Adam S. Miller

Adam S. Miller is the Mormon philosopher-theologian who wrote Future Mormon: Essays for a Different Christianity, one of the books in Kyle’s read library. In Kyle’s reading, Miller’s signature move is grace-first: he inverts Bruce R. McConkie’s “three pillars” (creation, fall, atonement) to argue that creation is grace, the fall is a response to grace, and sin “at root is the rejection or suppression of what God has already freely given” — “we don’t have to work our way into grace; we have to stop working so hard to pretend we aren’t already in it.” His chief sparring partner there is Terryl Givens’s The God Who Weeps.

Miller is also visible as a conduit to other works in Kyle’s anti-library — books Miller cites that Kyle flagged #books-to-read while reading Future Mormon. These include The Book of Mormon — The Earliest Text (Royal Skousen’s critical edition, referenced in Miller’s Book of Mormon essays), The Time That Remains (Giorgio Agamben, whose account of “messianic time” Miller leans on to read repentance and grace), and Way Below the Angels (Craig Harline, the “just be yourself”/emptiness-before-God passage). None of these are Miller’s own writing — they are sources he draws on — so Future Mormon is currently the one Miller-authored work in the corpus.

Context: Adam S. Miller is an American philosophy professor (Collin College) and a prominent voice in contemporary Latter-day Saint thought, known for works like Letters to a Young Mormon and Future Mormon and for bringing continental philosophy to bear on LDS theology.

Where this appears

• Future Mormon — author; his grace-first reading of Mormon theology is the book’s organizing thesis.
• The Book of Mormon — The Earliest Text — Skousen edition Miller cites in his Book of Mormon essays (in Kyle’s anti-library).
• The Time That Remains — Agamben’s messianic time, which Miller uses to read repentance and grace.
• Way Below the Angels — Harline memoir Miller quotes for the “just be yourself” passage.