Presentation

Matthew Roper

Some critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints claim that Latter-day Saint teachings regarding salvation for the dead are inconsistent with biblical teachings and are based upon a misreading of 1 Peter 3:19, 4:6, and 1 Corinthians 15:29. Most recently, Luke Wilson of Gospel Truths Ministry (an evangelical anti-Mormon organization based in Michigan) has argued that Mormons are not only biblically wrong, but even inconsistent with the teachings found in the Book of Mormon as well.¹ In this paper, I will discuss the concept of salvation for the dead as it was taught by early Christians. First, I will address Wilson’s claim that LDS teachings on Salvation for the dead contradict biblical and Book of Mormon teachings. Second, I will address several questions bearing on the interpretation of 1 Peter 3:19 and 1 Peter 4:6, namely, 1) When and where did Christ go to preach, 2) To whom did He Preach, 3) What did He proclaim there, and 4) Does 1 Peter 4:6 really relate to 1 Peter 3:19. Finally, I will respond to Wilson’s criticisms of the LDS understanding of 1 Corinthians 15:29.

Does Salvation for the Dead Contradict the Bible?

Romans 1:19-20

Wilson claims that the notion that those who died without a knowledge of the gospel need to have the opportunity to hear it is in conflict with the teachings of the Bible. According to Wilson, Romans 1:19-20 shows that, “those who do not have the written word of God are nevertheless without excuse according to Paul, because they have rejected God’s revelation of himself through creation and the human conscience” (1995:1). No doubt, the wonders of creation testify to God’s existence, but they do not explain the Gospel of Jesus Christ. While it is certainly true that all men and women have a conscience which helps them distinguish between good and evil, they cannot respond to and accept a gospel they have not heard and it is only the Gospel of Jesus Christ that saves. As Paul observed, “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:14). God is not arbitrary and unjust. Somebody, somewhere, has to teach these people so that they may hear and have the opportunity of accepting or rejecting the gospel message before the judgement.

When one examines Romans 1:19-20 carefully, it becomes clear that Paul is not speaking of those who die in ignorance of the Gospel, but is speaking of the consequences of willfully rejecting the gospel when it is offered. “The wrath of God,” says Paul, “is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” To hold the truth in unrighteousness, they must first have had the truth and then rejected it. “Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them (Romans 1:18-19). God always reveals the Gospel through his appointed preachers and messengers. When the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached by the power of God, the conscience or light of Christ within all men and women shows them that what they are hearing is true. If they follow that light, it will lead them to accept the Gospel. If they reject it they will fall back into darkness and sin as Paul tells us (Romans 1:26-32). It is those who have been taught the Gospel who are “without excuse” (Romans 1:20), since even God’s creations honor and obey God’s power and will, even when man does not. The sin of man lies in knowing the truth and rejecting it anyway, “because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were they thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened” (Romans 1:21). Having openly rejected the Gospel message when it was offered, they brought divine judgements upon themselves (Romans 1:32). Those who die in ignorance of the Gospel message without having the opportunity to receive it, however, are another matter entirely.

Latter-day Saints are not the only people who recognize the importance of this issue. Stephen T. Davis, a professor of Philosophy at Claremont College has recently written a cogent defense of the resurrection that many evangelicals should gladly welcome.² Addressing the issue of those who die in ignorance of the Gospel, Davis states:

Suppose there was a woman named Oohku who lived from 370-320 B.C. in the interior of Borneo. Obviously, she would never have heard of Jesus Christ or the Judeo-Christian God; she would never have been baptized, nor would she ever have made any institutional or psychological commitment to Christ or to the Christian church. She couldn’t have done these things; she was simply born in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Could it be right for God to condemn this woman to eternal hell just because she was never able to come to God through Christ? Of course not.³

But how can God’s mercy take effect, since salvation is only in the Gospel of Jesus Christ? As a solution, Davis suggests “post-mortem evangelism.”⁴ He argues that a number of New Testament passages support this view including Ephesians 4:8-10; 1 Peter 3:18-20; 4:6; and 1 Corinthians 15:29. He notes the early Christian tradition that Christ during the interval between his death and resurrection descended to preach the Gospel to the spirits of the dead. “Despite the scores of interpretations of the difficult texts just cited that have been suggested in the history of Christian thought, this still seems to be a possible and plausible exegesis of 1 Peter 3:18-20; 4:5-6.”⁵ Davis then reasons, “If the gospel was once preached to the dead, perhaps this practice continues. If so, perhaps the ignorant are preached to after death and receive then the chance they never had before to receive Christ and turn to God.”⁶

Hebrews 9:27

This scripture merely states that the judgement follows death. Latter-day Saints do not question that, however it is what happens in-between death and resurrection before the judgement that is the issue in question. Jesus and the apostles understood there was an interval between the time of death and the resurrection.⁷

Luke 16:19-31

Wilson argues that the story related by Jesus in Luke 16:19-31, “makes clear that there is no opportunity to repent after death” and “excludes the possibility of repentance in the spirit world” (1995:2). Wilson’s example, however, is ill-chosen since it does not describe the fate of one who died in ignorance, but the fate of one who sinned against light and knowledge. Unlike those who die in ignorance of the Gospel, the rich man and his family had already known of “Moses and the prophets” (Luke 16:29). These prophets had repeatedly taught Israel to treat the poor with mercy and kindness. Thus he had not died in ignorance of this truth, but had chosen a life of wickedness in spite of the commandments. Now dead, and having sinned against this light of knowledge, he finds himself suffering torment in hell. This example does not apply to those who die in ignorance.

Does Salvation for the Dead Contradict the Book of Mormon?

Wilson asks why, if the Book of Mormon contains the fulness of the Gospel, why it does not contain explicit references to the teaching of baptism for the dead and other LDS teachings. Latter-day Saints have generally understood that baptism for the dead was only practiced after the time of Christ. Most of the Book of Mormon takes place before the time of Christ, so we should hardly expect pre-Christian references to baptism for the dead in the writings of Nephi, Jacob or Alma. Moreover, the Book of Mormon is an abridgement, so even if Jesus did teach that doctrine during his visit to the Nephites (3 Nephi 26:6-8), we should not be surprised if it is not mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Wilson cites four passages from the Book of Mormon which he suggests are inconsistent with the LDS teaching of salvation for the dead (Mosiah 2:36-39; Moroni 8:22-23; 2 Nephi 9:22-24; Alma 34:31-35). We will briefly examine each of these passages.

Mosiah 2:36-39

In these passages King Benjamin is concerned with those who have already “been taught” concerning the truth (Mosiah 2:34) and then have turned away, coming out in “open rebellion against God” (Mosiah 2:37). He is not speaking of those who died without the opportunity to hear the Gospel, as Wilson implies. In the following chapter, Benjamin goes on to say that the blood of Christ atones for the sins of those “who have died not knowing the will of God concerning them, or who have ignorantly sinned” (Mosiah 3:11). The only way for anyone to be saved is through the atonement and “there shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of men” (Mosiah 3:17). Benjamin also indicates that “the time shall come when a knowledge of a Savior shall spread throughout every nation, kindred, tongue and people” (Mosiah 3:21). Since he has just mentioned those who “died not knowing the will of God concerning them” this passage suggests that the time would eventually come when they too would hear that message. “And, behold, when that time cometh, none shall be found blameless before God, except it be little children, only through repentance and faith on the name of the Lord God Omnipotent” (Mosiah 3:22). Contrary to Wilson, this passage is consistent with the LDS teaching.

Moroni 8:22-23

Moroni 8:22-23 states that those who died without the law are “alive in Christ,” that is, they are eligible for the mercies of Christ extended through the atonement and his Gospel. They are under no condemnation until they accept or reject the Gospel. Until adults could be taught the need to repent and receive the covenant of baptism, that ordinance would make no sense. At some point, however, as King Benjamin indicated earlier, those who died in ignorance would be taught and have the opportunity to accept or reject the Gospel.

Alma 34:31-35

Wilson argues that Alma 34:31-35 is also in conflict with LDS teachings about the redemption of the dead (1995:4). Is this so? Hardly. Amulek is teaching the Zoramites, who are dissenters from among the Nephites, who had already been taught concerning Christ, but then had apostatized from the truth. Amulek is warning the Zoramites that if they do not repent in this life, they, having once had the truth and rejected it, will not be saved. The context had nothing to do with salvation for the dead, or baptism for the dead, which is primarily for those who never had the opportunity to hear the Gospel and repent in this life. The Zoramite situation, as apostates and dissenters is obviously quite different from those who die without a knowledge of the Gospel

2 Nephi 9:22-24

What about 2 Nephi 9:22-24? After discussing the need for all to be baptized or they cannot be saved (2 Nephi 9:23-24), Jacob distinguishes between those who have the law and the commandments (2 Nephi 9:27) and those who do not have the law (2 Nephi 9:25-26).

Wherefore, he has given a law; and where there is no law given there is no punishment; and where there is no punishment there is no condemnation; and where there is no condemnation the mercies of the Holy One of Israel have claim upon them, because of the atonement; for they are delivered by the power of him. For the atonement satisfieth the demands of justice upon all those who have not the law given to them, that they are delivered from that awful monster, death and hell, and the devil, and the lake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment; and they are restored to that God who gave them breath, which is the Holy One of Israel (2 Nephi 9:25-26).

In other words, the atonement of Christ provides the means whereby those who sin in ignorance may be delivered from death and hell and the power of the devil and restored to God’s presence. Since Jacob has just explained that this deliverance comes about only in and through Christ’s atonement and our response to that act: namely, faith in Jesus Christ, repentance from sin and baptism (2 Nephi 9:19-24), it is obvious that those who have died in ignorance of these universal commandments will through “the mercies of the Holy One of Israel” (2 Nephi 9:25) be allowed the opportunity, at some future time to both hear and accept the principles of salvation.

But woe unto him that has the law given, yea, that has all the commandments of God, like unto us, and that transgresseth them, and that wasteth the days of his probation, for awful is his state!” (2 Nephi 9:27).

As we have just noted, Jacob testified that those who died in ignorance are “restored” to that God who gave them life. How was the restoration to be accomplished? The prophet Abinadi taught that after Christ was put to death he saw “his seed” (Mosiah 15:10), meaning he visited the righteous spirits of the prophets and those who had believed their words “since the world began” (Mosiah 15:10-13). After his death Christ would proclaim the joyful news of their redemption from the bands of death. Continuing the work begun in mortality, these faithful spirits continued to publish the gospel or “good tidings” (Mosiah 15:14-15). Many who had died in ignorance had apparently accepted their message in the spirit world (Mosiah 15:11, 22-24). Thus when Christ appeared in the spirit world following his death (Mosiah 15:10-14, 18), there were many already prepared to receive him. These faithful spirits of the prophets and saints continue to publish these “good tidings” now and “hereafter” (Mosiah 15:16-17). Thus, Abinadi explains, it is through the preaching of the departed prophets and saints that the good tidings are declared to those who were denied that opportunity in this life. This is how God redeems many of those, “that have died in ignorance, not having salvation declared unto them. And thus [through the preaching of the departed righteous] the Lord bringeth about the restoration of these; and they have part in the first resurrection, or have eternal life, being redeemed by the Lord” (Mosiah 15:24).

Having demonstrated, contrary to Wilson, that the scriptural passages in the Bible and the Book of Mormon are consistent with the doctrine of salvation for the dead, we will now examine the following questions raised by Wilson’s critique: 1) When and where did Christ go to preach? 2) To whom did He preach? 3) What did Christ proclaim there? 4) Does 1 Peter 4:6 really relate to 1 Peter 3:19.

When and Where Did Christ Go to Preach?

Wilson argues that the LDS understanding is wrong because, “Christ’s preaching [in 1 Peter 3:19] did not take place between his death and resurrection, but after his resurrection, evidently as part of his ascension.” This according to Wilson, “rules out the view that it is a reference to Jesus descending to the abode of deceased human beings during the time His body lay in the tomb” (1995:2).⁸ Few Biblical scholars follow this radical interpretation of this passage:

Most scholars conclude that this passage does intend to describe a descensus ad inferos [descent into hell], and that therefore the preaching must have taken place in the land of the dead, the underworld.⁹

No other interpretation than that of the work of the discarnate Spirit of Christ in Hades seems natural and self-evident here. Indeed, all other interpretations merely evade this evident meaning…. It can hardly be doubted that S. Peter is referring to the Descent.¹⁰ This preaching took place in the interval between Christ’s death and resurrection.¹¹ The simplest meaning [of 1 Peter 3:19] is that our Lord descended between his passion and resurrection, to preach to the spirits imprisoned in Hades.¹²

Wilson further argues that 1 Peter, “actually says nothing about a descent. It simply says that Christ ‘went and preached to the spirits.'” Since this is the same word (poreutheis) used in speaking of Christ’s ascension in verse 22, Wilson assumes that verse 19 must refer to the ascension as well. But this does not necessarily follow, since Christ could have done both: gone to preach to the spirits in Hades and then, following his resurrection, ascended into heaven. Moreoever, Hanson has shown how Paul’s words in Romans 10:7 are apparently based upon a Palestinian targum rediscovered in 1956. Hanson concludes, contrary to Wilson, “The doctrine of a descensus is found in NT writings both earlier than and contemporary with 1 Peter.”¹³ In fact he finds evidence for this doctrine in several other New Testament passages.¹⁴ While this argues against Wilson’s interpretation, it lends support to the LDS understanding of this passage: that between his death and resurrection, Christ went and preached to certain spirits in the world of disembodied spirits.

To Whom Did Christ Preach?

While the majority of writers understand 1 Peter 3:18-20 to refer to Christ’s descent to Hades between his death and resurrection, there has been a diversity of opinion as to just who these spirits are. This is true of both early Christianity and modern New Testament scholars.

Perhaps the most popular view was that which affirmed that Christ preached to the patriarchs and the righteous of Old Testament times. According to Ignatius, the disciples of Jesus and “the prophets themselves in the Spirit did wait for him as their teacher. And therefore He whom they rightly waited for, being come, raised them from the dead.”¹⁵ Irenaeus affirmed that the Lord descended into Hades in order to preach to “the righteous men” and “the prophets and the patriarchs, to whom he remitted sins in the same way as he did to us.”¹⁶ Hyppolytus taught that when Christ was slain he preached the gospel to the souls of the saints.”¹⁷

Other early Christian writers were more vague as to the recipients of Christ’s Gospel message. According to Origen, “We assert that not only while Jesus was in the body did he win over not a few persons merely… but also, that when he became a soul, without the covering of the body, he dwelt among those souls which were without bodily covering, converting such of them as were willing to Himself.”¹⁸ In another place he specifically cited 1 Peter 3:19 in favor of this view.¹⁹ In the Odes of Solomon, a collection of Christian hymns written at about the beginning of the second century, the speaker, Christ, movingly describes his descent into Hades where he liberated spirits held captive there and organized them into a congregation of believers.

I made a congregation of living among his dead; and I spoke with them by living lips; in order that my word may not fail. And those who had died ran toward me; and they cried out and said, “Son of God, have pity on us. And deal with us according to your kindness, and bring us out from the chains of darkness. And open for us the door by which we may go forth to you, for we perceive that our death does not approach you. May we also be saved with you because you are our Savior.” Then I heard their voice and placed their faith in my heart. And I placed my name upon their head, because they are free and they are mine.²⁰

Other early Christian writers suggested that while Christ descended into Hades in the interval between his death and resurrection, the apostles may have participated with Jesus in preaching the gospel to the dead. According to the Sherpherd of Hermas, “These apostles and teachers who preached the name of the Son of God, after falling asleep in the power and faith of the Son of God, preached it not only to those who were asleep, but themselves also gave them the seal of the preaching [i.e. baptism]…. By these then, they were quickened and made to know the name of the Son of God.”²¹ According to Clement of Alexandria, while the Lord preached the Gospel in Hades, he believed, “that as here, so also there, the best of the disciples should be imitators of the Master; so that He should bring to repentance, those belonging to the Hebrews, and they the Gentiles.” Clement believed that the apostles of the Master taught the just among the Gentiles, “that is, those who had lived in righteousness according to the Law and Philosophy, who had ended life not perfectly, but sinfully. For it was suitable to the divine administration, that those possessed of greater worth in righteousness, and whose life had been pre-eminent, on repenting of their transgressions, thought found in another place, yet being confessedly of the number of the people of God Almighty should be saved, each according to his individual knowledge.” Since God is no respecter of persons, Clement reasoned, “the apostles also, as here, so there, preached the Gospel to those of the heathen who were ready for conversion…. Though they are in Hades and in ward, on hearing the voice of the Lord, whether that of his own person or that acting through His apostles, with all speed, turned and believed.”²²

A third, more idiosyncratic view, advanced by the heretic Marcion was that Christ preached, not to the patriarchs, but to the most wicked of the pre-Christian age “that Cain, and those like him, and the Sodomites, and the Egyptians, and others like them, and, in fine, all the nations who walked in all sorts of abomination, were saved by the Lord, on His descending into Hades, and on their running unto Him” but “that Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and those other righteous men who sprang from the patriarch Abraham, with all the prophets, and those who were pleasing to God, did not partake in salvation…. that their souls remained in Hades.”²³

Among modern biblical scholars I have been able to identify at least three main lines of thought. The first group interprets the “spirits” as referring to the fallen angels (2 Peter 2:4). This is the position taken by Wilson (p. 3). Other scholars, however, have argued that the “spirits” referred to are not the fallen angels, but the spirits of men from the generation of the flood. Cranfield, for example, asserts, “The most probable interpretation is surely that which identifies the spirits in prison with the souls of men who perished in the flood.”²⁴ A third group argues that the “spirits” include both men and angels. “We have therefore three choices here: ‘the spirits in prison’ are either fallen angels or the generation before the flood or those who lived before the coming of Christ generally.” Hanson favors a combination of all three of these possibilities. Whatever the case may be, they would all be spirits now dead. It is probably safest to conclude, as Hanson does, that in 1 Peter 3:18-20, “Christ is represented as having visited the place or the sphere, in which the fallen angels and the generations of men before his coming to earth were found” (i.e. Hades).²⁵

Wilson argues that the allusion to the people at the time of the flood is problematic under the LDS point of view:

If Christ’s proclamation here was an offer of the gospel, a natural question is: Why would Noah’s contemporaries be singled out for an opportunity to repent in the spirit world? Arguably, they were less deserving of a second chance than others, since they had the godly example of the preaching of Noah, which they ignored or rejected. Indeed, since on LDS terms they did not die in ignorance of the gospel…. Why would they even be eligible for a second chance in the spirit world? (1995:2).

Latter-day Saint scripture teaches that Noah preached for 120 years before the flood came (Moses 8:17). It is not unreasonable to believe that some may have died during that time before they had the opportunity to hear Noah preach. In fact, the book of Moses indicates that certain groups of people were specifically excluded from the preaching during this age (Moses 7:2). The preaching in the spirit world would give these individuals an opportunity to accept the Gospel for the first time, not a “second chance” as Wilson suggests. Moreover, the Doctrine and Covenants suggests another possibility: Among those described as inheriting a Terrestrial glory are some, “who died without law; and also they who are the spirits of men kept in prison, whom the Son visited, and preached the Gospel unto them that they might be judged according to men in the flesh. Who received not the testimony of Jesus in the flesh, but afterwards received it” (D&C 76:72-74). Those who reject the Gospel while in mortality will be damned and will be denied eternal life, however, if these individuals accept the Gospel in the spirit world, they will still be able to inherit a Terrestrial glory following the resurrection (D&C 138:58-59). Thus the spirits in 1 Peter 3:19 could include, from the LDS point of view 1) some of those from the time of Noah who died in ignorance, 2) some of those from the time of Noah who rejected his testimony in mortality, but who later repented and accepted the Gospel in the spirit world. It is also possible that some of those from Noah’s day were so hardened and wicked that they rejected the Gospel message even in the spirit world. As Sherman E. Johnson puts it, “The implication of the passage [in 1 Peter 3:19] is clear. It deals with the comprehensive work of Christ in saving all who will respond to the proclaimed word…. Wherever Christ goes he brings both judgement and salvation.”²⁶

What Did Christ Proclaim?

Wilson argues that Christ’s proclamation in 1 Peter 3:19 was not an offer of Salvation through the Gospel at all, but rather, “a proclamation of victory over the demonic spirits” (1995:3).²⁷ His argument for this is based mainly on the fact that the term kurusso (meaning to announce, make known or proclaim) is used in 1 Peter 3:19, rather than euangelizomai (“bring, announce good news”). Wilson admits that kurusso is also used at different times in the New Testament to refer to the preaching of the Gospel, but argues that if the writer had really meant that Christ preached the Gospel he would have used the other term. Cranfield, responding to this very line of argument states, “But it is much more likely that [kurusso] has here its normal New Testament sense of preaching the gospel.”²⁸ According to Hunter, this view “can only be carried through if we wrest the meaning of the Greek words in the most unnatural way. The simplest meaning is that our Lord descended between his passion and resurrection, to preach to certain spirits in Hades…. Christ went down ‘in the spirit,’ says Peter, into Hades, between his death and resurrection, in order to offer salvation to sinners who had died without hearing the gospel and getting a chance to repent.”²⁹ According to Hanson:

The great majority of editors believe that Christ preached the message of salvation to the spirits in prison; this view is held by Friedrich, MacCulloch, Reicke, Bieder, Windisch-Preiser, Schweitzer, Cranfield, Schelkle, Best, and Brooks…. Only Dalton and Kelly maintain that what Christ proclaimed to the spirits in prison was a message of damnation. Both are influenced by inter-testamental literature in which a figure such as Enoch is sent to proclaim doom to the rebellious angels in captivity. But we must allow for the fact that we are dealing with a Christian text. The redeeming mission of Christ is all important here; this must surely have been the context of Christ’s message to the spirits in prison, according to our author.³⁰

In other words, Christ, “preached the salvation which God had achieved through him…. The author [of 1 Peter] is concerned to emphasize the universal scope of God’s salvation.”³¹ Or as another scholar notes, when Jesus preaches in Hades, it is as “the herald of the gospel.”³²

Is 1 Peter 4:6 Related to 1 Peter 3:19?

Wilson argues that Latter-day Saints erroneously connect 1 Peter 3:18-21 with 1 Peter 4:6. He argues that while the former describes Christ’s proclamation of doom to the fallen angels, the latter refers to the gospel having been preached to Christians now dead (1995:3-4). Contrary to Wilson, many scholars do connect the two passages in describing Christ’s descent and his preaching to the spirits of the dead in Hades. MacCulloch, for instance, argues for the unity of the two passages, but interprets 1 Peter 4:6 as referring to “a general preaching” to the dead in Hades as opposed to the preaching to Noah’s generation in 1 Peter 3:18-21, both performed by Christ during the three day interval.³³ Others, however, view these two passages as referring to the same event: “By far the most likely explanation is that [in 1 Peter 4:6] there is a reference back to 3:19” and that the “dead” of 4:6 are to be identified with the spirits of 3:19.³⁴ For our purposes here, it is only necessary to point out that many scholars do connect the two passages as do the Latter-day Saints, as referring to Christ’s preaching in the spirit world.

