Category Archives: LDS Doctrine

What the Book of Mormon actually says

Book of Mormon, LDS Doctrine, LDS History, Main

[UPDATED 11/15/07 – 1958 MST]

I have added some quotes by Hugh Nibley from 1952, showing that the idea of other people outside of the Book of Mormon inhabiting the Americans is neither new nor unique.

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There’s a bit of a buzz going on in media covering LDS topics (The Salt Lake Tribune, The Deseret News, LDS and, I suspect, anti-LDS blogs), because of a change that the LDS Church has made in the (non-canonical) introduction to the Book of Mormon:

The book’s current introduction, added by the late LDS apostle, Bruce R. McConkie in 1981, includes this statement: “After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians.”

The new version, seen first in Doubleday’s revised edition, reads, “After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are among the ancestors of the American Indians.”

LDS leaders instructed Doubleday to make the change, said senior editor Andrew Corbin, so it “would be in accordance with future editions the church is printing.”

(Peggy Fletcher Stack, “Single word change in Book of Mormon speaks volumes”, Salt Lake Tribune, November 8, 2007)

It’s a good change, and as I noted in a comment to a post on another blog on this same news, it’s significant not because it reflects current theories on the populating of the Americas but because it also more accurately reflects the Book of Mormon itself.

The racial and cultural picture of the Book of Mormon is anything but the oversimplified thing its critics have made it out to be.

— Hugh Nibley, “The Mormon View of the Book of Mormon,” Concilium: Theology in the Age of Renewal 30 (New York: Paulist Press, 1968): 170-173 (reprinted in Nibley on the Timely and Timeless [BYU Religious Studies Center, 1978]).

I might add to Nibley’s statement “…or its supporters”. This, in fact, has been a major theme of Nibley and FARMS (now Maxwell Institute) scholarship on the Book of Mormon: pointing out what the Book of Mormon actually depicts as opposed to what we think it depicts.

I believe that we as a church — including at times our leaders — have formed generalizations and models regarding what the Book of Mormon describes that, with closer study, aren’t actually supported by the text itself. The classic example of this is the “hemispheric geography model” that was generally held by Church leaders and members through much of the past 175+ years. Because the Book of Mormon speaks of a “land northward” and a “land southward” as well as a “narrow neck of land”, the assumption was made that it referred to North and South America, with the Panamanian Isthmus being the narrow neck. However, many LDS scholars who analyzed the text itself reached quite a different conclusion: that the region described in the Book of Mormon is no more than a few hundred miles in length and width, if that much. This became known as the limited geography model, and it pretty much is the foundation of modern serious Book of Mormon analysis and research.

Similar assumptions have been made over the years as to whether all indigenous peoples on the American continents descended from Lehi and his party. A close reading of the Book of Mormon, particularly the first few books, strongly suggests that the divided Lehite party — led respectively by Laman (Lamanites) and Nephi (Nephites) — found and absorbed (or set themselves up as rulers of) pre-existing indigenous populations in the Mesoamerican region (e.g., see this article, written 15 years ago).

“Turning to the Book of Mormon, is it not possible there also to fall into the old sectarian vice of oversimplifying? Are there not many Latter-day Saints who will insist that every American of pre-Columbian descent must be a Lamanite because, forsooth, there were once Nephites and Lamanites, and the Nephites were destroyed? Yet the Book of Mormon itself makes such an interpretation impossible.”

— Hugh Nibley, 1952 (found in The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol. 5: Lehi in the Desert / The World of the Jaredites / There Were Jaredites, [Deseret Book/FARMS, 1988], p. 237.)

Beyond that, the Book of Mormon itself makes it clear that at least one population group — the Jaredites (who most likely came via Asia) — had already been in the Americans for 1500-2500 years prior to the Lehites arrival, while another group — located at the city of Zarahemla but commonly called the Mulekites, though no such appellation appears in the Book of Mormon — apparently arrived in the Americas roughly the same time as the Lehites. The three groups had little or no formal contact with another for several centuries, but splinter populations from the other two groups may well be among the indigenous peoples that the Lehites encountered. There are also some hints in the minimal Jaredite record that they may likewise have found and merged with pre-existing indigenous groups (again, see this article, towards the end).

