58 replies to this topic

[inquiringmind]

I was just reading this.

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Intelligence, however defined, is not created or made (D&C 93:29); it is coeternal with God (TPJS, pp. 353-54). Some LDS leaders have interpreted this to mean that intelligent beings—called intelligences—existed before and after they were given spirit bodies in the premortal existence. Others have interpreted it to mean that intelligent beings were organized as spirits out of eternal intelligent matter, that they did not exist as individuals before they were organized as spirit beings in the premortal existence (Abr. 3:22; JD 7:57; 2:124)

But D&C 93:29 says that "Man was also in the beginning with God."

Wouldn't that mean that we were all individuals, who always existed as individuals?

Verse 23 says "Ye were also in the beginning with the Father," and wouldn't that mean we were there as individuals?

How can these verses be interpreted to mean "that intelligent beings were organized as spirits out of eternal intelligent matter," and "did not exist as individuals before they were organized as spirit beings in the premortal existence"?

Edited by inquiringmind, 26 April 2012 - 09:21 PM.

[inquiringmind]

If Bruce R. McConkie was right here

Abraham used the name intelligences to apply to the spirit children of the Eternal Father. The intelligence or spirit element became intelligences after the spirits were born as individual entities (see Mormon Doctrine, p. 387).

What does D&C 93:29 and 23 mean?

Edited by inquiringmind, 26 April 2012 - 09:04 PM.

[inquiringmind]

Just came across this (on another forum.)

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Did we exist as separate entities (intelligences) before we were created as spirit beings?

This is one of the most misunderstood topics in all of Mormondom.

I blame the misunderstanding on the misinterpretation of one word ("intelligences") which is found only three times in all of scripture. And all three instances of that word are found in two verses:

Abraham 3:21-22
Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; …for he stood among those that were spirits…

Everyone seems to forget that those verses are talking about spirit beings, so they go off on some tangent (philosophies of men) about how we existed as intelligences before we were created as spirit beings, when there is not one verse in all of scripture that provides credible evidence for such an idea.

All examples thrown about from D&C and PoGP are leaps in logic.

But what about all those references to intelligence in the Doctrine and Covenants? And don't those references say that intelligence always existed? Yes, they sure do:

D&C 93:29
Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.

Not only do we see that intelligence itself is eternal, we find out what intelligence is: light of truth.

Another verse defines intelligence:

D&C 93:36
The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth.

Verse 29 defines intelligence as "light of truth", while verse 36 defines intelligence as "light and truth".

Contradiction? Not at all. Simply substitute "understanding" for the word "light" in each case, like a light bulb going on over your head:
Intelligence, or the understanding of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.
The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, understanding and truth.

Both wordings make perfect sense.

But what about our having existed eternally as intelligence? The Lord explains in what manner we have always existed:

D&C 93:23
Ye were also in the beginning with the Father; that which is Spirit, even the Spirit of truth;

Yes, we were in the beginning with the Father. And the way we existed was as Spirit, even the Spirit of truth. In other words, we existed in the beginning as intelligence, or light and truth.

Here's another example:

D&C 93:29
Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.

Yes, we were in the beginning with God. And the way we existed was as intelligence, or the light of truth.

What the Lord is saying in these verses is that the following terms are all equal: intelligence = light of truth = light and truth = Spirit of truth = spirit matter.

Intelligence (spirit matter) was organized into individual spirit beings. Only then did we exist as individual entities.


From Bruce R. McConkie:
Abraham used the name intelligences to apply to the spirit children of the Eternal Father. The intelligence or spirit element became intelligences after the spirits were born as individual entities (see Mormon Doctrine, p. 387).

Another set of verses in D&C explains how spirit beings were created:

D&C 93:30-31
All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence. Behold, here is the agency of man…

In other words, God placed truth and intelligence (spirit matter) in a sphere in order for that truth and intelligence to become independent, to have agency, to act for itself, to become a spirit being. Otherwise, there would have been no existence: there would have been no individual identity or consciousness.

Before we were created as spirit beings, we were not individual entities. We existed as intelligence (light and truth). There are no such thing as intelligences, except to mean spirit beings that were organized out of intelligence, as Abraham spoke about.

Okay, let's say hypothetically, that intelligences exist before being put into a spirit body. This means that right now, beyond the farthest reaches of the universe, there are trillions of intelligence energy blobs floating in outer space, waiting for us to progress and become a god so we can create spirit bodies for them. "C'mon, someone out there!" they're saying, "I've been using my energy force to seek you out for a quadrillion years now... This is getting rather old. It'd be nice if you'd hurry up and create a spirit body for me so I can do something."

