Interestingly, Alma opens his discussion of faith and knowledge by mentioning again what has become a common theme in the Book of Mormon: that people will be held responsible for the level of knowledge they have received or acquired regarding spiritual things. In other words, the Lord doesn’t simply award people with miracles because those people would then be held accountable for a level of spiritual knowledge they have not genuinely attained through exercising faith. In mercy and kindness, God doesn’t burden human beings with more spiritual knowledge than they can bear, preferring to lead them gently and slowly through the stages of faith to a sure knowledge. (See also verse 22.) Brigham Young University professor Rodney Turner says that God has “ordained that faith must precede certitude so that, in the very process of exercising faith, the individual develops the spiritual maturity needed to possess divine knowledge in righteousness.”