The Radio Free Mormon podcast took on the First Vision in a recent episode. RFM is hitting his stride as a podcaster. He’s well researched, entertaining, and uses his attorney skills to present a logical argument with razor sharp precision. He does a very good job in this episode arguing that the creator of the dramatized history recently produced by the Church, Saints, intentionally exaggerated the harmonies and downplayed the discrepancies of the multiple First Vision accounts. Especially the 1832 and 1838 accounts.
Deception and Gaslighting
RFM’s conclusion is that the Church intentionally withheld information with the purpose to deceive Saints readers concerning the First Vision accounts. He closes the episode playing the Weird Alma hit song “Gaslighting”. That song points out what I think is valid from a certain perspective that the Church seems to be changing the narrative on certain issues while implying this narrative has always been the view and glossing over the change from previous narrative.
I would like to propose an alternate way of looking at this that may help someone feeling gaslighted feel better and look on Church leaders with a bit more empathy. At least it might make you not want to bang your head against a wall like the people in the Weird Alma song.
In the RFM-Weird Alma version, there is an assumption that the Church is a monolith with all Church leaders and supporting historians viewing all the historical information the same or very similarly.
My alternate proposal is something like this. Let’s imagine the creation of Saints as a production by committee. For simplicity, in our hypothetical let’s say it’s a committee of two. 1) One who holds a traditional view of the First Vision, ie the 1838 account, and a skeptical view of any accounts that aren’t completely in harmony of it, ie the 1832 account. 2) Another who recognizes the differences in the two accounts and who may lean towards the 1832 account being more accurate.
If you can picture that, you can easily picture a revision and negotiation and approval process that ends up with some sort of compromise. Neither is fully satisfied. The output is more transparent than prior versions but not as transparent as a critic might expect it to be. But no one is intentionally deceiving. No one is gaslighting. I believe at the FairMormon conference last year, I heard BYU scholar and lead historian for the Saints project Steven Harper say the revision and approval process for Saints took three years. I don’t know if my hypothetical is complete fantasy. But, I view it sort of like that. And that’s why it’s easier for me to have empathy for the Church in its desire to be more transparent about history. That’s a process that I think will take decades. We’re on the right path.
Vision or Visitation?
Something I learned from the podcast came from the Orson Hyde pamphlet written in German in 1842 titled A Cry Out in the Wilderness, which adds an interesting perspective to the First Vision.
The adversary then made several strenuous efforts to cool his ardent soul. He filled his mind with doubts and brought to mind all manner of inappropriate images to prevent him from obtaining the object of his endeavors… At this sacred moment, the natural world around him was excluded from his view, so that he would be open to the presentation of heavenly and spiritual things. Two glorious heavenly personages stood before him, resembling each other exactly in features and stature.
This account implies that Orson Hyde in 1842 perceived the First Vision as a visionary event not an actual visitation. Interesting. Does that change anything? I think it softens some of the takeaways we have about the First Vision but it in no way implies it didn’t really happen or that it’s a valid religious event.
All this leads me to take a 30,000 ft view of the First Vision and think about the discrepancies and what it really means. I think there are two main discrepancies that have a potentially strong impact on the meaning of the First Vision event.
Two personages
In the 1832 account, there seems to be just one personage: Jesus. It does have one ambiguous sentence where some LDS try to harmonize with the first “Lord” being God the Father and the second “Lord” being Jesus Christ.
I was filled with the spirit of God, and the Lord opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord.
I think that’s a bit of a stretch. I think the easiest reading is that he is only seeing one personage here.
What’s the impact of this discrepancy?
- It means he’s lying because if he saw two personages, he would have said he saw both in the 1832 account, so then he must have made the whole thing up. Maybe. But I think it’s reasonable to think the 1832 account is likely the most accurate to the actual experience and the 1838 account was how he reprocessed it later. Either misremembering or embellishing or drawing out meaning he hadn’t understood previously.
