From the Life of Joseph Smith

The introductory material for this lesson is concerned primarily with what we usually call the Joseph Smith Translation. There is something of an attempt in the last paragraph or two of the section to make a transition from that to the material gathered in the "teachings" section, but the link is, in the end, rather tenuous. But the attempt to make that link turns out to be quite fruitful, as shall be seen.

The first paragraph basically introduces the fact that there was a "Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible." The second paragraph in turn provides a summary of the historical background: "The Prophet began this work in June 1830 when the Lord commanded him to begin making an inspired revision of the King James Version of the Bible." Now, let me be frank: this is not entirely accurate. Unlike most of Joseph's early projects, there is no revelation in the D&C (or out!) in which Joseph is specifically commanded to begin doing a translation of the Bible beginning with the Old Testament. Rather, the project seems to have unfolded in a rather complex way.

In June 1830, Joseph received a revelation, which we now call Moses 1. It was not received as part of a process of translation, but as a revelation, much in the way that, say, D&C 7 contains the content of an ancient text which Joseph received, but not as part of the translation of the Bible. In June---and unfortunately, we don't know enough of the details---Joseph received a full-blown revelation of Moses' vision, without context and without any hint of a project of translation. This is especially clear from the original manuscript, published a few years ago by the RSC (at BYU): "At the top of the first page, it reads: "A Revelation given to Joseph the Revelator June 1830. The words of God which he gave spake unto Moses . . . ." Note that this came like any other "average" revelation in the D&C: it did not come through a process of translation.

What follows in the original manuscript is a full revelation of the same order of a text that is in many places similar to Genesis 1-25. The manuscript runs right up through the end of the Abraham story and then suddenly stops. The entirety of it was dictated, taken down word by word, and written like any of Joseph's other revelations. It would appear that none of this manuscript (referred to in scholarship as OT1) contains what we usually refer to as the JST: it is not a translation or a revision; it is a revelation.

The whole of this text was revealed and written down by March of 1831, when D&C 45 was given. In that revelation, Joseph was told that he would be undertaking a translation of the Bible: "And now, behold, I say unto you, it shall not be given unto you to know any further concerning this chapter [Matthew 24], until the New Testament be translated, and in it all these things shall be made known" (D&C 45:60). The passage goes on to command Joseph to begin a translation effort: "Wherefore I give unto you that ye may not translate it, that ye may be prepared for the things to come" (D&C 45:61). Joseph immediately began what we now (ought to) refer to as the JST. Indeed, the top line on the first manuscript of the New Testament translation is: "A Translation of the New Testament translated by the power of God. The book of the genaration . . . ."

The process for undertaking the translation effort was quite different from the manner of receiving revelation: whereas revelation was something Joseph dictated word for word, the translation was done with the help of a copy of the KJV, which Joseph and Oliver had purchased in 1829. That copy of the Bible has editorial marks all through it: Joseph and his scribes would scratch out lines to be cut and make marks where material was to be added or changed. The translation itself was something of a revision.

All of this historical clarification is meant to point to the fact that there are, under the umbrella of the JST (and then only up through the Kirtland era), what seem to me to be two fundamentally different projects. On the one hand is a revelation of a document apparently written by Moses but which is not to be read as tied too strictly to the KJV Bible; on the other is a revision/translation of the KJV itself, quite strictly the JST.

I think this distinction is enormously helpful: the JST proper is, as the lesson material seems to suggest, less than binding on the saints---it was never finished, never published by the Church, and it never has been entirely clear how much stock Joseph put in it. Much more important about the JST proper was what the lesson describes thus: "The Prophet's translation of the Bible was an important of his own spiritual education and the unfolding restoration of gospel truth." It was less a question of restoring ancient texts to some original purity than it was a question of pressing Joseph's attention in the directions needed for the reception of very important revelations (dozens of revelations in the D&C are in part a consequence of Joseph's work on the Bible). The revelation that is found now in the Book of Moses, however, I take (personally) to be the restoration of an ancient text---not necessarily (in fact, not likely at all) the text "behind" the Bible, but another text written up by Moses and hidden away for a later generation.

The lesson itself provides what I regard as a good example of how the JST proper (not the Moses material, but the rest) should be taken as a clarification of the KJV text and not as a restoration of ancient material: the lesson cites Joseph's Nauvoo discourse explaining the JST reading of Hebrews 6:1. Joseph says, "Look at [Hebrews 6:1] for contradictions---'Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection.' If a man leaves the principles of the doctrine of Christ, how can he be saved in the principles? This is a contradiction. I don't believe it. I will render it as it should be---'Therefore not leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection.'" (pp. 207-208)

Now, note first that Joseph never claims in this passage to restore the ancient text: he says only that he "will render it as it should be," namely, without contradiction. But what Joseph effectively does in his reading is to change the meaning of the words "leaving" and "go on": the author of Hebrews likely did not mean "existentially leaving behind" by the former, nor did he mean "progressively going on from" by the latter; rather, he was speaking rhetorically, of the rhetorical situation: "Having spoken up to this point in our discussion of the principles of the doctrine of Christ [the beginning points of doctrine], let us move along now to speak of higher things, namely, of perfection." Joseph's revision of the text would seem to be motivated by a possible misunderstanding of the ambiguous meaning of the language: he sees that people might use the text as a prooftext for suggesting that perfection releases one from "lower" duties (given the occasion in which the sermon was delivered, this may have been used as a prooftext in some conversation with Joseph already!), which would be a doctrinal contradiction. Joseph's translation is effectively a "plainer translation," one that cannot be misunderstood. But I don't see that it must be understood, for that reason, as a restoration of an ancient text that has somehow gone missing.

Which is to say that both the "original" text and the JST text can be read as complementary: Joseph is giving us a clarification of the doctrinal intention of the text, not a correction of the text's actual wording. The JST can be read as so many correctives to misreadings, rather than as a way of solving the problems of a corrupt text. A kind of methodology for reading the JST is implicit in all of these comments: one begins with the "original" biblical text; one then looks at the JST to see which directions of interpretation ought to be avoided; and then one returns to the "original" text to see what it is saying. The JST is something like an interpretive guide against prooftexting or excessively private interpretation, not a way of dismissing the KJV itself.

All of that said, it is time to look at the attempt at transition. After a description of Moses 1 (much more in line with what I described above, interestingly), the lesson provides as an example of what is to come in the lesson's "teachings" section a snippet from Moses 1: "And the Lord God spake unto Moses, saying: . . . For behold, this is my work and my glory---to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39). This verse deserves attention, because it highlights what might be called the three "versions" of the JST as they work themselves out in the course of Joseph's life. And this brief trajectory should clarify all of the above by providing something like a history of how we got to the present interpretation we lay on the JST.

There are two versions of Moses 1:39 in the JST manuscripts. There is the version in the "original" manuscript, taken down as part of the full-blown revelation given in June of 1830; and then there is a revision of that revelation, attached to the beginning of the JST translation effort undertaken some time later. They differ substantially. From OT1: "for behold this is my work to my glory to the immortality & the eternal life of man." The revised manuscript edits this to read as it presently does in the Book of Moses. But note the difference in meaning in the "original" revelation. It is not a work and a glory, but God's work, to His glory. Furthermore, there is no mention whatsoever of "bringing to pass," since the same work is not only to God's glory, but also "to the immortality and the eternal life of man." This text emphasizes the way that God's work has a kind of double intention: it does something to God (is to His glory) even as it does something to man (is to their immortality and eternal life). This pairing is a constant theme throughout the "original" revelation.

The edited version of this text, which ends up in the JST, is different, but obviously similar. Now it is God's work and His glory: the glory is already had, and the work is identified with it---the work does not aim at glory but is God's glory. Moreover, the work/glory is now identified with bringing immortality and eternal life to pass: it is not that God's work results in immortality/eternal life, but that God's work is to go about that task. The meanings are clearly close to one another, but ultimately quite different in intention. What is "lost" (setting aside for the moment what is "gained") is the pairing of two intentions or effects of God's work, which implies only in the earlier text a kind of pairing of God and human beings. In the later text, God seeks out human beings, rather than being so absolute or even distant.

But beyond these first two readings, there is a third---now not a textual alternative, but an interpretive alternative. The lesson takes this text as anticipating the teachings of the remainder of the lesson. But there is something somewhat incongruous about this. Not only is the text a bit unclear (appearing, historically, in two different forms), but it is also relatively early (the final form of the text is fixed by 1833) whereas the teachings in the remainder of the lesson are mostly from the Nauvoo era and cannot be disentangled from the teachings of the endowment, etc., which had not been anything like revealed to the saints in 1833. The text of Moses 1 is thus reinterpreted in terms of the "Nauvoo theology" or at least in terms of Joseph's explication (at last!) of that theology in Nauvoo: Moses 1:39 is now taken up into a much more complex universe than the one being discussed by Moses and the Lord in Moses 1. Effectively, the JST text is rewritten again, given new nuance.

Three versions of the JST, each with a different ultimately purpose: a revelatory one, sent fully as a whole in New York; a translational one, undertaken as a revisionary project in Ohio/Missouri; and an interpretive/theological one, reinterpreted through a theological explication worked out at length in Illinois. The relative canonization of Mormon theology in light of Joseph's finally public teachings in Nauvoo has perhaps fixed how we read the JST: we read it in the Nauvoo sense, that is, with the text of the Ohio/Missouri project (as in part inflected by the New York project) but with goggles we've brought from Nauvoo. In the end, I don't think that's wrong at all, but we can too easily run into interpretive troubles if we don't recognize the trajectory we've gone through. (For all you Lacanians, there is a powerful Lacanian theme here: New York as the real, Ohio/Missouri as the imaginary, and Illinois as the symbolic.)

All that said, it is time to transition to the Nauvoo era itself to take a further look at the teachings that have given us to reread the JST in a radically different way. On to the teachings.

Teachings of Joseph Smith

This lesson is no ordinary summary of "the plan of salvation." If it could be summarized in a sentence, it might be as follows: "Salvation is a question of deliverance through the body from the spiritual power of the devil." There is a heavy emphasis on the devil throughout the lesson material.

The first section, in fact, cites Joseph's revolutionary teachings on the devil's part in the pre-mortal council. Let me discuss just the last (or fourth) paragraph of that section.

First of all, the paragraph is lifted from the King Follett Discourse, a point that is not without importance: this teaching cannot be separated from the other revolutionary ideas in that discourse (such as the once-manhood of God, the possibility for human beings of becoming gods and goddesses, the eternal nature of the mind/spirit/soul, etc.). Most immediately in terms of context, this paragraph is found in the midst of a discussion of the unpardonable sin. Joseph has just asserted that all will be saved except for sons of perdition. It is only after this that Joseph says, as found in the lesson: "The contention in heaven was---Jesus said there would be certain souls that would not be saved; and the devil said he would save them all," etc. First things first, then: this teaching does not suggest that the devil was going to force everyone to the Celestial Kingdom. That was not his plan, given the context. His claim was that there would be no sons of perdition, since Joseph had just taught that all would be saved (in one of the three degrees of glory) except for the sons of perdition. Satan was either claiming (1) that he could do things well enough that no one would rebel in that radical way or (2) that he would somehow arrange things such that no one could (at all) become a son of perdition. My suspicion is that the latter is the case.

