Faith, Hope, and Charity

The corpus’s fullest treatment of faith, hope, and charity is a sermon of Mormon that his son Moroni transcribes near the record’s end (Moroni 7). Moroni frames it, adds his own restatement of the triad (Moroni 10:20–23), and had already recorded the one-line abstract of the whole in the Lord’s own words to him — “faith, hope and charity bringeth unto me—the fountain of all righteousness” (Ether 12:28). This page maps Mormon’s sermon as a single arc, registers the two textual connections that ground it (the Ether-12:28 abstract and the father-and-son miracles-and-unbelief argument), sets the gifts of the Spirit (Moroni 10:8–17) as a section, and — the build’s headline — registers Mormon’s charity-hymn and Moroni’s gift-list against their close New-Testament counterparts (1 Corinthians 13 and 12), now hosted books of this wiki’s corpus, as class-(c) connections: the parallel is extensive, the variants are reported as facts, the text gives no account of it, and the origin of the parallel is left outside this wiki’s scope.

Where this lands

Moroni 7 is the corpus’s fuller anchor for this triad, and Ether 12 with Moroni 7 form the natural pair. Ether 12 gives faith its tightest corpus definition — Moroni, in his own editorial voice, glossing Alma: “faith is things which are hoped for and not seen” (Ether 12:6), the record’s restatement of Alma’s Onidah teaching (registered as , Ether 12:6 ↔ Alma 32:21, hosted on Alma the Younger and cross-linked here, not re-registered). This page is the fuller anchor: not the definition of faith alone but the whole triad, expounded.

A word on voice, because the sermon’s authorship is layered and the page keeps it straight throughout. Moroni 7:1 is Moroni introducing — “I, Moroni, write a few of the words of my father Mormon, which he spake concerning faith, hope, and charity”. From 7:2 — “And now I, Mormon, speak unto you, my beloved brethren” — the voice is Mormon’s, and stays his to the end of the chapter. The sermon is therefore Mormon’s, preserved by Moroni. Moroni’s own contribution to the triad is his framing of the sermon, his restatement at Moroni 10:20–23, and the Ether 12:28 abstract he had already set down.

Mormon’s sermon (Moroni 7), as one arc

Works and real intent (7:5–11). Mormon opens on discernment by fruits: “by their works ye shall know them; for if their works be good, then they are good also” (7:5). The measure is not the outward act but the intent behind it — a gift given grudgingly “is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift” (7:8), for “except he shall do it with real intent it profiteth him nothing” (7:6). The image that seals the section is the fountain: “a bitter fountain cannot bring forth good water; neither can a good fountain bring forth bitter water” (7:11).

The way to judge — the light of Christ (7:12–19). Mormon then supplies a rule for telling good from evil: “all things which are good cometh of God; and that which is evil cometh of the devil” (7:12); the way to judge is “as plain… as the daylight is from the dark night” (7:15), because “the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil” (7:16) — a light he names directly, “which light is the light of Christ” (7:18). The light-of-Christ connection this passage grounds is registered on Opposition and Agency and is summarized, not duplicated, here. The section closes by turning judgment into an imperative: “if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ” (7:19).

Laying hold on every good thing, by faith (7:20–32). The pivot into faith proper is a question — “how is it possible that ye can lay hold upon every good thing?” (7:20) — answered: “I come to that faith, of which I said I would speak; and I will tell you the way whereby ye may lay hold on every good thing” (7:21). The way runs through ministering angels and the word: God “sent angels to minister unto the children of men, to make manifest concerning the coming of Christ” (7:22); “by the ministering of angels, and by every word which proceeded forth out of the mouth of God, men began to exercise faith in Christ” (7:25). By that faith “they become the sons of God” (7:26), and the same verse carries the ask-in-faith promise: “Whatsoever thing ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is good, in faith believing that ye shall receive, behold, it shall be done unto you” (7:26).

Miracles have not ceased (7:27–39). This strand — that miracles and angels persist, and cease only through unbelief — is the subject of the father-and-son connection below.

Hope (7:40–43). Mormon makes hope faith’s necessary companion: “How is it that ye can attain unto faith, save ye shall have hope?” (7:40). Its object is fixed — “ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal” (7:41) — and the dependence is stated both ways: “if a man have faith he must needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope” (7:42).

