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The LDS Bible Dictionary states that, "Latter-day revelation teaches that there was no death on this earth before the Fall of Adam. Indeed, death entered the world as a direct result of the Fall (2 Ne. 2꞉22; Moses 6꞉48). 2 Nephi 2꞉22 describes how Adam and Eve became subject to physical death, when the Book of Mormon prophet Lehi taught that
if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end. (2 Nephi 2꞉22)
Because this is the only scripture that indicates this, it is difficult to interpret the meaning of "all things." Does it mean "all things in the garden", or "all things on the entire earth", or something else?
The second scripture referenced, Moses 6꞉48, describes how "spiritual death" entered the world:
Behold Satan hath come among the children of men, and tempteth them to worship him; and men have become carnal, sensual, and devilish, and are shut out from the presence of God.
Current Church manuals take a cautionary approach to interpreting this verse by considering only how it affected Adam and Eve. For example, from Gospel Principles manual, page 28:
1979 Gospel Principles | 2014 Gospel Principles | Comment |
---|---|---|
Adam and Eve were foreordained to become the parents of the human race. | Adam and Eve were foreordained to become our first parents. | Instead of being the "parents of the human race," Adam and Eve are now "our first parents." We are only concerned with Adam. |
She was called Eve because she was the mother of all living (see Moses 4꞉26) | Eve was "the mother of all living" (Moses 4꞉26) | The phrase "mother of all living" is now in quotes to indicate a direct quote from Moses 4꞉26. |
She was given to Adam because God said "that is was not good that man should be alone." | God brought Adam and Eve together in marriage because "it was not good that the man should be alone." | |
When Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden, they were not yet mortal. They were not able to have children. There was no death. | When Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden, they were not yet mortal. In this state, "they would have had no children" (2 Nephi 2꞉23). There was no death. | Again, the text is changed to indicate that scripture is being quoted. The original statement that they "were not able to have children" is changed to the scriptural statement that they "would have had no children." The specific reason why they would not have had children is not indicated, whereas previously it was stated that they were incapable of having children in their "pre-Fall" state. |
God commanded them to have children and learn to control the earth. | God commanded them to have children. | The assumption that Adam and Eve were in "control" of the entire earth has been completely removed. |
Because Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the Lord sent them out of the Garden of Eden into the world as we now know it. | Because Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the Lord sent them out of the Garden of Eden into the world. | The assumption that the world outside the garden was "as we now know it" has been completely removed. |
More recently, in 2016 the Church's official magazine for youth, the New Era:
There were no spirit children of Heavenly Father on the earth before Adam and Eve were created. In addition, "for a time they lived alone in a paradisiacal setting where there was neither human death nor future family. (emphasis added)" [1]
J. Reuben Clark |
This is one of many issues about which the Church has no official position. As President J. Reuben Clark taught under assignment from the First Presidency:
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Harold B. Lee |
Harold B. Lee was emphatic that only one person can speak for the Church:
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First Presidency |
This was recently reiterated by the First Presidency (who now approves all statements published on the Church's official website):
In response to a letter "received at the office of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" in 1912, Charles W. Penrose of the First Presidency wrote:
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There is overwhelming geological evidence of death having occurred on the earth for many millions of years. For example, oil deposits are formed from the decomposed remains of ancient plants and animals.
This is where some accounts of Church teachings appear to contradict science, since many Latter-day Saint leaders and Church manuals have taught that there was no physical death on the entire earth prior to the fall of Adam.
This interpretation has been shared by many Church authors, including President Joseph Fielding Smith and Elder Bruce R. McConkie.[1] Consequently, the concept of no death before the Fall on the entire earth has made its way into many Church instructional manuals. For example, the LDS Bible Dictionary, which was included as an addition to the LDS edition of the King James Bible in 1979, includes the following statement that "death entered the world" as a result of the Fall:
Latter-day revelation teaches that there was no death on this earth for any forms of life before the fall of Adam. Indeed, death entered the world as a direct result of the fall (2 Nephi 2꞉22; Moses 6꞉48). [2]
The current edition of the Bible Dictionary, however, has a lightly edited entry "Fall of Adam":
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Note that some aspects focus the death upon Adam and Eve.
There are other aspects that could be read to imply a wider impact (esp., "the whole creation fell and became mortal".)
Other leaders have seen pre-Fall death of plants and/or animals as compatible with LDS doctrine, with the doctrine of "no death" applying only to Adam and Eve within the garden, and not the wider physical creation.
The important point to remember is that the question of the scope of "death before the Fall" does not affect our salvation, and is simply an academic exercise.
