Ethics is a discipline concerned with what is good and right. Broadly speaking, it investigates such questions as: How ought one to be? What ought one to do? What constitutes human flourishing? And how does one determine such things? Book of Mormon scholarship that is governed by these and similar questions is still in its infancy. To be clear, there is an abundance of literature that views the Book of Mormon as a tool for governing ethical life. In fact, this is arguably the primary lens through which Latter-day Saints read the text—as a “handbook of instructions as we travel the pathway from bad to good to better and to have our hearts changed.”1 But while such devotional or pastoral literature has its own method, audience, and utility,2 when I use the word “scholarship” in this essay, I am referring to literature that typically, although not always, presupposes...
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