Does 1 Corinthians 15:25 refer to Proxy Baptism?

Wilson believes that Paul disassociates himself from those at Corinth who were practicing baptism for the dead, since he uses the term “they” instead of “I” or “we.” If one were to follow Wilson’s reasoning here, a Latter-day Saint could turn his argument on its head. Paul alludes to the testimony of those who witnessed Christ’s resurrection. He speaks of the testimony of Cephas, James, the twelve apostles, and others including himself who witnessed the reality of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:1-8). Although Paul considers himself the very least of the apostles (15:9) he has “laboured more abundantly than they all” (15:10). “Therefore whether it were I or they so we preach, and so ye believed” (15:11). Note here, that if we were to follow Wilson’s argument, then we would have to conclude that both they and we refer to the apostles and others who like Paul witnessed the reality of the resurrection. If there is no resurrection from the dead, not only is the faith of the Corinthians vain (15:4), but “we [Paul and the apostles] are found false witnesses of God because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ” (15:15). Likewise, when Paul speaks of they in verse 10, he refers directly to the apostles, affirming that his testimony is consistent with theirs (15:10-11). He further speaks of “they” who have already fallen asleep or died faithfully in their witness of the resurrection and testimony of Christ (15:18). Again, if we were to follow Wilson’s own argument that the use of the term they is the key to interpreting 1 Corinthians 15:29, then we would have to see in it, not a reference to heretical Christians as Wilson argues, but to the apostles and other faithful witnesses of the resurrection: “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead” (15:29). As I said, a Latter-day Saint could have a little fun with this kind of argument. As tempting as that might be, however, that is not the real reason why Wilson’s argument is faulty.

As John Tvedtnes has pointed out,

The Greek original of 1 Corinthians 15:29 does not use the pronoun they. It says, “Otherwise, what will do the ones being baptized for the dead?” The text uses a passive participle form, “the being baptized [ones],” as a substantive (where it is usually accompanied by the definite article). Participles reflect gender, number, and case, but not person. Hence, there is no third person plural (they) in the Greek original…. Being devoid of reference to person, the passage does not restrict the practice to “false teachers” as Wilson contends.³⁵

In fact, most commentators admit that Paul does not pass judgement on the practice of baptism for the dead, one way or the other, although he did use it in support of his testimony of the resurrection of the dead. Below I have given a sampling from many of the commentaries on 1 Corinthians 15:29.

The text seems to speak plainly enough about a practice within the church of vicarious baptism for the dead. This is the view of most contemporary exegetes.³⁶

The normal reading of the text is that some Corinthians are being baptized, apparently vicariously, in behalf of some people who have already died. It would be fair to add that this reading is such a plain understanding of the Greek text that no one would ever have imagined the various alteratives were it not for the difficulties involved.³⁷

Again, the apostle alludes to a practice of the Corinthian community as evidence for a Christian faith in the resurrection of the dead. It seems that in Corinth some Christians would undergo baptism in the name of their deceased non-Christian relatives and friends, hoping that this vicarious baptism might assure them a share in the redemption of Christ.³⁸

Paul alludes in passing to a local practice of baptism for the dead, according to which certain Corinthians would seem to have undergone baptism on behalf of their departed relatives. (Paul is not passing judgement on the practice, but simply appealing to it as additional support for his argument about the resurrection of believers.)³⁹

It appears that under the pressure of concern for the eternal destiny of dead relatives or friends some people in the Church were undergoing baptism on their behalf in the belief that this would enable the dead relatives to receive the benefits of Christ’s salvation…. He attaches neither praise nor blame to the custom. He does take it as an illustration of faith in the future destiny of the dead.⁴⁰

Baptized on behalf of the dead is possibly proxy-baptism on behalf of friends who had died unbaptized.⁴¹

Of the many interpretations offered the most plausible is perhaps that which views the practice as an irregular type of baptism, possibly by proxy (so Moffatt) for those who died unbaptized.⁴²

The most common opinion among critical scholars is that Paul was referring to the practice of vicarious baptism on behalf of dead persons.⁴³

Possibly there was a custom in Corinth which allowed vicarious baptism–live people being baptized on behalf of dead people.⁴⁴

Perhaps some members of the congregation underwent further baptism on behalf of friends or relatives who had received instruction in the Christian faith but had died before they had themselves been baptized.⁴⁵

The wording is in favor of the “normal” exposition in terms of “vicarious baptism”: in Corinth living people have themselves vicariously baptized for dead people. Paul does not criticize the custom, but makes use of it for his argument.⁴⁶

There is something approaching a consensus among commentators that, according to the obvious meaning of the words, it is a reference to vicarious baptism, people “who have themselves baptized on behalf of the dead.”⁴⁷

In summary, Wilson’s arguments against the LDS understanding of the doctrine of Redemption for the dead is unpersuasive on a number of grounds. It has been shown that, contrary to Wilson this teaching is consistent with both the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and that some early Christians as well as modern biblical scholars interpreted and interpret biblical teachings such as those found in 1 Peter 3:19; 4:6 and 1 Corinthians 15:29 in ways similar to that of Latter-day Saints. The Latter-day Saint understanding of 1 Peter 3:19 and 4:6 and 1 Corinthians 15:29 is a plausible interpretation which finds substantial support in the writings of early Christianity and even some modern biblical scholars who often express uncertainty as to how they can reconcile such interpretations with their own theology, while Latter-day Saints can find interesting parallels to their own.

Notes

¹ Luke P. Wilson, “Does the Bible Teach Salvation for the Dead” Heart and Mind: The Newsletter of Gospel Truths Ministries (January-March 1995): 1-4; Wilson, “Did Jesus Establish Baptism for the Dead?” Heart and Mind (January-March 1997): 1-4. For another response to these articles see John A. Tvedtnes, “The Dead Shall Hear the Voice” FARMS Review of Books 10/2 (1998): 184-99.

² Stephen T. Davis, Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993).

³ Davis, 151.

⁴ Davis, 162.

⁵ Davis, 163.

⁶ Davis, 164.

⁷ See for example, Merrill F. Unger, Unger’s Bible Dictionary (Chicago: Moody Press, 1961), 437-38; D.S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic 200 A.D.-A.D. 100 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1964), 353-90; Richard Bauckham, “Hades, Hell,” in David Noel Freedman, ed., Anchor Bible Dictionary 6 vols (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 3:14-15; Alan E. Bernstein, The Formation of Hell: Death and Retribution in the Ancient and Early Christian Worlds (London and Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1993), 154-65.

⁸ This is the view of William Joseph Dalton, Christ’s Proclamation to the Spirits: A Study of 1 Peter 3:18-4:6 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1965).

⁹ Anthony Tyrrell Hanson, The New Testament Interpretation of Scripture (London: SPCK, 1980), 130. See also Hanson, “Salvation Proclaimed: I 1 Peter 3:18-22,” Expository Times 93/4 (January 1982): 102.

¹⁰ MacCulloch, The Harrowing of Hell: A Comparative Study of an Early Christian Doctrine (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1930), 61.

¹¹ C.E.B. Cranfield, “The Interpretation of I Peter iii.19 and iv.6,” Expository Times (September 1958): 370. See also 371.

¹² Archibald M. Hunter, “The First Epistle of Peter,” in The Interpreter’s Bible Commentary 12 vols (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979), 12:132-33. See also Donald Senior, 1 & 2 Peter (Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, 1980), 70.

¹³ Hanson, “Salvation Proclaimed,” 102. For a detailed discussion of Matthew 12:38-41; Acts 2:24; Romans 10:6-8; Ephesians 4:7-10; 5:14, 25-27; 1 Peter 3:19 and 4:6 as they relate to the Christian doctrine of Christ’s descensus into Hades see Hanson, New Testament Interpretation of Scripture, 122-56.

¹⁴ Hanson, New Testament Interpretation of Scripture, 122-56.

¹⁵ Ignatius, Epistle to the Magnesians 9, in Roberts and Donaldson, 1:62.

¹⁶ Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4:26, in Roberts and Donaldson, 1:499.

¹⁷ Hyppolytus, Treatise on Christ and Anti-Christ in Roberts and Donaldson, 5:209.

¹⁸ Origen, Against Celsus 2:43, in Roberts and Donaldson, 4:448.

¹⁹ Origen, Commentary on John 6:18, in Roberts and Donaldson 10:367-68.

²⁰ Odes of Solomon 42, in Charlesworth, 2:771.

²¹ Sherpherd of Hermas, similitude 9:16, in Roberts and Donaldson, 2:49.

²² Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 6:6, in Roberts and Donaldson, 2:490-92.

²³ Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1:27, in Roberts and Donaldson, 1:352.

²⁴ Cranfield, “The Interpretation of I Peter iii.19 and iv.6,” 370.

²⁵ Hanson, “Salvation Proclaimed,” 102.

²⁶ Sherman E. Johnson, “The Preaching to the Dead,” Journal of Biblical Literature 79/1 (1960): 51.

²⁷ This is the argument raised by Edward Gordon Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter (London: 1846).

²⁸ Cranfield, “The Interpretation of I Peter iii.19 and iv.6,” 371.

²⁹ Hunter, “The First Epistle of Peter,” 132-33.

³⁰ Hanson, The New Testament Interpretation of Scripture, 131-32.

³¹ Hanson, “Salvation Proclaimed,” 102.

³² Senior, 1 & 2 Peter, 70.

³³ MacCulloch, The Harrowing of Hell, 59-60.

³⁴ Cranfield, “The Interpretation of I Peter iii.19 and iv.6,” 371; See also Alfred Firmin Loisy, The Birth of the Christian Religion (New Hyde Park: New York: University Books, 1962), 270; Hunter, “The First Epistle of Peter,” 133; Johnson, “The Preaching to the Dead,” 48-51.

³⁵ Tvedtnes, 196.

³⁶ Krister Stendahl, “Baptism for the Dead: Ancient Sources,” in Ludlow, Encyclopedia of Mormonism 1:97.

³⁷ Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 763-64.

³⁸ Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Ronald Murphy, eds., The Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1968, 2:273.

³⁹ The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible 1:350.

⁴⁰ William Orr, James Arthur Walthur, eds., 1 Corinthians (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1976), 337.

⁴¹ D. Guthrie and J.A. Motyer, et al., The Eerdman’s Bible Commentary Third edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 1072.

⁴² F.F. Bruce, ed., The International Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Marshall Pickering/Zondervan, 1986), 1384.

⁴³ John Coolidge Hurd Jr., The Origin of 1 Corinthians (Macon, Ga: Mercer University Press, 1983), 136.

⁴⁴ R. Paul Caudill, First Corinthians: A Translation with Notes (Nashville, Tn.: Broadman Press, 1983), 211.

⁴⁵ Margaret E. Thrall, The First and Second Letters of Paul to the Corinthians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 109-910.

⁴⁶ Hanz Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 275.

⁴⁷ James Downey, “1 Cor 15:29 and the Theology of Baptism,” Euntes Docete 38 (1985): 23.

“I Have Said, ‘Ye are Gods'”: Concepts Conducive to the Early Christian Doctrine of Deification in Patristic Literature and the Underlying Strata of the Greek New Testament Text

D. Charles Pyle

Abstract: In this paper, I cite several statements of the Early Christian Fathers with respect to the doctrine of deification, giving evidence that this doctrine had wide geographical distribution among both orthodox and heretic alike from the early post-apostolic period to the end of the third century with little variance of wording and no evidence of being formulated through councils of any kind–something that could only have occurred so early in time if deification of man were actually a doctrine taught early on in the pages of Christian history presently lost to us.

Using a combination of my own observations and those of non-LDS biblical scholars, I give brief commentary on a few Greek New Testament passages that appear to contain concepts conducive to a belief in the doctrine of deification–notwithstanding the fact that the full implications of the doctrine of deification either had not yet been revealed or not made public during the composition of the documents of which our current Greek New Testament text is comprised.

No End to Controversy

“As man is, God once was; as God is, man may be.” This couplet, alliterated by President Lorenzo Snow, together with the earlier King Follett Discourse and the Discourse on the Plurality of Gods and other teachings by the Prophet Joseph Smith have been a major source of controversy from the beginning. We find that notwithstanding the majority of the saints accepted the teachings, some actually being awed by the doctrines taught, opposition did come from a select few. The first known opposition, so far as I am aware, to certain of the doctrines taught in those and a few unrecorded sermons originated from the authors of the Nauvoo Expositor. These persons quoted scripture that they felt opposed the doctrines of various sermons of Joseph Smith and made other claims and charges in an effort to get others to believe that Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet.¹

Today, Latter-day Saints are lambasted left and right for believing the doctrines that were taught since the days of Joseph Smith, namely, the ideas that God was once a man and that man could someday become like God–becoming gods themselves as others had done before. Controversy has even been found to exist among members of the Church because there are several differing views and explanations offered in relation to the doctrines. The reason for these differences of opinion is that there is not much that is revealed upon that subject. We have a few statements contained in our canonized scriptures and the various statements of Joseph Smith and others as attempts to exposit the meaning of the doctrine of deification as taught in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Other than that, we really do not know a lot about it, precisely as President Hinckley has suggested in recent interviews with the media.

Many Latter-day Saints, particularly recent converts from Evangelical Protestant backgrounds, either have been embarrassed by what critics have said of the LDS doctrine of deification (otherwise known as the doctrine of eternal progression) or have been silently contemplating the cost of believing it and remaining members of the Church. Evangelical critics of the Church have tirelessly told us that it is not possible for us to become gods and that the Bible clearly and expressly forbids belief in this doctrine.

Others have attempted to cause doubt by implying that if the doctrine of eternal progression were really true, the Book of Mormon would somehow contain the full doctrine within the pages of that great text.² They ask why the doctrine is not explicitly spelled out in the New Testament. They make the irrational claim that there is no evidence that so-called “Historic Christianity” taught any sort of doctrine of deification and that “Mormons” have no ground in believing any aspects of the doctrine of eternal progression because of this.

As a result, many recent converts are concerned about the doctrine of eternal progression and do not quite know what to make of it. Thankfully, most members of the Church do not have concerns about this doctrine and see the logic of it when examined in the full context of Latter-day Saint belief. For those who do have concerns, I hope that this paper will be of benefit to them as well as others outside the Church who doubt the truthfulness of the gospel as taught in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because of what they may have heard from our detractors.

Getting a Few Things Clear

There are several items that the author believes must be made clear before proceeding with this subject.

Firstly, the apostasy began almost at the beginning of the Church in that early dispensation, the most notable mass-exodus of members being during the time of the very ministry of Christ.³ Even the leaders of the early Church were well aware that a time of testing was soon to come and that after their departure, the flocks of the Church would be overrun with wolves bringing damnable heresies with them.⁴ That such was indeed happening even in the days of the Apostles themselves was recorded in the Bible.⁵

Evidence that things had even gone so far that there were individuals claiming ordination to Apostleship in Christ’s Church to lend support to their campaign to alter the Church from within is also found there as well.⁶ Additionally, the Church was badly fragmented from the beginning as disagreements on various doctrinal points caused divisions among the various groups. As a result of all this, it should not be expected that every doctrine of the early Church would be preserved in its pristine form among the writings of the early fathers of the Church.

Nor should it be expected that each of the fathers taught every aspect of doctrine with which we are familiar. As the metaphysical ideas that were advanced by various writers began moving toward the formulation of the traditional doctrine of the Trinity, for example, of necessity the understanding of the doctrine of deification became subtly altered as well. On the other hand, it should be expected that a number of fairly close parallels should be found among those writings–especially among the earlier fathers of the early Church–if Joseph Smith is to be believed.

Secondly, we are dealing with what we now have of the Greek text of the New Testament. In the course of recent research, I have come to believe that few, if any, of the words of much of the Greek text are original. I feel that recovering the original words of the New Testament (especially as contained in the Gospels) is an impossible task because much of our current Greek text is translation material deriving from Aramaic originals. We can only hope that the translators of the Aramaic originals preserved the correct meanings of the originals in the Greek New Testament translations they have left us.⁷

Thirdly, we do not know precisely what was revealed to the Church or even all the details concerning numerous doctrinal points because we have but a handful of extant texts. Others are yet missing,⁸ as the text of 1 Corinthians 5:9–a notable example of Paul referring his readers to a yet earlier but no longer extant letter he had written to them–demonstrates, while those extant collectively maintain that there was much more that was known by both Jesus and the Apostles than was committed to the Church or people in general via the writings we now possess in our current New Testament corpus.⁹

Allow me to digress for a moment. There are Evangelical writers who, of course, would disagree with the assessment that there are missing texts from the Bible. Most noteworthy of these is Norman Geisler, who, while giving his opinion as to why he believes the New Testament is complete, dogmatically insists that 1 Corinthians 5:9 could not possibly refer to a lost book of the New Testament as his sixth example that such is not the case is:

the letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 5:9), which may refer to 1 Corinthians itself by a device known as an ‘epistolary aorist,’ which stressed the urgency of the message, a device Paul used elsewhere in the same letter (1 Cor. 9:15). There is simply no evidence that any inspired apostolic work is missing from the New Testament.¹⁰

The last sentence in the above citation is quite dogmatic for Geisler, especially after his previous use of words like may, perhaps, etc! As to the epistolary aorist, it is possible that it may refer to the letter being written. That is certainly the case with the example that Geisler provides in 1 Corinthians 9:15 (which is lexically the same form of the verb as that found at 1 Corinthians 5:9). This is also true of the text of verse 11. However, he has misused what the scholars have said about the epistolary aorist and, most of all, what scholars have said about 1 Corinthians 5:9. Geisler definitely ignored the remainder of the argument as summarized in the last sentences of the following:

There are a number of problem texts in which the epistolary aorist may refer to the portion that the author is presently composing (thus, truly epistolary), or to the epistle as a whole, or to a previous portion of the epistle just completed (thus, immediate past aorist). Sometimes, in fact, the aorist may refer to a letter written on a previous occasion. For a few of these texts (which have obvious exegetical implications), cf. Rom 15:15; 1 Cor 5:9; Eph 3:3; Phlm 19; 1 John 2:21.¹¹

There is little room for Geisler’s dogmatism when the stronger probability exists for a previous letter. Further conducive to my point, there is one other exegetical consideration for 1 Corinthians 5:9 contained in the book just cited. Previous to the above quote, Wallace writes that “Paul had previously written to the Corinthians and is here reminding them of that letter.”¹² Allow me to take this one step further than did Wallace in that example. Context is everything when it comes to properly interpreting a text. In the passage, Paul clearly refers to something that he had written–a quote not found in any previous portion of the letter. Paul wrote:

I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.(1 Corinthians 5:9-10, emphasis mine)

Verse 9 is the original comment by Paul, while verse 10 comprises a clarification of verse 9, the message that was written previously (which does NOT appear in the previous text in 1 Corinthians). In addition to the exegetical considerations that strengthen the LDS position that 1 Corinthians 5:9 refers to a lost letter of Paul, we must consider the content of verse 11.

Previously, Paul stated that he had written that the Corinthian saints should not keep company with those who are immoral but could not avoid them all as that would require them to leave the world. He then uses the epistolary aorist in verse 11 to give emphasis to what he is now writing–that the Corinthian saints should not associate with members of the Church who may be involved in such immorality and that they should be put out of the Church (1-7, 13):

But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. (1 Corinthians 5:11)

I wish to comment upon the first phrase of the passage just cited. The Greek text underlying the English phrase But now I have written unto you is nun de egraya umin nun de egrapsa humin. The material that follows this phrase is Paul’s clarification of his previous instruction. Nun de Nun de (English: But now) is often used throughout the New Testament to contrast situations, conditions or instructions which are based upon those conditions or situations. Paul thus appears to contrast his previously written instruction with the new instruction:

But NOW I have written to you to not associate with–nor even ever to eat with–anyone identified as ‘brother’ who is sexually immoral, covetous, idolatrous, or who is a reviler, drunkard or robber. (1 Corinthians 5:11, translated from the Greek)

Paul understands that it would be difficult for the saints to avoid immoral people in everyday life but encouraged them to keep purity in their own Christian community by purging it of corrupt individuals.

Further, the construction of the entire text of 1 Corinthians reveals that much of it appears to be a response to what the Corinthian saints wrote in reply to an earlier Pauline letter. He also alludes to further introductory letters that he would write for each of the persons designated to carry the collection to Jerusalem (16:3–letters that are also now lost to us, contra Geisler). We are not alone in our interpretation of 1 Corinthians 5:9. A.T. Robertson, in his Word Pictures of the Greek New Testament, plainly wrote of the passage:

1Co 5:9 – I wrote unto you in my epistle…. Not the epistolary aorist, but a reference to an epistle to the Corinthians earlier than this one (our First Corinthians), one not preserved to us. What a “find” it would be if a bundle of papyri in Egypt should give it back to us?¹³

The 5:9 passage is rendered in The Amplified Bible: “I wrote you in my [previous] letter not to associate [closely and habitually] with unchaste (impure) people” [brackets and parentheses in original]. The introductory material to The New English Bible version of 1 Corinthians concurs:

This is apparently the second letter Paul wrote to the Corinthians. The previous letter, mentioned in 5.9, is lost (unless 2 Cor. 6.14-7.1 is a surviving fragment), but the Corinthians’ reply to that letter provides the subject matter for chs. 7-16 of the present letter.

“The Introduction to the Letters of Paul” in the New Jerusalem Bible clearly declares that: “There had been an earlier letter than these two canonical ones [1 and 2 Corinthians], 1 Co 5:9-13, but the date at which this first letter was written is unknown and it has not survived” (p. 1854, brackets mine). Let us also consider how J.B. Phillips rendered 1 Corinthians 5:9-11:

In my previous letter I said, “Don’t mix with the immoral.” I didn’t mean, of course, that you were to have no contact at all with the immoral of this world, nor with any cheats or thieves or idolaters–for that would mean going out of the world altogether! But in this letter I tell you not to associate with any professing Christian who is known to be an impure man or a swindler, an idolater, a man with a foul tongue, a drunkard or a thief. My instruction is: “Don’t even eat with such a man.”¹⁴

While it is true that one could conceivably infer (on relatively weak ground, that is) that the passage at 5:9 refers to a portion of Paul’s letter that we now know as 1 Corinthians, the construction of the sentences in 5:9-11, the structure of the letter as a whole, the lack of any previous source of the quotation in the passage or instruction in the current letter in any previous portion of the text thereof, the usage of the words, and the careful consideration given to the passage by more honest exegetes, we can conclude that Geisler is most likely incorrect and that the greater possibility exists (a much more likely possibility based upon what is presented above) that the passage does in fact refer to a previous letter written by Paul.

