Turning Hearts - D&C 2

The following text is repeated in some form in all four of the modern Standard Works of scripture, which, by itself, underscores the importance of the prophecy. Similarly, its placement immediately after the preface in our modern version gives it a place of prominence. Other things could have been inserted there--Joseph Smith's history of the First Vision, his retelling of the Moroni visit in its entirety, or, as it was in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, the constitution document of the church restoration (current-day D&C 20). But instead, from 1876 on, this portion of the angel Moroni's instructions 4 years prior to Joseph Smith's receipt of the golden plates was what inspired editors placed in this position.

Saints from the original 1831 publication of the "Book of Commandments," which later became the Doctrine and Covenants, all the way until Orson Pratt's 1876 restructuring and properly versified version did not have the following text from the mouth of Moroni, who was paraphrasing Malachi--an old testament prophet his civilization had no direct knowledge of--in visits to Joseph Smith in the 1820s. Saints after 1876 had the benefit of both this prophecy and its fulfillment (in section 110). Since the Moroni paraphrase differs significantly from the King James Malachi with which we are familiar, a study of the differences imposes itself:

"Behold, I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of1 Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers2, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers3. If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming4." - D&C 2:1-3 (Numbering mine)

"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." - Malachi 4:5-6

1. Elijah is not a magical being. But he's in limited company among prophets who, tradition holds (but not scripture except between the lines), were taken from the earth without tasting death. Book of Mormon believers are aware of conjecture within that book's pages to the effect that Alma the Younger was also "translated" in this way, but only Moses and Elijah among Old Testament prophets, have had the honor, unless we count Enoch and his entire anomalous city of Zion to which all societies should aspire. 

The place left for him in Jewish tradition during the Passover Seder meal is there for the same reason Christians hold this prophecy dear: His return was a prophesied component of the Messiah's coming. Because Jews believe the Messiah has not yet come, they interpret Malachi's passage as unfulfilled. But even Christians who know that Elijah was present on the Mount of Transfiguration and yet will return before the Second Coming have to reckon with transliterations of his name into Greek: Elias. The angel Gabriel told Zecharias, the serving high priest at the temple in 1 BC, that his son should have the given name John, but that this John, later to be surnamed "the Baptist," would go "before" the Lord in the "spirit and power of Elias" which, in the Hebrew, would have been indistinguishable from the name "Elijah." Later, in explaining that the presence of Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration didn't negate the prophecies of Elijah's coming before the Second Coming of Christ, Jesus noted how "Elias" was in fact not just a spirit, or power, but an office or a function which applied equally to John the Baptist as it did to Elijah the Tishbite (The Joseph Smith Translation makes the concept even more explicit). 

Because Saints of the Restored Church believe this title and function to apply to more prophets than Elijah himself, or even John, they are more interested in the function and purpose than they are the person. This is evident in the Moroni text, where the purpose is made explicit. Elijah's presence doesn't augur anything, but a Priesthood restoration--the laying on of hands for the passing of keys of authority after the pattern of ordination--is the substantive reason for the visit.

Elijah's coming restored authorities pertaining to the sealing of families beyond this mortal life.

2. In Malachi's version, the turning of the hearts has no explicit cause. We can infer that Elijah's presence itself touches off the turning and reconciliation it figuratively implies. But Moroni's version inserts a causal instrument: promises made of old planted in the hearts of the young. Prophecies made as early as Adam connect all humans into one great family of God. Orders of Priesthood whose offices serve community members which are organized in parallel for our modern-day benefit, were originally part of a Patriarchal order before Moses, before Abraham whose father tragically could not pass it on, causing Abraham to seek after another pathway to the covenants, and even before Melchizedek to whom Abraham paid tithes though not under his lineage. There were reasons that membership among the covenant people and the authorities attached to the ordinances by which the covenants are contracted was conceived as belonging to the family as an institution, rather than to the nation or the church. 

