Bishop's letter 2003

[TAO]

Also the Godhead as taught by the Church today was not understood in full till AFTER 1842. In 1843, Joseph Smith gave an address at the funeral of his friend King Follett; in which he taught FOR THE FIRST TIME

Moroni 9:26 disagrees.

[Questing Beast]

...

I'm a little confussed here.

What are the implications of Joseph receiving his first vision in 1824, instead of 1820?

What difference does it make?

In brief: the whole chronology of the events leading up to 1830 - the organization of the LDS Church - do not work if the 1820 date for the first vision is not correct. This raises further questions about Joseph Smith's reliability and possibly even his integrity.

He appears to have conflated his purpose in inquiring of the Lord: earlier accounts only mention a need to have his standing confirmed, i.e. his sins forgiven. From 1838, the accounts bring in an emphasis on his inquiring which church if any to join; and his being told that other churches were corrupt and their creeds abominable to the Lord; the resulting message is that from his first prayer, Joseph was called to be the prophet of the restoration. This changed emphasis was in response to the attacks on his authority by apostates, which included many of his closest friends and associates. They needed to be put in their place. Joseph Smith was the ONLY prophet of the church. Before, he had shared his visionary status with others like Oliver Cowdery. After the Kirtland apostasy of 1837-38, the status of Joseph Smith as THE prophet was established. And the revised personal history (the JS History as it now reads) was the tool by which his unique calling as the prophet was set down from the beginning. The trouble is, in important details (chronology, purpose for calling on the Lord, the nature of the Godhead) the final version of the first vision does not harmonize with any of the earlier accounts; especially it does not agree with the only account written by Joseph Smith in his own handwriting, the 1832 version....

[Questing Beast]

Also the Godhead as taught by the Church today was not understood in full till AFTER 1842. In 1843, Joseph Smith gave an address at the funeral of his friend King Follett; in which he taught FOR THE FIRST TIME

Moroni 9:26 disagrees.

Typical, trinity concept: Stephen as he dies says much the same thing as he sees the Godhead in vision. Paul uses almost the exact wording as Mormon here. You are interpreting this verse as a modern Mormon, not as an c. 1830 reader of the BofM would understand it. The Lectures on Faith (1835) are the first instance of Joseph Smith's Godhead being positively TWO distinctly separate beings; and even then the Father is a being of spirit; only the Son is a tangible, physical being....

[TAO]

Typical, trinity concept: Stephen as he dies says much the same thing as he sees the Godhead in vision. Paul uses almost the exact wording as Mormon here. You are interpreting this verse as a modern Mormon, not as an c. 1830 reader of the BofM would understand it. The Lectures on Faith (1835) are the first instance of Joseph Smith's Godhead being positively TWO distinctly separate beings; and even then the Father is a being of spirit; only the Son is a tangible, physical being....

Read it again:

And may the grace of God the Father, whose throne is high in the heavens, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who sitteth on the ^aright hand of his power, until all things shall become subject unto him, be, and abide with you forever. Amen.

Bolding and Underlining by me.

Its' not a very Trinitarian concept, Jesus growing to be as the Father, with not all things subject to him originally.

As for LoF, as I pointed out, I am not sure if JS knew Father had a body at the time. Revelation doesn't come all at once, after all.

[Jeff K.]

I agreed that the printing press ended the RCC's control base. You seem to dismiss the "almost exponential" capacity of the Internet to provide the WORLD'S populations with historical facts that the LDS leaders want to ignore or forbid study of. THAT difference is the one that McCue points out as "the crossroads" that the Church is at (and possibly the tipping point has already occurred, since the Church has not altered one iota of policy vis-a-vis "faith-promoting history" in the eight years since McCue's exchanged letters with Holland)....

Relative to the perior prior to the printing press I dare say the changes were greater than when the internet developed. L

ike the printing press the internet provides a means of transmitting information that was more difficult to acquire prior to its development, but the information is no more accurate than the sources one has available. In case you didn't know, not everything on the internet is true. And THAT is a DISTINCTION you seem to overlook.

The church is at no more a "crossroads" today than it was fifty years ago.

[Palerider]

Read it again:

Its' not a very Trinitarian concept, Jesus growing to be as the Father, with not all things subject to him originally.

As for LoF, as I pointed out, I am not sure if JS knew Father had a body at the time. Revelation doesn't come all at once, after all.