How, then, could this be done? The simple answer, given the way Joseph explains perdition in the KFD, is that Satan was not going to offer any Celestial glory to people: his plan was to maintain only a terrestrial/telestial split, shaving off the two extremes of the Celestial glory and outer darkness, since the latter could not exist without the former. Satan's plan, then, was not a forced Celestial glory (which would have been impossible, something everyone should have been able to recognize) but to remove the possibility of the Celestial so that no one would be eternally cut off. One could say that Satan's plan was (or at least seems to have been) to enforce a kind of eternal mediocrity: either telestial or terrestrial.

This reading, of course, forces us to reread Moses 4, where it is said that Satan sought to destroy the agency of man. But it should be clear that this phrase does not imply a forced Celestial glory either: to destroy the agency of man would be to destroy the plan of angelic visitation, of constant calls or summons to the Celestial kingdom. A world without divine messengers would be a world in which all would be saved. Satan offered to replace Christ so that he could arrange a world in which there was nothing but salvation---exaltation as much as outer darkness excluded. But Satan was rejected, etc.

The next section of the lesson begins to explain the metaphysics, so to speak, behind all of this. Again the source is the KFD. The doctrine is, first and foremost, the eternal nature of the soul/mind/spirit, though it is entirely unclear what Joseph has reference to exactly as being eternal (he seems to have been less than precise in his choice of words, at least in retrospect, after the wild speculations on this subject that have gone on since Joseph's day). But regardless of what exactly it is that is eternal, there are a few things that are quite clear.

The KFD discusses, broadly speaking, two subjects: the uncreated nature of physical matter used in the creation, and the uncreated nature of spiritual matter that makes up our "intelligent part." Notice an important parallel here: two uncreated substances are organized or arranged in the course of the creation, being brought together. The creation, in the KFD, amounts to a double arrangement: eternal physical matter is brought into organization in relation to eternal spiritual matter, and eternal spiritual matter is brought into organization in relation to eternal physical matter. This double aspect of creation is too easily missed in the KFD, but it seems to have been Joseph's entire point.

All of this metaphysics leads to Joseph's explanation of what God's work really amounts to: "God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself." Or, in the same paragraph, but drawn from another diary source: "The relationship we have with God places us in a situation to advance in knowledge. He has power to institute laws to instruct the weaker intelligences, that they may be exalted with himself, so that they might have one glory upon another." (p. 210) The creation amounts, it would seem, to the institution of a number of laws that "instruct the weaker intelligences." But the meaning of this instruction, etc., is not really made clear until the next section.

There, Joseph is suddenly given to focus on death! "All men know that they must die. And it is important that we should understand the reasons and causes of our exposure to the vicissitudes of life and of death, and the designs and purposes of God in our coming into the world, our sufferings here, and our departure hence. What is the object of our coming into existence, then dying and falling away, to be here no more? It is but reasonable to suppose that God would reveal something in reference to the matter, and it is a subject we ought to study more than any other. We ought to study it day and night, for the world is ignorant in reference to their true condition and relation to God." (p. 211)

We should study death day and night? Indeed: we ought to study the very idea of death, since it highlights the strange nature of the plan of salvation. It is one thing, after all, to suggest that God undertook the creation in order to instruct weaker intelligences, etc. But it is another thing entirely to say that death is implied in the process: Why death?

The question is especially poignant given the subsequent teaching on the same page: "The great principle of happiness consists in having a body. The devil has no body, and herein is his punishment. . . . All beings who have bodies have power over those who have not." This touches on a theme rather persistent in Joseph's Nauvoo discourses: there is a kind of eternal war between spirits in the spirit world, and to receive a body is to be subtracted from that eternal warfare because one gains "an ascendency over the spirits who have received no bodies." (p. 212) This Joseph describes further along: "And when we have power to put all enemies under our feet in this world, and a knowledge to triumph over all evil spirits in the world to come, then we are saved," etc. (p. 212)

There is actually quite a bit happening in this last quotation. The plan of salvation is a question of two things: first, to gain "power . . . in this world," and second, to gain "knowledge" that will be necessary "in the world to come." Power and knowledge, the former of importance here, the latter of importance there. Indeed, as Joseph explains in the paragraph immediately above the one just cited: "The principle of knowledge is the principle of salvation. . . . Every one that does not obtain knowledge sufficient to be saved will be condemned."

Does all of this begin to highlight the importance of asking the question about death, and perhaps also begin to provide a way of answering it? If creation---this intertwining of two eternal substances---is a question specifically of subtracting us from a power struggle that goes on in the spirit world ("God took upon himself to save the world of spirits" reads a teaching on p. 211 in the original diary entry), then why bother to allow us to die, when returning to a bodiless state would seem to mean that we come again under the devil's power? And yet, death would seem to mark a limit point, a point at which it must be said that knowledge has or has not been gained. Could there be knowledge without death? Could there be death without knowledge? From the very beginning---in the Garden, that is---death and knowledge have been intertwined. Is it knowledge that gives us to die, or death that gives us to know? Either way, it is only through this intertwining that we can gain what we need to have an ascendency in the world to come: knowledge, it seems, is what we need to gain most in this life, so far as the world to come is concerned.

What is the relationship, then, between knowledge and the resurrection? The lesson never provides any solid answers to this question.

But it does go on to spell out the nature of agency a bit in the final section. Most of this is relatively straightforward, so I will leave off comments so as to keep this lesson a bit shorter than it is threatening to become. But I will highlight the first paragraph on the last page of the lesson (p. 214): "The moment we revolt at anything which comes from God, the devil takes power." Let that be our motto!

God has always guided His people and His Church through revelation

The fourth paragraph on page 195 seems to me to provide a basic framework for approaching the remainder of the lesson. There, Joseph quotes what might be said to have been his favorite scripture during the Nauvoo era: Revelation 19:10, which states that the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus. Joseph comments: "Whenever salvation has been administered, it has been by testimony." The paragraph as a whole, in fact, essentially equates revelation with testimony: revelation is testimony. What does this tell us about revelation?

The question, really, is this: what is testimony? Note: not "what is a testimony?" but "what is testimony?" Testimony is always a question of an event or an encounter: someone has seen or encountered something, has heard or witnessed something, and so can offer up a word about what has been seen or encountered, heard or witnessed. Testimony is one's subjective announcement that something happened or that something is. And revelation, it seems quite obvious to me, takes the same shape or structure: to offer up a revelation is to testify to what one has seen or encountered, heard or witnessed. That is, revelation is fundamentally subjective: it cannot be offered up as an objective fact, but as a subjective truth.

Of course, one only offers up testimony because what one has seen or encountered, heard or witnessed, in some sense breaks with what is generally known: there would be no reason to testify if what one has been privy to were already common knowledge. Testimony---and hence, revelation---breaks with the ordinary, with the everyday, with the known or indexed. Truth, in fact, always breaks with the known facts, with things as presently understood: one subjectively testifies and so breaks the hegemony of the objective. Revelation is always progressive, always functions as a recasting of what is objectively known.

These preliminary comments, it seems to me, open the way toward reading the remainder of the lesson. It is precisely in that revelation breaks with what we think we already know that "one truth revealed from heaven is worth all the sectarian notions in existence." And it is in that revelation is tied to the event that it is the "rock" upon the Church is built. And it is in this sense that "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded upon direct revelation." And it is in that objective knowledge will never be enough that we believe in all God has revealed, all that He now reveals, and that we believe He will reveal still more.

Two other teachings from this first section, though, deserve a word or two of further comment. First, in the second paragraph of the section, Joseph explains that there are two ways we try to get out of revelation: "We may spiritualize" or "express opinion." The latter, I think, is simple enough: we tend, as Latter-day Saints, to oppose revealed truth to so much opinion. But I wonder whether we realize that we are far more apt to spiritualize and consider what we say as if it were revelation than we are to express opinion and regard it as authoritative. That is, while we tend to recognize the distinction between opinion and revelation quite easily, it is far more difficult for us to recognize the massive difference between the spiritualized and the revealed. I think this deserves more thought.

Second, the last two paragraphs of the section are of some interesting. In the first of these, Joseph offers a kind of remnant theology that ties the ancients to the moderns through the question of revelation. Very interesting. In the second, Joseph gives a brief summary of the events that make up the grounds for the revelations of this dispensation. Not only does this confirm the evental structure of revelation, but one ought to pay attention to the historical implications of the order in which Joseph presents the list of events. Also very interesting.

The President of the Church is appointed to receive revelation from God for the Church; individuals may receive revelation for their own responsibilities

This section can be broken into two major parts: the first paragraph (the second full paragraph on page 196) and the last three paragraphs (the last two full paragraphs on page 197 and the one that spans pages 197-198) on the one hand, and the rest of the section on the other hand. I'll deal with the first of these two parts first.

These several paragraphs all deal in one way or another with what might be called "council theology." That is, they deal with the role or place of councils in the Church and Kingdom. The first of these paragraphs in fact deals with the most divine council of all: "the grand rule of heaven is that nothign should ever be done on earth without revealing the secret to his servants the prophets, agreeable to Amos 3:7." It is often pointed out that the Hebrew word (sod) translated "secret" in that passage from Amos literally means "council": God does nothing except He reveals His council (not counsel, but council!) to His servants, the prophets. This is agreeable as well to Joseph's many discourses in Nauvoo, where no messenger is sent but by Adam's authority, as He presides over the council of the fathers/mothers in heaven as now constituted, etc. This begins to establish something of the order of the kingdom.

This ordering of things continues in the three paragraphs that conclude the section: "The Presidents or First Presidency are over the Church; and revelations of the mind and will of God to the Church, are to come through the Presidency. This is the order of heaven, and the power and privilege of the Melchizedek Priesthood." This is of some importance, given the statements in the Doctrine and Covenants about ancient councils of three, etc.: the First Presidency plays a much more unique role in the work of the Kingdom than we often talk about, and this passage begins to point in that direction. These first two points, then, establish something like the two sides of the veil: there is the council in heaven (presided over by Adam, etc.), and there is the principal council on earth (the First Presidency), and they are in constant contact. The last two paragraphs then provide a kind of framework for the ordering of the "remainder": "It is contrary to the economy of God for any member of the Church, or any one, to receive instructions for those in authority, higher than themselves." Everyone else, that is, falls into a particular level in a necessary hierarchy.

But I would like to turn to the larger bulk of this section: the passage beginning with the third full paragraph on page 196 and running through the sixth paragraph on page 197. These all deal with the conference of September 1830 and the deception of Hiram Page.

It is common enough for historians to portray this event as the one in which Joseph Smith realized that he would have to reign in his followers, that is, as the one in which Joseph decided effectively that he would have to have some kind of absolute power in the Church. However, these very paragraphs provide a very different understanding of things. First of all, it is important to note in the large paragraph on page 196 what Page's "revelations" were about: Joseph describes them as being "entirely at variance with the order of God's house, as laid down in the New Testament, as well as in our late revelations." Page's "revelations" were not superfluous prophecies, esoteric doctrines, or historical texts translated anew; they were replacements of the Articles and Covenants of the Church.