The old covenants are the same in content as the new--that the Messiah would redeem His people and enable their exaltation. And the familial relationships which the Lord has ordered each of us into can now, because of Elijah's return to convey the keys, be redeemed together as well. Christ saves us as individuals, collectively as a church, and intimately as families. These are the promises to which children can turn their hearts, that the heavenly societies we aspire to and render grace to the Savior for have the same basic unit as they do here: the family.

3. The ordinances pertaining to salvation, of which baptism serves as the first and most clear example, are bound to mortality. You can't baptize a spirit, only a body with a spirit inside. All those who haven't received, during their lifetimes, the individual chance to enter into the covenant relationship Christ requires of us all can only do so by proxy, and that authority is what Elijah restored. Because the promises and the temporal corporality are now ours, our hearts in the now can turn to the fathers in the past. But that direction of the heart-turning is only available in the Moroni paraphrase. The KJV Malachi text may still be accurate--fathers and mothers on the other side of the veil are indeed being taught the doctrines that will allow for their faith, repentance, and acceptance of a proxy baptism once one is performed in their name--and are likely therefore filled with the same joy in connection to the hearts of the children whose work can allow their celestial entry alongside those children. The turning of the hearts does indeed go both directions. But the Moroni version insists on the important direction as coupled with Elijah's purpose: that responsibility is ours as the children because they can't do it without us.

4. Lastly, the undefined and general curse the earth would be under if Elijah weren't to come is disconnected with any explicitly causal reason in Malachi's version. We should all take threats of curses from God seriously, even if they aren't specific, and even if they appear arbitrary. But Moroni's relaying of the same basic information adds purpose and specificity. It's not just that the earth will be smitten, it's that the very purpose of the earth--the place where mortal humans may gain experience in a test to become like their Father in Heaven is missing a critical salvific Priesthood power and function which could render moot the end of its entire creation. If Elijah doesn't restore this sealing power to bind families in a chain of covenant stretching back to Adam, the purpose of creation is wholly frustrated. It is, indeed, a waste.

God's great Plan of Salvation, whose center is His Son, our Redeemer, maps a path to Him far in excess of our limited mortal scope. He loves and is mindful of His children whose bodies have returned to the earth from which they sprang, but whose spirits are immortal and destined, by the power of that same Savior, to rise and inhabit their flesh once more, never to divide again. Those spirits in the waiting space before Resurrection are organized intelligences capable of faith and repentance, of decision, but not action, having no flesh to act upon. This Plan of Happiness fills my soul with hope and awe for a Being that allows us to combine our power with His for the individual reaching of all of His children whose choice is not to reject His saving ordinances and binding covenants.

The First Visions

 

I broke my own code in a lot of my analysis of Section 1. Because most of the other sections are chronological, we'll get a chance to get back up to speed, but I consider an understanding of context one of the most cardinal hermeneutic principles, and I didn't give enough. The words means things themselves, but unless you have a decent sense of who is writing, to whom, under what circumstances, as framed by which general discursive fields (the conjuncture of historical forces, current debates, broader intellectual movements relevant to the text, etc.), you're very likely to misinterpret something, and maybe even something pivotal.

So let's do a little work establishing things here. Joseph Smith is writing his own account of a heavenly visitation he claims to have received in 1820. The version we're reading, penned in 1838 by dictation to a scribe for publication purposes, is canon as of 1880. But it is not the first recording, and is not considered canonical at the date of its publication. While there are times a prophet speaks authoritatively and the Lord's words must be carried out immediately, this record is of a more testimonial nature, and is more rich in implications than instructions or doctrinal explanation. And while Smith told oral versions of this story to many over the years, even his first written version was 12 years after the fact, in 1832.  Why then?  Why wait 12 years before publishing a first account of something so important?