Bible Dictionary editor Elder McConkie pointed out—the Bible Dictionary is neither infallible, nor an arbiter of Church doctrine:
[As for the] "Joseph Smith Translation items, the chapter headings, Topical Guide, Bible Dictionary, footnotes, the Gazeteer, and the maps. None of these are perfect; they do not of themselves determine doctrine; there have been and undoubtedly now are mistakes in them. Cross-references, for instance, do not establish and never were intended to prove that parallel passages so much as pertain to the same subject. They are aids and helps only." [4]
The Bible Dictionary itself also cautions against assuming that its contents reflect "an official or revealed endorsement by the Church of the doctrinal, historical, cultural, and other matters set forth." [5]
One must also not overlook an earlier debate on the issue of "pre-Adamites" between Elder Brigham H. Roberts of the Seventy and then-Elder Joseph Fielding Smith was brought to an end at the instruction of the First Presidency. Part of the debate centered around whether there was death prior to the Fall. At the request of the First Presidency, Elder James E. Talmage gave a talk in the tabernacle, entitled "The Earth and Man." In it, he spoke of fossilized animals and plants and said:
These lived and died, age after age, while the earth was yet unfit for human habitation.
With the approval of the First Presidency, this address was published in the Deseret News, as a Church pamphlet, and later in The Instructor.[6] Clearly, then, a universal lack of death prior to the fall is not a necessary belief within the Church, since leaders and members have held both positions.
Elder Talmage's position was made quite clear in a letter he wrote in response to a question about these matters:
I cannot agree with your conception that there was no death of plants and animals anywhere upon this earth prior to the transgression of Adam, unless we assume that the history of Adam and Eve dates back many hundreds of thousands of years. The trouble with some theologians—even including many of our own good people—is that they undertake to fix the date of Adam's transgression as being approximately 4000 years before Christ and therefore about 5932 years ago. If Adam was placed upon the earth only that comparatively short time ago the rocks clearly demonstrated that life and death have been in existence and operative in this earth for ages prior to that time. [7]
The First Presidency eventually instructed the general authorities:
Both parties [i.e., Elders Smith and Roberts] make the scripture and the statements of men who have been prominent in the affairs of the Church the basis of their contention; neither has produced definite proof in support of his views…
Upon the fundamental doctrines of the Church we are all agreed. Our mission is to bear the message of the restored Gospel to the people of the world. Leave geology, biology, archaeology and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind, to scientific research, while we magnify our calling in the realm of the Church.
We can see no advantage to be gained by a continuation of the discussion to which reference is here made, but on the contrary are certain that it would lead to confusion, division and misunderstanding if carried further. Upon one thing we should all be able to agree namely, that presidents Joseph F. Smith, John Winder and Anthon Lund were right when they said: "Adam is the primal parent of our race. [8]
Reflecting on this episode, Elder Talmage wrote in his diary:
...Involved in this question is that of the beginning of life upon the earth, and as to whether there was death either of animal or plant before the fall of Adam, on which proposition Elder Smith was very pronounced in denial and Elder Roberts equally forceful in the affirmative. As to whether Preadamite races existed upon the earth there has been much discussion among some of our people of late. The decision reached by the First Presidency, and announced to this morning's assembly, was in answer to a specific question that obviously the doctrine of the existence of races of human beings upon the earth prior to the fall of Adam was not a doctrine of the Church; and, further, that the conception embodied in the belief of many to the effect that there were no such Preadamite races, and that there was no death upon the earth prior to Adam's fall is likewise declared to be no doctrine of the Church. I think the decision of the First Presidency is a wise one in the premises. This is one of the many things upon which we cannot preach with assurance and dogmatic assertions on either side are likely to do harm rather than good. [9]
Elder Jeffery R. Holland, at the April 2015 General Conference, stated,
[T]here was an actual Adam and Eve who fell from an actual Eden, with all the consequences that fall carried with it.
I do not know the details of what happened on this planet before that, but I do know these two were created under the divine hand of God, that for a time they lived alone in a paradisiacal setting where there was neither human death nor future family, and that through a sequence of choices they transgressed a commandment of God which required that they leave their garden setting but which allowed them to have children before facing physical death. [10]
The following is from the Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual, (2002), 167-171, "Section 77 Questions and Answers on the Book of Revelation." off-site
D&C 77꞉6-7. Why Was the Book Sealed That John Saw?
"‘The book which John saw’ represented the real history of the world—what the eye of God has seen, what the recording angel has written; and the seven thousand years, corresponding to the seven seals of the Apocalyptic volume, are as seven great days during which Mother Earth will fulfill her mortal mission, laboring six days and resting upon the seventh, her period of sanctification. These seven days do not include the period of our planet’s creation and preparation as a dwelling place for man. They are limited to Earth’s ‘temporal existence,’ that is, to Time, considered as distinct from Eternity." (Whitney, Saturday Night Thoughts, p. 11.) (emphasis added)
The manual specifically excludes the "period of our planet's creation and preparation as a dwelling place for man" from the period defined as the Earth's "temporal existence." Nothing is implied or stated regarding "death before the Fall."
