What Joseph Smith did NOT learn from the first vision.

[JAHS]

Something I have noticed is that there are many places in church literature that tells us that in the First Vision Joseph Smith learned that God the Father has a body of flesh and bone. I remember being taught that too as I grew up in the church. Here are some examples:

"Joseph Smith Learned Many Things from His Vision
Ask the children what Joseph Smith learned from his vision. Bring out the following points:
Joseph saw Heavenly Father and Jesus. He learned that they have bodies of flesh and bone."
(“Lesson 5: The First Vision,” Primary 3 (1994), 20–23)

"A new truth, a concept not understood by the myriads of people on the earth, burst forth, and in that moment (first vision) there was only one man on the face of the whole earth who knew with absolute assurance that God was a personal being, that the Father and Son were separate individuals with [glorified] bodies of flesh and bones [and that he] had been created in their image. As the Son was in the image of his Father, the Father God was the same kind of image as the Son."
(“Chapter 21: The Prophet Joseph Smith,” Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball (2006), 226–35)

"Another truth we learn because of the First Vision and the Prophet Joseph Smith is the true nature of God. Just imagine how blessed we are to know that God is a being with a body of flesh and bones as tangible as ours," (Essential Truths—Our Need to Act, By Elder Adilson de Paula Parrella, Of the Seventy, Oct 2017)

From Wikipedia:
"According to the LDS Church, the vision teaches that God the Father and Jesus Christ are separate beings with glorified bodies of flesh and bone;"

Joseph Smith already knew Jesus had a resurrected body of flesh and bone based on the following scripture when Jesus appears to His Apostles:
"Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." (Luke 24: 39)

But Joseph Smith could not have known from the first vision alone that God the Father had a body of flesh and bone without having touched Him. 

According to FairMormon
"There is no documentary evidence that indicates exactly when Joseph Smith learned that God the Father had a glorified and perfected body of flesh and bone.
And there is also no indication that Joseph learned any such thing during his 1820 First Vision."

This is one point of confusion that I have heard from other church members and investigators where they have gotten the impression or were directly taught that Joseph learned God the Father has a body of flesh and bone during the first vision when we don't really know for sure when he learned that.  

[clarkgoble]

I think people confuse embodiment with "flesh and bones." It's an understandable conflation but you're right that a lot of sources including in manuals get this wrong. Further the traditional view within Christianity is that immaterial entities like angel can appear as embodied without being essentially embodied.

[Bernard Gui]

16 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I think people confuse embodiment with "flesh and bones." It's an understandable conflation but you're right that a lot of sources including in manuals get this wrong. Further the traditional view within Christianity is that immaterial entities like angel can appear as embodied without being essentially embodied.

Wouldn’t that be deceptive?

 

[hope_for_things]

27 minutes ago, JAHS said:

This is one point of confusion that I have heard from other church members and investigators where they have gotten the impression or were directly taught that Joseph learned God the Father has a body of flesh and bone during the first vision when we don't really know for sure when he learned that.  

The historical evidence about what Joseph thought about God the Father shows a theological evolution of thought.  His earlier conceptions about God were not of a person with a body of flesh and bone.  The lectures on faith written in 1835 show that Joseph at one point thought of God the Father as a personage of Spirit.  The BoM certainly doesn't talk about God having a body of flesh and bone.  The evidence shows that this concept didn't develop until late in the Nauvoo period.  

The way correlated Mormonism explains this topic is to read present theological conceptions back into the historical timeline, but thats not an accurate reflection of how church teachings developed.  

[hope_for_things]

9 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Wouldn’t that be deceptive?

 

Nothing a handshake couldn't remedy.  

[JAHS]

2 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

The historical evidence about what Joseph thought about God the Father shows a theological evolution of thought.  His earlier conceptions about God were not of a person with a body of flesh and bone.  The lectures on faith written in 1835 show that Joseph at one point thought of God the Father as a personage of Spirit.  The BoM certainly doesn't talk about God having a body of flesh and bone.  The evidence shows that this concept didn't develop until late in the Nauvoo period.  

The way correlated Mormonism explains this topic is to read present theological conceptions back into the historical timeline, but thats not an accurate reflection of how church teachings developed.  

The earliest teaching from Joseph of this concept was on 5 January 1841, shortly before the so-called "official" First Vision story was released to the public, Joseph Smith was teaching in Nauvoo: "That which is without body or parts is nothing. There is no other God in heaven but that God who has flesh and bones." (Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of Joseph Smith, 2nd Edition, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1996), 60).

