Easier than Research,
More Inflammatory than Truth
by
Daniel C. Peterson
(My title - Rules for Comparing Religions and Holy Envy)
Let me just start out by
mentioning an experience that Truman Madsen told me about a few years ago. He
said that about the time the Stockholm Sweden Temple was about to be dedicated
there was some controversy. As you know, sometimes there is in connection with
the dedication of Latter-day Saint temples. Krister Stendahl, who is the
Lutheran Bishop of Stockholm and the former dean of Harvard Divinity School,
called him up and said he would like to hold a press conference. He wanted to
hold it in the LDS Stake Center, which was relatively near to the temple there
in Stockholm. This was a very deliberate choice. He invited all the press to
come and he offered his position as the Lutheran Bishop of Stockholm on the
building of that LDS temple and he endorsed it very strongly. Then he said that
he wanted to give them a little bit of guidance on how to deal with other
religions and on how to understand other religions.
He laid down three rules that
might seem obvious, but they are often ignored in trying to understand other
faiths. The first rule was that when you want to learn about a religion you
should ask the adherents to that religion and not its enemies. That seems
fairly obvious, but it is ignored an awful lot.
The second rule was a little
more interesting: Don't compare your best with their worst, which is often
done. You know, we Christians believe in the ideal of loving everyone, but the
Muslims, look at those terrorists in Algeria. What you do is take the worst
example of the other guy's religion and compare it to the ideal, almost never
reached in your religion and that's apples and oranges, right? If you are going
to compare terrorists, you should compare Christian terrorists with Muslim
terrorists. If you are going to compare ideals, you should compare the ideal in
the other faith with the ideal in your faith. If you are going to compare your
saint to something in their religion find one of their saints and compare them.
That's the only fair way to do it.
The third rule, I think, is
even more interesting: To leave room for what he called "holy envy."
By holy envy, he intended the idea of looking at another faith and saying, you
know, there is something in this other religious tradition that I really envy.
I value it; I wish we had it. I can learn something from it. The specific
instance he gave in the case of the Latter-day Saint temple there in Stockholm
was the idea of baptism for the dead. He said, "You know in my religious tradition,
our dead are forgotten. We don't think about them. They're gone. But the
Mormons want to bring the benefits of Christ's atonement even to their
ancestors. That," he said, "I envy and admire." That does not
necessarily mean that he believes in it, although he is much more sympathetic
to the idea of baptism for the dead in early Christianity than a lot of our
critics are.
You may remember his article in
the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. In
fact, there is a story behind that, which I also got from Truman Madsen. He
first approached Stendahl and asked him would he be willing to write an article
for the Encyclopedia of Mormonism about
baptism for the dead in ancient Christianity. Stendahl said "No."
Truman re-approached him and said, "We'd really like to have you involved.
Would it be possible, could I maybe write an article on the subject, just a
brief little thing, and send it to you and you just make any changes you want
to and you can put your name on it?" Stendahl said, "Oh, all right,
send me an article."
When Truman wrote the thing up
and sent it to him, Stendahl immediately fired back and said, "This is a
terrible article; it's not nearly strong enough; your case is much better than
you are letting on; don't be so reticent," and wrote the article you now
see in theEncyclopedia of Mormonism, which
is a quite positive thing saying, "Look, the consensus of all informed
biblical exegetes is that early Christians did practice baptism for the dead
and it was a rite essentially as the Mormons describe it." He didn't say
he thought it was right or anything like that, but that the historical evidence
was that it was practiced. And he said if it weren't for theological problems
that people have with the whole idea, they would all recognize that that's
exactly what the text says. Anyway, that was his example of holy envy in this
particular case.
Peterson's
Rule
Now, there's another rule that
I might mention to you, one I formulated some years ago. I can't remember if I
called it Peterson's Rule. I know one person who's called it Peterson's Rule
since it basically grew out of an experience I had in Cairo.
I remember going with a Muslim
friend of mine to visit a chemistry professor at the University of Cairo. And
this is a very educated man, obviously, holder of a doctorate, I think European
educated, as I recall, and we got to talking about what I was doing there, that
I was studying Islam, and so on, and he asked me, "Are you a Muslim?"
and I said "No." And he asked me the question that I always dread,
"Why not?" which can get you into a very awkward position. Well, I
tried to answer it positively and said, "I'm a Christian, I believe in the
divinity of Christ and, therefore, I can't be a Muslim."
He said, "How can you
possibly believe in that? Everybody knows that God doesn't have a son. God
can't have a son. 'He nether begets nor is he begotten'," he quoted from
the Koran. And then he said, "And let me tell you something else. Is this
what you believe? Do you believe that God had a son and that to buy himself off
because he wanted to destroy and damn everybody, he had to send his son down
and make sure he was tortured to death so that he wouldn't have to damn all of
humanity?"
I said, "Well, that's not
quite the way we typically put it but that's a relatively fair statement of the
idea."
He said, "Well that's the
stupidest thing I've ever heard. Everybody knows that's not true. It's
absolutely inconceivable."