Furthermore, other scholars note the differences in tone in certain sections within what we now know as Second Corinthians. Many of these scholars believe that this “second” letter is really a compilation of parts of at least two or more other letters of Paul to the Corinthians which are no longer extant.¹⁵ Geisler seems to be either miserably behind in his biblical scholarship or perhaps deceptive in his failing to mention it in an apparent effort to avoid weakening his case. There is no room whatever for Geisler to make the dogmatic declaration that “there is simply no evidence that any inspired apostolic work is missing from the New Testament.” He either ignores or is simply unaware of the evidence that is available for lost epistles of Paul.

It is also possible that he has fallen back upon what many of the commentators of the 1800s had to say on the issue. His motive simply seems to be one of disallowing any possibility of the correctness of LDS thought with respect to an appeal to the concept of lost books of the Bible as support for an open or incomplete canon rather than one of determining the true meaning of our Biblical text. His preconceived notions seem to come into play here rather than true scholarship–a truly unfortunate happenstance for an otherwise regarded scholar.

…It is Not Yet Made Known What We Shall Become

The actual beginning of the teaching of the full doctrine of deification is shrouded in mystery. Many documents of any real historical value were lost early on. Only tiny fragments of many of the earliest of these works, aside from those extant in our current text of the New Testament, exist today. What happened to the rest of them is unknown at present. We know that John lived until at least 110 CE (perhaps as late as 117 CE), when sometime after this he disappears from the scene.¹⁶

It is believed that sometime between 96 and 98 CE, John wrote a general epistle to the Church, a portion of which reads:

Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it is not yet made known what we shall become. We know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him just as he is. And everyone who has this hope upon him is purifying himself just as that (one) is pure. (1 John 3:2-3)

John is not more than general in what is entailed in this likeness to Christ except that it was something that could be hoped for, something that would result in action, and that the thing hoped for would be that the children of God would be as Christ now is. The Greek text here seems cautiously worded. Although it was generally known in the Church that there really were many beings that were given the title “gods” in the heavens and earth,¹⁷ it does not seem that the ramifications of such thought had yet been clearly understood by the New Testament saints–at least from the various public texts that we now possess.

Whether John was involved in the dissemination of the early doctrine, known among the ancients as qeopoihsiV theopoiesis or qeosiV theosis (English: godmaking or divinization or deification), is not certain at this time. Whether there were any further revelations given to the Church before the disappearance of John cannot be said with any degree of certainty, either. If there were any further revelations to John, they are no longer extant–as it is with what was the real First Letter to the Corinthians, now lost to us.

What is of interest to note, although this paper is not the place to discuss in any in-depth fashion the ideals of a past Judaism, is that various concepts related to this very same teaching seemingly have some affinity with early Jewish texts found in the Talmud¹⁸ and in various Midrashim, one of which reads:

The Holy One, blessed be He, will in the future, call all of the pious by their names, and give them a cup of elixir of life in their hands so that they should live and endure forever….And the Holy One, blessed be He, will in the future reveal to all the pious in the World to Come the Ineffable Name with which new heavens and a new earth can be created, so that all of them should be able to create new worlds . . . The Holy One, blessed be He, will give every pious three hundred and forty worlds in inheritance in the World to Come . . . To all the pious the Holy One, blessed be He, will give a sign and a part in the goodly reward, and everlasting renown, glory and greatness and praise, a crown encompassed in holiness, and royalty, equal to those of all the pious in the World to Come.¹⁹

In the Christianized prophecy of Adam in the third chapter of the Syriac Testament of Adam, a document contemporary to early Christianity with portions believed to have been written sometime between 100 and 150 CE, we find that the concept of deification appeared to have been well understood by the author of that work. In it, the author has Adam clearly tell his son, Seth, what the Messiah spoke to him in the garden of Eden after he had partaken of the fruit in which death was hiding. According to this document, Adam hears from the Lord:

Adam, Adam, do not fear. You wanted to be a god; I will make you a god, not right now, but after a space of many years…. And I will set you at the right hand of my divinity, and I will make you a god just like you wanted.²⁰

Both Heterodox and Orthodox Alike

What makes this all most interesting is that this doctrine of deification was taught by both heterodox and orthodox Christians alike, with little variation of wording between the various groups before the fourth century. Further, the doctrine was so geographically widespread through the Church at such an early date that it stands to reason that the doctrine had to have been advanced very early in Christian history, and accepted by the mass of Christians throughout the farthest reaches of the Church. The doctrine is found in the writings of fathers in regions from what is now known as Lyons, France, to Carthage, a city in Africa.

It is even found in writings of the fathers throughout the first eight centuries of Christian history, albeit with some necessary alterations of meaning after the final decisions concerning doctrines such as the Trinity–a doctrine with which the doctrine of deification became increasingly incompatible until it was discarded for a time by the Western Church and further redefined and/or discarded by certain of the Churches of the East.

All that can be shown at present, is that the most important teachings relative to the doctrine appear to emerge fully developed from within or shortly after the time of John’s mortal ministry, that persons involved with close disciples of John and other early Christian writers were among the first recorded Christian examples of this doctrine of deification,²¹ and that the doctrine spread quickly throughout the Church at a very early date. It is also of much interest that the doctrine of deification did not seem to have gone through the development process and series of councils that such doctrines as the Trinity did. Every early writer who had anything in-depth to say about the subject of salvation mentioned some aspect of the doctrine of the deification of man as well.

One thing is certain: a doctrine of deification quite similar to our own with respect to the nature of man was part and parcel of the doctrinal structure of “Historic Christianity,” if such a thing as “Historic Christianity” can be said to exist. Of this fact, one non-Mormon optimistically mused:

One can think what one wants of this doctrine of progressive deification, but one thing is certain: with this anthropology Joseph Smith is closer to the view of man held by the Ancient Church than the precursors of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin were, who considered the thought of such a substantial connection between God and man as the heresy, par excellence. We must remember here that for the Ancient Church salvation stood in direct correlation to embodiment. Athanasius, the great Bishop of Alexandria, the head of the Church in all Egypt, summarized the Christian doctrine of salvation in the words, “God became man so that we may become God.” The goal of salvation is deification, and Athanasius invokes in this context the words of Jesus: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”²²

Some examples of the doctrine from the heterodox position are found in such texts as the Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of Gnostic writings originating from the first to the third centuries. From one of these writings we read that:

The divine Word is God, he who bears patiently with man always. He wished to produce humility in the exalted. He (Christ) who has exalted man became like God, not in order that he might bring God down to man, but that man might become like God.²³

Similar teachings can be found in the Gospel of Philip and in other of the Nag Hammadi texts as well. Quite similar to the above citation from The Teachings of Silvanus are the teachings of Irenaeus and his student, Hippolytus. For Irenaeus, there was no fear in claiming that “our Lord Jesus Christ, who did through his transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”²⁴ It is clear from the context of his own writings, some of which will be covered later, that he intended to indicate that we would attain to that which Christ was understood to be at that time by Irenaeus. His student, Hippolytus, was not far behind him in similarly claiming:

Now in all these acts He [Christ] offered up, as the first-fruits, His own manhood, in order that thou, when thou art in tribulation, may not be disheartened, but, confessing thyself to be a man (of like nature with the Redeemer), mayest dwell in expectation of also receiving what the Father has granted unto this Son… And thou shalt be a companion of the Deity, and a co-heir of Christ, no longer enslaved by lusts or passions, and never again wasted by disease. For thou has become God;… And provided thou obeyest his solemn injunctions, and becomest a faithful follower of Him who is good, thou shalt resemble Him, inasmuch as thou shalt have honor conferred upon thee by Him.²⁵

Hippolytus was quick to add that God could not be diminished in any way by doing this, “having made thee even God unto His glory.”²⁶ Earlier, Justin the Martyr, sometime between 130 and 150 CE, also seems to have been familiar with the doctrine. Of interest to us is the manner in which he interprets LXX Psalm 81:1, 6-7 (equivalent to our Psalm 82:1, 6-7). It is the same manner in which a great many Latter-day Saints and the early fathers almost unanimously use the text. Justin, in the process of proving that Christ is called God in the Old Testament, writes:

‘God standeth in the congregation of gods; He judgeth among the gods…I said, Ye are gods, and are all children of the Most High’…let the interpretation of the Psalm be held just as you wish, yet thereby it is demonstrated that all men are deemed worthy of becoming “gods,” and of having power to become sons of the Highest.²⁷

In an earlier writing, Justin also maintained: “And we have learned that those only are deified who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue.”²⁸ Time and again, we find the fathers citing the equivalent to our Psalm 82 as one of the starting points for discussion on the doctrine of deification. These passages of text from the early fathers are far too numerous to quote here but I will give a few additional passages relevant to the early Christian ideal of qeopoihsiV theopoiesis or deification.

Concerning the future state of man, Irenaeus, as found in our English version, stated that notwithstanding man’s imperfection: “by their continuing in being throughout a long course of ages, they shall receive a faculty of the Uncreated, through the gratuitous bestowal of eternal existence upon them by God.”²⁹ Unfortunately, this text does not convey the full thought of Irenaeus, which is actually much stronger than that found in most of our current English translations. The Patristic Greek text of this same passage reads:

kata de to paramenein auta makroiV aiwsi, dunamin agennhtou proslhyetai, tou qeou proika dwroumenou autoiV thn eisaei paramonhn. kata de to paramenein auta makrois aiosi, dunamin agennetou proslepsetai, tou theou proika doroumenou autois ten eisaei paramonen.

A better translation of this text is:

But by continuing through long ages, they shall assume (the) power of the Unbegotten (One), by gratuitously having been given to them eternal existence by God.

The phrase certainly indicates something much stronger than the previous translation. It becomes clear that, for Irenaeus, it was possible for man to become eternal and that by continuance through long ages it would be possible for one to assume or take to oneself the very power, might, and ability of God. Irenaeus continues:

For we cast blame upon Him, because we have not been made gods from the beginning, but at first merely men, then at length gods; although God has adopted this course out of His pure benevolence, that no one may impute to Him invidiousness or grudgingness. He declares, “I have said, Ye are gods; and ye are all sons of the Highest.” But since we could not sustain the power of divinity, He adds, “But ye shall die like men,” setting forth both truths–the kindness of His free gift, and our weakness, and also that we were possessed of power over ourselves. For after His great kindness He graciously conferred good [upon us].³⁰

Irenaeus then rhetorically asks:

How, then, shall he become a God, who has not as yet been made a man? Or how can he be perfect who was but lately created? How, again, can he be immortal, who in his mortal nature did not obey his maker? For it must be that thou, at the outset, shouldest hold the rank of a man, and then afterwards partake of the glory of God.³¹

Clement of Alexandria, known anciently as Titus Flavius Clemens, also taught very clearly the doctrine of deification. Far more interesting to us is that many of his words have close parallels with many of Joseph Smith’s thoughts in his sermons dealing with the doctrine of eternal progression. His writings also appear to contain more references to this doctrine of deification and a more comprehensive description of the system of “lords many and gods many” in heaven than those of any other early Christian writer–a salient fact that offended the sensibilities of the editors of his translated works in the Ante-Nicene Fathers series.³²

Like Joseph Smith’s comment to the effect that we must learn how to become Gods as those who have done so before us, Clement, in his section on degrees of glory in heaven, reflects:

But such a good conscience preserves sanctity towards God and justice towards men; keeping the soul pure with grave [or, serious] thoughts, and pure words, and just deeds. By thus receiving the Lord’s power, the soul studies to be God.³³

Clement also mentions three abodes or dwelling places which are designated and appointed for those who would be saved according to their worth as believers. The third or highest of these chosen abodes is reserved as an inheritance for those alone who would “attain to ‘a perfect man'” and are brought to the “just inheritance of the lords and gods.”³⁴ For Clement, as for Paul, the person who struggles to maintain virtue is a true athlete who does so in the stadium of the world. God proscribes the contest, Jesus awards the prize, and angels and gods are the spectators in a contest, the battle against the passions of the flesh.³⁵ Eventually, those who overcame their passions and sins, and were freed from any punishment that they would have merited, and obtained knowledge would learn that knowledge:

Leads us to the endless and perfect end, teaching us beforehand the future life that we shall lead, according to God, and with gods;… After which redemption the reward and the honours are assigned to those who have become perfect… Then become pure in heart, and near to the Lord, there awaits them restoration to everlasting contemplation; and they are called by the appellation of gods, being destined to sit on thrones with the other gods that have been first put in their places by the Saviour.³⁶

Tertullian, otherwise known as the founder of Latin Christianity before his departure into Montanism, also taught the doctrine of deification in Carthage, Africa, and in surrounding areas. He taught that Adam, coming to be under law subject to death as a result of his partaking the forbidden fruit, was pronounced by the Lord to have become like “one of us” because of the “future taking of the man into the divine nature.”³⁷ However, man could not obtain this goal upon his own merits, as he was later to clarify:

Truth, however, maintains the unity of God in such a way as to insist that whatever belongs to God Himself belongs to Him alone. For so will it belong to Himself if it belong to Him alone; and therefore it will be impossible that another god should be admitted, when it is permitted to no other being to possess anything of God. But indeed we do, and shall continue to do–only it is from Him that we receive it, and not from ourselves. For we shall be even gods, if we shall deserve to be among those of whom He declared, “I have said, Ye are gods,” and, “God standeth in the congregation of the gods.” But this comes of His own grace, not from any property in us, because it is He alone who can make gods.³⁸

Origen was not far behind in his doctrine of deification. Where he differed was in his view that at some future time no one who was resurrected would have a corporeal nature, not even Jesus Christ. This extreme view came about because of his intense hatred of the idea that God might have a corporeal body. He seemed to have felt that the then-existing church’s doctrine of deification was not compatible with his view of God’s incorporeality unless all would someday become incorporeal. I will not cite that material here as it belongs elsewhere in this paper. In spite of this, Origen felt that people should not be concerned about the existence of many gods when they so often spoke of one God. He taught:

We have to say that God on the one hand is Very God (Autotheos, God of Himself); and so the Saviour says in His prayer to the Father, “That they may know Thee the only true God;” but that all beyond the Very God is made God by participation in His divinity…. And thus the first-born of all creation, who is the first to be with God, and to attract to Himself divinity, is a being of more exalted rank than the other gods beside Him, of whom God is the God, as it is written, “The God of gods, the Lord, hath spoken and called the earth.” It was by the offices of the first-born that they became gods, for He drew from God in generous measure that they should be made gods, and He communicated it to them according to His own bounty…. Now the God of the universe is the God of the elect, and in a much greater degree of the Saviours of the elect; then He is the God of these beings who are truly Gods.³⁹

Concerning the creation of man and his potential future, Hippolytus taught:

For if He had willed to make thee a god, He could have done so. Thou hast the example of the Logos. But if thou art desirous of also becoming a god, obey Him that has created thee, and resist not now, in order that, being found faithful in that which is small, you may be enabled to have entrusted to you also that which is great.⁴⁰

I could cite a great number of additional texts from additional writers of this pre-Nicene period but do not have either the time or space here. Suffice it to say, there are a great many writers who taught the selfsame things that I have presented to you here. Never let another critic of the Church tell you that so-called “Historic Christianity” never taught that the saints could become gods via obedience to the gospel and the grace of the Almighty God.

…We Know that When He Appears, We Shall be Like Him.

What should be noted is the repeated use of certain words and phrases among the writings of the early Christians. In the writings the authors have a tendency to refer to various scriptures and phrases contained in the Greek New Testament text. These early writers refer to the saints becoming united with God, obtaining the glory of God, sharing, partaking, or being taken into the divine nature, re-attainment of the image of God, attaining to the perfect man or attaining to the fullness of God and becoming co-heirs with Christ.

In every case, these phrases and concepts actually derive from the Greek New Testament text in various books of scripture. There are several texts in the Septuagint or Greek Old Testament conducive to this doctrine as well, but space limitations and the subject of this paper do not permit discussing them here. For space considerations, we cannot discuss all of the New Testament passages here, either. Notwithstanding, each of the points that underlie the doctrine are found strewn throughout the Bible–although primarily the Greek New Testament.

Romans 8:17 teaches us that we, children of God are sunklhronomoi de cristou sunkleronomoi de khristou or co-heirs with Christ. Paul further taught that we would inherit all things (Romans 8:31-32). This is confirmed in that we were to be like Christ according to verse 17 of chapter 8 of Romans and Revelation 21:7, in receiving all things from the Father, just as Jesus received all things from his Father (John 16:15). What is most interesting about this chapter is the text found at Romans 8:29, which speaks of our being conformed to the image of God’s Son. One scripture which identifies Christ as the image of God is 2 Corinthians 4:4. Christ is the image of God because he is exactly like the Father and resembles him, as is explained elsewhere. One biblical scholar writes of Romans 8:29:

Rom. 8:29 declares that, “those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image [symmorphous tes eikonos] of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” The passage presupposes that Christ is the image of God. In Christ God is really present. Again symmorphos means that we shall not only be similar to or like Christ but that we shall come into the same realm of power as he. We shall be identified with the same substance as he, and enter into the same essential nature as Christ…. Nevertheless, within this relationship Christ retains separate identity (“the firstborn among many brethren”, cf. Also 2 Cor. 3:18).⁴¹

2 Peter 1:4 is another scripture that is conducive to the doctrine of deification. We must keep in mind as we consider this scripture that there are three natures talked about in the Bible. These natures are the human nature, the nature of angels, and the divine nature. Mankind is as he is because of his nature. Angels are as they are because of their nature. The divine nature is the nature that makes God what he is. You will now understand the significance of this passage of scripture. The scholars who wrote the notes in the New Jerusalem Bible described somewhat about what was represented in this verse:

An expression of Gk origin. Unique in the Bible and surprising by its impersonal tone. The author expresses by it the fullness of divine life in Christ, the communication by God of a life which is his own. For the basic idea see e.g. Jn 1:12: 14:20: 15:4-5; Rm 6:5; 1 Co 1:9f; 1 Jn 1:3b. It is one of the starting-points for the doctrine of ‘deification’ in the Gk Fathers.⁴²

2 Peter 1:4 is all the more interesting because of what it says. The key phrase in the text is genhsqe qeiaV koinwnoi fusewV genesthe theias koinonoi phuseos

genhsqe genesthe represents us. You may become refers in the plural to his readers and hearers, essentially indicating that we will become.

koinwnoi koinonoi also represents the saints. It means common sharers.

qeiaV theias represents divinity. The word is usually used to refer to God or to the nature of God.

fusewV phuseos represents nature, composition, attributes, etc., and often refers to growth.

Taken together this text represents the thought that we will be the common sharers of the nature that makes God what he is. Of course, commonly sharing with God what makes him divine and makes him God makes us divine in like manner. We are then to be gods in a very real sense if we are to take this scripture literally.

We are specifically told that the glory that was given to the Lord would then be given to us (John 17:22) and that we would obtain the glory of Jesus Christ (2 Thessalonians 2:14).

The Bible tells us that those who overcome will sit on the throne with Jesus Christ just as he overcame and sat down on his Father’s throne (Revelation 3:21). To sit someone on your throne, in the ancient world, indicates an equality of authority, as it was with Jesus in relation to the Father.

The Bible also tells us that we would be united to God and with each other (John 17:21-23) through Christ.

The Bible also tells us that we shall be filled with all the fullness of God and Deity. Colossians 2:9, often used to prove the deity of Christ, also provides the key for interpreting Colossians 2:10. Jesus received all the deity bodily, and we are, by means of him, ones having received a fullness as well. If we receive the fullness of the deity in us, what will we become? Consonant with this are scriptures that we will receive and be filled with all the fullness of God (John 1:16; Ephesians 3:19). Remember, Jesus is Deity because he is filled with all the fullness of deity. Should we receive the same reward, what will that make us? Further supportive of this interpretation is the claim of Paul at Ephesians 4:13, that we would come “unto a perfect man” unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, meaning that we could eventually possess the same measure of the fullness that Christ possessed.

We are also told in 1 Corinthians 6:2-3 that the saints would judge the world and that the saints would also judge angels. There are scholars who hold that the Greek word for judge indicates ruling rather than merely judicial powers or privileges and that the word rendered world in our Greek text of this passage could also be rendered cosmos or universe. If correct, this text would seem to say that the saints would rule over the angels and the universe, making judicial decisions, indicating a power or authority that only God has at present, which will one day be given to his people.

Finally, the last scripture that I wanted to cover for now is 2 Corinthians 3:18. In this verse of scripture, we are told:

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

In this verse of scripture, we find the following:

Beholding as in a glass is the Greek katoptrizomenoi katoptrizomenoi which indicates ones looking into a mirror. We will thus see the glory of the Lord reflected from us as if looking into a mirror. The reason that this is occurring is because of the change indicated by the Greek thn authn eikona metamorfoumeqa ten auten eikona metamorphoumetha.

thn authn ten auten, an adjectival phrase giving emphasis to the noun that follows it in the text. The same.

eikona eikona from eikwn eikon image

metamorfoumeqa metamorphoumetha we are being transformed (into). The word indicates an inward and outward change from one state to another, i.e., a metamorphosis. In other words, we are being transformed or changed into the very same image represented by Christ whom we would mirror, who is the image of God because he is so like him. This is also our goal according to Paul. As this occurs, looking at ourselves in the mirror will be like looking at the Lord himself, in the process of change from glory to glory.

Who Teaches Forms of this Doctrine Today?

The doctrine of deification is still taught in various forms with some modification among the Eastern Orthodox and has been part of Roman Catholicism since Vatican II, although this is not quite as well known. For instance, item number 460 of the Catechism adopted at the Vatican II Council reads:

The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature:” “For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.” “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.”⁴³

It is of further interest to read from a book entitled Partakers of Divine Nature. The introduction of this book, which is essentially a how-to book on achieving theosis or becoming a god, reads in part:

As human beings we each have this one, unique calling, to achieve Theosis. In other words, we are each destined to become a god; to be like God Himself, to be united with him. The Apostle Peter describes with total clarity the purpose of life: we are to

become partakers of divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).

This is the purpose of your life; that you be a participant, a sharer in the nature of God and in the life of Christ, a communicant of divine grace and energy–to become just like God, a true god. Man, according to St. Basil, is a creature which has received the command to become a God. “He has been ordered to become God,” says Gregory of Nazianzos (“Funeral Oration for St. Basil,” Patrologia Graecae (P.G.) 36, 560A). God is not united except with gods, St. Symeon the New Theologian noted epigrammatically.

Theosis! What does this deep and profound word mean? It means the elevation of the human being to the divine sphere, to the atmosphere of God. It means the union of the human with the divine. That, in its essence, is the meaning of Theosis.⁴⁴

Of course, the Latter-day Saints also teach a form of the doctrine of deification, believed by them to be–with respect to man at least–a restoration of the original doctrine. However, Latter-day Saints take it one step further than most of the early fathers were willing to go.

