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My husband and I started a Great Courses History series that included a lecture on Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. My husband listened approvingly to the teacher about the 95 Thesis paper that is attributed to Martin Luther and then commented, “He [Martin Luther] got a lot of things right.” I took his comment to mean that he felt that God provided revelation for Martin Luther and then God provided revelation for Joseph Smith later on. I mentioned that it could be the inverse – that God provided revelation for Martin Luther, which filtered down to Joseph Smith (primarily through Lutheranism being the first of the of the religious groups to schism away which eventually lead to Methodists which lead to Joseph Smith). We ended up with an unexpected debate because evidently God needed to provide both Martin and Joseph with revelation – it wasn’t good enough that Martin got revelation which indirectly influenced Joseph.
It is possible – even likely – that I misunderstood the context of his original comment, and that I was not able to clarify my position correctly before I was labeled as “apostate” in my viewpoint (OK, slight exaggeration probable – but there is a certain edge to tone, a certain squintiness to the eye that screams “Danger! Apostate Rant Ahead – Must Divert from course” that gives the non-verbal “apostate” vibe.
Eventually I realized that I had not managed my theological boundaries correctly (hence the conflict)- so I focused back on the connections between the Protestant Reformation and the church that Joseph Smith organized.
I am working through Bushman’s “Rough Stone Rolling” – and while there is a lot to digest, a main theme is “religious-wise EVERYTHING regarding Joseph Smith and the restoration process is more complicated then it seems to be – and that part of the restoration process included “borrowing” already established religious principles, concepts, and adapting them to the church that Joseph Smith was founding.”
Question:Is the glory of the restoration diminished if Joseph Smith took already existing revelation and incorporated it into the theology?NOTE: There are assumptions that Joseph Smith restored something meaningful and glorious.
My personal take on this question is “No” – the restoration is not diminished by the incorporation of outside sources.
However, I know there is an “oh shiny” principle – there is a connotation that new = best. This is taught in our church theology that the world needed new revelations – Joseph Smith was told not to join any of the churches due to their corruption. So, I can see where the glory of the restoration would be diminished if Joseph was just taking theology he learned and tweaking it.
AmyJ wrote:
Is the glory of the restoration diminished if Joseph Smith took already existing revelation and incorporated it into the theology?
I believe that most TBM’s would be bothered by this concept. We tend to teach and believe that all the existing churches of that time were in apostacy. JS needed new revelation that would restore the true and pure principles that had been revealed in previous dispensations.Therefore any commonalities with existing churches and organizations of the day can be understood as shards of truth that came down through the ages – contaminated and mixed with error but still somewhat recognizable. This was the theory with the similarities between Masonry and the Endowment ceremony.
Of course now we have strong evidence that the Masonic organization did not begin in the time of Solomon or anytime close. It is estimated to have begun in the dark ages when we believe the general apostacy to have already taken hold.
The new theory is that JS could have received a few core concepts by revelation that he was to share with the saints and he borrowed the masonic roleplay/ritual as a delivery vehicle. However JS seemed to think that the masonic elements contained some truths (albeit in adulterated form) from a prior dispensation. If we are to maintain that JS revealed divine truth through this ordinance then we are to suppose that JS was right about the divine nature of the concepts while simultaneously being wrong about their origin.
This is not unlike the issue with the BoM. JS has made statements about the book and the inhabitants of the American continents that do not seem to be true. Therefore it is possible that JS was an unwitting conduit for revelations – receiving and transmitting important messages from God while at the same time misunderstanding and misinterpreting the context of those messages. Even this apologetic theory would make many church members uncomfortable.
I remember reading in RSR that JS scoured the revelation on Zion’s Camp to understand why it was unsuccessful when certain victory had been prophesied. This was confusing to me. Why could JS not just ask God and receive knowledge like he did in the sacred grove? Whatever it means to be a prophet, apparently the ability to have God or angels explain every little or even big issue is not in the program.
Joseph Smith did not exist in a vacuum. Christianityitself had already been shaped for a good 1800 years before JS came along. I know an orthodox belief is that Adam and Eve started out on day one with Christianity as we know it today but the teachings got corrupt or lost over time. If you’re starting with that assumption there’s not room for much else.
Mormons don’t believe in creation ex nihilo. I don’t think we believe in revelation ex nihilo either. If Joseph was completely isolated from the influences of his day what would his question in the canonized version of the first vision have been? All the influences surrounding him, including what Christianity had become by 1820, helped provide the framework to ask the question and the framework to interpret the answer.
AmyJ wrote:
Is the glory of the restoration diminished if Joseph Smith took already existing revelation and incorporated it into the theology?
Is the glory of a wedding cake diminished because the baker took existing flour, eggs, sugar, etc. that others refined and sold and incorporated them into their recipe?
Well, Joseph Smith’s revelations did borrow from other sources. The Book of Mormon is a huge example of this, as it borrows heavily from the JKV, including mistranslations, some of which were important enough to correct in Joseph Smith’s translation of the bible. The endowment ceremony is another one, which had to have borrowed heavily from other sources (the Masons), because of the multitude of changes which latter occured. If a revelation has changes and corrections made to it later, it either borrowed from an incorrect source, or is the primary source is false. Saying it had borrowed still leaves room for continued revelation.
