The Doctrine and Covenants: Revelations in Context: The 37th Annual Brigham Young University Sidney B. Sperry Symposium

By Andrew H. Hedges

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 The Doctrine and Covenants: Revelations in Context

This volume covers the lectures presented at The 37th Annual Brigham Young University Sidney B. Sperry Symposium, held at BYU in 2008. It honors Dr. Sperry who was part of the school’s religious education faculty for forty-five years, and was noted for his scholarship and outstanding teaching.

I attended the Sperry Symposium annually for the first ten or twelve years I lived in Utah, but stopped going a few years ago when some of my favorite presenters, like Robert J. Matthews, ceased participating or died. My reasoning was the new crop was “upstarts,” and their scholarship and presentations could not touch those of my favorites. So, when the current work arrived for review, I was a little apprehensive. It didn’t take long before I realized just how wrong I was. The current crop of lectures is among the finest I have perused in some time.

Ten lectures are included as chapters in this collection. I will enumerate them, and then comment on three. The chapters are: "Acceptance of the Lord," by Elder C. Max Caldwell; "Discoveries from the Joseph Smith Papers Project: The Early Manuscripts," by Robert J. Woodford; "One Continuous Flow: Revelations Surrounding the 'New Translation,'" by Kerry Muhlestein; "The Joseph Smith Revelations and the Crisis of Early American Spirituality," by J. Spencer Fluhman; "John the Beloved in Latter-day Scripture (D&C 7)," by Frank F. Judd, Jr. and Terry L. Szink; "'The Laws of he Church of Christ' (D&C 42): A Textual and Historical Analysis," by Grant Underwood; "Joseph Smith, Emanuel Swedenborg and Section 76: Importance of the Bible in Latter-day Revelation," by J. B. Haws; "Universalism and the Revelations of Joseph Smith," by Casey Paul Griffiths; "Redemption’s Grand Design for Both the Living and the Dead," by Jennifer C. Lane; and "'All Things are the Lord’s': The Law of Consecration in the Doctrine and Covenants," by Steven C. Harper.

The Joseph Smith Papers Project has been years in the making, and will eventually fill about thirty volumes. One of the most anticipated parts of the series is that dealing with the revelations. Robert Woodford’s paper gives us a tantalizing taste of what is to come. Woodward serves as an editor for two volumes in the Documents Series which deal with revelations through 1833. The earliest complete manuscript of the revelation is used, and all others will be listed as source notes. The text also deals with variations in the text. I found it interesting Woodford felt it necessary to state, “It is important to note that these alterations have historic value only, and the current edition of the Doctrine and Covenants is the only authorized text of these revelations.” (25)

As a result of research, we can now date the revelations with greater accuracy. I found the comments regarding Section 23 (April, 1830) of particular interest: “This section is actually a composite of five revelations first printed in the Book of Commandments. In that book they were dated April 6, 1830. Although that specific date was not duplicated in later printings of section 23, it is important that we now know that April 6 could not have been the date of reception, and what was printed in the Book of Commandments was in error. This removes part of the basis for the argument used by some that the location of the organization of the Church was in Manchester, not Fayette, New York.” (29)

The final topic of the paper deals with “Linking the Revelations with Historic Fact.” An example: “Section 20 Question: How could a revelation written during the same month the Church was organized have information concerning presiding elders, traveling bishops, high councilors, high priests, presidents, high council, and bishops (verses 66-67) when those offices were not revealed until years later?

“Answer: In editions from 1876 until 1920, there was an asterisk preceding verse 65 with an accompanying note at the bottom of the page that read: ‘Verses 65, 66, and 67 were added sometime after the others.’ There are no manuscript versions of section 20 that include these verses, and the earliest version with them is in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.” (32) This is truly exciting stuff.

Casey Paul Griffiths teaches seminary in Sandy, Utah. His essay, “Universalism and the Revelations of Joseph Smith,” is a good one. He examines the religious background of the Smith family, considers how that background prepared Joseph for his work, and how it framed his career.

Griffiths begins with a discussion of the reactions of early Saints to D & C Section 76, dealing with the “Three degrees of glory.” Although Joseph and others were ecstatic over the revelation, others were not. Brigham Young stated, “When God revealed to Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon that there was a place prepared for all, according to the light they had received and their rejection of evil and practice of good, it was a great trial to many, and some apostatized because Gid was not going to send to everlasting punishment heathens and infants, but had a place of salvation, in due time, for all, and would bless the honest and virtuous and truthful, whether they ever belonged to any church or not. It was a new doctrine to this generation, and many stumbled at it.” (170) Brigham also confessed, “My traditions were such, that when the Vision first came to me, it was so directly contrary and opposed to my former education, I said, wait a little: I did not reject it, but I could not understand it.” (171) Joseph, himself, instructed missionaries going to England to not mention it until a foundation for understanding it was in place.