I think the doctrine of the Godhead evolved in the LDS church, but the way the history is portrayed is somewhat "misleading".

Teachings of Presidents of the Church 2007

Joseph Smith:

[TAO]

I think the doctrine of the Godhead evolved in the LDS church, but the way the history is portrayed is somewhat "misleading".

Agreed, sometimes it is. But that doesn't make it incorrect.

Teachings of Presidents of the Church 2007

Joseph Smith:

[Hamba Tuhan]

My PROBLEM isn't the existence of inconsistency: it's the blatant use of partial history put forward as "the truth".

ALL history, by its very nature, is partial. It's an unavoidable reality. As Jos

[Deborah]

I think the doctrine of the Godhead evolved in the LDS church, but the way the history is portrayed is somewhat "misleading".

I wouldn't even argue that Joseph's understanding evolved, but how is it misleading if the church teaches the final and correct understanding? Joseph was given information step by step and as each piece was added his understanding grew.

Isaiah 28 says:

9 Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts.

10 For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little:

Isaiah seems to say in later verses that men will fall away and therefore he gives them a little at a time, but to those who take his words and understand them he will give more as they prove faithful.

[Palerider]

Agreed, sometimes it is. But that doesn't make it incorrect.

Yep, both fine.

First... you mean Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, and Fredrick G. Williams.

Second ... your quote above... he is saying he always declared God to be a separate person from Jesus... even in the LoF he did so.

Third... in the next quote, GBH is talking of God's having a body of tabernacle... not about whether or not Joseph viewed them at the time as having such

Fourth... the LoF wasn't received as revelation. I belive J.F.S. had something to say as it being incomplete in it's portrayal or something like that.

But yes... I think they don't portray it exactly correctly... but neither do the critics. Both sides are at fault here.

First... you mean Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, and Fredrick G. Williams.

Joseph signed off as author of the book. He could have easily corrected any misconceptions, therefore he must take ownership of the teachings.

Second ... your quote above... he is saying he always declared God to be a separate person from Jesus... even in the LoF he did so.

However he is stating that he always taught that there were THREE distinct individuals, which the LoF definitely is in conflict with. LoF places the Holy Ghost as simply the "mind of the Lord", not a personage of Spirit.

Third... in the next quote, GBH is talking of God's having a body of tabernacle... not about whether or not Joseph viewed them at the time as having such.

Hinckley states: it is "out of that experience has come our unique and true understanding of the nature of Deity.

[TAO]

Joseph signed off as author of the book. He could have easily corrected any misconceptions, therefore he must take ownership of the teachings.

Okay.

Second ... your quote above... he is saying he always declared God to be a separate person from Jesus... even in the LoF he did so.

However he is stating that he always taught that there were THREE distinct individuals, which the LoF definitely is in conflict with. LoF places the Holy Ghost as simply the "mind of the Lord", not a personage of Spirit.

You need to read the other parts of the LoF more carefully. He never says whether it is a personage or not. He mentions it as a mind, but he does not say anything concerning it's personage.

Hinckley states: it is "out of that experience has come our unique and true understanding of the nature of Deity.

[Palerider]

Okay.

Second ... your quote above... he is saying he always declared God to be a separate person from Jesus... even in the LoF he did so.

You need to read the other parts of the LoF more carefully. He never says whether it is a personage or not. He mentions it as a mind, but he does not say anything concerning it's personage.

That HF and JC were separate... yes, that comes out of it. I don't see what is wrong with his statement.

I agree that he did not know the Father had a spirit - however I disagree that he thought the Spirit was not a personage - rather he says nothing according to the subject.

I disagree...............

Q. How many personages are there in the Godhead?

A. Two: the Father and the Son (Lecture 5:1).

1. Q. Do the Father and the Son possess the same mind?
   A. a. They do. John 5:30, "I [Christ] can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me."
   b. John 6:38, "For I [Christ] came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me."
   c. John 10:30, "I [Christ] and my Father are one."
   

2. Q. What is this mind?

A. a. The Holy Spirit. John 15:26, "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me [Christ]."

I even think the concept being taught of "The Mind" disagrees and is in conflict with the Scripture they are using to support it. "he shall testify of me."

[TAO]

I disagree...............