Second, the whole affair seems to have had more to do with the relationship between Joseph and Oliver than between Joseph and the "average" member of the Church: D&C 28 (from which the passage in the lesson liberally quotes) commands Oliver to sort the matter out; it does not speak directly to Hiram. Moreover, the revelation also attempts to establish a Moses-Aaron relationship between Joseph and Oliver; but this was nothing new: the revelations to Joseph and Oliver had been working out this kind of relationship between them for over a year. The whole revelatory affair seems to have had more to do with Oliver's attempt to invert the relationship God had set them in than with Joseph's suddenly realized need to keep rival prophets under his thumb.

What is most crucial is that Joseph's role as prophet at this point was quite different from what Hiram Page was claiming to have: Hiram was trying to reorganize the Church, but Joseph is declared to have received "the keys of the mysteries, and the revelations which are sealed." These are two entirely different orders. The timing is important, especially given the order of events laid out in the last paragraph of the previous section: Joseph and Oliver had only just received the keys of the Melchizedek Priesthood, and Oliver was already misunderstanding what those were. The whole situation is rather delicate and complicated, but the point should be clear: the conference was a question of Oliver's training, not of Joseph's ascendency.

The President of the Church conveys the word of God to us for our day and generation

The bulk of this section is given to a rather famous story about Brigham Young: asked to testify by Joseph, Brigham said "There is the written word of God to us, concerning the work of God from the beginning of the world, almost, to our day. And now, when compared with the living oracles those books are nothing to me," etc. The point, of course is quite clear.

But it must, of course, not be taken in the wrong way. It is perhaps too easy to take Brigham's statement to mean something like: "We don't need to study the scriptures seriously, because we have General Conference every six months"; or "If the Brethren aren't saying it, it doesn't matter whether it can be found in the scriptures, it is either irrelevant for now or simply not true." These kinds of attitude of course entirely miss the point. Brigham was not responding to those who study the scriptures but those who would "confine" themselves to the scriptures alone: it would be a great mistake to take only the scriptures and so to reject the modern prophets, but it would be just as great a mistake only to take the modern prophets and to reject the scriptures. The written and the spoken word must work together.

We sustain the President of the Church and other Church leaders by praying for them and heeding their counsel

This section opens with a description of the sustaining of the leading councils during the Kirtland Temple dedication. Most interesting, however, is Joseph's statement on page 200, recorded by Eliza R. Snow: "Joseph Smith said, if God has appointed him, and chosen him as an instrument to lead the Church, why not let him lead it through? . . . Does [God] not reveal things differently from what we expect?" That, it seems to me, is a remarkably profound lesson: if we hear the prophet and learn nothing, we are apparently deaf. Just like: if we read the scriptures, and we are not shocked by what we find there, we are entirely missing the point. The words of prophets, ancient and modern, are supplementary to what we already know, though it is too easy for us to ignore the shocking reality of what is being said, and so to pass it off as something we've heard before.

The opposite attitude is described int he second paragraph on the same page: "We trust that you desire counsel, from time to time, and that you will cheerfully conform to it, whenever you receive it from a proper source."

Those who reject the living prophet will not progress and will bring upon themselves the judgments of God

This last section is perhaps the most interesting. Its theme in the first few paragraphs is this: "But they could not endure the new revelation: the old we believe because our fathers did, but away with new revelations." Note that the rejection Joseph describes here is not exactly a question of the content of the new revelation: it is not that one cannot handle what is said; it is rather that one cannot handle that something new is said. Another way to put the same point is this: what disturbs us about new revelation is primarily the fact that it questions what we take as already established, that it questions the establishment. As Joseph says in the following paragraph "It was too much. It showed the corruptions of that generation."

This last point is indeed important: running like a scarlet thread through the revelations of the Restoration is the idea that revelation is primarily a revelation of wickedness, that the purpose of seer stones and the like is to put on display the wickedness of this or that generation. Revelation is disturbing less for the new it introduces than for the implicit critique it wagers against us: we receive revelation not as a step forward, but as a reason to be ashamed of the past. And of course, since we don't like to be ashamed of the past, revelation tends to cause violence.

Indeed, the last two pages of the lesson primarily gather about a question something like the following: How or why was Jesus crucified?

People have always, says Joseph, "cherished, honored and supported knaves, vagabonds, hypocrties, impostors, and the basest of men," in fact, received them---the "false prophets"---as "true" prophets. These, we think, do not question the establishment, do not critique us or tell us we've done wrong, certainly never ask us to change in any way. And so we cherish, honor, and support them. Joseph says, Dostoevsky like, that our own "generation would reject [Christ] for being so rough" in His teachings. We are, Joseph says, "too wise to be taught," and we effectively "seal up the door of heaven by saying, So far God may reveal and I will believe." But, as Joseph explains, "Jesus was crucified on this principle."

This is serious business. We are interested in the scriptures only insofar as the confirm what we already know, and we will open them only to cite proof for our position. We listen to the prophets as a kind of token that we are Latter-day Saints, but if they tell us to change, we wonder where they get the nerve to command. And yet: "Jesus was crucified on this principle."

What are the prophets saying that we're missing? How are they unsettling our conformity, our comfort, our complacence? I hope we open our eyes and ears....

I apologize in advance for the poor condition of these notes. I am posting them anyway because for the first time in months I actually have some lesson planning done before Saturday night!

I see this lesson as quite naturally lending itself to discussions of several areas:

1- The historical context of 19th century America.

2- Some possible differences between how we understand geography today and how early Saints may have thought of it.

3- The promises and risks to community that come with the concept of Zion.

4- The literal and figurative concepts of Zion and the different implications of each for our faith and action.

Historical Context:

I admit that I am very much interested in the historical context in which Joseph Smith lived and carried out his work.  Early American history contains a number of figures with striking similarities to Smith such as William Bradford and Cotton Mather. Its also worth noting that in early America, specifically nineteenth century America, the idea of establishing utopian communities was broadly circulated, it was one manifestation of the idea of America as the new promised land that we see from the very beginning of American such as in the writings of William Bradford who in 1620 helped establish Plymouth.  Later, in the first half of the nineteenth century there were developments such as Harmony Indiana which was founded in 1814, by a group calling themselves the harmonists, who had hopes of forming a utopian society. The land was later purchased by Robert Owen  and re-named New Harmony. Owen was An English Mill Owner and social reformer who wrote:

" I left [England] in 1824 to go to the United States to sow the seeds in that new fertile soil - new for material and mental growth - the cradle of the future liberty of the human race"

He traveled widely throughout the US to talk about his new community and was even invited to address congress. Like many he clearly felt that America was a unique place for the future and a place ripe with possibilities for new types of community that emphasized education, cooperation, and communitarian values that are not so different from those talked about but Joseph Smith and lived by the Saints as they established Salt Lake City and surrounding communities.

Also in the early nineteenth century the Shakers and Quakers were living in small faith communities governed by Christian communitarian ideas.

 There was also the Brook Farm transcendentalist community founded by George Ripley in 1841 not far from Boston. This was a very well known community both for its ideals and for the famous writers who were associated with it such as Hawthorne and Emerson. Some of the main principals of the community were equality and personal improvement.

I mention all this as an introduction because it seems likely that to nineteenth century Americans the idea of the New Zion being in America was a not an extraordinary idea and Church members would contextualize the idea of a new Zion being on American soil both in term of Joseph's Smith's extension of Old Testament theology and also by the current events of their time. 

Geography:

Another aspect of the lesson may be a little more remote to us now. Our current context is one in which economics may well be the largest determining factor in where we choose to live and raise our families.  It’s a very common pattern for Mormon families to live in one geographic area for the purpose of education and then when education is completed to move to another area for employment. In short we (like many others) participate in an economic geography defined by our opportunities for material prosperity.  Granted that is often not the sole concern, but without going into it very deeply we can agree that economic opportunity is often at the forefront of such decisions.  On the other hand the idea of a new Zion having a specific location calls one to think in terms of a spiritual geography. A geography that creates an inside and an outside, defined by a small area of refuge and righteousness where God's promise would be fulfilled and a much lager area of danger and unrighteousness. 

I find this distinction meaningful to the extent that our geographic thinking, decision making, and behavior probably do not occur in the same way they would have for 19th century Mormons who understood Zion as established in a specific location, in their day. I'm thinking of the example provided on page 184 of the manual concerning Polly Knight and her determination to see Zion before her death.

There is also a lot more than can be said about the notion of the inside and the outside. Not just as a geographic variable but on the level of the social within the Church and in the relation of those inside the Church to those outside the Church. I take it from observing Mormon culture that the notion of Zion while announcing a hoped for promise, a place of security and refuge; it is also marked by specific cultural risks, such as happens when the idea of being "of one heart and mind" is synthesized with the majority political or cultural beliefs of a community. The division of inside and outside also can put pressure on ethical concepts such as hospitality, in which the arrival of the other marks the moment at which we become responsible for their wellbeing. But the more certain we are of the righteousness of our community or the more we cling to the notion of our own security we also signal a change in our relation to the other. That the arrival of the other is understood as a threat, and what is engaged is not our obligation to them, but our need to defend against them. 

The Gathering of Zion

Its also worth discussing what we mean when we discuss the literal gathering of Israel. It seems to me that there may have been a change in Mormon doctrine or at the very least a change in Mormon culture regarding this idea.  Based on the idea that the new Jerusalem is to be built in America it seems that many folks naturally believed that all church members needed to come to the U.S. to live in the new Zion. Statements by General Authorities stating that the stakes of the Church are the gathering places of Zion seem to be intended as a corrective to the belief in a single geographic gathering place.  Does this still represent the literal gathering of Zion, if its not the specific geographic location that matters but rather the faith and actions of the Church members, then haven't we made a figurative shift? If so, what are the implications of it?

Further, we can note that the lesson starts off by emphasizing statements made by Joseph in the early 1830's concerning the specific geographic location of Zion but then goes on to quote statements made in the early 1840's that describe Zion as "anyplace the Saint's gather" (p. 186) "there will be here and there a Stake [of Zion] for the gathering of the Saints . . . There your children shall be blessed and you in the midst of friends where you may be blessed." The lesson also emphasized the spiritual work that needs to be done for Zion to be build and that a lack a righteousness prevents Zion from being redeemed.  So this is the "call to action" section of the lesson in which the efforts of each individual member are called upon as part of the greater work of achieving Zion.  Does a belief in either a single Zion at a specific location or a gathering at many different places, effect our expectations, attitudes or works towards the building of Zion? If so How?

These are, of course, incredibly important themes, and I'm quite happy to dedicate my notes to them. I suppose I just expected something different. As things are, then, I will work out my notes below according to the two themes I have already identified: (1) geographical identity and (2) self-disinheritance.