Not a chance.

But what about all those writings by Cleon Skousen? He postulated that everything (including each separate molecule) has an intelligence. Therefore, when Jesus said, "Peace, be still," the molecules chose to obey him, and the wind and the sea became calm. And when prophets use priesthood power, the individual molecule intelligences each choose to respond in accordance with the Lord's will because of their respect for Jesus.

Such a philosophy assumes that each molecule has the ability to act for itself. Such is not the case. We learn from scripture that molecules do not move themselves from imagined agency; they are moved (acted upon) by priesthood power:

2 Nephi 2:14
...for there is a God, and he hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon.

If each molecule had its own intelligence and therefore decided to act for itself in response to priesthood power, then the previous verse wouldn't make sense. All things would act, and nothing would be acted upon...

http://www.survivali...ad.php?t=142054

Does it make any sense to any of you?

[BCSpace]

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But D&C 93:29 says that "Man was also in the beginning with God."

The beginning of what?  The beginning of the creation of the earth makes sense and does not have us existing as such when God was a mortal man.

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D&C 93:29 . How Is the Word Intelligence Used?


Elder John A. Widtsoe noted that “ intelligence as used by Latter-day Saints has two chief meanings. . . . First, a man who gathers knowledge and uses it in harmony with the plan of salvation is intelligent. He has intelligence. . . . Second, the word when preceded by the article an, or used in the plural as intelligences, means a person, or persons, usually in the spiritual estate. Just as we speak of a person or persons, we speak of an intelligence, or intelligences. ” ( Evidences and Reconciliations, 3:74; see also Abraham 3:22–23 .)

We know very little about the concept of intelligence. President Joseph Fielding Smith said: “Some of our writers have endeavored to explain what an intelligence is, but to do so is futile, for we have never been given any insight into this matter beyond what the Lord has fragmentarily revealed. We know, however, that there is something called intelligence which always existed. It is the real eternal part of man, which was not created or made. This intelligence combined with the spirit constitutes a spiritual identity or individual.” ( Progress of Man, p. 11.)

http://institute.lds...c-in-091-93.asp

[inquiringmind]

BCSpace, on 26 April 2012 - 09:22 PM, said:

The beginning of what?  The beginning of the creation of the earth makes sense and does not have us existing as such when God was a mortal man.

Thank you.

[splendidsun]

Joseph Smith taught that spirits were never created or made (Abraham 3; KFD; various other sermons).  After his death several church leaders began to teach that spirits were created by a sexual union of exalted beings from spirit matter.  BH Roberts at the end of the 19th century was reading JS and seeing the tension invented the tripartite model, where sensient beings called "intelligences" or "intelligencies" recieved a spirit body before mortality by some sort of spirit birth.  Most general authorities disregarded his ideas, but he got some traction with Widtsoe and they were later popularized by Truman Madsen.  See here.

[KevinG]

Me: "what is it about eternal that you don't get?"
Me: "everything".

[mfbukowski]

One possibility is that there are multiple "eternities", or different time lines some of which may overlap and others which don't.

For example, we know that time  (as we know/reckon it at least scientifically) "began" with the Big Bang.   Yet if God existed "before" the BB (since arguably he caused it in some sense) there must have been some context for the concept of "before" and "after"- meaning that in a sense, God must have existed on some sort of time line for there to BE a before and after.

That also works with the King Follette Discourse- if God existed on a world "before" there was time (in this universe) he could have still developed in a temporal sense.

The problem is that the word "eternity" might not always mean "forever" if there are multiple eternities.

All this is of course speculation but it is one way of at least solving the problem intellectually.   We know that the scrips say that "worlds without number have I made" and we presume that they are all within our time reference, but there may be more before this particular big bang and more afterwards.

I actually knew the guy who made the movie the "Land Before Time" (who was LDS) and think this is the way he resolved in his mind the problem of "no death before the fall"- that the dinosaurs existed before time in a human sense existed because there were no humans to reckon time yet.

One might argue that the "Theory of Relativity" did not exist before Einstein- because he invented the theory.   Yes, we have data some of which confirms it- but who invented the theory?   Is it the full picture of "reality"?   Well no, because it is incomplete.   But it IS the best tool we have to explain the data.

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Is Don Bluth no longer LDS? (Land Before Time was one of my favorite movies as a kid -- now I watch it and think the references to the Great Valley and the Treestar are totally references to the exodus to Utah and Lehi's Tree of Life dream. *grin*)



As far as the actual topic of this thread, I agree with a post Orson Scott Card wrote about the subject on his website some years back:

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Some of the doctrines [in McConkie's book [i]Mormon Doctrine[/i]] are flat-out false, and many are in the realm of "folk doctrine."