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Latter-day Saints and the Bible |
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Reliability of the Bible |
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Creation |
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Genesis |
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Understanding the Bible |
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The Bible and the Book of Mormon |
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One of the great problems of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is that we want it to answer all sorts of questions, that it was never intended to answer. And because of this, everyone tends to read between the lines. After all, you might respond with the same sorts of questions. If God didn't ever want Adam and Eve to eat the fruit then why put it in the Garden? If he didn't want Adam and Eve to fall, then why allow the serpent in?
In the Book of Mormon, Lehi has a long discussion about these issues in 2 Nephi 2. And without going into too much detail, what Lehi explains is that God's creation of man isn't finished in the Garden of Eden - that man wasn't perfect there - that God intended for man to develop agency (Lehi refers to this as the power to act as opposed to being acted upon). In framing it in this way, Lehi discusses many of the elements of the garden narrative from Genesis. We have the idea that to act, we have to have knowledge of good and evil (we have to understand purpose and consequences). We couldn't be forced or coerced to choose one over the other (this is why God tells Adam he has a choice with the Tree of Knowledge). So in 2 Nephi 2꞉15 -
First is the idea of God’s "eternal purposes". This is the reason for our creation. And Lehi suggests that this reason is found in the "end of man". This isn’t about man’s beginning, but man’s eternal destiny. So everything is created – but, it isn’t a perfect creation, and isn’t final (this is contrary to much of Christian thought who see Eden as a perfect creation). And if that "end of man" is free will or agency, then real free will created a necessity for opposition. This is Lehi’s way of understanding the "good and evil" from Genesis 3:. Two outcomes are presented. But for mankind to be able to act (and not be acted upon), compulsion had to be removed so, in the next verse:
Now this is an interesting dialogue. Lehi starts by pointing out that mankind has to be able to act for himself (again, the expression of free will). And then Lehi goes on to say that there had to be some reason for man to choose to act in one way and not in another. Why this bit of information? Because it gets to the philosophical problem of why Satan is in the Garden. Why does God allow the devil to be there? Would Adam and Eve have fallen if the Devil had not been there? And if they wouldn’t have fallen, could God have prevented the fall by removing the Devil? And if God could have prevented the fall, and didn’t, doesn’t that imply that God wanted the fall to occur? (Well that last bit might be a stretch – or not – depending on your point of view.) But for Lehi, there has to be some kind of enticement to encourage man to act. And so Lehi goes into some detail as to what this means (in the context of the comments above):
So the devil becomes the agent of enticement. So let’s summarize to this point –
So what happens next?
The fall leads to eviction from the Garden. And now the Book of Mormon sets up something that comes from these earlier ideas. Mortality isn’t just a place of acting (and being acted on), it is a probationary period. That is, we learn to know good from evil, and we are given a period of time in which to do so, and in which we can show God how we will act. As a side note, although Lehi doesn’t get into it here, in Mosiah, this is expanded on just a bit. We have this idea of opposition. And on one side we have the devil enticing men to do evil. What is on the other side? Benjamin tells us (Mosiah 3꞉19) "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord." What entices us to good? It is the Holy Spirit that prompts us and pushes us to do good. We will get a bit more on that later. Why was the eviction necessary? Lehi explains:
Here we come back to that problem of an incomplete creation. The garden was not a place of growth and development. Perhaps Lehi is drawing on the conclusion that Adam and Eve couldn’t have children precisely because they didn’t have children in the Garden. But the idea stems from the notion that if God wanted Adam to have free will (to be able to act instead of being acted upon) that it couldn’t happen in the Garden as it was. Without opposition, Adam could not be empowered to act for himself. If he was only given one choice, it couldn’t really be called a choice – it would simply be another situation in which Adam was being acted upon (if that makes sense). So the fall creates that ability to act. But at the same time, we have this idea of nothing changing. Perhaps the best way to explain this is that in the Garden, Adam and Eve were like children. In order to change (in order even to have children) they have to grow up. And Lehi tells us that without the ability to change, this couldn't happen.
The idea is that this isn't simply a narrative about Adam and Eve - it's a narrative about all of us. Perhaps we see the Garden as something akin to the pre-existence, that we have to leave to "grow up" in an environment in which real choice becomes possible. Part of the purpose of the story is to explain the obvious, which has the same reason as it does in the Garden - why is Satan allowed to tempt us here? If God wants us just to be good, then why can't God simply take the devil and banish him so that he cannot influence us during our mortality? All of the questions that the story in Genesis is trying to answer are directly related to questions that we have about our lives in mortality today.