Well, what struck me about that
was that religions often look silly to people outside. He said no intelligent
person could possibly believe in a doctrine like that. Well, besides the fact
that it was somewhat personally insulting, I thought, "But intelligent
people have demonstrably believed in that doctrine, whether you think it's
right or wrong." I mean, St. Augustine wasn't stupid. Thomas Aquinas
wasn't stupid. Calvin wasn't stupid. Kierkergaard wasn't stupid. There are a
lot of bright people who have accepted a doctrine much like this. So the
principle that came to me on this was that if you are looking at a religious
tradition that has a large number of adherents (I'll grant there are some small
ones that probably have no intellectual respectability at all that appeal to a
few weirdos and so on; I could name some groups but I won't), but if it's a
group of any size at all that's lasted for any length of time at all, then
there must be something in it that appeals to different people.
Mormonism, for example, has
clearly lasted long enough and has clearly appealed to a wide enough cross
section of people that you don't have to concede that it's true to say there
must be something there that appeals to people--bright people, practical
people, highly educated people, uneducated people--all sorts of people in all
sorts of cultures have found something appealing in this movement. The same is
true of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity.
I'm not saying this is an
invitation to relativism, but I am saying this is an invitation to consider
that if you can't see that any kind of intelligent person could accept doctrine
X but millions and millions of intelligent people have demonstrably accepted it
over generations, then the problem might be more in you than in the doctrine.
That is, you don't know enough about it, you haven't thought your way into it
enough to understand why it is that might appeal to people. What is it they
might find attractive about it? You don't have to believe it, but you have to
at least get enough sympathetic understanding to try to work your way into it
and say, "Well, I can see how given certain presuppositions, this would
appeal to you."
Now, what I would argue is that
very few of our critics have made that attempt to have any kind of sympathetic
understanding of the Latter-day Saints. For many of them the movement is so
obviously stupid, so obviously depraved, that it's a miracle that anyone with
half a brain could possibly swallow this. I've heard Latter-day Saints make the
same comment about Catholicism. Haven't you? Or other belief systems out there?
The more I've heard that kind of thing, the more I've resented it and thought
it a mistake. There are bright Catholics, there are bright Evangelicals, there
are bright Mormons, and the fact is, we just don't understand what the appeal
of that other faith is. But we should either stop talking about it or we should
try to understand it.
Violating
Stendahl's First Rule
Now I'm going to get into the
negative and destructive part of my presentation: Anti-Mormon violations of
Stendahl's Rules. That first rule, "ask adherents, not enemies." It's
amazing how rarely this is done. Quite often, believers and their evidence (or
what they see as their evidence) are simply ruled out in advance. You know,
books like the Mormon Illusion and the Mormon
Mirage tell you what kind of approach
they are going to take. It's not only that we are innocently misled and stupid,
it's that, in many cases, we are downright dishonest. Mormons can't be trusted
to state their beliefs accurately. Steve Robinson, for example, is lying. He is
misrepresenting his beliefs. He's deliberately deceiving people, and that poor
benighted fool, Craig Bloomberg, was duped. He was taken in by those suave and
sophisticated Mormons, or whatever you call them.
Listen to these titles; here is
one by a friend of mine, Allen Harrod who operates a large church in Jacksonville,
Florida. He has actually become a friend of mine. I've always been charmed by
his book title, Deception by Design: the Mormon
Story. That pretty well sums it up. Or this one, as some of you
know, a book I am particularly fond of, Behind
the Mask of Mormonism: From Its Early Schemes to its Modern Deceptions, by Dr.
John Ankerberg and Dr. John Weldon.
And then, of course, there is a
personal response that I find interesting; a response to me as an individual or
to people I'm associated with. FARMS writers, for example, are liars. They are
not to be taken seriously. They all lie. FARMS produces junk, therefore there
is no reason to read it because they are all deceivers. Will Bagley, a fellow
here in the valley, actually once boasted on the Internet that all FARMS
material was garbage--he had never read a line of it. I quoted it back to him
and he denied ever having said it, so I produced the e-mail.
Or this is one that I just was
told about this morning. "No one has found any errors in Michael Quinn's historical
writings. Not a single error. Can anyone suggest anything he has ever said
wrong?" And, by the way, quoting from FARMS is off limits. You cannot cite
them. Though FARMS has generated scores of pages identifying, in my view, very
clear errors in Quinn's writings, FARMS is simply out of court. You can't even
cite them; they are too dishonest. They shouldn't even be allowed to write.
Well, I spoke at the MHA a few
years ago and I was told afterward that there was a suggestion dropped in the
suggestion box that speakers from FARMS should in the future be barred from
attending or speaking at the Mormon History Association. What this sometimes
leads to is what I regard as kind of intellectual incestuousness among our
critics. They don't read anything we write, and in some cases they regard that
behavior with a certain element of defiant pride. In their eyes we are just not
doing anything worth looking at and, therefore, there's no use looking at it.
These critics just repeat what they have done for the last century and a half.
This is the same error that
Carl Mosser and Paul Owen have identified as a serious, serious deficiency on
their side--that people are not interacting with responsible Latter-day Saint
scholarship and it's hurting them. And so, Paul and Carl have called for a more
effective, a more efficient, more intelligent anti-Mormonism. I'm not sure
whether I'm really excited about that prospect, but I guess it would be an
improvement over what we've got.