The Final Step–the Logical Conclusion from the Doctrine of Deification

For the Mormons, not only could man become God, but God himself was once a man. There is little available to show that any of the early Christians believed or understood this doctrine. Interesting examples are found in the Armenian literature. This material shows that at least some Christians may indeed have had a belief that God was once a man.

In one translation of an ancient Armenian Christian document which Michael Stone entitles “Concerning Adam, Eve and the Incarnation,” we find, following Eve’s telling Satan that they would die if they ate the fruit of the tree, that the serpent replies, “That is not so! God was a man like you. When he ate of the fruit of this tree he became God of all.”⁴⁵

Interestingly, there is biblical scripture that can be used to some degree to support concepts conducive to the idea that God was once a man. One of these is John 5:19-20. It can be surmised the Father showed Christ a vision of his own experiences so that Christ could carry these details out. There is also scripture that can used to potentially support the idea that God could have a physical body. One of these is Hebrews 1:3. Christ could only be the exact representation of the Father if the Father himself possessed a body of some sort. In fact, some who wish to avoid what I feel is the plain meaning of Hebrews 1:3 actually go so far as to separate the natures of Christ or declare that the passage could not possibly infer that the Father is embodied.

Those who criticize this meaning thus, however, do not take into account the fact that there is not one portion of the passage that differentiates between the divine or human nature of Jesus. Secondly, the particle wn on indicates being, i.e., the present state of existence of Jesus from the perspective of the author of Hebrews. It has absolutely nothing to do with only Jesus’ previous state or of only a portion of his supposed dual nature. It only speaks of his total existence as a person.

Further, many grammarians have severely misunderstood the Greek apaugasma apaugasma (English: [active] effulgence or radiance; [middle, passive] reflection) in this passage to have the active sense. The Greek kai kai (English: and) is here a coordinating conjunction which combines the first and second parts (the second part being of a passive character) of a parallel couplet. Due to this fact, as much as the Evangelicals wish doggedly to hold to their interpretation, the Greek apaugasma apaugasma should be understood as having a passive sense.

Why? Because the second portion of the couplet indicates that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father’s substantial nature, not that he is synonymous with that nature. Since this passage is a couplet, with the second portion being passive in nature, the first portion must be understood as having a passive sense as well. Thus, Jesus is properly to be seen as he “who is the reflection of the glory (of God) and the exact representation of the substantial nature of him (i.e., the Father).”

In short, the glory of God reflects from Jesus rather than having Jesus as its source, according to the theology of the author of Hebrews. Thusly, Jesus exactly represents God as he exists in all aspects of Jesus’ existence. The passage does not allow differentiation of Jesus’ divine and human natures in relation to God. Quite the opposite is in view here, although I doubt that Evangelicals will wish to agree with my assessment of the passage. Nevertheless, if it is true that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father’s substantial nature in all aspects, the Father must have possession of a physical body. Otherwise, Jesus is not and could not be the exact representation of the Father, for the two would differ. This fact is further strengthened by another pertinent fact: the Father is never said to be bodiless in any place within the text of the Bible. That was for a later generation to develop.

In relation to this, although he did not believe that God had a physical body and believed that all would become incorporeal in time, Origen surmised:

For if in the end the life of the Saints is to be assimilated to the life of God, we must either admit that the Lord of the universe is clothed with a body and that he is enveloped in matter as we are in flesh; or, if it is unbecoming to suppose this…we are reduced to the following dilemma. Either we shall always have bodies and in that case must despair of ever being like God; or, if the blessedness of the life of God is really promised to us, the conditions of His life must be the conditions of ours.⁴⁶

There is much more that can be said on this subject but time and space precludes that at this time. Suffice it to say that the concepts conducive to belief in the doctrine of deification are found throughout the Greek New Testament text. It is my hope that Latter-day Saints, investigators and others may come to understand that this doctrine is not one to be ashamed of notwithstanding we do not have all the answers at this time. We should rejoice in the doctrine and take time to ponder the great and precious promises that the Father has in store for us, being eternally grateful that he desires to share with us this great glory and honor that he now possesses.

Notes

¹ Compare “Preamble,” Nauvoo Expositor, Vol. 1, No. 1 (June 7, 1844), 1-2.

² The reason for the apparent lack of texts concerning deification is adequately answered by 3 Nephi 26:1-12, which says that only the lesser things [basic teachings] are to be found in the text of the Book of Mormon. On the other hand, there are those texts which do hint at the doctrine or at least provide concepts conducive to belief in the doctrine of deification or eternal progression. One of them is found at 3 Nephi 28:10, where the disciples are told that they would be as Christ, who is as God is, and that they would be filled with a fullness of joy like both God and Christ.

³ This apostasy en masse occurred because Jesus’ first followers did not wish to comprehend what seemed to them too difficult to understand. See John 6:59-69.

⁴ Acts 20:29; 2 Thessalonians 2:3; 1 Timothy 4:4; et al.

⁵ Galatians 3:1; 4:6; 1 Timothy 1:6; 2 Timothy 1:15; 1 John 2:18-19; Jude 1:4; et al.

⁶ See, for example, 2 Corinthians 11:12-15 and Revelation 2:2.

⁷ See my forthcoming paper entitled, “If Our Lord Spoke Aramaic, Why Do We Have His Words in Greek? The Gospels as Tradition and Translation Literature.” Compare some of the same concepts in the writings of George Lamsa. While Lamsa is often extreme, much of what he says does seem to have some merit with respect to the text of the New Testament. His primary thesis that the Peshitta Aramaic text of the Bible is the original text is mistaken in many respects because the Peshitta seems to have many clear dependencies upon both the Septuagint and Greek New Testament. I do not think the Peshitta to be the original based upon these facts.

⁸ One notable reference to many writings that we now no longer have can be shown by Luke’s statement that many took it in hand to write down the things that were believed among the early saints who delivered these things to the saints (Luke 1:1-2). None of these doctrinal writings written by those that were “eyewitnesses” and inspired “ministers of the word” are any longer in existence.

⁹ See, for example, Mark 4:11; Luke 8:10; John 16:12, 29, 20:30, 21:25; 1 Corinthians 3:1-2; Hebrews 5:10-14; and Revelation 10:1-4. It should be noted that there are those who would attempt to reinterpret several of these passages to say something that they do not actually say. Some also are of the opinion that the author of Hebrews was only making the comments about difficult things about Melchizedek to whet the readers’ appetite for and to prepare them to receive doctrinal meat. It is nevertheless a well known fact that the early Christians held certain doctrines and practices as so sacred that they were not mentioned or practiced before the uninitiated.

¹⁰ Francis J. Beckwith, Norman L. Geisler, Ron Rhodes, Phil Roberts, and Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Counterfeit Gospel of Mormonism (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House, 1998), 23, emphasis added.

¹¹ Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1996), 563.

¹² Ibid., 217.

¹³ Cited from A.T. Robertson, “Word Pictures of the New Testament,” Bible Works for Windows, v 3.0, emphasis in original. For the printed text, see A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures of the New Testament, 6 vols. (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1931), 4:115.

¹⁴ J.B. Phillips, “The New Testament in Modern English,” Eight Translation New Testament (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1985), emphasis added.

¹⁵ See Introduction to Paul in the New Jerusalem Bible, 1854-1855.

¹⁶ Most believe that John died at Ephesus. Of interest is the last sentence of a statement of Hippolytus that:

“John, again, in Asia, was banished by Domitian the king to the isle of Patmos, in which also he wrote his Gospel and saw the apocalyptic vision; and in Trajan’s time he fell asleep at Ephesus, where his remains were sought for, but could not be found.” (“On the Twelve Apostles,” in The Ante-Nicene Fathers 5:254-255, emphasis added.)

Curiously, a number of traditions concerning John’s death, ranging from stories of how he had buried himself to stories about how insects dug his grave and buried him without a trace, arose from the mysterious circumstances of this great apostle’s disappearance. He was taken for dead by those Christians of that day and afterward, notwithstanding the fact that his body had never been found!

Of course, in time, traditions being what they are, a tomb of John-complete with skeletal remains or relics which would later disappear “again” without so much as a trace-came to be a part of the tradition and became a place of pilgrimage early on. See William Steuart McBirnie, The Search for the Twelve Apostles (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1973), 119-121.

The sheer number of stories concerning John’s supposed death, taken with the fact that there were differences in the story of that supposed death, burial, etc., attest to the mystery behind the disappearance of John. Latter-day Saints tell a different story which, it is believed, was revealed by God himself via a translation of text on a parchment written and hid up by John (D&C 7:1-8; John 21:21-23).

¹⁷ John 10:33-36; 1 Corinthians 8:5-6.

¹⁸ See the marginal notes and text in the Talmud at Sanhedrin 38b and Sanhedrin 65b.

¹⁹ Midrash Aleph Bet diR. Akiba. The Hebrew text was published in Adolph Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrasch (reprint Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1967), 3:32, and the English translation is from Raphael Patai, The Messiah Texts: Jewish Legends of Three Thousand Years (Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University, 1988), 251. My thanks to John Tvedtnes and Matt Roper for making me aware of this material.

²⁰ Testament of Adam 3:2-4, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth (Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday and Company, 1983), 1:994.

²¹ Notable examples are Justin the Martyr (who lived in Samaria, Ephesus and Rome), Tatian (who later became a heretic but who was taught by Justin and lived in Rome and Syrian Antioch), and Irenaeus (who lived and wrote in Lyons, France).

²² Ernst W. Benz, “Imago Dei: Man in the Image of God,” Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1978), 215-216.

²³ The Teachings of Silvanus 111:5-13, in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, edited by James M. Robinson and Richard Smith (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988), 392.

²⁴ Irenaeus, “Against Heresies V, Preface,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1987), 392.

²⁵ Hippolytus, “The Refutation of All Heresies X.32-33,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 5:152-153, brackets added, italics in original.

²⁶ Ibid., 153.

²⁷ Justin Martyr, “Dialogue with Trypho 124,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 1:262.

²⁸ Justin Martyr, “First Apology 21,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 1:170, emphasis added.

²⁹ Irenaeus, “Against Heresies V.38:3,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 1:521.

³⁰ Ibid., 522.

³¹ Ibid., 522-523.

³² “His merciless exposure of the entire system of ‘lords many and gods many,’ seems to us, indeed, unnecessarily offensive.” (“Introductory Note to Clement of Alexandria,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 2:165.)

³³ Clement of Alexandria, “The Stromata, or Miscellanies VI.14,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 2:506, brackets added.

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ Ibid., 2:528.

³⁶ Ibid., 2:539.

³⁷ Tertullian, “Against Marcion II.25,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 3:317.

³⁸ Tertullian, “Against Hermogenes V,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 3:480.

³⁹ Origen, “Commentary on the Gospel of John II.2-3,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 10:323-324. Some editions, such as the Hendrickson Editions, have this text contained in volume nine.

⁴⁰ Hippolytus, “Refutation of All Heresies X.29,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 5:151.

⁴¹ G. Braumann in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, edited by Colin Brown (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1986), 1:707.

⁴² The New Jerusalem Bible, Study Edition, 2007, note g.

⁴³ My thanks to John A. Tvedtnes for making me aware of this reference.

⁴⁴ Archimandrite Christoforos Stavropoulos, Partakers of Divine Nature: An Inspiring Presentation of Man’s Purpose in Life, According to Orthodox Theology, translated by Rev. Stanley Harakas. (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Light and Life, 1976), 17-18.

⁴⁵ Michael E. Stone, Armenian Apocrypha Relating to Adam and Eve (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), 25. I would like to thank John Tvedtnes and Matt Roper for making me aware of this relatively little-known material.

⁴⁶ Jerome’s Epistle to Avitus, Letter CXXIV.

John A. Tvedtnes

A number of early Jewish and Christian documents deal with elements found in modern LDS temples. As such, they are confirmation of the antiquity of our temple rites.¹ The volume of information is such that it will not be possible to discuss all aspects in this brief paper. In addition to some of the articles I have written, I would refer you to the temple research written by such LDS researchers as Hugh Nibley, John M. Lundquist, Donald W. Parry, Stephen D. Ricks, and Matthew B. Brown.

Just as an example, let me note that I have, to date, found fifteen early Christian documents that speak of baptism for the dead, along with several Mandaean and Jewish texts. This information will be included in my article “Baptism for the Dead in Early Christianity,” scheduled for publication later this year in another FARMS temples volume.

Initiation

In my previously published “Olive Oil as a Symbol of the Holy Ghost”² and “Temple Clothing in Bible Times,”³ I discussed the initiatory nature of washing, anointing, and investiture, which are known from priestly as well as royal initiations. All three elements are found in the priestly ordination of Levi, described in one of the second-century B.C. Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs:

And I saw seven men in white clothing, who were saying to me, ‘Arise, put on the vestments of the priesthood, the crown of righteousness, the oracle of understanding, the robe of truth, the breastplate of faith, the miter for the head, and the apron for prophetic power.’ Each carried one of these and put them on me and said, ‘From now on be a priest, you and all your posterity.’ The first anointed me with holy oil and gave me a staff. The second washed me with pure water, fed me by hand with bread and holy wine, and put on me a holy and glorious vestment. The third put on me something made of linen, like an ephod. The fourth placed . . . around me a girdle which was like purple. The fifth gave me a branch of rich olive wood. The sixth placed a wreath on my head. The seventh placed the priestly diadem on me and filled my hands with incense, in order that I might serve as priest for the Lord God. (Testament of Levi 8:2-10.)⁴

The heavenly setting of this ceremony is also reflected in the story of Enoch’s ascension to heaven found in the medieval 2 Enoch 22:8-10:

And the Lord said to Michael, “Go, and extract Enoch from [his] earthly clothing. And anoint him with my delightful oil, and put him into the clothes of my glory.” And so Michael did, just as the Lord had said to him. He anointed me and he clothed me. And the appearance of that oil is greater than the greatest light, and its ointment is like sweet dew, and its fragrance like myrrh; and it is like rays of the glittering sun. And I looked at myself, and I have become like one of his glorious ones.⁵

A parallel account in 1 Enoch 71:3, written in the second century B.C., has Enoch declaring, “And the angel Michael, one of the archangels, seizing me by my right hand and lifting me up, led me out into all the secrets of mercy; and he showed me all the secrets of righteousness.”⁶

Such accounts are reminiscent of the medieval Jewish text attributed to the second-century A.D. Jewish Rabbi Akiba, in which, in the day of redemption, the Lord will be seated in Paradise explaining the Torah when he hears voices from Gehenna answering, “Amen.” In response, he sends the angels Michael and Gabriel with keys to open the gates of Gehenna and bring out these repentant souls. The text continues:

What, then, do Michael and Gabriel do? In that hour they got hold of the hand of each one of the wicked and pull them up, like a man who raises his fellow man and pulls him up from a pit . . . And Gabriel and Michael stand over them in that hour, and wash them, and anoint them with oil, and heal them of the wounds of Gehenna, and clothe them in beautiful and good garments, and take them by their hand, and bring them before the Holy One, blessed be He . . . And when they reach the gate of the Garden of Eden, first Gabriel and Michael enter and take counsel with the Holy One, blessed be He, answers them and says: “Let them enter and see my Glory.” (Midrash Alpha Beta diRabbi Akiba.)⁷

In early Christianity, following the apostasy, temple initiation eventually merged with the baptismal initiation, which included both washing and anointing with oil, along with donning of white clothing and sometimes the reception of a new name.⁸ Thus, in Acts of Thomas 157, we read that the apostle instructed one Mygdonia to unclothe her sisters and put “girdles” on them, after which he blessed the oil and anointed one of the sisters, then had Mygdonia anoint the others. He then led them into the water and baptized them.⁹ In another passage (Acts of Thomas 5), the apostle anoints the top of his head, his nostrils, his ears, his teeth, and the area around his heart.¹⁰

Especially significant in this respect are the five catechetical lectures delivered by the fourth-century bishop St. Cyril to newly-baptized Christians, comprising lectures 19-23 in the collection. In the first lecture (19:10-11), he speaks of the converts being “clothed in the garment of salvation, even Jesus Christ.” And reminds them that “these things were done in the outer chamber. But if God will, when in the succeeding lectures on the Mysteries we have entered into the Holy of Holies, we shall there know the symbolical meaning of the things which are there performed.”¹¹ In the second lecture (20:2-4), he reminds his listeners that “those things, which were done by you in the inner chamber, were symbolical. As soon, then, as ye entered, ye put off your tunic; and this was an image of putting off the old man with his deeds. Having stripped yourselves, ye were naked . . . Then, when ye were stripped, ye were anointed with exorcised oil, from the very hairs of your head to your feet, and were made partakers of the good olive-tree, Jesus Christ . . . After these things, ye were led to the holy pool of Divine Baptism.”¹² In the third lecture (21:3-4, 6), he explains that the ointment is symbolically applied to the forehead and “thy other senses; and while the body is anointed with the visible ointment, the soul is sanctified by Holy and life-giving Spirit. And ye were first anointed on the forehead . . . Then on your ears; that ye might receive the ears which are quick to hear the Divine Mysteries . . . Then on the nostrils . . . Afterwards on your breast,” then he notes that the anointing is for the high priest and king, suggesting that the initiate becomes a priest and king.¹³ In the fourth lecture (22:8), Cyril cites Ecclesiastes 9:8 (“Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment”) and adds, “But now, having put off thy old garments, and put on those which are spiritually white, thou must be continually robed in white: of course we mean not this, that thou art always to wear white raiment; but thou must be clad in the garments that are truly white and shining and spiritual.”¹⁴

The initiation as king and priest (or bishop), even in our century, also involves receiving a new name. Indeed, the giving of a new name during initiation rites is common in many cultures, as I learned while working on my BA in anthropology. Though much additional information could be added to what has already been published, I refer you to the excellent study by Bruce H. Porter and Stephen D. Ricks on this topic.¹⁵ I shall add just one reference from the Mandaeans, a religious community of Iraq and Iran who claim to be descendants of the disciples of John the Baptist. Here we quote from the document known as Diwan Masbuta d Hibil Ziwa (“The Scroll of the Baptism of Hibil Ziwa”), which refers to seals, handclasps (called kuöta in Mandaean), and names:

And the kings (spirits) took kuöta with him and (each) conferred on him some of his own glory. They gave him seven coverings and sealed him with a first seal; its name, a secret name, was graven thereon. Then (they sealed him with) a second seal, “the-seal-Maköiel” was graven thereon. (Then) a third; its name was “Zarziel-that-guardeth-him” and a secret name was engraven thereon. The fourth seal, “Great-Light” was graven thereon, a secret name. The fifth seal, “Light” was graven thereon, a secret name. The seventh seal, “Name-of-the-Life” was graven thereon (and?) “Radiance,” a secret name. Such were the sealings daily.¹⁶

The Handclasp

The clasping of hands while revealing secrets is known from a number of early documents.¹⁷ Here, we shall examine just a few. In one of the fifth-century Christian Gnostic documents found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, the Second Apocalypse of James (V,4), Jesus tells the apostle that he would reveal things to him, then told him “stretch out your [hand]. Now, take hold of me.”¹⁸ One of my favorite passages is found in the pseudepigraphic Joseph and Aseneth, which has been variously dated to as early as 100 B.C. and as late as 200 A.D.

And Levi was on Aseneth’s right (side) and Joseph on (her) left. And Aseneth grasped Levi’s hand. And Aseneth loved Levi exceedingly beyond all of Joseph’s brethren, because he was one who attached himself to the Lord, and he was a prudent man and a prophet of the Most High and sharp-sighted with his eyes, and he used to see letters written in heaven by the finger of God and he knew the unspeakable (mysteries) of the Most High God and revealed them to Aseneth in secret, because he himself, Levi, would love Aseneth very much, and see her place of rest in the highest, and her walls like adamantine eternal walls, and her foundations founded upon a rock of the seventh heaven. (Joseph and Aseneth 22:12-13.)¹⁹

The handclasp plays a role in a story told in the Ethiopic Christian Conflict of Adam and Even with Satan I, 70:11-16. Satan appeared to the first couple in the guise of an angel and wanted Adam to swear that he would receive the word of God from him. “Then Adam said, ‘I know not how to swear and promise.’ And Satan said to him, ‘Hold out thy hand, and put it inside my hand.’ Then Adam held out his hand, and put it into Satan’s hand; when Satan said unto him, ‘Say, now – so true as God is living, rational, and speaking, who raised the heavens in the space, and established the earth upon the waters, and has created me out of the four elements, and out of the dust of the earth – I will not break my promise, nor renounce my word.’ And Adam swore thus.”²⁰

Secret Words

Many of the early Church Fathers wrote about mysteries and secret teachings. Just to list all the references alone would take more time than we can spare. So let’s concentrate on a few passages that discuss secret words.

From the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, we find that Judah, son of Jacob (Israel), twice broke his vow of secrecy as a result of drunkenness. He warned his children, “The mysteries of God and men wine discloses, just as I disclosed to the Canaanite woman the commandments of God and the mysteries of Jacob, my father, which God had told me not to reveal” (Testament of Judah 16:4).²¹ Judah also discussed his adulterous liaison with his daughter-in-law Tamar, who had disguised herself as a harlot (Genesis 38:13-26). Her pregnancy discovered, Judah was about to punish her when she presented to him certain of his belongings that he had left with the “harlot,” and he recognized them. But she apparently gave him yet another sign: “I summoned her and heard the words spoken in a mystery, when I was drunk and sleeping with her. So I could not kill her, because it was from the Lord” (Testament of Judah 12:6).²²

The Acts of Thomas has several passages that seem to apply to temple rites, some of which we have already seen. In one passage, the apostle stands to pray and says, “thou Lord art he that revealeth hidden mysteries and maketh manifest words that are secret” (Acts of Thomas 10).²³ During a subsequent prayer, he began, “Jesu, the hidden mystery that hath been revealed unto us, thou art he that hast shown unto us many mysteries; thou didst call me apart from all my fellows and spakest unto me three (one, Syr.) words wherewith I am inflamed, and am not able to speak them unto others” (Acts of Thomas 47).²⁴

The second-third century Christian writer Hippolytus wrote that the “heretics” Basilides and Isodorus “say that [the apostle] Matthias communicated to them secret discourses, which, being specially instructed, he heard from the Saviour.”²⁵

Prayer Circle

The prayer circle is also known from early Christian texts, and has been discussed at length by others.²⁶ In my “Temple Prayers in Ancient Times,” that will appear this year in the next FARMS temples volume, I discuss other aspects of ancient temple prayer, notably posture and how prayer opens the veil to allow one to enjoy the presence of God.

