Chauncey C. Riddle Brigham Young University 18 Mar. 1988
Riddle, Chauncey C. (1988) “Language and Human Being,” Deseret Language and Linguistic Society Symposium: Vol. 14: Iss. 1, Article 17. Available at: http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/dlls/vol14/iss1/17
Riddle, Chauncey C. (1988) “Language and Human Being,” Deseret Language and Linguistic Society Symposium: Vol. 14: Iss. 1, Article 17.
Introduction
The human be-ing considered in this paper is the
dynamic becoming of Aristotle, the concern with
what happens as one acts as a human being rather than the static essence of being projected in a Platonic
fashion. This paper is thus the attempt to
answer the questions, What happens to human beings as they use language? What
is the unique contribution to being a human being which the use of language affords?
An initial attempt was made to cast the answers to these
questions in naturalistic terms. It was soon perceived that such an approach,
in addition to being a deliberate falsification of the context, yielded but a
very impoverished account of the human situation. There are two pieces of
knowledge which we have that bear powerfully on the questions at hand: all men
are the literal children of the gods, and those parent-gods have given to men
the language which they enjoy. This second point is not meant to deny the
historic development of individual languages, which may be considered
naturalistically. It is simply to note that there was an initial endowment of
language, a superior language, which was given to men no more than two hundred
human generations ago. The effect of that endowment is the subject of this
paper.
Theses
Normal acquisition of any
“natural” human language accomplishes four
things:
Language enables each human being to attain to a fullness of agency and to accountability, which are the measures of being a fully functioning human being. The power of language unto choosing good or evil is so great and so important that everyone who enters mortality must acquire language before his or her mortal probation is complete.
Language enables each human being to understand the message of salvation from God, to enter into a covenant with God to receive that salvation, and to abide that covenant unto the receiving of salvation.
How we communicate is a large part of our salvation; using language correctly is the key to that perfect communication.
The choices one makes between good and evil using language thrust one beyond being a human being into becoming either a devil or a servant of Jesus Christ.
1. Agency and accountability.
Definition of agency: There are three necessary and sufficient conditions for agency: There must be (1) an intelligent (goal-oriented) being, who has (2) knowledge of alternatives among which to choose to solve his problems (fulfill his goals or desires), and who has (3) power to carry out the choices he makes to fulfill his desires. There is a rudimentary agency which higher animals may be said to have, for instance, as they select a preference as to where to rest or what to cat as they fulfill desire by doing as they choose. Human beings without language (e.g., wolf children) have this rudimentary agency after the animal fashion.
But a fullness of human agency comes only with linguistic development. Language and the rich communication it makes possible greatly expand the range of desire (expands the horizon of possibilities) for each individual. Language and the resulting communication furnish vastly increased knowledge, including the possibility of tapping the corporate memory of humankind (the writings and memories of other persons), thus to increase the range of means available for choice unto the satisfaction of desire. Language and communication bring to men vastly increased technical and other ability to implement the means chosen for the fulfillment of desire. The end result of this increased agency is what we call civilization, a plethora of choices, understandings and power which enables human beings seek successfully and revel in a marvelous panoply of satisfactions. Language enables a human being to desire things both real and imaginary, to reach for the stars or to plumb the depths.
Accountability, unlike agency, is made possible only through
language acquisition. Accountability is the ability of a person to give a
linguistic account of what, how and why he or she has acted. Accountability
presupposes normal human agency: that the person accounting acted out of choice
as to what, how and why he or she acted. While agency is relative (one person
has vastly different powers of choice, knowledge and action than another),
accountability only demands that the person acted by choosing and can give an
account of that choosing. This accountability is what enables human beings to
act rationally, according to a principle or rule, for if one can give account
of the past, one can also bind oneself to act in a certain manner in the
future. This ability is the basis of most cooperation, of contracts and legal
arrangements, of law and order in civilization. Two great barriers to
civilization are thus inability to communicate through language and mendacity
when communication is possible. Clearly it is the communication of good things
in a truthful manner which advances civilization.
Choice always involves values as well as mere physical
alternatives, thus necessitating a consideration of good and evil. One
construal of the value dichotomy is to see good as that which one has learned
by induction fulfills his desires, or is sufficiently like what has fulfilled
his desires that it is reasonable to believe by induction that the desire will
be fulfilled again by the look-alike. Evil is the value attached to things
which are undesirable, which past experience has shown to bring pain or
dissatisfaction, and this value is extended by induction to things which appear
to be like the bearers of dissatisfaction in the past. This definition of good
and evil explains the actions of human beings and of many species of animals,
all of whom have a measure of agency and can learn from experience.
The Restored Gospel perspective tells us that the definition of good and evil given above is not sufficient, that there is another good and evil which may be considered the real thing, with the former being but a preliminary. In the Restored Gospel, Good is the will of God and only the will of God. The will of man in choosing either the good or the evil under the first definition of them constitute what is Evil in the Restored Gospel. Thus in the Restored Gospel, the emphasis shifts from the anticipated utility or non-utility of making a choice to a recognition of whose will it is that is determining the choice. Motive or reasonfor choosing becomes more important than what is being chosen. Thus the new standard is that only God is good, and men to become good-doers must relinquish doing their own will to doing the will of God if they desire to escape from the doing of evil.
Thus men may and do choose between good and evil pre-linguistically,
even as do animals. But to be able to choose between Good and Evil one must
have normal human linguistic development so that the understanding of Good and
Evil may be made manifest to an individual. Good and Evil are abstractions
which have no physical exemplifications, whereas good and evil are based on
physical experience. Thus Good and Evil are seen only through the eye of faith,
which is believing in the revelations of an actual non-human being who speaks
to men, to each person in his own natural language and concepts, to explain to
each the new understanding of Good and Evil. One then learns that he has known
Good all along, for it is the light of Christ which is given to all men.
It is what one has done with the knowledge of the Good, given
by revelation, that each man must account before his Father and his Maker. This
agency to know the Good and the Evil, and to be able to account for what one
has done with that agency is so important that no human being is ever judged by
God until he or she has received full linguistic development to enjoy that
agency.
2. Language and Salvation.
Salvation in the Restored Gospel is to be placed beyond the
power of our enemies. It is essentially a passive matter, though it requires
all we can do. What we can do is never sufficient, but does enable us to
receive the gifts of salvation from Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ saves men from four things. He saves them from
the grave (from the power of Satan to prevent a reuniting of body and spirit in
the resurrection). He can save them from the eternal consequences of having
committed sins. He can save them from the littleness of knowledge and power and
righteousness which so characterizes human beings. And he can save them from
the evil in their own hearts which makes them unable to love God and keep his
commandments. Resurrection, the salvation of the body, is given as a free gift
to all mankind. Rut the other forms of salvation, which are sanctification,
justification and purification, come only by covenant, by contract. One has to
enter into an agreement with God to act in a certain manner (to choose and do
only the Good). It is not possible to understand either the offerer of that
covenant or the covenant except through language. There must be an
understanding of things which are not seen, and an agreement to live by
influences which are not seen; these things can only be accomplished by way of
language, building on what is seen. Thus language is an indispensable clement
in the salvation offered to men through Jesus Christ from anything but the
grave.
3. The covenant of salvation involves how we communicate and how we use language.
Communication is any
affect which one being has upon another. The following is a taxonomy of
communication:
Sensory communication:
Visual: Seeing or appearing (to be seen).
Auditory: Making noise or hearing.
Tactile: Touching or being touched (e.g., shaking hands).
Olfactory: To emit or to detect an odor.
Gustatory: To taste or be tasted.
Impact communication: To apply sufficient force or energy to another person to move or change some part of their body; or to receive the same.
Substance communication: To give or take from another person’s possession something material.
Chemical communication: To introduce a substance into the body of another person which changes their body chemistry; or to receive the same.
Indirect communication: To affect something another person owns or holds dear by any of the means of communication; or to be affected in this manner.
Privative: to deny another person any of the above communication modes when that person desires and expects the same, or to suffer this same treatment from another person.
We honor other persons in the Restored Gospel manner only by
communicating to preserve their agency. When we use language to communicate
with them to gain their full cooperation and agreement as to other possible
means of communicating with them, we honor their agency, their choice. Thus we
will not communicate with others except visually, and through language (which
may involve auditory or tactile language forms), until we have their full
permission to do so. Thus a doctor would not
operate on someone who has agency until he has explained the proposed procedure
and has gained the patient’s cooperation (unless the patient is unconscious or
not accountable for some other reason).
We can and do honor God in the Restored Gospel only by communicating with anything or anyone just as he instructs us. Thus God instructs his servants as to how to pray, how to speak, how to govern, how to teach, how to administer, how to preach; in all things we are to do his will.
We cannot abide the covenants of the Restored Gospel except
we communicate as he, God, directs: to honor
and love him and our fellow human beings. Thus
our keeping the covenants and obtaining salvation involves using language, the
increase in agency which he gives us, in a very special manner.
One of the special manners of communication which God makes
available to his faithful servants is the power of the priesthood. The
priesthood is the power of God, which faithful servants may use as he directs.
To use the priesthood is to speak in the
name of God, to command or to instruct using the power of God to bring to pass
his eternal purposes. As men increase in righteousness, their priesthood power
increases and the necessity of communicating to control or to subdue evil by physical
communication is lessened, as when Enoch set at defiance
the armies of the enemies of Zion by using his priesthood power. By speaking,
the gods created the heavens and the earth. By
speaking, the mind and will of God arc brought
to pass by one who has learned to abide the mind and will of God by obedience to every word that proceedeth forth from
his mouth.
4. Language, the tool which makes us fully human, is so powerful that the experience of using it thrust us beyond be a human being to become a devil or an eternal servant of Jesus Christ.
It is language which makes us fully conscious of good and evil and which enables us to understand clearly Good and Evil. Thus men have become as the gods, knowing good and evil. Knowing good and evil, men must choose between goodand evil in all things. That choosing has eternal consequences, one of which is the fact that human choices are either for Good or for Evil in all we do. Thus in all things man gives allegiance to God, or to Satan (who is the author and proprietor of Evil).
As a man chooses the way of Good and of God, he becomes
godly and a candidate for glory. Eventually everyone except the sons of
perdition will choose the Good and God, and will inherit glory. Some will make
that choice late, and will be inheritors of a telestial glory. Others will
choose earlier, and will inherit a terrestrial glory. Some choose Good and God
when they first have the opportunity, and thus qualify for the celestial glory,
the presence of the Father and the Son. But all who choose Good are servants of
Jesus Christ, doing his will and furthering the cause of Good in the universe,
of their own free will and choice, to all eternity.
Those who first know the way of Good and God, accept it, try
it, taste of the powers it brings—and then renounce Good and God, are the sons
of perdition. Through language they come to understand the spirit and manner of
God in pursuit of Good, then they use language to lie, to deceive, to curse, to
fight against the Good. Thus if they go down to their deaths in such a
condition, they are past the possibility of repentance and thus must remain in
the state they have chosen to all eternity, servants to Satan, whom they have
chosen over God.
Thus language is the power which makes us fully human, but
is so powerful that we cannot remain in this human condition. The power of
language is so great in giving us knowledge and opportunity and in enabling us
to act for Good or for Evil, that we are thrust beyond being human beings to
become immortal beings, persons who espouse and promote Good or Evil, according
to their own choice, for all eternity.
Conclusion
Thus language is the greatest power and instrumentality
which human beings possess. It is the power which opens the whole expanse of
eternity to each person, then closes one’s own choices upon one alternative for
that eternity. It is difficult to overestimate the importance and place of
language in the human scheme. We are judged by what we do. But only through
language can we do the greatest Good or the greatest Evil.
Chauncey C. Riddle Professor of Philosophy Brigham Young University Originally given in 1988
Chapter 15 in The Prophet Joseph: Essays on the Life and Mission of Joseph Smith, edited by Larry C. Porter and Susan Easton Black, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1988), pp. 261–279.
One important question a thinking Latter-day Saint might ask
concerning Joseph Smith is, What are the basic beliefs of his thinking? In
other words, what are the fundamental ideas which are part of all that he felt,
thought, and did?
This question is important because the mind of Joseph Smith
was shaped by God himself; the thinking as represented in the scriptures which
came through him is a prime clue to the nature of the mind of God. And since it
is the opportunity of each Latter-day Saint to come to have one mind with God
and with all of the holy prophets since the beginning,
this question also comes down to what each of us should believe.
I will attempt to isolate the most important features of the thinking of the Prophet Joseph Smith. This is not a work of scholarship, for no scholarly methodology enables one to make the value judgments necessary to this task. This writing is more a personal testimony, an editorial on the life and thought of the Prophet. Admittedly it represents my personal opinions, based on a lifetime of study of the scriptures and pondering of the doctrines of the restored gospel. A similar effort on the part of everyone is an important labor in establishing Zion as we strive to attain one mind, the Savior’s mind.
This paper lists and elaborates the ideas which I believe
are central to the thought of Joseph Smith and to the thought of all others who
pursue the revelations of the true and living God in the hope of being saved
from ignorance and impurity. My method is to give the reader a trisection by
which to contemplate these ideas. One aspect will be quotations from the
nonscriptural writings of the Prophet, another will be scriptural references,
and still another will be my comments.
1. The heart of man is the key, the most
important factor of man’s being. “Thus you see, my dear brother, the
willingness of our heavenly Father to forgive sins, and restore to favor all
those who are willing to humble themselves before Him and confess their sins,
and forsake them, and return to Him with full purpose of heart, acting no
hypocrisy, to serve Him to the end.” 1
The four parts of man are the heart, which is the function
of desiring and choosing; the mind, which is the function of understanding,
knowing, and planning; the strength, which is the physical body of man, having
the functions of sensing, acting, and procreating; and the might, which is the
influence of a person (of the heart, mind, and strength) as that person acts in
the world. Thus the four important things to understand about any person in a
given situation are the person’s motive (heart), intention (mind), action
(strength), and resulting influence (might)—the most important of these being
heart, for it is the independent variable. (2 Nephi 31:13: “Follow the Son,
with full purpose of heart.”).
2. Man’s life consists of using one’s heart and
mind to choose and act.“A
man may be saved, after the judgment, in the terrestrial kingdom, or in the
telestial kingdom, but he can never see the celestial kingdom of God, without
being born pf water and the Spirit. He may receive a glory like unto the moon [i.e., of which the light
of the moon is typical] or a star, [i.e., of which the light of the stars is
typical]: but can never come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living
God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels; to the
general assembly and Church of the Firstborn, which are written in heaven and
to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to
Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant unless he becomes as a little child, and
is taught by the Spirit of God.”2
To live is to act. To act is to sense a problem, perceive the situation, choose and plan a solution, and act to create a change the odd in the hope of solving the problem. The world is ones environment. A person acts to change that environment so that the desires of the person will be fulfilled. Actions do not always result in the fulfillment of desire, but persons always act to fulfill desire. (Proverbs 23.7. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”)
To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction in people as well as in particles, so whenever a person act; to change hi environment, that action also changes himself. (2 Nephi 2:1: “Opposition in all things.”) The specific change of self-involved in a given action is that every choosing creates a propensity to make a similar choice at a later time. That propensity, if reinforced with similar choices, will eventually create a habit in the person, and habits create a character. (Alma 62:41: “Hardened, … softened.”)
To live a human life is to attempt to reshape one’s
environment; this attempt may or may not
succeed, but the attempt always creates a set of habits, a character, in the
person. A person always succeeds in shaping the
self into the image of that person’s own desires. (D&C 123:11–17.
“Cheerfully do all things that lie in our power.”)
To live spiritually is to act under the direction of the
Holy Spirit, which leads to eternal life, which is the fulness of acting
spiritually. (Moses 6:59: “Enjoy the words of eternal life in this world, and
eternal life in the world to come even immortal glory.”)
3. In every action man must choose between what
he believes to be the better and the worse, between darkness and light.“We again make remark here—for we find
that the very principle upon which the disciples were accounted blessed, was
because they were permitted to see with their eyes and hear with their
ears—that the condemnation which rested upon the multitude that received not
His saying, was because they were not willing to see with their eyes, and hear
with their ears; not because they could not, and were not privileged to see and
hear, but because their hearts were full of iniquity and abominations; ‘as your
fathers did, so do ye.’ The prophet, foreseeing that they would thus harden
their hearts, plainly declared it; and herein is the condemnation of the world;
that light hath come into the world, and men choose darkness rather than light,
because their deeds are evil. This is so plainly taught by the Savior, that a
wayfaring man need not mistake it.”3
What a person thinks is better, the person calls good; and what a person thinks is worse may be called evil. This is to say that every human has agency. The agency consists in being subject to a person’s own desires, thus enabling that person to call some things good because they are desired by the person, and to call some things evil, or bad, or undesirable, because they are not desired by the person.
(Alma 42:7: “Subjects to follow after their own will.”)
Every person has some desires that he or she may act upon and others which he or she is powerless to attain. But in either case, the desiring and planning when one is powerless to act and the desiring and planning and acting when one is able to act both result in habit and character formation. (Mosiah 4:24–25: “you who deny the [poor] … say in your hearts.”)
4. In every action one is influenced toward the good by God and toward evil by Satan. “We admit that God is the great source and fountain from whence proceeds all good; that He is perfect intelligence, and that His wisdom is alone sufficient to govern and regulate the mighty creations and worlds which shine and blaze with such magnificence and splendor over our heads, as though touched with His finger and moved by His Almighty word. And if so, it is done and regulated by law; for without law all must certainly fall into chaos. If, then, we admit that God is the source of all wisdom and understanding, we must admit that by His direct inspiration He has taught man that law is necessary in order to govern and regulate His own immediate interest and welfare; for this reason, that law is beneficial to promote peace and happiness among men. And as before remarked, God is the source from whence proceeds all good; and if man is benefitted by law, then certainly, law is good; and if law is good, then law, or the principle of it emanated from God; for God is the source of all good; consequently, then, he was the first Author of law, or the principle of it, to mankind.” 4
God and Satan may influence man directly or indirectly.
Direct influence comes in the form of personal revelation from either, God
acting upon the spirit (heart and mind) and body of man, and Satan working upon
the body. Or the influence may be indirect, through other human beings, through
illness or calamity, or through natural events. The person receiving these
influences might not recognize either God or Satan as existing or having any
effect in a given situation. But it is fundamental to
scripture-based thinking to recognize that all good that is really good
comes from God and that everything that is evil is sent forth by the power of
Satan. (Moroni 7:11–12: “All things which are good cometh from God; and that
which is evil cometh of the devil.”)
Every person who attains accountability in this world knows both good and evil. But they do not come labeled. Thus there may be a difference between what a given person says is good and what God commends as good. The things individuals call good are relative goods, the desires of the person, and may differ from person to person. (See Moroni 7:14.) The good of God is righteousness and is absolute. Righteousness is so absolute that no human being can find it on his own. Thus it is that the true and living God of righteousness, which is Jesus Christ, is also “the fountain of all righteousness” to mortals on this earth. (Ether 12:28.)
Evil is inherently relative, never absolute, because it is
always simply anything other than the righteousness which God commends at any
given moment. Evil admits of degrees; some things are more evil than others.
But righteousness admits of no degree: one is either righteous or not, which is
to say that one is either yielding to the influence of God to do what is right
at a given moment, or one is not. (James 2:10: “Offend in one point, he is guilty of all”; italics
added.)
5. The righteousness of God is wise sharing in
love; the evil of Satan is selfishness. “Let the Saints remember that
great things depend on their individual exertion, and that they are called to
be co-workers with us and the Holy Spirit in accomplishing the great work of
the last days; and in consideration of the extent, the blessings and glories of
the same let every selfish feeling be not only buried, but annihilated; and let
love to God and man predominate, and reign triumphant in every mind, that their
hearts may become like unto Enoch’s of old, and comprehend all things, present,
past and future, and come behind in no gift, waiting for the coming of the Lord
Jesus Christ.” 5
Righteousness is of God. It is
acting under the direction of God to share the good things one has and can do
with others in such a way that the eternal happiness of any beings affected by
that action is maximized. (2 Nephi 26:24: “He doeth not anything save it be for
the benefit of the world.”) Selfishness is to shorten the God-ordained
blessings of some being in order to try to fulfill one’s own personal desires.
(3 Nephi 1:29: “They became for themselves.”) One work of God among men is to
direct them as to where and how to be generous with those who are less fortunate
than they are. Satan essentially says to each human that one should look out
for himself first, that one should feather his own nest. (Moses 5:29–31:
“Murder and get gain.”)
As a person yields to the influence of God, that person grows in generosity and care for the welfare of others until his love is full, pure, and universal. Thus, over time, that person acquires the character of God. As unselfishness becomes the essence of the person, God is able to share with that person his own purity of heart and fullness of mind and strength. Thus the person grows to be as God, which process eventuates in becoming a god. (D&C 50:24: “Until the perfect day.”)
As a person who was once
cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ yields to the influence of Satan, he becomes
selfish and possessive in character. If he does not repent of that selfishness
before temporal death, then Satan seals that one to himself. (Alma 34:35: “He doth seal you
his.”) But if one turns away from selfishness before one’s character is finally
fixed and partakes to some degree of righteousness through Jesus Christ, that
one may become righteous in character to that same degree and able to endure a
kingdom of glory in eternity. (D&C 76:50–106: “Just men made perfect.”)
It follows also that no action
of any human being is temporal only. Every action has moral ramifications and
eternal consequences. Every action is either a yielding to the influence of God
to do the work of righteousness, or it is yielding to the influence of Satan to
sin. In every act, humans fill the God-given opportunity to make the world a
place of happiness, wisdom, and truth; or, they fulfill the Satan-inspired
opportunity to be self-indulgent, uncaring for others, promoting darkness and
lies. (D&C 29:34–35: “Not at any time have I given unto you a law which was
temporal.”)
One measure of the degree of
evil a person is perpetrating when he acts is the limits of the circle within
which that person is willing to be good to others. Thus an absolute devil has
concern only for himself; everything and anything else, including all human
beings, God, and Satan are simply tools to be used by that person to get what
he wants. A less evil being is “good” to perhaps one other person but acts
selfishly toward anyone else. A being yet less evil may include in the circle
of persons with whom he desires to share all of his immediate or extended
family.
A being still less evil may
extend the boundaries of his positive concern to his village, state, or nation.
But a being cannot become righteous until he is willing to share with everyone—with
his enemies, with all other human beings regardless of their nationality, religion, class orientation,
education, health, or gender, and also with God, Satan, rocks, trees, animals,
stars, etc., ready to share with all in the
manner commended to him by God. (2 Nephi 26:24: “Benefit
of the world.”)