Violations
of the Second Rule
On the second principle,
"don't compare your best with their worst." I've been corresponding
with a fellow over the last few months who has loudly been proclaiming Utah as
being "the sinkhole of corruption" and "the pit of despair in
the United States." It is "the worst place on the face of the
earth," or as Ex-Mormons for Jesus used to call it, "the spiritual
heart of darkness of North America."
There are those whose common
response to Mormonism is that they are good people, they believe their good
works are going to save them [and] in that they are tragically deceived, but
they are basically good people. They are great neighbors. By and large, Utah is
not a bad place, and so on. In fact, we are sometimes mocked for that. We are
boring, bourgeois. We don't have enough crime and the streets are a little too
clean. It's not interesting. I liked the line from Naifeh and Smith's book a
few years ago called The Mormon Murders (about
the Hoffman Case) where they referred to what they called the "great
grinning goodness of Mormon Utah," which they saw as something very bad,
negative.
But now there's another
response to Utah which is not only "it's a horrible evil place; Mormons
are clearly depraved." In that case, what they tend to do is compare their
ideal, say Mother Teresa, with Ron Lafferty, a typical product of Mormonism, a
typical product of Christianity. But this also happens on intellectual issues.
Bill Hamblin's article on anti-Mormon approaches to the geography and
archaeology of the Book of Mormon, I think, is a landmark piece which shows the
kind of double standard that exists among critics who look at the Book of
Mormon and refuse to apply to the Book of Mormon the same kind of standards
they would to the Bible, or apply standards to the Book of Mormon they wouldn't
apply to the Bible.
Consider, for example, the
rather incendiary charge that Mormons believe that Jesus is the spirit brother
of Lucifer, which I think is designed to inflame instead of inform. People are
never given the theological context in which that proposition makes some sense
and they are never really told what the alternative is. It has always seemed to
me rather odd to say that one view is blasphemous but the other view is not
blasphemous. You see, it is one thing, as some of you have heard me say, to
believe that Satan or Lucifer is the spirit brother of Jesus, the Son of
Heavenly Father went wrong. That's an explanation, maybe, of evil in one sense.
We don't typically hold parents responsible if they raise their children well
and the child simply takes a bad turn--becomes a serial killer or something
like that. On the other hand, if the parents raise the child to do what he ends
up doing, we regard the parents as morally culpable.
More comparable to what I see
as the traditional theological view is that Jesus is the Son of God, but
Lucifer is the creation of an all-powerful, all-knowing God. He knew exactly
what he was doing. He knew exactly what would happen (because he sees the
future perfectly), and created Lucifer out of nothing. That seems, to me, to
create at least a dilemma, a little problem, called a problem of evil. Because
then God knowingly is heading down the path that will lead to Auschwitz or the
Killing Fields of Cambodia. And I'm not sure that's a real improvement over the
Latter-day Saint view. It just seems to me that if you are going to look at
theological problems that you perceive with one view, you have to acknowledge
that there are some real dilemmas connected with the other view as well.
Considering
"Holy Envy"
Many anti-Mormons say,
"Well there is nothing to envy in Mormons. There is nothing good in
Mormonism. It's Satanic." "It's not," some will say,
"really a church." If you talk about it as a church you have to put
it in quotes. It's not really a religion. You have to put that in quotes. It
has all the outward trappings of religion. Gordon Fraser said it's not really a
religion; it's never shown any of the graces of real religion.
Others will say, in an
interesting response to that same issue, "Oh no, it is a religion. Christianity
isn't but Mormonism is. It's a religion that works. But there's nothing good in
it." And, of course, there are rampant violations of Peterson's Rule,
constantly saying "How could any intelligent person swallow that, it's so
obviously stupid." Which does leave you with a dilemma: How do my
neighbors seem to be saying they are Mormons? How could that possibly be? Well,
it's just one of those mysteries.
Let's get into more specific
issues. I won't necessarily concentrate on what I see as the flat-out invention
of facts, which I see quite commonly among some strains of anti-Mormons. It's a
very venerable technique. It didn't begin with Mark Hoffman. It goes back to at
least Philastus Hurlbut and his affidavits, or to one of my favorite cases: the
American Anti-Mormon Association (1906), which discovered that wonderful Oliver
Cowdery confession, which turned out to be a forgery (probably forged by the
general secretary of the Anti-Mormon Association).
If the facts aren't in your
favor, just invent them and that can be very handy. It was handy for a good
half of a century. Or Ed Decker; it isn't limited to him. You know, some of
you, the recent story of Reach Out Trust with their claim that Latter-day
Saints believe that Joseph Smith is as important as Jesus in the salvation of
humanity. And despite their failure to show a single passage from any
authoritative Mormon sources saying anything of the kind, despite extensive
correspondence with the Latter-day Saints that showed them explicit statements
denying that Joseph Smith was as important as Jesus Christ, they still persist
in that charge. This is simple, flagrant distortion and invention. Excuse me,
that was Reach Out Trust.