(Sidebar: Orson Scott Card has opined that the ‘Mulekites’ may actually have been a true indigenous group rather than a second band of Middle East refugees; see this article and scroll down to ‘Speculation on Zarahemla’. Actually, read the whole article; it’s well worth the time.)

Genetic dispersal and the mathematics of genealogy seem sufficient to spread the ‘Lamanite’ heritage around among any major pre-Lehite (indigenous) populations in the Americas during the 2100 years between the arrival of Lehi and the arrival of Columbus. For example, it appears that virtually everyone who has European ancestry is descended from Charlemagne and Muhammad; not because those two men populated an empty Europe single-handedly, but because their lineages survived long enough to spread throughout the population that already existed. Similarly, given the fact that population groups were splitting off from the Lehites on a regular basis (e.g., cf. Alma 63:4-10), as well as the relative isolation of the Americas up until 1500 AD, there would appear to enough time (see this article as well as this one) for Lehite ancestry to spread throughout much of North and South America. (As for the “traceable DNA” issue, see this article.)

There is not a word in the Book of Mormon to prevent the coming to this hemisphere of any number of people from any part of the world at any time, provided only that they come with the direction of the Lord; and even this requirement must not be too strictly interpreted, for the people of Zarahemla “had brought no records with them, and they denied the being of their Creator” (Omni 17), i.e., they were anything but a religious colony. No one would deny that anciently “this land” was kept “from the knowledge of other nations” (2 Nephi 1:8), but that does not mean that it was kept empty of inhabitants, but only that migration was in one direction — from the Old World to the New; for even as Lehi was uttering the words just quoted, the Jaredites were swarming in the east, and the old man referes to others yet to come, “all those who should be led out of other countries by the hand of the Lord.” Must we look for all these in the book of Mormon?

— Hugh Nibley, 1952 (found in CWHN, Vol. 5, pp. 251-252)

In short, the concept that all native Americans then present from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego when Columbus arrived in 1492 belonged to a population solely created by and descended from Lehi and his party is a straw man perpetuated by Mormons, non-Mormons and anti-Mormons alike. It is neither required nor supported by the Book of Mormon, any more than the hemispheric geography model is. Nor is this a novel idea within LDS circles, any more than the limited geography model is somehow new or recent (it’s not).

As I said, the change is a good one. ..bruce..

Other and related postings on this topic:

Coverage of the San Diego fires — LDS relief efforts

Humanitarian, LDS Doctrine, LDS Organization, LDS Society, Main

I run another blog (And Still I Persist) with a co-blogger, Bruce Henderson. I’m from San Diego, and BruceH has lived there for many years. So when the fires broke out a little over a week ago, BruceH started posting information on the blog, including photos, maps, and 3-D visualizations of the fires; I joined in as best I could (I currently live in Colorado, but have many family members, including children and grandchildren, in San Diego County).

As is typical with such disasters, LDS relief efforts started almost immediately and have continued through the course of the fire. Most people outside the LDS Church don’t realize the global reach of LDS relief and humanitarian efforts, most of which goes to people who are not members of the LDS Church. In the past 22 years, that aid has totaled nearly $1 billion — all given without consideration of creed, national origin, or ethnic background, and almost all of which comes from the pockets and donated labor of the Latter-day Saints members themselves.

But, of course, we’re not Christian. 😉 ..bruce..

Highly recommended: The Year of Living Biblically

Humor, LDS Doctrine, Main, World Religions

Last week, I received (via Amazon) and read The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs. Jacobs, a self-described Jewish agnostic and an editor at Esquire, had previously written The Know-It-All (in which he described reading the Encyclopedia Britannica from cover to cover). In this case, however, he was not only reading the Bible, he was attempting to follow all the commandments and injunctions found in it.