Particularly impressive are the descriptions of the prayer circle given in the Christian Gnostic works known as the Pistis Sophia and the Books of Jeu, thought to date to the second century. In 1 Jeu 41, the resurrected Christ “said to them, the twelve: ‘Surround me, all of you.'” He then instructed them to “answer me and give glory with me as I give glory to my Father,” and offered a lengthy prayer. At the end of each utterance of the prayer, the apostles, in chorus, repeated, “Amen. Amen. Amen.”²⁷

One of the most remarkable descriptions is in the fifth book of the Pistis Sophia, where we find Jesus standing at the altar praying, surrounded by his apostles and women disciples clad in linen garments (Pistis Sophia 138). A short while later, Jesus commands the disciples to set out an offering of wine, water, and bread. He then stands before the offering, with the disciples behind him clad in linen garments and making signs with their hands as Christ prays (Pistis Sophia 142).

The account of this offering is also found in another Coptic document, 2 Jeu 45-47, where Jesus has the disciples, men and women, dress in linen garments and surround him while he makes offerings at the altar and prays. The scene is followed by Jesus’ instructions on how the disciples can use the signs and names to pass by both gods and angels to enter the presence of the Father (2 Jeu 48-50). In 1 Jeu 41, Jesus has the twelve surround him while he prays and they repeat after him. In the following chapters (2 Jeu 42-43, rather than 1 Jeu), Jesus asks that the twelve and the women disciples surround him so he can teach them the mysteries of God. What then follows in the text is a discussion of signs, seals, and how to pass by the guardians at the veils to the presence of God.

Passing the Angels

A number of other early documents also discuss the guardians at the heavenly veils. In order to place these early witnesses into perspective, we must note the definition of the endowment as given by Brigham Young:

Your endowment is, to receive all those ordinances in the House of the Lord, which are necessary for you, after you have departed this life, to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels, being enabled to give them the key words, the signs and tokens, pertaining to the Holy Priesthood, and gain your eternal exaltation in spite of earth and hell (Journal of Discourses 2:31, emphasis added).

President Young spoke on this topic a number of times,²⁸ as did some of the other apostles of his day.²⁹ The Lord also told Joseph Smith that those who enter into eternal marriage, if they remain worthy, “shall pass by the angels, and the gods, which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things, as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fullness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever” (D&C 132:19).

The guardians of the heavenly gates or veils are mentioned in a number of ancient texts. The third-century Christian writer Origen noted that the Orphian Gnostics believed that seven archons guarded the gates by which the soul ascends to heaven (Contra Celsum 6:24-38).³⁰ According to 3 Enoch 18:3-4, an angel guards each of the doors of the seven heavenly palaces. The angels who guard the doors of heaven are mentioned in 3 Enoch 18:3; Chronicles of Jerahmeel 18:1, cf. 20:1-2; and Hekalot Rabbati 22:1. The guards of the gates of the aeons are also mentioned in Pistis Sophia 32, while Pistis Sophia 86 notes the nine guardians of the treasury of the light, which is the highest of the heavens in Gnostic lore. Even the Bible notes (Revelation 21:12-13) that twelve angels guard the twelve gates of the heavenly Jerusalem. In this respect, these heavenly gatekeepers are paralleled by the Levitic porters (doorkeepers) who served at the tabernacle and in the temple.³¹

The role of the heavenly sentinels, often called “thrones” because they are sometimes described as sitting on thrones, is noted in the third-century A.D. Apocalypse of Elijah 1:7-11:

“Therefore become sons to him since he is a father to you. Remember that he has prepared thrones and crowns for you in heaven, saying, ‘Everyone who will obey me will receive thrones and crowns among those who are mine.’ The Lord said, ‘I will write my name upon their forehead and I will seal their right hand, and they will not hunger or thirst. Neither will the son of lawlessness prevail over them, nor will the thrones³² hinder them, but they will walk with the angels up to my city.’ Now, as for the sinners, they will be shamed and they will not pass by the thrones, but the thrones of death will seize them and rule over them because the angels will not agree with them.”³³

In one of the Nag Hammadi texts (Second Treatise of the Great Seth), Jesus promises that those who accept him “will pass by every gate without fear and will be perfected in the third glory.”³⁴ Epiphanius, a fourth-century bishop of Cyprus, cited the Gospel of Philip as saying, “The Lord revealed unto me what the soul must say as it goeth up into heaven, and how it must answer each of the powers above” (Against Heresies 36:13).³⁵

Chapters 33-40 of the Coptic 1 Jeu describe how Jesus instructed the apostles regarding the seals, names, and ciphers (hand-signs) they must use in order to prompt the “watchers” or guardians of the various heavens to open the veils and allow them entry.³⁶ The account in 1 Jeu 33 is typical. It uses blanks and number-codes to conceal material that should not be revealed.

When you come to this place, seal yourselves with this seal: This is its name: . . ., while the cipher 70331 (?) is in your hand. Furthermore say this name . . . three times, and the watchers and the veils are drawn back, until you go to the place of their Father and he gives (you his seal and his name) and you cross over (the gate into his treasury).³⁷

Another revealing passage is found in 1 Jeu 49:

But when you reach the six aeons [archangels], they will restrain you until you receive the mystery of the forgiveness of sins, because it is the great mystery which is in the treasury of the innermost of the innermost. And it is the whole salvation of the soul. And all those who will receive that mystery will surpass [pass by] all the gods, and all rulerships of these aeons, which are the twelve aeons of the invisible God, for this is the great mystery of the unapproachable one which is in the treasury of the innermost of the innermost. Now because of this, every man who will believe in the Son of the Light must receive the mystery of the forgiveness of sins, so that he will be completely perfected and completed in all mysteries . . . Then again when the pathways are purified I will give to you the mystery of the forgiveness of sins, and its defences and its seals and its ciphers and its interpretations. You yourselves, my disciples, if you have received these, when you are about to come forth from the body you will become pure light. And you will hasten upwards one after another, and go forth to the places in which all the aeons are spread out, until there are none upon the pathways, until you reach the Treasury of the Light. Then the watchers of the gates of the Treasury of the Light see the mystery of the forgiveness of sins which you have performed and its defences and all its injunctions. And they see the seal on your foreheads, and they see the cipher in your hands. Then the nine watchers open to you the gates of the Treasury of the Light, and you go into the Treasury of the Light. The watchers will not speak with you, but they will give you [their] seals and their mystery.³⁸

Most of chapter 50 contains a list of the various individuals who will give to the individual their seals, mysteries, and the name of the Treasury of the Light. Regarding the soul’s destination, the text says,

Again you will pass in to their interior to the rank of the veils which are drawn before the great ruler (king) of the Treasury of the Light. They will give to you their great mystery and their seal and the great name of the Treasury of the Light. And they will be drawn back until you cross over and pass into them, until you reach the great Man, he who is the ruler (king) of this whole Treasury of the Light, whose name is Jeu.³⁹

In one of the Nag Hammadi texts, the Apocalypse of Paul (V,2) 23, we find the apostle encountering angels at the gate of each of the ten heavens, who open to him because he was accompanied by the Holy Spirit. When he arrived at the seventh heaven, he encountered an old man who interrogated him. The Spirit instructed the apostle, “Give him [the] sign that you have, and [he will] open for you.’ And then I gave [him] the sign . . . and then the [seventh] heaven opened.”⁴⁰

In a Mandaean text about the ascent of the soul to the realm of light, the soul is told, “O Soul! You are ascending to the Place of Light, wherefore do you cry to the great and sublime Life? Give your name and your sign which you received from the waves of water.”⁴¹

Jewish lore has similar beliefs. In Hekalot Rabbati 17:1-20:3, the adept passes through the seven doors of the seven heavenly temples, past angels whose name he must give, while presenting a seal, in order to enter the presence of God. The names and seals given to the angels are also mentioned in 3 Enoch 48D:5.

In the Pistis Sophia, the resurrected Christ tells how, when he descended from heaven, “the heavens opened” (Pistis Sophia 4). During the post-resurrection ascension, when he arrived at the gate of the first sphere, the gates opened and the dwellers of the sphere saw “the mystery of their name” on his garment and were surprised that he passed without them knowing (Pistis Sophia 12). The same thing happened in the second sphere (Pistis Sophia 13). When he ascended to the gates and veils of the twelve aeons, both opened for him (Pistis Sophia 14). He then ascended to the veils of the thirteenth aeon, which drew apart for him (Pistis Sophia 29).

A similar story is found in the account of the vision attributed to the prophet Isaiah but thought to have been written in the mid-second century A.D. We learn that Jesus had to give passwords to angels while descending through the seven heavens to be born on earth:

And those who kept the gate of the (third) heaven demanded the password, and the LORD gave (it) to them in order that he should not be recognized . . . And again I saw when he descended into the second heaven, that there again he gave the password, for those who kept the gates demanded (it), and the LORD gave (it) . . . And again I saw when he descended into the first heaven, that there he gave the password to those who kept the gates . . . And again he descended into the firmament where prince of this world dwells, and he gave the password to those who (were) on the left . . . And I saw when he descended and made himself like the angels of the air . . . he did not give the password (Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah 10:24-25, 27, 29, 31).⁴²

In some early Jewish stories, the individual ascending to heaven is challenged by one or more angels who threaten to kill him, but is then rescued. Thus, Rabbi Ishmael reported that when he arrived at the heavenly palace, the angels were about to cast him out, but God sent the angel Metraton. “He grasped me with his hand before their eyes and said to me, ‘Come in peace into the presence of the exalted King'” (3 Enoch 1:1-5).⁴³

The Jewish Zohar, though compiled in the thirteenth century, contains many elements taken from earlier sources. Zohar Leviticus 78b says,

Blessed are the righteous in this world and the next, because God desires to honour them and reveals to them profound secrets of the Holy Name which He does not reveal to celestial holy ones (angels). And therefore Moses was able to crown himself among those holy ones and they were not able to touch him, though they are like a burning flame and coals of fire. For otherwise how could Moses have stood among them. When God commenced to speak with Moses, the latter desired to know His holy names, disclosed and undisclosed, each one in fitting manner, and thus he came closer and learnt more than any other man. When Moses entered into the cloud and came among the angels, one named Gazarniel came up to him with flames of fire, with flashing eyes and burning wings, and sought to wound him. Then Moses mentioned a certain holy name which was traced with twelve letters, and the angel was utterly confused; and so with all the others.⁴⁴

This story seems to be reflected in Zohar Exodus 58a, which says that when Moses went on the mountain, “a certain great angel, whose name, according to tradition, is Kemuel, and who is appointed guardian and chief over twelve thousand messengers, sought to attack him. Thereupon Moses opened his mouth and uttered the twelve letters of the Holy Name which the Holy One had taught him at the bush, and the angel departed from him to a distance of twelve thousand parsangs. And Moses walked in the midst of the cloud, his eyes flaming like coals of fire.”⁴⁵

Admitted into God’s Presence

The ultimate goal in passing the heavenly sentinels is to enter into the presence of the Lord, which is achieved by passing through gates or veils. In the Testament of Isaac 6:4, we read, “Then they (the angels) took me by the hand and led me to the curtain before the throne of the father.”⁴⁶ In the medieval Sepher Hekhalot (“Book of the [Heavenly] Temples”), Rabbi Ishmael reports being presented at the curtain that hangs before God.⁴⁷

Compare this with a Nag Hammadi text, the Second Treatise of the Great Seth 58:7-14, which has the resurrected Christ speaking of those who “did not put me to shame, they were not put to shame. Since they were not afraid before me, they will pass by every gate without fear and will be perfected in the third glory.”⁴⁸

A Final Note

Let me conclude with just a brief word about temple teachings. Whether anciently or in our day, temple ritual has always been accompanied by structural teachings intended to provide additional insights. For example, the temple teaches us things about the creation and our first parents that are not found in the Scriptures. While reviewing the following passage from an Armenian document, Concerning the Creation of Adam and the Incarnation of Christ our God 14-31, you should think of how the story of the Fall is presented in the temple in comparison with what we read in the book of Genesis.

When Adam departed and was walking around in the garden, the serpent spoke to Eve and said, “Why do you taste of all the trees, but from this one tree which is beautiful in appearance you do not taste?” Eve said, “Because God said, ‘When you eat of that tree, you shall die.'” But the serpent said, “God has deceived you, for formerly God was man like you. When he ate of that fruit, he attained this great glory. That is why he told you not to eat, lest eating [it] you would become equal to God.” When she heard the advice of the serpent, she wanted to become divine. She promptly picked and ate of the fruit. And immediately she became stripped.⁴⁹ Now Adam came and saw his wife stripped, [and] he turned and said, “What is this you have done? Why did you eat of that fruit and become stripped?” Eve said, “This fruit is extremely sweet and tasty; you take also [and] eat.” She wanted to deceive Adam. Adam said, “Shall I eat and be stripped like you?” And Eve said, “I ate too much and was stripped because of that. You eat just a little.” Adam said, “I cannot taste it and become like you.” Eve said, “Even if you eat too much, you will not become stripped, because God loves you.” When Adam heard this he took the fruit into his hand, but he was afraid to eat. But Eve cried and begged him and said, “Eat and do not separate me from you. If we live, let us live together, and if we die, let us die together.” Now Adam thoroughly examined the fruit in his hand for three hours. Now he would want to eat it, and then he would not. But when he looked at the woman’s begging and [her] tears, he felt pity in his heart. When he saw her nakedness, he was afraid to eat. When he saw her beauty, he became foolish. Even though she was stripped, she was nevertheless beautiful because she was newly created and she glistened like a white pearl. But Adam, because of his love for the women, could not restrain himself and he ate of the fruit and stripped himself of the light. (Emphasis added.)⁵⁰

Notes

¹ When Joseph Smith introduced the temple endowment in May 1842, he referred to it as “the order of the Ancient of Days” (History of the Church 5:1-2), referring to one of Adam’s titles (D&C 27:11; 116:1; 138:38). This suggests that temple ceremonies go back to the beginning of mankind on earth.

² John A. Tvedtnes, “Olive Oil as a Symbol of the Holy Ghost,” in Stephen D. Ricks and John W. Welch, The Allegory of the Olive Tree (Salt Lake City: FARMS and Deseret Book Company, 1994), 427-459.

³ Donald W. Parry, Temples in Antiquity (Salt Lake City: FARMS and Deseret Book Company, 1994).

⁴ James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City: Doubleday, 1983), 1:791.

⁵ Ibid., 1:138-9. Compare with the story in Moses 7:2-4.

⁶ Ibid., 1:49.

⁷ The Hebrew text was published in Adolph Jellinek, Bet haMidrasch (orig. 1938; reprint, Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1967), 3:27-29. The English translation used here is from Raphael Patai, The Messiah Texts: Jewish Legends of Three Thousand Years (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1988), 252-53.

⁸ Though he does not discuss baptism as part of the initiation, see William J. Hamblin, “Aspects of an Early Christian Initiation Ritual,” in John M. Lundquist and Stephen D. Ricks, eds., By Study and Also By Faith (Salt Lake City: FARMS and Deseret Book Company, 1990), volume 1.

⁹ Montague Rhodes James, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1955), 433.

¹⁰ Ibid., 366-67.

¹¹ Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series (original 1894; reprint, Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson, 1994), 7:146.

¹² Ibid., 7:147.

¹³ Ibid., 7:150.

¹⁴ Ibid., 7:152.

¹⁵ Bruce H. Porter and Stephen D. Ricks, “Names in Antiquity: Old, New, and Hidden,” By Study and Also By Faith, edited by John M. Lundquist and Stephen D. Ricks (Salt Lake City: FARMS and Deseret Book Company, 1990), 1:501-522.

¹⁶ E.S. Drower, The Haran Gawaita and the Baptism of Hibil-Ziwa (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1953), 32.

¹⁷ For a study of this subject, see Todd M. Compton, “The Handclasp and Embrace as Tokens of Recognition,” By Study and Also By Faith, volume 1, edited by John M. Lundquist and Stephen D. Ricks.

¹⁸ James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library (3rd ed., San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990), 274.

¹⁹ James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2:239.

²⁰ S.C. Malan, The Book of Adam and Eve, also called The Conflict of Adam and Eve With Satan (London: Williams and Norgate, 1882), 85-86.

²¹ James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:799.

²² Ibid., 1:798.

²³ Montague Rhodes James, The Apocryphal New Testament, 368-369.

²⁴ Ibid., 387.

²⁵ Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers (original, 1886; reprint, Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson, 1994), 5:107.

²⁶ For ancient Christian prayer circles, see Hugh Nibley, “The Early Christian Prayer Circle”, BYU Studies 19/1 (Fall 1978): 41-47, reprinted as chapter 3 in Hugh Nibley, Mormonism and Early Christianity (Salt Lake City: FARMS and Deseret Book Company, 1987), 45-99, and Hugh Nibley, Old Testament and Related Studies (Salt Lake City: FARMS and Deseret Book Company, 1986), 158-63, 182-3. For LDS prayer circles, see D. Michael Quinn, “Latter-day Saint Prayer Circle,” BYU Studies 19/1 (Fall 1978): 79-105, and the entries for “Altar” and “Prayer Circle” in Daniel H. Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism (New York: Macmillan, 1992). The reader should note, however, that Todd Compton was correct when he wrote that “some of the examples cited by Nibley are not really group prayers, are not circles, and so on, though there are some similarities to prayer circles” (Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 3:?).

²⁷ Carl Schmidt and Violet MacDermot, The Books of Jeu and the Untitled Text in the Bruce Codex (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 92-98.

²⁸ Here is a collection of statements on this subject by Brigham Young:

“Will you abide our counsel? I say again, my soul for any man’s, if they will abide our counsel, that they will go right into heaven. We have the signs and token to give to the porter at the door, and he will let us in” (History of the Church 7:240).

“I and my brethren have received our endowments, keys, blessings – all the tokens, signs, and every preparatory ordinance, that can be given to man, for his entrance into the celestial gate” (Journal of Discourses 1:278).

“When we talk of the celestial law which is revealed from heaven, that is, the Priesthood, we are talking about the principle of salvation, a perfect system of government, of laws and ordinances, by which we can be prepared to pass from one gate to another, and from one sentinel to another, until we go into the presence of our Father and God” (Journal of Discourses 2:139).

“He has taught you how to purify yourselves, and become holy, and be prepared to enter into His kingdom, how you can advance from one degree to another, and grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth, until you are prepared to enter the celestial kingdom; how to pass every sentinel, watchman, and gate keeper” (Journal of Discourses, 2:315).

“All the riches, wealth, glory and happiness that we shall ever possess in heaven will be possessed on and around this earth when it is brought up into the presence of God in a sanctified and glorified state; and the sanctified ones who enter through the gate and pass the sentinel into the New Jerusalem, and into the presence of the Father and the Son, are the ones who will inherit the new heavens and the new earth in the presence of God, for here is the eternity, the glory and the power” (Journal of Discourses 10:35).

“Those who are counted worthy to dwell with the Father and the Son have previously received an education fitting them for that society; they have been made fully acquainted with every pass-word, token and sign which have enabled them to pass by the porters through the doors into the celestial kingdom” (Journal of Discourses 10:172).

“It is absolutely necessary that the Saints should receive further ordinances of the house of God before this short existence shall come to a close, that they may be prepared and fully able to pass all the sentinels leading into the celestial kingdom and into the presence of God” (Journal of Discourses 12:163-164).

²⁹ Here are some of these declarations:

Heber C. Kimball: “Joseph always told us that we would have to pass by sentinels that are placed between us and our Father and God. Then, of course, we are conducted along from this probation to other probations, or from one dispensation to another, by those who conducted those dispensations” (Journal of Discourses 6:63).

Orson Pratt: “We shall enjoy all that has been put upon our heads, and, through the Priesthood, and signs and tokens that have been revealed, come forth in the first resurrection, and pass by the sentinels and the Gods that stand to keep the way of eternal lives” (Journal of Discourses 8:106).

Orson Hyde: “I tell you, Joseph holds the keys, and none of us can get into the celestial kingdom without passing by him. We have not got rid of him, but he stands there as the sentinel, holding the keys of the kingdom of God; and there are many of them beside him. I tell you, if we get past those who have mingled with us, and know us best, and have a right to know us best, probably we can pass all other sentinels as far as it is necessary, or as far as we may desire. But I tell you, the pinch will be with those that have mingled with us, stood next to us, weighed our spirits, tried us, and proven us: there will be a pinch, in my view, to get past them. The others, perhaps, will say, If brother Joseph is satisfied with you, you may pass. If it is all right with him, it is all right with me” (Journal of Discourses 6:154-5).

³⁰ Compare the seven steps to God mentioned in Questions of Ezra A:19-21.

³¹ 1 Chronicles 9:17-27; 15:18; 16:38, 42; 26:1-19; 2 Chronicles 8:14; 23:4-5, 19; 31:14; 34:13; 35:15; Ezra 2:42, 70; 7:7, 24; 10:2?; Nehemiah 7:1, 45, 73; 10:28, 39; 11:19; 12:25, 45, 47; 13:5. The band and officers sent by the chief priests to arrest Jesus were undoubtedly Levitic guards.

³² The thrones are of the angelic host (cf. Colossians 1:16 and many early Christian pseudepigraphic works). Hence, in ascending heaven, one must “pass by” these angels.

³³ James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:736-37.

³⁴ James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library, 366.

³⁵ Cited in Montague Rhodes James, The Apocryphal New Testament, 12.

³⁶ The term “watcher” is used in both the Bible and in pseudepigraphic texts to denote angelic guardians around the throne of God.

³⁷ Carl Schmidt and Violet MacDermot, The Books of Jeu and the Untitled Text in the Bruce Codex, 83. In 2 Jeu 44, some of the names and seals are given only when one arrives at the various heavenly gates.

³⁸ Ibid., 117-119.

³⁹ Ibid., 122.

⁴⁰ James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library, 259.

⁴¹ Werner Foerster, Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts, translated by R. McL. Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), 2:247.

⁴² James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2:174.

⁴³ Ibid., 1:255-256.

⁴⁴ Maurice Simon and Harry Sperling, The Zohar (New York: Rebecca Bennet Publications, 1958), 5:86.

⁴⁵ Paul P. Levertoff, Maurice Simon, and Harry Sperling, The Zohar (New York: Rebecca Bennet Publications, 1958), 3:180.

⁴⁶ James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:909.

⁴⁷ The Hebrew text was published in Adolph Jellinek, Bet haMidrasch, 5:187.

⁴⁸ James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library, 366.

⁴⁹ That is, stripped of the heavenly garment with which Adam and Eve were clothed before the Fall. The story is quite common in early Jewish and Christian literature. See the discussion in my forthcoming “Baptism for the Dead in Early Christianity.”

⁵⁰ W. Lowndes Lipscomb, The Armenian Apocryphal Adam Literature (Armenian Texts and Studies 8) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1990), 262-264.

Daniel C. Peterson, Ph.D.