In the summer of 1832, Joseph's wife of 5 years was pregnant with their 4th child, but the first three had died, as well as one of the twins they had adopted when their own survived only hours after birth. This was also a time of the early spread of the Church. Just 2 years prior, the translation and publication of the Book of Mormon was complete and the Church was restored, and even more recently revelations had been received calling on the Saints to relocate from wherever they originally converted through first missionary efforts to Kirtland, Ohio.

And while growth in the church was robust, so was pushback. Competing churches decried the doctrine and local newspapers were happy to publish inaccuracies mingled with facts so long as it sold copies, which it seemed to in direct proportion to the growth of the church. This is especially important in a protestant world of remunerated pastors whose livelihoods, not just doctrines, would be under threat by a popular Christian denomination preaching that authority didn't come from votes or degrees, and that local priests should provide their own material support and not be compensated for preaching and ministry. Worse, if the Joseph's story were taken seriously, it implies no need for them as intermediaries--either dispensers of authority or dispenser's of Biblical interpretation. 

Joseph's main prophetic priority at this time was split between revelatory work on a revision of the Bible and meeting the various and frequent administrative needs, which included caring for the training and spiritual needs of growing numbers of converts, group and doctrinal discipline (there was at least one competing "prophet" who had deceived some from the inside) and the codification and editing of the "Book of Commandments" for first publication. But public affairs was also a concern and discipline was sometimes thorny, and more than one disaffected recent convert turned sour enough to publish biased and distorted testimony, or worse. A few short months before the first written First Vision was penned, Joseph was tarred and feathered by a mob led by just one such disgruntled ex-member.

It is in this environment--a young, inexperienced father, acquainted with grief and 3rd degree burns, in a barely civilized land of nominal freedom, but in which mob rule was often more likely to settle a dispute than a constitutionally conforming judiciary, under the intense pressures of leadership--that Smith relays the details he deems salient for others to read on his personal story of conviction for sin and answers to prayers, mustering his entire 2nd grade education to write it himself. This is a departure. His norm since obtaining the gold plates seems to have been prioritizing the publishing of translation, and revelation, and the administration of church and community affairs. His concentration, in other words, was on recording God's words and work to the world, not his own faith journey. 

What are those details? While there are significant shifts of focus and detail between the various accounts he gave and others shared that he gave, the canonical version lays out the same basic framework of a youth stymied by competing interpretations of scripture, noting the mismatch between doctrine and behavior and between Biblical and extra-biblical elements of extant churches, and faithful prayer, with intent to act upon it, that led to a theophany. The visit from the Lord spoke of forgiveness from sin, testified that Christ was He who atones, and then warned of an impending anger against unrighteousness, and about lips near Him, but hearts far from Him--all of which confirmed Joseph's tentative conclusions previously drawn from scripture and observation. This early manuscript version clearly establishes the pattern, accessible to all, of personal experience with God, of aloofness from already established Christian denominations, and of the Savior actively and personally directing the preparations for the judgment at His second coming. But it doesn't as clearly do three things: 1. claim God the Father was there and spoke first; 2. claim Smith was interested in joining one of the churches, but was told not to; 3. claim Smith was told he would be a prophet to restore the church.

Tackling those back to front, the 3rd thing isn't in the 1838 canonized version either. That's a misconception critics and uncareful readers assume. The other two, however, are real and are addressed in the following paragraphs.

I have a hard time reconciling point #2. The more polished 1838 version contains the parenthetical comment in verse 18 "(for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)." The 1832 version reads: "my mind become excedingly distressed for I become convicted of my sins and by searching the scriptures I found that mand <​mankind​> did not come unto the Lord but that they had apostatised from the true and liveing faith and there was no society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new testament." In other words, The 1832 version makes the sacred grove theophany sound like it was about mercy for the inability for himself or anyone to be saved from sin because there were no Biblically accurate organizations available to administer the Gospel, whereas the 1838 version makes the primary question about wanting to join one, but not knowing which and not knowing "none" would be the answer.