The book is a delight. I admired Jacobs’ honesty, particularly about his own failings and struggles, his empathy with the various religious groups he encounters even (especially!) when he strongly disagrees with their beliefs and practices, his willingness to introduce great upheaval in his personal and family life just to find out what this Bible stuff is all about, and his courage to adhere to his lists of commandments — the bulk of which come from the Mosaic law — even at the risk of social awkwardness.

Plus the book is really, really funny.

Day 124. January 2. We’re back in New York. I’m not supposed to make New Year’s resolutions — probably a pagan ritual — but if I did, here’s what mine would be: I have to start thickening my skin. It’s right there in Ecclesiastes: Don’t pay attention to everything everyone says about you; you know you’ve talked trash about other people.

Today I was reading the Amazon.com reviews for my encyclopedia book (I know, not biblical), and I ran across one that was very strange. The reviewer said she looked at my author photo and discovered that I’m not really that ugly. In fact, I’m kind of “normal looking.” Which I guess is sort of flattering. Normal looking.

But she didn’t mean it as flattery. She said that I’m normal-looking enough that I have no excuse to be socially awkward, neurotic, or best with an inferiority complex. So I should shut my normal-looking trap and stop complaining. This is the most backhanded compliment I’ve ever received. It sank me into a bad mood for three hours. The Bible is right; I have to toughen up.

And I must, absolutely must, stop self-Googling. It’s a horrible habit that I still haven’t kicked in my biblical year. …This is alll very unrighteous, very vain. I should think instead of the well-being of my family and my neighbors — and on God.

I should be more like Noah. It took Noah decades to build his ark. Can you imagine the mockery he must have received from doubting neighbors? If Noah were alive today, he wouldn’t be wasting his time checking out what blogs said about him. He’d be down at Home Depot buying more lumber. Starting today, I’m going to be more like Noah. Toughen up. (pp. 151-152)

Read it. ..bruce..

The parameters of reality (ours, at least)

Belief systems, LDS Doctrine, Main, Science

One of the intriguing aspects of reality, as far as we are able to analyze and perceive it to date, is that it depends upon a relatively small set of dimensionless parameters. Here is a listed set, taken from the paper “Dimensionless constants, cosmology, and other dark matters” by Max Tegmark (MIT), Anthony Aguirre (UCSC), Martin J Rees (Cambridge), and Frank Wilczek (MIT) (Phys.Rev. D73 (2006) 023505):

And here are the derived physical parameters:

I got to this paper via an article in New Scientist (subscription required for full article) by one of the paper’s authors (Max Tegmark) who feels that our universe itself is a mathematical construct:

Here, I will push this idea to its extreme and argue that our universe is not just described by mathematics – it is mathematics. While this hypothesis might sound rather far-fetched, it makes startling predictions about the structure of the universe that could be testable by observations. It should also be useful in narrowing down what an ultimate theory of everything could look like….

So here is the crux of my argument. If you believe in an external reality independent of humans, then you must also believe in what I call the mathematical universe hypothesis: that our physical reality is a mathematical structure. In other words, we all live in a gigantic mathematical object – one that is more elaborate than a dodecahedron, and probably also more complex than objects with intimidating names like Calabi-Yau manifolds, tensor bundles and Hilbert spaces, which appear in today’s most advanced theories. Everything in our world is purely mathematical – including you.