Whether or not the glory of the restoration is diminished or not is up to the individual to decide. But this is completely independent of the fact that Joseph did borrow. One cannot be honest with the history and not see that Joseph borrowed at every turn. I think that was part of his great genius – a master syncretizer of the cultural milieu of his day and repackaged into something that was inspirational and transformational for his followers. But the facts of history are clear that Joseph borrowed from everything around him. He admitted as much himself. I think he saw this as part of his role as prophet – to take all the good and truths that were already available and add to them. dande48 wrote:
Well, Joseph Smith’s revelations did borrow from other sources. The Book of Mormon is a huge example of this, as it borrows heavily from the JKV, including mistranslations, some of which were important enough to correct in Joseph Smith’s translation of the bible.The endowment ceremony is another one, which had to have borrowed heavily from other sources (the Masons), because of the multitude of changes which latter occured. If a revelation has changes and corrections made to it later, it either borrowed from an incorrect source, or is the primary source is false. Saying it had borrowed still leaves room for continued revelation.
And it appears the JST was also heavily borrowed from Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible.
In studying Bushman and Givens, I think JS saw himself more as a seeker/finder of truth in restoring it as opposed to everything being “revealed” through revelation.
DarkJedi wrote:
And it appears the JST was also heavily borrowed from Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible.In studying Bushman and Givens, I think JS saw himself more as a seeker/finder of truth in restoring it as opposed to everything being “revealed” through revelation.
I am reading “Rough Stone Rolling” now – and I picked up on that huge theme of innovation/borrowing over over starting from scratch. In part, it was driving my comment.
DarkJedi wrote:
In studying Bushman and Givens, I think JS saw himself more as a seeker/finder of truth in restoring it as opposed to everything being “revealed” through revelation.
I can believe that. I’m just not sure JS was very accurate at determining what was truth and what wasn’t.
dande48 wrote:
DarkJedi wrote:
In studying Bushman and Givens, I think JS saw himself more as a seeker/finder of truth in restoring it as opposed to everything being “revealed” through revelation.
I can believe that. I’m just not sure JS was very accurate at determining what was truth and what wasn’t.
Yeah, I think he sort of had an idea of what he thought the “true church” (I’m not sure he actually ever used that term) was supposed to be like from his study of the Bible and I think his aim was to have a church like what was in the Bible. Do any of us really know truth?
DarkJedi wrote:
Do any of us really know truth?
I think as more evidence and better information presents itself, I can better know “the truth”. And, to quote the quote in my signature line,
Quote:“Even though there are no ways of knowing for sure, there are ways of knowing for pretty sure.”
I think the fact that no one can know truth, or know anything “for sure” is often used to equalize possibilities of vastly different probabilities. For example, you can’t know “for sure” the earth is spherical, hence you have “flat earthers” who cling to the smallest of possibilities that the earth is flat. But I think there reaches a point, where something is so probable or improbable, you can say you “know” (otherwise, the word “know” is meaningless).
If you require absolute certainty to “know”, you’ll never “know the truth”. Likewise, if you don’t take into account the probabilities of possibilities, you’ll never “know the truth” either.
As a side note: I think it’s unfair to use the word “know” with different definitions in the same context. For example, a theist should not say “I know there is a God”, while at the same time declaring an atheist cannot “know there is no God”. In the first context, “know” is defined as “concluded according to my experiences and the evidence presented me”, and in the second it is used as “devoid of any contrary possibility”.
DarkJedi wrote:
And it appears the JST was also heavily borrowed from Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible.
FWIW, I’m not convinced on that one yet. I’m waiting to see the supposedly-to-be-published report by the UofU… The only thing I’ve seen so far is a summary that lists only two cases, neither of which passes the test in my mind to make it clear or “obvious”. Not saying he didn’t or even whether it would matter, I just want to see more before deciding.As nibbler pointed out, Christianity has been a moving target. The periods of the most movement were the first 300 years and the Reformation, but there has been plenty going on in all other areas of the timeline, right up to today. I think it’s worth pointing out that ML produced the 95 Thesis 313 years before JS organized the Church. Just to get a sense of the span of time, if we go back 313 years from 2018, that gets us to 1705, 13 years after the Salem Witch Trials and one year before the birth of Benjamin Franklin.
It is natural that there would be some similarities between ML and JS, since they both saw their role as tearing down the traditions of men, though they went about it in different ways. I would say that it is impossible for any Christian Leader today (including in the Catholic Church) not to have been influenced by ML, directly or indirectly. ML did, indeed, get a lot of things “right”, so did JS, as it turns out. For my part, I don’t think either one had revelations from God.
For completeness, let me add that the Reformation did not follow a single strand, either. Even those wanting to reform did not agree with each other, so much as they agreed against the Church.
There is a direct line from Luther to Smith for sure. Luther was not the first to question how the church was run, but he was the first in western Europe to start a lasting reform movement. Without Luther, there would not be the multitude of churches that Smith was influenced by and reacted to. Nor would there have been such wide availability of Bibles. Without Luther, Smith would likely have been burnt at the stake.
However, Smith also took his church back into a more RC mode. The Protestant aspect is a potentially universal priesthood, personal revelation, simple meeting houses and emphasis on scripture study; and the RC aspect is the supreme leader, with his college of cardinals who must be obeyed, the lineage, the heavy use of iconography etc
Elder Uchtdorf’s talk from a while ago entitled “Faith of Our Father” is excellent. The section entitled “Faith of Our Fathers” deals explicitly with the Protestant Reformation, and he praises the leaders of the Reformation for being inspired. https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2008/04/faith-of-our-father?lang=eng It’s also worth pointing out Luther’s actions led to many reforms withinRoman Catholicism itself. The Vatican cracked down on corruption big time.
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