We still have the acceptance or rejectance, but perhaps the “space for repentence” that Alma talks of is longer than it appears.

It seems that the usual explanation for your neighbors’ salvation is that they will suffer, eventually accept Christ’s atonement, and be received into a kingdom of glory. How is this different from the vain and foolish doctrine that we’ll be saved after being beaten with a few stripes?

The common way those two approaches is dealt with is to simply take Alma’s comment that that same spirit that possesses your body now will possess your body then. Spirit in this context isn’t a physical spirit, but rather your inclination. Which inclination rules you? The good inclination or the bad inclination. When you read the Book of Mormon in terms of that notion then the doctrine of two ways makes more sense. What do you like? If you think you can love sin and die and everything will be OK you are mistaken. You still love what you love. That doesn’t change.

Now that I think about it, this is just putting a nice doctrinal veneer on the fact that I WAS a screw-up in the mission field. Still, that doesn’t mean the doctrine isn’t on point. If, in the end, Christ will save all who reach out to Him, and if, in the end, every kneel shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ, then in the end (again, insofar as souls are concerned) missionary work–indeed, practically all temporal work, for that matter–has little or nothing to do with the actual mechanics of salvation.

I do think though that the important part of missionary work ends up being for us as much as others. (Although the “elect” certainly appreciate finding out about it sooner rather than later — just that this delay doesn’t amount to much from an eternal point of view) Mosiah 15 as I recall talks of saviors on mount zion. A lot of what we do in serving others has a more profound impact on us ultimately.

Regarding the why of dualism, I really think it goes back to the doctrine of two inclinations found in fairly early Judaism. The parallels with the Book of Mormon use are quite profound. It is just that I think we have too much baggage with the term spirit and assume it means something more than it does in all cases.

People who are in the lesser degrees of glory *feel* damned due to their disappointment. The damnation is an eternity mulling “what could have been.” They’re not in hell, as they inhabit a world of glory superior to mortal experience, yet they suffer forever because they cannot have eternal lives; their spiritual progression has stopped; they are damned.

If everyone who’s not part of the top tier of the celestial kingdom is damned, the dualism taught in scripture makes perfect sense even though most of the damned are received in glory.

The rub with this solution is trying to figure out how a “large heaven” can have so many damned people in it!

“As a convert, though anything but a recent one, it seems to me that even without damnation hanging over our heads, having the Gospel earlier rather than later makes a difference, so missionary work is important.”

You’re right, of course; as I noted in my post above, I recognized during my mission, and still acknowledge today, that missionary work and other similar labors could make a difference “in a temporal sense.” And the temporal world surely matters (I may have an Augustinian-Lutheran streak in me, but I’m not down on ALL works). Being a Christian, living a Christian life, and associating with (contributing to and being benefitted by) a Christian community, is surely better than otherwise, and to that degree I agree that what missionaries are doing does matter. But that understanding was secondary during my mission, both in my own mind and in, so far as I could tell, all official mission materials or policies. And despite all I’ve heard and seen about the new emphasis on service work and member relationships in the missionary program today, I suspect it continues to be secondary to a very straightforward “save-the-wheat-before-the-field-is-burned”-salvation emphasis in the lives of missionaries. Maybe I’m wrong, but I doubt it. As I see it, the church’s missionary program (at least the part of it made up by highly regimented, hierarchically structured, frequently transferred young men) cannot help but be about saving souls first, and serving people second. And since I simply don’t see the former purpose as being in our hands, doctrinally speaking, the justification for the program is complicated, to say the least, in my eyes.

This is one of the reasons I’m happy we only have girls; it means that when the option of their serving a mission arises, I’ll have somewhat more flexibility in explaining my point of view and making my case (which is that they should serve, despite all my reservations). With boys, the confusion and doubt in my assessment of the missionary program would be, I think, much more obvious and problematic.