It should be noted that even the "From the Life of Joseph Smith" section of the lesson articulates these two themes in succession. The first paragraph (on p. 183) introduces the question of Zion by placing it into a historical string of revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants (one that deserves a good deal more attention), and the following two paragraphs (on pp. 183-184) describe Joseph's travels to Missouri to discover, announce, and dedicate the center place in Independence. After a paragraph about the desires of the faithful at the time (on p. 184), the introductory section concludes with the persecution and Joseph's reception of D&C 105, with its postponement of the redemption of Zion.

Of course, there is a good deal of history of massive importance here, but I don't know that I want to bury myself in all of its details. I will suggest two directions for further study by presenting, first, a brief list of texts in the D&C that lead from the very beginnings of Joseph's mission to the establishment of Zion (with an eye to the Book of Commandments) and, second, a question with a few guiding thoughts regarding the collapse of things in Missouri.

The List

D&C 2:1-3 - Moroni brings news of the gold plates and connects their reception to a rereading of Malachi 4, in which the resurrected ancients bring texts to the living moderns so as to restore covenants and promises made in earlier ages
D&C 8:1 - Oliver joins Joseph to do the work of translation and is given the possibility to do the work of translation himself
D&C 9:1-4 - Oliver fails to translate and so receives a rather different role in relation to Joseph than he apparently might have had
D&C 20:2-3, 63 - Oliver is thus inscribed as the second elder at the organization of the Church; in the same revelation, the first conference is projected for three months later
D&C 28:1-16 - Between the organization and the first conference, Oliver several times falters in understanding the relationship he sustains to Joseph, and so receives this rather solemn rebuke and commandment relative to the conference
D&C 30:5-8 - Oliver is, because of his misunderstandings, sent away on a mission, relieving him now even of his duties as Joseph's scribe
D&C 32:1-5 - The mission is specified: the missionaries are to go to the Lamanite territories in Missouri, and Parley P. Pratt, a recent convert, is to go with them; because of Parley P. Pratt's presence in the group, they will stop in Kirtland, Ohio, on the way and convert hundreds, including Edward Partridge and Sidney Rigdon
D&C 35:20 - Sidney Rigdon, having come to meet Joseph, is called to take Oliver's place (since the latter is now in Missouri preaching) as Joseph's scribe so that the New Translation of the Bible can take place
Moses 6-7 - Joseph and Sidney translate the prophecy of Enoch, with its explanation of Zion in ancient times and the prophecy of its return
D&C 37:1-4 - Joseph and Sidney are commanded to move the Church to Ohio "against the time that my servant Oliver Cowdery shall return unto them" from preaching in Missouri
D&C 38:1-42 - Clarifications concerning the move to Ohio are offered; mention is made of Enoch's city of Zion; the elders of the Church are promised "my law" when they get to Ohio
D&C 42:1-93 - A revelation "in fulfillment of the Lord's promise previously made that the 'law' would be given in Ohio; see Section 38:32"; the law of consecration is revealed and connected (in verse 35) to the "building up of the New Jerusalem which is hereafter to be revealed"; the Lord commands (in verse 62) "Thou shalt ask, and it shall be revealed unto you in mine own due time where the New Jerusalem shall be built"
D&C 44:1-3 - A conference is called to be had in Kirtland for an (obviously preliminary or even primitive) endowment to be given to the elders
D&C 52:1-2 - At the conclusion of the conference duly held, the next conference is appointed to take place in Missouri, "upon the land which I will consecrate to my people, which are a remnant of Jacob"; various elders are sent to Missouri for the conference
D&C 57:1-3 - Having arrived for the conference and having offered up a prayer concerning the matter, Joseph receives a revelation that Zion will be built up in Independence
D&C 58-64 - A string of revelations follow, all given in Zion and all geared toward the law of sacrifice, etc., that make up the last chapters of the Book of Commandments

The Question

If the above sequence of texts and revelations points to the effective establishment of Zion in Missouri by late Summer, 1831, why did Joseph then return to Kirtland? Might this have something to do with Joseph's rather constant desire to be done with his prophetic calling and to leave the work on the shoulders of the saints (something Bushman brings out very well in Rough Stone Rolling)? Or did Joseph see wisdom in keeping a number of the saints gathered together in a secondary place, in case things did not go well in Missouri? Or did Joseph perhaps understand Kirtland to be a kind of terrestrial (as opposed to Zion's celestial) place, a place for the gathering of the saints unwilling as yet to live the law of consecration? Or did Joseph hope to rectify the difficulties of the failed first version of the endowment (see the historical records on the June 1831 endowment) by ensuring that a temple be built in Kirtland? Or what?

The unchanging geographical identity of Zion

Having dealt with the introductory material, I want to turn to what I see as the two overarching themes in this chapter. First, the unchanging geographical identity of Zion.

The first teaching on page 185 contains a kind of historical summary of how the geographical location of Zion was uncovered. Joseph then describes something like the "purpose" of Zion in a couple of different ways. First, it is "an 'holy city,'" "a place of righteousness." Second, it is only to be built by those who "worship the true and living God" and who "all believe in one doctrine, even the doctrine of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Third, Joseph sums all of this up by quoting Isaiah 52:8, also quoted by Abinadi (as well as---first---by the priests who questioned Abinadi) in his discussion of the "doctrine of Christ." Taking these three brief descriptions together, it might be possible to come to a rather interesting interpretation of what Zion really amounts to.

Let me focus first and the second description: one can only build in Zion if one believes, along with everyone else building there, the "one doctrine . . . of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." This language is roughly Nephite, or rather, roughly Christic, as Christ appears among the Nephites: Jesus speaks in Third Nephi of his doctrine, just as Nephi speaks in 2 Nephi 31-33 of the "doctrine of Christ." As Christ lays it out (especially in 3 Nephi 11, which can very fruitfully be compared to 2 Nephi 31), this doctrine is a question of the relationship between the Father and the Son: THE doctrine of Christ---what Nephi calls "the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost"---is a teaching concerning the nature of the "trinity." This obviously bears as well, then, on the third point raised in the teaching as mentioned above: the quotation of Isaiah 52, to which Abinadi addresses himself.

Without turning to 3 Nephi 11 (or 2 Nephi 31) to work out a commentary on the text there, let me summarize this doctrine as follows: the Father bears record of the Son, the Son bears record of the Father, and the Holy Ghost bears record of the Father and Son. Notice that there is a reciprocal relationship of witnessing between the Father and the Son, but that the Holy Ghost is never testified of---the Holy Ghost only bears record of the Father and Son, of these two in their reciprocal testimonies. Notice that this pattern is familiar from the temple: the Father and the Son are bound or sealed together by the Holy Ghost, by the Holy Spirit of Promise. I would posit that the one doctrine that grounds Zion as such is this familial doctrine of God: God is a sealed family.

This makes some sense of the mention of the "new covenant" in the second paragraph on page 185: Zion is a question of the new covenant, a phrase attached in scripture both to the Book of Mormon, with its doctrine of ancient fathers/mothers seeking out modern sons/daughters in order to restore covenants, and to the celestial order of marriage or sealing.

If this approach is right, then the first full paragraph on page 186 becomes intelligible: "The building up of Zion is a cause that has interested the people of God in every age; it is a theme upon which prophets, priests, and kings have dwelt with peculiar delight; they have looked forward with joyful anticipation to the day in which we live." Notice that Joseph here portrays the ancients---the fathers and mothers who received the covenants, the prophets, priests, and kings (kings and queens, priests and priestesses?)---as looking to the moderns to fulfill the work of the covenants they had received. So they have been "fired with heavenly and joyful anticipations" and "have sund and written and prophesied of this our day." Moreover, as the relatively short paragraph that follows emphasizes, Zion is a place that "every righteous man will build up for a place of safety for his children." And the next paragraph as well: "There your children shall be blessed." Zion is first and foremost a question of celestial family.

Though of course that means that we will have to understand the nature of the celestial family, which is obviously quite different from the romantic notion of an earthly family eternalized that we too often talk about.

But all of these clarifications about what Zion is might seem to distract us from where Zion is. I do not think this "where" is without importance. The last full paragraph on page 186 explains, "In regard to the building up of Zion, it has to be done by the counsel of Jehovah, by the revelations of heaven." We must not be seduced by the idea that Zion is a kind of automatic effect of our more or less doing what we've been asked to do. To build Zion is a question of the revelations and counsel of God---and so we will have to attend to the revelations concerning Zion.

On that note, then, we turn to page 188, where one finds the tenth Article of Faith: "We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent." If this is not straightforward enough, the fourth full paragraph on page 188 finds Joseph quoting from Moses 7, the prophecy of Enoch, where the meaning of the New Jerusalem is clarified: it is a place of meeting, and it cannot be disconnected from ancient scenes that happened in the same location. That is, the location is itself a question of the connection between fathers and children, between ancients and moderns, as the last paragraph beginning on page 188 and its sequel make clear: "Men and angels are to be co-workers in bringing to pass this great work, and Zion is to be prepared"; "'Behold this people will I establish in this land, unto the fulfilling of the covenant which I made with your father Jacob, and it shall be a New Jerusalem.'"

A specific location is called for, not because of the arbitrary will of God, but because certain things happened in that place anciently that call for the fulfillment of all things in the very same place. As Joseph says in the last paragraph beginning on page 185: "I cannot learn from any communication by the Spirit to me, that Zion has forfeited her claim to a celestial crown," though, Joseph goes on to explain, many of the saints certainly had.

Indeed, the continuity of Zion in her established place nicely paves the way to the not so nice second theme of the lesson: the threat of losing an inheritance in Zion.

The threat of losing an inheritance in that geographically identified Zion

It is now worth quoting what I just quoted in greater length: "I cannot learn from any communication by the Spirit to me, that Zion has forgeited her claim to a celestial crown, notwithstanding the Lord has caused her to be thus afflicted, except it may be some individuals, who have walked in disobedience, and forsaken the new covenant." Note that it is not Zion that is removed from its specific location, but we who refuse to build up Zion, who refuse to receive an inheritance. As Joseph says on page 186, "I know that Zion, in due time of the Lord, will be redeemed"; but how many of us will be redeemed, it is far less sure.

The last teaching beginning on page 186 is especially emphatic on this point: "If Zion will not purify herself, so as to be approved of in all things, in His sight, He will seek another people." Notice here that it is not a question of God seeking another place, but another people: we can subtract ourselves from the gathering (and we perhaps have more or less done so as a whole people for now...). Joseph goes on: "for His work will go on until Israel is gathered, and they who will not hear His voice, must expect to feel His wrath."

Further along in the same paragraph, now on page 187, Joseph explains why it is that we reject Zion, why it is that we refuse to receive an inheritance: "Repent, repent, is the voice of God to Zion; and strange as it may appear, yet it is true, mankind will persist in self-justification until all their iniquity is exposed, and their character past being redeemed, and that which is treasured up in their hearts be exposed to the gaze of mankind." I wish I could explain how true that is, how I have seen it myself in the past week in some personal experiences! It is self-justification, our desire to be right or smart or good or liked or powerful or independent or whatever that keeps us out of Zion. We are so wrapped up in us, in being what we think we are, that we ignore the words that scream to us from the dust, the words of the dead, that tell us to repent and to depend on the angelic help those who wrote these texts would send us. If it is the "new covenant" that we ignore---and if the whole Church is therefore under condemnation, a condemnation that rests upon the children of Zion, even all---then it is specifically the scriptures that we refuse to countenance.

