“Every Man Prospered According to His Genius”

Brant Gardner

Korihor’s doctrine appears to be a form of social Darwinism. For Korihor, sin itself is not possible because there is no valid religious rule against which we might be judged. We are not responsible to a God but only to ourselves.

By calling human beings “the creature,” Korihor uses a rather animalistic term, thus further removing his listeners from a creator God. “Management of the creature” means that each individual is responsible only to himself, not to other people (unless they are more powerful and able to enforce their will), and certainly not to the fiction of a God.

He reiterates this idea in several ways. By asserting that “every man prospered according to his genius,” Korihor asserts that man becomes what he makes of himself. His destiny is not tied to the divine but solely to his own efforts. By asserting that “every man conquered according to his strength,” Korihor is preaching a form of “might makes right” and announcing a social survival of the fittest.

His next statement, that “whatsoever a man did was no crime,” could be read two ways. If Korihor is announcing that man’s actions may never be defined as a crime, then he declares himself a social anarchist. If he is referring to crime as a synonym for sin, then he is simply continuing his attack on the foolishness of the fathers. I see this interpretation as the more probable of the two, more consistent with Korihor’s discourse. Korihor is not attacking the civil law, but rather Nephite religious law. If there is no such thing as a sin, then no action a man does can make him guilty of sin. Hence, he has no need of a Redeemer.

Second Witness: Analytical & Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 4

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