- It strikes out the meaning that we as a church have taken from the First Vision related to our understanding of God. That the trinity is incorrect. That God the Father and the Son are two separate personages. That they have bodies of flesh. My argument on this is that this knowledge never would have been understood solely through the First Vision. Joseph didn’t touch the bodies and most likely they didn’t appear physically at all. So he wouldn’t know through the First Vision God has body of flesh. I also disagree that the First Vision gave him information that the trinity is incorrect. The First Vision is very similar to what the martyr apostle Stephen saw. And trinitarians are just fine with that. I believe a trinitarian could have the First Vision the same way Joseph did in the 1838 account, seeing both as separate, without changing their understanding of the trinity. So regardless of the discrepancy and how many personages appeared, it doesn’t have impact on our doctrine.
Which Church is True
The other main issue coming out of the discrepancies between the accounts is concerning the idea of Joseph’s motivation for praying and what he was told regarding which church is true.
The context for the 1832 account is that Joseph came to conclusion that no existing churches perfectly represent the teachings of the Bible. He then prays primarily with motivation of seeking repentance and sees the vision of Jesus Christ.
Joseph, my son, thy sins are forgiven thee. Go thy way, walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments. Behold, I am the Lord of glory. I was crucified for the world, that all those who believe on my name may have eternal life. Behold, the world lieth in sin at this time, and none doeth good, no, not one. They have turned aside from the gospel and keep not my commandments. They draw near to me with their lips while their hearts are far from me. And mine anger is kindling against the inhabitants of the earth, to visit them according to their ungodliness and to bring to pass that which hath been spoken by the mouth of the prophets and apostles. Behold and lo, I come quickly, as it is written of me, in the cloud, clothed in the glory of my Father.
There’s not as strong as implication as is in the 1838 account that the primary reason for the Vision was to declare all churches not true and that Joseph would be starting the true one. Some LDS scholars even maintain that the sense we have about LDS exclusivity wasn’t there in the early church and even that D&C 1:30 was meant to emphasize the “living” aspect not the “true” aspect of the church in terms of distinguishing it from other Christian faiths.
30 And also those to whom these commandments were given, might have power to lay the foundation of this church, and to bring it forth out of obscurity and out of darkness, the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased, speaking unto the church collectively and not individually
In the 1838 account, Joseph has a hunch one of the existing churches is true and his motivation to pray is to find out which one. In the vision, he asks which is true. Christ answers in language that is more clear than the 1832 account that none are true, and there is more of an implication that there should be one true church which Joseph will start.
My conclusion on this is that the 1832 account can come close to harmonizing with the 1838 account with these two notable exceptions. I think the reasons for those exceptions could be due to reprocessing, understanding better, misremembering, or embellishing. I can’t say for sure, but I believe the 1832 account is likely more accurate to the actual experience. But also that the differences in the accounts don’t have huge, significant impact in terms of changing the meaning.
Wheat & Tares 
1 Ne. 8:2: “And it came to pass that while my father tarried in the wilderness he spake unto us, saying: Behold, I have dreamed a dream; or, in other words, I have seen a vision.” The English version of that verse dates to 1830, closer to the First Vision than any of the written accounts we have. And in 1 Ne. 8:2 a vision is depicted as equivalent to a dream. In early Mormon understanding, a vision was much more like a dream than it was like a visitation.
In my view Greg Princes article in the Mormon history association is the best analysis of the first vision. I think he would also agree that these are the 2 big issues. Greg agues strongly that Joseph was a modulist during the period of the first vision and thus you can not just read into the 1832 version 2 personages. But I must disagree on the reason for praying not being significant. If Joseph had concluded that all churches were not true, he would not have asked what church to join. Hasn’t this been the main point of the first vision: Asking God which church was true?!?
But in the end, if this is just a vision (we call it the first vision) but usually don’t think of it as a vision, doesn’t the mind of Joseph have to be part of it. Just like Joseph’s mind is a part of the BoM.
Ryanprun, I agree Greg Prince has the best take on this. The reason I disagree that it’s a huge deal re: his motivation to pray is that in both accounts there is some sort of thought on Joseph’s part in preparation for the Vision as to which church was true. And in both accounts, Christ asserts there is no truth, in the 1832 account it confirms Joseph’s thought, in the 1838 account it’s sort of a surprise. It’s more strongly stated and more of the obvious central theme in the 1838 account but it’s there in both.