What strikes me is how the earlier record seems to draw a different picture of Smith's confidence level in his own calling as prophet. By 1832 he has already had massive and extended experiences with angelic visitations, translations, and other revelations. The content of some of the revelations prior to this date include a Book of Mormon passage all but naming him outright as a prophet so pivotal that his namesake, the original Joseph of Egypt, had prophesied about his role three and a half millenia beforehand. And the preface to the Doctrine and Covenants itself made explicit the principle that the Lord speaks by servants. So he should be as confident in himself as the Lord is calling him prophet. Why not start with the start and show the progression from First Vision to Moroni's revelation of the gold plates, and on to the other revelations of the Restored Church?

My best hypothesis, for now, is that as authorized as he was, as exemplary as his story could be for others, he wanted to make conversion to the Restored Gospel about Christ, not himself. The pathway to covenantal belonging in the Lord's true church was through accepting Joseph Smith as a prophet, yes, just as accepting the Father--as Pharisees claimed to want--had to come through that same Jesus they rejected. But accepting Smith as a prophet came through discovering the Book of Mormon was true, not through an analysis of Smith's own testimony of his direct dealings with heaven. At least, that was the pattern from 1829 on.

And if that's the case, then it might make a little sense that he was less concerned with crafting a polished response to extant criticisms in the biased press (which seems to be the main motivation in 1838, meaning he had multiple false testimonies to address in a single source then) and more concerned with creating solidarity with new converts, many of whom had drawn similar conclusions--they were convinced of Christ, but knew that none of the denominations claiming to represent Him and His church were Biblically sound.

In other words, it was about structure, not personality for Smith. The main un-named, but unmistakable contrasts from this account that investigators to the church would not fail to note in their day and context is that to gain access to the Lord's forgiveness, one could not rely on intermediaries: neither traditional authorities nor Protestant interpreters. There is a Church, and there is scripture, but God's desire was for a direct mantic connection, not a sophic one that bound Christ up in mediated limits under which God doesn't speak anymore, and miracles are no longer in His toolkit. Joseph's story was of personal salvation, and offered an experiment that all could reproduce. But it was not a doctrinal analysis designed to compel reform through argumentation--instead it was the testimony of a demonstration of the need for an entirely restored paradigm of direct revelation.

In this way, Smith's study and experience noting that New Testament patterns are not present among the various churches led him to a hypothesis and an existential angst that He knew only God could resolve, so he asked for that wisdom under the intention to join a church anyway. And this thought is what reconciles the two versions, finally: the anyway. He sincerely thought they were all in apostasy, but it hadn't yet entered into his heart that this meant he should still NOT join one. At least, to me, this nuance helps me hold the two as possibly consistent on, even with a surface detail that seems contradictory.

Smith was likely more self-effacing when the membership was around a more manageable 2000 than when six more years of growth, a population of over 17 thousand, and the experience of struggle against bad press, mob activity, and bad-faith legal challenges to his leadership. In the summer of 1832, by my very schematic extrapolation, Smith is in the early New Testament phase of his "translation" of the King James Bible. We know he worked on it from June 1830 to July 1833, and if one assumes a fairly consistent pace that speeds up when verses require no changes, this reasonably puts the 600,000 words of the Old Testament upon which only 1300 of the verses required alteration most likely in the rear view mirror by spring 1832 as the 2100 verses he altered among the 180,000 words of the New Testament slowed him down and likely took up the last year of the project. Adding this context help remind us of how fresh on his memory the New Testament passages would have been when feeling inspired to alternate writing duties with Frederick G. Williams in a notebook to make that first record of the First Vision for compilation among other Church history records from its infancy. It must have been striking to Smith how structures, principles, and procedures that had been revealed to him directly in the previous 2-3 years were lining up with the passages he was freshly translating. The pattern was not sola scriptura, it was sola revelatio. And those revelations were both consistent and corrective without the need to address 1800 years of argument and commentary in a precise analog to how Jesus' ministry corrected and restored the Spirit of the Law of Moses to Jews whose commentary and creedal additions had contravened it in the most important of ways in His day.