Human tragedy is made when a person attempts to do good for those whom he
loves, tries to do evil to those whom he does not love, and finds that the evil he tries to do to the unloved ones destroys those whom he desires to
love. The tragedy is occasioned, of course, by
the fact that his love for those whom he
desires to love is not pure love, because it does not first focus on love of God. Thus the person finds
that his relative,
personal love is another form of evil, of which he must repent if he wishes to come to God
and be reconciled to true righteousness. (See Matthew 5:43–48.)
6. Acuteness of
heart and mind in man consists in learning to discern the influence of God and
to distinguish it from the influence of Satan.“The Spirit of Revelation is in connection with these
blessings. A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit
of revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you,
it may give you sudden strokes of ideas, so that by noticing it, you may find
it fulfilled the same day or soon; (i.e.) those things what were presented unto
your minds by the Spirit of God, will come to pass; and thus by learning the Spirit
of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of revelation,
until you become perfect in Christ Jesus.”6
Life is an intelligence test. Of all the things a person may attempt in this life, the most important and for some the most difficult task is that of sorting out his or her own heart and mind. Three things must be carefully and accurately identified: the influence of God, the desires and ideas of the self, and the influences of Satan. (D&C 46:7: “Not be seduced by evil spirits.”) This is not strictly a mind problem, as many would make it. It is a heart and a mind problem.
God is to be identified by the fact
that he is the source
of good and of truth. The self is to
be identified as a source of desires and ideas which do not always square with good and truth.
Satan is to be identified by his insistence that
our own desires and ideas are really very good when we ourselves
in our “heart of hearts” know that they are not.
(Moroni 7:16–17: “The way to judge.”)
The person who has not made such identifications lives life
in a fog where everything is relative and
nothing is holy except perhaps himself. This person
is driven to and fro with every wind of doctrine, having no anchor and
no rudder. He or she will likely be an imperfect copy of some stronger nearby
human being. (James 1:5–7: “He that wavereth.”)
One begins to live as an individual
only when one makes these discriminations and begins to use them. One
then knows that God exists and is good, that Satan exists and is evil, and that
one’s self is not either God or Satan but that one may choose between them.
This can be an auspicious beginning of good
things in the person’s life.
7. Wisdom for man
is to learn to act only under the influence of
God.“There is one thing under the sun which I have learned and that is that the righteousness of man is sin
because it exacteth over much; nevertheless,
the righteousness of God is just, because it
exacteth nothing at all, but sendeth rain on the just and the unjust, seed time and harvest, for all of which man is ungrateful.”7
“Every word that proceedeth from
the mouth of Jehovah has such an influence over
the human mind the logical mind that it is
convincing without other testimony. Faith cometh by hearing. If 10000 men testify to a truth you know
would it add to your faith? No, or will 1000
testimonies destroy your knowledge of a fact? No.” 8
Man is free to serve God or to serve himself. Satan’s only
leverage is to encourage an individual to
disobey God in following his own desires. (James
1:13–14: “Own lust.”) But by
paying careful attention, a person may learn to serve God only, never to indulge
the desires of self. (Helaman 3:35: “Purifying … sanctification.”)
The self is motivated to make this dedication only after it
has learned to identify and distinguish carefully between the influence of God
and the influence of Satan. Having attained that enlightenment, the self will
then quickly discern that when one follows the influence of God, things go
well: one’s beliefs then are regularly discovered to be true, and one’s actions
are seen to lead to kindness, love, sharing, and an increase of the happiness
of others whom one affects. Having observed such results, the self then sees
that the only intelligent thing to do is to yield to the influence of God in
all things. (Alma 32:26–43: “Ye must needs
know that the seed is good.”)
There will be momentary doubts for most. To satisfy those
doubts one needs but to relapse into selfishness for a season and bask in its
misery to be reassured that the way of God is real and correct. God is kind and
permits such experiments, but not forever. Before mortal death, each person who
has heard the gospel of Jesus Christ must declare himself or herself. (D&C
88:83: “Seeketh me early.”)
8. The only way wisdom can be attained is to
learn to love with God’s love.“The
names of the faithful are what I wish to record in this place. These I have met
in prosperity, and they were my friends; and I now meet them in adversity, and
they are still my warmer friends. These love the God that I serve; they love
the truths that I promulgate; they love those virtuous, and those holy
doctrines that I cherish in my bosom with the warmest feelings of my heart, and
with that zeal which cannot be denied. I love friendship and truth; I love
virtue and law; I love the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob; and they are
my brethren, and I shall live; and because I live they shall live also.” 9
“Until we have perfect love we are liable to fall and when
we have a testimony that our names are sealed in the Lamb’s book of life we
have perfect love and then it is impossible for false Christs to deceive us.”
10
This is to say that one must not just play at learning to
yield to the influence of God in all things. One must throw one’s whole heart
and soul into the fray. Until one fastens all the affections of his heart on
God and his righteousness, so much so that serving God and establishing his
righteousness on earth become an all-consuming passion, one will not be able to
yield to the influence of God unerringly. (Alma 37:37: “Counsel with the Lord.”)
The pressures to care for self are so great and so pervasive that mind alone
can never deliver a soul to God. (Matthew 13:22–23: “Care of the world … choke
the word.”) Nevertheless, heart and mind combined and dedicated can make this
all-important delivery. But heart must lead the way, for heart is stronger and
more important than mind. Mind facilitates, and that in a most ingenious and
admirable manner, but heart points the mind and controls the occupation of the
mind almost entirely. (D&C 59:5: “Thou shalt love.”)
9. The only way one can love God with all of
one’s heart, might, mind, and strength is through the law and the ordinances of
the new and everlasting covenant. “It is a duty which every Saint ought
to render to his brethren freely—to always love them, and ever succor them. To
be justified before God we must love one another: we must overcome evil; we
must visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, and we must keep
ourselves unspotted from the world: for such virtues flow from the great
fountain of pure religion. Strengthening our faith by adding every good quality
that adorns the children of the blessed Jesus, we can pray in the season of
prayer; we can love our neighbor as ourselves, and be faithful in tribulation,
knowing that the reward of such is greater
in the kingdom of heaven. What a consolation! What a joy! Let me live the life of the righteous, and let my reward be like this!”
11
To be able to deliver oneself—heart, might, mind, and strength—to Jesus Christ is a matter of power. No human being has that power naturally, though many go a remarkable distance toward that goal outside the covenant. The power that makes that delivery possible is the gift of the Holy Ghost, which is the pearl of great price. Through the Holy Ghost a person’s heart may be purified, cleansed of all selfishness; then the soul can reflect back to God that pure love and also extend it to a neighbor. By that power the mind can eliminate all errors of belief, which are the chains of hell inflicted by Satan on the world, and also gain that precious knowledge of the truth which one must have to be saved. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, one may keep his body clean and pure and have it renewed in rebirth unto sufficiency to accomplish every mission to which the person is appointed by God. And through that power one receives priesthood might, enough might to show that one will use it obediently and fully in the service of God. (Moroni 7:25–48: “Lay hold upon every good thing.”)
Thus through the new and everlasting covenant one can fulfill all that
is possible for man: to become as God is. (D&C 132:19–20: “Then shall they be
gods.”) This new creation will not be accomplished completely in this mortality, but enough will be accomplished here that the individual may become a great power
in extending the influence of God in the earth. (Mosiah 8:15–18: “Becometh a great benefit.”)
The law of the celestial kingdom
is that one must act only in faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. (D&C 132:12: “No man shall
come unto the Father but by me or by my
word, which is my law.”) All righteous acts
are acts of faith in him, and whatsoever is not that faith is sin. To say that we should love the
Lord, our God, with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength is
linguistically equivalent to saying that we should exercise full faith in Jesus
Christ through the new and everlasting covenant.
10. The key to
knowledge (truth) is to learn first of
the whole, which is God, then of the parts, which are nature and man.
2.
Let us here observe, that three things are necessary in order that any rational
and intelligent being may exercise faith in God unto life and salvation.
3.
First, the idea that he actually exists.
4.
Secondly, a correct idea of his character, perfections and attributes.
5. Thirdly, an actual
knowledge that the course of life which he
is pursuing is according to his will. For without an acquaintance with these
three important facts the faith of every rational being must be imperfect and
unproductive, but with this understanding it
can become perfect and fruitful, abounding in righteousness, unto the praise
and glory of God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. 12
The world would have one study
the parts and through them discern the whole. But this is
not really possible. No one can intelligently
study a part of something without having at least a
working hypothesis of the nature of the hole of that something. If the hypothesis about the
whole is faulty, the part will be analyzed in a
faulty way. This is the real lesson of systems thinking, thinking popularized
in the present century but employed by responsible thinkers from time
immemorial.
The whole is God. The universe is personal, not natural,
because the hand of God is in every thing. (D&C 59:21: “Confess … his hand
in all things.”) Until one understands the nature and being of God, one cannot
understand correctly the rest of the universe. Nature is the handiwork of God,
and when one sees any natural occurrence in
the universe, one is beholding “God moving in
his majesty and power.” (D&C 88:46–47.) Men are the children of God, and
when one sees a human being one sees the literal offspring of gods, a potential
heir of Jesus Christ. Whatsoever one does to any of those heirs, Jesus Christ
counts it as done unto himself. (Matthew
25:40: “Ye have done it unto me.”) Each of these heirs may inherit all He is
and has if that heir will only deny selfishness and grow in spiritual stature
unto the measure of the fulness of his stature through faith in Him and through
the power brought by the covenants. (Ephesians 4:13: “Fullness
of Christ.”)
11. Jesus Christ is the Truth. The gospel of
Jesus Christ is the truth which points the way to find the Truth. “And now what remains to be
done, under circumstances like these? I will
proceed to tell you what the Lord requires of all people, high and low, rich
and poor, male and female, ministers and people, professors of religion and
non-professors, in order that they may enjoy the Holy Spirit of God to a
fullness and escape the judgments of God, which are almost ready to burst upon
the nations of the earth. Repent of all your sins, and be baptized in water for
the remission of them, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost, and receive the ordinance of the laying on of the hands of him who
is ordained and sealed unto this power, that ye may receive the Holy Spirit of
God; and this is according to the Holy Scriptures, and the Book of Mormon; and
the only way that man can enter into the celestial kingdom. These are the requirements
of the new covenant, or first principles of the Gospel of Christ: then ‘Add to
your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and
to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness,
brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity [or love]; for if these
things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor
unfruitful, in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.’” 13
“Again, if others’ blessings are not your blessings, others’
curses are not your curses; you stand then in these last days, as all have
stood before you, agents unto yourselves, to be judged according to your
works.” 14
Man is saved no faster than he gains knowledge of the Truth.
This truth one must know is not just any truth, such as one would encounter in
a phone book or on a topographic map. The truth which saves is Jesus Christ.
Only he can and will save from sinning, from hell, from death. Only as one comes
to know him personally can one be saved. (John 8:31–36:
“Ye shall know the truth.”)
Everyone on earth is invited to come to know the Truth through the teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If a person accepts that gospel and lives it completely, the path entered upon will lead such a one to know the Savior personally. The scriptures speak of the gospel as the truth because it is that portion of truth in the world which everyone must come to know to fulfill their mortal probation in accepting or rejecting Jesus Christ. (D&C 123:11–12: “Know not where to find [the truth].”)
The responsibility for seeing
that every child of God encounters the gospel of Jesus Christ rests on the
shoulders of the Savior himself. He enlists others to assist him, that they too
might become as he is through faithful service. But he also respects the agency
of men. He allows men to teach their children the truth or lies, as they will.
Some teach the lies of Satan or part truths in ignorance, but some do not.
(D&C 123:7–8: “Chains … of hell.”) It suffices to know that God is just, and thus
every soul will hear the truth taught to him in his own tongue, in all
humility, by a servant of Jesus Christ. This will happen before he or she
becomes fully accountable for his or her sins and therefore liable for the
final judgment which will come to all human beings. Partial accountability
comes to each person through the light of Christ. But the light of Christ
witnesses of truth and good. It does not tell one how to repent of sinning nor
how to be able to make amends for all the evil one has done. That is the
message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. (Moses 6:55–62: another law: all men
must repent through Christ.)
As defined by the Lord himself
in scripture (see 3 Nephi 27:13–21), there are but a few simple, powerful ideas
which constitute the truth, the gospel of Jesus Christ. These are as follows:
Jesus Christ was sent into this world to do the will of
God, his Father.
His Father’s will was that he be lifted up upon the cross
and atone for the sins of all men.
After Jesus had been lifted up, he was to draw all men to
himself, that each might receive a final judgment as to whether each one’s
works were good or evil.
Whosoever would desire to be found guiltless at the day of
judgment must:
Exercise full faith
in Jesus Christ, unto
Repenting of
sinning, and
Being baptized in his name, of water; then to
Receive the Holy
Ghost unto the remission of sins; then to
Endure to the end.
Whosoever receives the
Holy Ghost and endures not unto the end will be hewn down and cast into the
fire.
12. Family is the important social relationship.
Except a man and his wife enter into an everlasting
covenant and be married for eternity, while in this probation, by the power and
authority of the Holy Priesthood, they will cease to increase when they die;
that is, they will not have any children after the resurrection. But those who
are married by the power and authority of the priesthood in this life, and
continue without committing the sin against the Holy Ghost, will continue to
increase and have children in the celestial glory. The unpardonable sin is to
shed innocent blood, or be accessory thereto. All other sins will be visited
with judgment in the flesh, and the spirit being delivered to the buffetings of
Satan unto the day of the Lord Jesus.
Salvation means a man’s being placed beyond the power
of all his enemies. The more sure word of prophecy means a man’s knowing that
he is sealed up unto eternal life by revelation and the spirit of prophecy,
through the power of the holy priesthood. It is impossible for a man to be
saved in ignorance. 15
All human beings have one literal Heavenly Father and thus
are brothers and sisters in the spirit. All human beings have one physical set
of parents, Adam and Eve, and thus are brothers and sisters in the flesh. One
purpose of the gospel of Jesus Christ is to allow men to know and affirm this
family relationship, that all might learn again to serve their Father, the true
and living God. (Acts 17:22–31: “God that made the world.”)
The marriage covenant is of God, and marriage and the begetting of children unto God are to be holy undertakings, functions of the holy priesthood of God. The most important personal bond between any two persons is the bond between any human being and the Savior, as one learns to love the Savior, his new father, with all of his heart, might, mind, and strength. (Ether 12:4; Mosiah 5:7: “Children of Christ.”) The next most important bond for any human being is the bond of love which the new and everlasting covenant makes possible between husband and wife. This second bond can be successful only if the first one is in place, the bond of love between each individual and the Savior, When a husband and wife bond in the pure love of Christ, they create an eternal unit and they can then be exalted. It is that nuclear, bonded family consisting of three persons, the Savior as father, and the faithful husband and the faithful wife, which is and can be exalted, not the individuals separately. (D&C 132:8–25: singly saved.)
13. The greatest power on earth is the Holy
Priesthood.“It has been the
design of Jehovah, from the commencement of the world, and is His purpose now,
to regulate the affairs of the world in His own time, to stand as a head of the
universe, and take the reins of government in His own hand. When that is done,
judgment will be administered in righteousness; anarchy
and confusion will be destroyed, and ‘nations will learn war no more.’” 16
“Other attempts to promote universal peace and happiness in the human family have proved abortive;
every effort has failed; every plan and
design has fallen to the ground; it needs the
wisdom of God, the intelligence of God, and the power of
God to accomplish this. The world has
had a fair trial
for six thousand years; the Lord will try the seventh
thousand Himself; ‘He whose right it is will possess the kingdom,
and reign until He has put all things
under His feet;’ iniquity will hide its
hoary head, Satan will be bound, and the
works of darkness destroyed; righteousness will be put to the line, and
judgment to the plummet, and ‘he that fears the Lord will alone be exalted in
that day.’” 17
The holy priesthood is the power of God. By it the worlds are created, governed, and destroyed; and
by it the work of God in all the universe is
accomplished. (D&C 38:1–3: “All things came by
me.”)
Man is given the opportunity, through faith in Jesus Christ, to receive and use this
priesthood if he will use it only as God instructs him. As God commands men,
they do the most important work they do on earth through the priesthood power.
That work is to establish eternal family relationships
between God and men through the teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ
and through the administration of the new and everlasting covenant. (D&C
128:17–18: “Tum the heart of the fathers.”)
Because of the fall of Adam, men
must do the work to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. This is part
of the individual salvation each must work out as each seeks to be obedient to God. But the time will come for the faithful, perhaps
in the next world, where all work will be done by priesthood power. As one is
true and faithful to his priesthood covenants here, one prepares to wield the
greatest power in all of eternity, the holy priesthood of God. (D&C
84:33–38: “These two priesthoods.”)
All associations or alliances
made on earth which are not made through the new and everlasting covenant “have
an end when men are dead.” (D&C 132:6–7.) The only associations which may
be made eternal through that covenant are
family relationships.
The power of the holy priesthood
is also the only power by which righteous and lasting government can be established on the earth. The civil governments of men are better
than nothing, usually, but none can solve all problems or achieve either equity
or righteousness. The nations of the earth must suffer until they are willing
to accept the Savior as their lawgiver; then he will reign through love and the
power of priesthood.
The thinking of the Prophet
Joseph Smith is as wide and as deep as eternity. It compasses all of God and
all of space, time, and matter. Truth and
righteousness are his themes, but righteousness reigns as head. For him it is
the God of Righteousness who rules the universe, who is the source of truth,
who is the “Spirit of Truth” to all who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Notes
1. Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7
vols., 2 ed. rev., ed. B. H. Roberts (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1932–51), 2:315.
2. Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith
(Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Co., 1938), p. 12.
3. Ibid., pp. 95–96.
4. Ibid., pp. 55–56.
5. Ibid., pp. 178–79.
6. Ibid., p. 151.
7. Ibid., p. 317.
8. Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W.
Cook,
eds.,
The Words of Joseph Smith (Provo, Utah, Brigham Young
University Religious Studies Center 1980), p. 237.
9. Smith, History of the Church, 5:108–9.
10. Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 9.
11. Smith, History of the Church, 2:229.
12. Lectures on Faith (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Co., 1985) no. 3,
p. 38.
13. Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 16.
The New Testament and the Latter-Day-Saints – Sperry Symposium 1987 – p. 263-278
Chauncey C. Riddle
Interpreting the New Testament quoted from The New Testament and the Latter-day Saints – Sperry Symposium 1987
This paper is divided into three parts:
Deals with the place of the New Testament in our lives and why we must know it.
Discusses the three modes of interpreting the New Testament.
Contains special suggestions for interpreting the New Testament.
Part 1: The Place of the New Testament in Our Lives
To understand the place of the New Testament in the life of a Latter-day Saint, we must first inquire as to the place of the scriptures in general. If salvation is the goal for man, then we see that there are three principal helps for man as he seeks to be saved. The first help is God himself. Salvation is not a mortal or human thing. It is supernatural, a lifting of man from human to divine status, and comes to us only in the person of Jesus Christ. It is through the personal power and intervention of Jesus Christ that any man is saved from unrighteousness.
The second help sent by God to draw men unto him that they might be saved is the prophets of God. These are they who are given power from God to teach the true gospel of Jesus Christ and to administer the saving ordinances, which are the covenants thereof. The gospel is necessary because men must understand and desire salvation from unrighteousness before they can be saved. Each person is then saved in and through the covenants each makes with God and the carrying out of the promises made by each person and by God.
A third help for salvation is the holy scriptures. The purpose of the scriptures is to acquaint men with the possibility of salvation, that each might have the opportunity to understand and to desire salvation through Jesus Christ. Those who have that desire are pointed by the scriptures to find a prophet of God, that they, too, might partake of the covenants and thus enter into life, which is salvation. When the scriptures are not adulterated by men, they perform well those two tasks: allowing men to desire righteousness by understanding its possibility in Jesus Christ, and pointing them to find an authorized servant of Jesus Christ who can lawfully and effectively administer the saving ordinances.
Let us note what is necessary for salvation: God is necessary, and since he saves men only through covenants, the covenants are necessary. Prophets of God would not be necessary if God himself were to come down and administer the gospel and the covenants directly to men. But God chooses not to do that most of the time. When God chooses not to come down, then men who desire to be saved must seek a legal administrator sent from God, a prophet. In this case, the prophet, who bears the authority of God to teach the gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof, becomes necessary. The scriptures are not necessary. They are helpful, but men could be saved if there were not one line of scripture written. Men could be saved by the prophet of God without scripture, for the true prophet has all that is necessary.
But the scriptures are helpful. They point our minds to our God and to righteousness. They make us hunger and thirst for the ordinances which make righteousness possible. Each different scripture gives the witness of a different people and / or time, showing that God loves his children and saves men in all ages through the very same gospel and ordinances. The New Testament is the special witness of the prophets who labored in the Old World during the meridian of time. They give us many precious insights into the life and ministry of the Savior and his apostles. But no Latter-day Saint needs those insights to be saved.
We are a missionary people, however. The New Testament is the only record of Jesus Christ and his gospel that much of the world knows. That record therefore is the bridge by which we can put them in touch with the true priesthood authority of God. Because Latter-day Saints are a missionary people, we need to know the New Testament backwards and forwards, not for our own salvation but that we might be instrumental in bringing the knowledge of how to be saved to others of our brothers and sisters. For us to ignore the New Testament or to know it poorly is not to love either our God or those Christian neighbors whom our God has given us.
Part 2: Three Modes of Interpreting the New Testament
The first mode for understanding the New Testament is private interpretation; the second is scholarly interpretation; and the third is prophetic interpretation.
A. Private Interpretation
Private interpretation of the New Testament is reading some version of it and deciding that it means whatever we think it means. In this method, each person sets himself up as the interpreter and fixes on his own fancy as the standard. There are two principal ways of doing this.
The first kind of private interpretation is whimsical; with it we allow our own creative imagination to tell us that the text means whatever pops into our heads as we read it. Many human beings interpret everything they read in this way.
The second variety of private interpretation is the dogmatic variety, wherein the reader attributes the same meaning to the text which he or she has been told by someone else is the proper interpretation. Without any further thought or inquiry the reader simply accepts what he has been told.
The New Testament has a pointed comment about private interpretation. Peter warns us not to indulge in it: “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:20-21). The dogmatic variety of private interpretation is what the scriptures call the “chains of hell” (see D&C 123:7-8). The purpose and end of private interpretation is to confirm and convince the reader of what he already believes. It is principally an occasion for self-justification, a path to be eschewed under all circumstances.
B. Scholarly Interpretation
Scholarly interpretation of the New Testament is applying a rational formula to the translating of a scriptural text into some vernacular and then designating the significance of that text. There are two principal varieties of scholarly interpretation.