Q. How many personages are there in the Godhead?

A. Two: the Father and the Son (Lecture 5:1).

1. Q. Do the Father and the Son possess the same mind?
   A. a. They do. John 5:30, "I [Christ] can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me."
   b. John 6:38, "For I [Christ] came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me."
   c. John 10:30, "I [Christ] and my Father are one."
   

2. Q. What is this mind?

A. a. The Holy Spirit. John 15:26, "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me [Christ]."

I even think the concept being taught of "The Mind" disagrees and is in conflict with the Scripture they are using to support it. "he shall testify of me."

Again, this does not say anything about whether or not the Holy Ghost is a personage.

[Questing Beast]

Read it again:

Its' not a very Trinitarian concept, Jesus growing to be as the Father, with not all things subject to him originally.

As for LoF, as I pointed out, I am not sure if JS knew Father had a body at the time. Revelation doesn't come all at once, after all.

Depends on which form of the Trinity that you adhere to I suppose. The reason why there are thousands of Christian denominations is because of disagreement. Mormonism is just one not-so-big fish in the barrel. The BofM fits trinitarianism, except when it doesn't fit very well, like your quoted verse. Earlier the teaching of Abinadi is not very in harmony with what Mormon has to say, is it? But Abinadi's theology is in harmony with Trinity doctrine.

The Church's missionaries teach every investigator that what Joseph Smith learned from the first vision is that God and Jesus have bodies and are individual beings. In fact, Joseph Smith knew no such thing until at least 1834, and even then, it was only Jesus who had a corporeal body; the Father remained a Spirit. It is the evolution of a radically altering theology that we see, not "line up line" revelation. The last theology cannot be harmonized with the middle one or the first as shown in the BofM (which is inconsistent anyway).

Mind you, I don't have a problem with this personally anymore: "my" theology doesn't assert knowledge where facts do not exist. But Mormonism DOES assert absolute knowledge, and further that it came even as early as the first vision. This is conflation of the history (and ignoring of the disharmonious facts) for the purpose of clarity. "Faithful history" in the making....

[TAO]

Depends on which form of the Trinity that you adhere to I suppose. The reason why there are thousands of Christian denominations is because of disagreement. Mormonism is just one not-so-big fish in the barrel. The BofM fits trinitarianism, except when it doesn't fit very well, like your quoted verse.

True true.

Earlier the teaching of Abinadi is not very in harmony with what Mormon has to say, is it? But Abinadi's theology is in harmony with Trinity doctrine.

Mmm... I have found that Abinadi's can fit in... but it takes a bit of reading around the context and careful study. It's difficult, but it's possible. In any case, it

The Church's missionaries teach every investigator that what Joseph Smith learned from the first vision is that God and Jesus have bodies and are individual beings. In fact, Joseph Smith knew no such thing until at least 1834, and even then, it was only Jesus who had a corporeal body; the Father remained a Spirit. It is the evolution of a radically altering theology that we see, not "line up line" revelation. The last theology cannot be harmonized with the middle one or the first as shown in the BofM (which is inconsistent anyway).

I disagree - just because he did not mention it in the other versions of the first vision doesn't mean Father wasn't necessarily there. Although I will agree he did not know Father had a corporeal body at the time.

Mind you, I don't have a problem with this personally anymore: "my" theology doesn't assert knowledge where facts do not exist. But Mormonism DOES assert absolute knowledge, and further that it came even as early as the first vision. This is conflation of the history (and ignoring of the disharmonious facts) for the purpose of clarity. "Faithful history" in the making....

I think the missionaries are just simplifying things for the sake of ease for the converts, tbh.

[Questing Beast]

... In case you didn't know, not everything on the internet is true. And THAT is a DISTINCTION you seem to overlook.

The church is at no more a "crossroads" today than it was fifty years ago.

Oh shock! Before the Internet not everything you could read was true. I didn't know that!

Look, the sources on the Net can be checked for accuracy and origin. Have I posted anything that you find bogus vis-a-vis the sources? Is McCue a victim of bad sources? Palmer? Are their sources' sources bogus?

Somehow the Internet is less worthwhile than good old books? Just where does the Internet derive its source material? From books, libraries of them.

The point you dismiss is the rapidity and copious availability that the Internet provides. The swifter the network of computer access spreads around the planet, the slower Church growth via converts will become. That was one of McCue's observations. I see no reason to dispute it: IF learning the more full history is enough to cause investigators to decide "no thank you". That would be enough to stop my consideration. But perhaps other cultures could care less about historical anything; perhaps they just like the story, the solidity of the interwoven doctrines, the cosmology and theology, the family-centered ethic, and, the American basis of it all....

