KnoWhy #140 - Why Did Alma Use Creation Imagery in His Sermon on Faith? (Alma 32:40)

When Alma taught the gospel to the Zoramites, he included a masterful discourse on the nature and nurture of faith, as recorded in Alma 32. According to scholar David Bokovoy, this passage “contains a variety of advanced literary allusions to the Genesis creation accounts.” For instance, “Alma’s statement that a testimony is ‘light’ and that ‘whatsoever is light, is good’” is a clear allusion to the Genesis account, which records that “God saw the light, that it was good.” The multiple instances where Alma 32 draws from creation imagery “conceptually associates Alma’s discourse on faith with the original purpose of human creation. In essence, Alma is saying we were created to cultivate faith.”