First-class scholarship has each of the following criteria as necessary conditions: (a) the most authentic.e .version of the text must be used; (b) the text must be used in the original language (Greek, for the New Testament); (c) the scholar must be aware of and account for what every other first-class scholar has said on the topic or passage being interpreted; and (d) the first- class scholar must use a rational formula which I explicitly describes and which any other scholar could discern and use. These rather strict conditions for first-class scholarship cause it to be rare. One mark of the work of first-class scholars is the abundance of footnotes, but many footnotes do not make first-class scholarship. Only a first-class scholar will read all the footnotes, track down the origins, and judge for himself whether or not a writer makes sense. It takes a first- class scholar to identify and deal with a first-class scholar.
Second-class scholarship is interpretation which satisfies any one of the conditions for first-class scholarship but lacks one or more of the other requirements. There is a good deal of second-class scholarship in the world.
The rational formulae which scholars use are of some note, and it serves our purpose to review the principal varieties here.
“Lower,” or textual criticism, is the comparison of texts to determine by both internal and external evidence the text which is most authentic. In the case of the New Testament, this usually is the pursuit of the oldest manuscript, assuming the oldest to be the closest to the source. We have nothing which could be considered an original manuscript for the New Testament, so lower criticism is important to every student of that text.
“Higher” criticism is the search for authorship of biblical texts by considering internal evidence, such as writing style, vocabulary, historical references, and so forth.
Grammatical criticism, or ordinary textual interpretation, is intense analysis of the words and grammatical forms of the text, in an attempt to establish what would constitute an acceptable modal translation of the text based on what are considered to be the meanings of other nonscriptural texts of the Koine Greek which appears in the New Testament manuscripts.
Source criticism is the attempt to structure the hypothetical original documents which the writers of the Gospels and Acts might have used to compose those works, drawing evidence from the similarities and differences found among the synoptic Gospels in particular.
Form criticism is the attempt to relate the New Testament texts to the literary forms present in the manuscripts of the contemporary Hellenic culture of the writers of the New Testament. Various pericopes or fragments of the text are analyzed as paradigms, tales, legends, myths, and exhortations, interpretation being affected by the perceived literary device employed.
Redaction criticism assumes that there were primary source documents like those which source criticism seeks to reconstruct, and that writers of the New Testament were principally employed in stitching the older fragments together with comments of their own, which is redaction. The work of redaction criticism is to reinterpret the text in light of the perceived biases and emphases of each redactor.
Tradition-history criticism attempts to correlate the biblical text with the historic development of the New Testament church. It is based on two principles: first, that the Christology of the New Testament is not that of Jesus himself but is a product of the legends which grew up in the first century; and second, that it is possible to separate the authentic teachings of Jesus himself from the accretions added by later Christians.
Comparative religion criticism (history of religion criticism) approaches the New Testament by noting what elements it does and does not have in common with the other religions of the ancient Near East. Relationships with Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and other religions are established, showing that the atoning sacrifice and purification rites were common to many cultures.
Demythologizing is the attempt to relieve the New Testament of its supernatural elements, which, it is said, are no longer tolerable to the enlightened mind, and to discover the authentic, timeless core that lies within those supposed myths. An interesting variation on that theme is the attempt to “remythologize” the text in favor of modern myths, those more acceptable to modern minds.
Hermeneutics, as an intellectual approach, leaves the attempt to say what the text originally meant to others, and concentrates instead on discerning what the text should mean for us in our modern setting. Instead of our judging the text, it is understood that the text judges us who read it. As Jesus established a common understanding with the people to whom he spoke that he might thereby surely deliver his message, so we must seek today that frame of mind in which the teachings of Jesus will be most meaningful to us.
Another scholarly device is that employed by Harnack, Boman, and others in the attempt to characterize the patterns of Hebrew thinking as they contrast with those of the Greek mind. Boman sees the Hebrews as interested in action, whereas the Greeks look for the unchangeable, eternal verities; the Hebrews focus on inner qualities of soul, while the Greeks favor visible particulars in describing persons; Hebrews see action as either complete or incomplete, whereas the Greeks nicely divide time into past, present, and future. Such differences as these, Boman contends, must be taken into account when interpreting the Hebrew New Testament message in Greek grammatical forms. |interpreting the new testament (fn:1)|
An excellent explanation of much that relates to the scholarly interpretation of the New Testament is found in a work edited by I. Howard Marshall, entitled New Testament Interpretation. |interpreting the new testament (fn:2)| I recommend especially the article by F. F. Bruce entitled “The History of New Testament Study,” one by E. Earl Ellis entitled “How the New Testament Uses the Old,” and a third by Anthony Thiselton entitled “The New Hermeneutic.”
The end or goal of scholarly interpretation is knowledge. The scholar seeks, with the best rational tools and worldly learning that he can muster, to reach conclusions that are intellectually justifiable. His greatest fear is that he will believe something that is unworthy of rational assent. Often he assumes protective custody of nonscholars in attempting to spare them the horrors of naive belief and private interpretation, thus becoming a brother-keeper. Some scholars, of course, have a real belief that Jesus was divine. They search and reason while believing, hoping to find a better faith, and through their faith have given great gifts to the world. I think here of works such as that of James Strong, who, with others but without the benefit of a computer, produced that invaluable tool for biblical scholarship that we know as Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. |interpreting the new testament (fn:3)| I also recommend the volume by Richard L. Anderson entitled Understanding Paul, an interpretive work of first-class scholarship. |interpreting the new testament (fn:4)|
Scholarly interpretation is clearly an improvement on private interpretation. Scholarly and rational though it is, much of it is guesswork. But gems can be found in it which are well worth the search. This body of material is much in the category of the biblical Apocrypha concerning which the Lord declared through the Prophet Joseph Smith: “There are many things contained therein that are not true, which are interpolations by the hands of men …. Therefore, whoso readeth it, let him understand, for the Spirit manifesteth therefrom; And whoso receiveth not by the Spirit, cannot be benefitted” (D&C 91:2-6).
We now contrast private and scholarly interpretation with prophetic interpretation. Prophetic interpretation is interpretation of a scriptural text under the immediate direction of the Holy Spirit. This is personal revelation, the same kind of personal revelation by which the scripture was originally created. This kind of interpretation is denominated “prophetic” because it is the Holy Spirit which brings the true testimony of Jesus Christ and that testimony of Jesus Christ is the spirit of prophecy. Whoever has the Holy Spirit to guide him or her is for that moment a prophet-not necessarily a prophet to anyone else, but at least a prophet unto himself or herself. Since it takes a prophet to tell a prophet, the Holy Spirit binds the sent prophet to the receiving prophet in the unity of submission to the mind and will of God (cf. D&C 50:13- 24).
Thus there are two basic types of prophetic interpretation. The first is the prophecy of receiving from God for one’s own personal benefit. As one approaches a scriptural text in prayer and faith, ready to do what is instructed by the Holy Spirit, one indeed may receive specific instruction in connection with text as to how that should be interpreted, then acting accordingly in one’s own life situation and predicaments. This is using the text as if it were a Urim and Thummim, a divinely given aid to facilitate the receiving of further revelation from the Lord. Since the Lord has promised that he will give wisdom–that knowledge of how to act in faith–that we might please him, such revelation is a frequent occurrence. Its occurrence is correlated strictly with the degree to which the person seeks and hungers after righteousness through Jesus Christ. We noted above that the purpose in private interpretation is self-justification and that the purpose of scholarly interpretation is the ascertaining of truth, that one might know what to believe. Contrasted with both is the purpose of prophetic interpretation: to be able to act in faith to please God. Action, which includes but goes much beyond mere believing, is the end of prophetic scriptural interpretation. Built into this kind of prophecy is the supposition that this process will take place again and again, and that through much faith and experience in experimenting with those messages delivered by the still, small voice of the Spirit, one will come to know for oneself, unerringly, what is and what is not the voice of God in this world. Thus one becomes sure and established, rooted and tested in the faith of Christ, and through that mature faith comes all other good things from God.
The second kind of prophetic interpretation of the scriptures is the prophecy of receiving from God for the purpose of bearing witness to others concerning God. To safeguard the purity of this kind of revelation, the Lord has put three safeguards on it. First, prophecy may be received and delivered to other human beings only by those who are ordained of God by the laying on of hands by those who have true authority from God, even as was Aaron. Second, the hearer will always be one to whom the preacher or teacher is specifically sent. It will be publicly known to members of the Lord’s Church who those preachers and teachers are that are duly sent. Third, each hearer is entitled to personal revelation from God himself confirming any interpretation or prophecy which the one who is sent might deliver to him or her. Thus the prophecy of preaching or teaching for God must be matched by the prophecy of receiving from God by the hearer for the witness of the preacher or teacher to be valid and binding. These three essentials are clearly stated by the Lord as his standard: “And, behold, and lo, this is an ensample unto all those who were ordained unto this priesthood, whose mission is appointed unto them to go forth–And this is the ensample unto them, that they shall speak as they are moved upon by the Holy Ghost. And whatsoever they shall speak when moved upon by the Holy Ghost shall be scripture, shall be the will of the Lord, shall be the mind of the Lord, shall be the word of the Lord, shall be the voice of the Lord, and the power of God unto salvation” (D&C 68:2-4).
Thus, each human being who encounters the holy scriptures has three choices: he may put his own private interpretation on the scripture, he may use the tools and formulae of the scholarly world in interpreting it, or he may seek and find personal revelation that the Lord might interpret it for him. It seems that this is an exhaustive taxonomy; every interpretation can be correctly designated as one of these three.
But what about the value of mixing these three types of interpretation? It is plain that private interpretation is always evil and that it will destroy any good that might otherwise be found by an individual when combining it with either scholarly or prophetic interpretation. Scholarly interpretation is evil if it is private interpretation, that is to say, if it is not done under the inspiration and permission of the Holy Spirit. But scholarship can be noble and spiritually rewarding. The scholarly work of Mormon in creating the Book of Mormon is a perfect model of responsible, spiritual scholarship. But scholarly or not, interpretation of scripture must always be purely prophetic to avoid being evil. The kingdom of our Savior today could use more first-class scholarship by those who enjoy the spirit of prophecy. Of course, what it most needs is more persons reading the scriptures by the spirit of prophecy and then acting faithfully. We have enough scripture; we need to better use what we have. It is promised that then we shall have more.
D. Applications by History
How can an understanding of these three kinds of interpretation be seen to operate historically? First, we note that all scripture is produced by prophecy, by the revelations of God to his chosen servants. The intention is that all reading and interpreting of any portion or of all of that scripture should be done by prophecy, either for the benefit of the individual in his own stewardship or for the purpose of instructing others. But when men sin, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are taken from them. If they then interpret scripture, they are forced either to scholarly or to private interpretation.
After prophets ceased in Judah in Old Testament times (c. 400 B.C.), there arose the schools of rabbinic interpretation. Rabbinic interpretation is scholarly interpretation. It focuses on reading the accepted text in the original Hebrew, knowing what other rabbis have said about it, and elaborating interpretation according to rational formulae. These scholars were known as scribes and Pharisees in the Savior’s time. Jesus was a problem to them because he did not have the rabbinic training or outlook: he taught as one having authority, for indeed he was a prophet of God. He spoke only by the spirit of prophecy and instructed his followers to do likewise. In this the Savior threatened the rabbinic tradition of the scribes and Pharisees. They saw themselves as the saviors of the common people, preserving them from the great evil of private interpretation of the holy scriptures, which is generally the scholarly attitude. It was these protectors of the people who called for and gained Jesus’ blood, calling him a blasphemer for pretending to revelation from his Father and theirs. So they had their way, and rabbinism has maintained its hold on Judah to this day.
Paul was a rabbinic zealot, persecuting the blasphemers wherever he could. He was cured of his spiritual blindness by a revelation which left him physically blind. But then, knowing revelation, he became a faithful disciple of the Savior, teaching the deadness beth of the law of Moses and of the rabbinic tradition of interpretation which refused to see the law as the schoolmaster to prepare Israel for Christ.
During the time of Paul and the other Apostles, prophetic interpretation of the scriptures flourished, though not without opposition. But when the apostles were gone, the opposition triumphed and scholarly interpretation replaced revelation, even as it had done in Judaism earlier. Training for the priest became the study of languages and philosophy that scholarly work might be pursued. Thus, the world came to think that one cannot preach unless he is school learned.
The Protestant Reformation provided an interesting twist on the old story. When Luther, Wycliffe, and others translated the Bible into the vernacular languages, they did so as scholars, but they were undoubtedly aided by the Holy Spirit in much of what they did. The result was that prophetic interpretation again began to flourish. Individuals could now read the things of God and interpret them for themselves, and through faithful obedience to God as he gave them revelation, they revolutionized the world for much good. Institutionally, Protestantism has always been weak. Lacking authority for the preaching and teaching gifts, it has foundered on the question of authority. But individuals were not barred or prevented from doing much good. That is perhaps why the practice of Christian religion among genuine Protestants has so often been very good while the theory has been very bad.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also reflects the tension among these three modes of interpreting the scriptures. Prophetic interpretation is the core and being of the Restored Church. But there are those who insist on their own private interpretation of the revelations. These go off into the desert (spiritually and/or temporally) and form their own private churches and kingdoms. They have their reward.
Others employ scholarly methods to interpret the scriptures, and some of that scholarship is first-rate. Among these scholars there are those who are also submissive to the Holy Spirit, who wait upon the Lord; they have sometimes made important contributions to the kingdom, often anonymously. They know that their blessings come not through their scholarly attainments but from their faith in Jesus Christ Another group in the Church are scholars of one sort or another who do not brook priesthood authority and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. They come to believe that reason must and will eventually triumph over what they call “blind faith.” To them, blind faith is unscholarly faith. They struggle with what the General Authorities of the Church say and cannot fully support those authorities. They are sometimes miffed because persons of lesser intelligence and scholarship are placed in positions of authority over them or are given precedence before them. Their scholarship has become a stumbling block to them. This is one source of the so-called anti-intellectual bias of the Church.
But scholarship and revelation can go hand in hand as long as revelation is the leader, the interpreter, and not vice versa.
Part 3: Suggestions for Interpreting the New Testament
We come now to the third part of this paper, which is to make some concrete suggestions for faithful, prophetic interpretation of the New Testament. It is incumbent upon every faithful member to read the New Testament during 1987, if at all possible. If we read it and how we read it will determine much about our future.
I will make seven specific suggestions as to how one might profitably go about reading the New Testament prophetically. I report these as admonitions to myself, hoping that something I say might find a responsive chord in your spiritual repertoire.
1. I believe that it is important to begin each scripture session with prayer, that we might demonstrate our faith and make ourselves more receptive to the whisperings of the Spirit. Indeed, prayer itself, if done truly, is simple practice at receiving and obeying personal revelation. It is thus a specific preparation for receiving what the Lord would have us do in connection with the text we are about to examine. I call as my witness on this point, Nephi of old: “But behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul” (2 Nephi 32:9).
2. It has often been noted that we tend to see in a text what we already believe. If what we already believe is true, then we have a great help in interpreting the scriptures. But if we are struggling with new doctrine and have false doctrine as our interpretive frame, we will have a difficult time when the Holy Spirit tells us something contrary to what we already believe. We must clean up the launching pad to avoid misinterpretation.
One excellent way to cleanse our minds of error is to let the Book of Mormon be our standard of doctrine and truth. Of course, the Book of Mormon cannot give us the truth without revelation. But at least we are reading the book with the most correct text in this whole world. A better place to practice interpretation by the Spirit and to establish a true theology and cosmology is difficult to find, and if found, is sometimes not accessible (such as the person of a General Authority). My witness here is the Prophet Joseph Smith: “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book” (Introduction to The Book of Mormon).
3. We need to see all things from the perspective of eternity. There is only one thing which matters in eternity: righteousness. If righteousness is the thing after which we hunger and thirst, then as we read the scriptures prayerfully and faithfully, we will be filled with information about how to obtain righteousness and how to avoid unrighteousness. The Christian world generally believes that the problem of salvation is to somehow get forgiveness for unrighteousness. The Book of Mormon shows us that the larger problem is getting our personal self re-created into a new being that no longer does anything unrighteous. Studying that process of re-creation through being reborn and growing up into the stature of the fulness of Christ is the key to righteousness and eternity. We have the promise of the Savior: “Blessed are all they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost” (3 Nephi 12:6).
4. We can liken the scriptures unto ourselves. When we read the stories of the scriptures, we can imaginatively put ourselves in the place of the characters of the story. How would I think, feel, and act if I suddenly awoke and realized that I am the prodigal son? What should I then feel, think, say, and do? Or do I imagine myself to be the other brother who supposedly never sinned; do I see myself as saved while all about me are prodigal? If so, I probably am in great need of repentance for even allowing myself to suppose that I am that son.
When I read of Ananias and Sapphira, do I understand what must have been going through the heart and mind of each when questioned about the consecration? Can I feel the fear of trusting entirely in that unseen Jesus Christ, yet being tugged upon by the Holy Spirit to tell the truth? Can I imagine the anguish each must have felt in deliberately denying the Holy Spirit, grasping at a worldly straw? Can the memory of that imagination help me in the future when my faith wavers and the cares of the world press upon me? I can indeed live a hundreds lives in my imagination, and taste the bitterness of sin and the joy of righteousness vicariously. That knowledge then can help me to be strong and reject the bitterness of hell. Through Cain I know murder and perdition. Through Judah I know the pain of adultery. Through David I know the damnation of lust. Through Peter I deny that I know the Christ and have bitter tears. Through Paul I know persecution and stoning. Through John I know what it is to lean upon the Savior’s breast and be his beloved disciple. Not that I do these things, but the Holy Spirit causes all these things in me as I prayerfully meditate and ponder the stories which the prophets have carefully preserved for me under instruction from the Holy One. Again, I call Nephi as my witness in this likening: “And I did read many things unto them which were written in the books of Moses; but that I might more fully persuade them to believe in the Lord their Redeemer I did read unto them that which was written by the prophet Isaiah; for I did liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning” (1 Nephi 19:23).
5. More specifically I can ask myself how I relate to the priesthood authority which my Savior has set over me. Am I Uzza who steadies the ark? Am I Simon who would buy the power of the priesthood if I cannot bring myself to repent to get it? Am I like the rich young man who goes to the authorities for help but then has to go away sorrowing because I love the world more than I love obedience? Can I see how I must not pretend that I am as good as the prophet, as Hiram Page was tempted? Do I see in my bishop and stake president the same authority and power which parted the Red Sea and fed the five thousand?
The brethren who preside over us are human, but the authority they have is not. Can I look both fully in the face and accept them? When those brethren use a scripture to teach us, do I find fault with their interpretation because I fancy myself to be superior, then neglect to do what they tell me, thus compounding the error? Peter tells us that the key to perfecting our love for the Savior is first to learn to love the brethren whom he has sent to preside over us (see 2 Peter 1). If our reading of the scriptures encourages us and enables us to do that, we are profiting from the scriptures indeed.
6. If we love the brethren who preside over us, we then can use our reading of the scriptures to draw us closer to the Lord himself. Have we read the life of the Savior in all the detail preserved for us, then prayed for the confirmation so that we can say with Peter; “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16)? If we read with faith, we will know that our Savior loves us and that he does nothing save it be for the benefit of the world. If we love and serve him, everything which happens to us he will turn to our good. As our admiration and love for him and our faithfulness to him grow, we will grow in the power and understanding of his word. The scriptures will indeed become a Urim and Thummim to us. We will not be in doubt as to what he would have us believe and do. He himself tells us, “And again, verily I say unto you, my friends, I leave these sayings with you to ponder in your hearts, with this commandment which I give unto you, that ye shall call upon me while I am near–Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (D&C 88:62-63).
7. My final suggestion for interpreting the New Testament and all scripture is that we strive to understand how to apply the great commandment. We are told, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and strength; and in the name of Jesus Christ thou shalt serve him” (D&G 59:5). I take this to mean that there are four basic and distinct ways in which we should love our God. Since everything we do should be an act of love for him, reading the scriptures must be one of those things, and we should use the scriptures to lean how we can love and serve him with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength.
Our heart is the heart of our spirit body and is the factor which determines what we choose among the alternatives furnished by the mind. Most of us have the problem that our hearts are not pure: we want to do what is right, but we also want to sin. So we defeat ourselves, frustrate ourselves by doing some good things but not being able to reap the full benefits because we also tarnish ourselves with sinning. The solution to the problem is to find the one way to become pure in heart, which is found only in the Savior. If we come unto him as little children, believing and obeying, he can purify us. When we read the scriptures, we might well be asking, What does this passage teach me about how I should feel and what I should desire? If I then follow through with what I am instructed by the Spirit to feel and desire, I am beginning to love the Lord with my heart.
Our mind apparently is the brain of our spirit body. It is our mind which knows and understands, which receives instruction and reproof, which contemplates the world and the perspective of eternity. If our mind is right, we will receive many things but admit into our beliefs only those things directly attested by the Holy Spirit, which will show us the truth of all things. Under the direction of that Spirit we will train ourselves to think, to compare, to analyze, to relate, to synthesize, to create, to conjecture, to test, to evaluate. We will strive to furnish our heart with an able and truthful servant and companion. Even as the heart needs to be pure, so does the mind need to be filled with truth and to eschew all error, even until one sees and understands the mysteries both of this world and of eternity. Only the Spirit of Truth, which is Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost acting as one, can so purify our minds and fill them that we can begin to become wise servants, properly furnished with the perspective of eternity. As we read the scriptures, we should be hungering and thirsting after truth, jealous for every true belief, that we might learn to love the Lord fully, in truth and righteousness, with our mind.
Our strength is our body, our mortal tabernacle. To love our God with all our strength, we must study and train ourselves until we furnish this body with the very best nutrition available, the best hygienic environment we can muster, the most valuable exercise and work which is appropriate. We must treasure our power of reproduction, deeming its purity of more value than physical life itself. We must search out that field of labor where the Lord would have us dwell and be a husbandman to his vineyard, and bring forth upon the earth those physical and spiritual fruits which will please him. Our study of the scripture will help suggest particulars of how we might act as just and wise stewards, how we might keep ourselves unspotted from the world, how we might need to sacrifice our very physical life in the cause of our Master. Thus we learn to love the Lord with all of our strength.
Our might is our sphere of influence in this world: our money, our property, our belongings, our family and friends, our stewardships. We are apprentice gods, and it pleases God to instruct us in all the ways of godliness if we seek righteousness rather than power. As we read his word, we will learn many things about how to be a just and wise steward. Through his Spirit he will show us good examples in the scriptures of the very principles and standards that he himself abides. As we are faithful in complying with that instruction, he is able to make us rulers over many, for we have then learned to love him with our might.