Hence (from page 187): "I say to you (and what I say to you I say to all,) hear the warning voice of God, lest Zion fall, adn the Lord swear in His wrath that the inhabitants of Zion shall not enter into His rest." Or again, "So long as unrighteous acts are suffered in the Church, it cannot be sanctified, neither can Zion be redeemed."

We have got to get over ourselves so that the work can get on. We have got to be so much less interested in getting our own, in getting what we deserve, in securing our images and reputations and attitudes, so that we can finally---finally---get on to the work of building the Kingdom. The covenant itself hangs in the balance---or our part in it does, at least.

The "most part"

"From the Life" in this lesson is little more than a list of deaths Joseph and Emma encountered. They are all quite familiar stories for anyone acquainted with the basics of Joseph's life. I'll pass them by entirely here.

Pages 176-178 are given to the extraordinary and infinitely reassuring doctrine that children lost to death during this life will be given to their (exalted) parents in the hereafter to raise. The teaching is beautiful, but more or less the same idea is repeated over and over again in the few pages, so I won't dwell on it here. (One gets the sense that the editors of the manual were concerned to secure without question the fact that Joseph actually taught this point. Is there some history about this question that I'm not familiar with?)

The final teachings, on pages 178-179, have a few interesting points, but again they seem to me for the most part just to elaborate a well-known doctrine: God has purposes in taking some saints early in their lives, and they have work to do on the other side of the veil. Again, it is a marvelously comforting point, but rather straightforward and well-known. Again I'll excuse myself from any kind of sustained discussion.

I would like, then, to spend the remainder of my time focused on the first section of Joseph's teachings in the lesson: pages 174-176.

When beloved family members or friends die, we have great comfort in knowing we will meet them again in the world to come

These three pages of instruction come from only two discourses: the famous King Follett Discourse of April 7th, 1844 and the less famous but equally powerful discourse of April 16th, 1843.

The first paragraph on page 174 comes from the beginning of the former. Joseph began this enormous discourse (of several hours' length) thus: "Beloved Saints: I will call the attention of this congregation wihle I address you on the subject of the dead." I think there is already a vital point here: Joseph does not speak on the subject of death but on the subject of the dead. The non-Mormon interpreter of Mormonism Douglas Davies points this out in his book The Mormon Culture of Salvation: Mormons are less concerned with death as such than they are with the dead, and there is something absolutely amazing about this point, perhaps particularly from a philosophical point. A word or two of explanation.

Philosophers have, since at least Socrates and Plato, recognized that death is of enormous philosophical importance: death is what most perfectly distinguishes me from anyone else, since no one can die in my place. As such, it is when I come to realize the reality of my death that I finally claim myself as myself: death authenticates me. (Jan Patocka does a marvelous job of analyzing this point in the history of philosophy.) Socrates said that the most ethical and authentic life amounts to melete thanatou, which could be translated "the practice of death," "the care of death," or even (somewhat creatively) "living-for-death." To live well, one must learn how to die well.

However, some thinkers have begun---and importantly, always in the name of Paul, whether they are atheists or not!---to point out that it is precisely this exaltation of death that may have led philosophy astray from the very beginning. In a sense, this is a Freudian point: one becomes obsessed with death (one develops a "death drive") precisely because one cannot receive commandments from one's father(/Father) in the shape of a gift (or grace). That is, living-for-death or authentic/ethical living is a way of avoiding grace in the hopes of remaining in control of one's self. Of course, the scriptures---and, as pointed out above, especially Paul---preempted Freud on this part by a few thousand years.

Joseph's shift from death (always meaning "my own death") to the dead, then, must in my opinion be understood as being grounded in an embracing of life, as odd or ironic as that might sound. That is, for Joseph life is an orientation to the dead. It became clearer and clearer as Joseph taught more and more in the Nauvoo period that the dead cannot be disentangled from the fathers/mothers: love for the dead is an effective reversal of the Oedipal (that is, natural or in Greek psychical) situation in which wo/man finds her/himself. To love the dead is to live, in fact, to live by grace.

This can, of course, be read into the sections I've glided over so quickly above. But I want to look now at what Joseph has to say about all of this in the two discourses that make up pages 174-176.

The remainder of the first paragraph on page 174 deserves a bit of attention. Joseph says: "I feel disposed to speak on the subject in general, and offer you my ideas." I think it is worth noting how subjective this sounds: Joseph does not offer up a revelation, but his ideas, the thoughts he has had. Of course, he goes on immediately to mention the Spirit, but in an importantly peculiar way: "I feel disposed to speak on the subject in general, and offer you my ideas, so far as I have ability, and so far as I shall be inspired by the Holy Spirit to dwell on this subject." Notice here that, even as he will says he will speak "as . . . inspired by the Holy Ghost," he does not exactly say that he will speak what the Spirit inspires him to say, but "as . . . inspired by the Holy Spirit to dwell on this subject: Joseph receives a kind of ratification from the Spirit to dwell on these ideas, but the ideas are his.

Now, let me be clear on what I'm suggesting by noting this: I do not at all mean to suggest that what Joseph goes on to teach is not true (far from it!), but to point out what it means for Joseph to teach by the Spirit. For Joseph, to teach by the Spirit is not to have words magically provided him from beyond, but to be told in the moment by the Spirit whether or not to share what he has himself worked out of the truth. When he calls on the Holy Ghost a moment later in the same paragraph, it is "so that I may set forth things that are true and which can be easily comprehended by you, and that the testimony may carry conviction to your hearts and minds of the truth of what I shall say." Joseph is less interested in providing a well-worded bit of revelation than he is of communicating what he has come to understand through his own strugglings with the Lord and with the scriptures. This is, I believe, an important clarification of what Joseph did in his public sermons (and particularly in this King Follett Discourse).

All that said, most of Joseph's most radical ideas in the King Follett Discourse are not cited in this lesson. Rather, the implications of those ideas are what are included. It is interesting, then, that so much of this first paragraph has been included, especially when it might seem to be beside the point. But I'll assume, since it appears in the lesson, that there is something to be learned here: might it be that one cannot fully understand what Joseph has to say about the dead without understanding Joseph's subjective, almost radically subjective, position as teacher? Unless we realize that Joseph is here offering not some kind of "absolute revelation" but what he has come to understand as he has worked through translations, revelations, study, prayer, and suffering, we may treat what he has to say too lightly, or miss its ultimate import. These are teachings that cannot be simply placed before the world as the basics of Mormon metaphysics, or as simple facts to be taken as the ground for Mormon theology: what Joseph teaches in the King Follett Discourse cannot be disentangled from Joseph's subjective position with respect to the dead.

The second paragraph, then: the dead dwell in a kind of parallel kingdom, "a place where they converse together the same as we do on the earth." As such, death (as the possibility of the impossibility of being) is obliterated entirely: the dead "are only separated from their bodies for a short season." Moreover, the death of the wicked is reason for "hope and consolation" according to the third paragraph, and even should be regarded as an "occasion to rejoice" according to the fourth paragraph. Again, this must be understood as inseparably connected to Joseph's own subjective position with respect to the dead: Joseph is offering up his thoughts, not a revelation or commandment. That is, Joseph is offering up what he has come to understand of the nature of God and wo/man, and he suggests that such an understanding means that death should be a time of rejoicing!!! (The original texts from which paragraph four is derived make it clear that Joseph said this of not only Elder King Follett, but all the righteous dead. It has been a bit bungled in the transition to the History of the Church, and thence into the manual.)

Joseph's subjective position here is again placed center stage in the first full paragraph on page 175: "I am authorized to say, by the authority of the Holy Ghost, that you have no occasion to fear," etc. This is something Joseph wants to say, and the Spirit has given him license to do so. The second paragraph on that same page finally comes back to Joseph's very own situation: "I have a father, brothers, children, and friends who have gone to a world of spirits." But Joseph anticipates meeting them shortly (this discourse was given only two and half months before Joseph's death). Death is, for him, an opportunity to meet up with the righteous dead, to enjoy "an eternity of felicity" with them, and to rest from persecution, etc.

Joseph's doctrines---and they are unquestionably his---make it possible to see what death is, or really, make it possible to see that death is nothing, or at least, nothing but comfort.

In the remaining paragraphs of pages 175-176, Joseph describes the scene of reunion that will occur at the resurrection: "If tomorrow I shall be called to lie in yonder tomb, in the morning of the resurrection let me strike hands with my father, and cry, 'My father,' and he will say, 'My son, my son,' as soon as the rock rends and before we come out of our graves." Interestingly, Joseph goes on to describe this scene as somewhat surprising: "And when the voice calls for the dead to arise, suppose I am laid by the side of my father, what would be the first joy of my heart? To meet my father, my mother, my brother, my sister, and when they are by my side, I embrace them and they me." Joseph doesn't picture himself being swept up into the arms of an arriving Jesus first, but first to mingle with his loved ones, to mingle with the saints. "The expectation of seeing my friends in the morning of the resurrection cheers my soul and makes me bear up against the evils of life." To rise from the dead is not to be raptured away to heaven, but to join one's loved ones and together to meet the Savior.

It is thus that Joseph speaks of "learn[ing] how to live and to die." He compares it to something of a sleepover: "When we lie down we contemplate how we may rise in the morning; and it is pleasing for friends to lie down together, locked in the arms of love, to sleep and wake in each other's embrace and renew their conversation." And so it will be in the resurrection: we must learn to die in the middle of praising God together, to die entirely engaged in the work, so that we will rise to do the same. This must be what Joseph means when he says: "This has been a warning voice to us all to be sober and diligent and lay aside mirth, vanity and folly, and to be prepared to die tomorrow." We need to get to work, so that we can lie down in the midst of our labors, and rise again in the same way.

Again, this entirely distracts the "individual" or "individualizing" meaning of death: death is but another night's sleep, and if we lie down "locked in the arms of love," we will so rise in the morning as well. So much more important than our own deaths is the death of our loved ones, and we direct our entire world toward them: so far as we can exalt them, we will find ourselves rising in "the morning of the resurrection" with them. We without them cannot, of course, be saved, nor they without us. The living and the dead must be completely intertwined.

And so we are called upon by the fathers and mothers who have received ancient covenants, who whisper to us in the texts they left behind. Our relative ignorance of the scriptures, and our refusal to read them seriously and constantly, is a sign of how focus we are on our own deaths, of how little we love the dead without whom we cannot be saved. Our constant postponement of the work of the temple, of seeking out our dead to perform ordinances on their behalf, is another sign of how much more we are concerned with our own (meaningless) deaths than we are with exalting the dead who have gone before. Our reticence to do anything like missionary work is a show of how blind we are to the fact that such a great majority of the people we see every day are more or less the walking dead, and we are so very wrapped up in our own pointless lives, our own pointless livings-toward-death, that we take no notice of the fact that these people all around us need life. Again and again and again, we reveal that we are obsessed with (our own) death and are not at all interested in life. Again and again and again, we manifest that we are not interested in the exaltation of which Joseph Smith spoke.