Tegmark also feels that this hypothesis leads inevitably to the conclusion that multiverses exist that embody different combinations of dimensionless parameters; we just happen to be in one in which life as we know it can evolve. I’m impressed that Tegmark et al. in the “Dimensionless parameters” paper were willing to include “design” as one explanation for the “fine-tuned for life” values of the parameters, though (rightly) stating that physicists prefer the others:

So why do we observer these 31 parameters to have the particular values listed in Table 1? Interest in that question has grown the the gradual realization that some of these parameters appear fine-tuned for life, in the sense that small relative changes to their values would result in dramatic qualitative changes that could preclude intelligent life, and hence the very possibility of reflective observation. As discussed extensively elsewhere [list of footnotes], there are four common responses to this realization:

  1. Fluke: Any apparent fine-tuning is a fluke and is best ignored.
  2. Multiverse: These parameters vary across an ensemble of physically realized and (for all practical purposes) parallel universes, and we find ourselves in one where life is possible.
  3. Design: Our universe is somehow created or simulated with parameters chose to allow life.
  4. Fecundity: There is no fine-tuning, because intelligent life of some form will emerge under extremely varied circumstances.

Options 1, 2 and 4 tend to be preferred by physicists, with recent developments in inflation and high-energy theory given new popularity to option 2. (Tegmark et al., Phys.Rev. D73 (2006) 023505, pp. 1-4)

No great theological or philosophic intent to this posting, other than I tend to lean towards the “Design” answer. My intended college major during my senior year of high school was astrophysics; that came to a halt upon reading an article about the bartenders and cab drivers with PhDs in astrophysics, but I remain interested in the topic. On the other hand, as someone who has done real-world simulation work (cruise missiles, large space structures, the Space Shuttle flight simulators, and tectonic processes on Venus), I’m keenly aware of how model definition and parameter selection directly leads to your results. ..bruce..

Rethinking the Flood from an LDS perspective

Belief systems, LDS Doctrine, Main, World Religions

[UPDATED 01/24/11 — 1857 MST] Found out that most links in the article pointed at the Web Archives versions of the links (as part of my restoration 18 months ago); have updated them all (I believe). Also note that the Younger Dryan impact theory has not found a lot of acceptance due to evidence issues.

[UPDATED 08/31/09 — 1850 MDT] Somehow, the text of this post vanished, probably during one of my efforts to save and restore the entire website due to security issues. I found this text at the Internet Wayback Machine and have restored it.]

[UPDATED 11/11/07 – 1804 MST] Added the actual Hugh Nibley quote below, which I moved to the start of the posting, and made a few additional edits for clarification and to reflect some of the information presented at the Younger Dryas Impact press conference.

[UPDATED 11/01/07 – 1027 MDT] Here is a link to YouTube videos of the Younger Dryas Impact AGU Press Conference. Based on what’s presented here, it would suggest (contra some of my initial speculation below) that the ‘Flood party’ left before the impact, given the scientists’ postulation of a large firestorm on the North American continent. More as I work through the videos. ..bfw..

The stories of the garden of Eden and the Flood have always furnished unbelievers with their best ammunition against believers, because they are the easiest to visualize, popularize, and satirize of any Bible accounts. Everyone has seen a garden and been caught in a pouring rain. It requires no effort of imagination for a six-year-old to cover concise and straightforward Sunday-school recitals into the vivid images that will stay with him the rest of his life. These stories retain the form of the nursery tales they assume in the imaginations of small children, to be defended by grownups who refuse to distinguish between childlike faith and thinking as a child when it is time to “put away childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11)

– Hugh Nibley, “Before Adam”, talk given to BYU students in 1980, reprinted in Old Testament and Related Studies — The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley: Volume 1 (Deseret Book/FARMS, 1986), p. 63.

This article in Dialogue by Clayton White and Mark Thomas addresses in an LDS setting what numerous other articles and postings have in more generic Christian and Jewish settings: the inconsistencies between classic Christian/Jewish interpretations of the Genesis Flood story and, well, pretty much every bit of geological, archaeological, and biological evidence we have for the time period in question (typically set around 2350 BCE). White and Thomas address the problems just from a biological point of view, but their endnotes indicate some of the other problems as well.

I have no real problems with the idea that a global flood could occur — in my opinion, a God Who created, perceives and runs the entire universe could probably come up with some easy (for Him) mechanism to schlep the required 1.4 billion cubic miles or so of H2O onto the earth and then drain it off again. Indeed, such a task would be no more difficult for Him than rinsing and mopping a floor is for us (and probably a lot easier). But, as many folks have pointed out, most recently White and Thomas, such an event would leave, well, catastrophic evidences worldwide.