"Transgression" is sometimes used in LDS discourse to distinguish a degree of moral culpability. In one context, a "transgression" violates God's law, but the guilty party is less fully responsible or aware of the moral implications: "In a general sense and in most instances the terms sin and transgression are synonymous, although the use of the term transgression lays emphasis on the violation of the law or rule involved whereas the term sin points up the willful nature of the disobedience" (McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 804).
Adam and Eve and all humanity were redeemed from physical death by the atonement of Christ (2 Nephi 9꞉12). The "death" that is the wages of sin is spiritual death—being outside the presence of God (Alma 12꞉16-17).
Adam and Eve were told, however, that eating the fruit would cause them to die—the exact nature of their act is immaterial (see Genesis 2꞉17) and Adam and Eve understood this much (Genesis 3꞉2-3). Any disobedience of God's law puts us forever outside his presence—hence the absolute necessity of the atonement of Christ. Without the atonement, even those who are less responsible for their actions would have been lost (Mosiah 3꞉16). By the grace of Christ, however, they are saved.
Adam and Eve's actions in the garden made them subject to death and put them out of the presence of God, as He had told them it would (Genesis 2꞉17). It happened that way because God had told them it would, as the Bible and other LDS scripture bears witness.
When out of the presence of God, the effects of a sinful world were possible for at least three reasons:
We do not suffer eternal physical death for our sins and neither does Adam, for the same reason—the Atonement of Jesus Christ:
Adam spake unto the Lord, and said: Why is it that men must repent and be baptized in water? And the Lord said unto Adam: Behold I have forgiven thee thy transgression in the Garden of Eden. Hence came the saying abroad among the people, that the Son of God hath atoned for original guilt, wherein the sins of the parents cannot be answered upon the heads of the children, for they are whole from the foundation of the world. (Moses 6꞉53-54)
Notes
Latter-day Saints and the Bible |
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Reliability of the Bible |
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Creation |
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Genesis |
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Understanding the Bible |
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Cultural issues |
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The Bible and the Book of Mormon |
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Mainstream Christianity teaches that God created the universe from nothing (ex nihilo), while Mormons teach that God organized the universe from pre-existing matter. The LDS God is therefore claimed to be "less powerful" than the God of mainstream Christianity, or "unbiblical."
One non-LDS scholar's conclusion is apt:
Creatio ex nihilo appeared suddenly in the latter half of the second century c.e. Not only did creatio ex nihilo lack precedent, it stood in firm opposition to all the philosophical schools of the Greco-Roman world. As we have seen, the doctrine was not forced upon the Christian community by their revealed tradition, either in Biblical texts or the Early Jewish interpretation of them. As we will also see it was not a position attested in the New Testament doctrine or even sub-apostolic writings. It was a position taken by the apologists of the late second century, Tatian and Theophilus, and developed by various ecclesiastical writers thereafter, by Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen. Creatio ex nihilo represents an innovation in the interpretive traditions of revelation and cannot be explained merely as a continuation of tradition.[1]
Creatio ex nihilo is not taught in the Old or New Testaments, or by the early Christian Fathers, unless one assumes it. The doctrine was a novel idea that altered the beliefs and doctrines of the Jews and early Christians.
The reason why most of modern Christianity demands ex-nihilo creation stems from arguments dealing with the sovereignty of God. If something exists apart from God—i.e., pre-exists the first act of creation, it must be co-eternal with God (and by extension, perhaps co-equal, or potentially co-equal). Likewise, LDS scripture teaches that there exists something which is co-eternal with God and potentially co-equal with God in the Book of Abraham. Is God absolutely transcendent over the material with which he works? Is there only one that pre-exists creation (God) or is there more than one?
The Old Testament makes no direct statement of ex-nihilo creation, and so the creation account is scrutinized for clues. Much of the debate over ex-nihilo creation stems from the first few verses of Genesis. And the controversy starts with the very first word: bereshit. The interpretation of Genesis 1:1 faces two questions. 1) Is Genesis 1:1 an independent sentence or a dependent clause, introducing the first sentence? And 2) What is the relationship of verse 1 to verse 2 (and even the remainder of the creation narrative in Genesis chapter 1)?