[Questing Beast]

ALL history, by its very nature, is partial. It's an unavoidable reality.

You are dissembling with the subject here. Which is: that the Church deliberately ignores, dismisses or otherwise dispenses with everything that is KNOWN that does not fit the paradigm of "faithful history". It picks and chooses (with everything defined by the phrase "malice aforethought") its history sources, even the same sources selectively. This is dishonest.

As Jos

[Palerider]

Again, this does not say anything about whether or not the Holy Ghost is a personage.

Sorry, I believe it does. Joseph has limited the number of personages in the Godhead by stating there are only "two". The "mind" is definitely not referred to as a personage.

[TAO]

Sorry, I believe it does. Joseph has limited the number of personages in the Godhead by stating there are only "two". The "mind" is definitely not referred to as a pesonage.

Ah, the two bit. Okay.

[Questing Beast]

Lecture Five states: "And he being the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, and having overcome, received a fulness of the glory of the Father - possessing the same mind with the Father, which mind is the Holy Spirit, that bears record of the Father and the Son, and these three are one, or in other words, these three constitute the great, matchless, governing and supreme power over all things: by whom all things were created and made, that were created and made: and these three constitute the Godhead and are one: the Father and the Son possessing the same mind, the same wisdom, glory, power and fulness: Filling all in all - the Son being filled with the fulness of the Mind, glory and power, or, in other words, the Spirit, glory and power of the Father - possessing all knowledge and glory, and the same kingdom: sitting at the right hand of power, in the express image and likeness of the Father - a Mediator for men - being filled with the fulness of the Mind of the Father, or, in other words the Spirit of the Father: which Spirit is shed forth upon all who believe on his name and keep his commandments: ...

"As the Son partakes of the fulness of the Father through the Spirit, so the saints are, by the same Spirit, to be partakers of the same fulness, to enjoy the same glory; for as the Father and the Son are one, so in like manner the saints are to be one in them, ... "

At the end of the lecture is the question and answer part. And it says: "Q. How many personages are there in the Godhead? A.Two: the Father and the Son. ... Q. Do the Father and the Son possess the same mind? A. They do... Q. What is this mind? A. The Holy Spirit... Q. Do the Father, Son and Holy Spirit constitute the Godhead? A. They do."

Joseph Smith couldn't even add one plus one! If I had been sitting in on the lectures I would have been thoroughly confused on this one point alone. It makes no consistent sense.

The reason why the Holy Spirit is not mentioned as a distinct personage isn't because he's not addressed here: it's because you cannot address a personage who does not exist in the doctrine. Joseph Smith was not being accurate (I won't say he lied) when he later said that he had "always taught" that there are three distinct personages in the Godhead. He did not always teach it. Nor did he always believe/understand it.

By asserting that the Holy Spirit is part of an "always taught" Godhead of three distinct personages, we must assume that the "Godhead" is actually limitless, because the Saints are to be included - "...for as the Father and the Son are one, so in like manner the saints are to be one in them". If there is an infinite "Godhead" inclusive of all the faithful, then the discussion of the Holy Spirit being a third member of the "Godhead" as "always taught" is redundant. There is no such thing as a "Godhead" of three distinct beings if the Holy Spirit is merely the mind of the Father and Son which is the same mind of "God": and the conclusion is that ALL of us are equally and merely part of the mind of "God". But Lecture Five hardly arrives at THAT conclusion, does it now?

Regardless, the Lectures on Faith (originally called Lectures of Faith, until it was later changed to "on") hardly resonate with the exegesis of the LDS Church today, do they? And yet they were not dropped from the "canon" of the "Standard Works" until 1921 (without a "vote" from the body of membership)....

[Palerider]

Ah, the two bit. Okay.

Now if I could just learn how to spell..............

[Hamba Tuhan]

Palmer did not create yet another fallacious and deliberately incomplete (misleading) interpretation.

Deliberately incomplete? Indeed, he did. See below.

And what you are defending is the Church's "faithful history", when you know good and well that it is based on deliberate winnowing away of any controversial facts - often from the SAME sources that the Church employs in its construct.

