Weak Things - D&C 1:17-20

 

"I the Lord, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, called upon my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., and spake unto him from heaven, and gave him commandments; and also gave commandments to others, that they should proclaim these things unto the world; and all this that it might be fulfilled, which was written by the prophets—the weak things of the world shall come forth and break down the mighty and strong ones, that man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh—but that every man might speak in the name of God the Lord, even the Savior of the world."

When Paul, prize student of eminent Pharisaic doctor Gamaliel, Roman citizen, scholar of Greek philosophy, and Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ penned the embedded quote on the "weak things" of the world to the Corinthians who were struggling with the treatment of their belief in Christ and His resurrection, he was including himself as one of the weak. As prominent as his education and status may otherwise have been, the prevailing Greek philosophy devaluing the body, and the prevailing Jewish philosophy denying that the Messiah would fulfill the Law of Moses meant that the Gospel Paul taught had an uphill battle for reception. And yet, the humble, the weak things of the world, all had access to the truth, to covenant belonging, and to the Savior's strength.

Moroni also, the last Book of Mormon prophet, was a high commander in his nation's armies, and son of its most prominent general. And yet, as the task of relaying the message of the entire destruction of two separate civilizations fell to him to inscribe in a condensed and specialized script that must have felt alien to him by comparison with his speaking skill, he too looked to the Lord for strength, recognizing that his conditions made him weak.

Taking weakness to the Lord is the common theme here: yoking with Him taps into light and power in accessible by any other means.

And this is the pattern Joseph Smith applied. With his education arrested at about the 2nd grade, his family impoverished and itinerant, and yet his desires to do the right thing pure, he experimented upon the words of James 1:5 to "ask of God" for the wisdom he lacked of which of his local and competing churches he should join. And the answer he received broke the great dam of apostasy the world had been stewing in for centuries, and began the process of restoring prophets, authorities, and revelations to the earth.

What strikes me in this passage is partly the tone of the lead-up to it. The previous 16 verses are almost entirely in a "fire and brimstone" register, warning the inhabitants of the earth of dire consequences for sin and for failure to hearken to the Lord's voice as given through His chosen vessels.

And then it's how the tone morphs into encouragement, to impetus to seek power with Him. I think the turning point is the phrase "that every man might speak in the name of God."

There is a division because of the differing attitudes and choices of our brothers and sisters in the world--those who think believers are weak, and those who have the "weakness" to accept the callings of the Lord. But the club is utterly inclusive. Everyone can receive the authority to speak in the name of God, have a personal connection with Him, be a conduit for His message of Good News to all people. He wants us all as His instruments, and encourages all to become His mouthpieces.

Prophets are special, but not because they have special access. We can all receive His authority and avoid what calamities He judges fit for the world that rejects truth.

Hearing Heaven's Voice - D&C 1:1-4

 

"Hearken, O ye people of my church, saith the voice of him who dwells on high...yea, verily I say: Hearken ye people from afar...listen together. For verily the voice of the Lord is unto all men...by the mouths of my disciples, whom I have chosen in these last days."

As this is section 1, I haven't done a full analysis of Joseph Smith's various tones and styles or whether there's a through-line boiling them down into a distinct "voice," but I've read these enough to know that a "Messianic" voice is not uncommon. Joseph Smith frequently narrates the revelations he receives as if in character, as if speaking from the position of the Lord or others. Like he's literally a spokesperson whose words are dictated and he is merely animating them. He's not the only one to do this. Many prophets, the most famous aside from the utterly poetic Psalmist being Isaiah, spoke and wrote with a Messianic voice. It may seem a little blasphemous to speak for God in this way if it weren't a longstanding tradition that prophets do so.

What strikes me from this section is the choice of first word, hearken. This word denotes audible communication which, unless you imagine yourself in the room or as the scribe, the message you're receiving is manifestly not--you're reading it through text. Right from the start, we're being prepared to think symbolically, to take visual symbols and use our minds to convert them to a form with more immediate impact, and more fleeting existence in time. This is not meant to be a mere record to us, but a living, motivating, urgent message to take action.