Indeed, all too often, it seems that we find Joseph's words comforting just because we think they mean that we can have all our selfish desires fulfilled in the resurrection. But, given Joseph's subjective position in teaching these most remarkable truths, it is clear that we are entirely resisting the influence of the Holy Ghost that authorized him to tell us things he had learned only through so much tribulation and work. We are, as we tend always to do, treating lightly the things we have received.

But I hope we can rethink a few things.

From "The Elders of the Church in Kirtland, to Their Brethren Abroad"

This epistle is worth reading in its (rather lengthy!) entirety (it more or less opens the second volume of the History of the Church). While the style of argumentation is clearly not Joseph's, it does provide an interesting glimpse into the theology of pre-1835 Mormonism (that is, of Mormonism before the development of a centralized institution). The two paragraphs on pp. 163-164 (the first of which begins with "The law of heaven...") are a good example. Very much at the root of the thinking of the author, there, is a gospel framework like that of Alma 12-13 (or, quite similar in theological bearing, the epistle to the Hebrews): the gospel is a question of the revelation of certain laws, which, received and obeyed, serve as preparatory to entering into the Lord's rest.

In the teachings extracted from this same circular on pp. 164-168, this "law-leads-to-rest theology" is interwoven with the heavy pre-1835 emphasis on a particular interpretation of Adam-ondi-Ahman, and it makes quite a bit clearer the "Christian primitivism" that is behind the "law-leads-to-rest theology" (again: it is worth reading the entire epistle to really catch what is at work here). I want to offer a few thoughts on each of these clarifications, two points of importance that perhaps cannot ultimately be so clearly disentangled from each other.

The last paragraph on p. 164: "In the 22nd chapter of [Matthew's] account of the Messiah, we find the kingdom of heaven likened unto a king who made a marriage for his son." The feast at the wedding is then linked up with the concluding scenes of John's Apocalypse, "the sayings of John in the Revelation where he represents the sound which he heard in heaven to be like 'a great multitude,' or like 'the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to Him,'" etc. The following paragraph adds this: "those who keep the commandments of the Lord and walk in His statutes to the end, are the only individuals permitted to sit at this glorious feast."

That this eschatological feast is Adam-ondi-Ahman as the saints then understood it seems quite obvious to me. Thus this question from the next page (166): "Reflect for a moment, brethren, and enquire, whether you would consider yourselves worthy [of] a seat at the marriage feast with Paul and others like him, if you had been unfaithful? . . . Have you a promise of receiving a crown of righteousness from the hand of the Lord, with the Church of the First Born?" Here things seem to get their clearest: at this eschatological feast, the Lord Himself will be present, as well as ancient figures like Paul, and the saints will be crowned "with the Church of the First Born" (note that this phrase is drawn quite directly from Hebrews).

But if the referent---Adam-ondi-Ahman---is rather obvious, it is not entirely clear what that event meant for the saints before 1835 (which is when Joseph added a good deal of material to what is now D&C 27, published what is now D&C 85, revealed the order of the Kirtland Temple, began to speak of the keys and orders of the several priesthoods, etc., etc., etc.). The next few paragraphs---indeed, the remainder of the lesson---are quite helpful however, because they turn to the question of the place of the ancient saints in this story.

From the second paragraph on p. 166: "The ancients, though persecuted and afflicted by men, obtained from God promises of such weight and glory, that our hearts are often filled with gratitude that we are even permitted to look upon them." Glorious promises were made to the fathers, but there is a problem, as the next paragraph shows: "we cannot claim these promises which were made to the ancients, for they are not our property, merely because they were made to the ancient Saints." Here enters the theme of "Christian primitivism." It is perhaps quite difficult for us now to recognize how serious a question something like a restoration was to the earliest members of the Church. For them, the announcement that the same promises that were given to the ancients were being given all over again was overwhelming. Hence this from the same paragraph: "yet if we are the children of the Most High, and are called with the same covenant that they embraced, and are faithful to the testimony of our Lord as they were, we can approach the Father in the name of Christ as they approached Him, and for ourselves obtain the same promises."

It fascinates me that these teachings so closely approach the language Joseph will eventually use to describe the meaning of Adam-ondi-Ahman: we and the ancients are to be bound together by covenants and promises, the hearts of the children turning to the fathers, the hearts of the fathers having turned long since to the children, etc. But it should be noted at the same time that a rather important gap remains between this articulation and Joseph's subsequent explanations: things are not here laid out in terms of a family relation. That is, there is a kind of individuation, a setting up of a parallel: we can receive the same things they did, but we thus become equal or parallel to the ancients, not explicitly bound to them. A single word emphasizes this point quite nicely (so to speak!): property.

The word appears twice here. On p. 166: "And though we cannot claim these promises which were made to the ancients, for they aren ot our property . . . ." And then on p. 167: "They [the same promises] will be communicated for our benefit, being our own property (through the gift of God) . . . ." It is tempting in some ways to level a serious critique against the use of such a capitalistic term in the midst of these teachings, but I think that would be to miss the point (as the "through the gift of God" business begins to make quite clear). What can be read in this pairing of two separable properties is the complete unanticipation on the part of the earliest leaders of the Church of the familial chain that really grounds the structure of the plan of salvation. In order to come quite clearly to grips with what Adam-ondi-Ahman means, and with what obedience has to do with it, it is necessary to take a look at what Joseph would eventually teach.

Joseph's Teachings on Obedience

Two teachings on p. 164, both from Joseph Smith himself, make an interesting connection between the themes of Adam-ondi-Ahman from the circular discussed above and the later familial teachings of the Prophet. The first comes directly from D&C 130: "There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated---and when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated."

Now, first things first: this verse has been interpreted in quite a number of different ways. For example, it is common to understand this verse to suggest that every blessing is attached to a particular law (this particular blessing being attached, say, to the law of tithing, that particular blessing being attached, say, to the Word of Wisdom, etc.), and so that no blessing is going to be received unless it is by obedience to that particular law. Another reading of the verse is also quite common: there is a single law decreed, namely, that of obedience, and all blessings come through one's obedience to all laws, through one's general obedience (but not that this blessing comes through that law, or that blessing through this law, etc.).

These interpretations are very nice, but I wonder if they don't both miss the point of the verse. I had not seen this possibility at all until I read through this lesson, though, because it is only here that I've seen this teaching paired with the one that follows it on p. 164: "All blessings that were ordained for man by the Council of Heaven were on conditions of obedience to the law thereof." This is a remarkable clarification of the passage from the D&C. What does it suggest?

First, it displaces the sort of undeniable but essentially unknowable anteriority of the law's decree by giving that decree a locus: it cannot be separated from the work of "the Council of Heaven." Second, it clarifies the blessings at stake: they are not blessings in the sense of moments of serendipity, but "blessings that were ordained for man by the Council of Heaven," blessings over which the gods, goddesses, and angels gathered in council wager their decisions. Third, the meaning of the law itself is clarified: "the law thereof" seems best read, it seems to me, as referring back to "the Council of Heaven," such that the law here is "the law of the Council," whatever that might mean.

These clarifications, I think, greatly adjust the meaning and place of obedience. The Council of Heaven together ordains blessings, arranges a way for those blessings to be communicated to those on the earth (sending angels, etc.), and then dispenses blessings on conditions of obedience to that Council's decreed law. It is not, it seems to me, that there is some metaphysical law of cause-and-effect that makes it impossible to receive any blessing without one's having performed a particular work in advance (a rather scientific and undeniably works-oriented way of understanding obedience), but rather that anyone receiving a messenger or a message must come to receive that gift---that manifestation of grace---in obedience to the Council, as something given by the "living constitution," and not as some abstract or metaphysical requirement. In other words, obedience is, as Joseph clarifies things here, a question of the fathers and mothers of ages past, with the promises they have received, extending those promises to their children on earth by sending messengers that must be received as having been sent from within that familial structure---and the blessings to be received are the blessings of the covenant.

This reworks in a fascinating way what had been written so many years earlier in the circular discussed above: it is not that the ancients serve as a kind of model, but that they are our parents who send us commandments and covenants through angelic messengers. Our relationship to them, that is, is familial: we have the natural (man's) tendency to set ourselves up in relation to the revelations in an Oedipal way. Or, another way to say the same thing: we have the tendency to regard the commandments given us by the fathers/mothers as an injunction to work, as bound to a threat, as a kind of economy. And so it seems to me that the rest of what can be read in this lesson works to clarify how we can obey commandments without becoming involved in an economic relationship with God and/or our fathers/mothers, that is, how we can obey commandments without turning the gift or grace into the execution of so many slavish works.

In the very first paragraph of the teachings in this lesson, a powerful distinction is drawn: "We may tithe mint and rue, and all manner of herbs, and still not obey the commandments of God. The object with me is to obey and teach others to obey God in just what He tells us to do." (p. 161) Joseph makes it clear here that there is a difference between obedience and dutiful over-exaction. To be obedient is not to be honorable, but to act upon the commandment actually given. From the third paragraph on the same page: "We have been chastened by the hand of God heretofore for not obeying His commands, although we never violated any human law, or transgressed any human precept; yet we hvae treated lightly His commands, and departed from His ordinances, and the Lord has chastened us sore." To be a "good person" or an "honorable citizen" is not to be obedient to commandment. It might in fact be a cover-up, a way of pretending to be obedient so as to avoid having to keep the actual commandments. It is far too easy to be pious and far too difficult actually to study scripture; far too easy to have perfect attendance at meetings and far too difficult to live the law of consecration; far too easy to magnify a calling and far too difficult to teach somebody truth, etc.

And so this from p. 164: "How careful men ought to be what they do in the last days, lest they are cut short of their expectations, and they that think they stand should fall, because they keep not the Lord's commandments." The context in which Joseph wrote this is of some significance. It comes from a letter to W. W. Phelps in late 1832. Phelps had written to Joseph to complain of all the saints moving from Kirtland to Zion (Jackson County, Missouri) who were not entering into the United Order and living the Law of Consecration. Joseph responded with a letter that contained D&C 85 (which is worth reading again and again and again) and with extended frustrations about the inability to communicate the truth. But he also responded with this snippet quoted here: we can go to Zion and establish a place and eventually find out that we are not to inherit a space there. The law of consecration had been commanded, and the people thought the whole idea was to get to a certain place, not to live a certain law. I'm frightened by how much that sounds like our own attitude toward the temple: "I go to the temple. I'm fine." "Yes, but do you live the law of consecration?" "Oh, well. That's very nice and so forth, but this is the real world, my friend." "Yes, but do you live the law of consecration?" "Well, but I've only accepted it, not promised to live it yet." "Oh! Is that all you promised to do?" "Right. We've got to wait for the Brethren to ask for our fortunes in the meanwhile." "I wonder how well you've been listening when you've gone to the temple." Etc.