A crucial example: McConkie defines "intelligences" (primordial pre-spiritual beings) in such a way as to remove all individuality from them - a raw material, NOT individuals co-eternal with God. Now, this may seem harmlessly weird, but it radically undoes some of the most crucial aspects of Mormon theology. It is precisely that uncreated aspect of individual existence that eliminates the freedom/responsibility problem: if ANYTHING created you, then you are not ultimately responsible for the choices you make. Including if God made you out of the primordial soup of intelligence. It is only if your "chooser" is uncreated that your choices represent your actual free will. (The problem of freedom is much more complicated, of course; but this is the core of it.) And McConkie wipes it out with a stroke. Why? Hard to fathom. He has no justification for it in scripture. It's probably Orson Pratt's continuing influence: He had weird ideas (weird enough that Brigham Young had to slap him down a bit from time to time), but he passed them on to Joseph F. Smith, who passed them on to Joseph Fielding, who passed them on to his son-in-law Bruce R. McConkie. Sort of a family heritage thing. It was also a family tradition to speak authoritatively without authority. Interestingly, NONE of them made the same blanket statements AFTER becoming President of the Church (which McConkie never was, of course, nor Pratt; I speak of the JFS's). And even McConkie toned down a lot after becoming an apostle.

The fact is that when MD came out, it absolutely outraged David O McKay and many on the 12; but Bruce R. McConkie, then one of the Seven Presidents of Seventy, was under the "protection" of Joseph Fielding Smith, who was president of the Quorum of the 12. There was outrage, but a higher priority was put on "salvaging" his effectiveness as a General Authority; so the book remained in print and was never publicly repudiated, though Mark E. Petersen reputedly found many dozens of outright doctrinal errors, and some aspects of the book were in fact revised for later editions.

This is NOT to say anything against BRM as a man or as a general authority. In fact he was one of the more humble and reasonable of the apostles, and in 1978 was the one who said what no one else that high up dared to say: "We were wrong" [who said various folkloric things about the relationship between the priesthood and people of black African ancestry]. It needed saying; he's the one who said it.

The nice thing is that the actual core of Mormon doctrines is much smaller than McConkie's thick, well-padded book would imply. The doctrines that are officially taught in the church are plain and simple. People are free to guess, speculate, extrapolate, and research to their hearts' content - but when I worked on the Ensign, the things we actually taught with official standing were surprisingly right-down-the-middle. Mormons may love to go off on weird doctrinal tangents, but the official church does not.

Edited by JeremyOrbe-Smith, 27 April 2012 - 05:47 PM.

[tana]

As I've stated in the past, there seems to be paradoxes with this intelligence realm, namely, how do entities interact with their environment? Are they nested in a vehicle/body? If so, who created it and why would they later need a spirit body...and then a physical body?

If an entity/intelligence is separate from the oneness, isolated into it's own personal sphere, it is isolated into its own mind. It is only aware of the picture its mind creates from sensory input. It is not in direct contact with the objective realm outside of itself. This sets up the eternal digress of the "little man in the head" perusing the screen of its host.

The only way I see this to be overcome is for there to be one collective consciousness

[mfbukowski]

tana, on 27 April 2012 - 05:56 PM, said:

As I've stated in the past, there seems to be paradoxes with this intelligence realm, namely, how do entities interact with their environment? Are they nested in a vehicle/body? If so, who created it and why would they later need a spirit body...and then a physical body?

If an entity/intelligence is separate from the oneness, isolated into it's own personal sphere, it is isolated into its own mind. It is only aware of the picture its mind creates from sensory input. It is not in direct contact with the objective realm outside of itself. This sets up the eternal digress of the "little man in the head" perusing the screen of its host.

The only way I see this to be overcome is for there to be one collective consciousness

Nah.   I certainly have never experienced that.   I have experienced feeling a "part of all" but it was ME who was a "part" of all.  

I don't think it is possible to totally erase the ego.   I know I will get an argument- but at least in earth life survival itself implies ME opposed to the environment, not total unity with anything.   Something to be worked toward- yes.   We are commanded to be one flesh with our wives- and I think that happens for periods of time, but that it perhaps cannot be sustained with two separate bodies.   People die, and we are alone again.  It is a fact of life.

Besides, my wife and I definitely do not have the same consciousness.