I’ll be the first to admit that 1 person verses 2 people is a massive oversight!
My question is “the why”? Why would Joseph need to embellish later on and say he saw the father? I’ve heard it’s because his theology changed but that doesn’t square with the context.
Lectures on Faith in 1835 already spelled out the divide between father and son and that they’re two separate beings and no one was arguing with him.
Also, Joseph never taught that if Christ appears then the father must be there too.
So there’s no real motivation to go back and change the story or need to bolster his claims. No one was challenging him.
Another historical note is that at the same time in 1842, Joseph is rolling out polygamy and the Book of Abraham… and again, it’s being accepted because “he’s the prophet”.
This idea that he’s got to go back and tweak the first vision so it’s in line with “new theology” is intriguing but a completely unnecessary step for Joseph to do.
I’m open to other ideas but the “new theology” one doesn’t make sense in context unless you can show me where people were challenging the theology.
ChruchisTrue
What about the line from the 1832 account ” there was no society or denomination that built upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the
new testament”. Seems pretty definitive to me and not “there is some sort of thought on Joseph’s part in preparation for the Vision as to which church was true” he had determined no denomination was built upon Christ. Maybe I am missing something
Andy
Answering Why is always difficult. But when you account for the 1832 not being public along with the 1838 not being written by Joseph, you can see that it is not so clear. What Prince does nicely is line up what Joseph’s evolving theology on God to the time frame of the accounts. (Which is brilliant) Surprise, surprise they match.
Read Princes take here on Why?
p87 “Why Did the Story Change?”
Click to access 4304-JMH.pdf
I suppose I should just let it go, and allow people to see things the way they see things. But just once, I would like to see an explanation in place of just an assertion.
Suppose you’re taking a test of critical thinking skills.
A. I went to the store and saw Bob.
B. I went to the store and saw Bob and Susan.
–Are A and B logically incompatible accounts of the same event? Why or why not?
–Can A and B both be truthful accounts of the same event? Why or why not?
–If B is true, is it possible that I might truthfully describe my trip to the store using statement A? Why or why not?
============
C. I visited Norway and Sweden on my vacation.
D. I visited Norway on my vacation.
E. I visited Scandinavia on my vacation.
F. I visited two countries on my vacation.
–Are any of the statements C through F logically incompatible with any of the others? Why or why not?
–If C is true, is there any reason why I could not truthfully describe my vacation with statements D-F? Why or why not?
–If at various times, you heard me make all these statements regarding my vacation, could you logically conclude that I was lying or embellishing? Why or why not?
Left Field – While you logic is lovely, I think it misses an important point. How about these A & B.
A: I went to the store and saw my neighbor Bob.
B: I went to the store and saw the chief of police take down a bank robber with duck tape and zip ties.
A and B might both be true. Stories could be told separately about each. But why on earth would one tell A when B is so many magnitudes more impressionable and unusual? If my daughter came home and said she’d seen Bob at the store but I’d heard on the news that there had been a police take down in the exact moment she was supposedly at the store, I’d assume she was lying under this logic.
Well sure. I could see your point if Joseph had said:
1832: “I went to the woods and heard the call of a robin.”
1836: “I went to the woods and God spoke to me.”
I’m just not seeing how
G: “I saw the Lord and he spoke to me” is magnitudes different from
H. “I saw the Father and the Son and they spoke to me.”
Once you’ve claimed to have chatted with the Almighty, I’m not sure I’d dismiss either account as a nothing-burger.
So back to the original question, can you explain how it is that G and H could be logically incompatible and if so, how is that any different from the logical compatibility of my original A and B?
So we can debate what was in Joseph Smith’s mind and the intent of his accounts.
But what about the 15 “prophets” and 200+ apostles since and their interpretation repetition of the events?
The past 200 years of their misleading members be it intentionally or unintentionally is the issue.
But in reality that is not my issue with the lds church. Mine is how they hijacked use of God,s name to get members to follow them through decipt, Guilt, power, authority, to not ask questions. Blind obedience. And now in the information age, they have become gaslighting experts. The church on every level is NOT what they told us it was.
The history of the first vision is just one of thousands of examples of misleading member for the hierarchy to have power and control.