“Christianity,” observes Thorleif Boman,

arose on Jewish soil; Jesus and the Apostles spoke Aramaic, a language related to Hebrew. . . . As the New Testament writings show, they were firmly rooted in the Old Testament and lived in its world of images. Shortly after the death of the Founder, however, the new religious community’s centre of gravity shifted into the Greek-speaking Hellenistic world, and after the year 70, the community was severed finally from its motherland: Christianity has been the religion of Europeans ever since. It is significant, however, that despite their absolute authority the words of Jesus were preserved by the Church only in the Greek language. Not only are these two languages essentially different, but so too are the kinds of images and thinking involved in them. This distinction goes very deeply into the psychic life; the Jews themselves defined their spiritual predisposition as anti-Hellenic. Once this point is properly understood, it must be granted completely.¹

Mormons, of course, recognize in this Hellenization at least one aspect of what they term “the Great Apostasy” the event that made necessary the restoration of the gospel in the early nineteenth century.

Latter-day Saint studies of the restoration and the early Christian church tend to focus on the detailed resemblances that exist between the two. This is both fascinating and perfectly appropriate. But it is not merely the content of Mormon ideas that parallels many elements of early Christianity. I contend that the very way in which Latter-day Saints primarily think about their faith and express it resembles the mode of thinking typical among the Hebrews and the first Christians (who were, of course, largely also Hebrews). On the other hand, Mormons have tended not to develop the intellectual approaches to their faith–and the institutions that would support such approaches–that are characteristic of Hellenized Christianity. To illustrate my claim, if not to prove it, which would require much more time and space than I have available to me here. I will look at the way Latter-day Saints do “theology” and history, and at some characteristics of the way life is lived in the church.

Prologue

“What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Tertullian’s famous question, propounded within two centuries of the death of Jesus, reflects perhaps the unease with which some Christians greeted the (by then) quite obvious Hellenization of their community.² In fact, of course, neither Athens nor Jerusalem had much directly to do with what we can now, by virtue of hindsight, realize was a quite inexorable process. Athens, as a center of philosophical study and speculation, was past its prime, although there would be flickers of life from time to time, and Jerusalem, by the period of Tertullian and following two ruthlessly suppressed Jewish revolts, was almost wholly irrelevant to the development of Christian doctrine. It was probably Alexandria, more than any other city, that served as the engine of theological change within what would come to be the mainstream church, as well as within the various “heretical” movements that occasionally seem to have outnumbered the “orthodox.”³ It was at Alexandria that the first distinctly anti-anthropomorphic movement can be recognized, when, for example, the translators of the Septuagint omitted the “repentance of God” from their version of Genesis 6:6.⁴ (And if anthropopathy attributing human emotions to deity proved offensive to those Alexandrian scholars, it is hardly surprising that expressions of what might be construed as a more literal or even physical anthropomorphism were also dispensed with. Thus, the Psalmist’s declaration, at Psalm 8:6, that man had been made “little lower than God” (or than “the Gods” elohim) became, in the Septuagint, “a little lower than the angels.”)

It was in Alexandria that Philo arose (born ca. 10 to 20 B.C.); “[he] propounded, if he did not originate the doctrine of a transcendental deity.”⁵ Here, also, Basilides and Valentinus, eminent second-century Gnostic leaders, flourished. (The great Gnostic systems of the second century “originated almost exclusively in Alexandria,” remarks Kurt Rudolph, “for here the problems discussed are closely related to Greek Platonic philosophy.”⁶) And it was here that the great church fathers Clement (born ca. 150) and Origen (ca. 185-254) fought against “persistent anthropomorphic tendencies in early Christianity.”⁷ Alexandria was in the vanguard of the religious thought of the day.

Alexandria’s contribution valuable both intrinsically and for its effects upon the monotheistic religions has not, until recently and perhaps not even now, received the full attention that it deserves. But this is also true of the greatest philosopher of late antiquity, Origen’s contemporary, Plotinus, who seems to have been born and educated in Egypt, even if he spent most of his actual career and wrote his great work, the Enneads, in Rome. In 1917-18, when William Ralph Inge, then dean of St. Paul’s in London, delivered his Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews, he could complain that

the neglect with which the Enneads have been treated is not a little surprising. In most of our Universities where Greek philosophy is studied (I can speak at any rate for Oxford and Cambridge), it has been almost assumed that nothing later than the Stoics and Epicureans is worthy of attention. Some histories of ancient philosophy end earlier still. The result is that a very serious gap seems to yawn between Hellenic and Christian philosophy, a gap which does not really exist.⁸

Studying Christian theology as if it had sprung fully armed from the Hebrew and Greek scriptures and the Councils, while neglecting the Hellenic element in its makeup, was, he said, “like tracing a pedigree from one parent only.”⁹

If the situation has improved somewhat in the eight decades since Dean Inge spoke those words, it is probably still not fundamentally different. Even today, very few students of philosophy occupy themselves seriously with the Enneads of Plotinus. This is unfortunate, for, with the Middle Platonism from which it evolved, it is Neoplatonism, the philosophical school “founded” by Plotinus, that may be chiefly responsible for the movement, in varying degrees, of all three Abrahamic traditions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam away from their roots as historico-revelatory religions to their new status as Hellenized theological systems.

For a similar process did indeed occur in all three. The great Islamicist Marshall Hodgson was one who clearly understood this fact. “For those,” he says,

who cast the history of Islamicate civilization into the form “what went wrong with Islam?”, there have been two answers on the level of intellectual history: that Muslims failed to give full effect to the Greek heritage, or that they allowed the Greek heritage to inhibit unduly their own more concrete and historically-minded (kerygmatic) heritage. I am not, here, siding with those few who take the second view, of course; I am not clear that anything more did go wrong with Islam than with any other tradition.¹⁰

As a matter of fact, I do tend to think that an imported Hellenism diverted Islamic religious conceptions from their original inclination toward literalism and concreteness. However, I also think that this merely repeated, in broad brush strokes, an evolution which both Judaism and Christianity had already undergone. Of course, any verdict to the effect that Hellenism “unduly” affected Islam or Judaism, or Christianity is a prescriptive judgment that must necessarily flow rather from transhistorical values than from any objective data in the literary monuments. Still, that this process occurred is, it seems to me, indisputable. Its history is inextricably bound up with the story of Platonism. And, in this forum at least, I do not hesitate to say that, yes, Hellenism “unduly” affected Christianity. It warped and deformed it.

I shall now attempt to show, in three different areas, how the restored gospel, known popularly as Mormonism, seems to fit remarkably well into the Hebrew thought-world from which Christianity emerged.

Life in The Church

“It is impossible for any one,” Edwin Hatch declared in his classic Hibbert lectures for 1888,

whether he be a student of history or no, to fail to notice a difference of both form and content between the Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed. The Sermon on the Mount is the promulgation of a new law of conduct; it assumes beliefs rather than formulates them; the theological conceptions which underlie it belong to the ethical rather than the speculative side of theology; metaphysics are wholly absent. The Nicene Creed is a statement partly of historical facts and partly of dogmatic inferences; the metaphysical terms which it contains would probably have been unintelligible to the first disciples; ethics have no place in it. The one belongs to a world of Syrian peasants, the other to a world of Greek philosophers. The contrast is patent. . . . [T]he question why an ethical sermon stood in the forefront of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and a metaphysical creed in the forefront of the Christianity of the fourth century, is a problem which claims investigation.¹¹

My friend and colleague Stephen D. Ricks likes to imagine an updated version of Matthew 16:13-17 in which Jesus, questioning his disciples, encounters a theologically more savvy Peter than the one depicted in scripture:

He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

And Simon Peter answered and said, “Thou art the ground of all being, of whom no positive attribute may be predicated. Thou art the focus of our ultimate concern, transcending both existence and non-existence, ontologically one with the Father and the Holy Spirit in a manner that neither confuses the persons nor divides the substance.”

And Jesus answered and said unto him, “What?”

It has often been noted that Hebrew thought is characteristically dynamic and active, while Greek thought tends to the static and the contemplative. “If Israelite thinking is to be characterized, it is obvious first to call it dynamic, vigorous, passionate, and sometimes quite explosive in kind; correspondingly Greek thinking is static, peaceful, moderate, and harmonious in kind.”¹² More precise than a contrast between the dynamic and the static, however, might be a distinction between the dynamic and the harmonic or resting.¹³ One might remark, for example, that, as in the Semitic languages generally, almost all Hebrew nouns are derived from verbal roots.¹⁴ Thus it is action, rather than inaction, that seems to be fundamental in Semitic languages. Boman suggests an examination of the chief Hebrew and Greek terms for word as a way of entering into their distinctive worlds of thought. “Logos,” Boman writes,

expresses the mental function that is highest according to Greek understanding. . . . dabhar performs the same service for the Israelites; therefore, these two words teach us what the two peoples considered primary and essential in mental life: on the one side the dynamic, masterful, energetic on the other side the ordered, moderate, thought out, calculated, meaningful, rational. . . .

We have to render dabhar as well as logos by “word”, but our concept “word” renders only one part of the content of dabhar and of logos; the most important part is not touched by this rendering, and at the same time the great distinction between dabhar and logos is hidden within the very term “word”. “Word” is, so to speak, the point of intersection between two entirely different ways of conceiving of the highest mental life.¹⁵

Boman illustrates his contention with a chart that shows how the Hebrew dabhar derives from a verbal root originally meaning “to drive forward” and, later, “to speak.” Greek logos stems from a verbal root that first meant “to gather, to arrange” and came thereafter to mean “to speak, to reckon, to think.” The two developmental tendencies intersect in the sense that both logos and dabhar signify “word,” but they diverge again when logos acquires the sense of “reason,” while dabhar takes on the notion of “deed” or “act.”¹⁶ The ancient Hebrews did not to an extent because they could not distinguish as rigidly as we tend to do between word and deed. Thus, Goethe’s famous translation of John 1:1 as “In the beginning was the deed” (Am Anfang war der Tat) is, from the Hebrew biblical perspective, really not far wrong.¹⁷

Boman observes that “it is characteristic of the Hebrews that their words effect and of the Greeks that the word is.”¹⁸ “The characteristic mark of hayah, in distinction from our verb ‘to be’ [to which it is the primary Hebrew equivalent], is that it is a true verb with full verbal force.”¹⁹ And, of course, the same is true for the Arabic verb “to be,” kana; it takes an accusative object just as any other transitive verb would. This is not true in English, even though, despite what our grammar teachers would have of us, many of us (at least in the United States) find it difficult to answer the phone with “It is I” rather than the more colloquial but incorrect “It’s me.”

Study of the definitions of Hebrew verbs yields a very similar, and reinforcing, conclusion:

Hebrew and Greek thinking differ on the relative importance and ontological status of changing and remaining the same. We usually think of stasis as originary and movement as a change from that originary state. In Hebrew thinking, however, remaining the same stasis is a particular kind of movement. For example, to rise up and to stand are the same verb, standing being a particular instance (the completed event) of rising up.²⁰

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Semitic linguistic focus on action seems to have had an impact on Semitic culture. It is scarcely an original insight to say of both Judaism and Islam that they are religions of the law. Good Jews are Torah-observant. Good Muslims live according to the sharica, the legal code of Islam. Orthopraxy, in other words, or “right action,” seems to be a more central concern for both religions than is orthodoxy, or “right belief.” “The genius of [the Jewish] people was directed not toward the fashioning of form, nor toward a harmonious experience of the surrounding world, but toward the legitimacy of moral activity.”²¹

But the Jews’ relative emphasis on behavior led inevitably to a relative deemphasis of theology and doctrine. Ask a rabbi a theological question or a question about the specifics of the life to come, and you are likely to be told that such matters are of no real concern. But the Talmud is full of detailed and passionate discussions of the minutiae of sacrificial procedure and other matters of practical action. While neither Judaism nor Islam is entirely without theology (as witnessed by such figures as Maimonides and al-Ashcari), and while both certainly have characteristic doctrines, the role of theology in both has been distinctly more limited than it has been within mainstream Christianity. Yet Hatch’s observation suggests that such emphasis has not always been characteristic of Christendom, either.

Greek thinking was rather different from Hebrew on this point.

The life of the philosopher is a [bios theoretikos], a vita contemplativa. For Aristotle, the word qewriva [theoria] means, in part, observation and the inquiry connected with it, and in part, the doctrine which is thereby set forth, our notion of “theory”. In the Protrepticus it is said that pure idea is theoria and deserves to be esteemed most highly as sight among the senses is esteemed; in the Metaphysics (xi, 7), theoria is called “the most pleasant and most excellent”, and in the Nichomachean Ethics (x, 8), perfect happiness, too, becomes a contemplative activity (theÙrÍtikÍ).²²

Indeed, so highly did the Greeks value contemplation that “The participant in a cultic act or mystery drama is called [theoros] ‘spectator’, which was soon connected by folk etymology to [theos], ‘god’.”²³

Such contemplation is notable in scripture, by contrast, for its absence. Significantly, for example, Boman notes the remarkable lack of visual description in the Hebrew Bible. While we are told in sometimes excruciating detail how and of what the temple and the ark and the Tabernacle in the wilderness were built, we really don’t know what they looked like. “The edifice is thus not a restful harmonious unity in the beauty of whose lines the eyes find joy, but it is something dynamic and living, a human accomplishment.”²⁴

Yet the scriptures were by no means the sole influence on the development of Christian thought. It is perhaps to be expected that, in a Christianity saturated by Greek ideas (including an emphasis on meditation and contemplation), the ultimate and most yearned-for goal came to be the “beatific vision” a purely intellectual “seeing” of God (who, it was said, was invisible in any other sense). Although the Jewish idea of the physical resurrection of the dead was not abandoned in favor of this doctrine (perhaps because, given the New Testament’s affirmation of the corporeal resurrection of Jesus, it was now simply too central to Christianity to permit its surrender), having a restored physical body seems oddly irrelevant to a vision of postmortal bliss as purely mental.

I would argue that, with regard to the primacy of action over contemplation, of orthopraxy over orthodoxy, both Judaism and Islam have remained more faithful to their Semitic roots than has mainstream Christianity, though it shares those roots.

And how do the Latter-day Saints fare when viewed in this light? We use the word orthodox relatively rarely, and the word heretic even less commonly. When we inquire whether a person is a “good Mormon,” we generally have in mind such things as attendance at church and adherence to the Word of Wisdom. When that person comes to her bishop for a temple recommend interview, she is not invited to lay out her views on the relationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for theological evaluation. Rather, by and large, she is asked whether she obeys the commandments and keeps her covenants. Being a good Latter-day Saint, while it certainly involves some basic doctrinal commitments (as does the temple recommend interview itself), is largely a matter of behavior.

We seldom describe a person as a “devout Mormon,” and even more rarely as a “pious Mormon.” We are much more inclined to describe that person as an “active Mormon.” I think this kind of language is significant. Boman, attempting to distinguish representative Greek modes of thought from representative Hebrew ways of thinking, contrasts them in a striking comparative image: “The matter is outlined in bold relief,” he writes,

by two characteristic figures; the thinking Socrates and the praying Orthodox Jew. When Socrates was seized by a problem, he remained immobile for an interminable period of time in deep thought; when Holy Scripture is read aloud in the synagogue, the Orthodox Jew moves his whole body ceaselessly in deep devotion and adoration. The Greek most acutely experiences the world and existence while he stands and reflects, but the Israelite reaches his zenith in ceaseless movement. Rest, harmony, composure, and self-control this is the Greek way; movement, life, deep emotion, and power this is the Hebrew way.²⁵

Thus, I would argue that Mormonism is closer, in this regard, to the Semitic roots of Christianity than are most other branches of the Christian movement today. When one recalls the hired gangs of thugs deployed by the rival Alexandrian church officials of Athanasius’s day against their theological opponents, one can scarcely avoid the obvious conclusion that, for them at least, doctrinal correctness (orthodoxy) trumped ethical behavior (orthopraxy) in importance. Of course, all Christians fall short of the moral ideal. But that is not the point. The Alexandrian leaders would have justified their behavior, and did justify it, as essential to carrying out their Christian mission and ecclesiastical responsibility much as St. Augustine later justified the use of state force against heretics.²⁶

Before leaving this subject of activity as the marker and manifestation of religious devotion, one other aspect of it is perhaps worth noting: “The Israelites,” says Boman, “like all other ancient peoples were ‘outer-directed’ and did not dissect their psychic life as modern man does.”²⁷ This, too, seems akin to the Latter-day Saint mode of religiosity. If one wanders through contemporary bookstores today, looking for what comes under the category of “spirituality,” one is sometimes hard pressed to see exactly how it differs from a type of (perhaps almost “pop”) “psychology.” Much time and effort is expended nowadays on the analysis of one’s inner states. Latter-day Saints, on the whole, have tended to produce little of this literature. Our emphasis, by contrast, tends to be on getting out to the welfare farm, attending the temple, cleaning the chapel, taking care of our home teaching. Doing things, in other words. And this seems to go right back to our founder. “There are few men,” Fawn Brodie complained of Joseph Smith, “who have written so much and told so little about themselves. To search in his six-volume autobiography for the inner springs of his character is to come away baffled. . . . His story is the antithesis of a confession.”²⁸ Mrs. Brodie, of course, was seeking fodder for a reductionist psychoanalysis.²⁹

Finally, on a rather different note: Conservative Protestant critics of the Latter-day Saints have taken to deriding Mormons as “irrationalists” who rely on emotion rather than reason for the justification of their religious loyalties. Now, I will leave to the side the fact that such charges of emotionalism and irrationalism ring rather oddly coming from Protestant fundamentalists, and I will not try to demonstrate my considered impression that Latter-day Saints need feel no inferiority when comparing their own educational attainments and ability to reason to those of their critics. I will not even attempt to show that it is not emotionalism to which Latter-day Saints appeal, but the Holy Spirit (a rather different matter), and that they are entirely biblical in doing so. What I do want to suggest, even though I cannot develop it here to the extent that I hope to do elsewhere, is that the Latter-day Saint way of coming to know spiritual truth is rather like that of the ancient Hebrews.

Listen, again, to Boman:

The . . . Hebrew concept of truth is expressed by means of derivatives of the verb aman “to be steady, faithful”; amen “verily, surely”; omen “faithfulness”; umnam “really”; emeth “constancy, trustworthiness, certainty, fidelity to reported facts, truth”; cf. omenah “pillar, door-post”. In short, the Hebrews really do not ask what is true in the objective sense but what is subjectively certain, what is faithful in the existential sense; therefore, it is not what is in agreement with impersonal objective being that interests them, but what is in agreement with the facts that are meaningful for them. This shows that Hebrew thought is directed toward events, living, and history in which the question of truth is of another sort than in natural science. In such matters the true is the completely certain, sure, steady, faithful.³⁰

Boman proceeds to show that, when Israelite thinkers (notably those of the Bible) seek to convince an audience, they do not resort to logical syllogisms but to parables and to repetition. Two examples should suffice to make clear what he means:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. (Psalm 1:1)

The object of such narrative and rhetorical devices is not logical convincing but psychological conviction. “The Hebrew thinkers’ and poets’ art of composition is not like that in architecture where everything is built step by step, but it is more similar to music wherein the theme is set forth at the beginning and returns later in constantly new variations.”³¹ “The other expressions for the function of thinking (yadhac ‘know’, raah ‘see’, shamac ‘hear’) likewise have the purpose of finding a point rather than of furnishing a proof. . . . Greek thinking is clear logical knowing; Israelite thinking is deep psychological understanding. Both kinds of thinking are equally necessary if one means to be in touch with the whole of reality.”³²

For both Latter-day Saints and the ancient Hebrews, coming to know divine truths seems to have been less a matter of persuasion than of immediate, intuitive and ultimately incommunicable perception.³³

History

The Semitic insistence on the importance of acts and behavior carries over into the Semites’ very positive valuation of history. “According to the Israelite conception, everything is in eternal movement: God and man, nature and the world. The totality of existence, Ùlam, is time, history, life.”³⁴ In this regard, although it is true that the Greeks did give us the tradition of “scientific” historiography commencing, perhaps, with Herodotus but reaching its real fruition in Thucydides their valuation of the lasting significance of history was far different than that of the Hebrews.

Heinrich Rickert argued rightly, I think that “the unique, that which occurs only once, is the proper category for history, while the natural sciences disregard differences and inquire only into what is repeated again and again without change.”³⁵ It is in that sense that we are to understand Boman’s dictum that “The Greeks have given to the world the science of history; the Israelites gave to the world historical religion.”³⁶

Let us first look at the Greek attitude toward the world of change and decay, of coming to be and ceasing to be, that is the sphere of historical events:

While, as we have seen, the Hebraic kind of thinking was in the main dynamic, the kind of thinking employed by the Eleatic school of philosophers was not only diametrically opposite but contradictorily so. They considered being not only as the essential point, but even more, as the only one since they flatly denied the reality of motion and change. Only what is immovable and immutable exists; all becoming and passing away is mere appearance and is equivalent to what is not, about which nothing positive can be said. Our sense-impressions are deceptive. In a sense, the Greek kind of thinking appears here most distinctly and clearly.³⁷

The Eleatic philosophers, of course, represent an extreme view and, as an extreme view, the Eleatic approach was not likely to be accepted by the Greeks generally, given their characteristic accent on moderation. Moreover, one might point out that the Eleatic vision had its opposite extreme in Heraclitus of Ephesus, who insisted that all was constant change and flux, that “all things flow” and that one cannot step into the same river twice. Still, the Eleatic position had considerable influence. Plato named one of his dialogues after Parmenides of Elea, the founder of the Eleatic school, and Zeno of Elea gave us his famous paradox, purporting to demonstrate the impossibility of motion and change. (In order to cover the distance from A to B, he said, an arrow must first cover half that distance. But before it can cover that distance, it must cover half of that half. And so on, to infinity, which means that the arrow can never cover any distance at all.) Moreover, Heraclitus may not be fully Greek in his insistence on universal change. He came not from Greece proper but from Ephesus in Asia Minor, and most of his followers were likewise Asians, which may reveal an “oriental” influence that is, an influence akin to that of the Hebrews on his thinking.³⁸

In any event, to illustrate what clearly emerged as the leading and most characteristic Greek view, permit me to quote at some length from Plato’s Republic:

“See human beings [says Plato’s Socrates] as though they were in an underground cavelike dwelling with its entrance, a long one, open to the light across the whole width of the cave. They are in it from childhood with their legs and necks in bonds so that they are fixed, seeing only in front of them, unable because of the bond to turn their heads all the way around. Their light is from a fire burning far above and behind them. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a road above, along which see a wall, built like the partitions puppet-handlers set in front of the human beings and over which they show the puppets.”

“I see,” he said.

“Then also see along this wall human beings carrying all sorts of artifacts, which project above the wall, and statues of men and other animals wrought from stone, wood, and every kind of material; as is to be expected, some of the carriers utter sounds while others are silent.”

“It’s a strange image,” he said, “and strange prisoners you’re telling of.”