 

Every single civilization in existence at that time — indeed, the population of every single city, town, and village — would cease to exist, leaving behind water-logged ruins. Repopulation would occur, but it would be from a relatively small source and a single location, and it should follow some reasonable population and cultural diffusion model. White and Thomas detail all the biological impacts, which are profound and global. (Those who defend the Genesis Flood story are usually those who argue against any form of evolution — yet as White and Thomas point out, they would have to posit a hyper-evolutionary mechanism to explain the extreme diversity of species, post-Flood.) Geological evidence would abound as well. Yet there is no evidence in any of these areas — archaeological, biological (including DNA), or geological — for the classic Flood. Quite the contrary: all such evidence, and there is plenty, points to no such Flood happening in the presumed timeframe.

There are four typical responses to this dilemma:

  • All the evidence (or lack thereof) is wrong
  • God wiped away all evidence of the Flood — which strikes me as sort of defeating the whole purpose, and which also requires so many other special acts (hyperevolution, instant repopulation of destroyed civilizations, etc.) as to run afoul of Occam’s Razor
  • The Flood was actually a localized event (such as the flooding of the Black Sea — though many dispute the suitability of this particular event)
  • The Flood is just a myth

My own opinion is that we’re caught in a double trap: justifying the details of the Flood as recorded in Genesis and adopting the ‘4004 BC’ chronology likewise derived from Genesis. The root cause of that dilemma is that early LDS Church leaders accepted the ‘4004 BC’ chronology without realizing they had already refuted it. Joseph Smith famously said that the Book of Mormon was “the most correct of any book on Earth and the keystone of our religion.” And what does the Book of Mormon have to say on the chronology of the human race? Just one thing:

Yea, and behold I say unto you, that Abraham not only knew of these things, but there were many before the days of Abraham who were called by the order of God; yea, even after the order of his Son; and this that it should be shown unto the people, a great many thousand years before his coming, that even redemption should come unto them. (Helaman 8:18; emphasis mine)

The setting of this comment by the prophet Nephi2 (son of Helaman) is just a few decades before the birth of Christ. And he states that God had revealed the coming of Christ and established the priesthood “a great many thousand years” before Christ’s coming. Any way I look at that phrase, it appears to be a lot more than just four (4) thousand years before Christ’s coming.

(To be fair, there is always the chance that “a great many thousand” was a peculiar language idiom where “a great many” was an intensifier rather than a count value. But I know of no basis for that assumption, since the Book of Mormon authors have no problems at all counting many thousands of people, and all other Book of Mormon uses of the phrase “a great many” appear to indicate just that: a great many.)

And if you interpret “a great many” to be at least greater than twelve (12), that pushes us back into the last glaciation period — during which, throughout much of the world, “water” (ice) covered the tops of the mountains and at the end of which great floods occurred due to breaking ice dams and glacial melting.

Most notably, it appears that at least one massive flood occurred about 13,400 years ago on this (the American) continent — where LDS doctrine places the antediluvian patriarchs — when on-going warming caused the release of a massive body of water into the North Atlantic oceaqn — which in turn may have triggered the last cold period (the Younger Dryas), with the corresponding climate change and rapid glaciation. There are indications that another major flood occurred during the last ice age but into the North Pacific ocean instead.

On the other hand, there is also speculation (with significant and widespread geological evidence) that an extraterrestrial impact may have triggered the Younger Dryas and a massive (North American) extinction, with a Tunguska-like airburst occurring over the North American glacial sheet:

The associated blast wave and thermal pulse would have contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and destabilized the Laurentide Ice Sheet, loading the atmosphere with dust, soot, NOx, and water vapor and triggered the YD cooling. (from the abstract for Evidence for a Massive Extraterrestrial Airburst over North America 12.9 ka Ago; emphasis mine)

So what we have in North America is a period of warming, accompanied by a period of floods. That is intensified by a firestorm resulting from a possible extraterrestrial impact, which in turn is followed by the Younger Dryas rapid cooling period — with increased rain, snow and glaciation around most of the world (though an overall drying trend as water gets locked up into ice) — quite literally with water (albeit frozen) covering the tops of the mountains. All of this leads to massive fauna and flora extinction, including possible “widespread, abrupt human mortality” at least on the North American continent and possibly on a global basis.