I’m not arguing they are logically incompatible. I absolutely agree that they are logically compatible. So was my example.
I’m arguing that magnitude matters and saying “I saw the Lord” vs saying “I saw two personages standing in the air” is a huge difference in magnitude. Whether you agree or not, this is why people question it, not because of compatibility/lack of it. You’re arguing the wrong thing. (I totally cut and pasted my quoted language from wikipedia, so if it isn’t accurate, that’s my source).
ReTx, I’m not convinced that Joseph would have seen any huge difference in magnitude between those two statements. The first is already overwhelming. In current Mormon culture the second is infused with the theological significance given to it by those, like Truman Madsen, who purported that Joseph had learned from the vision that the Father and Son were two separate personages and that this was in significant contrast to what Joseph and his contemporaries thought before the vision.. That may be what Madsen and others want to derive from the 1838 account, but I haven’t yet found any reason to think Joseph learned it from the vision. Perhaps he already thought that; perhaps he was no more persuaded to anti-trinitarianism by the vision than many others who had not been persuaded to it by Stephen’s vision recorded in Acts. Is the huge difference in Joseph’s meaning or in the cultural and theological baggage the Church subsequently attached to the 1838 account? . Maybe the more apt comparison would be the difference between:
A: I went to the store and saw my the chief of police take down a bank robber; and
B: I went to the store and saw the chief of police take down a bank robber with duck tape and zip ties.
“I’m not convinced that Joseph would have seen any huge difference in magnitude between those two statements.”
I guess in the days after the event, I would agree. It might all be the same to him. He was young and we view things differently right after they happened compared to reminiscence in later life. But then 12 & 18 years later? It makes no sense to me that he wouldn’t get the story correct all those years later. So…
A: Fifteen years ago, I went to the store and saw my chief of police take down a bank robber.
B: Fifteen years ago, I went to the store and saw a swat team from my local police department take down a bank robber using nothing but duck tape, zip ties, and pool toys. (Our example is so funny to me for some reason that I can’t help taking it up a notch.)
It’s a different story when you increase the magnitude of the event.
“In the RFM-Weird Alma version, there is an assumption that the Church is a monolith with all Church leaders and supporting historians viewing all the historical information the same or very similarly.”
I have two comments, which may in fact contradict each other, but I’m going to say them anyway:
1. I doubt that RFM or Weird Alma would agree with this characterization.
2. While it’s useful to remember that the church is made up of individuals with different strengths, weaknesses, and even beliefs, it is also one single institution. It strives very hard to be a united institution, and to be seen as a singular, unified entity. It doesn’t surprise me when people treat it as such.
Well, I think “duck tape” is actually a brand of duct tape. I doubt either his perception at the time or memory years later would be that specific. 🙂
But in any event, whether an increase in magnitude makes a different story depends on the magnitude of the increase and whether one insists on ascribing great significance to it.
Didn’t Prince say regarding motivation, that the questions 1) how do I get forgiven of my sins and 2) Which Church should I be baptized into or termination of sins just two sides of the same coin?
Let’s not forget that the 1832 account has only been publicly available for the last 50 years, It was unknown to LDS for the first roughly 150 years of the Church. Furthermore, when initially discovered by some senior LDS leader in the mid-20th century, the account was removed from the letterbook in which it was written and the excised pages squirreled away in the First Presidency Vault for a generation or two before it was made public, and then only because the Church’s hand was forced. So the senior leaders who had initial knowledge of the 1832 account certainly viewed it as a threat.
See Stan Larson, “Another Look at Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” Dialogue Vol. 47, No. 2 (Summer 2014):37-62, available at this link:
Click to access Dialogue_V47N02_210.pdf
I’m trying to imagine raising our kids this way. Hey, kiddo, that clever half-truth you just laid on us sure beats the obvious lies you used to come up with. It’s gonna take a few decades, but you’re on the right path to becoming an honest citizen, kudos! Empathetic parenting FTW! And it only took you three years to rocket from the moral universe of a five-year-old to that of an eight-year-old. Exceptional kid! Oh, wait.