And therein is why the 1838 version became necessary and remains canonical: with the more explicit detail that the Father was also present with the Son in that pillar of fire, those who believe have no need for Niceae, or for a works-cited list dozens of references long to rebut the false doctrine of the trinity, of the closed canon, of the changeable God who is incapable of miracles and direct revelation today, and of a Christ who is one with His Father in an inexplicable and "mysterious" way. Instead Joseph learned before the first word from either deity was uttered, by sight alone, that they were unified, not conflated; that there was a more tightly analogous way to how we need to become one with Christ--not literally, but symbolically; not in person, but in purpose.

And despite all of this, we should remember that while the authenticity of the 1832 account as a draft document is not contested, there was not a choice to publish it until it was lost and recovered from historical vaults in 1965. What was published was the 1838 canonical account.

This vision, and what it implies, fills me with wonder and hope, and because I've received a witness from the Lord through His Spirit that the Book of Mormon is true, and that Joseph Smith was truly a prophet, I am in pursuit of the Lord's pattern of revelation as Smith was--through study and prayer, faith to act and in expectation of direct direction. The heavens are not closed, His authority remains among His servants, and we can become like Him and His Father, as He taught, through unity of purpose with Them. May we all seek His refinements to our purpose and direction as we approach His Son with our weakness, sin, and lack of wisdom.

It is the Same - D&C 1:38

"What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same"

I referred recently to the lesson of Naaman, respected general of the Syrians who sought out the renowned prophet Elisha for healing when he was stricken with leprosy, and who was offended when Elisha himself didn't come to pronounce the remedy, but rather sent a servant to relay it. It's a great lesson on faith and humility--their interconnection, in fact. If God's interest is our growth in faith, then coming down personally to indelibly mark our consciousness with his blinding light and truth would produce obedience, but not choice. Just as Naaman learned about God's power better by listening to a servant, we come to rely on Him and learn of His character best line upon line, from small obedience to large obedience, from messenger to presence.

This is one of the grand keys to the question of why God chooses intermediaries at all, and especially why so many of them are our mortal peers rather than beings of obvious power and celestial provenance.

Another reason is the obverse: if Naaman hadn't hearkened to the servant, he would have remained leprous, but less culpable for his rejection of the true way to healing. If he had heard Elisha, in whom he already had trust as an oracle of God, and rejected the healing prescription because the Jordan was too simple a river, and bathing too ordinary a solution, his rejection would have come with increased condemnation. In other words, it's an act of mercy for the Supreme Justice to prevent the responsibility for rejecting higher and more obvious authorities until we've demonstrated compliance with the lesser ones and preparation for the higher knowledge and skills He promises. We are just according to the light we receive, and those who reject prophets are less responsible for the knowledge they've rejected than those who reject angelic visitations, or the sure knowledge of the Holy Ghost.

Yet even listening to fellow humans poses challenges. Hebrews who saw the 10 plagues, saw the waters part, saw the cloud by day and the fire by night, and saw the Lord provide miraculous food in the desert, still got worms when they over-picked the manna except on the Sabbath. And the most formally theologically educated group in Jesus's day took up hostile footing when the Son took flesh and began speaking of doing His Father's will. Speaking to these Pharisees, the Lord responded in John 5:23-24:

"He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life."

Later in His mortal ministry, the Redeemer trained the 70 to prepare the way for His preaching in cities that might not accept Him, he taught in Luke 10:16: 

"He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me."