Or, there is Concerned
Christians in Mesa, Arizona, with their claim that the Priesthood and Relief
Society manual of last year expressly denies that Brigham Young was a
polygamist or that the Church ever taught or practiced plural marriage. Despite
the fact that there is not a single passage anywhere in that book that says
anything of the kind, they unrepentantly persist in that claim. I don't know
what else to say about this, except that it is dishonest. They have no evidence
for it, and lots of evidence against it. They go on because these charges have
a certain inflammatory and incendiary value.
Now I've recently been
listening to anti-Mormon cassettes while driving. When one is in a certain
mood, such listening can be both entertaining and educational. For instance,
from Sheila Garrigus, My Years as a Mormon, a
lecture given by a leader of Ex-Mormons for Jesus in an unidentified church in
California a few years ago. I learned that one can be a devout Mormon without
believing in Jesus but that faith in Joseph Smith is mandatory. The Savior, she
explained, is "not important" in Mormon theology. In fact, during her
thirteen years as a Latter-day Saint, she never heard the name Jesus Christ in
any Mormon meeting except as appended to prayers, which can only, by the way,
be offered by males. She didn't own a Bible during that time because Latter-day
Saints are not encouraged to read the Bible. And when her non-member husband
rather abruptly became a committed fundamentalist Protestant, her bishop
explained her options to her. One, she could divorce her husband; two, she
could remain in her marriage and after death become a ministering angel to
better Mormons than herself; or three, she could remain in her marriage but at
her death be sealed to a faithful Mormon man as his plural wife. She initially
chose that latter option. So, with her bishop's encouragement, she telephoned a
Latter-day Saint man that she had once dated before her marriage and he happily
accepted her request to be his plural wife in the life to come.
I can tell by your laughter
that this does not strike you as plausible. I found myself kind of pounding the
dashboard as I was driving along.
Now, here is another one I was
listening to. From the Q&A session following Kurt Van Gorden's lecture on
Mormonism at Calvary Chapel in Chino, California, on the first of June this
year, I learned of John F. Kennedy's appearance in the St. George Temple. I'd
never heard about that one before. I always thought it was some other
presidents. I also discovered that Latter-day Saints view the words procreation andcreation as
synonyms. Among other things, this explains (he explained) how Mormon women in
Utah introduce their families. These, they say, pointing to their children, are
the children I created. Have you ever heard that? I have never in my life heard
anything like that.
I also learned that Latter-day
Saint men have the option of resurrecting their wives--or not. Naturally, as
Rev. Van Gorden explained, this puts LDS women in a "precarious
position," for if a wife does not treat her husband well enough, he may be
inclined to simply let her "lay in her grave and rot." Now, I really
liked this. I immediately announced to my wife that I was never going to eat
cooked carrots again. I don't like them, I'm tired of them, and she had better
not put them on my plate.
I learned of one case where a
woman's father-in-law helped her in a certain point in the temple and, thus,
without her agreement or prior knowledge, he acquired her as a plural wife in
the life to come. The sealing ceremony that immediately followed didn't count
because it was overruled by that. It's amazing doctrine.
These are things I never
learned in all my years of going to Church. So it's fun. You get a different
perspective on things and get a deeper understanding of the gospel.
I want to get up to that level
where, as Ed Decker was once telling, you drink human blood out of human skull
mugs in the Holy of Holies. I've never been introduced to that level, but I'm
looking forward to it.
There's Peter Elias; he uses an
assumed name. This is one I was just looking at this morning. "Mormonism,"
he said, "depicts the Bible as a flawed source, not to be trusted as a
record of Christ's teachings. Certainly not the final authority on doctrinal
issues." That is simple distortion, of course, because he conflates the
word flawed. I'm not
even sure we would use that word, but we would say we are not inerrantists.
"But if it's not inerrant, it's worthless. It can't be trusted at
all." And so, for inflammatory effect, you distort Mormon teaching in a
way that no Latter-day Saint would ever accept it as a statement of his or her
faith, and then you proclaim that as the
Latter-day Saint view.
Stating
Another's Beliefs
Now, this leads to another
rule. It seems to me that one of the rules of doing comparative religion stuff
is that when you restate someone else's beliefs, that restatement ought to be
recognizable to the person whose beliefs you are restating. You ought to be
able to go to that person and say, "Now is this what you believe?"
and the person would say, "Yes." The person might say, "That is
not exactly how I would phrase it, but yeah, OK, given the change in language,
that is what I believe." But if your intended target is always screaming,
"But I don't believe that!" then the proper response is not,
"Oh, yes you do!" This strikes me as a really, really illegitimate
tool of comparative religion.
There is also the technique of
exaggeration. Here's one that I just found last night. I spend entirely too
much time browsing through this stuff, but you come up with gems. This is just
a small thing. This is from the Apologia Report Vol. 3,
No. 3, January 1998. It's talking about B.H. Roberts, and you all know the
accusation that B. H. Roberts lost his faith in the Book of Mormon. I confess
that when I first heard that I thought, "It's possible. I'm not sure that
would be evidence against the Book of Mormon, but it's possible. It would be a
sad story." The more I look at it, not only am I less inclined to think he
might have, I'm absolutely positive he did not. But, be that as it may, the
strongest charge that was ever made about him was that he became a closet
doubter. However, in the Apologia Report he
ceases to be a very dubious closet doubter because the evidence does not seem
to be there to establish even that. He becomes a former General Authority who
became a dissident. The story grows--it just grows and grows and grows.