Dave B., Minor correction, but with some possible implications: According to Stan Larson it was not in the First Presidency Vault, but was relinquished about 1964 by Joseph Fielding Smith from his private office safe back to the Church Historian’s office. JFS was not then a member of the First Presidency. JFS began employment in the Church Historian’s office in 1901. He was Church Historian from 1921 to 1970, having previously been an Assistant Church Historian. JFS showed the 1832 account to Levi Edgar Young in the 1940s or early 1950s. Regardless of who had removed it from the book in which it was written, JFS had control of it at that time.
The only “necessary contradiction” (as RFM puts it) is Joseph’s motivation for going to the grove in the first place. In 1832 it’s to seek forgiveness and he has already determined no church is true. In 1838 that thought had never yet entered into his mind. This is a “necessary contradiction” but in my mind not that big of a deal – but definitely interesting.
The differences in details about the number of personages is a possible contradiction but could also just be an omission of detail. Again, I don’t see this as a significant criticism and was not a big shelf item for me.
When we compare the developing First Vision narrative to Joseph’s evolving theology they do seem to correlate quite nicely. The fact that Joseph didn’t widely publish these accounts suggests to me that he wasn’t telling the first vision story as a means of establishing authority or authenticity for himself. I just see them lining up nicely with the overall development of the church.
I do think Vogel has a decent argument that Joseph had a born again experience that evolved and changed in his retelling of it over the years until it became the first vision experience we have today. That it was a visionary experience rather than a literal visitation seems much more likely to me based on the records we have.
“In 1838 that thought had never yet entered into his mind.”
So he claims in verse 18. However, in verse 10 of JSH, he says: “I often said to myself: What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together?”
Contrary to what he says a few verses later, the thought actually had come into his mind, and come “often.” I’ve wondered why Joseph appears to have forgotten to edit that earlier verse.
Left Field explores an implied exclusionary principle:
A. I went to the store and saw Bob.
B. I went to the store and saw Bob and Susan.
For some readers, “A” excludes everyone but Bob. I went to the store and saw Bob and only Bob, for no other people were present. In that scenario, Susan cannot have been there, because the reporter has a duty to enumerate ALL persons present, failing to do so presumes their absence.
But it is common in conversation to report, “I went to Walmart and saw Susan”, if I am having a conversation with someone for whom Susan is interesting, but the 500 other people at Walmart that day aren’t part of the conversation. In this mode, one identifies the persons of interest even if others are present., identifying Susan does not (or should not) exclude everyone else that was there.
So what about my own First Vision? Incredibly, one of the most important events of my life has no contemporary record of it, or even mention why not. I wrote about it in letters to friends a few months after the event. Sometimes the importance or uniqueness of an event is not yet obvious at the time.
Wondering-Well, I think “duck tape” is actually a brand of duct tape. I doubt either his perception at the time or memory years later would be that specific.
Actually the product originates from WW2 for water proofing and wet-proof repairs and was called “duck tape” by soldiers. The name has changed with loss of this historical knowledge. Would an old vet today use the term “duck” or “duct?” How much would knowledge gained later changed how Joseph presented the information?
One important consideration that is absent from the current conversation is scope of the persons involved in the vision.
Bob and Susan are two ordinary folk who are may or may not be relevant to the person you are relating the story to. Omitting one or the other in a conversation would be perfectly normal and acceptable if they add nothing to the narrative for the audience.
Consider this alternative scenario.
A. I went to dinner with President Trump.
B. I went to dinner with President Trump and Kim Jong Un.
As already established above, neither of these statements is logically a lie.
Telling the story that I went to dinner with President Trump would be something of interest to the majority of people (regardless of what side of the political isle you find yourself on).
Now if a few years later I add to the story that Kim Jong Un was also at dinner with President Trump and I, others might understandably doubt the accuracy of the addition to my experience and question why I did not disclose that information on the first telling of the event as Kim Jong Un is a fairly important and well known character in todays global landscape.
Was my first telling of the story inaccurate? No. However adding another important global figure to the dinner would probably be seen with some scrutiny.
If my memory is correct, the first vision was the starting point of our 1960’s missionary discussions. Now there are questions about whether JS saw one or 2 heavenly beings. And why he decided to pray in the first place, and the message he received? Or maybe it wasn’t a vision, it was a dream, maybe a lucid dream.