The Hebrew word roshit occurs some 50 times in the Old Testament. The vowels in the word indicate that is a construct form - that it means "beginning of" and not just "beginning". Of the other 50 occurrences, 49 of them follow this pattern. The exact same construction with the prefix be- occurs in four other places (Jer. 26:1; 27:1; 28:1; 49:34), and in each instance is generally translated as "In the beginning of the reign of ..." The other instances of roshit follow this construct pattern except for one in Isaiah 46:10, where we read: "I am God ... declaring the end from the beginning." Here there can be little doubt that the word cannot be read as a construct. And this one occurrence is often used to justify reading bereshit in Genesis 1:1 as an absolute and not a construct. To which we respond, is a grammatical error in one location reason to justify an adoption of a similar reading here? Why should we adopt the reading favored by one example over the dozens of alternatives?
If beroshit is a construct state, then verse 1 and verse 2 are both subordinate clauses describing the state of everything at the moment which God begins to create, and the beginning of verse 3 becomes the main clause for the first sentence of the Bible. Read this way, the beginning of the Bible reads:
When God began to create the heavens and the earth (the earth being without form and void, and darkness was on the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the surface of the waters), God said, "Let there be light".
The first act of creation then is the command for light to exist. And all the rest - the earth as a desert and a wasteland (terms that imply an absence of both plant and animal life), the darkness, the deep, and so on, all exist prior to that first act of creation - and by definition are pre-existent.
Apart from this passage, there is often discussion over the meaning of the word bara - "to create". The Hebrew term bara itself is rather indifferent to the question of ex-nihilo creation. Often the claim is made that the word is used exclusively of God, but this clearly isn't the case (see for example Ezekiel 21:19). The meaning of bara here is dependent entirely on how we read the rest of the first line of the Old Testament.
In the absence of any Old Testament expressions of ex-nihilo creation, it seems preferable to follow the view that Israelite religion had not developed this theology. Joseph Smith resolved the interpretive crux in Genesis 1:1 in a rather unique fashion. In the Book of Moses, rather than defining creation in absolute terms (either from nothing or from something), he limits the description of creation in Genesis to a particular place and time. Creation is no longer universal:
And it came to pass, that the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 'Behold, I reveal unto you concerning this heaven and this earth; write the words which I speak. ... Yea, in the beginning I created the heaven and the earth upon which thou standest. (Moses 2꞉1,3)
The New Testament doesn't provide much additional help in resolving the issue. It relies heavily on the language of the Old Testament when discussing creation. And the same sorts of ambiguities arise. As James Hubler's Ph.D. dissertation on this very issue noted:
Several New Testament texts have been educed as evidence of creatio ex nihilo. None makes a clear statement which would have been required to establish such an unprecedented position, or which we would need as evidence of such a break with tradition. None is decisive and each could easily be accepted by a proponent of creatio ex materia...The punctuation of [John 1:3] becomes critical to its meaning. Proponents of creatio ex materia could easily qualify the creatures of the Word to that "which came about," excluding matter. Proponents of creatio ex nihilo could place a period after "not one thing came about" and leave "which came about" to the next sentence. The absence of a determinate tradition of punctuation in New Testament [Greek] texts leaves room for both interpretations. Neither does creation by word imply ex nihilo...as we have seen in Egypt, Philo, and Midrash Rabba, and even in 2 Peter 3:5, where the word functions to organize pre-cosmic matter. [2]
The following quotes from scholars demonstrate the near-consensus view that the Genesis in particular and/or Bible as a whole does not explicitly support Creatio ex Nihilo. The quotations are divided into scholars that are commenting on Genesis alone and those that comment on the Bible as a whole. These lists are meant to be representative and not comprehensive/exhaustive.[3]
The following scholars affirm that creatio ex nihilo is not taught in Genesis
Contrary to the critics' claims, their belief in ex nihilo creation was not shared by the first Christians. The concept of creatio ex nihilo
began to be adumbrated in Christian circles shortly before Galen's time. The first Christian thinker to articulate the rudiments of a doctrine of creatio ex nihilo was the Gnostic theologian Basilides, who flourished in the second quarter of the second century. Basilides worked out an elaborate cosmogony as he sought to think through the implications of Christian teaching in light of the platonic cosmogony. He rejected the analogy of the human maker, the craftsman who carves a piece of wood, as an anthropomorphism that severely limited the power of God. God, unlike mortals, created the world out of ‘non-existing’ matter. He first brought matter into being through the creation of ‘seeds’, and it is this created stuff that is fashioned, according to His will, into the cosmos.[35]
Thus, the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo was first advanced by a Gnostic (a heretical branch of Christianity), and did not appear until more than a century after the birth of Christ.