Learning to love God through the scriptures is like learning to braid with four strands. Here and there, line upon line, and precept upon precept, we learn the standards and requirements for loving him with heart, might, mind, and strength. As we obey, we make the strands a reality instead of a possibility. As we obey through time, we twist, turn, weave, and sacrifice until we have formed a tightly woven strand, one that is strong yet flexible, durable yet pliable, ready and able to bear the weight of eternal things. We personally, being reborn and refashioned, have become worthy of the Master of our apprenticeship through loving him and his word.
One example must suffice. We read in John that if we continue in the word of the Savior, we are his disciples indeed; then we shall know the truth and the truth shall make us free. How shall we interpret this according to heart, might, mind, and strength? With our heart we can desire to know him who is the truth, desire enough that we actually repent of our sins and obey his will through his Holy Spirit, hungering and thirsting after righteousness. With our mind we can understand that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and that besides him there is no Savior and no salvation. We see that the world does not know the truth. We must put our whole trust and confidence in him only. With our strength, we can sacrifice to keep his commandments, to get up when we should, to sleep when we should, to eat when we should, to go and come and work and play as we should, to defend or retreat as we should, to till the earth and provide for our own as we should. With our might we can tithe and consecrate, foster good causes and bless, share with our neighbor who is in want, store for a dark future, and invest in that which is eternally worthwhile. For if we love and serve him who is the truth, he will then be able to set us free from every impurity, every smallness, every selfishness, every error, every untoward desire. Then we shall be free indeed.
The sum of the matter is that scripture is of no private interpretation. We must search and strive until we find that Holy Spirit which alone can make the scriptures come alive to us with that life which never ends. May we relish that great treasure, the New Testament, in that way, is my hope for all of us.
Boman, Thorlief; Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, W. W. Norton Co., 1960.
Paternoster Press, Exeter, England, 1977.
MacDonald Publishing Company, McLean, Virginia.
Anderson, Richard Lloyd; Understanding Paul, Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 1983.
Printed in Sunstone Magazine, May 1988 Given at Sunstone Symposium Salt Lake City, 28 August, 1987
By Chauncey C. Riddle
What a Privilege to Believe! A philosopher explores the pillars of his faith – Printed in Sunstone Magazine May 1988
I AM GRATEFUL TO BE A MEMBER OF AND SUPPORTER OF THE Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
One of the reasons why I am so grateful for the opportunity to support this church is because it has no creed. It challenges me to construct for myself out of the scriptures and my own personal revelations an understanding of the universe which will help me to attain important goals in this life I enjoy this challenge to search for the truth using all of the evidence and intelligence which I can muster I recognize that my understanding is neither complete nor as yet fully self-consistent. But I rejoice in the process of learning and growing line by line precept upon precept.
In this paper I intend to explain something of what I believe the picture of the universe I have fabricated to date and then explain why I believe these conclusions.
To me the most important thing in the universe is God. That is simply a matter of definition for me I call “God” that which is most important in any person’s life. If anything is important to a person, then there will be a most important thing and that thing is that persons god. I see some people who are their own gods, for instance. Every human being of normal intelligence has a god by this definition but most people certainly do not agree as to what God is like To know what a person’s God is, is the most important thing to know about any person, one’s self included.
My God has two aspects. I believe first that there are beings in the universe who are fully good; they are perfect; holy, and righteous. These I denominate “gods,” with a lowercase “g.” But all of these gods are associated in a great family priesthood structure which I call “God” with a capital “G” Each individual god has a specific place in that family priesthood order and fills that place perfectly, being omniscient; omnipotent; and morally perfect in his or her own right There is but one God (capital G”) in the universe.
Not everything in the universe is God. The principal non-God things in the universe are nature and worlds. Nature is God’s handiwork and is holy and sacred; holy because it wholly obeys God, and sacred because it is God’s gift. Worlds are chunks of space-time where children of God have been given their agency which agency those children use to become like or unlike their divine parents to some degree Nature is the physical setting for worlds, of which there are two kinds. In worlds of the first kind, the children of God contemplate good and evil and choose between them; these are called “probationary worlds” or temporal “time worlds.” Worlds of the second kind are eternal worlds, where those children have made their choice of some degree of good and/or evil and are enjoying the consequences of their choice.
Men and women are the children of God, and are potentially gods themselves. Like their parents, each one is a dual being a body and a spirit. The body and spirit are inseparable for the parents but separable for the children to facilitate their probation and the maximization of the happiness of each human being. The spirit of a person is composed of heart and mind. The heart is the most important part, the true self, the most private aspect. The heart is the chooser the decision maker. The mind is the switching center; the understanding which presents choices to the heart; and the controller which implements decisions by giving instructions to the physical tabernacle. The body of a person also has two aspects, strength and might. The strength is the actual physical tabernacle, the house of the spirit; the link between the person and nature and other people. Might is the sphere of influence of the person and is measured by the effect which he or she has upon the world in which he or she resides. Both the body and spirit are matter material.
When people are given agency in a probationary or temporal world, their essential business is to choose and embody some kind of order. There are four basic kinds of order in the universe. Celestial order is the order of righteousness, which arises out of a love for God and for all other beings. Terrestrial order is the order of correctness, which arises out of respect for truth and for others. Telestial order is the order of selfishness, putting the desires of self above the needs and desires of others. Perdition order is the order of destruction, seeking to destroy all her order. This probationary world in which we human beings find our-selves is thus a heaven and a hell at the same time where the celestial, terrestrial. telestial, and perdition systems of order confront each other. It is this confrontation which gives each human being choice. The gift of God is agency which is the power to enact that which one chooses. Thus each human being is busy implementing some kind of order on this piece of the universe in accordance with his or her own desires. Since there are persons who severally desire each of the alternatives, we see a world which is chaotic and spotty; having no universal order but only interlocking and conflicting chunks of the celestial, terrestrial, telestial, and perdition options as each person fulfills his or her agency.
To me the celestial order is the most interesting though the others are important and must be understood. The celestial is the ideal, that order which one can fully achieve in this world only within his or her heart. Pure hearts yearn also for celestial mind, strength, and might, which they are promised by God for the eternal world where they will dwell hereafter. A pure heart is so wonderful that a person who desires it would give up everything else to obtain it, for it is the most precious and most powerful possession in all eternity.
Originally printed in Sunstone Magazine – May 1988
There are other factors which I believe are consonant with a pure celestial heart. The most important human skill is to abide one’s own conscience which is to seek and maintain purity of heart under the light of Christ. The most valuable human activity is prayer by which one seeks and maintains place in the light of Christ. The most valuable human opportunity is work, which is the option to enact within ones stewardship that celestial order to which one is guided by the light of Christ. The most valuable human experience is pain, for pain is the surest index that one is not fully abiding the light of Christ, spiritual pain being even more diagnostic than physical pain. The most important human work is perfecting a godly bond of love with one’s spouse, becoming one with him or her and with Christ. The most important means to perfecting that celestial bond with one’s spouse is to have and nurture children in the light of Christ. The greatest happiness this world affords comes from creating celestial and terrestrial order in some piece of this world. The greatest joy comes in perfecting the family associations which the New and Everlasting Covenant offers in this existence. The most important power in the world is the power of the Holy Priesthood, which is the power and authority of God.
The key to power in that priesthood is to first seek the light and knowledge of God to perfect ones soul. Then one can use one’s human power with maximal efficiency to set in order his or her stewardship. Once this human power is mastered and disciplined, one can shift over to the power of the Holy Priesthood to govern and control the elements. For example, a righteous man knows that he must subdue the earth to fulfill God’s commandments. So he works to master the skills and understanding which will enable him to produce crops in abundance from the earth. Having become a master husbandman, producing ample crops for his family and others, he then is in a position to learn how to draw the earth into ample production by speaking to it the words of love in the authority of the priesthood. Sometimes, of course, the Lord will allow a man to do a work with his priesthood which he has not mastered by temporal means, such as in a healing, but I understand that to be the exception and not the rule.
The key that runs through all these ideas is the centrality of righteousness. God is a God of righteousness. The restored gospel of Jesus Christ is the message as to how to obtain the righteousness of God. The restored Church is the organization of those who have dedicated themselves to fulfilling the Lord’s righteousness. The Holy Priesthood is God’s power of righteousness which he shares with people as they begin to come to his righteousness. Righteousness in this system has precedence over truth, as important as truth is. A righteous being will receive and profit from having all truth, but all truth in the hands of an unrighteous being would create a monster. Thus, one should seek first the kingdom of God to establish his righteousness, then all other things, including all truth, will be added to him or her
But what is righteousness? As I understand it, righteousness is what beings must do, given the total universe in which they exist, so to use their agency so that their actions redound to the maximum eternal benefit for every being whom their actions do actually affect. It should be obvious that to be righteous requires both omniscience and omnipotence to know what should be done and to have the power to do it. Thus righteousness is of God, never of man. The person who would set his or her stewardship into any beginning of celestial order must thus renounce his or her own will and do only the will of God through the new and everlasting covenant, as our Savior did.
These beliefs are the frame in which I understand the restored gospel, the restored Church, and the Holy Priesthood. I now turn to the basis on which I have come to believe these things
I divide my support for my beliefs into two categories, lesser evidence and better evidence. Lesser evidence is that which comes through the flesh. Better evidence comes through the spirit.
The first lesser evidence is the testimony of other human beings. The witnesses of my parents, relatives, and friends were the beginnings of my beliefs. It was they who pointed me to belief and give me my initial framework of ideas. As I grew older the testimony, example and teachings of ward members, quorum advisors, and some very special bishops and stake presidents were impressive. These were people whom I knew in daily life. I saw them in many situations and could see for myself that they were intelligent, honest, capable people. I remember as if yesterday sitting close to the stand and hearing my stake president bear witness of the love and mission of Jesus Christ. That meant something to me for I had watched him and had been the recipient of his personal concern already in my youth. These witnesses sank deep into my soul. As yet I did not know; I only believed, and that in a tentative experimental sort of way.
Then I began to get into the scriptures themselves and began to piece together LDS theology for myself. I first read the Book of Mormon completely through at age sixteen, but did not understand much of the doctrine. College years brought many discussions with peers, and I began to propound and defend my construction of the restored gospel. This process led me to see the strength of the gospel. It did have answers. It did hang together. There was a fine correlation between the works of ancient and modern scripture. Thus my mind began to be satisfied that the gospel was something worthy of and fruitful in rational investigation. As apparent contradictions melted before better understanding and as the range and beauty of the concepts came into my view, I was impressed. My belief was strengthened.
There was a strong pragmatic element to my beliefs. It didn’t take much intelligence to see that those who kept Church standards were better off. Those who were active and sincere were special people: accomplishers, doers, succeeders. I especially noticed the young people who were a year or two ahead of me. Some were casual about the gospel, and although they were talented, their labors seemed only to aggrandize themselves. Others who were gospel oriented were such a benefit to everyone that it was always a delight to be in their company and to see their good works. As yet I had only belief; but that belief was getting stronger.
Then I went away to graduate school, where I was challenged severely. One professor warned his students that any who had religious beliefs and wanted to keep them had better get out of his class, because he intended to shred their beliefs; he proceeded to do so with great skill. Another warned me that people who believed such works as the Bible and the Book of Mormon were not fit to be in graduate school. The result of all this was that I was sent scurrying to find support for my beliefs. A frantic inventory revealed that my store contained only circumstantial evidence; I didn’t really know. I realized that I needed a rock to stand on, and that rock could only be personal revelation.
I felt I had received some revelation before. However, I saw that random revelation was not sufficient. To be a rock, a bastion of surety, revelation must be something on which one can count and receive in every occasion of real need. I began to seek for it actively. I prayed, I fasted, I lived the gospel as best I knew. I was faithful in my church duties. I tried to live up to every scruple which my conscience enjoined upon me. And dependable revelation did come. Intermittently, haltingly at first, then steadily, over some years it finally came to be a mighty stream of experience. I came to know that any time of day or night, in any circumstance, for any real need, I could get help. That help came in the form of feelings of encouragement when things seemed hopeless. It came in ideas to unravel puzzles that blocked my accomplishment. It came in priesthood blessings which were fully realized. It came in whisperings of prophecy which were fulfilled. It came in support and even anticipation of what the General Authorities of the Church would say and do in general conference. It came in the gifts of the Spirit; as the wonders of eternity were opened to the eyes of my understanding. That stream of spiritual experience is today for me a river of living water that nourishes my soul in every situation. It is the most important factor of my life. If it were taken away, all that I have and am would be dust and ashes. It is the basis of my love, life, understanding, hope, and progress. My only regret is that though this river is so wonderful, I have not been able to take full advantage of it as yet. My life does not yet conform to all that I know. But now I do know; I do not just believe.
This river of revelation is the better evidence which I mentioned. The testimony of others, rational correlations, pragmatic justifications are all lesser evidence. But personal revelation, that enduring dependable river of personal experience with my God in prayer and obedience, that is better evidence, even a rock, even sure knowledge. But there is one piece of lesser evidence worthy of special mention. That is the Book of Mormon.
The Book of Mormon has a unique place in my life and thought. I first read at it at age eight; I then felt its spiritual power though did not understand nor much appreciate the divinity and importance of that witness. Over the years I have read the book through some forty to fifty times, and I consult it constantly. That familiarity has brought me a special appreciation of the book. The constant divine witness that accompanies experience with it is better evidence. However the lesser evidence of the book is massive. The strength and lucidness of the doctrine the clarity of its instruction for living the gospel, the internal consistency of the story line, all add to a monumental, overwhelming mass of lesser evidence. I believe the day will come when the lesser evidence has so accumulated that anyone in the world will be able to see that the Book of Mormon is a true document, all that Joseph Smith said it was. I also believe that it will be too late then to repent. But even today the evidence is massive, impressive. The faith of Latter-day Saints does not stand on documents or on flesh and blood. It stands on the rock of revelation, on that river of living daily experience with God as one serves him. Yet the lesser evidence is helpful and satisfying. It leads one to perform the experiments of sacrifice which do bring the better evidence, the sure knowledge. The Book of Mormon is especially helpful as a catalyst to help seekers receive better evidence, the sure knowledge.
Although human authority, reason, pragmatic justification, and empirical evidence are lesser, while personal experience with God is the greater, the better evidence, I am grateful to be the possessor of both and to know that the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is true, that this is his restored Church, and that there is godly power in the priesthood authority of this kingdom. One thing further remains: To point out the place and relationship of the lesser evidence as related to the better, the sure rock.
Lesser evidence cannot give one sure knowledge of the truthfulness of the restored gospel. Lesser evidence is sand. Sand is not useless, for often it is our only basis for approaching and gaining the rock. But what if there is a problem with the rock itself? How are we to be sure that we have the true rock? There is a counterfeit rock, for Satan also gives revelation, that very satisfying revelation that pleases the carnal mind. How can we be sure that we have the rock, the true rock, and not its counterfeit?
The answer is that we must use the lesser evidence: human authority, reason, empirical evidence, and pragmatic justification to certify the rock itself. If a person has not learned to be wise in judging human authority, in rationally analyzing evidence for completeness and consistency, in carefully observing empirical data, in judging the worth of circumstantial and pragmatic evidence related to the physical things of this world then one is not in an admirable position to judge between God and Satan. The developing and proving ground for those powers that bring one to strength in lesser evidence is the work of this earth, subduing the earth. If you find a person well skilled in subduing this earth, in providing food, clothing and shelter from nature, then you find a person who has learned to learn from others, who can reason, who can evaluate empirical evidence who can capitalize on pragmatic correlations. Such a one developed in judging the things of this earth, is also well developed to judge the things of God, for the earth is the handiwork of God. It is made by him, for us, and all things temporal are in the pattern of things spiritual. Men and women who are wise about earthly things have a head start in being wise about heavenly things if they will take the same care to gather and evaluate the evidence that they have used in the physical sphere.
You may have noted that I restricted my praise for development of skill ln lesser evidence to the sphere of subduing the earth (or nature); I deliberately did not include success in the world as a base for judging the things of God. This world is a fallen place where Satan controls much of what goes on. It is possible for a person to have success in this world and not to have learned judgment in the evaluation of lesser evidence. Success in this world is as much a social as a physical thing. It is sometimes possible to attain worldly success using the tools of Satan, such as lying, priestcraft, monopoly, bribery, deceit, and raw power. Nature resists the tools of Satan and yields only to the intelligent use of man’s strength. Those who are successful in this world may have gained those skills which enable them to evaluate evidence but then again they may not have. It is thus often the humble laborer who senses the divine gift of God ahead of the wealthy and successful man or woman of the world.
In conclusion, I emphasize that I have been sharing my beliefs and my basis for knowing the truth of the restored gospel. If your beliefs and basis for testimony differ from mine that is only to be expected. I believe that no one can build on another’s foundation, that we all must be true to our own experience and evidence. This means that initially we will not see eye to eye.
But if we eventually reach the same conclusion from our several bases, and each know from different life histories that the restored gospel is true that gospel will then tend to bring us into a unity and commonality of experience both temporal and spiritual. That unity and commonality of experience will then bring us to see eye to eye, each building from the rock up rather than attempting to mold and force each other’s thoughts after the manner of this world.
When we do see eye to eye it will be, I believe, because we are all thoroughly converted to the restored gospel, to the restored Church, to the Savior of all mankind. That conversion is not simply an objective, detached, mental assent to overwhelming evidence. Conversion is of heart, first and foremost, and hearts are easiest to convert when they hunger and thirst after righteousness. Conversion of the heart proceeds apace with conversion of the mind, as heart and mind lead and complement one another. Conversion is also of strength; the body will follow the heart and mind, creating a visibly new person, a tower of good deeds and examples. This means that the person’s might, their stewardships, will also be converted and begin to show forth the love of God, to become a witness to his grace and goodness.
All of this shows you why I gratefully assert that the restored gospel, Church and priesthood are true, for I know that they represent the true and living God. This leads me to see that the most important and most powerful sentence in existence is the following instruction from the true and living God: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and strength; and in the name of Jesus Christ shalt thou serve him.” (D&C 59:5).
CHAUNCEY C. RIDDLE is a professor of philosophy at Brigham Young University. This paper was presented at the Sunstone Symposium in Salt Lake City on 28 August 1987.
Chauncey C. Riddle Brigham Young University 27 Mar 1987
Riddle, Chauncey Cazier (1987) “The Logic of Meaning,” Deseret Language and Linguistic Society Symposium: Vol. 13: Iss. 1, Article 20. Available at: http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/dlls/vol13/iss1/20
Riddle, Chauncey Cazier (1987) “The Logic of Meaning,” Deseret Language and Linguistic Society Symposium: Vol. 13: Iss. 1, Article 20.
Logic has two major applications to language. One is the relating
of truth-value, taking units of language as wholes and relating them to each
other in the manner of the propositional calculus. This we shall call
macro-logic. The second application is the study of the logic of meaning relationships
in language, which we denominate as the micro-logic of language. The concern of
this paper will be with the micro-logic of meaning. But first we must lay some
groundwork.
A. Background
Considerations
Certain premises govern all that is said in this paper. The
first is that language is a system of actions whereby a person affects the
universe about him. It is an
intentionally devised and intentionally used human tool. The principal use of
this tool is one person affecting or controlling others. We note the following
categories of this social affect and control by distinguishing three kinds of
language usage:
Phatic usage: Language used to fill up time.
Esthetic usage: Language used to stimulate
imagery and/or feelings.
Informative usage: Language used to formulate
testable hypotheses about the universe.
It is noteworthy that in usage, these categories are not
usually found in the pure state. Language usage may be phatic, esthetic and
informative all at the same time. But usually one of these functions will be
dominant in a given usage.
The informative use of language itself has three
subdivisions:
Disclosure: The speaker reveals his inner states.
Example: I have a headache.
Directive: The speaker reveals his desired hearer
response.
Example: What time is it?
Description: The speaker reveals his ideas about
something outside himself.
Example: This dog is old.
Every informative use of language is disclosure, because the
speaker is revealing himself, but some disclosures are also commands
(directives). Some disclosure commands are also descriptions. In all three the
speaker reveals himself, but in some he purports to reveal the nature of the
universe as well.
Revelations about the universe may take one of two forms, or
be couched in two different types of language. The difference comes in the mode
and precision of definition being used. One type of language is “ordinary,” the
common vernacular languages of mankind which everyone learns as a child. The
basic form of definition used in this language is ostensive. By induction a
person learns to see pattern in objects which arc given names by his mentors.
Dogs have aspects in common, and as one observes enough dogs a pattern forms in
his mind which he then uses both to understand and to indicate that pattern when
conversing with others. This kind of pattern or meaning is not exact, is not
usually specifiable in terms of a specific number of elements all of which are
common to the pattern dog. This is
“family resemblance” meaning, as celebrated by Wittgenstein.
The second type of informative language is technical usage. Technical terms are those which have a precise meaning, a meaning based on essence rather than family resemblance. To have an essence means that there is a finite set of qualifications which necessarily apply to an object being referred to. This does not mean that the object may have no other characteristics: it need not be pure. It means that speaker and hearer both intend that the object referred to has at least the characteristics, the “essence,” agreed upon by prior stipulation. For instance, to be a legal contract in the technical sense, certain factors are stipulated in advance, such as:
1) both parties must be competent to contract; 2) there must be a meeting of the minds; 3) there must be an anticipated benefit to both parties; and 4) there must be an exchange of consideration.
If those stipulations were the agreed essence of a contract in a society, any agreement lacking one of those components would not be considered a legal contract and could not be enforced.
It is noteworthy that many of the terms used in a technical
listing of essential characteristics themselves need further technical
definition, such as “meeting of the minds” and “consideration” in the example
of the preceding paragraph. But eventually all technical definitions must rest
on terms which are not technically defined. Formally speaking, this is to say
that defined terms must be defined in terms of undefined primitives. In the
real world, our primitive definitions are non-technical, family resemblance
definitions which we invent by induction through ostensive definition. This is
to say that all technical use of language is embedded in a larger context of
ordinary language. Technicality is a matter of degree. Only one term of a conversation
might be used technically. Or a majority may be used technically. When the
number of technical terms becomes so great that the non-initiated hearer cannot
grasp the gist of the conversation, the language has become technically oriented
jargon.
Meaning is a matter of pattern. The meaning of any word or
sentence is the pattern of ideas which the speaker intends or the hearer
infers. The atomic elements of these patterns are either irreducible sensory
items (a shade of blue, the fragrance of lilac) or constructed elements (line,
wishing, angry). Constructed elements usually may be further subdivided at the
constructor’s desire; thus to be elemental is to be considered elemental by the
constructor. The meaning of tulip is,
for ordinary language, the indication of a spring blooming bulb which produces
a flower of greatly varied shapes and colors, the pattern being a vague one
which enables its constructor to identify tulips with a high (say 90%) rate of
success. The technical meaning of tulip specifies exactly the parameters
necessary for a plant to be tulip, enabling the user to identify correctly with
something like a 99% rate of success.