Then of course in 1843 there is the D&C 130: 22 verse:
"The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also;"

We have to assume that sometime before these events that he received revelation that God has a body of flesh and bone. 

[clarkgoble]

24 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Wouldn’t that be deceptive?

No, since they need to adopt form to be encountered. If that's their nature then what's deceptive about it? Particularly in the Aquinas view which sees them a substantial forms. So in the metaphysics of the era it makes sense.

[clarkgoble]

31 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

The historical evidence about what Joseph thought about God the Father shows a theological evolution of thought.  His earlier conceptions about God were not of a person with a body of flesh and bone.  The lectures on faith written in 1835 show that Joseph at one point thought of God the Father as a personage of Spirit.  The BoM certainly doesn't talk about God having a body of flesh and bone.  The evidence shows that this concept didn't develop until late in the Nauvoo period.  

The way correlated Mormonism explains this topic is to read present theological conceptions back into the historical timeline, but thats not an accurate reflection of how church teachings developed.  

I'm not sure the LoF necessarily conveys what Joseph thought. Although I agree with you regarding evolution. That said, I think the Book of Mormon is a tad more complicated than you suggest due to the confusing relationship between Father and Son in the text. After all the text does talk about bodies of spirit and flesh regarding divine beings in Ether 3. I think the text strongly suggests the Father is embodied in some fashion. However it doesn't make the claim regarding the Father explicitly - except to the degree Jesus is father and son. However I'm not sure Joseph really understood quite a few passages in the Book of Mormon. Honestly I think Mosiah 7:27 in particular takes Genesis' "image of God" as implying body.

So to me the bigger issue is the relationship between Father and Son culminating in making them effectively the same in Nauvoo. i.e. even the father is resurrected. 

Edited May 29, 2018 by clarkgoble

[Gray]

Yes, Joseph would not have known from his vision whether or not the father had a body or if he was a spirit.

[hope_for_things]

3 minutes ago, JAHS said:

The earliest teaching from Joseph of this concept was on 5 January 1841, shortly before the so-called "official" First Vision story was released to the public, Joseph Smith was teaching in Nauvoo: "That which is without body or parts is nothing. There is no other God in heaven but that God who has flesh and bones." (Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of Joseph Smith, 2nd Edition, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1996), 60).

Then of course in 1843 there is the D&C 130: 22 verse:
"The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also;"

We have to assume that sometime before these events that he received revelation that God has a body of flesh and bone. 

The 1841 statement is interesting, from the Journal of John Nuttall, and apparently as reported by William Clayton, so that sounds like third hand reporting, William Clayton telling John Nuttall who recorded it in his journal.  Here is a little more of the entire section: 

http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/account-of-meeting-and-discourse-5-january-1841-as-reported-by-william-clayton/5#source-note

Quote

Observations on the Sectarian God.
That which is without body or parts is nothing. There is no other God in heaven but that God who has flesh and bones. John 5— 26, “As the father hath life in himself, even so hath he given the son to have life in himself.” God the father took life unto himself precisely as Jesus did. The first step in the salvation of men is the laws of eternal and self-existent principles. Spirits are eternal. At the first organization in heaven we were all present and saw the Savior chosen and appointed, and the plan of salvation made and we sanctioned it. We came to this earth that we might have a body and present it pure before God in the Celestial Kingdom. The great principle of happiness consists in having a body. The Devil has no body, and herein is his punishment. He is pleased when he can obtain the tabernacle of man and when cast out by the Savior he asked to go into the herd of swine showing that he would prefer a swines body to having none. All beings who have bodies have power over those who have not. The devil has no power over us only as we permit him; the moment we revolt at anything which comes from God the Devil takes power.

Apparently John 5 is a source for this teaching, and I would argue that a mainstream Christian interpretation of John 5 is more in line with the idea that Jesus is the physical manifestation of God, but not that these are two clearly distinct individuals with different properties.  I'm thinking this statement is more ambiguous in the sense that its not clear the God who has flesh and bones is not Jesus.  I know it says that the father took life unto himself precisely as Jesus did, and that's what it says in John 5 as well, and I think they may have been reading this passage in a more traditional Christian sense and not in the way that Joseph latter innovated in the King Follett discourse.  

Since we have other conceptions of God taught prior to 1841 that teach of a different kind of God the father (spirit) and other conceptions of the God head.  We know that this was not an early Mormon idea.  

[Storm Rider]

To me, the teaching of Father and Son having glorified bodies of flesh and bone was evident in the New Testament.  Jesus showed himself unto his disciples in Luke 24:39 and he clearly states he is not a spirit but has a body of flesh and bone. I guess the exact moment Joseph understood this was never an issue.