Edit:  I have only good things to say about the McConkies.   Great human beings.

Edited by mfbukowski, 27 April 2012 - 06:16 PM.

[mfbukowski]

JeremyOrbe-Smith, on 27 April 2012 - 05:45 PM, said:

Is Don Bluth no longer LDS?

I didn't mean to imply he was not- but actually I have no idea if he is or not.   I was his home teacher for a brief period when he lived in the LA area (Culver City to be exact)

I used the past tense because my experience of his being LDS was in MY past- not necessarily his.   I once taught an elder's quorum class on this very topic and have always wondered if the movie title was somehow linked to that discussion.

Of course I will take full credit for it if you let me get away with that nonsense!  

[inquiringmind]

mfbukowski, on 27 April 2012 - 04:29 PM, said:

One possibility is that there are multiple "eternities", or different time lines some of which may overlap and others which don't.

For example, we know that time  (as we know/reckon it at least scientifically) "began" with the Big Bang.   Yet if God existed "before" the BB (since arguably he caused it in some sense) there must have been some context for the concept of "before" and "after"- meaning that in a sense, God must have existed on some sort of time line for there to BE a before and after.

That also works with the King Follette Discourse- if God existed on a world "before" there was time (in this universe) he could have still developed in a temporal sense.

The problem is that the word "eternity" might not always mean "forever" if there are multiple eternities...

Thank you.

I've often wondered why LDS use the term "eternities."

Edited by inquiringmind, 27 April 2012 - 06:15 PM.

[mfbukowski]

inquiringmind, on 27 April 2012 - 06:13 PM, said:

Thank you.

I've often wondered why LDS use the term "eternities."

Yeah, when you think about it, this is one of the big problems with ex nihilo creation.   God had to be floating around sometime "before" he created time.  It's contradictory- but this explanation solves it, imo.

[inquiringmind]

I don't see how the idea that God created time and space would imply that God was floating around in space for some "time" before the big bang, but I did find this interesting.

Truly Jesus Christ created the worlds, and is Lord of Lords, and as the Psalmist said: “Judges among the Gods.” . . . [he is] the Son of the Living God, meaning our Father in heaven . . . and who with Jesus Christ, his first begotten son, and the Holy Ghost, are one in power, one in dominion, and one in glory, constituting the First Presidency of this system, and this eternity. . . (“The Living God,” 6:809, emphasis added; quoted in Taylor 76).

As I said, I've always been interested in what's meant by "eternities," and this suggests that the plural does mean something.

Edited by inquiringmind, 27 April 2012 - 06:57 PM.

[mfbukowski]

inquiringmind, on 27 April 2012 - 06:46 PM, said:

I don't see how the idea that God created time and space would imply that God was floating around in space for some "time" before the big bang, but I did find this interesting.

Well, surely he existed "before" he created the world AND time?   How do you resolve that?   We cannot speak or about it without using the concept of "before" unless it is just another "mystery" to be avoided.

All first cause arguments rely on God being a "cause"- and causes "precede" effects- don't they?

[inquiringmind]

mfbukowski, on 27 April 2012 - 07:03 PM, said:

...causes "precede" effects- don't they?

If you asked C.S. Lewis, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine,  or Aristotle, they would say "no, not always."

But I'm more interested in what terms like "eternities," and "this eternity" mean.

What did you think of that quote from John Taylor?

BTW: I know it says that intelligence, Light, and Truth "are not created, neither can be," and I know it says the elements are eternal (whatever that means), but do the standard works ever say that "element," or "the elements" can't be created?

Are the words "uncreated," "without beginning," or "are not created, neither can be," ever used of "elements"?

Edited by inquiringmind, 27 April 2012 - 07:27 PM.

[tana]

mfbukowski, on 27 April 2012 - 06:04 PM, said:

Nah.   I certainly have never experienced that.   I have experienced feeling a "part of all" but it was ME who was a "part" of all.  

I don't think it is possible to totally erase the ego.   I know I will get an argument- but at least in earth life survival itself implies ME opposed to the environment, not total unity with anything.   Something to be worked toward- yes.   We are commanded to be one flesh with our wives- and I think that happens for periods of time, but that it perhaps cannot be sustained with two separate bodies.   People die, and we are alone again.  It is a fact of life.

Besides, my wife and I definitely do not have the same consciousness.


Edit:  I have only good things to say about the McConkies.   Great human beings.

I agree.....since I happen to be a "Mc" meself.