Furthermore, this voice isn't just ringing in our ears symbolically, it's coming to us by proxy. The voice of the Lord is only entering our minds and hearts by representation. We are responsible for our reception of its content as if it were direct, no matter how we feel about its vehicles. In fact, this should be a joyful demonstration because it establishes a principle: if God's voice is heard through prophets, why not us? We all, as mortals, may receive authorization to speak on behalf of the Most High in our sphere of influence, and we should all seek for this privilege.

But it also means that we can't pridefully wait for God Himself to part the veil and remain unwilling to act on His truths until we have incontrovertible evidence compelling our belief. We can't be Naaman before his servant convinced him to listen to the servant of Elisha and bathe in the far inferior river Jordan to be cured of our metaphorical leprosy. We have to be humble enough to take the truth from peers before we can know for certain that the messages weren't really theirs, but His.

The voice of the Lord, except in the case of the very few worthy of it, comes not by acoustic vibration to our tympanic membrane, but through text, through proxies, and through authorized channels. The Spirit, which confirms all truth, is what brings the text to life in our hearts, minds, and will. And this Holy Ghost, through whom we gain conviction and testimony, through whom faith, hope, charity, and all spiritual gifts come, requires action for further prompting. The Lord's first word through His prophet in His preface to other commandments and revelations was not "hear," it was "hearken." It isn't the mere passive and effortless perception of unavoidable sound waves, but rather the active, respectful turning of one's full attention toward the source with full willingness of heart to act upon the truth once received. Hearing comes naturally to all with working ears, hearkening depends on attitude and choice.

What is Scripture?

Although many scholars believe the definitive compilation wasn't made until the time of the Babylonian exile (around 600 BC), Jewish tradition has kept a more or less standard list of "books" as canonical from as early as we have record of a Hebrew alphabet, and have added to it what histories, poetry, prophecies and divine directives have been deemed authoritative and noteworthy ever since. There are a few books which remain debatable for their inclusion (the Protestant King James Bible, for example, discards 7 books from the Catholic canon), and there is some evidence that some books have been lost to time for various reasons, but the agreed upon grouping has been stable for centuries. Christians broadly agree, even with Jews, and largely with Muslims on the sacredness and divine provenance of at least 39 Old Testament books, all written in Hebrew.

The New Testament, on the other hand, was written at a time and in a geographic area where Greek was the predominant lingua franca. Its books, which are entirely comprised of letters meant for public consumption, are more standardized across Catholic and Protestant compilations, but there are still a few "apocryphal" books that are excluded sometimes for questions of authenticity, sometimes for doctrinal content. What they share, aside from Greek, is 1st century authors with a maximum single degree of separation from personally witnessing the Savior's mortal ministry.

In both cases, some process of vetting extant copies (which contained variations) and weighting (personal letters for private edification versus letters worthy of parallel inclusion with writings of world-wide importance) had to be made and carried out by accepted authorities, whether subject experts or civil or spiritual authorities. And in both cases, Christians of the LDS variety accept the King James canonical 66 books of the Bible as the word of God as far as they are translated correctly.

The Book of Mormon, on the other hand, was transmitted basically from prophet to prophet (with minor departures from that pattern still remaining in-family), and kept under guard and/or secret during the entire span of its compilation. Because its transmission was centralized and secure, the only errors come from the human flaws of its sources, and from its translation (either from inspired ideas to linguistic forms, or between linguistic forms). Since the Christians who are LDS believe that the Book of Mormon was translated by divine gift, the translation pathway for error introduction is also eliminated and we often assert that it is therefore the most correct book--not the most important, or the most influential, just the most correct.

Finally, translations of certain discovered papyrii, inspired additions to biblical books, and a few testimony accounts and a credo comprise the fourth and least consulted tome of LDS scripture.