B. Parameters
Necessary for Truth
We are now in a position to ask, what are the parameters of information necessary to make an informative statement about the universe? We find that there are four basic kinds of information necessary to form a minimum complete statement.
These are:
a) A target pattern, b) An overlay pattern, c) Affirmation or denial of the overlay, d) Specification of relevance factors.
We will explain each of these factors.
The target pattern is something like the subject of a
sentence, but it is the meaning subject, not the grammatical subject. In the
sentence “It is raining,” the target pattern is “current weather.” Be it a
simple or a complex pattern, the target pattern is simply the subject being
operated upon in a given situation of linguistic usage.
The overlay pattern is the pattern being brought to bear
upon or to modify the target pattern. A sentence functions to overlay or to add
the overlay pattern upon the target pattern. In the example of the preceding
paragraph, “raining” is the overlay pattern.
The third clement of an informative sentence is the
affirmation or denial of the overlay. Affirmation is to assert the overlay, as
in “It is raining.” This sentence
would be used principally in case the pattern of current weather in unknown to
the hearer or to emphasize the fact of the overlay. Or we might deny the
overlay by saying, “It is not raining.”
This sentence would ordinarily be used when the hearer is uncertain whether or
not it is raining, or has been afraid it might be raining, or believes that it
is raining because someone has said so. Affirmation or denial is strictly an
on/off matter. It admits of no degrees or variations. Should degrees or
variations be necessary, those factors would be put into the pattern of the
target or overlay class, as in “It probably is raining.” In this example we
have an affirmation of overlay of “probably is raining” on target pattern “My
idea of current weather.” This shifts the focus of the sentence from
description of the weather to epistemological considerations about whether one
knows what the weather is or not.
The fourth consideration, relevance factors, give the
information necessary to test the pattern established by overlay or subtraction
of overlay against the “real world.” Four relevance factors are necessary: 1)
Spatial location, 2) Temporal location, 3) Mode of reference, and 4) Specification
of ordinary or technical usage.
Spatial location is the designation of the boundaries within
which the overlay pattern is asserted to hold. Just where is it raining?
Difficulty of description limits most usages of the example sentence to specification
of the fact that it is raining or not raining at a particular spot. Weather
persons on television have the ability to show satellite photos with areas of
rain indicated.
Temporal location is again best done by specifying time when it was raining at a particular place, or saying that rain began at a certain time and continued to a certain time. To speak of future time is to forecast, which is the relevant issue since the past is already gone and that past rain rains no more. But future rain has very practical consequences. Needless to say, forecasting future time rain is a guess, but sometimes a very sophisticated guess which turns out to be vindicated.
Mode of reference designates whether one is speaking in the
disclosure, directive, or descriptive mode. The same sentence could be used in
any of the three modes, hence the need to specify. In real life this factor is
seldom overly specified because the context makes evident what is going on. But
sometimes the context is insufficient. “It is raining” could be a description
if the person has been asked what the weather is. That sentence could be a
directive if the speaker previously had told the hearer to move indoors as soon
as it started raining. And that sentence could be a disclosure if it is a response
to the question “What is your guess as to what the weather is right now?”
The specification of ordinary or technical usage is of great
practical importance. Weather reports almost always are given in ordinary
language. This means that though rain is reported over a certain area at a
certain time, that does not mean that every open square foot of the area is
being rained upon. The meaning is approximate, family resemblance type, and is
thus usually given in percentages. “There is a 70% chance of rain falling in
this area.” Such a statement seems silly when one looks out the window and sees
pouring rain. But the statement is intended to give a percentage over an area,
not at a specific location. Technical usage would have to assure rain or not
rain at a specific number of specified areas.
Thus we see that two kinds of information are needed in the
relevance factors of language usage: Where and when to look to see if something
is true, and what kind of language usage the speaker is using to assert what he
does. Only as these relevance factors are explicitly specified can the exact
nature of the utterance be described. This is to say that we are attempting to
give a technical definition of the relevance factors necessary to linguistic
usage.
It is interesting to note what is necessary when verbal
communication is reduced to the absolute minimum, when context provides
everything but the minimum. The minimum is the specification of the overlay
pattern. Thus when someone cries out “Fire,” this word is a specification of
the overlay. The target pattern (conditions), the affirmation, the present time
and place, the mode of reference, and the ordinary use of language are all
assumed.
C. The work of
Jean-Marie Zemb
In an unpublished paper entitled “The Trios, the Duos and the Solo in the Structure of Propositions” (Translated
by Alan K. Melby of Brigham Young University), Jean-Marie Zemb of the College
of France has approached the problem of the relationship of the grammar of
linguistic usage as related to the structure of meaning. He concludes that the
structure of meaning is not tied to grammatical form as is inferred by the
hearer as the hearer infers the meaning of the sentential formulation.
Zemb analyzes the structure of meaning in a manner similar to that which has been done in this paper. He concludes that the structure of theproposition is that of thema-phema-rhema. Thema is analogous to what we have designated as the target class. Rhema is like that which we have called the overlay class. Phema is a pattern like that of the affirmation or denial of the overlay.
If one uses Zemb’s terminology we see that a fourth element
is necessary. That fourth element has been called above the relevance factors. To match Zemb’s terminology one might designate
these relevance factors as schema, the
pattern or ordering of the assertion relative to the universe of human
experience.
Zemb has made a contribution by showing clearly that grammar and meaning are not correlated uniquely. His suggestion of the thema-phema-rhema is seen to be consonant with the pattern employed in this paper. Zemb’s focus is on the proposition, whereas this paper focuses on the assertion as the basic unit of human language. But it is possible that a fruitful accommodation of terminology may consolidate Zemb’s work and the present paper into a viable approach in the philosophy of language.
D. Conclusion
The conclusion of the matter is that the micro-logic of
meaning is very simple compared with the macro-logic of truth. The logic of
meaning is simple addition or subtraction of overlay pattern to or from a
target pattern. Using this device of overlay recursively, any meaning can be
reduced down to its simplest elements or built up into a most complex idea,
such as the idea of the universe.
Sperry Symposium 1986 The Old Testament and the Latter-Day Saints
16 October, 1986
Chauncey C. Riddle
Introduction
We shall begin with a definition of religion, which will enable us to give a contextual
Justification, Ancient and Modern – quoted from The Old Testament and the Latter Day Saints – Sperry Symposium – 1986
definition of justification.
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary lists the archaic definition of religion as “scrupulous conformity.” If we inquire as to what it is that enables a person to achieve scrupulous conformity, the answer might be that it is the person’s character, his habits, which allow him to be diligently faithful to principle or person, depending on the object or his faith, Using that cue we shall define religion to be a person’s character or habits, that which enables him to act in a regular manner in achieving his objectives. This definition distinguishes whimsical or fortuitous action from that which is characteristic, but also suggests that if a person’s actions are notably whimsical or fortuitous, his religion, his habits, are not very strong or reliable. This definition also distinguishes personal religion from the social institutions we call “church” or “culture.” A church functions to inculcate and perpetuate some person’s idea of what personal religion should be. It is noteworthy that leader and layman alike often do not personally exemplify the pattern of religious habit proclaimed by the church to which they belong. A culture is a group of people having a widely shared pattern of personal religion, a group of people having similar or identical character or habits, The mark of a successful church is a homogeneous culture. The mark of a successful personal religion is a set of habits which enables a person to achieve his goals in life. In a Latter-day Saint frame, a person’s religion is sufficient if it enables him to fill his divinely appointed life’s mission completely, which only the pure and undefiled religion will do.
We can now define justification. The root JUS is the Latin word for “right.” Ficare is the Latin word meaning to make or to do. Etymologically then, justification means “to make right, or the process by which a person becomes a righteous person.” In the frame of our definition of religion, we will give a secular definition : justification is the process by which a person acquires the character or habits which he personally deems to be ideal for himself. A person envisions a standard or pattern of being which he takes to be his desired state, the right condition, the nature of a just being. The process which delivers that desired state is then justification.
That definition of justification gives rise to two very different kinds of justification. It allows a person to say “I am just. What I do is the right thing to do.” This is self-justification, that favorite pasttime of mortals who do not wish to repent. But that definition also enables us to see that in addition to pulling the standard of right down to ourselves, we may work out a change of our character which wiIl lift us up to the standard of being and doing what is right. This latter kind of justification is the one on which we will focus. This second kind of justification is another name for the process of change. In some theological views that change is largely done for the person, with little effort required on his part. In other theologies justification is almost wholly up to the person. Only in some theological hypotheses does justification correspond to repentance.
It turns out, then, that justification is a key index by which to compare different religions, churches and cultures. In this paper we shall examine four different cultures to contrast the theory and procedures of justification which are typical to each. We shall first examine Judaism as a reflection of the teachings of the Old Testament. We shall then successively examine Catholicism and Protestantism as reflections of the teachings of the New Testament. Finally, we shall examine the LDS position as a reflection of latter-day scripture, particularly of the Book of Mormon.
Justification in Judaism
Our brethren of Judah have no trouble in knowing what the standard of righteousness is: the Old Testament is full of references to tsedek, righteousness, and tsadik, the righteous person. The thing that a person must do to be righteous is to love God with all of his heart, and soul, and might (Deuteronomy 6:5). To love God is also to fear him and serve him, and to swear by his name (Deuteronomy 6:13). To love God is also not to avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of God’s people, but to love one’s neighbor as one’s self (Leviticus 19:18). The prophet Micah crystalizes the requirement: “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah 6:8.)
Judah knows furthermore that it is commanded to treasure up the words of Moses:
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates (Deuteronomy 6:6-9.)
Judah has taken as its special task, the thing which will justify it before God, the treasuring of those words of Moses. Justification to them is to learn by heart the Torah, the Jaw of Moses, and then to learn the commentaries and the commentaries on the commentaries. Handelmann gives us the following insight into the Jewish view of the text:
The Biblical text is not, according to the Rabbinic view, a material thing located in a single space and circumscribed by a Quantifiable time. The text ultimately is not even that authoritative and divine document which was given to Moses at a particular and place, but, claims the Talmud, “The Torah preceded the world” (Shab. 88b)…. In other words, in the Rabbinic view the Torah is not an artifact of nature, a product of the universe; the universe, on the contrary is the product of the Torah… The written text is not only the enclothing of the fiery preexistent letters in which are contained the secrets of creation, but with the proper methods of interpretation, one can unlock the mysteries of all being. Every crownlet of every letter is filled with significance, and even the forms of letters are hints to profound meanings. To understand creation, one looks not to nature but to the Torah; the world can be read out of the Torah, and the Torah read from the world.1
The scriptural text, or first house, is accompanied in the Rabbinic tradition, by a second house, the oral tradition, which is as important as the first. According to Rawidowicz, the oral law is:
.. . not just a continuation or development but a new act of weaving undertaken by master weavers of rare power … and interpretatio of the highest order. Bayit Sheni is second only in time; it is first in essence, io its own particular essence. I dare say Bayit Rishon (the First House, inherited written scriptures) and the Bayit Shed are the beginnings of a system of thought and mode of life. This means that Israel has two beginnings. The second beginning or inlerpretatio achieved by Bayit Sheni may serve as a model for interpretatio in the sphere of thought at large.2
Judah is thus devoted to the word, interpreting, expounding on, reacting to, and elaborating of the tradition. In this tradition there is no room for prophets. Moses plainly warned them:
If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,
And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with an your heart and with all your soul.
Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him.
And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt … (Deuteronomy 13:1-5).
Since it is the rabbis who determine in Judah who and what is God and what he has said, no prophet can successfully challenge them. They can reject his God as a false God, and see him fit only for death.
Judah does await the Messiah. When he comes they will know him because he will come in power and establish a political kingdom. But in the meanwhile they believe that those who wish to become just in the eyes of God must do so by loving him through loving his word. To learn, to discuss, to debate, to interpret, to elaborate, to bring to precision that which is inchoate in the text or the oral tradition, these are primary things which make a person acceptable to God. And while the Messiah yet tarries, it is the business of every righteous Jewish person to work those works which will promote the work of Messiah: “The central idea of Judaism and its life purpose is the doctrine of the One Only and Holy God, whose kingdom of truth, justice and peace is to be universally established at the end of time.”3
Even as the people are to be perfected as a whole in the Messianic kingdom, so each individual 16 to be perfected, to become righteous. Kohler tells us: “Judaism holds that the soul of man came forth from the hand of its Maker, endowed with freedom, unsullied by any inherent evil or inherited sin. Thus man is through the exercise of his own free will, capable of attaining an ever greater perfection by unfolding and developing to an ever higher degree his mental, moral, and spiritual powers in the course ofhistory.”4
Justification in Jewish thought is thus done by the individual, for himself, using the word of God as a guide. Sanctification, on the other hand. is God’s work:
The blotting out of man’s sins with their punishment remains ever an act of grace by God. In compassion for man’s frailty He has ordained repentance as the means of salvation, and promised pardon to the penitent The truth is brought out in the liturgy for the Day of Atonement, as well as in the Apocalyptic Prayer of Manasseh. At the same time, Judaism awards the palm of victory to him who has wrestled with sin and conquered it by his own will. Thus the rabbis boldly assert: “Those who have sinned and repented rank higher in the world to come than the righteous who have never sinned,” which is paralleled in the New Testament: ”There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine righteous persons, who need no repentance,” No intermediary power without secures the divine grace and pardon for the repentant sinner, but his own inner transformation alone.5
Teshubah, which, means return, is an idea peculiar to Judaism, created by the prophets of Israel, and arising directly from the path of salvation, a “straying” into the road of perdition and death, the erring can return with heart and soul, end his ways, and thus change his entire being. This is not properly expressed by the term repentance, which denotes only regret for the wrong, but not the inner transformation. Nor is Teshubah to be rendered by either penitence or penance. The former indicates a sort of bodily self-castigation, the latter some other kind of penalty undergone in order to expiate sin. Such external forms of asceticism were prescribed and practiced by many tribes and some of the historical religions. The Jewish prophets, however, opposed them bitterly, demanding an inner change, a transformation of soul, renewing both heart and spirit.
“Let the wicked forsake his way.
And the man of iniquity his thoughts; And let him return unto the Lord and He will have compassion upon him, And to our God, for he will abundantly pardon”
(Isaiah 55:7). Judaism considers sin merely moral aberration, not utter corruption, and believes in the capability of the very worst of sinners to improve his ways; therefore it waits ever for his regeneration. This is truly a return to God, the restoration of the divine image which has been disfigured and corrupted by sin.6
The parallel justification of the person and of the people is distinctive in Judaism because it seems to indicate that the personal justification needs no help, no savior or divine intervention, while the redemption of the people, of the kingdom, does.
As a historical note we mention that this national justification has left many of Judah puzzled. They, as a people, have been diligent in pursuing this justification which they understand and believe. Why then has God so forsaken them and left them exposed to their enemies? How could the holocaust of World War 11 occur to a people who have been as sacrificing for the ideal as they have been? It would seem that the saying which most accurately represents modern Judah is “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani” (Matthew 27:46).
Justification in Catholicism
We now tum to the New Testament and the justification which is envisioned by the Roman Catholic faith. The Savior says:
… thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matthew 16:18-19).
It is assumed by Catholics that Peter and his successors have received from the Savior the power to give and to deny persons on earth permission to pass into the presence of God. The token of permission for passage. the thing that must happen for a person to be receivable by God, to be acceptable to him, is that the person must receive the sacraments. The authority of Peter is the authority to administer or to withhold the sacraments.
But sacraments are a necessary, not a sufficient condition for a person to receive the beatific vision, to be in God’s presence in the hereafter. The full sufficient condition is the addition of grace to the sacraments. Through the atonement of Christ. and the supererogated good works of the saints, those who receive the sacraments also are given forgiveness for their sins. The process of justification for the Roman Catholic faith is thus to qualify for the sacraments and consequentially to be forgiven by the grace of God. The forgiven person in eternity dwells with God and the angels in an unending bliss.
In the Principles of Catholic Theology edited by E. J. Gratsch we find the following statement:
The just are the righteous, the friends of God. Justification is the transition from a state of sin or aversion from God to a state of sanctifying grace or friendship with God…. God justified the sinner in the sacrament of baptism by forgiving his sins and infusing sanctifying grace with the virtues and gifts that accompany it. One who is justi6ed becomes a son of God and heir of heaven. It is possible to advance in the state of grace by keeping the commandments and by good works which gain merit for eternal life. Grace is gratuitous and supernatural. It is lost by every mortal sin, but it can be recovered by repentance and the sacrament of penance.7
It is noteworthy that the person himself does very little in this process of justification. Though a person may struggle with sin, the nature of man is such that complete repentance is not possible. The difference is made up by penance, which is 8 form of paying for sin, as opposed to replacing sin by righteousness. God, in his mercy, is th e Justifier. Not through the works of the law, but in the works of the sacraments does a mortal qualify for that redeeming mercy. Carmody and Carmody show that the net importance of justification in the Catholic faith has to do with original sin:
On justification the Council (of Trent) disputed the Reformer’s notion that righteousness is merely imputed to believers because of Christ. Rather, original sin really is removed, though after baptism concupiscence or the “tinder of sin” (formes peccati) remains. Justification leads one to sanctification or inner renewal, for the grace that makes one righteous presses further to make one holy.8
Faithfulness to the church is the means of assuring the receiving of the sacraments by an individual. Faithfulness is mostly a matter of sustaining the faith. The faith is the teachings of the Roman Catholic church. Thus it turns out that orthodoxy is the key virtue in man for Catholics. Orthodoxy is thus the key to Justification. It is the theologians of the church, the Pope or others whose ideas are accredited by the Pope, who establish what a person must believe to qualify. Thus there is no role for prophets in this system. The saying which seems to epitomize the Roman Catholic re1igion is the Savior’s statement, ” . . . ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32), especially if we (mis-)interpret “the truth” to refer to theological knowledge.
Justification in Protestantism
The New Testament key to the Protestant religions is found in Romans 10:9-13:
If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
It is then faith in Christ which saves man. This faith “cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10;11). Protestants generally deny the efficacy of the sacraments, maintaining that it is faith and faith alone which brings the mercy of God to man. But like the Catholics, justification is largely the responsibility of God for them. The trigger for the administration of God’s grace is that a man confess and believe when he hears the word. Then God sends grace upon him. The marks of that grace are good deeds in this world, those deeds being the result, not the qualification for grace. And like Catholicism, the results of grace are not realized fully in this life but only in the Resurrection. Having been cleansed and purified by the blood of Christ, the Protestant faithful dwell with God in eternal bliss.
For Protestants, justification is a forensic matter, a legal judgment pronounced upon man by God. Berkhof tells us:
Justification is a judicial act of God, in which he declares, on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, that all the claims of the law are satisfied with respect to the sinner …
Justification removes the guilt of sin and restores the sinner to all the filial rights involved in his state as a child of God, including an eternal inheritance. Sanctification removes the pollution of sin and renews the sinner ever-increasingly in conformity with the image of God.
Justification takes place outside of the sinner in the tribunal of God, and does not change his inner life, though the sentence is brought home to him subjectively. Sanctification, on the other hand, takes place in the inner life of man and gradually affects his whole being.
Justification takes place once and for all It is not repented, neither is it a process; it is complete once and for all There is no more or less in justification; man is either fully justified, or he is not justified at all. In distinction from it sanctification is a continuous process, which is never completed in this life.
4. While the meritorious cause of both lies in the merits of Christ, there is a difference in the efficient cause. Speaking economically, God the Father declares the sinner righteous, and God the Holy Spirit sanctifies hirn.9
Protestants do not enjoy a strong basis for claiming any priesthood authority from God. It is quite natural, therefore, that they should place less importance upon the ordinances, the sacraments which the Catholics emphasize. They also claim that the canon of scripture is full, so they have no room for a prophet in their midst Should one come claiming to be a prophet of God and proclaim anything other than their received tradition, he is rejected as being either unnecessary, since God has given his grace freely to alt who believe, or an imposter, if he tries to teach any different theology to them.
The epitome of the Protestants’ view of themselves is found in the words of Paul:
For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified ….
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s eject? It is God that justifieth (Romans 8:29-30, 33).
They see themselves as the elect, justified by God, the only heirs of salvation.
Justification in the Restored Gospel
We turn now to the account of the process ofjusti6cation as found in the scriptures of the latter days. One key scripture is found in the Pearl of Great Price:
That by reason of transgression cometh the fall , which fall bringeth death, and inasmuch as ye were born into the world by water, and blood, and the spirit, which I have made, and 50 became of dust a living soul, even so ye must be born again into the kingdom of heaven, of water, and of the Spirit, and be cleansed by blood, even the blood of mine Only Begotten; that ye might be sanctified from all sin, and enjoy the words of eternal life in this world, and eternal life in the world to come, even immortal glory;
For by the water ye keep the commandment; by the Spirit ye are justified, and by the blood ye are sanctified” (Moses 6:69-60).
We see from this scripture that to be sanctified is to be c1eansed from sin, to be forgiven of the debt due because of having sinned. This sanctification is made possible by the blood of Christ. The Savior gave his blood that he might ransom us from a damnation that could be broken in no other way. The occasion or this sanctification is the receiving of the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost after the baptism of water: “For the gate by which ye should enter is repentance and baptism by water; and then cometh a remission of your sins by fire and by the Holy Ghost.” (2 Nephi 31:17). This sanctification is apparently an all or nothing phenomenon. If we sin deliberately after having once received it, we must reassume the burden of the debt of sin for which we were once forgiven:
“And the anger of God kindleth against the inhabitants of the earth; and none doeth good, far all have gone out of the way.
And now, verily 1 say unto you, I, the Lord, will not lay any sin to your charge; go your ways and sin no more; but unto that soul who sinneth shall the former sins return, saith the Lord your God (D&C 82:6-7).
Sanctification is thus the reward for seeking the way, for entering into it by the strait gate. This sanctification also makes it possible to go along the path. That straight path is the way which is an important, however. That. way is justification, or the process of doing what. is just. A man is made just. by doing just or righteous deeds. As he does those deeds, which he can only do as an act of faith in Jesus Christ and in a state of being sanctified, the just acts which be performs begin to form in him the divine nature, the character, habits, and strength of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. As long as a person qualifies for the continued companionship of the Holy Spirit, he maintains that precious dual gift: forgiveness because he is in the way, and knowledge of what to do next to stay in the way of holiness. Thus, sanctification is prerequisite to being in the way, and being in the way is prerequisite to becoming so much like the Savior that nothing can take us away from that way. To be a just man is not just to have done good deeds. It is also to have taken upon oneself the nature, countenance, habits, and character of the Savior, to have grown up unto the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ. It is the justification of the man, not his deeds that is important in the long run. An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit, neither will a good tree bring forth evil fruit. The Father and the Son are anxiously engaged in the cause of creating good trees through the process of justification.