And the BoM wasn’t translated from golden plates, it was inspired from seer stones in a hat. And the book is not a history of all Native Americans, it is only the history of a few, and we don’t know where they settled. Or maybe the book is inspired fiction.
Very little of what I taught in the 60’s was in fact accurate. Was I gaslighted? Sure. After all several GA’s believed that history needed to inspirational, not accurate.
Was I a party to gaslighting? Yep, for that I need to repent.
Thanks for the post.
My 30,000 foot view of all of this is that whatever version of the First Vision occurred, if any occurred at all, has not been made all that clear by God.
I feel that something so critical to the LDS Church and it’s physical and philosophical underpinnings would be made a little clear by him / her or the prophet.
It seems like most of the comments are focusing on the first vision accounts themselves. There fact that there are multiple accounts is not the “gaslighting” aspect, but rather a plain vanilla (discrepancy/error/whatever).
The gaslighting comes in when, as churchistrue states in the OP, the church adds information about the multiple accounts to church literature and pretends it has been there all along. Or when some church leader points to a single ensign article, maybe from the 70s(?), to claim that the church has been open about this.
I think think it is more palatable to consider the fact that a committee or beauracracy has to come up with this stuff, but for some people that doesn’t make it easier to come to terms with the change in the narrative. The narrative has actually changed, and denying the change is problematic.
ReTx, it seems to me then, that your point is not that the accounts conflict; it’s that if you ReTx, personally had seen two personages, you don’t think you would ever describe it by saying “I saw the Lord.” I can’t speak for you of course, but for me, that language seems entirely natural, and I don’t see any substantive difference in magnitude at all. Once you’ve claimed to have conversed with the resurrected Jesus, that’s so far out of the ordinary, that having him introduced by the Father isn’t going to be the one thing that *really* makes the story astonishing.
God heard my prayer.
Jesus heard my prayer.
The Lord heard my prayer.
Heaven heard my prayer.
The Holy Spirit heard my prayer.
God and Jesus heard my prayer.
Precisely speaking, each of those means different things depending on your theology, and include different numbers of personages. But in practice, I believe that most people would use them interchangeably, and if someone at different times used different terminology to describe the same experience, I would not think to question their sincerity.
So if Joseph saw “two personages,” why did he only mention one in 1832? I could think of several reasonable “explanations,” but the 1832 account seems so natural to me that I don’t find that any “explanation” is even required, other than that he mentioned speaking with Jesus because that’s the experience he was talking about at the time. Seeing a bank robber apprehended with duck tape at the store is a cool story, and maybe Susan is someone really notable like a movie star or the president of the United States. But if Bob is who I’m talking about at the moment, I don’t need to discuss anyone else. Perhaps I’m telling you about meeting Bob at the store because he helped me to understand that I had been forgiven of my sins. I can tell you about Susan or the bank robber another time. I’m not obligated to include every aspect of the story the first time I tell it.
In all the accounts, Joseph says that he spoke with Jesus. Whereas in the 1832 account, Joseph says that he spoke with Jesus. I’m not too troubled about the discrepancy.
When people tell of their experiences, they naturally use different language from time to time or include different aspects of the story. If they recite the same text every time, that would seem unnatural to me, and more likely an indication of having made it up, or at least being suspiciously cautious about the details. If Neil Armstrong had been interviewed in the 1980s and mentioned something about the moon landing that he hadn’t said before, that’s just a new bit of information, not a fabricated embellishment. We can take into account that it’s a more distant memory for him, but there’s no reason to question it just because he didn’t mention it previously. When I read the First Vision accounts as a group, they ring true to me. They vary in the ways I would expect independent truthful accounts to vary. And I’m bewildered by the expectation that some seem to have that independent truthful accounts will not vary at all. I’m bewildered by the idea that Joseph had to have had one discrete clearly defined motive for going to the grove, and he’s not allowed to ever go beyond that. He was troubled about a lot of things, and he doesn’t always discuss every aspect of every issue that had been going through his mind. Who does?
