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.