Charity (7:44–48). The hinge is 7:44: faith and hope are “vain” without meekness, “and if a man be meek and lowly in heart… he must needs have charity; for if he have not charity he is nothing”. Then the charity-hymn (7:45–47) — treated in full below beside its Corinthian counterpart — and the closing prayer (7:48).

The one-line abstract: Ether 12:28

[Textual] — the abstract and its exposition. The compact form of Mormon’s whole sermon is a single sentence the Lord spoke to Moroni, and Moroni set it down in the Jaredite record:

• Moroni 7:1: “…the words of my father Mormon, which he spake concerning faith, hope, and charity…”
• Ether 12:28: “I will show unto them that faith, hope and charity bringeth unto me—the fountain of all righteousness.”

Both quotes are verbatim from their own verse. The connection is registered as paraphrase, not on the rarity of the triad-phrase: the contiguous list “faith, hope[,] and charity” is a recurring formula, standing in that exact form at three corpus verses — Alma 7:24 (“faith, hope, and charity”), Ether 12:28 (“faith, hope and charity”), Moroni 7:1 (“faith, hope, and charity”) — and at two more in variant form: 1 Corinthians 13:13 (“faith, hope, charity”), the conjunction dropped, in a hosted corpus book since the New-Testament freeze, and Moroni 8:14 (“neither faith, hope, nor charity”), the negated form — five verses in all that list the triad contiguously. (Counted across the whole corpus — every work frozen in raw/, distinct verses, punctuation-tolerant. Three further corpus verses carry all three words without listing them contiguously: Moroni 7:44, Moroni 10:20, Moroni 10:21.) What the record carries is the relationship: Ether 12:28 is the one-line abstract (“the fountain of all righteousness”), and Moroni 7 is its full exposition. Moroni 7:1 is the anchor verse because it is the only verse of the sermon that lists the whole triad as a set and frames the chapter as its treatment; 7:44 states the triad relationally (faith → hope → charity as a chain) but never as a coined list.

Moroni restates the same chain in his own voice at the record’s close: “there must be faith; and if there must be faith there must also be hope; and if there must be hope there must also be charity” (Moroni 10:20), “and except ye have charity ye can in nowise be saved in the kingdom of God” (Moroni 10:21). Three witnesses to one order, then: the abstract (Ether 12:28), the father’s exposition (Moroni 7), the son’s restatement (Moroni 10:20–21).

Faith defined, hope anchored — beside Hebrews

The corpus’s tightest definitions of faith stand beside the opening of Hebrews 11, and its hope-figure beside Hebrews 6. The wiki already links the two Book-of-Mormon definitions to each other (, Ether 12:6 ↔ Alma 32:21); here it adds their King James counterparts. Both texts are frozen corpus books; the correspondence is reported as textual fact.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. (, ) Faith as things hoped for and not seen:

• Ether 12:6: “…faith is things which are hoped for and not seen…”
• Alma 32:21: “…if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.”
• Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

Each quote is verbatim in its own verse; the shared kernel is faith + hoped-for + not-seen, restated in each writer’s words rather than quoted across — no contiguous run of four or more words spans both ends of either pair (verified by a search of the corpus).

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () Hope figured as an anchor of the soul:

• Ether 12:4: “…which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast…”
• Hebrews 6:19: “Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil…”

In the whole corpus “anchor” carries this soul-and-hope sense only at these two verses; its other occurrences are literal ships (Mormon 5:18; Acts 27:29, 27:30, 27:40; verified by a search of the corpus). The KJV spells “stedfast,” Ether “steadfast” — reported as a fact.

[Textual] — near-verbatim. () A title of Christ shared almost word for word:

• Moroni 6:4: “…relying alone upon the merits of Christ, who was the author and the finisher of their faith.”
• Hebrews 12:2: “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith…”

The two differ only by an inserted “the” and by “their” against “our” — reported as facts. The title stands at exactly these two verses in the whole corpus (verified by a search of the corpus, near-forms included).

Miracles have not ceased — the father and the son

Thirteen of the chapter’s forty-eight verses (7:27–39) argue that miracles and the ministering of angels have not ended, and can end only one way — through unbelief. This is a section of the sermon, not the chapter’s central argument: the chapter’s own subject is the triad it names at 7:1, and its hinge is 7:44. Mormon states the argument here:

[Textual] — the same argument, father and son.