One of the clear and fairly detailed descriptions of how this process of justification via sanctification actually works in a human life is given by Nephi in 2 Nephi 3–33. Rather than Quote that entire scripture, I will summarize what Nephi says, point by point, as to what that process entails, and invite you to compare notes:
Chapter 31, verse 2: Nephi 1S speaking in his calling as prophet to his people. Verse 3: Nephi delights in plainness, that he might assist his hearers to understand the message of the Lord God.. Verse 4: The Savior will be baptized by a. Prophet of God. Verse 5: If the Savior, being holy, already sanctified, needs baptism, how much more do we? Verse 6: Wherein did the Savior fulfill a1\ righteousness by being baptized? Verse 7: The Savior was baptized to keep the commandment or the Father that he might continue to be just (righteous, law-abiding), even as he was holy, or already in the state of sanctification. Verse 8: After his baptism, the Holy Ghost appeared in the form of a dove to show to all who could see the connection of baptism with receiving the Holy Ghost. Verse 9: This example shows men the exact gate by which they must enter to be on the narrow way of the sanctified who are doing justly and becoming just persons.. Verse 10: We can follow the Savior only by likewise being willing to obey the Father. Verse 11: The Father says, stop sinning and be baptized in the name of Christ. Verse 12: The Son will give the Holy Ghost to all who are baptized as he was. Verse 13: If you repent and are baptized with real intent to take upon you the name of Christ, you will receive the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost and can then speak with the tongue of angels. Verse 14: The Savior says: If you speak with the tongue of angels and then deny me, it would have been better never to have known me. Verse 15: The Father saitb, He that endureth to the end shall be saved. Verse 16: Unless we endure to the end, we cannot be saved. Verse 17: Wherefore enter the gate by being born of the water and of the Spirit. Verse 18: Then are ye in the straight and narrow path to eternal life. Verse 19: Is all done? No. You must continue to rely wholly on the merits of Christ, with unshaken faith in him. Verse 20: Ye must press forward in faith, having a perfect brightness of hope and a love of God and of all men, to the end. Verse 21: There is no other way.
Chapter 32, Verse 1: Do you still wonder what the way is? Verse 2: Remember that when you receive the Holy Ghost you will speak with the tongue of angels. Verse 3: Through the Holy Ghost you may feast upon the words of Christ, for the words of Christ through the Holy Ghost will tell you all things what ye should do. Verse 4: If you do not now understand, it is because you are not seeking to understand, Verse 5: Again I say. if you receive the Holy Ghost it. will show you al1 things you should do (to act justly, to do the good works which are the fruit of the good tree), Verse 6: This is the doctrine of Christ; you will not receive any more doctrine until you have lived up to this doctrine to the end. Verse 7: I can say no more because of your wickedness. Verse 8: You still do not understand; to understand you must pray. Verse 9: Don’t do anything without praying and receiving the Holy Ghost to show you how to be just before the Father. 2 Nephi 33:4: The end to which we must endure is life eternal.
The end to which we should and must endure is then to become as the Savior is. When we have become as he is: we shall see him, and know him as we are known by him. John says: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but. we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1 John 3:2-3). Life eternal is: to know him and the Father: “And this is: life eternal. that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). And this promise is to all who endure to the end:
”Verily, thus saith the Lord: It shall come to pass that every soul who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me, and calleth on my name, and obeyeth my voice, and keepeth my commandments, shall see my face and know that I am” (D&C 93:1 ).
Thus by the waters of baptism we keep the commandment of the Father that all men should repent and be baptized after the manner in which our Savior was baptized, By the companionship of the Holy Spirit we are led to do just or righteous acts, even those acts the Savior would do were he in our position. Through doing those just acts. we learn to love purely as the Savior does taking upon ourselves the divine nature by adding grace to grace, virtue to faith, knowledge to virtue, temperance to knowledge, patience to temperance, godliness to patience, brotherly kindness to godliness, and charity to brotherly kindness which charity is the greatest of all, If we have truly become the sons of God, then our love of God, of Christ, and of our neighbor is full and pure: we have become as God is in that one most important respect which mortality offers: we have a pure heart. God can add upon that pure heart all other things which pertain to life and godliness. But until one obtains that pure heart by persevering in the narrow way, there can be no brightness of hope, no enduring to the end. A diagrammatic representation of the relationship of sanctification to justification is presented on Table I, with scriptural references to assist the reader in pursuing the matter, The chart is to be read as a time line from left to right. At birth every soul is innocent and on the narrow way. At age eight, sins accumulate a debt of sin. Hearing and accepting the Restored Gospel make sanctification by the Holy Spirit possible, which returns one to the straight and narrow way whereon justification, both of individual acts and of the person, may be pursued. Individual acts are just when they conform to the immediate instructions of God as received by personal revelation. The person becomes just as he or she becomes changed in character or nature so that he or she will not depart from the narrow way of righteousness no matter how great the opposition. Enduring to the end is completion of the process of justification of the person through successive performance of undeviating individual just acts.
Table 1
The Way of Holiness
The Human Problem for a Latter-day Saint:
To become a good (godly) person = have the personal character of the Savior = have the pure religion.
To satisfy the debt of sin incurred in the process of becoming a godly person.
Chauncey C. Riddle was a professor of philosophy at BYU when this devotional address was given on 8 July 1986
True Crown Jewels
Royal weddings and state occasions are top news items in our world. The reason for that is that people in general, of nearly every nation and culture, enjoy the show, pomp and ceremony that these occasions feature. A conspicuous aspect of many of these occasions is the use of crowns and crown jewels, of royal purple, and other finery.
The use of crowns themselves is an ancient custom that seems to have four somewhat interrelated origins. Some crowns were first helmets, part of personal military gear. As the rank of the person increased, the helmet tended to become more elaborate, sometimes losing all pretense of being a protective device and serving solely to signify to all the high rank of the wearer. We see an example of this in the “scrambled eggs” on the visor of a naval officer’s cap.
A second antecedent of the crown is found in the laurel wreaths that were anciently bestowed as honors on the heads of successful athletes. These were later bestowed on persons receiving honor and status of many kinds. The garlands became stylized, and we are probably seeing a version of the garland in the festive headbands some modern people wear.
A third antecedent of the crown is the religious headdress worn in many different cultures to suggest the possession of authority. These are represented in the modern world by the rather massive crown used in the coronation ceremony of the Pope.
A fourth related item is the bridal garland that is part of the traditional marriage regalia in many cultures.
All of these cultural streams converge in the regal headdress so familiar as part of the courtly trappings of European aristocracy, including crowns, coronets, and tiaras, each often festooned with precious gems according to the wealth and rank of the possessor. The investment of a fortune in such items has been deemed desirable to set the wearer apart from those of lesser status. Sometimes the common people of a nation are insulted if their leaders are not appropriately bedecked; they seem to take a vicarious pride in such ostentation. All of this provides the show and pageantry of which some people are so fond and that attract worldwide attention. Ordinary people tend to mimic royalty by wearing jewelry and expensive clothing even though they cannot indulge in crown jewels and royal purple. The highlight of some commoners’ lives is to live and look like the nobles and the wealthy for a moment, perhaps to be “queen for a day.”
Though the world is awed and carried away by the royal show of jeweled crowns and royal purple, it is important to remember that in the restored gospel frame of reference, those worldly indulgences are counterfeits of something good and spiritual. Crowns are counterfeits of true priesthood authority. Purple robes and other rich and royal vestments are counterfeits of the robe of righteousness that every person may wear and bear through faith in Jesus Christ. The jewels that are so costly and outwardly beautiful are counterfeits of the true concepts and principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ that make a life of righteousness possible. These precious jewel concepts, when properly cut and polished, become instruments through which the light of Christ is translated into understanding and good deeds in the life of a Saint.
Let us now turn to an examination of some of the precious jewels one may find in connection with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Like natural jewels, these concepts that pertain to godliness are first found rough and irregular, mixed with things of lesser value. The deposit to which we turn to seek out these treasures is the scriptures. The fullness of the scriptures is itself a treasure, but within the scriptures are some ideas that stand out as precious guiding lights when properly uncovered, shaped and polished, and installed in our system of thinking.
The Concept of Fear
An example of a real and eternal jewel is the concept of fear as found in the scriptures. As we turn to instances where the word “fear” is used, we see that fear is commended and commanded. In Deuteronomy 6:13 we read, “Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name.” Samuel tells the children of Israel in 1 Samuel 12:1415,
If ye will fear the Lord, and serve him, and obey his voice, and not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then shall both ye and also the king that reigneth over you continue following the Lord your God:
But if ye will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then shall the hand of the Lord be against you, as it was against your fathers.
We see plainly from these scriptures and many others like them that the servants of God are to fear him.
But turning to other scriptures, we read passages such as the following in the same chapter in 1 Samuel just quoted:
And Samuel said unto the people, Fear not: ye have done all this wickedness: yet turn not aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart;
And turn ye not aside for then should ye go after vain things, which cannot profit nor deliver; for they are vain.
For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake: because it hath pleased the Lord to make you his people.
Moreover as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you: but I will teach you the good and the right way:
Only fear the Lord, and serve him in truth with all your heart; for consider how great things he hath done for you. [1 Samuel 12:2024]
How is it that a prophet of God would tell the people both to fear and not to fear in almost the same breath?
We see the same problem in Isaiah. Isaiah counsels Israel in Isaiah 35:4: “Say to them that are of a fearful fear, Be strong, fear not: behold your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will come and save you.” But Isaiah also says, “Sanctify the Lord of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread” (Isaiah 8:13). It sounds again as if we are both to fear and not to fear. Without further multiplying examples we can readily conclude that the concept of fear is important but needs to be clarified. But who shall we believe as to the correct concept of fear?
The one whom we should believe is, of course, the Lord himself. The written scriptures as we have them are our treasure mine. But the treasures do not jump out at us in ready-made splendor. We must search, hypothesize, test, correct, perfect, and live by what we find. The holy scriptures are our raw material; the revelations of the Lord that result from our diligent searching of the scriptures become our jewels, our keys to understanding and to faithful obedience.
Let us suppose we have made a diligent search of the scriptures, old and new, concerning fear. Having done that we are then in a position to make hypotheses in the attempt to lay out clearly and distinctly the concepts of the scriptures. If we have done our work well, every scripture should be clear and understandable with no contradictions. Great light should be shed on the topic, and it should tie beautifully with other correct concepts.
May I now share with you the results of my own personal search into the scriptures concerning the concept of fear. Without going through all the detailed steps of the search, I will give only my present conclusions, because every day as I think about the gospel and the scriptures, new light seems to come. A new insight in one area of ideas sheds light and new perspective on every truth hitherto discovered. Thus, one must constantly readjust his thinking to new and grander perspectives as the panorama of the Father’s marvelous love for his children slowly takes shape and detail. This is exciting to experience. Of all the experiences a person can have, I suppose that learning the ways of God is perhaps next to the greatest of all experiences. I believe that the greatest experience is to have the privilege of putting those newly learned truths into action, to do the work of righteousness that correct concepts and true understanding make possible.
May I then share with you my hypotheses concerning fear. Please do not be tempted to believe what I say because I say it. I am not an authority to you. But I am your brother in Christ, and gladly share what I believe in the hope you may hear something that will cause you to make your own diligent search into these matters. For if you search in faith, I believe you will find and be greatly edified. Should you already have made your search, you will be able to compare notes and see where I have both scored and failed. Perhaps then, some occasion of testimony will bring your insights to me that I may then test your hypotheses. Thus may we all grow together in the knowledge of the Lord.
But on to my hypotheses as illustration of the true crown jewels.
Fear One
I see fear as an emotional state, a matter of the heart of man, having much to do with the choices he makes. But it seems from the examples we have already presented that there must be two different concepts represented by the English word “fear,” which would explain why we are commanded both to fear and not to fear. I shall begin with the more ordinary variety and will call it Fear One.
Fear One is closely related to prudence; it is prudence with a powerful emotional charge. When one is prudent, he carefully calculates the results of his actions before doing anything, taking care to avoid results that are not desirable. When that prudence becomes an emotional, compelling force, it turns to Fear One. Examples of Fear One are fear of heights, fear of the dark, fear of spiders and snakes, and most important, the fear of death. I personally have known this fear strongly in the fear of not surviving graduate school and in the fear of not being able to support my family adequately. In many ways this kind of fear is a good thing. Fear of traffic may help a child to be wary of a busy thoroughfare. Fear of falling may temper some desires to climb. But this fear can also become a paralyzing phobia as when a person freezes high on a building and cannot rationally be induced to save himself. I suppose that every human being is well acquainted with Fear One, and that life for many of us is a precarious balance between the strength of desire for results that impel us to action and Fear One, which prevents us from doing many things. When Fear One prevents us from doing things we should not do, that is one thing. But often it also prevents us from doing what we well know we should do. So it is a mixed opportunity.
I see Fear One well represented in the scriptures. In Deuteronomy 28:5867, the curse upon wayward Israel is couched in terms of this fear:
If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD;
Then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance.
Moreover he will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt, which thou wast afraid of; and they shall cleave unto thee.
Also every sickness, and every plague, which is not written in the book of this law, them will the Lord bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed.
And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude; because thou wouldest not obey the voice of the Lord thy God.
And it shall come to pass, that as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it.
And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone.
And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of the foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind:
And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life:
In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.
Fear One has a complement concept in boldness. The more bold one is, the less Fear One one has, and vice versa. The fullness of Fear One is petrification, or the inability to act.
Fear Two
We turn now to build the concept of Fear Two by contrast. Fear Two is also an emotional state, a matter of the heart. But where Fear One is a negative emotion, Fear Two is largely a positive one. Fear Two is awe and respect and admiration for God and for his goodness. Fear Two begets reverence and faithful obedience to the commandments of God. Perhaps the clearest contrast between the two concepts of fear is seen in the relationship each has to sin. Fear One causes one to be afraid to sin for fear of the resulting punishment when justice comes. Fear Two, on the other hand, is a fear to sin lest one disrupt the plans and purposes of God in bringing to pass the salvation of all mankind. Fear Two trembles at the very thought of sin, as we see in the words of Nephi:
Behold, my soul delighteth in the things of the Lord; and my heart pondereth continually upon the things which I have seen and heard.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord, in showing me his great and marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities.
I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me.
And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins; nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted. . . .
O Lord, wilt thou redeem my soul? Wilt thou deliver me out of the hands of mine enemies? Wilt thou make me that I may shake at the appearance of sin?
May the gates of hell be shut continually before me, because that my heart is broken and my spirit is contrite! O Lord, wilt thou not shut the gates of thy righteousness before me, that I may walk in the path of the low valley, that I may be strict in the plain road! [2 Nephi 4:1619, 3132]
We see that Fear One is fear of the consequences of sin, fear for one’s own skin, fear of the punishment that is surely to follow. It is a selfish fear, a concern only for oneself. Fear Two, by contrast, is fear of sinning, fear of harming others, fear of destroying the beautiful plan of blessing that God has ordained for all of his children here and now. It is not a fear for self, but a sorrow that one is weak and may harm others. It is a fear of thwarting God, of harming other persons; it even extends to plants and animals, which are also God’s creatures. Fear Two is a reverence for all of nature, which is God’s handiwork. Fear Two is the anguish of soul that causes a person to repent of all sin. Fear Two does not shrink from the penalties due for past sins. It gladly and willingly would suffer tenfold if that would do any good; but it learns that the freedom from sinning is inextricably coupled with the forgiveness for the debt of past sins. Fear Two cannot rest until repentance is complete and sin is done away with in the heart, mind, strength, and might of the person forever. Fear Two is also a concern for the welfare of others, an anxiousness when they will not repent.
A person driven by Fear One is obsessed with forgiveness of sins, if indeed he does believe in God and in an accounting. Fear One has a natural tendency to hope there is no God, and that there will be no day of accounting.
The salvation that Fear Two desires is to be free from sinning so that one will no longer inflict wounds on others. It so hungers and thirsts after righteousness that it is willing to forego eating and drinking, sleep and rest, riches and honors, even life itself in the quest for freedom from transgressing against the God it knows and reveres. Fear Two is not a motive open to atheists and agnostics. It is available only to those who have perceived the existence of God through the Holy Spirit and who worship to partake of more of the same.
Indeed, this Fear Two is a gift of the Holy Spirit, as we see in the account of the reaction of the people to the great sermon of King Benjamin:
And now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin had made an end of speaking the words which had been delivered unto him by the angel of the Lord, that he cast his eyes round about on the multitude, and behold they had fallen to the earth, for the fear of the Lord had come upon them.
And they had viewed themselves in their own carnal state, even less than the dust of the earth. And they all cried aloud with one voice, saying: O have mercy, and apply the atoning blood of Christ that we may receive forgiveness of our sins, and our hearts may be purified; for we believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who created heaven and earth, and all things; who shall come down among the children of men.
And it came to pass that after they had spoken these words the Spirit of the Lord came upon them, and they were filled with joy, having received a remission of their sins, and having peace of conscience, because of the exceeding faith which they had in Jesus Christ who should come, according to the words which king Benjamin had spoken unto them. [Mosiah 4:13]
The Fear of God
Now it is possible to call Fear One worldly fear and Fear Two godly fear on the model of the distinction between worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. But if we do that we must be careful to maintain a distinction between Fear One of God and Fear Two of God. As an instance of Fear One of God, Isaiah describes the situation of the wicked of the house of Israel in the last days, when they realize that the prophets were right, that there is a God, and that he is actually visibly arriving on earth to recompense every man for his deeds:
Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers.
Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots:
Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made:
And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not.
Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty.
The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.
For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low: . . .
And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.
And the idols he shall utterly abolish.
And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.
In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats;
To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. [Isaiah 2:612, 1721]
For an example of Fear Two toward God, we turn to Psalms 22:2331:
Ye that fear the Lord, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.
For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.
My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him.
The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the Lord that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.
All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.
For the kingdom is the Lord’s: and he is the governor among the nations. . . .
A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.
They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.
Thus we see that Fear One sees God as terrible and threatening, whereas Fear Two sees God as marvelous and wonderful, the object of adoration.
This difference between Fear One and Fear Two of God is reflected in an interesting passage in Isaiah that is also represented in the Book of Mormon. In Isaiah 29:1314, the Lord himself laments that men have only Fear One for him, and therefore he will restore the true gospel to them that they might again worship in spirit and truth:
Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:
Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.
When men teach the fear of God to other men, they usually do it by preaching hellfire and damnation, or purgatory and limbo. Or they may portray God as a terrible and unloving being, sometimes as completely impersonal. Such may generate wariness and prudence but can never become the heartfelt adoration of Fear Two, which comes only as a gift of the Holy Spirit. To know God is first to know his Spirit.
If we know his Spirit, the thing that Holy Spirit teaches us is the nature and attributes of God in the pattern revealed in D&C 93:1920:
I give unto you these sayings that you may understand and know how to worship, and know what you worship, that you may come unto the Father in my name, and in due time receive of his fulness.
For if you keep my commandments you shall receive of his fulness, and be glorified in me as I am in the Father; therefore, I say unto you, you shall receive grace for grace.
That grace begins with fear of and for God. It seems to me that it does not really matter whether one begins with Fear One or Fear Two. What does seem to matter is the reaction. Either Fear One or Fear Two can come as a gift of the Holy Spirit. When received as this kind of gift, the receiver is turned toward repentance. In repentance and faith, Fear One always turns to and becomes Fear Two. The basic issue seems to be, when one fears, does one turn to God through the Holy Spirit or does one turn away and harden his heart? We read in Proverbs 1:7: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction. ” With either Fear One or Fear Two as a beginning, the humble servant of God progresses from grace to grace until Fear One grows into Fear Two, and Fear Two grows into a perfect love for God and for all of God’s creatures. We read in 1 John 4:1518:
Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
This passage from John presents us with a problem. If perfect love casts out fear, is it Fear One or Fear Two that is cast out? Or is it both? I will venture an interpretation. My belief is that John was referring only to Fear One when he says perfect love casts out fear. One clue that this is his meaning is the phrase “fear hath torment.” Fear One indeed has and is torment. But Fear Two has no torment, unless you wish to call the agony of hating one’s own sins a torment. I deem John to be saying that when one accepts God’s love and the redemption from sin and sinning that eventually attends the faithful, he ceases entirely to have any Fear One, for anything. I believe that same idea is reflected in D&C 63:17, where the Lord speaks concerning the fate of those who covenant with him and then deliberately go on and die in their sins:
Wherefore, I, the Lord, have said that the fearful, and the unbelieving, and all liars, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie, and the whoremonger, and the sorcerer, shall have their part in that lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.
Now we know that only the sons of perdition suffer the second death and that only those who take the covenants in this life can become sons of perdition. Therefore, it seems urgent that anyone who has taken the covenants needs to press on in the gifts of the Spirit until their trust in the Lord is great, until they can acknowledge his hand in all things, until they know there are no accidents of nature, until they know that not a sparrow falls without the Lord being aware of it, until they know that all things work together for their good for they who love the Lord. Then there is nothing to fear in the sense of Fear One.
The Perfecting of the Soul
If, then, we walk in the Spirit of the Lord, the Lord will lead us in the paths of righteousness, and in that path nothing can harm us in any eternal way–that is to say, in any important way. Wicked men may prey upon us, disease may fell us, war may ravage us, but through all of this we will know that the Lord is working out his eternal purposes. Though these may indeed hurt our body, if we love God they can in no way hurt our eternal spirit. Therefore we endure them without Fear One, knowing that the Lord is master of all, that he is fully mindful of our predicament, and that he is but using our faith and suffering to work out his eternal purposes for all of his other children as well as for us. Thus we will have no Fear One, no gripping concern for the future welfare of ourselves or of our loved ones, for we rest content to do our part in the Lord’s great drama. Thus does love of God with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength, serving him in all things in the name of Jesus Christ, cast out all Fear One.
My hypothesis is that a righteous being maintains Fear Two always. Fear Two forms a tension with the pure love of God. We see on the one hand the enormity of sin and the inability of God to look upon sin with the least degree of allowance because of his justice. That is in appropriate tension with the love and mercy of God on the other hand. Fear of sinning stretches against love of God. I see this tension as the power by which a righteous being keeps himself eternally on the straight and narrow path of righteousness.