But to Christians who believe that the canon is open and that all words inspired by the Spirit are "scripture" even if not officially canonized, the term scripture itself has a broadness problem. Prophets and apostles speak truth to the public regularly, and General Conference compilations are published every six months to log the most official and broadest audience versions of these. But in order to avoid drowning in inspired text, the LDS often distinguish between "the scriptures" (the 4 canonized "standard works") and other inspired writings like conference talks, official declarations, and proclamations. All of them are revealed and useful for instruction--all of them lead powerfully to Christ as all scripture must--and some of them have the force of official doctrine immediately upon publication (the Proclamations, for example), but most are merely useful reflections on, commentary about, and illustrations of doctrine and scripture, not new scripture per se.

Not everything a prophet or apostle says is scripture just because they said it, or even just because it's true. We generally expect that men upheld as revelators will carefully distinguish between their own thoughts or thinking about revealed truths and thoughts they were commanded to transmit to the public as revelations. Only this latter category would be proposed as canonical by its leaders to the church collectively.

I hope that provides a little clarity on what scripture is and is not, and how and why some writings get canonized as we begin a study of the only LDS book of canonized scripture with an open end: the Doctrine and Covenants. We will assume no errors of translation or transmission (although refinement of a minor editorial nature has occurred), divine provenance, and all of it directly into English (although mostly an 1830s American version of it). And we will approach it as we do all scripture: God is its author, men are merely the conduits, and we have to change for the truth--work to discover and apply its truth for ourselves--because the truth isn't affected by our denial of it or disinterest in it.

 

Explanatory Introductions

 

Since 1921, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has published an "Explanatory Introduction" to initiate its first-time readers to its collection of revelations entitled Doctrine and Covenants. This blog needs one as well.

As a literature PhD with a background in linguistics, my dream calling in the Church is Gospel Doctrine teacher. And for the last two years I've been privileged to serve in it. Last year, the service coincided with some aspects of my personal life and a new feature in the Gospel Living app: the ability to make Circles posts to the entire Gospel Doctrine class. The feature kicked in so close to New Year's resolution time and the beginning of the Book of Mormon study in the Come Follow Me curriculum, that I've just now completed a full year of nearly daily scripture reflections, posted in digestible chunks to my ward's adults. The study was so valuable personally that I want to keep it up. I think others have benefited by me publishing my reflections, and I'm gratified to have received reports of such, but it's self-motivating enough for me that I don't need much external confirmation to continue.

So continue I shall. As close to daily as I can manage, I'll post a commentary on the passage of scripture under study. This time the public may be wider, but the goal is the same: share thoughts from a strong and faithful reader so that others may gain insights and grow in faith.

Insiders may get the references more readily, but I'm conceiving of my potential audience as containing non-LDS folks as well. You are all welcome here, and I appreciate and will respond to comments and questions, maybe even some hostile ones if there are any. But I don't plan to initiate outsiders to every detail of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you're not a member of the Church, you may have to build your own on-ramp on some terms, concepts and structures.

For today, however, a quick primer:

Christians around the world misinterpret their own book of scripture badly in places. Please don't take that statement wrong. I don't mean they get the core doctrines of Christianity wrong, or are ill-informed on Christ's reality, His atoning sacrifice, or His ability to save us from the effects of Adam's fall. I belittle their faith and sincerity not one whit. I just mean that there are doctrines and patterns of behavior that each denomination disagrees upon, even though they've thought it through as best they can in completely good faith and with all the resources they have at their disposal. And none of it prevents them from fundamental impasses in the theological details. It's possible to be smart, well-informed, broadly correct, and still misguided in a fundamental way.

