rejection and cruelty” of the world. Certainly suffering is part of Jesus’ mortal life, but in Nephi’s vision, that suffering appears to be an incident of Jesus’ mortality, or maybe a subsidiary purpose of it, rather than the sole purpose of Jesus’ mortality. The purpose seems to be simply for Jesus to be present with us in our fallen mortality with all its sorrows and all its joys as well, and to offer relief from those sorrows. Put differently, the condescension of God, as I see it, is not about Jesus being rejected and abused, but is rather, about God becoming one with us in fallen mortality so that we may become one with God in redeemed immortality. Maybe this is not too different from your point about condescension as succoring union.

I guess my point is that I agree with you about the point of condescension being succoring union, but I don’t see that as at all different from the point that the condescension of God is Jesus’ incarnation and death.

I’m not sure I understand the comment about this being a remnant of traditional Christian theology. Do you mean that Joseph Smith inserted some traditional Christology while he was translating, or that Mormon or some other compiler had some version of traditional Christology that he inserted into Nephi’s record when he compiled it, or that it isn’t in the Book of Mormon at all, and is just something that we are bringing to the text because of our previous exposure to traditional Christology? Personally, I think that concept of the condescension of God is pretty faithful to the text, and I accept Joseph Smith’s claims that the text was ancient, so if the Book of Mormon presents a theology that appears in places to resemble traditional Christologies, to me that’s just a reflection of its primary purpose to serve as an additional witness to Jesus’ divinity, rather than a remnant of some obsolete theology. But maybe I’m misunderstanding.

The comments about seeing the building in a positive light (the wisdom of the world, though it will fail in the end, and cannot lead to salvation, is not all bad) are very interesting and worthwhile. Thanks for that.