[hope_for_things]

15 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm not sure the LoF necessarily conveys what Joseph thought. Although I agree with you regarding evolution. That said, I think the Book of Mormon is a tad more complicated than you suggest due to the confusing relationship between Father and Son in the text. After all the text does talk about bodies of spirit and flesh regarding divine beings in Ether 3. I think the text strongly suggests the Father is embodied in some fashion. However it doesn't make the claim regarding the Father explicitly - except to the degree Jesus is father and son. However I'm not sure Joseph really understood quite a few passages in the Book of Mormon. Honestly I think Mosiah 7:27 in particular takes Genesis' "image of God" as implying body.

So to me the bigger issue is the relationship between Father and Son culminating in making them effectively the same in Nauvoo. i.e. even the father is resurrected. 

What evidence do you have that Joseph thought differently at that time period?  I've heard this argument before because we have evidence that Joseph didn't write all the LoF himself.  But if Joseph had the concept about God the Father having a body of flesh and bone during this earlier time period, then you need counter evidence to support that, otherwise its just speculation.  

I also think the BoM concepts about God are slightly different than the LoF concept, and things were very fluid throughout Joseph's lifetime on just about every church teaching and the distance between 1829 and 1835 represents a lot of evolution of doctrine.  

[JAHS]

5 minutes ago, Storm Rider said:

To me, the teaching of Father and Son having glorified bodies of flesh and bone was evident in the New Testament.  Jesus showed himself unto his disciples in Luke 24:39 and he clearly states he is not a spirit but has a body of flesh and bone. I guess the exact moment Joseph understood this was never an issue.

But that verse only refers to Jesus having a body of flesh and bone; you assume the same is the case for God the Father. 

[clarkgoble]

3 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Apparently John 5 is a source for this teaching, and I would argue that a mainstream Christian interpretation of John 5 is more in line with the idea that Jesus is the physical manifestation of God, but not that these are two clearly distinct individuals with different properties.  I'm thinking this statement is more ambiguous in the sense that its not clear the God who has flesh and bones is not Jesus.  I know it says that the father took life unto himself precisely as Jesus did, and that's what it says in John 5 as well, and I think they may have been reading this passage in a more traditional Christian sense and not in the way that Joseph latter innovated in the King Follett discourse.  

Since we have other conceptions of God taught prior to 1841 that teach of a different kind of God the father (spirit) and other conceptions of the God head.  We know that this was not an early Mormon idea.  

The big problem with this reading is his argument (later picked up by Pratt) that "that which is without body or parts is nothing." So it's an argument for materialism. Now this doesn't mean God couldn't be a material spirit. It seems clear that sometime around this period they were reading about Tertullian's more Stoic conception of the Godhead. That may well be the source for the "spirits are material" and likely at minimum represents how the Pratts thought about it.

So the real issue is materialism versus a more platonic ontology. Again one could easily argue this was also in the Book of Mormon with Ether 3 - especially those who see a strong connection between the Book of Mormon and Joseph's understanding. (I don't think Joseph really understood the Book of Mormon well so that's less of an argument to me)

Anyway, I think the quote in question is making a distinction between Jesus and the Father but saying the Father is like Jesus in the fashion we accept today. I think reading it otherwise is difficult. The bigger question is the view from the 1820's and 1830's. To me by the time you get to Nauvoo around 1841 things are pretty well set.

[hope_for_things]

2 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

The big problem with this reading is his argument (later picked up by Pratt) that "that which is without body or parts is nothing." So it's an argument for materialism. Now this doesn't mean God couldn't be a material spirit. It seems clear that sometime around this period they were reading about Tertullian's more Stoic conception of the Godhead. That may well be the source for the "spirits are material" and likely at minimum represents how the Pratts thought about it.

So the real issue is materialism versus a more platonic ontology. Again one could easily argue this was also in the Book of Mormon with Ether 3 - especially those who see a strong connection between the Book of Mormon and Joseph's understanding. (I don't think Joseph really understood the Book of Mormon well so that's less of an argument to me)

Anyway, I think the quote in question is making a distinction between Jesus and the Father but saying the Father is like Jesus in the fashion we accept today. I think reading it otherwise is difficult. The bigger question is the view from the 1820's and 1830's. To me by the time you get to Nauvoo around 1841 things are pretty well set.

I think you make some really good points about the materialism ideas that were starting to be used in Mormonism, and the later innovations of the Pratts.  Really important to think about how those ideas influence our contemporary ideas about Mormon doctrine.  