The Flood, as recorded in Genesis, could then represent a local record of a catastrophic event with global impact. Noah, being warned (much as Lehi), would have started off from North America ahead of the impact and — reversing the travels of Jared and Lehi — carried his family, along with sufficient livestock for their travel purposes, across the ocean (most likely the Atlantic) to somewhere in and around the Mediterranean. During that transit, Noah and his family spend months crossing the ocean — which would have left them with the impression that the entire earth had been covered with water. Wherever they landed in the Old World may have been deserted and depopulated (due to the ice ages) when they arrived, adding to the impression of all human life being wiped out. In any case, the Middle Eastern climate may well have been the best place to weather the Younger Dryas cold period (~1200 years) and may indeed have been quite temperate and lush in contrast to the hot, dry climate that exists today.

Food for thought. ..bruce..

P.S. Just so everyone’s clear, I wrote the original post in one sitting, so I reserve the right to continue to edit and revise it as things occur to me or I run across items that support or modify my thesis.

Someone who gets it

Belief systems, LDS Doctrine, LDS Organization, LDS Society, Main, Media, Politics

As I’ve mentioned before, one of my sources of both frustration and amusement during my 40 years as a Latter-day Saint has been the sheer number of people who either misunderstand or deliberately misrepresent LDS history, beliefs and practices. So it is always a delight to run across a well-written article by someone outside the LDS Church who not only under understands LDS culture and doctrine, but who provides new insights.

Such an article is “A Mormon President? The LDS Difference“, written by Laurie Maffly-Kipp and published in The Christian Century. Maffly-Kipp is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), and one of her areas of specialty is Mormonism. She clearly has done her homework; I’ve never seen someone outside the LDS Church (or few within it) so clearly articulate the balance of authority and independence within the Church:

Yes, the prophet can receive revelation. But this power is couched within a set of concentric circles of revelation and authority: the prophet receives revelation for the church, bishops receive revelation pertaining to their wards (local churches), and fathers and mothers receive revelation relating to their families. Most important, Mormons—like Protestants—attach great importance to the agency of the individual believer, who is expected to pray and receive guidance for herself. This set of interconnected responsibilities makes for clear lines of authority, to be sure—few agencies are as efficient as a local Mormon ward in action—but it also means that leaders cannot, in theory, overstep the bounds of the authority bestowed on them by virtue of their office.

In practice, then, LDS religious authority is diffused and regulated in quite orderly ways; indeed, one might say that this flow is both more controlled than in many Protestant churches and more democratically distributed than in Roman Catholicism. Mormons are taught from a very young age that their purpose in life is to exercise their own spiritual agency and to maintain a right relationship with God. The church hierarchy, of course, has a major role in facilitating that growth, but not the only role. Higher education is valued for both men and women, regardless of one’s career path. Healthy living and moral values are extolled not simply as exercises in discipline, but as keys to individual progress. Considerable emphasis, in other words, is placed on the individual cultivation of personal agency, a fact that may help explain the resounding business success of someone like Mitt Romney.

Nor do LDS Church members in good standing bow to church officials at every point; the authority of many church teachings is, in fact, somewhat ambiguous. There are a number of incontrovertible teachings, of course (such as: Joseph Smith was a prophet; sex before marriage is forbidden), but these are surprisingly few in number. Many other decisions are left to the dictates of individual conscience. One need only ask 10 church members about whether Mormons are allowed to drink caffeinated soft drinks to encounter a wide range of interpretations.

