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Amen, johnh. My problem is with the justification, as much as anything else. Interesting Ray/John, So do you not accept the idea that a righteous priesthood holder can bring a family member into the celestial kingdom?
I’m sure I’ve several times people say something about a child BIC being able to be ‘rescued’ by the father, even if they don’t live worthy themselves. I’ve also heard the same said by people about a man’s wife.
Is that all just more mormon folklore? Is it not taught anywhere?
If it is a principle that someone can recruit someone to their celestial family then perhaps that’s the approach from Joseph. They join his tribe if they don’t ‘make it alone.’
I’ve no real idea. Just conjecture…
mackay11, I was referring to the angel-with-the-drawn-sword-condemned-if-you-don’t justification. Even if Joseph believed it, which I think he might have, I have a problem with it. My view of eternity and grace is expansive enough that I believe passionately in the concept of communal and comprehensive sealing. I don’t have a problem with that aspect of Mormon theology (even when expressed as dynastic kingdom building) in the slightest. It’s the unrighteous dominion I see in the approach that bothers me – and I think Joseph absolutely was involved in unrighteous dominion on occasion. After all, he was one of “nearly all men” who got “a little power” and from whom “we have learned by sad experience”.
I really do believe that chapter was written about him, for his own learning, as much as it was for and about us.
mackay11 wrote:
I’m sure I’ve several times people say something about a child BIC being able to be ‘rescued’ by the father, even if they don’t live worthy themselves. I’ve also heard the same said by people about a man’s wife.Is that all just more mormon folklore? Is it not taught anywhere?
hi mackay11,
This is a very narrow response, intended to answer the question of whether it’s mormon folklore… Your question might have been rhetorical, but I like this doctrine and I don’t think it’s folklore, because I’ve heard it in LDS children’s funerals – and because the idea came from two of our first LDS leaders:
Joseph Smith
When a seal is put upon the father and mother, it secures their posterity, so that they cannot be lost, but will be saved by virtue of the covenant of their father and mother.
Our Heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in his mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive.
Brigham Young
Let the father and mother, who are members of this Church and Kingdom, take a righteous course, and strive with all their might never to do a wrong, but to do good all their lives; if they have one child or one hundred children, if they conduct themselves towards them as they should, binding them to the Lord by their faith and prayers, I care not where those children go, they are bound up to their parents by an everlasting tie, and no power of earth or hell can separate them from
Frankly, I like those quotes, but I see them differently than most people. I see them as nothing more than an acknowledgment / hope that God is much, much more patient and forgiving than we tend to realize – that He isn’t going to “lose” as many of His children as we tend to think – that the Celestial Kingdom (which I see as just a name for the state of full and unconditional love, when I boil it all down to the most basic level) is much more expansive than most people think.
Roadrunner, thanks for the quotes. I don’t suppose you have a source? Ray, I can understand you seeing them as symbolic, but I don’t think they were teaching it as such.
They seem pretty specific to me and perhaps go some way to adding a layer to our understanding of polyandry.
I agree that they weren’t teaching it symbolically, but I still like the concept I see behind the quotes. 🙂 I’m late in the discussion but for me whether or not sex occurred is less concerning that the idea that Joseph Smith could pull rank and take worthy men’s wives as his in the next life. The idea that a higher up priesthood leader can call eternal dibs on someone who is already married bothers me more than the sex. Frankly, bc_pg, that doesn’t bother me in the slightest, since it wasn’t part of the view at that time in any way. Seriously, that’s a gross distortion of how the people involved viewed it. It represents how many people now interpret it, but it just doesn’t match how the people involved actually saw it.
Old-Timer wrote:Seriously, that’s a gross distortion of how the people involved viewed it. It represents how many people now interpret it, but it just doesn’t match how the people involved actually saw it.
Really? Are you sure?
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Yes, cwald. When you read the first-person statements, none of the members (of whom I am aware) whose wives were sealed to Jospeh thought they were giving up their wives in doing so. They viewed “sealing” very differently than “marriage” – and it was a vital distinction to them. The idea of sealing lots of people to lots of people just doesn’t make sense to me. It sounds like Joseph was experimenting with the sealing power and hadn’t really figured it out before he died. If everyone is sealed to everyone (an obvious exaggeration, but illustrates my thinking) what’s the point of sealing? I thought the relationships that are sealed are super duper special, like husband/wife, parent/child. Why would I want to be sealed to my male neighbor, even if we get along great, and even if he’s super righteous? To me the sex and the dynasty building are equally important and equally troublesome. My guess is that some of the early and famous defectors / apostates left the early church for both reasons.
mackay11 wrote:Roadrunner, thanks for the quotes. I don’t suppose you have a source?
Hi mackay11
1st quote – Alma P. Burton, ed., Discourses of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 151.
2nd quote – Joseph Fielding Smith, ed., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 257.
3rd quote – Brigham Young, Discourses of Brigham Young, 208.
The idea to sealing sounds both supercool and weirdly strange and humanistic to me. I love it. But it presents various questions. I try to picture it as I always do with everything I read. I always visualize. I keep coming to a point were multiple leads to… Thus is my super special wife #28. Meet me other super special wife number 3 and 10. Then another comes along and says I can borrow person X, your wife number 10 and my wife as well number 6, I want to introduce her to my other special wife 3. It just gets so weird and meaningless (to me) for multiple. As well as kids having super cool multiple dads and moms. I stop thinking about it at that point because I get weirded out. But I do like the concept of sealing to those you really love without all the stuff that would make it become uncomfortable or mundane. We’ve tied sealing almost exclusively to marriage – to the point that the original views of it have almost disappeared completely. If it’s viewed as nothing more than symbolically interlocking God’s entire family into one “sealed” unit, with the ultimate purpose of “saving” (almost) all mankind / “losing” as few of his children as possible . . . I think Joseph had a glimpse of something he couldn’t replicate – and I think it got influenced (or even sparked) somewhat by libido – and I think what he saw never did get transmitted fully to others, since replicating it was so messy and morphed over time – etc., etc., etc.
That’s all my own speculation, so I might be spectacularly wrong, but I like it.
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