The
Tanners: Case Study in Exaggeration
Here is another one. This is
from the greatest of all anti-Mormons, in the opinion of many critics of the
Church. In 1855, Gerald and Sandra Tanner say Brigham Young preached a sermon
in which he denied that the Lord came to Joseph Smith in the First Vision. This
is the quote:
But as
it was in the days of our Savior, so it was it in the advent of this new
dispensation. It was not in accordance with the notions, traditions and
preconceived ideas of the American people. The messenger did not come to an
eminent divine of any of the so-called orthodoxy. He did not adopt their
interpretations of the Holy Scriptures. The Lord did not come with the armies
of heaven in power and great glory nor send his messengers panoplied with ?
from the truth of heaven to communicate with the meek, the lowly, and the youth
of humble origin. This sincere enquirer asked of knowledge of God. But he did
send his angel, the same obscure person, Joseph Smith, Jr. who afterward became
a prophet, seer and revelator and informed him that he should not join any of
the religious sects of the day for they were all wrong.
Now on the following page is a
photograph of that actual passage, with a caption that reads "Brigham
Young says the Lord did not come to Joseph Smith in the First Vision. But,
instead, he sent his angel." Just go back and look at what it actually
says: "The Lord did not come with the armies of heaven," from which
they extract "the Lord did not come." You see a little problem with
that? I do! But it is true there is a little bit of a question because he said
he sent his angel. OK, that's a little odd. I admit, that's a little bit odd
from our perspective. But let me give it some biblical context, which they
signally fail to do.
In the rather odd story of the
Patriarch Jacob in Genesis 32, the text says "there wrestled a man with
him until the breaking of the day." But Jacob called the name of the place
Peniel "for I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved."
Who is it he wrestled with? The being said to him that his "name shall be
called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and
with men, and hast prevailed." For who is this person he wrestled with?
Well, it's not altogether clear but one possible reading of it is that he
wrestled with God or had some sort of encounter with God. It's a very puzzling
story but there are others.
"And the Lord," says
Exodus 13:21, "went before them by day in the pillar of a cloud to lead
them by the way and by night in the pillar of fire to give them light to go by
day and night." The Lord went before them in this pillar. But in Exodus
14:19, the very next chapter, it is the angel of God which went before the camp
of Israel. So is it an angel, or is it God? We have a contradiction there.
Well, if you are going to hold that there is a contradiction in Brigham Young's
account, you have to hold that there is a contradiction in Exodus 13 and 14, or
you are operating on the basis of a double standard.
But there is even more. Malachi
3 verses 1 through 3:
Behold,
I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord,
whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the
covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.
But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth?
for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap: And he shall sit as a
refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge
them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in
righteousness.
Well, who is it talking about
here? The Tanners treat "messenger" and "Lord" as antonyms
and they can't be the same. Malachi treats "messenger" as a synonym
for "Lord." If you are going to accept that in the Bible, you have to
accept that in Brigham Young's statement.
Now, on the same page the
Tanners quote an 1868 passage from George Smith, the prophet's cousin, in order
to suggest that he didn't know the traditional version of the First Vision as
late as 1868. He didn't, even though it had been published many, many years
before in various forms. But he thought that it was only an angel that appeared
to Joseph Smith. But they fail to mention the following passage from Elder
Smith in a sermon delivered four years earlier, in 1864. Which, you know how
long it took me to find this with my computer? Thirty seconds. Now, the
Tanners, I think, could do this.
When
the Lord appeared to Joseph Smith, and manifested unto him a knowledge
pertaining to the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the work of the last
days, Satan came also with his power and tempted Joseph. It is written in the
book of Job, 'Now there was a day when the Sons of God came to present
themselves before the Lord and Satan came also among them.' In the very
commencement of this work, the Prophet Joseph Smith was called upon to contend,
face to face, with the powers of darkness by spiritual manifestations and open
visions as well as with men in the flesh stirred up by the same spirit of the
adversary, to hedge up his way and destroy him from the earth and annihilate
his work which he was about to commence.
He thus describes the incident,
and then, George A. Smith quotes the account that we all know.
In the
spring of 1820, when I had retired in the place where I had previously designed
to go," (so on and so forth), he knelt down, a thick darkness overcame
him, he exerted all his power to call upon God. Just at this great moment of
alarm (I'm leaving things out) "I saw a pillar of light exactly over my
head above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell
upon me. It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy
which held me bound. ... When the light rested upon me, I saw two personages,
whose brightness and glory defy all description standing above me in the air.
One of them spake unto me calling me by name, and said pointing to the other,
"this is my beloved Son, hear him."
Now, since he read that in the
Tabernacle in 1864, do you think it's likely that four years later George A.
Smith didn't know the story? The Tanners could have found that. But they didn't
because it's not important to tell the whole story. Find a passage that's
useful; you go with it.
The Tanner's also quote a
statement of John Taylor, dated March 2, 1879, with the same desired effect.