I strongly recommend the article, and I plan to keep a look out for other articles and books by Maffly-Kipp. ..bruce..

Mormons and Hell

LDS Doctrine, Main

This touching (and well-written) article — from Jennifer Pemberton, a woman who is not LDS but who has LDS relatives — got me thinking about Hell, something else that divides us from most conservative Christians. She talks about the conflicts between her grandmother (not LDS) and her great aunt (LDS) over religion, and her great-aunt’s final health decline and death:

Aunt Ruth died a week later. My grandmother was inconsolable — a complete surprise. “There’s no relief,” she said over the phone. “We can’t say, ‘She’s with the Lord now.’ I can’t help but think of her burning in hell, and there’s nothing we can do about it now.” How could I console her? “We don’t know that,” I said. “More likely she’s with Wendell and Richard and Grandpa. It’s one big family reunion up there for the Mormons.” I shouldn’t have included my grandfather in the mix, but she let it slide.

“I hope you’re right,” she said, with a laugh.

“At least if the Mormons are right, we’ll all be safe,” I said.

We were joking again, irreverent at the most inappropriate times — the only way we knew how to make sense of things.

“It wouldn’t hurt to invest in a pair of that holy underwear,” I added. “Just in case.”

Just about the same time I ran across this article, I also ran across this video mashup of Jack Chick’s ‘Titanic‘ tract using footage from James Cameron’s movie by the same name. Between the two, I was struck anew at how stark much of conservative Christian theology is regarding the concept of Hell and the significant (and often radical) differences in the LDS concept of Hell. (More after the jump.)

Continue reading Mormons and Hell →

A few observations on LDS temples

LDS Doctrine, Main, Temples

I received a very thoughtful and civil e-mail from a reader of this blog, who told of his own brief experiences investigating the LDS Church and in particular of some issues he had with the concepts of temples, temple recommends, and temple ceremonies — and how restrictive and exclusionary LDS practices and doctrine regarding the temple appeared to be. He was somewhat encouraged by my posting on “Who gets saved?” but still had additional questions. I wrote him an e-mail reply late last night; I’m going to use a slightly edited and extended version of my response for this post.

The temples detailed in the Bible (Moses’s Tabernacle, Solomon’s Temple, and what is generally called Herod’s Temple [New Testament era]) all had restrictions on who could enter where and when — and restrictions far more strict than the LDS Church has for its temples. Let me focus on Herod’s Temple for now.

Continue reading A few observations on LDS temples →

Some thoughts on higher dimensional realms

LDS Doctrine, Main

[UPDATED 02/27/08: I was startled today to find that Jeff Lindsay has written a poem, “Flatland“, inspired in part by this paper. And a wonderful poem it is; go read it.]

I have a half-finished post on the nature of eternity, but I realized that I really need to address some foundational issues with regard to it. And since I co-authored a paper on the subject (“Some thoughts on higher-dimensional realms”, Robert P. Burton and Bruce F. Webster, BYU Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Spring 1980), p. 281 ff.) nearly 30 years ago, I thought I’d simply repost the paper, both in PDF format (as transcribed — not scanned — by BYU Studies) and as text that you can read here.

The gist of the paper is that there is evidence in the scriptures as well as in LDS sources (historical and doctrinal) that there are macroscopic physical dimensions outside of the 3D+time continuum in which we appear to reside. I did this as a University Scholar project my senior year (1977-78) at Brigham Young University; it was the first published writing I ever did (though certainly not the last), and so it’s a bit more awkward and stilted than I would write today. But it still brings together the sources that led me to this conclusion three decades ago, and my studies since then have only reinforced them.

The article itself appears after the jump. I have inserted some comments within brackets ([…]) when appropriate. Footnotes are also indicated with brackets ([1], etc.) and are given at the end of the article. Finally, I have noticed some typographical errors in the PDF transcription of the article (there are sadly quite a few) and have corrected these silently.

Continue reading Some thoughts on higher dimensional realms →