Again, then: "Any man may believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and be happy in that belief, and yet not obey his commandments, and at last be cut down for disobedience to the Lord's righteous requirements." But what does all of this aim to communicate? Does it not just suggest that it is entirely up to me to be perfect, to do all the works necessary to save myself? NOT AT ALL!!! Rather, I think it is all a clarification of what it means to obey, and how obedience is only possible as an act of grace. There are two "normal" ways we respond to the gift of any particular commandment, given to us in an act of self-abandonment: (1) we dismiss it or define ourselves against it; (2) we immediately give ourselves to guilt. It is obvious, so far as the first one fo these two responses goes, that something is wrong: clearly, we shouldn't rebel against God. But there is something equally wrong with the second: obedience out of guilt is not obedience. It is to take God as our employer, to be watching over our shoulder to make sure that He doesn't punish us for not doing things right on the job, to be worried that He might fire us. If number (1) here is essentially to reject the relationship of grace offered to us, number (2) here is to accept it only on our own terms: we would rather be servants or slaves than sons and daughters, something like the prodigal son on his way home.

This point deserves clarification. Obedience is a familial relationship. But that is too difficult, and in at least two ways: (1) suddenly, we are not our own, and we have to stoop low enough to accept a gift; (2) the desires, intentions, aims, purposes, and works of a Father and/or fathers/mothers are inscrutable, and we know we will often be left in the dark. To become a servant or slave---that is, an employee---is so much easier: we will be given certain tasks that, once accomplished, no longer weigh on us; we'll be free whenever we have finished what we've been asked to do. To be a servant is to maintain one's essential independence, but to be a son or a daughter is to be tied forever to the work.

Now note: an employee/servant/slave is not obedient. The employee either fulfills the assigned tasks or does not, and so receives payment or does not. There is no question of relationship, because the employee is guided by the work and task at hand, not by the employer. One receives one's paycheck for what one has done, not for one's love of the employer. This is not obedience. To be obedient to God's commands or to the revealed commands sent by the Council of Heaven is entirely different affair.

Which leads to the last teaching I want to comment, the first paragraph on p. 162. It is worth reading in the original (cf. Words of Joseph Smith), since it was actually delivered to the Relief Society, and much of the wording was changed long before it came into this manual.

"When instructed, we must obey that voice [I like the anonymity here], observe the laws of the kingdom of God [rats! even the law of consecration?], that the blessing of heaven [notice how this language connects up with the talk of the Council of Heaven] may rest down upon us. All must actin concert, or nothing can be done, and should move according to the ancient Priesthood [there is so much that could be said about this little bit I've italicized; read it again and again]; hence the Saints should be a select people, separate from all the evils of the world [economy, etc.]---choice, virtuous, and holy. The Lord [is] going to make of the Church of Jesus Christ a kingdom of Priests [see what all of this leads to!?], a holy people, a chosen generation, as in Enoch's day [rats! the law of consecration indeed!], having all the gifts [oh no! not grace!] as illustrated to the Church in Paul's epistles and teachings to the churches in his day."

The work---the work of a family that stretches from Adam and Eve to the last woman and man on earth---must go on.

But I personally find this relatively abstract, structural approach quite helpful. It is likely that the actual structure of preaching is what ultimately must ground any reflection on the content, aim, result, or techniques: if we are not aware of what is actually happening when preaching is undertaken by the Spirit, then I'm not sure how we can expect ever to see how to undertake to do it ourselves. In a word, what I hope to explore in working through this lesson is what it is to preach, and with the intention of understanding in light of that structure how it is that I or we might go about doing it.

From the Life of Joseph Smith

After a brief report of a thwarted-and-then-recovered baptismal service within the first months after the organization of the Church and the initial call to teach the Lamanites in the Missouri area, the introductory part of the lesson records an example of Joseph's own preaching. The experience was reported by Parley P. Pratt and occurred in Philadelphia in 1839. Both the time and the place of this occurrence are of some importance: this is after the entire Missouri affair, which means that Joseph had finally emerged from a kind of self-imposed latency in which he had encouraged others to step forward and handle the Church (there is a good deal of history here that I'm summarizing rather poorly); and it took place in a rather large Eastern city, where Joseph the farm kid who had been wowed by the beauty and evil of New York City would have to speak to Americans in terms other than what he wont to employ when speaking to the sorts of people who made up the ranks of the Church. Giving some latitude for Elder Pratt's perhaps excessively laudatory point of view, Joseph seems to have performed quite well.

Significantly, Joseph's message seems to have focused on the several divine manifestations that grounded the beginnings of the Church. That is, his focus seems to have been primarily on events, in fact, on the event (in the singular): "He commenced by saying: 'If nobody else had the courage to testify of so glorious a message from Heaven, and of the finding of so glorious a record, he felt to do it in justice to the people, and leave the event with God.'" (p. 150) Several points in this brief description deserve attention.

First, what of this "If nobody else..." business? One might be justified reading into these words an explicit recognition on Joseph's part of his then-underway emergence from latency: no one else seemed to recognize that the universality of the gospel was rooted in actual events, and so it was necessary for Joseph to begin to do things the "right" way. What was preaching like at the time? Was it excessively logical? Textual? Historical? In what way did it ignore the founding events?

Second, there is this question of "the courage to testify." Whatever was not being done in preaching as it was then being practiced (if it is indeed right to see Joseph as speaking condemningly), Joseph seems to characterize it as a lack of courage: to fail to root the emergence of Mormonism in the universal singularity of an event was to shy away from something, or at least to allow oneself to be ruled by some kind of fear. What was it that was feared? Or what was avoided and why? And whatever it was wasn't feared or avoided, it would seem that the preacher claims a kind of radical subjectivity, underscored by the radical courage that must be claimed. What kind of subjectivity is this that inhabits Joseph's preaching?

Third, the "glorious message" cannot be disentangled from the "glorious record," the Book of Mormon. The event, it must be always be recognized, was a textual event, in fact, an event of translation. Joseph seems to have seen Mormonism as primarily a kind of reworking of everything in the world in light of a translation. For Joseph to take up this testimony is for him not only to claim that the book, as true, grounds the truth or validity of a particular organization; it was also (and more importantly) to claim that the sudden emergence of this supplementary (and---let's face it---unnecessary) text amounts to a textual revolution: every other book must be reread or even rewritten in light of the Book of Mormon.

Fourth, Joseph undertakes his preaching "in justice to the people"! Here one can perhaps recognize how Joseph the farm boy could speak to an urban congregation: his message was universal, and its being declared in subjectivated faith was (and remains!) an act of justice. The preaching, then, even as it is powerfully subjective, cannot be disentangled at all from the encounter with the people: the book was translated, and that event has universal bearing, and so must be preached. Justice is to be accomplished in nothing less or other than preaching.

Fifth, at last, Joseph says that he will "leave the event with God." What he meant by this is not entirely clear to me. It is at least clear---again---that his focus is on the event as an event. And it is also clear that the event has a kind of autonomy or untouchability or truth for Joseph: it was not something that could be altered, but rather what alters everything else. But what, I wonder, does it mean to leave such a thing with God? Is this a dismissal of teleological preaching, that is, of preaching with a particular aim or intention? Is this a declaration of a fidelity that refuses to totalize the untotalizable, to name the unnameable? Is it a veiled appeal to transcendence, or precisely the rejection of transcendence? I wonder...

But whatever ought, in the end, to be read into this brief account, it is clear that here we have what I will call the "perfect" model of preaching: this is what it ought to be. The teachings in the remainder of the lesson articulate this very model.

Teachings of Joseph Smith

Joseph's teachings begin with several paragraphs about the revelation of wicked that cannot be disassociated from the preaching of the event: "Who but those who can see the awful precipice upon which the world of mankind stands in this generation, can labor in the vineyard of the Lord without feelig a sense of the world's deplorable situation?" (p. 152) To preach the event faithfully is to reveal that the world has been, in all the meanwhile, distracted (by death/the threat of death?): "you see the great extent of the power and dominion of the prince of darkness, and realize how vast the numbers are who are crowding the road to death without ever giving heed to the cheering sound of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." (p. 151) But the "truth of these facts" (p. 151) must give way to the "light and truth of the everlasting Gospel from the rivers to the ends of the earth." (p. 152) Joseph's wish: "Oh, that I could snatch them from the vortext of misery, into which I behold them plunging themselves, . . . bringing them to unfeigned repentance." (p. 152) It is self-deception in which the world finds itself, a structural self-imposition that makes repentance effectively impossible (so long as one is deceived, how can one see the need to repent?), and Joseph's entire aim is to preach "in all fidelity and righteousness before Him, that our influence may be felt among thenations of the earth, in mighty power, even to rend the kingdoms of darkness asunder, and triumph over priestcraft," etc. (p. 152)

Preaching would seem then to be---structurally---a question of disrupting self-deception, of bringing light to the darkness that clouds over a distracted world. It is thus, as Joseph explains further along in the lesson, a question of rendering effectively indifferent many of the differences that determine the thinking of the world: "Therefore we believe in preaching the doctrine of repentance in all the world, both to old and young, rich and poor, bond and free"; or again: "I will proceed to tell you what the Lord requires of all people, high and low, rich and poor, male and female, ministers and people, professors of religion and non-professors." (p. 154) Such an indifferentiating of the differences that distract the world from the voice heard in the gospel must be accomplished, it would seem, through a kind of deciding of the undecideable: "It is the acceptable year of the Lord," Joseph announces. (p. 154) Such a faithful announcement, precisely because it distracts the play of differences that determine the world's encyclopedia of knowledge, breaks the impossible bonds of self-deception: "It is the acceptable year of the Lord; liberate the captives that they may sing hosanna"! (I want to dwell on the singing here, with its connections to the idea of the collapse of the tongue of men by the eruption of the tongue of angels, etc., but I'll forbear.)

Of course, it must not be understood that such faithful preaching undoes or does away with the world's encyclopedia of knowledge; rather, it recasts it or reinterprets it: "We don't ask any people to throw away any good they have got; we only ask them to come and get more." (p. 155) The work of preaching is a work of typological rereading: in light of this (antitypical) event (of translation), what other texts need to be rewritten (that is, retranslated)? It is in this sense that Joseph can speak of "the force of truth," a force that forces everything to take on a different meaning after the translation of the Book of Mormon. (p. 155) But "force" does not imply that there is no subjective acceptance necessary for the hearer. Rather, "the force of truth" only "tak[es] a deep hold in the hearts and affections of all those who are noble-minded enough to lay aside the prejudice of education, and investigate the subject with candor and honesty." (p. 155) The force is the power of (the weakness of) the message when it is preached in the power of the Spirit. Only those who are so trapped within self-deception that they cannot approach the message with "candor and honest" will reject that power.

And so the work goes on, since, as the last teaching in the lesson, drawn from D&C 123, points out: "There are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are blinded by the subtle craftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it." (p. 156)

This lesson is a bit more scattered than most in the manual thus far. In the "Teachings of Joseph Smith" portion of the lesson: the first section is dedicated to narrative history, the second section to testimony, the third section to organizational details, the fourth to persecution, and the last to the individual's subjective place in the work. In a sense, then, what follows is a handful of different little lessons.