Just as
it was when the Prophet Joseph asked the angel which of the sects was right
that he might join it. The answer was that none of them are right. What, none
of them? No. We will not stop to argue that question. The angel merely told him
to join none of them, that none of them were right.
So, John Taylor didn't know the
story of the Father and Son appearing, even though the Pearl of Great Price had
just been published in Salt Lake City the year before with that story in it. It
had been published many decades before. John Taylor certainly knew it. And we
know that he knew it because this is what he said on September 7 of that same
year, 1879.
Now we
will come to other events of later date, events with which we are associated. I
refer, now, to the time that Joseph Smith came among men. What was his position
and how was he situated? I can tell you what he told me about it. He said that
he was very ignorant of the ways, the designs and purposes of God and knew
nothing about them. He was youth not acquainted with religious matters or the
systems and theories of the day. He went to the Lord having read James' statement
that "If any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God that giveth to all men
liberally and upbraideth not. You shall be given it." He believed that
statement and went to the Lord and asked him and the Lord revealed himself to
him, together with his Son, Jesus. Pointing to the latter, He said "this
is my beloved Son, hear Him" He then asked in regard to the various
religions with which he was surrounded. He enquired of them which was right. He
wanted to know the right way and to walk in it. He was told that none of them
was right and they had all departed from the right way. They had forsaken God,
the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns
that could hold no water. Afterward, the angel Moroni came to him and revealed
to him the Book of Mormon.
So, did John Taylor know the
traditional story? Quite clearly, he did. And he said that Joseph Smith himself
had told him the story. So what's the point of all this? I think the point is
to score points but not to reach historical understanding or to explain the
truth.
The
Strange Case of Peter Elias and Amasa Lyman
Now, here's another example.
Peter Elias, again, the owner-operator of Mormonism Web Ministries (a group
that has occupied a considerable amount of my attention in the past couple of
months because they are so darn fun), recently published an issue of his rather
puckishly titled newspaper The Truth. It's
called a "Christian perspective on Mormonism," in which he put Amasa
M. Lyman forth as his prize example of typical Latter-day Saint teaching. The
newsletter slogan repeated on the masthead of every issue is "Trust the
Truth." Again, I think that might be ironically intended.
This newsletter furnishes a
particularly clear illustration of the methodology employed by some zealous
critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As such, it also
provides a good argument for why their books, lectures, pamphlets, cassette
tapes, Web sites, tabloids, broadcasts, seminars should not be taken at face
value. The theme of this particular issue of The
Truth is "Mormonism, Insulting
the Spirit of Grace." Savvy readers can guess far in advance how Mr. Elias
will answer his own question.
Under the rubric of LDS, Mr.
Elias has the following: "We may talk of men being redeemed by the
advocacy of Christ's blood, but the truth is that blood has no efficacy to wash
away our sins. That must depend upon our own actions." That's signed
"LDS Apostle, Amasa M. Lyman, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 7." Mr.
Elias contrasts this with the truth. "For you know that it is not with
perishable things that you are redeemed from the empty way of life handed down
to you from your forefathers, that is the law (works), but with the precious
blood of Christ, the lamb without blemish or defect. 1 Peter 1:18."
Mr. Elias subsequently
strengthens his argument with two quotations from Elder Lyman under the
subheading of "Trampling on the Blood of Christ." This scarcely seems
necessary; there appears to be a pretty stark contrast between what Elder Lyman
said and what 1 Peter 1:18 said. This is particularly so in the biblical
passages spun by Peter Elias' hyper-Protestant equation of an empty way of life
with the Mosaic law, an equation that many observant Jews might understandably
regard as demeaning and anti-Semitic. And, in turn, he equates that Mosaic law
with works, in general.
It seems undeniably obvious
that Latter-day Saint teaching as represented by Amasa Lyman, Council of the
Twelve, diverges dramatically from the doctrine of the New Testament. Case
closed. But is it? Can Amasa Lyman's public musings on the redemptive power of
the blood of Christ, or the lack thereof, legitimately be taken as illustrating
the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Let's look at
the historical background [using] only the materials I have on the shelf of my
personal library at home, deliberately excluding the Web and any database
software. Nothing among these materials is particularly esoteric or difficult
to obtain. They are all certainly within the reach of someone as devoted to the
study of Mormonism as Mr. Elias purports to be. An author who has found Amasa
Lyman's scattered nineteenth-century ruminations can also reasonably be
expected to be aware of mainstream historiography on the Latter-day Saints. Most
particularly, the broad outlines of Amasa Lyman's biography.
What does this historical
record tell us? From 1855 to 1859, Lyman denied Christ's special divinity and
vicarious blood atonement in several Conference sermons. A renowned orator, he
told the Saints that Christ was "simply a holy man"--[that there] was
nothing about Jesus except the priesthood that he held and the gospel that he
proclaimed that was so very singular. The counter objection, Lyman argued,
"is that you must not think much of Jesus. Yes, I do. How much? I think he
was a good man." Lyman acknowledged that Jesus died for the world but
added "what man that ever died for the truth that he died for did not die
for the world? Have we found redemption through them? We may talk," and
this is the quote that Elias uses, "We may talk of men being redeemed by
the efficacy of Christ's blood, but the truth is that that blood had no
efficacy to wash away our sins, that must depend upon our own action."