So, why all the fuss? Most early converts came into the Church from what the author refers to as “heaven or hell” Protestantism. If a person lived a good life, and accepted Jesus, he/she would go to heaven; otherwise the individual would be condemned to hell.

Perhaps Joseph Smith had no problem in accepting the revelation because his family had a background in Universalism which declared, “We believe that there is one God, whose nature is Love, revealed in one Lord Jesus Christ, by one Holy Spirit of Grace, who will finally restore the whole family of mankind to holiness and happiness.” (172)

Asael Smith, Joseph’s grandfather, was of a philosophical bend similar to the founder of Universalism, John Murray. Eventually, Asael settled in Vermont where he and two of his sons, Jesse and Joseph, Sr. organized a Universalist society in Tunbridge. Jesse ultimately became an ardent Calvinist, while his brother remained attached to Universalism philosophically even as he removed himself from it institutionally.

Although the Prophet’s immediate family had no formal ties to any Universalist organization, it is probable its doctrines played a part during his youth. It is of interest to note that Martin Harris, the Hezekiah Peck and Joseph Knight families, all early converts to Mormonism, were Universalists.

This review is already too long, but I am happy to suggest a study of this paper will be of great interest to its readers.

I’ll state without reservation that J. B. Haws, “Joseph Smith, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Section 76: Importance of the Bible in Latter-day Revelation,” is of prime importance. Its very inclusion in this volume is, to me, an indication of the trend towards openness in LDS historical inquiry. Although I became aware of Swedenborg a number of years ago, I hadn’t read any of his works. That is until I met Sam McBride of the Swedenborg Foundation in Salt Lake City. I was introduced to him by Jeff Needle at the Sunstone Symposium. Mr. McBride sent me on my way with an armful of literature, and even included a very fine DVD on Helen Keller and the influence the writings of Swedenborg had on her. I recommend the DVD to you.

The question raised in this paper centers on what effect, in any, did Emanuel Swedenborg’s writings have upon Joseph Smith. What did Swedenborg teach? Did Joseph have access to those teachings? Did Joseph “lift” Swedenborg’s concepts and adopt them as his own? Or did Joseph Smith and the eighteenth century Swedish visionary come to similar understandings, particularly of the concept of heaven and hell, by their study of the Bible?

Among other things, Swedenborg taught the concept of angels without wings, eternal marriage, and a three-tiered heaven with marriage being a condition of admittance to the highest level. All these ideas are familiar to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Did Joseph have access to Swedenborg’s ideas or writings? Michael Quinn suggests Joseph could have seen some of the advertisement and sale of Swedenborg tracts in and around Palmyra, Joseph’s boyhood home. It is an established fact that Emma Smith and her children lived with Sarah and John Cleveland for part of 1839 while Joseph was in jail. Although Sarah was converted to Mormonism, her husband was a Swedenborgian. Haws suggests Smith would certainly have become familiar with the Clevelands after he was released from jail in Missouri, and traveled to Quincy. (George Smith, in his recently published Nauvoo Polygamy, claims Joseph took Sarah as a plural wife; however Todd Compton’s “In Sacred Loneliness” does not include her as such.) Another possibility is Joseph became aware of Swedenborg through Sidney Rigdon as Swedenborgian evangelists were active in Pittsburgh, where Rigdon lived in the 1790’s. Whether Sidney taught Joseph Swedenborg’s view is open to debate; what is not debatable is Rigdon’s involvement with Section 76.

After a discussion of I Corinthians 15: 40-42 as a passage central to Section 76, Haws finds Swedenborg never cites this passage in any of his writings. This suggests to him that Joseph and Swedenborg came to their understanding of the heavens independently. Although both use the term “celestial kingdom” for the highest degree, Haws finds the term a “common synonym for heaven in the Christian vernacular,” and feels it a “serious stretch to see in this shared vocabulary a direct borrowing of Swedenborgian thought in Joseph Smith’s writings.” (151) The fact that Joseph refers to the second level as “terrestrial,” while Swedenborg calls it “spiritual” and the term “telestial” does not appear in any of the latter’s works is evidence that Smith’s vision was unique and not borrowed. (I am simplifying the discussion here.) I find it interesting, and somewhat comforting to note Haws acknowledges, “Latter-day Saints could accept that, to a remarkable degree, Emanuel Swedenborg and Joseph Smith both experienced actual visions of the afterlife reality.” (156) Wow!