Our challenge is to accept truth from God, no matter what intermediary He chooses. It democratizes the ability to speak for God for Him to choose mortals like us as vehicles--a source of great hope to all who seek to know Him, since we can all accede to His spokesmanship in our own affairs and in the affairs pertaining to our callings. It encourages magnifying, and looking higher for us to see other mortals look heavenward for guidance, and trust their testimony as we seek and confirm our own. And it builds trust in the Lord to know that honoring His servants honors Him, because His servants point His way. They who need repentance call for it. They who insist on baptismal ordinances as signs of covenant-making themselves need the covenant belonging. And they testify of the Redeemer, and His father's kingdom.

Anyone who accepts Christ as Lord has to logically accept the principle of an intermediary. Anyone who accepts Christ as model must logically take Him at His word that the principle is extensible--others may represent Him just as He represents His Father.

And that nesting of intermediaries is what mercifully and didactically leads us higher.

As long as the source is true, that is.

What a bold, dangerous, and magnificent responsibility we have, then, to learn for ourselves who the servants of God are. If only there were a test...

Zero Tolerance - D&C 1:31

 

"I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance"

 Schools and workplaces sometimes have explicit "zero tolerance" policies for certain kinds of misbehavior they find most egregious. In the academic setting, this most often refers to drugs or violence. The idea is that infractions in these areas aren't matters for explaining yourself to authorities who have discretion as to whether or not and to what degree to apply a penalty. Instead, they are a "you do the crime, you do the time" concept where the penalty is applied automatically no matter how light or "first time" your drug use was, or how justified or defensive your violence was. More broadly, the policies are designed to remove all doubt from all members of the affected community that there is no acceptable reason for the infraction. And they are also popular because the administrators don't need to engage in the messy business of moral judgment--they can just be blind to anyone's reasons, the context of the event, and the prevailing moral baseline of the community, and still come off as supporting high standards of behavior. It's using neutrality as cover for moral relativity.

As the moral law-giver Himself, the Lord doesn't fall into the category of moral relativist in the slightest. This verse casts Him as the embodiment of the opposite: moral absolutism.

But be careful to judge only as He does with respect to two implications: 1. Tolerance and allowance are different concepts; 2. Sins are not the same things as mistakes.

1. I know of now other Christian denomination that declares such bold doctrines as to suggest that God is capable of certain behaviors that would result in His immediate cessation of being God. That there are principles superordinate to the Supreme Being. In order for God to be God, He must be a God of justice, and perfectly so. If He is merely an arbitrary Being whose commands are rooted in whim, not reason, then obedience to Him is purposeless. But because He has a purpose, and it has been revealed, all of His laws have a design serving that purpose: our happiness. Purpose, design, and justice are all inherent principles of our creation.

And so is judgment day.

The principle of accountability for our choices in this mortal life is as immutable as God's just character. No matter how small, no matter how justified we think we are, no matter our weakness or the other guy's bad character, we will all have no excuse one day. No excuse, but perhaps a covering. If we repent, the Savior will take upon Himself our guilt no matter how excuse-free our guilt is. His merciful grace is our Good News.

Until then, however, mortality definitely still is a space where sin is tolerated--only temporarily, of course, but this fallen world with sin and sin's consequences in it is part of what makes the space a worthy test.

God doesn't allow sin, we do. And His promise and design is that this temporary allowance teach us in the here and now what is and what is not tolerable. Until it stops, and we are left either covered or convicted.

2. God has a will, and the more we surrender ours to His, the better we grow and benefit. He directs individuals sometimes in very detailed ways. But when it comes to public pronouncements of His will, He chooses authorized voices--prophets--and gives them commandments. Being under commandment and failing to obey is sin. Knowing the commandment and choosing to disobey it is sin. Is one more condemnable for its active and rebellious nature and another less for its passive nature, and for the weak nature of those who fail to obey it? Maybe, but none of it will be excused, which is to say that all of it will prevent our celestial happiness.

But there are tons of choices we can make that don't fall under the obedience versus disobedience to God rubric, and yet can have serious consequences for us. These are mistakes. These aren't what God is judging, so we shouldn't either. God looks upon weakness differently than He looks upon rebellion. And He looks upon mistakes differently than sins.