Theologians use the categories sophic and mantic to distinguish between religions that focus on prior tradition or interpretation from religions that focus on present experience and inspiration. And while other distinctions exist, the term sophic seems to describe the bulk of Evangelical Christianity. Even the more "charismatic" Pentecostals, who consider manifestations of the Spirit such as glossolalia in lived experience and worship as evidence of the Lord's continuing work of inspiration and who therefore fall closer to the mantic side of the Christian spectrum adhere to the Protestant principle of sola scriptura, leaving them more sophic than Christ or His own apostles.

Belief in the Bible as an inerrant text or as the sole authority doesn't guarantee the debate gets settled. But it does close eyes to an otherwise entirely obvious pattern and clear doctrine as demonstrated in the Bible's entirety--the idea of continuing revelation. At no point in the Biblical text did any author, who we accept as canonical, limit himself to commentary on prior revelation as the basis for his own contribution. Protestants counter Catholic insistence on the pope as current-day spokesperson for God partly by foreclosing on the concepts of authority and revelation altogether. They explain away the pattern of an open canon by calling Christ the fulfillment of all need for prophecy, and His gift of the Holy Ghost as the end to any need for mediation between covenant makers and Christ. To them, a personal relationship with Christ obviates the need for a Priesthood and revelation has been democratized since the Resurrection. And yet, they will insist, only the original twelve apostles (or a close living companion to them, like Luke, whose gospel and subsequent book of Acts may have been commissioned by the original apostles) are included by rights into the New Testament canon--meaning that they already implicitly accept some principle of revelation having continued after the resurrection. 

As heretical an idea as both Catholics and Protestants might claim it is, the Bible itself demonstrates a pattern of God choosing men to serve as spokespersons, and Christ's first coming did not do away with the pattern. Subtle word-play on Peter's name (petra meaning "little rock" in Greek) notwithstanding, Christ Himself made continuing revelation--the direct investiture of knowledge by God to a human--the foundational principle of His Church. Sorry Catholics, Peter isn't the cornerstone of the Church and never was. There is also Agabus, an otherwise entirely oblique character who appears twice in Acts, who is mentioned as a post-resurrection prophet who received accurate revelations fulfilled in his own time, and Paul prescribes an ecclesial structure as requiring prophets and apostles (there's no indication he means only dead ones!) for the Church to be well founded. But they either gloss these examples over or explain them away rather than question their fundamental theory that miracles have ceased in our day.

Faith in God and heed for His directives affects reception of revelation. There have been long stretches of history when wickedness and unworthiness has removed the presence of prophets and apostles from the body of the covenant people. But the principle still holds: God is not unable to speak to the world, and still does through chosen receptacles that all may recognize as authorized. One massively influential tool in the reaffirmation of this principle is the Book of Mormon. While its internal narrative also demonstrates that the pattern of continuing revelation crossed the logical resurrection boundary that Protestants erroneously suppose stopped it, the Book of Mormon's provenance is even more important as evidence. It was discovered with the aid of heavenly direction, translated by divine inspiration, and forms the central, testable evidence of the claim that Joseph Smith makes--that he was a duly authorized prophet in the early 1800s whose task it was to restore the Church of Jesus Christ.

As the Introduction explains, the Doctrine and Covenants differs from other volumes not merely because it is primarily a collection of revelations delivered to Joseph Smith and successors in relatively modern times, but because it is not a translation of ancient revelations, but an open-ended compilation to which others may be added as revelations continue to accrue. In the introduction's own words

These sacred revelations were received in answer to prayer, in times of need, and came out of real-life situations involving real people. The Prophet and his associates sought for divine guidance, and these revelations certify that they received it.

Because the Lord has revealed to me that the Book of Mormon is true--it's His word as Joseph Smith claims--I also know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet as he claimed. His words, and those of subsequent prophets, accord perfectly with ideas revealed to Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Paul, John, and all other prophets and apostles of old, and so I'll season my commentary with references as they track back.

I exhort all to come to Christ--He is the Redeemer that all the prophets have testified about--and to accept that coming to Him means accepting the words of His servants.