• Moroni 7:37 (Mormon): “…it is by faith that miracles are wrought; and it is by faith that angels appear and minister unto men; wherefore, if these things have ceased wo be unto the children of men, for it is because of unbelief”.
• Mormon 9:20 (Moroni): “And the reason why he ceaseth to do miracles among the children of men is because that they dwindle in unbelief, and depart from the right way, and know not the God in whom they should trust.”

The pairing is cross-authorial: Moroni 7:37 is the father’s word (Mormon’s sermon), and Mormon 9:20 is the son’s — the book of Mormon’s closing chapters are Moroni’s, who wrote “I, Moroni, do finish the record of my father, Mormon” (Mormon 8:1). Both name unbelief as a cause of miracles ceasing, but not in the same shape: Moroni 7:37 gives it as the single reason (“it is because of unbelief”), while Mormon 9:20 gives three coordinated failings — “they dwindle in unbelief, and depart from the right way, and know not the God in whom they should trust” — without subordinating the second and third to the first. The record is typed paraphrase: the two verses share the doctrine and the keyword “unbelief,” but no distinctive contiguous phrase spans both (“the children of men” is common corpus diction, not a coined link).

The two men also share the rhetorical move of asking whether miracles have ceased and answering no:

• Moroni 7:29 (Mormon): “…have miracles ceased? Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither have angels ceased to minister unto the children of men.”
• Mormon 9:15 (Moroni): ”…Has the end come yet? Behold I say unto you, Nay; and God has not ceased to be a God of miracles.”

This second pair is disclosed as evidence of the shared argument, not registered separately (the load-bearing connection is the miracles-and-unbelief statement above). The same doctrine returns once more in Moroni’s own voice at Moroni 10:19, 24 — the gifts “never will be done away… only according to the unbelief of the children of men” — and that leg is hosted on An Unchangeable God; see the gifts section below.

Charity: the pure love of Christ, beside 1 Corinthians 13

Mormon’s charity-hymn (Moroni 7:45–47) tracks the KJV of 1 Corinthians 13:4–8 closely — closely enough that the two belong side by side. With the New Testament now frozen into this wiki’s corpus, 1 Corinthians is an ordinary hosted source text, and the correspondences below are registered connections (no longer variant-comparison comparanda). This is the editorial position paper’s class (c) — an unexplained parallel: the corpus supplies no account connecting Mormon’s sermon to Paul. Moroni 7’s own framing bears this out — Moroni introduces “the words of my father Mormon” (7:1), Mormon speaks from 7:2 (“And now I, Mormon, speak unto you”), and neither Paul nor Corinth is named anywhere in the chapter. So the wiki states it plainly: the parallel is extensive, the variants are these, and the text gives no account of it; the origin of the parallel is outside this wiki’s scope.

Standing disclosure. This page reports verbal correspondence with the King James text as textual fact, including where the correspondence follows the KJV’s English translation. What that correspondence implies about the origin of the Book of Mormon text — in any direction — is an external question outside this wiki’s scope.

The registered connections:

[Textual] — near-verbatim quotation. The litany’s shared clauses run in the same order and, where they overlap, word for word. The longest contiguous verbatim run is twenty-one words: it begins at “rejoiceth not in iniquity” and runs to the end of the litany, Moroni 7:45 against 1 Corinthians 13:6–7, the two differing only in punctuation and sentence-initial capitals (the run stops just short of its start at Mormon’s inserted “and” before “rejoiceth”). The pair registered here is the closing quartet — twelve words, both ends inside a single verse:

• Moroni 7:45 (Mormon): “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things”
• 1 Corinthians 13:7: “Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things”

[Textual] — verbatim phrase.

• Moroni 7:46 (Mormon): “charity never faileth”
• 1 Corinthians 13:8: “Charity never faileth”

The differences, stated as textual facts (each derived from the two texts themselves):

• Two clauses stand in the Corinthian litany with no counterpart in Mormon’s: “charity vaunteth not itself” (1 Corinthians 13:4) and “Doth not behave itself unseemly” (1 Corinthians 13:5).
• One clause stands in Mormon’s with no counterpart in the Corinthian litany: the definition and its promise — “charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him” (Moroni 7:47). The phrase “pure love of Christ” occurs at exactly one corpus verse (Moroni 7:47; corpus-wide search), and the phrase “charity never faileth” now at exactly two — Moroni 7:46 and 1 Corinthians 13:8, the latter a hosted corpus book since the New-Testament freeze (no longer reference).
• Where the two texts describe what fails, they part in scope: 1 Corinthians 13:8 enumerates — “prophecies… tongues… knowledge”; Moroni 7:46 compresses to “all things must fail”.
• Both crown charity the greatest: Moroni 7:46, “which is the greatest of all”; 1 Corinthians 13:13, “the greatest of these is charity.” (Reported as a fact; the two share no distinctive contiguous run here, so it is carried in-note under , not separately registered.)