The idea of God using pre-existing material in creation was accepted by at least some of the early Church Fathers, suggesting that beliefs about the mechanism of creation altered over time, as Greek philosophical ideas intruded on Christian doctrine. Justin Martyr (A.D. 110—165) said:
And we have been taught that He in the beginning did of His goodness, for man's sake, create all things out of unformed matter; and if men by their works show themselves worthy of this His design, they are deemed worthy, and so we have received-of reigning in company with Him, being delivered from corruption and suffering."[36]
Justin continues elsewhere with such examples as:
Justin was not the only Father to reject ex nihilo creation. Clement said in his "Hymn to the Paedagogus":
Out of a confused heap who didst create This ordered sphere, and from the shapeless mass Of matter didst the universe adorn....[40]
And, Blake Ostler comments on 1 Clement:
Clement stated: "Thou . . . didst make manifest the everlasting fabric of the world. Thou, Lord, didst create the earth." The terms used here by Clement are significant. He asserts that God did "make manifest" (ἐϕανεροποίησας) the "everlasting fabric of the world" (Σὺ τὴν ἀέναον του κόσμου σύστασιν). He is referring to an eternal substrate that underlies God's creative activity. Clement is important because he is at the very center of the Christian church as it was then developing. His view assumed that God had created from an eternally existing substrate, creating by "making manifest" what already existed in some form. The lack of argumentation or further elucidation indicates that Clement was not attempting to establish a philosophical position; he was merely maintaining a generally accepted one. However, the fact that such a view was assumed is even more significant than if Clement had argued for it. If he had presented an argument for this view, then we could assume that it was either a contested doctrine or a new view. But because he acknowledged it as obvious, it appears to have been a generally accepted belief in the early Christian church.[41]
Non-LDS author Edwin Hatch noted the influence of some Greek philosophical ideas in the change to creatio ex nihilo:
With Basilides [a second century Gnostic philosopher], the conception of matter was raised to a higher plane. The distinction of subject and object was preserved, so that the action of the Transcendent God was still that of creation and not of evolution; but it was "out of that which was not" that He made things to be . . . . The basis of the theory was Platonic, though some of the terms were borrowed from both Aristotle and the Stoics. It became itself the basis for the theory which ultimately prevailed in the Church. The transition appears in Tatian [ca. A.D. 170][42]
Creedal Christians believe in the post-Biblical doctrine of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing). Because this is how they understand the idea of creation, they read it into this verse.
The passage in question reads:
[Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:
For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.(Colossians 1:15-17.)
As one author observed, the Greek text does not teach ex nihilo, but creation out of pre-existing raw materials, since the verb ktidzo "carried an architectural connotation...as in 'to build' or 'establish' a city.... Thus, the verb presupposes the presence of already existing material."[43]
One must not overlook 2 Corinthians 4꞉18, which states that "the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal"—suggesting that aspects of the created "unseen world" are eternal, despite the exercise of God's creative power upon them.
LDS doctrine sees creation as an act of organizing pre-existing, eternal matter and intelligence. (See D&C 93꞉29, D&C 131꞉7.)
Thus, Jesus certainly participated in the creation of all created things—but He worked with preexisting chaotic materials. The angelic ranks of "thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers" were also created by Christ, for these beings did not assume their angelic status or form without divine creative power, even though some aspect of their "intelligence" pre-dated God's creative acts in their behalf.
Each of us, along with Jesus and Lucifer/Satan, are spirit children of our Father in Heaven. Our personality and character were developed during the long pre-mortal existence. During this time the Savior, as the first born of the Father, developed the attributes that allowed God the Father to trust Jesus with the creation of all things that would be created and to assume the divine role of The Son. With that same process Lucifer developed the attributes that led him into sin and rebellion.
The difference between Jesus and Lucifer is so great that we cannot fully understand it. The rest of God's children are somewhere in between these two extremes. Because of Jesus' role in the creation Satan's premortal powers and status were dependent upon the creative power and authority of God, exercised through Jesus Christ.
The difference between those who followed the Father and those who followed Lucifer is in part dependent upon the eternal aspect of each individual. This may help to explain Satan's antipathy toward Jesus, and his desire to usurp the power and authority of God possessed by Christ (see Moses 4꞉1).
The claim, then, that Jesus and Satan were merely peers, misunderstands and misrepresents the LDS doctrine of creation, and Jesus' preeminent role in it.
Related articles: | The Father: A Spirit vs. Embodied |
Corporeality of God | |
Creatio ex nihilo | |
No man has seen God |
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Joseph Smith taught that spirits were not created, and that spirits did not have a beginning because they will not have an end. In scripture, however, there are many verses which stated that God created spirits.
It should be noted specifically that Joseph addresses the word "create" as meaning "to organize" and not to "create out of nothing." Therefore, God can still at some point "organize" whatever composes spirits just as He organized the "chaotic matter" into the world and all that we see. As long as one properly understands that "to create" is "to organize" rather than "to create out of nothing," there is no problem or conflict between God creating spirits and creating the world. In both instances He used some preexistent material from which He organized both.