It does admittedly seem a bit
strange that Elder Lyman was able to get away with such teaching for so long.
Plainly, there were those who objected to his teaching. We aren't told who they
were, but he refers to them. Perhaps other General Authorities were unclear as
to what he was really saying. James Allen, the former assistant Church
historian, suggests of William Clayton (who wasn't a General Authority, he was
a relative of Lyman's by marriage), that he "probably never fully
understood Lyman's highly sophisticated theological speculations."
I know personally of a case, in
which a person had long since ceased to believe in Latter-day Saint doctrine,
managed for years to maintain an appearance of orthodoxy by using
sophisticatedly re-defined terminology. He kept a position at BYU for a number
of years until they finally caught him. I don't believe he did it with any
malicious intent but the end result is much the same--he deceived. Perhaps the
Twelve simply couldn't imagine that a fellow apostle would hold such opinions
and assumed that they must be misunderstanding them. William Clayton's eventual
reaction, worked out somewhat on the same lines as the Apostles would, is
prolonged refusal to accept the accusations against Elder Lyman was followed by
profound feelings of shock and betrayal, disillusion, and revulsion.
The Twelve had long enjoyed
close association with Amasa Lyman. Their personal reactions were probably
somewhat along the same lines. After all, the passage quoted can be taken, at
least in part, in a relatively harmless sense. When he says "We may talk
of men being redeemed by the advocacy of Christ's blood, but the truth is that
blood has no efficacy to wash away our sins. That must depend upon our own
actions." This is true in one sense, unless you are a Calvinist or
determinist. Christ's blood cannot redeem us if we refuse to accept it's
atoning power. And the choice to accept it or reject it is a free act on our
part. The very next line in Elder Lyman's sermon is "can Jesus free us
from sin?" Well, we go into sin again, [so] most people would be inclined
to answer, "No." So Elder Lyman's declaration that Christ's blood
lacks redemptive advocacy in the absence of our own actions is, on
non-Calvinist principles, probably plausible, at least for many, many
Christians--even those beyond the Latter-day Saint community.
As it turned out the doctrine
that Lyman held or came to hold is far more pernicious than that. In 1860 he
was sent on a mission to Great Britain along with Elders Charles C. Rich and
George Q. Cannon of the Twelve. He returned home in mid-May, 1862, but not
before delivering a notorious sermon at Dundee, Scotland, on the 16th of March
of that year in which he effectively denied the atonement of the Savior. B.H.
Roberts' remarks that "no satisfactory explanation appears why this matter
was allowed to pass, apparently unnoticed until the 21st of January,
1867." It was not until then that Elder Lyman was brought before the
Council of the Twelve for his heresy. Well, actually, Elder Lyman's heterodox
views began to attract the attention of other leaders of the Church at least a
month before the date given by B. H. Roberts. For example, here's an entry from
Wilford Woodruff's journal, December 26, 1866:
The
subject of a sermon preached by A. Lyman and published in the Millennial Star,
April 5, 1862 in Vol. 24 was brought up and read and it was found to have done
away with the efficacy of the blood of Christ. President B. Young said he
wished to know what the Twelve had to say about it for he had a good deal to
say about it. When you do away with the blood of the Savior, you do away with
all the gospel and plan of salvation. If this doctrine is preached by A Lyman,
be preached and published as the doctrine of the church and not contradicted by
us it would not be long before there would be schisms in the church. This
doctrine as preached in this sermon is false doctrine. If we do not believe
that it is necessary for Christ to shed his blood to save the world, where is
our church? It is nothing. This does not set well upon my feelings. It is grievous
for me to have the Apostles teach false doctrines. Now, if the Twelve will sit
down quietly and not contradict such doctrine, are they justified? No they are
not.
Finally, Elder Lyman was
summoned before the Council. The story is clearly told in B.H. Roberts' widely
available Comprehensive History of the
Church, with which any serious student
of Latter-day Saint history should be familiar. However, I'll go directly again
to the journal of Wilford Woodruff, a member of the Twelve at the time and a
future fourth president of the church. On January 21, 1867, he wrote:
We held
a meeting in the evening as the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to examine the
subject of Amasa Lyman teaching false doctrine and publishing it to the world.
He had virtually done away with the blood of Christ saying, the blood of Christ
was not necessary for the salvation of man. The Quorum of the Twelve were
horrified at the idea that one of the Twelve Apostles should teach such a
doctrine. After Amasa Lyman was interrogated on the subject and said these had
been his sentiments, W. Woodruff (of course, that is he himself) made the first
speech and all the Quorum followed and they spoke in very strong terms. W.
Woodruff said that he felt shocked at the idea that one of the Twelve Apostles
should get so far into the dark as to deny the blood of Jesus Christ and say
that it was not necessary for the salvation of man and teach this as a true
doctrine, while it is in opposition to all the doctrine taught by every
prophet, and apostle and saint from the days of Adam until today. The Bible,
Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants have taught from beginning to end
that Christ shed his blood for the salvation of man and that there was no other
name given unto heaven whereby men could be saved and I can tell Brother Lyman
that that doctrine will send him to perdition if he continues in it. And so it
will any man. And such a doctrine would rend this church and kingdom to pieces
like an earthquake. There never was no never will be a saint on the earth that
believes that doctrine. It is the worst heresy that man can preach. When the
Twelve got through speaking, Amasa wept like a child and asked for forgiveness.