“They’re like us,” I said. “For in the first place, do you suppose such men would have seen anything of themselves and one another other than the shadows cast by the fire on the side of the cave facing them?”

“How could they,” he said, “if they had been compelled to keep their heads motionless throughout life?”

“And what about the things that are carried by? Isn’t it the same with them?”

“Of course.”

“If they were able to discuss things with one another, don’t you believe they would hold that they are naming these things going by before them that they see?”

“Necessarily.”

“And what if the prison also had an echo from the side facing them? Whenever one of the men passing by happens to utter a sound, do you suppose they would believe that anything other than the passing shadow was uttering the sound?”

“No, by Zeus,” he said. “I don’t.”

“Then most certainly,” I said, “such men would hold that the truth is nothing other than the shadows of artificial things.”

“Most necessarily,” he said.

“Now consider,” I said, “what their release and healing from bonds and folly would be like if something of this sort were by nature to happen to them. Take a man who is released and suddenly compelled to stand up, to turn his neck around, to walk and look up toward the light; and who, more over, in doing all this is in pain and, because he is dazzled, is unable to make out those things whose shadows he saw before. What do you suppose he’d say if someone were to tell him that before he saw silly nothings, while now, because he is somewhat nearer to what is and more turned toward beings, he sees more correctly; and, in particular, showing him each of the things that pass by, were to compel the man to answer his questions about what they are? Don’t you suppose he’d be at a loss and believe that what was seen before is truer than what is now shown?”

“Yes,” he said, “by far.”

“And, if he compelled him to look at the light itself, would his eyes hurt and would he flee, turning away to those things that he is able to make out and hold them to be really clearer than what is being shown?”

“So he would,” he said.

“And if,” I said, “someone dragged him away from there by force along the rough, steep, upward way and didn’t let him go before he had dragged him out into the light of the sun, wouldn’t he be distressed and annoyed at being so dragged? And when he came to the light, wouldn’t he have his eyes full of its beam and be unable to see even one of the things now said to be true?”

“No, he wouldn’t,” he said, “at least not right away.”

“Then I suppose he’d have to get accustomed, if he were going to see what’s up above. At first he’d most easily make out the shadows; and after that the phantoms of the human beings and the other things in water; and, later, the things themselves. And from there he could turn to beholding the things in heaven and heaven itself, more easily at night looking at the light of the stars and the moon than by day looking at the sun and sunlight.”

“Of course.”

“Then finally I suppose he would be able to make out the sun not its appearance in water or some alien place, but the sun itself by itself in its own region and see what it’s like.”

“Necessarily,” he said.

“And after that he would already be in a position to conclude about it that this is the source of the seasons and the years, and is the steward of all things in the visible place, and is in a certain way the cause of all those things he and his companions had been seeing.”

“It’s plain,” he said, “that this would be his next step.”

“What then? When he recalled his first home and the wisdom there, and his fellow prisoners in that time, don’t you suppose he would consider himself happy for the change and pity the others?”

“Quite so.”

“And if in that time there were among them any honors, praises, and prizes for the man who is sharpest at making out the things that go by, and most remembers which of them are accustomed to pass before, which after, and which at the same time as others, and who is thereby most able to divine what is going to come, in your opinion would he be desirous of them and envy those who are honored and hold power among these men? Or, rather, would he be affected as Homer says and want very much ‘to be on the soil, a serf to another man, to a portionless man,’ and to undergo anything whatsoever rather than to opine those things and live that way?”

“Yes,” he said, “I suppose he would prefer to undergo everything rather than live that way.”

“Now reflect on this too,” I said. “If such a man were to come down again and sit in the same seat, on coming suddenly from the sun wouldn’t his eyes get infected with darkness?”

“Very much so,” he said.

“And if he once more had to compete with those perpetual prisoners in forming judgments about those shadows while his vision was still dim, before his eyes had recovered, and if the time needed for getting accustomed were not at all short, wouldn’t he be the source of laughter, and wouldn’t it be said of him that he went up and came back with his eyes corrupted, and that it’s not even worth trying to go up? And if they were somehow able to get their hands on and kill the man who attempts to release and lead up, wouldn’t they kill him?”

“No doubt about it,” he said.³⁹

The latter is no doubt a foreshadowing of the death of Socrates himself, Plato’s teacher, who was one of those who had freed himself from the cave and sought to liberate others. And it must not be forgotten that Socrates, with his guiding daimon and his mandate from the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, is, in some respects, no less a religious figure than one of the Israelite prophets.

With his famous doctrine of the Ideas, or the Forms, Plato reconciles Heraclitus’s recognition of change with Parmenides’ insistence that what is truly real is changeless. There is triangularity, and there are innumerable triangular objects in what we would today call the “real world.” For Plato, though, the real world is the world of the Forms, or the Ideas. “There abides the very being with which true knowledge is concerned; the colourless, formless, intangible essence, visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul.”⁴⁰ It is triangularity, and not the approximate triangles in the world of matter, that is truly real. Plato saw two main levels of being:

Visible things and their reflected images together form the first large main level of being the kingdom. Characteristic of this level are being born and passing away; everything here is mutable and transitory, and nothing is eternal. . . .

The spiritual and intelligible world has an essentially higher reality; here nothing alters, nothing comes into being, and nothing passes away. This is the kingdom of true being. This upper level of being is . . . divided into two subordinate levels; the lower of these levels consists of mathematical realities, especially geometric figures and numbers together with the laws that inhere in them, while the Ideas, which truly are, form the upper and highest level. . . .

All being is therefore at rest and in harmony, and all higher being is unalterable and indestructible; there is also a certain order of rank among all existing things. The more original and spiritual a thing is, the more being it has and the higher is its dignity. . . . In the eternal and intelligible world the rest of the Eleatics rules; but the world of appearance, which consists partly of images of the Ideas and partly of images of the images, is perishable and transitory, and it possesses less reality, power, and value the farther removed it is from that which eternally is.⁴¹

(This ontological hierarchy becomes particularly important and evident in Neoplatonic thought. It is fundamental to the system outlined by Plotinus in his Enneads.)⁴²

The basis of Plato’s thinking is the eternal or transcendent world of which our world of experience is only an image; this image is in itself beautiful and glorious, but the glory of the world is nothing compared to the glory of eternity. That in our world which most nearly approaches the beauty of the transcendent world is the beauty of geometry. (One has to be fascinated by geometry in order to be able to enter into Plato’s experience and to understand him.)⁴³

It is said that there was an inscription above the entrance to Plato’s Academy, saying, “Let no one ignorant of mathematics enter here.”

The deep conviction that “the sensible world was transitory, and the supra-sensible was everlastingly wonderful, beautiful, and divine”⁴⁴ cannot fail to have an impact on how one views the significance of historical events, which necessarily take place in, precisely, that sensible world. “Alles Verg‰ngliche ist nur ein Gleichnis,” wrote Goethe, in a rather Platonic spirit. “Everything transitory is but a likeness.”⁴⁵ If this is believed, ultimate truth is not to be discerned in history. It is not to be found in the world of appearances rather than reality, of belief rather than knowledge. “The classical culture, elaborated by Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics,” wrote Reinhold Niebuhr, “is a western and intellectual version of a universal type of ahistorical spirituality.”⁴⁶ “The true votary of philosophy,” says Plato, “is always pursuing death and dying; . . . he has had the desire of death all his life long. . . . Would you not say he is entirely concerned with the soul and not with the body? He would like, as far as he can, to get away from the body and to turn to the soul.”⁴⁷ Porphyry, in his Life of Plotinus, says that the great Neoplatonist “seemed embarrassed at being in the body. As a result of this attitude he couldn’t stand to talk about his ancestry or his parents or his homeland.”⁴⁸ History and the physical world cannot be the primary arena of divine disclosure for anybody holding such a view.

Let me show the impact such presuppositions had on one particular group within the Islamic tradition. Edwin Hatch argued with reference to the history of the early church that “the change in the centre of gravity from conduct to belief is coincident with the transference of Christianity from a Semitic to a Greek soil.”⁴⁹ While rejecting any potentially racialist inferences from such a view, I believe that an analogous shift is observable within some segments of the Muslim community or umma as it, too, encountered the Greek intellectual tradition with all its attractiveness and prestige.⁵⁰ An intellectual trend arose that had little interest in what Hodgson, in his insightful discussion of the situation, has called “the dated and the placed.”⁵¹ Alongside students of hadith (the sayings and precedents of the Prophet Muhammad) and usul al-fiqh (the principles of jurisprudence, which derived from past precedents) and history, there came to be another category of thinkers, almost always quite distinct, who found their inspiration in the timeless regularities of the natural world.

It is too simple, of course, to blame everything on the Greeks. “Irano-Semitic culture,” as Hodgson terms it, “had . . . shown another face from Cuneiform times on: one in which not the moral judgments of history but the rational harmonies of nature were the source of inspiration. This tradition had its own high seriousness in life, as alien to courtly elegance or frivolity as was that of the mono theistic tradition.”⁵² But this ancient tendency was reinforced by the introduction into the future lands of Islam of Hellenizing modes of thought, and of the Greek language itself, by Alexander the Great and the forces he set in motion. And it should not be forgotten that both of these positions were religious. “Both the Abrahamic prophetic tradition and the Hellenizing philosophic and scientific tradition,” Hodgson continues,

had, in their origins, dealt with comprehensive life-orientational problems. Even the mathematical and scientific traditions of Cuneiform times were instrumental to larger religious visions. The transition into the Greek language had at the same time been a transition into a new religious framework: that of the Socratic tradition of Philosophia, to which the particular scientific traditions were more or less ancillary. Socrates and Plato, by the definitions of religion we have been using, were as much religious figures as Amos and the Isaiahs; geometry or astronomy were almost as subordinate to the total cosmic vision which adherents of the several Socratic traditions were working out as was Hebrew historiography to the spiritual vision of the adherents of the Abrahamic tradition.⁵³

By the time of what Hodgson calls the “High Caliphate” or the “High Caliphal Period” (A.D. 692-945), the Hellenizing philosophical orientation had become largely identified with Christianity, which “had been profoundly touched by it: Christian thinkers had had to confront the Hellenic metaphysical and logical traditions, and the formulation of the problems of Christian theology problems concerning the nature and power of God and the freedom of human beings reflected this.”⁵⁴ A few centers of pagan Hellenism still survived (most notably, the star-worshipers of Mesopotamian Harran), but they were of far less significance than the presence of a Hellenized Christianity.⁵⁵ It was this surviving Hellenism that faced the new Semitic revelation of Islam, emerging from its Arabian matrix.

When we survey the civilization of what has often, if somewhat misleadingly, been called classical Islam, at least three main intellectual trends are immediately discernible. With one of these, the one (perhaps somewhat problematically) termed “adab culture” by Hodgson, I am not here concerned. However, two others were probably more religiously serious and are of direct relevance to this essay. The first trend was that of “the objective studies proper to the Sharicah-minded [i.e., to those who concerned themselves with the divine law], [which] were especially historical studies, from the collection of hadith reports to the elaborate compositions of Tabari.” The second, with which the first often conflicted, was the trend embodied in the lives and works of the falasifa the philosophers whose designation in Arabic transparently manifests their Greek roots. (They were said to practice “the foreign sciences.”) “The Philosophic tradition expressed itself most objectively in nature studies, particularly those based on mathematics,” says Hodgson.

Perhaps the most generally appealing of these studies was astronomy. The earliest of the nature studies to be highly developed almost anywhere, it yielded dramatic and imaginatively satisfying results to the application of elementary but precise observation. But the results could be rather too satisfying. For the Greek tradition, the temptation was great to find in astronomy just the perfection which their vision of pure reason called for, in the shape of the universe as a whole.⁵⁶

It was reason, after all, that was the fundamental value of this worldview, and the faylasuf, or philosopher, sought to govern himself according to the rational order of the universe. His seeking to uncover such order was, in most cases, largely an aid to what might be termed “the philosophic way of life,” to becoming a sage. (A mastery of science and the gathering of technical knowledge, considered as valuable in its own right, would be of interest only to a mere craftsman and unworthy of the sage.)

Any concern with the time-bound, the accidental, the whole realm of the historical, as such, was despised as unworthy, irrelevant to genuine self-cultivation. What was wanted was an adequate understanding of the unchanging whole; any particular instance was at best only one more repetitive exemplification, and acquaintance with it could be of only transient relevance, meeting needs of the moment. . . .

The model sciences of the Greeks had fitted this principle. In geometry a whole range of propositions could be deduced from a few axioms. It was the true triangle, which never occurs in nature, and not actual more-or-less three-cornered objects, that could be known and was worth knowing; neglect of the rest was what made possible geometrical calculations that were effective even on the practical level. In astronomy, if one observed essential regularities in a few heavenly bodies, the course of conjunctions and eclipses could be predicted to the end of time. Ideally, all truth should be reducible to this level of exact statement, incontestably demonstrative and timelessly applicable (at least by approximation) to anyone anywhere.⁵⁷

The Faylas˚fs were interested, since the days of Plato, in the unchanging, in the permanently valid. Thrust into the water, a stick appears bent; in the air, it appears straight. When one is angry, one’s neighbour seems an object for violent assault; a few minutes later, he may seem an object for pity. If one is born in India, it seems of the utmost importance to burn one’s father’s corpse; if one is born in Arabia, one will bury it, and do one’s best to prevent anyone’s burning it. A year ago one’s fields were rich with wheat and this year the same fields are almost barren. In such a world what can one be sure of? The rationalistic answer of the Philosophers was that though individual plants and even fields appear and disappear, we can know what wheat is, as such, and what a field is, and what is universally true of any wheat growing in any field; we can know what anger is, and what pity is, and what a human being is as such, apart from any particular feeling we may have for particular persons. Knowledge is therefore a matter of timeless concepts, essences, and natural laws, rather than of transient and changing details. We can be sure that there are 180 degrees in a triangle, that justice is more admirable in men than injustice, that oaks grow from acorns; we cannot be sure, but can only have a provisional opinion, that this three-cornered piece of wood is a triangle, that this man is just, that this acorn will actually grow into an oak.⁵⁸

Thus, for the philosopher, “Rationality involved bringing all experience and all values under a logically consistent total conception of reality. Falsafah proved to have its own special world view, its cosmology, to which its adherents were implicitly committed.”⁵⁹ This worldview, this conception of rationality, had direct impact on the theological position of those who adopted it. It also created conflict with those people of intelligence who did not. “The Socratic tradition could not rest content with being bound to limit its questioning within a framework which was imposed by a historical intervention such as Islam,” Hodgson observes. “Nor could the Qur’anic tradition accept subordination of its conclusions to the authority of private human speculation.”⁶⁰ Ashcar mutakallimun, or “theologians,” for instance,

doubted that there were any inherently unchanging essences and natural laws. For them the most important facts were not abstractly universal but very concrete and historical. These were, first, that the individual man Mu›ammad had brought to human beings supreme truth in a particular place at a particular time, and that this truth was carried by his community from generation to generation; and second, that every individual was faced with the supreme choice of deciding in his own case whether to accept this truth or not. One could know the individual man Muhammad, or more exactly one could know by documented hadÓth reports, various individual facts about him; it was much harder to say anything dependable about the universal essence of prophecy . . . all we can actually know is the concrete momentary fact.⁶¹

(This stance is surely not unrelated to the doctrine of atomistic occasionalism, so characteristic of Ashcarism.)⁶² “The monotheists’ notions of God,” Hodgson says,

had been built up precisely from observing and responding to those contingent and historical data which the Faylas˚fs tended to disregard as not amenable to reason. The prophets’ idea of God was more moral than ontological, more historical than timeless. . . .

The Faylas˚fs’ “God” remained a very different figure from the God of the prophets, as different as their sense of human destiny; and however much the difference was disguised by the use of common words, it showed up at crucial junctures.⁶³

It is easy, of course, for us to say such things about Islam. I deliberately chose an illustration that was unlikely to arouse opposition or murmuring in a predominantly if not entirely Christian audience.

But Islam did not exist in a vacuum, nor was it hermetically sealed off from Christendom. Muslim philosophers had a perfectly enormous influence on philosophical theologians of the Latin West such as St. Thomas Aquinas. And it isn’t even necessary to blame the Muslims. The ahistorical style of theology that arose out of Hellenism had long since entered Christian thought. Philo’s allegorizing interpretations of scripture, in which he managed to see behind the historical narratives of scripture in order to discover that the Bible was really teaching Middle Platonism, may not have found much immediate echo within Judaism. But Philo’s general approach unmistakably entered in among the leading thinkers of the church in the persons of Clement and Origen and the Cappadocians. The metaphysical systems of Pseudo-Dionysius and of St. Thomas, brilliant though they are, breathe a spirit sharply, dramatically different from that of the scriptures.

For Plato, “If God is to be found, he must be sought in the unalterable, in mental being, in the Ideas.” On the other hand,

God revealed himself to the Israelites in history and not in Ideas; he revealed himself when he acted and created. His being was not learned through propositions but known in actions. The majority of Old Testament books are historical, and those that are not (Song of Solomon, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, for example) have concrete human life as their subject; they are not systematic presentations.⁶⁴

“Whereas the scriptural accounts spoke of the actions of God in history, Greek philosophy centered attention on the question of metaphysical being.”⁶⁵ There is a tangible quality to the witness of the Bible that is utterly different from the ontological speculations of the Hellenes and their imitators among the Christians. The authors of the New Testament did not offer syllogisms and metaphysics. Rather, they testified of “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life” (1 John 1:1).

One can hardly fail to think, here, of the Nephite multitude coming forward to feel the marks of the wounds in the hands and feet of the resurrected Savior. No abstract metaphysical argument could have been nearly so decisive. And one thinks naturally also of Hyrum Smith, one of the Eight Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, writing in December 1839 of his sufferings in Missouri, where he had come face to face with the prospect of martyrdom.

I had been abused and thrust into a dungeon, and confined for months on account of my faith, and the testimony of Jesus Christ. However I thank God that I felt a determination to die, rather than deny the things which my eyes had seen, which my hands had handled, and which I had borne testimony to, wherever my lot had been cast; and I can assure my beloved brethren that I was enabled to bear as strong a testimony, when nothing but death presented itself, as ever I did in my life.⁶⁶

Four and a half years later, of course, Hyrum Smith did go willingly to his death as a martyr. The Greek word martyros means “witness.”

Boman writes of “the centre of the Old Testament revelation.” “That centre,” he says,

is God’s mighty and merciful leading of the people out of Egypt through Moses, particularly the miraculous delivery of the people at the Red Sea. Although these events observed from the point of view of world history might be quite insignificant, through them Israel experienced Jahveh’s unlimited power over the might of the Egyptians as well as over nature, and they experienced it so trenchantly and convincingly that this event became the starting point, source and foundation of all later religious faith in Israel.⁶⁷

As recent studies have shown, precisely the same attitude appears in the Book of Mormon.⁶⁸ And Professor Louis Midgley has shown the very Hebraic importance of “memory” in the Book of Mormon.⁶⁹

Indeed, the historical orientation of Mormonism is one of the most immediately obvious things about it. It begins with the story of a young man, called to be a prophet, through whom is revealed another story, an account of several pre-Columbian peoples in the New World. Its truthfulness does not stand or fall on metaphysical speculations but on whether Christ really visited America, on whether there really was a historical Lehi, on whether Joseph Smith was really visited by the Father and the Son and, later, by the resurrected Moroni. It is a resolutely historical faith, making claims about the history of the tangible world.

The distinction can be pressed too far, of course. Most Christians see their faith as resting upon the decisive historical events of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ. And if Latter-day Saints reenact the pivotal events that occurred in illo tempore (as Mircea Eliade would put it), so, too, do many Christians. Latter-day Saints have their pageants (to say nothing of the temple); other Christians have their passion plays.⁷⁰ Latter-day Saints have the sacrament; other Christians have communion or the mass. Mercifully, mainstream Christianity (notwithstanding a few eccentrics like Paul Tillich, who said that it actually didn’t matter whether the historical Jesus of Nazareth really lived, since only the Christ symbol was truly important) has not lost its anchor in claimed historical reality.⁷¹

Theology

The quite different ratio in Mormonism of “theological” and historical interest shows up, however, very clearly in the fact that, while we produce historiography in considerable quantities, we scarcely do “theology” at least in the ordinary understanding of that term at all. While historical scholarship is an intellectual activity that we share with other Christians, we do not share their theological approaches to any significant degree. And, therefore, our historical scholarship looms relatively larger. But it is also, I think, larger on an absolute scale.

I recall the moment, a number of years ago, when a Latter-day Saint friend of mine who was completing a doctorate in philosophy told me, very concerned, that one of his quite eminent professors had expressed interest in meeting and speaking with a “Mormon theologian.” He couldn’t think of any in the state. Neither could I. We could hardly think of any anywhere. Not, at least, in the sense that she intended. Although there may be an exception somewhere, it cannot be far wrong to say, simply, that Latter-day Saints have no theologians in the normal acceptation of the term.

One might account for that fact by observing that Latter-day Saints have no paid clergy and no divinity schools, and that, since most theologians are either clergy or are on the faculty at divinity schools, there is no economic basis for the rise of specialized Mormon theology. And certainly the financial realities play a role. But even among full-time Latter-day Saint leaders and employees of the Church Educational System Mormon clergy, as it were though there have been not a few with good minds and excellent educations, no systematic theologians have appeared, nor even anybody with an apparent hankering to become such. And one could say, too, that the reason there are no Latter-day Saint divinity schools is because there is no Mormon interest in theology. On the other hand, there are many fine Latter-day Saint historians, and a small but solid and growing group of biblical scholars (perhaps another species of the genus historian). And even the so-called “theologians” of Mormondom men such as Bruce R. McConkie and James E. Talmage have not done anything even remotely resembling theology as it is practiced in other Christian traditions. (For what it’s worth, “systematic theology” is effectively nonexistent within Judaism and Islam, too.) What is more, several of those “theologians” including Hugh W. Nibley, probably including Joseph Fielding Smith, certainly including B. H. Roberts have actually been historians.⁷²

Mormonism’s nonspeculative character is hardly a secret. In fact, it is frequently seen as a liability. Thus, in his recent bestseller How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill offers a glib and superficial summary of Manichaeism, concluding with the judgment that “it couldn’t keep up with Augustine’s fearlessly inquiring mind.” Then, entirely gratuitously, he offers a modern analogy: “Like . . . Mormonism, it was full of assertions, but could yield no intellectual system to nourish a great intellect.”⁷³ In its 1997 cover story on the church, Time magazine spoke of “a vacuum of theological talent in a church with a lot of unusual theology to explain.”⁷⁴ And back when the Washington D.C. Temple was dedicated, the student newspaper at nearby Georgetown University published a lengthy article in which some of its editors responded to their tour of the building during its open house. Their report was not favorable. At one point, they met the president of the new temple, a retired executive (as I recall) from the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Shaking his hand, the writer observed with unconcealed contempt, one could not overlook the fact that it was a hand that must have sold many sewing machines in its day.