In the 2008-9 lesson manual Teaching of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, we find the following in Chapter 17 - The Great Plan of Salvation:
In April 1844, the Prophet taught: "I have another subject to dwell upon, which is calculated to exalt man. … It is associated with the subject of the resurrection of the dead,—namely, the soul—the mind of man—the immortal spirit. Where did it come from? All learned men and doctors of divinity say that God created it in the beginning; but it is not so: the very idea lessens man in my estimation. I do not believe the doctrine; I know better. Hear it, all ye ends of the world; for God has told me so; and if you don’t believe me, it will not make the truth without effect. …"
"I am dwelling on the immortality of the spirit of man. Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it has a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits. … " [44]
The present text of quotes from the "King Follet discourse" as recorded in the lesson manual is from the Grimshaw Amalgamation, which was the work of Jonathan Grimshaw in 1855. Grimshaw was a clerk in the Church Historian's Office assigned to prepare Joseph Smith’s sermons for inclusion in what would eventually become the 7-volume History of the Church.
Since there was no stenographic report of the sermon and no prepared text from which to reconstruct the sermon, Grimshaw relied upon the accounts of the four men who made record of the prophet’s words on that day. Three of these men, Thomas Bullock, Willard Richards and William Clayton, were assigned to do so and the fourth, Wilford Woodruff, made a record for inclusion in his journal.
Thomas Bullock amalgamated together his account and that of William Clayton in 1844, which was then printed in the LDS periodical Times and Seasons. Grimshaw took this amalgamation and amalgamated it with the accounts of Willard Richards and Wilford Woodruff in an attempt to provide the most complete account possible. This version of the sermon has been reprinted more than any other and has been published in the Ensign, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is also the source of the quotations noted above from Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith.
The following quote appeared in the April and May 1971 Ensign on pages 13-17 of each. Within the sermon, Joseph is reported as having said:
"I am dwelling on the immortality of the spirit of man. Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it has a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are co-equal [co-eternal] with our Father in heaven."
The question is: Are there indications within the scriptures regarding creation contradict such a statement? It should be noted that the scriptures themselves clearly state that,
"Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be." (D&C 93꞉29) It would appear that whatever this "intelligence" is, it cannot be "created or made." Precisely what this "intelligence" is and whether it is an individuated spirit being or merely the chaotic precursor to an organized individuated spirit has been the subject of a much of discussion in LDS thought. Suffice to say that we existed as this "intelligence" previous to whatever action the Father took that resulted in our becoming His spirit children. This is the manner in which the matter has been understood and expounded upon within Church publications.
Does the fact that we existed as "intelligence" previous to our organization into spirits preclude "creation"? Not necessarily. It would all depend upon how one views the process of "creation." Did God create the world from nothing as most of our Christian brothers from other faiths infer? Joseph did not think so. In the same sermon he stated:
"You ask the learned doctors why they say the world was made out of nothing, and they will answer, "Doesn’t the Bible say he created the world?" And they infer, from the word create, that it must have been made out of nothing. Now, the word create came from the word baurau, which does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos—chaotic matter, which is element, and in which dwells all the glory. Element had an existence from the time He had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning and can have no end."
Therefore, it is not merely "intelligence" which cannot be "created or made" but "chaotic matter" or "element." Something existed, some form of primordial "matter" or "element" which "had an existence from the time He [God] had" just as "The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal [co-eternal] with God himself."