We then all went into President Young's office and conversed with him. He felt
as the Twelve on the subject only more so and required Brother Lyman to publish
his confession and make it as public as he had his false doctrine.
Now, Elder Woodruff was
precisely right. The concept of Christ's redeeming blood runs throughout
uniquely Latter-day Saint scripture. This is, of course, the dominant theme of
the New Testament. As the prophet Helaman said to his sons Nephi and Lehi,
Oh,
remember, remember my sons, that there is no other way nor means whereby man
can be saved, only the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. (Helaman 5:9)
O then
ye unbelieving, turn ye unto the Lord; cry mightily unto the Father in the name
of Jesus, that perhaps ye may be found spotless, pure, fair, and white, having
been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, at that great and last day. (Mormon
9:6)
And the second to last verse of
the Book of Mormon promises the readers of that volume that if ye are by the
grace of God perfect in Christ and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified
in Christ by the grace of God through the shedding of the blood of Christ which
is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins that you
become holy without spot. There appears little purpose in multiplying such
references, which could be done indefinitely. The point seems sufficiently made.
On the following day, January
22, 1867, Elder Woodruff recorded that
We met
at President Young's office to hear Amasa Lyman's confession, which he had
written, and it was not satisfactory. President Young talked very plain upon
the subject and told Brother Lyman that if he did not make a confession that
was satisfactory, he should write it on the subject himself. He said if it had
been in Joseph's day he would have cut him off from the church. There is a
question whether the Lord would justify retaining him in the church or not.
The January 30, 1867, issue of
the Deseret News contained
the following statement published over the name of A.M. Lyman,
I have
sinned a grievous sin in teaching a doctrine which makes the death and
atonement of Jesus Christ of no force, thus sapping the foundation of the
Christian religion. The above mentioned doctrine is found in a discourse which
I preached on the nature of the mission of Jesus on the 16th of March, 1862 in
Dundee, Scotland, which was published in the Millennial Star. The above
preaching was done without submitting it to or seeking the counsel of those who
bear the priesthood with whom I am associated. In this I committed a great
wrong for which I most humbly crave and ask their forgiveness as I do also of
all the Saints who have heard my teachings on the subject.
Now, it's possible, as I have
suggested before, that Elder Lyman was able to maintain his status in the
Church an unexpectedly long time while repeatedly denying the redemptive
advocacy of Christ's blood because when expedient, he coupled a somewhat
oblique way of expressing himself with statements to his associates and others,
that wittingly or unwittingly disguised or misrepresented his real position.
The statement cited immediately above may fall into that category because it
represented no real change of heart or conviction. Later in that same year,
accused again of teaching the same doctrine, Lyman was brought before the
Quorum of the Twelve, disfellowshipped, and advised by President Young to find
activities employing his head and hands. Witnesses stated:
We
heard the testimony against him and heard his own remarks we finally voted to
silence him for preaching.
On the following day the
journal reads:
I met
with the Twelve at Bishop Murdock's. The subject of A. Lyman was again taken up
and investigated. He was silenced for preaching because he had done away with
the blood of Christ in his teaching.
Now, Charles Walker, an
ordinary member of the church living down in Washington County, wrote in his
journal on May 5, "The conference in St. George attended by Brigham Young
and several of the Apostles. The church authorities were presented," he
recorded, "And Amasa Lyman was dropped from the Quorum of the Twelve for
infidelity."
Lyman's expulsion from the ranks
of the Apostles was subsequently formalized in the General Conference of the
Church in the new Salt Lake Tabernacle on October 6, 1867. Joseph F. Smith was
called to fill the vacancy when he left. Unfortunately, Lyman continued on his
heretical course and was altogether expelled from the Church in 1870. Charlie
Walker, learning the news down in St. George on June 1, thought the
excommunication worth noting in his journal:
I see
by notice in the Deseret News that on
the 12th of last month, Amasa Lyman, formerly one of the Twelve Apostles, has
been cut off from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for apostasy.
Strange, strange. Once so high and now so low, may God preserve me in the
truth.
When Lyman died in 1877, he was
a practicing spiritualist and a vocal dissident of The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints. It thus seems rather peculiar, to say the least of it,
that Peter Elias has chosen Amasa Lyman as his star witness of Latter-day
Saints beliefs.
With others, I've been leaving
messages on Mormonism Research Ministries electronic message boards since 5 May
2000, calling on him to either explain or retract his use of Amasa Lyman as a
representative specimen of Latter-day Saint teaching on the blood of Christ. As
of today, I checked, he has failed either to justify or to abandon this brazen
misrepresentation. In fact, he hasn't replied at all, which has been my
previous experience with him. Borrowing the language of Brigham Young, the only
ethical course for Peter Elias would be to publish his confession to make it as
public as he has his false characterization of Latter-day Saint doctrine.
It's a course one might
recommend to others as well.
______________________________________________
LDS Article of Faith 11 - We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.