The Manner of our Understanding - D&C 1:24

 "Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding"

 With the section opening so strongly on the concept of the voice of the Lord, this connected point about the language of the Lord gains more meaning and deserves more reflection.

First, as a reminder, "hearkening" as we are told to do, not just listen or hear, means that there's an active opening of heart, mind, and will to the message. The implication is that while messages must come from authorized sources, our task as receivers is to convert the symbols into an actionable contribution to our understanding, feeling, and motivation.

As Saussure's lectures on general linguistics establishes, communication presupposes at least two interlocutors (a sender and a receiver), a message, and a shared code, and as Grice adds, there must be a cooperative principle orienting interpretation or else the message received will not be the one intended. This verse insists on all of the above. The message sender is God, who can use proxies and various forms as vehicles for His Word. The receiver is us, and whether through human intermediaries or mediated by the various forms verbal communication can take (audible, textual), we must incline our faculties of interpretation with humble attitudes in order to accept the divine messages. The code we share is the language used.

I find it heartening to know that God adapts his message through codes as part of His design to increase understanding and obtain the goal of everyone "speaking" for the Lord. He spoke to Adam in Adamic, Moses in Egyptian, Isaiah in Hebrew, and to Peter in Aramaic. And while I don't think this principle means He is equally pleased with both King James early modern English and the latest Gen Z slang "translation," it does mean that His messages are not arcane, not meant to be inaccessible, not so far beyond the common tongue that there are educational barriers to understanding.

But that also does not mean that the messages are shallow or lack complexity.

Notice the structure of this section, punctuated and broken down into verse for us after the fact, contains very few independent propositions, but rather includes multiple embedded clauses and other kinds of complex sentence structure. It takes effort to unpack. And I think that's the model for all scripture--it's given to us in understandable form, but the meaning we wring from it is a function of both our effort and our initiation. In fact, it's also a function of our faith: our lived experience heeding and hearkening to what light we have received.

The above image is a common depiction of the Annunciation. Many medieval and renaissance era artists depicted the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove aiming at the ear, not the womb of Mary as the angel Gabriel revealed to her that she would bear the Son of God. The unbelieving poke fun at the idea of a virgin birth, and literalists poke fun at the concept of conception through the tympanic membrane rather than in the usual manner. But these depictions, like all words, are symbolic--sometimes symbolic on multiple levels at once. Just as the Holy Ghost enters only metaphorically through the ear, so the language of the Lord is aimed at our emotion, our reason, and our will, and enters only through our embodied faculties of reception.

Yes, the Being of perfection, or omniscience and omnipotence doesn't compel understanding, even though He could, and even though the behaviors thus motivated would accord with His will more certainly and universally. Instead, this Father adapts to maximize our growth toward Him, which is less about crossing an information gap between us and Him as it is about choosing to take growth steps and beginning what part of the crossing we can begin.

Hearkening has to include effort, but He also makes efforts to be understandable. And since all symbolic communication improves with initiation, the invitation is to learn more about the symbols. Don't just assume that since you are a reader of English your study of the Doctrine and Covenants will transparently grant you the fathoming of all of the Lord's depths.

The dove aimed at Mary's ear to "conceive" of the Savior has another layer--a contrast--that enhances understanding. Eve listened to the serpent and sin was brought into the world. Contrasting Eve and Mary, the serpent and Christ, holiness and sin, the choice to accept temptation versus the choice to accept blessing, all in a single image element draws out multiple facets of the Savior's character and roles. It allows us to identify with new aspects of the avatars for all of us. It allows us new gratitude for the magnitude of Christ's atoning sacrifice.

I hope, in the same way, that as we open our minds and hearts to learning new symbolic entry-points into scripture, our hearkening and gratitude will be continuously drawn toward improvement, toward matching, as best our imperfect selves are able, His model.

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.