The true Church of Jesus Christ was organized by Joseph Smith in the dispensation of the fulness of times

The first section of the lesson proper, as mentioned above, is given to historical narrative, the story of the actual organization of the Church and the first few months following. What permeates the two accounts excerpted for this purpose is the common theme of restoration, that is, of a specifically ancient thing being brought about all over again. For example, on page 138: "[W]e dismissed [from the official organization meeting on April 6th, 1830] with the pleasing knowledge that we were now individually members of, and acknowledged of God, 'The Church of Jesus Christ,' organized in accordance with commandments and revelations given by Him to ourselves in these last days, as well as according to the order of the Church as recorded in the New Testament."

This reflection concludes the narrative of the actual organization of the Church, and what seems to have been so striking for Joseph at least was that the ancient was again recurring, that there was some kind of connection with the ancients. This becomes even clearer in the further reflection on page 139: "To find ourselves engaged in the very same order of things as observed by the holy Apostles of old . . . ; and to witness and feel with our own natural senses, the like glorious manifestations of the powers of the Priesthood, the gifts and blessings of the Holy Ghost, and the goodness and condescension of a merciful God unto such as obey the everlasting Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, combined to create within us sensations of rapturous gratitude, and inspire us with fresh zeal and energy in the cause of truth." The emphasis is on a kind of unifying of dispensations, a bringing together of the ancient faithful with the modern faithful.

What must not be missed, it seems to me, is that this bringing together is effected primarily through the gifts of the Spirit. Not only does the snippet quoted just above from page 139 emphasize that, but also this from page 138: "We then laid our hands on each individual member of the Church present, that they might receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, and be confirmed members of the Church of Christ. The HOly Ghost was poured out upon us to a very great degree---some prophesied, whilst we all praised the Lord, and rejoiced exceedingly." But if it is particularly the manifestations of the Spirit that united the moderns with the ancients, this unification cannot be separated from what Joseph calls in the last phrase of the teaching on page 139 "the cause of truth." Truth: if one can here draw on the previous lesson on the gifts of the Spirit, it would then seem that the truth is a question of so many signs, signs that are unite the latter days with the former days, us with the ancients, and so the whole human family at Adam-ondi-Ahman. Would it be too much, then, to suggest that there is, buried in Joseph's narratives concerning the organization of the Church, the theme of the gathering together of all dispensations through the ordinances of the temple, etc.?

Christ's Church is organized according to the order of God

Indeed, it is.

The Church is led by the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and the Quorums of the Seventy

This section perhaps seems quite straightforward at first: it is essentially a brief description of the several quorums that make up the general authorities. But there is a good deal more at work here that deserves discussion, primarily because there seems to have been major institutional developments in the hierarchy of the Church at a number of points in our history. In other words, the historian might take issue with the way this section is laid out, pointing out things like: the First Presidency can be said to be a rather different kind of organization after Joseph's death, as evidenced by Brigham's and then several of the Twelve's serious consternation about a reorganization of that presidency; Joseph's description of the Twelve here was right at the time, but things have since changed, because Joseph made them part of a centralized hierarchy (of which they were not originally a part) after the 1841 mission to England; the seventies (besides the first quorum) were local quorums who attended to the work of the ward/stake missions for many years rather than general authorities as they are now. In a word, the historian might suggest that this stringing together of things is a bit ideological, a semi-dishonest way of bringing together what only look like confirmations of the way things presently are.

But I think there is a good deal more to think about here (there is so much more than facts to talk about!). For example, while I agree that there are some important differences between the First Presidency (-ies) of which Joseph was a part and the First Presidencies that have led the Church after his death, the differences are historically and theologically important rather than practically or institutionally important: the differences call for further reflection, but do not at all suggest any kind of disingenuity on the part of the Brethren. More importantly, perhaps, I'm not sure I at all agree that there was an institutional redefinition of the Twelve in 1841. It is certainly clear that the Twelve suddenly seemed to have a centralized position whereas they had before been assigned as the Traveling High Council, but I don't see why this shift should be divorced from the effective disappearance of Missouri from immediate institutional plans. That is, if Joseph had by 1841 finally given up on getting a strong foothold in Missouri any time soon, the Standing High Council of Zion that undeniably is the hierarchical center of Church organization as laid out in the Doctrine and Covenants effectively ceased to be, and the entire Church became the Church abroad, over which the Twelve has hierarchical jurisdiction. The Church remains---and will remain until there is a Standing High Council in Jackson County---the Church abroad, and the Twelve remain at the center of the hierarchy. And again, though there have been changes in a number of ways in the quorums of the seventy over the years, there has never been a disconnect between the calling of the seventy to assist the Twelve in the building up of the Church abroad, and so those changes are essentially immaterial. The shift from local seventies to general authority seventies is a mere shift in approach, but not a structural redefinition in any way.

At any rate, a few notes for the historically curious, primarily to suggest that the teachings, as laid out in this section of the lesson, stand as they are laid out: I don't see any reason to call them or the Church's stringing them together into question.

Although the forces of evil may seek to destroy the Church, 'no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing

Now we get on to the fun stuff. This section returns, in a sense, to the question of truth raise above: here one finds Joseph's famous "standard of truth," according to which "the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent," etc., and one reads Joseph speaking of "the spread of the truth into various parts of our land," etc. But it is this truth that brings upon the Church persecution, the idea presumably being that because the truth bears the burden of its own... well... truth... the only response that can be made to it is violence. But I think there is something more subtle and profound happening in the teachings here than just this.

The three paragraphs that begin with the last paragraph beginning on page 142 are remarkably interesting. Joseph here offers an interpretation of the parable of the mustard seed that grows into a tree in the branches of which the fowls come to lodge. (Interestingly, this is from 1835, though Joseph returned to this same interpretation in 1839 in what I think is his most important discourse: the "Before 8 August 1839 Discourse." What is the connection?) The three paragraphs are organized thus: the first is given to the parable itself; the second is given to Joseph's interpretation; the third is given to the theme of persecution. Since the first is clear (and famous) enough, let me deal with the relationship between the second and third paragraphs.

Joseph's interpretation is that the seed is the Book of Mormon, which is planted in the ground like a seed. When it "spring[s] up in the last days, or in due time," it becomes the Church (as a tree), and the fowls that come down to lodge in its branches are God's "powers, gifts, and angels." (In the 1839 discourse, Joseph emphasizes primarily angels, identifying them as the ancient holders of the priesthood who come to pass along their keys, etc.) The picture of the truth that Joseph here describes is again, as it was in the first section discussed above, a question of interdispensational relations, of keys and signs/gifts of the Spirit being passed from one dispensation to another, and all of that rooted in the coming forth of a translated text.

What this effectively does, I think, is to weave together a picture of faith or fidelity: faith is to be faithful to the emergence of a text or to the text itself, one that was brought with and whose interpretation is guided by the visitation of angelic messengers from the past who hold and deliver up keys and powers, all connected in some way with the priesthood. Faith is thus (here) a question of one's relation (1) to a text and (2) to the messengers who bring it.

The question this raises when one turns to the third paragraph is this: What does all of this have to do with persecution? Why, that is, does fidelity to a text and the messengers who bring it invite violence?

I'm tempted to leave that as an open question. It might be wisest for now. But I'll confess that I have a great many thoughts on the subject. Perhaps they'll be forced out of me in the discussion that (I hope) follows the post.

We each have the responsibility to strengthen the Church and do our part in building up the kingdom of God

This is getting long, so I'll be relatively brief here. I see this last section as bringing together the question (all over again) of the ancients, the angels, the holders of keys of former times, etc., with the question of individual subjectivity. What a remarkable statement this is, from page 144: "let every man, woman and child . . . act as if success depended on his individual exertion alone"! This work is radically subjective, and we wager ourselves in our fidelity to the message that angels have begun again to visit the earth and to restore keys, etc. That is, we wager ourselves in looking forward to the event in which all of these visitations will be gathered together in one: Adam-ondi-Ahman. That singular event is what I think Joseph means when speaks of the "one common cause" that is "the cause of God" and ultimately the cause of "truth." And it obliterates what Joseph marvelously calls "party feelings, separate interests, exclusive designs." What language! If this is a question of radicalism (of radical fidelity), then we must be careful never to let our radicalism become a party (which is why consecration can never be communism, for example), nor can we any longer allow for subjectivity in the old modernist sense, according to which I am some kind of separate being with my own interests, nor can we allow for any kind of exclusion by design. This work is singular (who else is speaking of Adam-ondi-Ahman?), but it is nonetheless universal.

In a word: it is true.

It is common for historians, Mormon and non-Mormon alike, to see Joseph as essentially coming out of his shell in Nauvoo. Pre-1835 Mormonism is generally portrayed as focused on Christian primitivism: the saints gathered to Zion, sought spiritual gifts, denounced the world at large, and waited for the dawn of the millennium. 1834-1839 Mormonism is generally portrayed as passing through an era of bureaucratization: the orders of the priesthood were announced, the quorums and councils were organized, spiritual gifts were discouraged, Kirtland became more focal than Zion, and apostasy flourished while the increasingly totalitarian church tried to reign it in. 1839-1844 Mormonism is generally portrayed as Joseph's innovative period: now in Nauvoo, Joseph emerges from the complex hierarchy as a commanding personality. Only now does Joseph begin to announce (publicly and in secret) doctrines and revelations that distinctively mark the oddness of Mormonism: the patriarchal order, baptism for the dead, a new endowment, sealing ordinances, plural marriage, the plurality of gods, and so on. Joseph, the story is usually told, essentially reinvented Mormonism in Nauvoo, adding doctrines, changing directions, inventing new ideas, and building up a genuine theocracy.

Now, in one sense, there is little to argue with in this picture: the historians all talk this way because the historical record suggests that this is precisely what happened. In fact, the difference between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) can be said to be grounded in this reading of the history: the Utah church followed Joseph's Nauvoo innovations, while the Missouri church rejected those innovations as so much betrayal of the pre-Nauvoo teachings.

And yet, I think there is something fundamentally flawed with this reading. So much of what Joseph suddenly began to teach in Nauvoo can be found in revelations and writings of ten or more years before: nothing, in a sense, was new. I see Joseph, not beginning to expand Mormon theology and practice in radical ways, but rather finally realizing that the quorums and the councils were never going to look carefully enough at the revelations to see what they really meant, and so he began at last to take it upon himself to expound their meaning. In other words, I do indeed see a shift in Nauvoo, but it is not a shift of teachings, doctrines, or ordinances; rather, it is a shift in Joseph's im/patience with the interpreters of the scripture he had provided the saints. Though they had been called as so many Aaron's to Joseph's Moses, he finally saw that they would never stop dancing around the golden calf until he ground it, strewed in on the waters, and made them drink it.

Now, I bring all of this up for two reasons. First, I think it is important to see why the Nauvoo teachings in the lesson manual generally are so much more rich and explicit than the pre-Nauvoo teachings included there. But second, I think it is also important to see that the pre-Nauvoo teachings contain the Nauvoo teachings in them, that they "anticipate" the Nauvoo teachings, if only they are rea