Out of scope. How this close parallel between Mormon’s sermon and a Pauline epistle came to exist — the origin question — is an external, real-world question outside this wiki’s scope, per the standing disclosure above. The wiki shows the reader the two texts and reports the differences as facts about wording; no reading of what those differences mean is asserted.

”That ye may become the sons of God” (7:48)

Mormon closes with a prayer whose object is the last-day transformation of the faithful: “that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is… that we may be purified even as he is pure” (Moroni 7:48). The risen Lord’s commandment states a last-day end in different vocabulary — “that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me at the last day” (3 Nephi 27:20). The two share a purity-vocabulary family (purified / pure; sanctified / spotless) and a last-day frame — though on Mormon’s side the words “at the last day” stand at 7:47, not in the prayer of 7:48, while 3 Nephi 27:20 carries them outright. But no distinctive phrase spans both: the only contiguous run of four or more words the two verses share is “that ye may be” (Moroni 7:48; 3 Nephi 27:20), common scriptural diction. The wiki reports each verse’s wording as a fact and registers no connection between them (a thematic parallel below the textual bar). The wording of 7:48 — “we shall be like him… we shall see him as he is… purified even as he is pure” — is also familiar from the KJV of 1 John 3:2–3. With the New Testament now frozen into the corpus, 1 John is a hosted book; this page nonetheless registers no Moroni 7:48 ↔ 1 John connection — that juxtaposition is left to the New-Testament lane and is named here only as a fact about diction, neither quoted at length nor connected on this page.

The gifts of the Spirit (Moroni 10:8–17), beside 1 Corinthians 12

Near the record’s close Moroni enumerates the spiritual gifts, opening with an exhortation: “deny not the gifts of God, for they are many; and they come from the same God… it is the same God who worketh all in all” (Moroni 10:8). The enumeration runs nine gifts:

1. “teach the word of wisdom” (10:9)
2. “teach the word of knowledge by the same Spirit” (10:10)
3. “exceedingly great faith” (10:11)
4. “the gifts of healing by the same Spirit” (10:11)
5. “work mighty miracles” (10:12)
6. “prophesy concerning all things” (10:13)
7. “the beholding of angels and ministering spirits” (10:14)
8. “all kinds of tongues” (10:15)
9. “the interpretation of languages and of divers kinds of tongues” (10:16)

He closes: “all these gifts come by the Spirit of Christ; and they come unto every man severally, according as he will” (10:17).

This list, too, tracks a Pauline passage — 1 Corinthians 12:6–11 — closely, and it is registered here under the same class (c): 1 Corinthians is a hosted corpus book, the enumeration is Moroni’s own words (Moroni 10:1, “Now I, Moroni, write somewhat as seemeth me good”), and the corpus gives no account connecting it to Paul — the origin of the parallel is out of scope. (The standing disclosure above governs this section as well.)

The registered connections:

[Textual] — shared phrasing. The catalogue opens on a near-verbatim frame:

• Moroni 10:8 (Moroni): “it is the same God who worketh all in all”
• 1 Corinthians 12:6: “it is the same God which worketh all in all”

[Textual] — verbatim phrase; the gifts catalogue. The single whole-clause verbatim match (each gift-clause counted entire) anchors the nine-gift list:

• Moroni 10:11 (Moroni): “the gifts of healing by the same Spirit”
• 1 Corinthians 12:9: “the gifts of healing by the same Spirit”

[Textual] — shared phrasing. The catalogue closes near-verbatim:

• Moroni 10:17 (Moroni): “they come unto every man severally, according as he will”
• 1 Corinthians 12:11: “dividing to every man severally as he will”

The differences, as textual facts:

• The frame is near-verbatim. “the same God who worketh all in all” (Moroni 10:8) against “the same God which worketh all in all” (1 Corinthians 12:6) — the two differ by the relative pronoun (who / which).
• The close is near-verbatim. “every man severally, according as he will” (Moroni 10:17) against “every man severally as he will” (1 Corinthians 12:11) — Moroni adds “come unto… according.”
• Both lists number nine gifts, in near-identical order. The one gift that differs in kind is the seventh: Moroni has “the beholding of angels and ministering spirits” (10:14) where Paul has “discerning of spirits” (1 Corinthians 12:10).
• The gifts are attributed to Christ in Moroni’s close — “the Spirit of Christ” (10:17) — where Paul attributes them to “that one and the selfsame Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:11).