It is difficult for an intellectually inclined Latter-day Saint not to feel some pain at our lack of a sophisticated theological tradition. Years ago, I had the opportunity of studying, one on one, for several months, with the late Father Georges Anawati of the Institut Do minicain d’…tudes Orientales in Cairo. He was one of the great authorities in the world on Islamic philosophy, and we spent many hours together reading and discussing several important texts. He was fascinated by the fact that I was a Latter-day Saint and frequently joked about it in a good-natured way. (Father Anawati was, I would judge, incapable of anything malicious. I fully concur with F. E. Peters’s expression of thanks, in a book published that same year, to “PËre Anawati, O.P., of Cairo and the Kingdom of God.”⁷⁵ When I left Egypt, I presented him with a leather-bound “triple combination” as a farewell gift. He assured me that he would place it in the section of the Dominican Institute’s library that he called “limbo.”) At a certain stage in our relationship, I was overcome by a feeling of inferiority before the vast and ancient intellectual traditions Father Anawati represented both Islamic and Catholic. How improbable it suddenly seemed to me that God’s true church resided in the arid Great Basin of the American West, among a relatively unsophisticated people with a very short history.

And yet, that is precisely how an early Christian might have felt.

The first few pages of the Recognitions of Clement, a Christian text from perhaps the first half of the third century, offer us a glimpse of a clash between Hellenized philosophical culture and a Christian witness that had not yet succumbed to the attractions of that culture. The first-person narrator, who identifies himself as Clement of Rome, tells of his youthful anxiety about the immortality of the human soul and his desperate search for proof of it. A talented young man, Clement joined the philosophical schools of his native city but was very disappointed and depressed to find no truly convincing arguments and to see that his teachers and fellow students were more interested in demonstrating their cleverness than in attaining to the truth. So desperate did he become that he even, for a time, considered taking up spiritualism.

But then rumors began to reach Rome of a great and powerful worker of miracles in the distant land of Palestine. And one day, while he was walking in the city, Clement ran into what can only be described as a Christian missionary “street meeting.” A Jewish Christian named Barnabas was proclaiming the coming of Christ to the passersby. “When I heard these things,” recalls Clement,

I began, with the rest of the multitude, to follow him, and to hear what he had to say. Truly I perceived that there was nothing of dialectic artifice [i.e., arguments of the kind that were cultivated in the philosophical schools] in the man, but that he expounded with simplicity, and without any craft of speech, such things as he had heard from the Son of God, or had seen. For he did not confirm his assertions by the force of arguments, but produced, from the people who stood round about him, many witnesses of the sayings and marvels which he related.

A number of those in the crowd were impressed and began to give credence to what Barnabas and his fellow witnesses related. But then a group of philosophically minded onlookers challenged Barnabas. They “began to laugh at the man, and to flout him, and to throw out for him the grappling-hooks of syllogisms, like strong arms.” Why do tiny gnats have six legs and a pair of wings, while the much larger elephant has only four legs and no wings at all? But Barnabas declined to enter into their silly objections. “We have it in charge,” he said, “to declare to you the words and the wondrous works of Him who hath sent us, and to confirm the truth of what we speak, not by artfully devised arguments, but by witnesses produced from amongst yourselves.”

The crowd now mocked him, saying that he was a barbarian that is, a foreigner, presumably with a funny accent and a madman. At this, though, Clement could remain silent no longer. “Most righteously does Almighty God hide His will from you,” Clement cried out,

whom He foresaw to be unworthy of the knowledge of Himself, as is manifest to those who are really wise, from what you are now doing. For when you see that preachers of the will of God have come amongst you, because their speech makes no show of knowledge of the grammatical art, but in simple and unpolished language they set before you the divine commands, so that all who hear may be able to follow and to understand the things that are spoken, you deride the ministers and messengers of your salvation, not knowing that it is the condemnation of you who think yourselves skilful and eloquent, that rustic and barbarous men have the knowledge of the truth; whereas, when it has come to you, it is not even received as a guest. . . . Thus you are convicted of not being friends of truth and philosophers [i.e., lovers of wisdom], but followers of boasting and vain speakers. Ye think that truth dwells not in simple, but in ingenious and subtle words, and produce countless thousands of words which are not to be rated at the worth of one word. What, then, do ye think will become of you, all ye crowd of Greeks, if there is to be, as he says, a judgment of God?⁷⁶

Is selling sewing machines any less spiritual or dignified than sewing and mending nets on the Sea of Galilee? Is fishing a more intellectual pursuit than serving as a corporate executive? Were the Georgetown writers biblically justified in looking down their noses at the president of the Washington D.C. Temple? Would a modern Latter-day Saint intellectual be biblically justified in sharing their contempt to any degree at all? I remember an interview, from a decade or so ago, with a Harvard Divinity School student who was a disciple of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. He was asked whether he didn’t feel it rather incongruous to devote his increasingly sophisticated theological understanding to the interpretation of writings by a man who had received no theological education at all. “Oh,” he replied, feigning denseness. “Are you referring to St. Peter?” It was a very good answer.

So, while it may be understandable that some of us wish for a sophisticated theology with which to impress outsiders, that wish may nonetheless be misguided and, perhaps, even morally questionable. It was the early Christian “Apologists” Minucius Felix, Justin Martyr, and others with their desire to make Christianity intellectually respectable, who may have done more than any other group to deform early Christian doctrine. With the best will in the world, they adopted and adapted the philosophical concepts of their day to express Christian beliefs and, in that very process, subtly but unmistakably altered those beliefs. Moreover, Boman is right to lament “the customary European judgment that only the systematists are real thinkers. Whoever is of this opinion will find no thinkers in the Old Testament, for the Israelites were truly no systematizers, even less logicians.”⁷⁷ At least, they didn’t do logic the way Aristotle did logic. “I have repeatedly pointed out,” wrote the great W. F. Albright,

that the Hebrew Bible is the greatest existing monument of empirical logic and that this logic is more exact than formal logic in some important respects. After all, it is based on the cumulative experience of men, and not on postulates or presuppositions which may or may not be correct, as is inevitably true of most postulational reasoning outside of mathematics and the exact sciences.⁷⁸

So Latter-day Saints do not do “theology.” The great historian of doctrine Adolf Harnack “maintained that the Gospel was hellenized and that dogma was a product of the Greek intellect in the soil of the Gospel.”⁷⁹ Once again, if Harnack is correct, the Latter-day Saints have dodged a Hellenizing bullet. What have they missed out on by neglecting this very Greek enterprise? Let us cite a few examples.

o As we have said, Greek philosophy focused its attention on what, in its view, does not change. For the philosophers, by and large, change was seen as a defect. Therefore, whatever is ultimate (and this would obviously include God) must, of necessity, be static and immobile. Moreover, they argued, if something was perfect, any change would inevitably be a change from the perfect, and therefore a change for the worse. In their understanding, whatever changes, including the world of experience and history, is of a lesser order and a lower rank than that which does not change. Indeed, things subject to change were thought to be less real than things purportedly beyond change.

The orthodox, traditional Christian concept of God falls within this philosophical tradition that the fixed is superior. In other words, traditional Christian ideas about God are based on Greek models of what it means to be. . . . From this unchangeableness follow all the attributes of the traditional God (that he is static, unembodied, and atemporal).⁸⁰

Latter-day Saints reject these attributes.

o “Motionless and fixed being is for the Hebrews a nonentity; it does not exist for them. Only ‘being’ which stands in inner relation with something active and moving is a reality to them. This could also be expressed: only movement (motion) has reality.”⁸¹ It is readily evident therefore, that Aristotle’s conception of God as the Unmoved Mover could not have arisen on Hebrew soil. And, thus, that such attempts to demonstrate the existence of God as the cosmological proof have little if anything to do with the God of the Bible.

Latter-day Saints have paid virtually no attention to the cosmological or other proofs of the existence of God. Instead, they come to conviction of his reality through the narratives of the scriptures and the early days of this final dispensation and through the seemingly subjective (because personal and individualized) witness of the Spirit.

o “Unlike Greek, Hebrew does not conceive of anything immaterial or unembodied, even in thought.”⁸² Latter-day Saints are famously anthropomorphic in their conception of the divine. “There is no such thing as immaterial matter” (D&C 131:7), taught Joseph Smith.

o The Greeks tended to see a qualitative gulf between “time” and “eternity.”

Eternity for [Plato] is not endless astronomical time, but the life-form of the divine world to which God also belongs. Time designates for him the life-form of the world of nature, the world produced by God. By way of analogy with the origin of the world, which he defines as a reflection of divinity, Plato calls time a moving image of eternity (Timaeus 38).⁸³

Aristotle is in agreement with the maxim that time destroys: everything grows old under the pressure of time and is forgotten in the course of time, but nothing grows new or beautiful through time. Hence we regard time in itself more as destructive than constructive. That which exists eternally, e.g. a geometrical proposition, does not belong to time. This contempt for time by so clear and sober a mind as Aristotle’s tells us more about the difference between Greek and Hebrew conceptions of time than all attempts to understand the Greek concept of time philosophically. For this reason, too, everything pertaining only to space, e.g. geometry, was so highly regarded, and the Greek gods and the divine world had to be conceived as exempt from all time, transitoriness, and change because time, change, and transitoriness are synonymous terms.⁸⁴

The Hebrews, on the other hand, tended to see the difference between “time” and “eternity” as a quantitative one. Eternity is pretty much like time, only much, much longer.

Our notion of eternity inherited from Plato . . . is at base the same thing as the divine beyond (Jenseits), and is therefore rather more something spatial than something temporal. The Hebrew language has no word for the same notion; Hebrew equivalents for eternity are temporal to the extent that they do not signify things beyond but things pertaining to this life. . . .

The commonest word for boundless time is cÙlam; according to the most widespread and likeliest explanation the word is derived from calam meaning “hide, conceal”. In the term >Ùlam is contained a designation of time extending so far that it is lost to our sight and comprehension in darkness and invisibility. . . .

Even when cÙlam is used of God, it suggests only unbounded time and does not refer to his being beyond time or to his transcendence.⁸⁵

Like the Hebrews, Latter-day Saints do not expect to encounter, in eternity, a mode of existence utterly unlike our present mortal existence. “When the Savior shall appear,” taught the Prophet Joseph Smith, “we shall see him as he is. We shall see that he is a man like ourselves. And that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy” (D&C 130:1-2).⁸⁶

“When it comes to thinking about divine things,” writes my friend and colleague James Faulconer, “I think it not too much to say that, by itself, Greek thinking locks us out of an understanding of God as a living and acting being, handing us over to the theology of a static and immutable, in other words, dead, god.”⁸⁷ I agree. With him, “I believe that most of what passes for talk about God, whether positive or negative, is talk about a god who is not the God of Israel.”⁸⁸ I also believe that Mormonism represents in its broad outlines and its general approach, as well as in many of its details, something very similar to what we find in the Bible and in early Christianity.

I do not want to push things too far. Latter-day Saints are not exactly the same, in their attitudes, as early Christians. There is too much water under the bridge for that, including the scientific and industrial revolutions, the Renaissance, the age of discovery, the Crusades, different languages and cultures, and many other factors. No two people can ever see anything in precisely the same way, owing to their differing psychologies and personal histories. And if this is true for contemporary neighbors, it must necessarily be true for peoples separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles. And, of course, the New Testament itself is not entirely pure of Greek influences. There is, for example, the use of the term logos in both John 1 and Middle Platonism particularly in John’s Platonic Jewish contemporary, Philo.

But the claim that Mormonism represents a restoration of authentically ancient biblical faith seems, to me, entirely plausible, in the big picture as in the small.

Notes

¹ Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek (New York: Norton, 1970), 17.

² Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum 7.9.

³ See Walter Bauer’s famous Rechtgl‰ubigkeit und Ketzerei im ‰ltesten Chris tentum, translated into English as Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Phila delphia: Fortress, 1971).

⁴ On this, see Morris S. Seale, Muslim Theology: A Study of Origins with Reference to the Church Fathers (London: Luzac, 1964), 8.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism, translated by Robert M. Wilson (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), 284. Rudolph, Gnosis, 308, thinks that Gnosticism reached Alexandria from the Syria-Palestine area in the first two decades of the second century. On Basilides, see ibid., 309-12.

⁷ Seale, Muslim Theology, 8-9.

⁸ William R. Inge, The Philosophy of Plotinus, 3rd ed. (New York: Longmans, Green, 1948), 1:12-13.

⁹ Ibid., 1:14; cf. 1:60.

¹⁰ Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 2:179 n. 14.

¹¹ Edwin Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity (Gloucester, Mass.: Smith, 1970), 1. It should be remarked that Hatch’s modern annotator, F.C. Grant, cannot let the passage I have quoted go by without comment. “The famous contrast between Jesus on the mount, preaching his imperious ethical sermon, and the later church reciting the Nicene Creed amid the pompous ritual of the fourth century is grossly unfair and does violence to the whole conception of the historical development of religion” (see ibid., xii). I do not entirely agree. In any event, Hatch’s stated question is an important and valid one.

¹² Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 27; compare 19. One must always beware of oversimplifications, of course. Nietzsche famously distinguished between Apollonian and Dionysiac elements within Greek culture itself. But Dionysus may have been a foreign god, brought into Greece proper by Thracian invaders.

¹³ See Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 27.

¹⁴ The arrangement of Hans Wehr’s very important Arabic-English Dictionary makes the priority of verbal meanings over nominal meanings visibly clear.

¹⁵ Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 68.

¹⁶ See ibid., 65.

¹⁷ Goethe, Faust, 1.1.889. On this, see Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 65-66.

¹⁸ Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 69.

¹⁹ Ibid., 38.

²⁰ James E. Faulconer, Scripture Study: Tools and Suggestions (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1999), 140. Once again, the same thing is true in Arabic: The verb qama/yaqumu, to choose the same example, means both “to get up” and “to stand” or “to continue standing.”

²¹ Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 17 n. 2, citing the J¸disches Lexikon.

²² Ibid., 115-16.

²³ Ibid.,117. Latter-day Saints, of course, will be tempted to see something significant in a connection between participation in a ritual drama and human deification.

²⁴ Ibid., 76.

²⁵ Ibid., 205.

²⁶ See R. W. Dyson, trans., Augustine: The City of God against the Pagans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), xxviii. In his introduction, Professor Dyson notes of St. Augustine that, “despite his initial misgivings, he came eventually to feel that the Church may and should call upon the secular magistrate to aid her in her struggle against heretics and schismatics.”

²⁷ Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 45.

²⁸ Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1975), vii.

²⁹ She herself spent a great deal of time on the psychoanalyst’s couch (see Newell G. Bringhurst, Fawn McKay Brodie: A Biographer’s Life [Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999], 268), and the second edition of her biography of the Prophet, particularly, is an explicit attempt to portray Joseph Smith in psychobiographical terms. Compare Davis Bitton and Leonard J. Arrington, Mormons and Their Historians (Salt Lake City: Uni versity of Utah Press, 1988), 115.

³⁰ Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 202.

³¹ Ibid., 203.

³² Ibid., 204.

³³ It was to this same immediate if incommunicable perception he termed it dhawq, or “taste” that the great Islamic theologian al-Ghazali ultimately resorted. See his spiritual autobiography, Al-Munqidh min al-ŒalÂl (“The Deliverer from Error”), available in various translations.

³⁴ Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 205.

³⁵ Heinrich Rickert, Die Grenzen der Naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung: Eine logische Einleitung in die historischen Wissenschaften (Freiberg i. B: Mohr, 1896-1902), 441-42, as summarized in ibid., 169.

³⁶ Ibid., 170.

³⁷ Ibid., 51.

³⁸ As suggested in ibid., 51-52.

³⁹ Plato, Republic 514a-517a (Book VII). I use the version given by Allan Bloom, trans., The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 193-196.

⁴⁰ Plato, Phaedrus 247, in The Dialogues of Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett (Chi cago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), 125.

⁴¹ Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 53-54, emphasis in the original.

⁴² I have treated this subject, among other places, in a paper entitled “Ascension Soteriology and the Great Chain of Being: Some Islamic Evidence,” presented at the Mulla Sadra Conference in Tehran, Iran, 23-27 May 1999. The paper is scheduled to be published in the proceedings of that conference.

⁴³ Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 155.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 175.

⁴⁵ Goethe, Faust, 2.5.

⁴⁶ Reinhold Niebuhr, Faith and History: A Comparison of Christian and Modern Views of History (New York: Scribners, 1949), 16, as cited in Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 169.

⁴⁷ Plato, Phaedo 64, in The Dialogues of Plato, 223-224.

⁴⁸ Porphyry, Peri tou Plotinou Biou 1 (my translation).

⁴⁹ Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, 2.

⁵⁰ Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 1:429 n. 6, warns against just such a racialist interpretation.

⁵¹ Hodgson develops the concept at some length, in ibid., 1:359-409.

⁵² Ibid., 1:410.

⁵³ Ibid., 1:410-411; cf. 1:432.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 1:412.

⁵⁵ See ibid.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 1:413. On these sciences, see ibid.,1:413-425.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 1:422-423.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 1:440; cf. 1:441.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 1:422; cf. 1:418.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 1:431; cf. 1:441.

⁶¹ Ibid., 1:440-41; cf. 1:443.

⁶² On which, see Majid Fakhry, Islamic Occasionalism and Its Critique by AverroÎs and Aquinas (London: Allen and Unwin, 1958).

⁶³ Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 1:428. The Gnostics have also been described as, in a certain sense, devaluing history in order to emphasize rather that which is timeless. See Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 159-60.

⁶⁴ Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 171.

⁶⁵ Donald K. McKim, Theological Turning Points: Major Issues in Christian Thought (Atlanta: Knox, 1988), 8.

⁶⁶ General letter of Hyrum Smith (December 1839), Times and Seasons 1 (1839): 20, 23, cited at Richard Lloyd Anderson, Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1981), 148.

⁶⁷ Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 172. By contrast, Boman observes on page 179 that the author of the book of Job “cannot refer to Jahveh’s revelation in history because Job, as a non-Israelite, does not know of it.” So the book of Job is full of awe at the wonders of God’s creation.

⁶⁸ See George S. Tate, “The Typology of the Exodus Pattern in the Book of Mor mon,” in Literature of Belief: Sacred Scripture and Religious Experience, edited by Neal E. Lambert (Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1981), 245-262; Terrence L. Szink, “To a Land of Promise (1 Nephi 16-18),” in 1 Nephi to Alma 29, edited by Kent P. Jackson (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1987), 60-72; S. Kent Brown, “The Exodus Pattern in the Book of Mormon” BYU Studies 30/3 (1990): 112-126; Bruce J. Boehm, “Wanderers in the Promised Land: A Study of the Exodus Motif in the Book of Mormon and Holy Bible,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 3/1 (1994): 185-203; Mark J. Johnson, “The Exodus of Lehi Revisited,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 3/2 (1994): 123-126. See also David B. Honey and Daniel C. Peterson, “Advocacy and Inquiry in the Writing of Latter-day Saint History,” BYU Studies 31/2 (1991): 139-179, for a discussion of the ancient tradition of “exemplar historiography.”

⁶⁹ In his “The Ways of Remembrance,” in Rediscovering the Book of Mormon, edited by John L. Sorenson and Melvin J. Thorne (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1991), 168-176, and “‘O Man, Remember, and Perish Not,'” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon, ed. John W. Welch (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1992), 127-29.

⁷⁰ For an interesting study of Mormon historical pageants and related matters, see Davis Bitton, The Ritualization of Mormon History and Other Essays (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 171-187.

⁷¹ See Mark K. Taylor, ed., Paul Tillich: Theologian of the Boundaries (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 107, where Tillich, writing of his fellow theologian Karl Barth, says, “Historical criticism is of so little concern to Barth that he can quite avowedly express his indifference toward the question of the existence or non-existence of the ‘historical Jesus’. He does not reject the historical research of the liberals, but he treats it as a trifling matter, of which his Christology is independent.” It isn’t altogether clear, however, that Tillich’s own view on this matter was substantially different: “Religious symbols, he [Tillich] insisted, should not symbolize any-thing or actual event. The ‘truth’ of a symbol is always truth for someone and not about something. The proper posture of man is not credulous acceptance of merely probable empirical statements like ‘Jesus was resurrected’ a proposition he felt was absurd if taken at all literally but concern, concern about one’s own being and therefore about that which is the ground of all finite being(s). Faith is not the acceptance of factual propositions about ‘doubtful historical probabilities’ like the resurrection of Jesus, even if the probability were high. ‘If the Christian faith is based even on a 100,000 to 1 probability that Jesus has said or done or suffered this or that; if Christianity is based on possible birth-registers of Nazareth or crime-registers of Pontius Pilate, then it has lost its foundation completely.'” In fact, “As far back as 1911 he was busy trying to show ‘how the Christian doctrine might be understood if the non- existence of the historical Jesus should become historically probable.'” Louis Midgley, “Religion and Ultimate Concern: An Encounter with Paul Tillich’s Theology,” Dialogue 1/2 (1966): 68-69 (where the primary source references to Tillich are supplied). Alison Coutts reminds me of Tillich’s dismissal of the historical reality of Jesus’ resurrection. See Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957), 2:155-58.

⁷² For reflections on the place of theology in Mormon thinking or the lack of such a place see Louis C. Midgley, “Theology,” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4:1475-1476.

⁷³ Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 49.

⁷⁴ Time, 4 August 1997, 55.

⁷⁵ F.E. Peters, Children of Abraham: Judaism/Christianity/Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), xi.

⁷⁶ The account occurs at Recognitions of Clement 1.1-9. Hugh Nibley summarizes it in The World and the Prophets (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1987), 34-38. I use the translation of Thomas Smith, as featured in Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson, 1994), 8:77-79.

⁷⁷ Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 196.

⁷⁸ William F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: A Historical Analysis of Two Contrasting Faiths (Garden City: Doubleday, 1968), 177. But even the mathematical sciences and symbolic logic are subject to personal predilections; perhaps Professor Albright was too impressed by them. On this, see William E. Barrett, The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization (Garden City: Anchor, 1978), 3-117.

⁷⁹ As summarized by Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 18.

⁸⁰ Faulconer, Scripture Study, 135, 136.

⁸¹ Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 31.

⁸² Faulconer, Scripture Study, 137.

⁸³ Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, 127.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 128.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 151-152.

⁸⁶ Many years ago, Brigham Young University’s Dennis Rasmussen published a fascinating essay on Platonic and anti-Platonic concepts of immortality that deserves more attention from Latter-day Saint thinkers than it seems to have received. (Perhaps Latter-day Saints missed it because it appeared in a non-Mormon academic philosophical journal.) See Dennis Rasmussen, “Immortality: Revolt against Being,” The Personalist 56/1 (1975): 66-74.

⁸⁷ Faulconer, Scripture Study, 150-151.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 136-137.