The righteous, those who are impassioned and motivated by Fear Two, see sin as a devastating destruction of the happiness of mankind. They recognize that God has prepared a celestial heritage for every human being, one that can be claimed in all important aspects even here in mortality. They come to realize that the potential of every human life is to do great good through our Savior in establishing and maintaining that celestial society to which all men are invited. They see that sin, which is selfishness, is the great destroyer of the blessings of mankind, and it even causes God himself to suffer. The terrible thing about sin is not that one has to pay for sin, as the believer in Fear One would have it, but that I cause everyone else to suffer here and now when I sin. He who understands Fear Two knows that he is hating God and each of his fellowmen when he transgresses the commandments of God. Such a one would far rather suffer himself than cause the least of these, his brethren, to suffer because of his own weaknesses. Thus he strives for perfection by making every sacrifice necessary to love the Lord God with all of his heart, yearning to receive it.
My conclusions about fear, then, are that Fear One is human fear of being hurt, and it fears God and sin because of the possibility of being brought to justice and thus having to suffer. Fear One is selfish, an attempt to protect one’s own skin. Fear Two is godly fear, a gift of the spirit, a sense of awe and gratitude at the goodness of God and the life opportunity he has given. This awe and reverence makes one tremble at the very thought of sinning, or hurting someone else. The fullness and perfection of Fear Two is the perfecting of the soul through the sacrifice of repentance unto a perfect man, even to the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ. A person who has Fear Two is the God-fearing man of the scriptures, one who reverences God through faithful obedience, striving to love purely, even as God does.
The Riches of Eternity
Those are my conclusions about fear. These ideas are very precious to me; they are some of my jewels. But do not mistake them for the main point of my discourse with you today. The conclusions about fear are my conclusions, and are intended to be illustrative only. My main point concerns crown jewels and purple robes, if we may return to where we began. My belief is that the concepts and principles of the restored gospel have virtually infinite worth compared with the paltry dust of gold, silver, jewels, and expensive clothing. He who knows the ways of God has the riches of eternity, for having that knowledge, he can live the gospel of Jesus Christ and thus fulfill the work of righteousness. Those who lack that knowledge seem to know their lack and adorn themselves with that which has no life and cannot save. One beauty of the truths of the restored gospel is that they are not a limited resource. One does not need to deprive someone else to gain them. In fact, as they are shared, all grow richer.
We may all seek and obtain these riches by a simple process. The Father has ordained that we should have written scriptures. If we hunger and thirst after righteousness, these scriptures will be delicious to us. But the main thing we learn from them is that there is more. The fullness of the gifts of the Spirit, including all of the mysteries of godliness, are ours if only we will relinquish selfishness and begin to live by every word that proceeds forth out of the mouth of God. Through personal revelation we may share a fullness of all that the Father has, even unto eternal lives, but we must begin with a knowledge of him and his ways.
We may go to the Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, in mighty prayer, fasting, scripture study–searching the words of the dead prophets but especially the words of the living prophets–pondering, piecing, hypothesizing, experimenting, feeling, thinking, and trying with all the power we have to search out the ways of God. I bear you my testimony that this is a very rewarding process.
The true jewels are of immense benefit to us. Even as light shines on earthly jewels and reflects visible light of pleasing color and brilliance, even so do the true concepts and precepts enable us to reflect the light of Christ into noble thoughts, clear ideas, and goodly deeds. Through correct gospel concepts and principles we receive and assimilate the riches of eternity. Through them we minister to our stewardship. Using them and the power of the priesthood, we have the ability to work mighty miracles unto the salvation of souls. In place of the purple robes of earthly royalty, we may enjoy the garment of the wedding feast when Christ comes as the bridegroom. Our wedding garment is the invisible sacrifices we make to keep our covenants and to minister to the poor and the needy out of the abundance that the Lord has given to each one of us. The true robes are the robes of righteousness, and they are spotless white, not royal purple.
We are saved no faster than we gain knowledge of the ways and goodness of our God. It is my prayer that we shall all be diligent in obtaining the true riches, that there will be no regrets when our eyes are opened in death and we realize that our whole life we lived in the hand of God. I believe that we shall then see that he was trying to bless us and help us all the while so we would not need to try to comfort ourselves with crown jewels and royal purple. I say this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Chauncey C. Riddle Brigham Young University 13 Feb. 1986
Riddle, Chauncey C. (1986) “The Basic Unit of Human Communication,” Deseret Language and Linguistic Society Symposium: Vol. 12: Iss. 1, Article 11. Available at: http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/dlls/vol12/iss1/11
Riddle, Chauncey C. (1986) “The Basic Unit of Human Communication,” Deseret Language and Linguistic Society Symposium: Vol. 12: Iss. 1, Article 11.
This paper attempts to give a definitive answer to the
question: What is the basic unit of human communication? The inquiry will
proceed by establishing communication as a systems concept and will then
propose that assertion-in-use-context is the basic unit of human communication,
showing the superiority of that unit over others which might be reasonably
considered as the basic unit.
In systems theory we may distinguish three kinds of systems,
each of which has an appropriate companion definition of communication. We
shall assume that in reality there is only one system in existence, which is the totality of the universe.
The term system used below should be
read as sub-system of the universe.
Static systems are geometric arrangements of non-changing parts of sane
arbitrarily defined whole. Each static system has internal parts (each of which
has some internal relationship with every other part), a system boundary, and
an environment. Communication in a static system is unobstructed contiguity of
parts of a static system. This is a non-transitive relationship. For example,
we say that the kitchen of this house communicates with the living room because
there is a doorway which leads directly from one to the other. We say that
tunnel A does not communicate with tunnel B in the mine because one must go
outside the mind into another static system to gain access from tunnel A to
tunnel B.
Dynamic systems are first static systems to which change or
functioning of internal parts and the external environment have been added. The
dynamic aspect of dynamic systems is construed in terms of input from the
environment, internal processing of that input, and output from the system to
the environment. Communication in a dynamic system is the effect which one or
more parts of a dynamic system has upon any other part. This communication is
to be taken as transitive, effect transferring from part to part, contrary to
the non-transitive nature of static communication. The unit of dynamic
communication may be taken to be effective force applied through time, as in
foot-pounds of work per minute. For example, the engine of an automobile
delivers an output of foot-pounds of power which is transmitted through the
transmission, drive shaft, differential, axles, wheels and tires of the
automobile; that power translated into friction between the tires and the
pavement propels the vehicle along the surface of the pavement. Thus the engine
communicates with the tires to accomplish the work of the automobile. If any
linkage part is missing or defective (e.g., if the differential is stripped),
then the engine no longer communicates with the tires and the functioning of
the system is defective.
An agent system is a dynamic system of which at least one part is an agent. An agent is a being whose acts are discretionary: given any act performed in its specific context, if the actor could have acted otherwise then the actor is an agent. This is an ideal definition, for it presupposes an omniscient observer. For mere humans, agency is attributed when the actor acts first one way am then quite another in apparently identical but time differentiated situations. Communication for an agent system is (1) action of the agent upon the environment to attempt to effect a desired change in the environment; or (2) action by the agent to interpret present input from the environment in order to project a hypothesis as to what will happen next as a basis for communication (1). In other words, agents both send and receive communication as agents. In the agent communication situation the universe is divided into two systems: the agent and all he controls, and the remainder of the universe. Thus agent communication is simply any output from the agent system to the remainder of the universe or any input from the remainder of the universe to the agent system. For example, an agent who reads a newspaper is being affected by an input from the environment in the receiving of communication; he may then write a letter to the editor in the attempt to create a change in the environment by sending communication. Negative examples would be failure of the delivery of the newspaper (so that no effect of the newspaper is possible on the agent) and failure of the letter to reach the editor (thus making impossible any change such as that which the agent desires).
It is now necessary to posit two hypothetical creatures to answer the needs of the two kinds of agent communication posited above. The receiving of communication from the universe by an agent we shall denominate assessment; the sending of communication to the universe by an agent shall be denominated as assertion. Thus an agent receives input from the universe and processes it. This processing is never a simple result of the universe acting upon the agent in a mechanical fashion: the agent is always a creative participant, injecting his desires and beliefs into the construction which he creates to represent in his own mind what is happening “out there” in the universe. Likewise, his attempt to project a cause into the universe which will create a desired change in the universe is clearly a function of the agent’s desires and beliefs. Thus, agent communication is significantly different from either static or dynamic communication. Whereas static communication is wholly a matter of internal relations constrained by spatial contiguity, and whereas dynamic communication is a mechanical type of input and output constrained in a mechanical fashion by the physical properties of the environment and the receiving and producing system, so the input and output of an agent system is internally shaped by the desires and beliefs of the agent (beliefs being a function of the desires of the agent). Incoming and outgoing action is not mechanically determined but is always factored by the unique nature of the desires of the individual agent.
When we compare assessment with assertion we see that both
are necessary to communication. But assertion is action, whereas assessment is
reaction. Assertion is public and objective, whereas assessment is private and
subjective. Assertion is fixed and final for a given time and place, whereas
assessment may be ongoing, perhaps never concluding definitively among several
possibilities. Assertion is intrusive, offensive; assessment is protective,
defensive. Assertion is a reflection of the assessments of the asserter, though
assessment may remain mute, silent. Assertion tends to increase in importance
with increase of the agency of the asserter, whereas assessment does not
necessarily do so. An asserter is found out for what he is, whereas an assessor
may simply be a blotter. These contrasts suggest that assertion is the primary
factor in agent communication, a better target for fixing a single unit of
communication than assessment would be.
Assertion is the intentional act of an agent who attempts to effect a change in the universe (the universe outside of himself) in order to change how the universe affects him. He makes this attempt by a more or less calculated launching ofa perturbation (an effective force) into the universe. This assertion can take a verbal or nonverbal form, the universe seeming to be indifferent to which form it is. Thus an assertion can be a sentence, an exclamation, any noise, any gesture, any movement of body, perhaps even a thought process, should thought processes be detectable by am therefore influential on sane aspect of the universe.
We must also distinguish between assertion in the abstract
and assertion in the context of a specific usage by a given agent in a specific
environment. Abstract assertions are in reality not assertions but only
hypotheses. They are potential assertions, having the form of assertions but
lacking the pertinent autobiographical and contextual realities to make them
real assertions. All real assertions are thus assertions by an agent in a
specific, unique, historic situation. One final preliminary stipulation is
necessary. We shall make a basic inclusion of human communication within agent
communication. This inclusion cannot be made categorically, for not all humans
are agents, and it is typical of adult human beings to be agents. Therefore
this stipulation will suffice for the present concern.
It is now possible to state the thesis of this paper precisely. This is the thesis: The basic unit of human communication is an assertion in its historic context of actually being propounded by a real agent. We shall use this concept of assertion-in-use-context as the focus of attention for the remainder of this paper, and shall refer to it by the acronym AIUC.
We shall now state basic laws which apply to the AIUC.
Every AIUC is unique, individuated by space, time, quality and author.
The summed series of a given author’s assertions are his history. (assessments are presumed to be reflected in subsequent assertions.)
Every agent is propounding an assertion at every moment.
The AIUC of a given moment is the being of the agent.
The measure of the agency of an agent is the sum of the agency of the agent assessors which respond positively to his assertion, plus the sum of his effect on non-agent reactors.
The limiting factor on the expansion of the agency of an agent is his ability correctly to assess the desires of other agents as an instrument in the fulfilling of those desires of other agents.
AIUC is the unique vehicle of message.
Messages are assessments of AIUCs. Messages exist only in
the minds of assessors. They are different from intentions, for authors may
intend one thing then see that their own assertion must be assessed to have a
different message than that which they themselves intended. Messages are the
reaction of each sentient, intelligent observer to a given AIUC, including the
reaction of the asserter.
Messages have the following components:
The asserter’s intent is hypothesized.
There is a propositional decoding of the assertion.
There is an attribution of strength (urgency, importance, authoritativeness, truthfulness, rightness, all these positive or negative) for that assertion.
There is an estimate of the impact or result on the universe of that AIUC being assessed (present result and probable future results.)
Propositional decoding is the observer’s mental action of
translating the signals of the AIUC into a concatenation of concepts which the observer deems to be a full and adequate
representation of what the asserter is saying. This translation may have two or
more versions. One version may be the “literal” meaning of the asserter’s words
which is then contrasted with the deeper or “real” meaning. When someone say’s
“How are you?” upon meeting you for the first time in the morning, it is
usually best to ignore the literal interpretation of the words spoken and
answer only the “real intent,” which is often simply an acknowledgement that
they recognize your presence. This propositional decoding is not necessarily a
translation into a standard spoken language. It may be this in same cases. But
it is always a translation into the personal concept language of the individual.
The personal concept language of the individual is those
concepts which have been formed out of experience and need by each person. If
people have many experiences in common, the concepts with which they think
about those common experiences will tend to have greater similarity than if
they do not have such experiences in common.
The hallmark of understanding of one another’s concepts is
the ability to cooperate. When people work together over a period of time,
language becomes adequate to facilitate extensive cooperation. This, for
instance, is what makes government of the people and by the people possible.
When a group of people are familiar only with oppression and tyranny, when they
have learned to survive that tyranny only by being selfish and devious, they do
not have the mind set nor the cooperative habits and attitudes which enable
them to govern themselves peaceably. Another way of saying this is that there
must be a language of freedom and responsibility in successful use before a
people can enjoy freedom and responsibility.
The construction of a message by an observer is very much
like the process that takes place as one watches a person draw, and shoot an
arrow. If one wishes to understand the archer, one must figure out the archer’s
target, assess the nature of the arrow (poison tipped, well-fashioned, etc.),
have some sense of the power behind the arrow (full or partial draw, 20 lb. bow
or crossbow, etc.), and estimate the damage the arrow will inflict on what it
strikes as well as the future consequences of that striking. If the arrow is
aimed at us, the urgency of determining the message is great, and those slow to
translate sometimes do not survive. It is noteworthy that the shooting of an
arrow is always an assertion, an AIUC, since all actions by a person are such,
as noted above.
It would be extremely helpful if one were able to construct the true and correct message related to each AIUC which one observes. Most persons are aware through the passage of time and the confirmation or disconfirmation of subsequent events that their message constructions vary widely in their degree of accuracy. Intelligence would have us study this matter to learn to be as accurate as we can be at all times, hoping and striving for complete accuracy, but still being cautious enough to recognize that we probably will not attain such extraordinary perceptiveness as mortals. The substitute for this unerring perceptiveness which most people desire to have is power. The more power one has, the less one needs to be accurate in judging the assertions of others (up to a point). A potentate commands, not needing to cooperate; whatever interpretation he places on his own AIUC will often stand for the truth even if not true. Of course, the downfall of potentates often comes when they blindly paint themselves into a corner in not correctly assessing the intent of someone close to them who intends to usurp their power.
True message portrayal is the province of the gods. Belief
that one’s message portrayals are true is the province of fools and those who
think they are gods. Mere mortals must simply do the best they can, shoring up
their guesses by redundancy, tentativeness and humility as needed.
True or false, partially true or insufficiently so, whenever
we utter our interpretation of another person’s AIUC we are asserting
ourselves, and it is then up to our observers to guess what we really mean and
how correct we are in interpreting the AIUC which we report. The fabric of
society is thus one great AIUC fair wherein everyone is taking in everyone
else’s AIUCs, making judgments and hanging out their own AIUCs for everyone
else to judge and comment on. No wonder the course of wisdom is sometimes to
remain silent.
The message one creates for the AIUC of another is the meaning one attaches to the AIUC. No
AIUC is self-revelatory. All meaning is attributed by an observer. With a
multiplicity of observers there will undoubtedly always be a multiplicity of
meanings for any AIUC. Meaning, like message, which meaning is, is always specifically
related to the context of assertion.
Thus words and sentences in mention-context have no meaning.
Hypothetical or mock-up meanings can be made up for them. But ordinarily they
are not intended to be used, which is to say, to have meaning. There are
meanings-in-general of words and phrases, which are the modal uses of the
linguistic item in question in historic contexts of use. But there are no
proper meanings, no necessary or correct meanings of any linguistic structure.
It is important now to compare AIUC with other candidates
for the position of most fundamental unit of language. Comparison will be made
with phoneme/character, morpheme/word, phrase, sentence, proposition and
message.
Phoneme/character:
An isolated phoneme/character may mean anything because it means nothing. These
are units of syntactic structure, and they play a necessary and decisive role
in the use of language. They are the critical factors in creating and
determining morphemes and words. But they are not the basic units of language
because apart from their use in or as morphemes or words they have a
mention-value only.
Morpheme/word: A morpheme or a word apart from an actual
use in a living context has no meaning but may have several potential standard meanings and always has an infinite
number of potential use meanings. These cannot serve as the basic unit of
language because each, until used, can have no meanings.
Phrase: A phrase is yet incomplete,
having the same position and shortcomings of morphemes and words.
Sentence:
Sentences in use are assertions in use, even as words and phrases in use may be
assertions in use. But to isolate a sentence from a specific use context is to
leave it as potential language, not real language. Assertion-in-use-context is
an actual linguistic unit, have a manifold richness of meaning indicators both
in the body language of the speaker and in the spatial and temporal context of
utterance. So we must reject sentence as our candidate for most basic unit of
language.
Proposition:
Propositions are whatever they are construed to be by their authors, ranging
from true descriptive assertions to the essential informational content of any
assertion. Propositions are thus specialized sentential usages and suffer the
same problems relative to AIUCs as do sentences.
Messages: Message is always the subjective reaction of a participant in the assertion context. Linguistic structures in mention context do not have messages, and messages related to use context are always answers to the question as to what is being asserted. These messages grow and improve with time and the interpretive ability of the observer, even relative to a given AIUC, and they may also deteriorate with time. To make the subjective reaction of the observer the unit of language would be to beg the question, for to ask what is the basic unit of language is to ask what is the basic unit of meaning.
We are thus left
with assertion-in-use-context as the basic unit of human communication. Only
that unit is an objective starting point for human inquiry, for the interpretation process.
Only the AIUC has the reality and richness to provide determinative clues as to
what a given person really means by mankind an assertion is some manner in some
particular context.
There are other
points which favor AIUC as the
basic unit of language.
This use of AIUC is continuous with common sense. Common sense is not always a touchstone, but to defy it is to assume the burden of proof in any matter. But it does seem that we all know that our language teachers are saying something important when they tell us, time after time, that the specific meaning of some syntactical usage must be determined by context.
The AIUC gives us
the most behavioral target
possible for our interpretive quest, even allowing the electronic capturing of
the nuances of speech utterance, body language, physical context, etc. Such
capturing is never complete, for the full context of any utterance is all that
has gone before and much of what comes after. But we can generally agree on the
assertion as an assertion in a specific context, even if we cannot agree on the
interpretation.
The use of AIUC is
metaphysically parsimonious. It does not necessitate the invention of such
creatures as “deep structure,” “objective referents” or “platonic categories.”
It simply points to language use as the self-expression of particular human
beings in particular contexts.
This use of AIUC
recognizes agency in both the speaker and the hearer of language. Thus
communication is not forced into the narrow reductionistic or mechanistic frame
which robs it of its agentive spontaneity and creativity. This freedom allows language to rise
above human resources and to partake of whatever supernatural potential for
language the speakers and hearers may have at their disposal. While this point
is a debit rather than a credit for a person of naturalistic philosophic bent, it
enhances the linguistic understanding of that majority of mankind who savor
contact with the supernatural.
AIUC as the unit of language facilitates consideration of non-verbal languages and non-language actions as part of the actual communication phenomenon. Considered attention to these often-neglected aspects of communication has given dramatists power through the ages and advertisers commercial application in modern advertising techniques, which, even with all the advertisers pecuniary diverting of basic principles, still function as prime examples of expert communication.
This use of AIUC is also helpful in that it helps to prevent
hubris in the human species by
reminding us that there is no human voice that is final and authoritative—about
anything—and that every assertion in its actual context of use is always the
personal bearing of personal testimony. Much as we would desire to be the last
word, to state eternal truth the way it really is, we must simply settle for
saying the best we know and for hoping that someone can successfully construe
what we mean to their own edification.
The conclusion of this matter is the hope that focus on AIUC
will provide an enhancement to the use and understanding of language by seeing
it ecologically, as it really grows in a real world.
Principles of the Gospel in Practice – Sperry Symposium – 1985
CHAPTER SEVEN
Chauncey C. Riddle
The purpose of this paper is to describe the nature of a testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. To have a testimony is to know for a certainty that that message is a true message from the true and living God. An understanding of testimony is seen here as an invaluable aid in gaining and strengthening a testimony, should one desire to do so.
Two thousand years ago when Jesus of Nazareth hung crucified in the Roman province of Judea for everyone to see, there were two distinct interpretations of what was being seen. Some saw the Son of God, the Savior of all mankind, hanging in agony to do the Father’s will. Others saw a pretender from Galilee who had blasphemed God by claiming to be his son and was receiving his just reward. That difference is a witness to the principle that human knowledge does not come by sight only. And it emphasizes the importance of knowing for a surety in all matters of moment. Can we be sure, and if so, how? To answer those questions we must examine what we know about human knowledge. What we are concerned about is the common sense about human knowledge: those matters to which every intelligent, observant human being is able to assent. You, the reader, are called upon as a witness to the truth of the following account.
1. Human beings and human knowledge.
We note first that the human being has two parts or aspects. First, there is the outer part wherein the human body plays a conspicuous role; here we humans observe, touch, and communicate about the external world in which we live. This world consists of the earth and nature, other persons, and the human artifacts which compass us. The second part of a human being is the inner world of our own personal thoughts, feelings, and desires; in it are the good, the holy, and the beautiful as well as the bad, the evil, and the ugly. The first is the public arena in which we act and react with the physical universe. The second is the private realm of our ideas, ideals, dreams, and plans. Both of these realms are important. Were we to fail to function relative to either we would be in serious difficulty. Abdication in the private realm is to cease to be autonomous and to become an externally controlled and motivated automaton. Neglect of the public realm fosters incompetence, which in the extreme is called insanity. But normal coping with human life is a careful integration of these two, a cooperative personal response of an intelligent and feeling inner self as it deals with important ideas and values and relates them to the opportunities and demands of an external, real world through a real physical tabernacle. In a world of challenges, opportunities, and dangers, one must draw heavily upon each and coordinate them in order to meet those challenges and dangers successfully and to capitalize on one’s opportunities.
Corresponding to those two aspects of the human being are two kinds of knowledge or belief. (Much of what we think we know is but belief.) In the public, outer realm we have ideas about the physical world, other people, and things. These ideas we gain through communication with other persons whom we respect (authority), from our thinking about what others say– especially noting that others don’t agree in what they tell us (reason), from our own sensory observations about the outside world (empiricism), and from our noting which ideas and procedures seem to work in the world (pragmatics). We take in evidences from all these sources, knead them into a unified picture of the world and file that picture in our memory. We update or correct that picture at will. That picture is our reality, the best we can do in relating to reality. Some of us are very careful, searching out evidence and piecing the evidence into a consistent whole with diligence. Others of us are fairly casual about the whole thing, not even minding inconsistencies and gaps, changing our ideas only when painful necessity forces us to amend our expectations of the world.