Out of scope. As with the charity-hymn, how Moroni’s gift-list and a Pauline passage came to run so close is an external question the wiki does not take up. It shows the two texts and reports their differences as facts.

Moroni frames the gifts with the same doctrine his father gave the miracles: they “never will be done away… only according to the unbelief of the children of men” (Moroni 10:19), and “if the day cometh that the power and gifts of God shall be done away among you, it shall be because of unbelief” (Moroni 10:24). That gifts-and-unbelief connection — paired with Mormon 9:20, Moroni’s own earlier statement of the cease-by-unbelief cause (the denunciation of those who say the gifts “are done away” begins at Mormon 9:7–8) — is registered on An Unchangeable God and cross-linked here, not duplicated.

Key references / appearances

Related

Doctrines / themes: The Doctrine of Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, the Holy Ghost) · The Atonement (hope “through the atonement of Christ”) · An Unchangeable God (the gifts-and-unbelief doctrine; “the same yesterday, today, and forever”) · Opposition and Agency (the light of Christ; judging good from evil)

People: Mormon (the sermon’s author) · Moroni (its compiler, and author of Mormon 9 and Moroni 10) · Alma the Younger (Alma 32’s faith-seed, glossed at Ether 12:6) · Ether / The Brother of Jared (the faith-chapter, Ether 12, that frames Ether 12:28)

Connections (eleven records hosted here): · · · · · · · · · · · cross-linked:

Pages: Index · Connections

Sources

The Book of Mormon — every chapter this page quotes: Alma 7; Alma 32; 3 Nephi 27; Mormon 8; Mormon 9; Ether 12; Moroni 6; Moroni 7; Moroni 8; Moroni 10. All Book-of-Mormon quotes are drawn verbatim from the frozen source text. The New Testament, frozen into the corpus on the same terms (KJV, public domain) and a legal connection endpoint: 1 Corinthians 13 and 1 Corinthians 12, quoted for the charity-hymn and gifts-catalogue records, and Hebrews 11, Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 12, quoted at 11:1, 6:19 and 12:2 in the three heb-w1 blocks above; those quotes are likewise drawn verbatim from the frozen New-Testament corpus text. Two references are cited by reference only and not quoted here: Mormon 5:18 and Acts 27:29, 27:30, 27:40, the literal-ship occurrences of “anchor”. The 1 John 3:2–3 diction named at Moroni 7:48 is a hosted corpus book too, but is cited by name only here, is not quoted at length, and is not connected on this page (left to the New-Testament lane).

Every Book-of-Mormon quote on this page is taken verbatim from the source text (Alma 7, Alma 32, 3 Nephi 27, Mormon 8, Mormon 9, Ether 12, Moroni 6, Moroni 7, Moroni 8, Moroni 10); every New-Testament quote verbatim from the frozen New-Testament corpus (1 Corinthians 13 and 12; Hebrews 11, 6 and 12). The register hosts eleven connections on this page — two prior (, Moroni 7:1 ↔ Ether 12:28; , Moroni 7:37 ↔ Mormon 9:20), five class-(c) records to 1 Corinthians ( through ), and four to Hebrews (, Ether 12:6 ↔ Hebrews 11:1; , Alma 32:21 ↔ Hebrews 11:1; , Ether 12:4 ↔ Hebrews 6:19; , Moroni 6:4 ↔ Hebrews 12:2) — all textual, all quoting each end verbatim, each shown in a [Textual] block above. The five 1 Corinthians records are class (c) under the editorial position paper: the parallel is extensive, its variant differences are reported as facts, no reading of those differences is asserted, and the origin of the parallel is left, by rule, outside this wiki’s scope. The Moroni 7:48 ↔ 3 Nephi 27:20 last-day-purity juxtaposition, and the Moroni 7:48 ↔ 1 John 3:2–3 diction, are both reported as parallels below the textual bar and deliberately left unregistered on this page.