Well, since egos exist now, it stands to reason that they have always existed. But, are egos the entity, or just the entities projection? Egos are fluid and change with the times....with acquired knowledge. There must be a core awareness that does not change, is not dependent on the information. It can have no biases or identity. I believe logic, threads of reasoning - and understanding/awareness, are two different things. There is a thinker, and a listener/understander. If one makes the listener a thinker.....you'll need another listener to understand.

Universal awareness/God, divides up into entities/egos.....and does this for as long as it desires. But eventually, one will tire of of the endless cycle of chasing physical stimuli, and the loneliness of separation.....and will gladly abandon the illusory sense of self.

The 'little man in the head' paradox makes this the only option I see available.

Edited by tana, 27 April 2012 - 07:23 PM.

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Ah, thanx for the clarification, mf -- was preparing to be rather saddened!

Back to the thread topic:

Young's Literal Translation of the Bible has "eternity" as "age" or "age-enduring", which I think is more appropriate. If God exists as an exalted Man like ourselves -- an immortal primate of flesh and bones! -- in a causal universe of any kind, then he cannot have "created" time itself from nothing. Joseph Smith explicitly said in the King Follett Discourse that God did not have power to create Himself or any other Intelligence, nor the elements, as testified in the D&C. He's a wise Intelligence, but He's not the omniscient, omnipresent contradiction of the Creeds.

Such words are not found anywhere in the scriptures at all, anyway; neither is the idea that God created the entire universe. If Heaven is a physical place, God can create it like we can create a city (I cross the St. John's bridge at night and see downtown Portland, and all the glass buildings and neon lights and tv screens certainly look "like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future"), and He can be the Governor, but He's not creating it from ex nihilo scratch, he's irrigating it and Gardening it. (Not to be irreverent, but it's not good to be so reverent that we idealize God into a magical superman who can do absolutely anything. He can do all things that are possible. That "the things which are impossible with men are possible with God" shouldn't give us license to get completely crazy. *grin*)

What God could have Created was a Calendar (ie, "time", at least measured time) instituted at the Foundation of this world, ie, not the foundation when the worlds came rolling into existence, but rather that founding time whenever premortal Intelligences were placed here and this world was colonized. You can measure things out and create a calendar of world-ages (see Hamlet's Mill), and we can still believe in the big bang, etc. The reckoning of God’s time, angel’s time, prophet’s time, and man’s time, are all according to the planet on which they reside. God can exist before any Age He Created by instituting a Calendar; He, like all other Intelligences, is Eternal, and exists from Age to Age, from Eternity to Eternity.

Eternity: late 14th century, from Old French eternité (12th century), from Latin aeternitatem, from aeternus (see eternal).

Eternal: late 14th century, from Old French eternel or directly from Late Latin aeternalis, from Latin aeternus "of an age, lasting, enduring, permanent, endless," contraction of aeviternus "of great age," from aevum "age" (see eon).

Eon: 1640s, from Latin aeon, from Greek aion, "age, vital force, lifetime," from Proto-Indo-European root *aiw- "vital force, life, long life, eternity" (cf. Sanskrit ayu "life," Avestan ayu "age," Latin aevum "space of time, eternity," Gothic aiws "age, eternity," Old Norse ævi "lifetime," German ewig "everlasting," Old English a "ever, always").

Aeon: 1640s, from Latin aeon, from Greek aion "a period of existence, lifetime; age, generation;" in plural, "eternity."

Age: late 13th century, "long but indefinite period in human history," from Old French aage (11th century, Modern French âge) "age; life, lifetime, lifespan; maturity," earlier edage, from Vulgar Latin *aetaticum (cf. Spanish edad, Italian eta, Portuguese idade "age"), from Latin aetatem, "period of life, age, lifetime, years," from aevum "lifetime, eternity, age," from Proto-Indo-European root *aiw- "vital force, life, long life, eternity" (see eon). Meaning "time something has lived, particular length or stage of life" is from early 14th century.

Edited by JeremyOrbe-Smith, 27 April 2012 - 07:39 PM.

[inquiringmind]

Quote

Universal awareness/God, divides up into entities/egos.....and does this for as long as it desires

I think the Pratt brothers said that Joseph had taught them something like that, and it makes some sense to me.

Quote

But eventually, one will tire of of the endless cycle of chasing physical stimuli, and the loneliness of separation.....and will gladly abandon the illusory sense of self.

Unless there's value to existence, and God (The Universal Awareness) is love, and wants to eternally share His existence with other entities in a community of love.

Then you might have something like resurrection, exaltation, and the survival of individual personal identities for eternities without end..

Edited by inquiringmind, 27 April 2012 - 07:40 PM.