However, I disagree that this doctrine was pretty well set in 1841, and I don't see any reason to believe that Joseph's ideas about God the Father were developed at that point or that this reading of John 5 represents a reading that clearly was descriptive of the Father or that their interpretation departed from traditional protestant Christian ideas at that point. 

Wondering if you've read John Turner's The Mormon Jesus: A biography, it has some good material in it on this topic, but I don't have it in front of me at the moment.  

[stemelbow]

Not only including all that has been said (I agree it doesnt' appear to me Joseph learned of the Father being flesh and bone at the time of his first vision) but the first recorded version of the first vision doesnt' have the Father there at all, unless the Father is the LORD and the Lord is also the Son who was crucified for the sins of the world.  In time, it appears, his perspective changed.

[clarkgoble]

4 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

What evidence do you have that Joseph thought differently at that time period?  I've heard this argument before because we have evidence that Joseph didn't write all the LoF himself.  But if Joseph had the concept about God the Father having a body of flesh and bone during this earlier time period, then you need counter evidence to support that, otherwise its just speculation.

Well I was just opposing the idea that the Lectures on Faith necessarily reflects Joseph's thought. That is it can't be used to say positively what Joseph's views on the Father were. It might well be we just don't know what Joseph thought in the 1830's after all.

The arguments for the 1830's tend to focus on the late 1830's and use the move towards detecting immaterial beings. (Say the June 27, 1839) By July of the same year you have Joseph emphasizing John 14's "everyone that hath seen me hath seen the Father" with the idea that they are similar. But he doesn't, so far as I know, make the similarity in things like resurrection explicit. 

But for the 1830's I just don't see Joseph giving the Father much attention.

[clarkgoble]

22 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I think you make some really good points about the materialism ideas that were starting to be used in Mormonism, and the later innovations of the Pratts.  Really important to think about how those ideas influence our contemporary ideas about Mormon doctrine.  

However, I disagree that this doctrine was pretty well set in 1841, and I don't see any reason to believe that Joseph's ideas about God the Father were developed at that point or that this reading of John 5 represents a reading that clearly was descriptive of the Father or that their interpretation departed from traditional protestant Christian ideas at that point. 

Wondering if you've read John Turner's The Mormon Jesus: A biography, it has some good material in it on this topic, but I don't have it in front of me at the moment.  

I've not read Turner yet. But I'd just say that it's just in certain ways the doctrine's set by 1841. You can see the move towards it in 1839-1840. But it's in 1841 that it really gets explicit. However I'd once again note that the Book of Mormon is more explicit on some aspects of this than I think you were originally acknowledging - particularly Ether 3. It isn't explicit to the ontology of a spirit I'd admit. But the spirit in Ether 3 certainly isn't a Thomist spirit either. So there's a certain naive folk materialism in that section. (Mosiah 15 I'll acknowledge can be read more platonically)

If you think there's a passage in Turner giving a counter argument I'm all ears.

As for how Joseph read John 5, again I think the passage already quoted is pretty explicit. "That which is without body or parts is nothing." At minimum it rejects the traditional Christian understanding of divine simplicity. So saying he didn't "depart from traditional Protestant Chrstian ideas" seems questionable. Now there of course is a Christian tradition of negative theology so calling God nothing isn't out of the question. However I think contextually Joseph's not doing negative theology here. That means that nothing implies God couldn't exist without a body or parts. Further while I don't think Ether 3 reflects Joseph's understanding, it seems clear he'd recognize the idea of a spirit body. So he's at minimum embracing a materialism at odds with most Christianity. (Tertullian doesn't count since he's writing before the dominance of immaterialism in Christian theology in the west) 

Likewise "God the father took life unto himself precisely as Jesus did" has no echo in traditional Christianity. So I'm not sure what you mean there. That's blasphemous in traditional Christianity. Now one might quibble with whether Joseph means by life mortality. However again contextually I think it must mean that. Otherwise "take life" doesn't make much sense if they already were alive as spirits.

Now one might argue Joseph wasn't consistent or coherent in his ideas at this time. But that seems a different issue.

I should add there is an other reason to think of Stoic influence, perhaps (speculatively) due to reading about Tertullian's view of the Trinity. Take the other Jan 5, 1841 notes. The discussion of fundamental principles is very Stoic.

• "he also said as for his own knowledge the Earth was made out of sumthing for it was impossible for a sumthing to be made out of Nothing fire, air, & watter are Eternal Existant principles which are the Composition of which the Earth-has been Composed; also this Earth has been organized out of portions of other Globes that has ben Disorganized; in tistimoney that this Earth was Not the first of Gods work;"

To my eyes by January 1841 Joseph has fully embraced a material ontology. Perhaps a Stoic one rather than a scientific one. But a materialism nonetheless. That same sermon also is pushing the idea of taking John 5 literally. 