Non-LDS Christian Stephen H. Webb wrote:[45]
Mormon arguments deserve to be examined on their own grounds for internal consistency and biblical adequacy. Not being Platonic is not equivalent to not being rational. [46]:92
Non-LDS Christian Stephen H. Webb wrote:[45]
Thological and philosophical critics of Mormonism often focus on their rejection of the doctrine of creation out of nothing, as if the Mormon relationship to traditional theology is merely negative. What critics miss is the flip side of this rejection, namely, the affirmation of the eternity of matter and how this affirmation functions as the philosophical foundation for a
dramatic revision of the pre-existence of Jesus Christ. [46]:87
Non-LDS Christian Stephen H. Webb wrote:[45]
[I]t would be a mistake to think of Mormonism as simply rejecting the Greek heritage of metaphysics. Paulsen has done more than any Mormon thinker to demonstrate how Smith’s idea of divine embodiment would have been in the theological mainstream prior to Origen and Augustine. In fact, [David] Paulsen, who is also a professor at Brigham Young University, has done more
than any theologian of any denomination to rediscover the metaphysical depths of anthropomorphism in early Christian theology, and his work has been extremely helpful for my own project. Paulsen shows how the Mormon version of the restoration of the Church requires a strong reading of the history of metaphysics. Joseph Smith spoke plainly, but that should not disguise the revolutionary nature of his claims. I have discussed emerging ideas of matter in the context of the Neo-Platonists, the Gnostics, and the early theologians, and Smith would have held his own in debating with all three groups. Smith had the imagination of the Gnostics in his multilayered portrait of the divinities that populate the cosmos. Nonetheless, he would have agreed with the Neo-Platonists and the Christians that the Gnostics erred in identifying matter with evil. He would have liked the Platonic concept of pre-existent souls as well as Plato’s portrait of the Demiurge as being not absolutely different from the world. Indeed, his sense of the rhythmic and cyclical movement of spirits from a refined to an embodied state and back again would have led him to express great interest in the circular framework of Plotinus, but Smith would not have accepted the elitism and intellectualism built into Neo-Platonic thought. He would have sympathized with Christians who struggled to identify nature’s inherent goodness, but he would not have shared their solution in attributing infinity to God. Smith absorbed and revised so many Christian traditions, but negative theology has virtually no room in his thought. In the debates over infinity, Smith, ever the concrete thinker, would have affirmed an actual, as opposed to a potential infinity in order to defend his vision of the afterlife as an eternal progression through space and time. His cosmos was big enough for both the eternity of the divine and the infinity of matter, but his materialism left no room for one entity that is both eternal and infinite. In sum, he would have de-Augustinized theology in order to baptize Greek philosophy anew. [46]:91
Non-LDS Christian Stephen H. Webb wrote:[45]
Augustine’s position is actually not as sound as it first appears. If God makes the world out of himself, does it necessarily have all the attributes of the divine? Does it necessarily follow that matter is a substance that equals God’s own power? The problem with Augustine’s position (and the whole of classical theism on this issue) is that he can imagine no middle ground between creating and shaping. From the perspective of classical theism, if God does not create matter out of nothing, then God merely shapes (or adds form to) the matter that is already there, and that means that God is neither infinite nor omnipotent. If matter is too close to God, then God must not have complete mastery over it. Likewise, if matter comes from God, then God must be tainted by it, which means that God shares in its corruptibility. Either way, God would not be God, or at least, God would not be infinite. But what if there is a middle ground? What if matter is one of God’s perfections without the world being divine? If the perfection of matter is already an expression of who God is (indeed, if it is the substance of the Father’s relation to the Son), then matter can come from God without compromising God’s nature. Moreover, God would be neither master nor victim of matter’s nature, since God’s relation to matter would be nothing more than a reiteration of the Father’s relation to the Son.[46]:92–93
Non-LDS Christian Stephen H. Webb wrote:[45]
[In LDS doctrine] Matter as we know it has a beginning, an origin, in Christ, but matter as it can be, in its perfected form, is eternally an attribute of the divine. In this way, the eternity of matter can be conceived without falling into the trap of pantheism, and this possibility, I am convinced, is precisely what Joseph Smith saw, even if he did not put it into these words or this theological context.
Th Mormon Church stakes its whole theology on the coherence of the idea that God formed the world from a material substance that is not totally unlike his own divine nature. That makes Mormonism either a religious oddity in Western history or an utterly crucial metaphysical correction to our understanding of the role and value of matter in God’s creation of the world. At the very least, Mormonism presents a prod to theological thought at the precise time when materiality is more central to public awareness than ever before. Our relationship to the material world, whether it goes by the name of environmentalism, ecology, sustainability, or evolution has never been so urgently pressed before us as today. To respond to this urgency, we need not only an ethic but also a metaphysics of matter.
We cannot know how to treat matter unless we know what it is, and the nature of matter has to include but ultimately go beyond the specificities of science. We need to know what matter is for, where it comes from, and to what extent it is identical to what we are. These are the central questions of our time, and creedal Christians can answer them only in a self-critical and mutually beneficial dialogue with Latter-day Saints—and that dialogue has to begin with an assessment of the life and thought of Joseph Smith. [46]:94–95, (emphasis added)
Non-LDS Christian Stephen H. Webb wrote:[45]
Far from reverting to paganism or simply falling into sloppy thinking, Smith was carrying his confidence in Christ to its fullest possible expression....All things are possible not only for us but also for God, in that this universe does not exhaust the divine creativity. The universe is not big enough to hold the majesty of God’s ingenuity. Rather than reacting negatively to the apparently infinite expansiveness of the universe, Smith called astronomy’s bluff and multiplied the universe by the same expansive factor. Smith was wiping the theological slate clean of the Neo-Platonic metaphysics that had so influenced Augustine.[46]:96–97
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