The other kind of knowledge, the personal sort, is very different. It is heavily involved in values, ideals, desires, and satisfactions. Perhaps the most important facet of this inner world is our experience of the holy. Many persons have a sense that there is something special, something deserving of reverence within their inner realm of consciousness. This may or may not have been initially influenced by other persons. But every human being must cope with this influence and learn on his own how it acts and reacts in his own inner world. What each person needs to learn and will learn if attentive is what happens when he or she yields to the influence of the holy. Part of that learning comes from contrasting yielding to the enticements of that which the inner self feels to be evil, opposing the holy in oneself. Each of us also experiments with yielding to our own desires, trying to ignore feelings of good and bad, right and wrong. Sometimes we don’t even make decisions: we just let things happen. Out of all these experiments and experiences we learn much about ourselves, about what brings happiness and what brings unhappiness, and about that which is prudent, desirable, and effective.
Since each of us is a person who operates in two worlds, our minds must integrate these two kinds of knowledge in order for us not to be double-minded. That integration is an ideal, perhaps never fully completed. The struggle to gain correct notions in each realm and then to correlate them is the challenge of human life, the basis of drama and pathos, happiness and joy.
It is important to note that the experiences we have as humans do not uniquely determine what we believe either in the outer or the inner world. Our own desires are important. Our desires enable us to search for the kind of evidence which we wish to have, to reject evidence which goes contrary to our desires, and to integrate only those materials which we wish to, and to the degree to which we desire. We literally create our own universe within the bounds of those experiences which are too painful for us to ignore. Those bounds are quite generous, allowing us much freedom. Each person’s synthesis of the universe is thus a genuine reflection of his or her own desires.
But if desire is a powerful selecting and ordering factor, so must be our minds. Because much of the evidence we gain from other humans is contradictory, because reason itself is captive to the premises which we furnish it, because our senses do give us ambiguous reports, because what works is never a sure indication of what is, and because we can fool ourselves as to what really happens inside our personal world, we must use all of the power of mind and discernment that we can bring to bear. Skepticism is our friend, insisting that we duplicate evidence, that we rethink, that we probe and try and experiment afresh, that we challenge every idea. Only a healthy skepticism enables us to separate the true and the good from the welter of appearance and opinion. But skepticism, too, can exceed its proper bounds. As it cuts it may begin to decimate that which is reliable and substantial. If we let it, if we so desire, it easily slips into a cynicism that indiscriminately derogates everything. Each of us must balance faith with incredulity, trust with wariness, exuberance with soberness, creativity with responsibility, passion with temperance, hope with realism. Only thus can we create an understanding of the world which will allow us those successes we desire.
2. Knowledge in matters of religion.
Let us then suppose that we have become intelligent, coping individuals, that we are making a reasonably good stab at being responsible persons, that we are assets to our communities, and that we are intelligent about truth and value. Our synthesis of the two kinds of knowledge is then beginning to serve our needs and challenges. In this state of intelligent awareness of the universe we are basically prepared to address the most important kinds of questions, those of religion. For religion is about ourselves. What kind of person should we make of ourselves? What habits of feeling and valuing, of thinking and believing, of doing and making should we foster in ourselves? Our own habits are our character. Our character is the most precious achievement and construction of our mortal existence.
Let us further suppose that our challenge is to ascertain the truthfulness of that particular religion, the restored gospel, church, and priesthood of Jesus Christ as revealed first to the Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., and then to a host of others in these latter days. Specifically, let us focus on how one can know that the restored gospel is the true message about salvation for all men from the true and living God. For that message to be true one would need to gather and synthesize enough information to be sure that there is a true and living God, our Father in Heaven, who has sent us his beloved, only begotten Son, whom we should hear. What we hear is that we should believe in the Son, repent of all our sins, choose faithful obedience to him as our sole means of acting, and strive to become perfect in our character (to endure to the end)–all under the personal companionship and tutelage of the Holy Spirit and through the ordinances administered by the authorized priesthood of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While that seems much to prove, it all boils down to one principal feature: Does the Holy Ghost bear witness to our inner self of the truthfulness of these things? As we begin to obey, does that Holy Spirit continue to guide us in paths that we ourselves, judging by our own sense of what is holy, know are good and true?
As there are two kinds of evidence and knowledge about things in general, so there are two kinds pertaining to the hypothesis that the restored gospel is true. We shall examine each of these kinds of evidences in turn, beginning with the evidences from the external world.
The first kind of evidence which comes to bear is that of authority. What do the responsible, intelligent people whom we know who have investigated the restored gospel say about it? If they assure us that it is true, we have an important piece of evidence. If they bear negative witness, we must also account for that. But we can only make responsible judgments about other person’s testimonies, positive or negative, when we have gained further evidence of other kinds on our own. We need to have independent evidence as to whether or not the restored gospel is true or false before we can evaluate any person’s testimony. The testimony of other persons is always inconclusive if there is no other evidence available.
Next is the evidence of reason. What kinds of answers to theological questions go with the restored gospel? Are those answers self-consistent? Are they consistent with the Holy Bible? Is the Book of Mormon consistent with the Holy Bible? Is there a completeness of answers so that every important question has an answer? Is there some consistency about the answers which authorities of the restored Church give? As our reason searches and compares it begins either to be satisfied or dissatisfied. To become either is an important kind of evidence. But this evidence is not conclusive. We can evaluate it only when we get more information from other sources. We cannot know if we should be satisfied or dissatisfied until we know on other grounds whether the restored gospel is true: Then we can evaluate our own reasoning.
We turn to observation. What can our senses tell us of the truth of the restored gospel? They can tell us that there is an interesting artifact produced by Joseph Smith that we can examine: the Book of Mormon. As we read and examine it, we must ask: Whence came this volume? Could a person who never attended school fabricate out of his imagination such a complex, detailed history which is so internally consistent and which fits into the historical and geographical evidence of today, much of which was not even known to the world in 1830 Detractors of Joseph Smith are unanimous on one point: he was too ignorant to have written it. By whom or how, then, did it come into being? So far the only proffered explanation that fits the known historical facts is the one given by Joseph Smith himself: he received it as a revealed translation of writing on ancient plates of gold. What of the three witnesses who also saw the plates? Their testimony must count for something, especially since each in turn was excommunicated from that Church, yet none ever denied his testimony. There is sufficient meat here for every intelligent mind to cogitate upon. Yet this area is in itself not conclusive, even if we find that we cannot discount Joseph Smith’s explanation of the book. We must yet seek further evidence.
Another kind of observation which is important is the order of the universe. The motions of the heavens, the intricacy of the plant and animal orders, the complexity and perfection of the human species all raise questions as to their origin and maintenance. Do these things bespeak the hand of a great creator, or are they simply the blind career of chance concatenations of atoms? Some persons are convinced one way, some the other. The net result is that we see again that observation needs interpretation: no set of empirical evidence is self-interpretive or self-warranting. We must seek elsewhere for surety while not forgetting our observations.
Turning to consideration of pragmatics, we see that there are seeming sociological consequences of accepting the restored gospel. Those who profess belief in the restored gospel have marriage, divorce, birth, and death statistics that are different from the public at large. They seem to have a distinctive cultural pattern that is in accord with the New Testament standards. They prosper wherever they go if they are left alone. These are interesting and valuable correlations. But they do not prove the case. We must yet seek further evidence.
We see that none of the four external kinds of evidence yields unambiguous assurance of the truthfulness of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. While their combination is more powerful than any type by itself, even that conjunction does not yield solid proof. The reason is that each of these is an external evidence. The essence of the restored gospel concerns what goes on inside a person, not outside. We must then turn our attention to the inner realm, not forgetting nor discounting the outer realm, but holding its evidence in abeyance for the moment.
Inner knowledge concerns the personal private experiments which a person can perform. Before one can experiment he must either believe or desire to believe. One must risk something. This is not to suggest that one must persist in blind faith. But one must begin with the hope that God will answer his prayers. If one believes or desires to believe, he can at least perform the experiments. The experiments will give evidence which will become so sure that his faith is not blind ever after. Each person who is willing to experiment can determine for himself whether the gospel hypothesis is just another romantic dream or is truly a reality.
With at least temporary belief, one can then perform the crucial experiment, which is to pray to the Father in the name of Jesus Christ, ready to do whatever one is instructed to do. If one has not already received it upon hearing the message of the restored gospel, the first message from God will likely be that peaceful, burning assurance which the Holy Spirit gives that the restored gospel is indeed true. What one must then do is to believe even more. To believe even more is to pray again, to thank the Father, and to ask what to do next. As the next instruction comes and the experimenter obeys in faith, he embarks upon a path that is rewarding and satisfying. That cycle of belief, prayer, revelation, and obedience is so self- reinforcing and so satisfying to those who delight in doing the will of God that they never need seek for the path of progress again. They need only to persevere. Now they know that the restored gospel is true, for its promise has been delivered. They have received the promised Holy Spirit unto faith and repentance. Because their souls are enlarged and the yearning for and the guidance of the holy in their lives is now satisfied, they know they are on the path of pleasing God and of coming to Him.
Faithful prayer leads to promptings that come even when one is not praying or meditating. These promptings come in the same voice and with the same peaceful assurance as the answers to prayer. To experiment with following them is the course of intelligence for those who have enjoyed that companionship of the Holy Spirit. As again they experiment they learn the rewards of further sensitivity to the holy. They also learn to compare the results of yielding to those promptings to yielding to their own desires, especially when those personal desires are abetted by that opposing evil spirit which enjoins selfishness upon one. The knowledge that. comes from faithful obedience to the promptings of the Holy Spirit reinforces and buttresses the already sure knowledge one has from answers to prayers.
To promptings are added special insights, understandings, and interpretations. As one ponders the gospel message and searches the scriptures many questions arise. As these arise the answers also often flow, sometimes because of prayer, sometimes without asking. What they bring is a completeness, a comprehensive overview of the world and the universe as God would have us see them. We begin to understand that nothing is wasted in the economy of our God, that all truth is interconnected, that everything works for the good of those who love the God of righteousness. The satisfaction of understanding and the esthetics of glimpsing the greatness and the goodness of the divine system help us to begin to understand ourselves for the first time and to know even more surely the truthfulness of the restored gospel.
Understanding brings a comprehension of man’s potential, a vision of what he could become through the gifts and promises of God. As these gifts are sought and used for the work of godliness there comes an understanding of God’s power and a realization of the promises. As healings, miracles, tongues and interpretation of tongues, prophecy, discernment, power over the elements, and nobility in the soul show forth the handiwork of God, knowledge builds upon knowledge, and the established, buttressed, well-founded edifice becomes so sure and secure that no power of man or of hell can shake it.
The import of this discussion is that a testimony, a sure knowledge of the truth of the restored gospel can only come in the inner, personal knowledge of a person. What then is the place of the external evidences? They do have their place.
3. The weaving of a testimony.
Let us now change the figure of speech from a building to a fabric and discuss the weaving of that fabric. The beginning of the weaving process is to establish the warp. These are the strong threads, the real substance of the cloth, and they are usually anchored at each end in a vertical row, then spread alternately in two directions to provide space for the shuttle to draw through the horizontal threads of the woof. If the threads of the weaving are fine yet strong and carefully spaced yet tightly woven, a cloth of superior utility is created.
We may liken the strong warp threads of a cloth to the internal evidences which come from our own personal experiments with the holy and the evil, the good and the bad. If we perform those experiments with skeptical care we will accept only those evidences or threads which are strong, true, and reliable. We must also avoid the cynicism which would have us discard that which we perceive surely to be true. And we must have enough threads to mass a sufficient warp. After one experiment we know almost nothing. But after thousands and thousands of experiments we know that we can trust the Lord. As we marshall those threads in a record of the actual experiences which created them, we create a warp of substance, strength, and capacity.
To the warp we may now add the woof threads of the external evidences that we previously gathered but found to be insufficient of themselves. We have many or few of these strands, but obviously, more and stronger threads are better. These are the testimonies of others, the reasoning we have done to observe the consistency and completeness of the restored gospel, the observations we have made of the handiwork of God both through men and in the natural order of the universe around us, capped by the practical evidence of the utility of living the restored gospel. These evidences, though not sufficiently strong of themselves to constitute a testimony, when carefully woven into the strands of strong and sure knowledge, become genuine assets to the whole. Then one can know which doctrines are found to be consistent and can reject the unwanted baggage of the doctrines of men which becloud the matter. Then one can see that it is truly the hand of God which brought the Bible and the Book of Mormon into existence and which has created and does now maintain the starry heavens and the course of nature. Then one can see that the wicked are punished by their own hands and that the righteous reap the rewards of the children of God. To have a testimony is to live, to see, and to know in ways never available to persons who do not have a testimony. ‘~”~
Should one weave such a fabric of strength and beauty it will serve him well. For such a testimony is not gained by taking thought; it is not the product of observation, but of doing the will of God. It is a personally constructed artifact made of individually experienced items selected with the greatest of care and the highest standards. It is not just a cloth, as it is not just a knowing. It becomes the robe of righteousness, that which every soul must have to attend the wedding feast. It is the newly formed character, the fiber of the being of a son or a daughter of God. What we are is what we do and what we know. Our own character is the robe of righteousness which enables us to dwell in eternal burnings. To be saved is to receive the divine gifts that are necessary and to weave a new character for ourselves in the pattern of the divine nature of our Christ himself; then He can present us spotless before the Father. To gain a testimony is to repent, to create a new self through faith in Jesus Christ.
The necessity of the connection between testimony and righteousness is found in the nature of God himself. He is a God of truth, but truth without righteousness is a monster. Thus, he is first a God of righteousness and then a God of truth. Those who wish to become as he is must follow that same order. He promises to fully satisfy the desire of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. He has no kind words for those who are merely curious. Creating a testimony means doing the works of righteousness. In the process of doing those works one comes to know and understand first the truth of his own inner experience and feelings, then the truth about this physical world in which we live; after that he may learn of heavenly things beyond the ken of mere mortals if he asks in faith. Righteousness is of Christ, for he is the sole fountain of righteousness in this earth, as also he is the Spirit of Truth. To love righteousness is to seek and to gain a testimony of the restored gospel, which then enables one to do the works of righteousness.
The perfect example of the necessity of seeking a testimony through righteousness is found in the lives of Laman and Lemuel. Each of them was furnished with an abundance of evidence of divine things: they saw and heard an angel, they saw miracles, they felt the power of God shock them, their lives were saved by divine intervention. Yet they gained no testimony from their experiences because those experiences were not part of the experimentation of faith. The whole of these experiences was in the external world–to them. They did not seek the Lord in the inner realm and thus had no evidence in the inner realm of their own souls. They could interpret away all of the external evidence and did so. They simply refused to repent. After this world, in the spirit prison or at the bar of judgment, they will have enough evidence to know that the gospel is true and will finally admit to that truth. But then it will be too late to show sufficient love for the Lord and for righteousness to be saved in the celestial kingdom.
4. Questions and answers.
1. What are the qualities of a testimony? A strong testimony is one in which the bearer has certainty that the God of Heaven hears and answers his prayers as he attempts to live the restored gospel. Only those with strong testimonies are able to make the sacrifices that the Lord requires to perfect their souls. A weak testimony is one in which the bearer has as yet little confidence; enough perhaps to continue experimentation and exploration, but not enough to stand tribulation nor the finger of scorn. A sure testimony is one in which the bearer has amassed enough internal evidence to surmount all reasonable doubt that the restored gospel is true. A strong testimony is an assurance of the heart; a sure testimony is an assurance of the mind. A present testimony is one that is a living present companionship with the Holy Spirit. A past testimony is the memory of marvelous former experiences with the Holy Spirit. A strong and sure and present testimony enables one to live by every word that proceeds forth from the mouth of God.
2. What then can a person do to strengthen his own testimony? Gaining and strengthening a testimony begins with the heart. If a person does not desire to be righteous, he needs to repent until he has that desire. When his heart is right, he will search for those whisperings of the spirit which are the precious lifeline to all godly things. Sensing their holiness, he will begin to follow the whisperings unto doing the works enjoined, thus becoming a person of some degree of faith. Though he might encounter negative evidence, such as the contrary witness of other persons, seeming contradictions, and venality on the part of professed members of the restored Church, his own faith in the whisperings will lay, positive spiritual evidence beside each of those negative externals until he sees that the truth of the gospel shines through the spotty facade of those negative impressions. Each person is free. Anyone who desires the negative to predominate will have it so. But anyone who treasures that which is honest, true, virtuous, of good report, and praiseworthy will soon find that his joy in his own increased ability to do the works that the Savior commends far outweighs the negative. The Holy Spirit reveals that those who bear negative testimony of the gospel are under the influence of the adversary; their negative testimony is thus a backhanded positive testimony of the gospel’s truthfulness. Seeming contradictions become the occasion for greater understanding in which the marvels and mysteries of the gospel are unfolded to the faithful seeker, thus becoming a positive strength to this testimony. The venality of Church members when interpreted by the Holy Spirit becomes an occasion for sympathy for those persons, a further attestation that the way of righteousness and truth is straight and narrow indeed, and few there be that find it.
So, do I keep the Sabbath day holy? Do I honor my parents with all that the Holy Spirit enjoins? Am I honest in all of my dealings with my fellowmen, pressing down, shaking, and heaping up the measure which I give them? Do I reach out to the poor in money, strength, wisdom, understanding, and honor, sharing with them out of the abundance of heart, mind, strength, and substance with which the Lord has blessed me? Do I fill very mission gladly, exuberant and wise in the assurance that I have of the merits of my Master? Do I love my spouse, my children, and my neighbors with that same pure love that the gods of heaven shower upon me? Do I do all things unto the Lord, knowing that I am his but have no merit, wisdom, or goodness of my own? Do I fulfill my Savior’s instruction in the faith of love so that I can overcome the forces of this world? Do I allow my conscience to smite me down to humility and repentance whenever the thorns of selfishness or arrogance snag my robe?
Every decision of daily life affords me the opportunity to prove that good and acceptable will of my God. As I add faith to faith, obeying in humility in every decision I make from moment to moment, the gifts and blessings and rewards of God flow so abundantly that I come to realize that in the path of such faith I never need hunger or thirst again. He who loves purely is sufficient to my every need. I need to search and wonder no more except to be sure that I continue to please him. I neither doubt nor flounder. I know I am on the path. I must only endure to the end, until my faithful service has brought me to the measure of the stature of the fullness of my Savior, for he is the end, indeed.
3. Is it possible for me to talk myself into a testimony, to desire one so much that I create a false testimony? That surely is possible, just as a person might believe that he is Napoleon or is invisible. But the evidences would not be there. Neither internally nor externally would sufficient confirmations come to allow one to believe a false testimony to be a true one unless one is unable to evaluate evidence. Some persons are clearly unable to evaluate evidence, even in the external, physical world. They do indeed often come to strange opinions about religious matters. That is why it is important to establish one’s sanity in the realm of ordinary, earthly matters before one attempts to stand as a witness to anyone else of the truth of sacred, spiritual matters. Our Savior, knowing the sometimes precarious nature of new faith and testimony, has assured us that he will always establish his word in the mouths of two or three witnesses. Sometimes those witnesses are several kinds of internal and external evidence, which then give us a firm rock upon which to stand.
4. Is it possible to transfer a testimony? It is never possible to share the essence of our testimony with another person, for that essence exists in the private, inner realm which can never be shared. But our sincere and truthful witness, though external to our hearers and therefore a sandy foundation for their testimonies, may be accompanied by the second witness of the Holy Spirit. That second witness is internal, the essence of real testimony. On that rock they can proceed to build surely.
5. Which concepts are closely associated with that of testimony and would assist one to gain a better understanding of testimony? Testimony is a type of knowledge. Similar concepts are those of evidence, assurance, record, monument, and proof. Contrary concepts are those of doubt, discredit, counterindicativeness, and insecurity. The complement concept is that of uncertainty. The opposite is complete ignorance. The perfection of testimony is full knowledge of complete certainty. The prerequisites for testimony are (1) revelation from God, (2) belief in that revelation, and (3) obedience to the instructions of that revelation. (Those are the elements of faith, for faith is the prerequisite to testimony.) The constituents of testimony are the internal and external evidences for the truthfulness of the restored gospel that we have gained and see through the eye of faith. A celestial testimony (the only kind that saves anyone) is based squarely on an abundance of cooperative experience with the Holy Spirit. A terrestrial testimony is based on an abundance of external, physical evidence for the truthfulness of the restored gospel. A telestial testimony is based on a fear that it might be true and an unwillingness to search out the evidence, either internal or external. A perdition testimony is that of a person who knows full well that the restored gospel is true (a past sure testimony), but bears witness to others that it is not true.
5. Summary and conclusions.
A. The essence of a testimony of the restored gospel is present, inner, continuous cooperation with the Holy Spirit in the cause of relieving misery in this world (the work of righteousness). Public, physical evidence about the restored gospel is helpful only when carefully evaluated by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and useful only when tightly woven into our continuous, inner, present cooperation with the Holy Spirit. The function of external evidence in the cause of righteousness is not to assure anyone of the truthfulness of the gospel, but to attract attention to the restored gospel so that a person will personally perform the inner experiments which do bring a sure testimony.
B. Testimony comes only through faith. When we hear the gospel, our first evidence that it is the word of the Lord comes as we receive the internal witness of the Holy Spirit that it is true. If we then act on that witness, asking to know what to do about our doubts–asking anything in the willingness to believe and obey the holy within us, we ask in faith. Asking in faith brings the revelations of the true and living God to anyone who will so ask. Out of these revelations is born the abundance of experience that assures us of the reliability of God’s revelations–which is a testimony.
C. Only hunger and thirst for righteousness is a sufficient motive to experiment on the gospel message in faith. Those whose only interest in the gospel is an academic curiosity can never perform the experiments in faith. No amount of external evidence can, will, or should convince them of the truthfulness of that message. The gospel message is aimed specifically at the sheep: those who live first to love others, as does the true and living God.
D. A testimony is always a construction, a personal artifact. It is built out of a person’s life experiences and is the record of what that person has sought, hoped for, and selected out of the welter of opportunities that this world affords. If a person has received the personal witness that the restored gospel is true, then that person’s testimony, positive or negative, is a clear reflection of that person’s character.
E. A testimony is always nontransferable. While one may indeed bear witness of his inner experience, that inner experience forever remains his private domain. But as one bears true witness, the Holy Spirit can and will witness to the hearers of the truth of that person’s witness, which is the beginning material for the testimony of each of those hearers. To some it is given to believe on the testimony of those who know.
F. Any person who has a sure testimony of the restored gospel, and thus of the Holy Spirit, can endure by means of the laws and ordinances of the gospel to a sure knowledge of the Son and of the Father. But one must endure in faith.