• he quoted a passage from the testament where Jesus said all things that he had saw the father Do he had done & that he done Nothing But what he saw the father do John the 5th [verse 19] he also said in testimony of the situation the saints in the presence of God. that they had flesh & bones & that was the agreement in Eternity to come here & take on them tabernacles 

Again though that's basically the Nauvoo period. The 1830's are a bit more mysterious IMO.

To me the main argument against my reading of the 1841 notes is just that they're too fragmentary to trust at that level of detail. Yet I think if you read both set of notes of the sermon it seems clear Joseph's pushing for a materialist conception with eternal material principles ala Stoicism. (Minus the eternal recurrence) Regardless of whether you think it implies God the Father having flesh, it clearly is a huge break with traditional Christian understanding of the Trinity.

Edited May 29, 2018 by clarkgoble

[hope_for_things]

20 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Well I was just opposing the idea that the Lectures on Faith necessarily reflects Joseph's thought. That is it can't be used to say positively what Joseph's views on the Father were. It might well be we just don't know what Joseph thought in the 1830's after all.

The arguments for the 1830's tend to focus on the late 1830's and use the move towards detecting immaterial beings. (Say the June 27, 1839) By July of the same year you have Joseph emphasizing John 14's "everyone that hath seen me hath seen the Father" with the idea that they are similar. But he doesn't, so far as I know, make the similarity in things like resurrection explicit. 

But for the 1830's I just don't see Joseph giving the Father much attention.

Well, we know Joseph was involved in producing the AoF and that he approved it as canon for the church, so those facts do tell us something about what Joseph thought.  Since we have no contradictory evidence that Joseph thought anything differently, we have to go with the positive evidence we have. 

[Bernard Gui]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

Nothing a handshake couldn't remedy.  

True. What better test than direct physical contact. 

[JAHS]

6 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

True. What better test than direct physical contact. 

Joseph knew that Jesus had a resurrected body of flesh and bone. In the first vision I wonder if just seeing them side by side gave him a clue that the Father might also have a tangible body.
If the Father was only a spirit he might have expected to be able to see through Him, but could not and therefore may have gotten the impression that He was the same type of being as Jesus.

[clarkgoble]

22 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Well, we know Joseph was involved in producing the AoF and that he approved it as canon for the church, so those facts do tell us something about what Joseph thought.  Since we have no contradictory evidence that Joseph thought anything differently, we have to go with the positive evidence we have. 

Even if you go that route you are then left with the problem that it's not clear what ontology is meant by spirit in the LoF.

[pogi]

2 hours ago, JAHS said:

But Joseph Smith could not have known from the first vision alone that God the Father had a body of flesh and bone without having touched Him. 

Not only did he not touch Him, but I question whether he actually saw Him with his physical eyes.  The way I read the first vision accounts, it sounds more like an actual "vision" rather than a physical sighting.

In the 1842 account, Joseph speaks of losing consciousness of his physical surroundings:  

Quote

I retired to a secret place in a grove and began to call upon the Lord, while fervently engaged in supplication my mind was taken away from the objects with which I was surrounded, and I was enwrapped in a heavenly vision...

When the vision ended, Joseph reports coming back to consciousness and finding himself lying on his back in the 1838 version:

Quote

When I came to myself again I found myself lying on <my> back looking up into Heaven.

It is my opinion that if there was witness to these events, someone walking in the woods at the time who happened upon Joseph, it would have appeared to them that while Joseph was praying he fell unconscious on his back, and regained consciousness again a few minutes later.  They would not have seen any light or personages in the grove.

Edited May 29, 2018 by pogi

[Bernard Gui]

18 minutes ago, JAHS said:

Joseph knew that Jesus had a resurrected body of flesh and bone. In the first vision I wonder if just seeing them side by side gave him a clue that the Father might also have a tangible body.
If the Father was only a spirit he might have expected to be able to see through Him, but could not and therefore may have gotten the impression that He was the same type of being as Jesus.

I can't imagine the shock he experienced when he saw them. I doubt he had theological positioning racing through his mind. Besides, we don't have a minute by minute account of what happened there.

[JAHS]

3 minutes ago, pogi said:

Not only did he not touch Him, but I question whether he actually saw Him with his physical eyes.  The way I read the first vision accounts, it sounds more like an actual "vision" rather than a physical sighting.

So I guess the question might be, was it just a vision, like John the Revelator might have experienced,  or was it an actual visitation?