FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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Revision as of 10:29, 20 December 2006
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Important note: Members of FAIR take their temple covenants seriously. We consider the temple teachings to be sacred, and will not discuss their specifics in a public forum.
Criticism
Critics point out that a former version of the endowment used to contain mention of various "penalties" associated with the breaking of the temple covenants. They use this fact to claim that the temple encouraged violence or vengeance against those who violated its covenants, or that the Church sought to use fear to motivate members to keep their covenants.
Source(s) of the criticism
Response
Critics misrepresent this part of the temple ceremony, which is relatively easy to do since members endowed since April 1990 will have had no direct experience with the penalties mentioned. Likewise, with the passage of time many members have only a vague recollection of of the endowment ceremony before the changes were made.
Contrary to the critics' representation, the ceremony said nothing about what would happen to people if they revealed that which they had covenanted to keep secret. Nor did the ceremony encourage anyone to inflict penalties on another.
Rather, the person making the covenant indicated what they would prefer to have done to themselves rather than reveal sacred things. (Such penalties also had symbolic implications, which are beyond the scope of this article). So, the temple ceremony did not involve descriptions of what God (or others) would do to someone if they failed to keep their covenants, but instead illustrated the lengths to which someone else might go to try to get a member to break their covenants.
The penalties served, among other things, to teach us how determined we should be to resist those who would encourage us to violate covenants. The endowment said nothing about the consequences of violating covenants save that one would be judged by God for doing so. Such judgment of necessity remains always in the hands of God alone. (The Church might, of course, discipline a member for violation of covenants via excommunication, but this is the extent of the penalty which the Church can apply.[1])
This important distinction was sometimes not well understood by some members, and this is likely one reason that penalties were removed from the current ceremony. The penalties confused people more than it helped them, in our era, and the presentation of the endowment has changed (and will likely continue to change) when necessary to administer the ordinances and associated doctrinal teaching in the most effective way.
Conclusion
Temple penalties involved promising to resist even extreme efforts to cause us to break temple covenants. They never contemplated or advocated inflicting such penalties on others, or the threat of having them inflicted upon us. Only the wicked would inflict such penalties; the endowed member simply covenanted to resist all such efforts.
Endnotes
Further reading
FAIR wiki articles
Latter-day Saint Temples/Endowment/Oath of vengeance
Temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are sacred places where Church members participate in sacred ceremonies (ordinances) that help them come closer to God and prepare to live forever in an eternal family.
To view articles about Latter-day Saint temples, click "Expand" in the blue bar:
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External links
Printed material
| Temple printed materials |
- Matthew B. Brown,The Gate of Heaven: Insight on the Doctrines and Symbols of the Temple (American Fork, UT: Covenant, 1999), 1.
- Matthew B. Brown, Symbols in Stone: Symbolism on the Early Temples of the Restoration, 2d ed., (American Fork, UT: Covenant, 1997).
- William J. Hamblin and David Seely, Solomon's Temple: Myth and History (London: Thames and Hudson, 2007), Chapter 3.
- Hugh W. Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment, 2nd edition, (Vol. 16 of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley), edited by John Gee and Michael D. Rhodes, (Salt Lake City, Utah : Deseret Book Company ; Provo, Utah : Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2005), 1. ISBN 159038539X. 1st edition GL direct link
- Temple and Cosmos: Beyond This Ignorant Present (Vol. 12 of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley), edited by Don E. Norton, (Salt Lake City, Utah : Deseret Book Company ; Provo, Utah : Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992), 1.
- Boyd K. Packer, The Holy Temple (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1980), 1. ISBN 0884944115.