All history production, since textual sources inevitably include inconsistencies (the ones I work with are loaded with them!), requires a deliberate sorting through, sifting, and then winnowing away of inconsistencies. How exactly a historian does this depends upon his/her chosen interpretive frameworks and, since methodological consistency is an ideal only, her/his personal biases. This process when engaged in by faithful historians is 'controversial' to you only because you've chosen to give your allegiance to a narrative structure which, because of its competing interpretive frameworks and alternate biases, has winnowed away its own--and nearly opposite, in many cases--set of inconsistences. These choices, by the way, appear controversial to me.

Hold on there: "faithless history" implies a deliberate agenda to disbelieve.

Bingo!

I see no evidence of that in Palmer, McCue, my brother, myself...AT ALL.

Of course you don't. And therein lies the problem.

But Palmer's winnowing of the 'facts' reveals his agenda clearly nonetheless.

(By the way, you keep calling textual sources 'facts.' That's not accurate. Textual sources provide us with data, but data do not speak for themselves. They require the overlay of an interpretative framework (which, when more consistent in its approach, could be called a methodology), which then generates an interpretation. The only 'facts' in such an enquiry is that a certain statement was committed to paper at some point. For example, we can reasonably accept as fact that someone wrote Joseph's Smiths 1832 account of his own history, and it seems reasonable to conclude as well that, since it appears to be in his own hand, the Prophet himself wrote it and, because of other evidence, it actually was produced in 1832. Nothing he may have written in that history can be treated as an established fact, however. Hence my use of inverted commas above.)

And that Palmer has engaged in the very cherry picking which you claim to detest is demonstrable, as I asserted above. A good introduction to this issue can be found in Steven C Harper's review of Palmer's book.

Again, a couple of excerpts for the lazy:

In his chapter on priesthood restoration (pp. 215

[Jeff K.]

Oh shock! Before the Internet not everything you could read was true. I didn't know that!

Look, the sources on the Net can be checked for accuracy and origin. Have I posted anything that you find bogus vis-a-vis the sources? Is McCue a victim of bad sources? Palmer? Are their sources' sources bogus?

Somehow the Internet is less worthwhile than good old books? Just where does the Internet derive its source material? From books, libraries of them.

The point you dismiss is the rapidity and copious availability that the Internet provides. The swifter the network of computer access spreads around the planet, the slower Church growth via converts will become. That was one of McCue's observations. I see no reason to dispute it: IF learning the more full history is enough to cause investigators to decide "no thank you". That would be enough to stop my consideration. But perhaps other cultures could care less about historical anything; perhaps they just like the story, the solidity of the interwoven doctrines, the cosmology and theology, the family-centered ethic, and, the American basis of it all....

No, sources cannot be checked out all the time. Like books, some can and some cannot. The medium change has not increased or deterred accuaracy, anymore than the printing press did.

I do not say the internet is more or less worthwhile than old books.

You presume speed somehow increases accuracy, it does not. Indeed the number of internet rumors out there and the presistence of conspiracy theorists regarding everything from Kennedy to the twin towers shows to even that venerated flat earth society that dismissal through the internet simply will not occur as readily as you seem to think. Speed does not equal accuracy.

As to coversions. I know of no system in which maintains a steady growth rate, indeed most seem to plateau and then increase. Even our cosmology isn't in a steady state. So the idea that we must maintained a steady state or else something is wrong, tends to go against the natural progress that exists.

[Hamba Tuhan]

Pursuant to my above posts, I thought it might helpful to re-address the issue of interpretative frameworks a bit. One way of looking at this issue is to utilise a mathematical metaphor: f(x), where x = the data gleaned from historical documents and f = the interpretative framework(s) a historian brings to bear on those data. In this case, the function of x results in a specific historical interpretation.

In the case at hand, a (necessarily limited) set of data x might look like this:

[*]In the 16 November 1830 Painesville [Ohio] Telegraph, an article entitled 'The Golden Bible' records that Oliver Cowdery (misspelt as Cowdray) had been preaching in the vicinity and that a part of his message, mentioned twice in the 237-word article, was that he had 'seen and conversed with Angels.'

[*]In his 1832 history, Joseph Smith himself wrote plainly concerning 'the reception of the holy Priesthood by the ministring of Aangels to adminster the letter of the Gospel

[Hamba Tuhan]

Double post.