I get that you personally might not say “I saw the Lord” after seeing the Father and the Son. But you can’t extrapolate that to everyone else. You can’t extrapolate that to me and you certainly can’t extrapolate that to Joseph Smith.
I appreciate using non-first vision analogies in this little logic discussion. It helps remove some of the passion from the debate.
For me the problem isn’t whether or not ReTx’s A precludes B, etc.; I think the real problem is the one DoubtingTom dismissed as “not that big of a deal – but definitely interesting.”
A: I shopped at Amazon today
B: I shopped at Amazon and eBay today
I have no problem accepting both A & B as different versions of the same day.
C: I shopped at Amazon today because I know that brick and mortar retail store never have the lowest price.
D: I shopped at Amazon and eBay today because all the marketing done by brick and mortar retailers confuses me and I never know which has the best deal.
I have a harder time homogenizing C&D.
MTodd, C and D seem complementary to me. I can’t figure out if Home Depot or Lowes has the better price, but I know that Amazon and eBay will be cheaper than both. So rather than trying to decide which big box store to go to, I’ll just order online. In the case of Joseph Smith, he may have previously determined that none of the churches was right, but that doesn’t preclude him from seeking confirmation and continuing to question his original conclusion.
I saw Christ last week. I forgot to mention God the Father was there too. Also angels. And a bunch of other people.. It’s easy to forget that God the Father was there, because I was talking about Jesus and the Father didn’t seem that important…
You can mock all you want vajra, but people just don’t give comprehensive recitations of their experiences as if replaying a tape recording. They just don’t. You don’t, I don’t, and Joseph Smith didn’t. If someone had a deep spiritual experience at church last week, they’re not obligated to report every aspect of it whenever they talk about going to church. They can tell as much or as little as they feel comfortable. If you know people who never leave out anything important when they relate their experiences, then they are very different from anybody I’ve ever interacted with. People talk about what they want to talk about. People talk about things of “lesser importance” all the time. And thank goodness for that.
Historians don’t dismiss documents for not being comprehensive enough. If a historical figure wrote a letter reporting A, B, and C, historians don’t don’t throw out the document for not having mentioned D and E which are discussed in a different letter, no matter how “important” D and E are. That would be an impossible standard that no document could pass. Accounts of personal experiences are like maps. It is literally impossible to include everything, and impossible to include everything deemed “important” by some standard. For the map to be useful, the mapmaker always has to decide what important things to leave out.
And just to be accurate, nobody here said that Joseph Smith “forgot” about the Father or that he thought it wasn’t “important.” That is certainly not what I think and is not what I have argued. In fact, it is the opposite of what I think.
Thanks.
Left Field, perhaps. But in my mind, reconciling C&D is much more difficult than A&B, not impossible, but it requires more mental gymnastics.
It’s not only about the first vision, it’s the totality of how historical events are communicated. I can live with a few discrepancies, but I think the gaslighting issue has to do with a whole list. Polygamy, seer stones, mountain meadows, book of Abraham. And the first vision. These are not trifling details.
Several of the explanations for the “discrepancies” seem to imply that the visitation was some ordinary event. I’m pretty sure that if I had a face-to-face with God and Christ, I would remember every detail. And that the deity would want me to remember every detail. It would be permanently etched in my brain.
The story of First Vision in the 1960’s was used to explain many of our beliefs: God has a body of flesh and bone and that after death so will we; the true Church is non-trinitarian; God answers prayers; etc. So the details of the First Vision were important and not to be taken lightly.
MTodd, I certainly agree that your A and B are a simpler case than C and D. But I don’t find C-D to be particularly problematic either.
There are a couple of issues that do appear to be genuine contradictions. One is his age. If the different accounts are referring to the same vision, he can’t be both 14 and 15 years old. It’s a real discrepancy but it doesn’t really bother me at all. That sort of error seems pretty commonplace among us humans. In 1836 he reports (verse 10 in the canonized edition) that he often asked himself if all the churches are wrong together. In verse 18 he reports during the vision that “at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong.” That’s a head-scratcher for sure, but I guess it’s not a big issue for me to know when he first considered that all might be wrong. If he were here, we could ask him. Maybe he was talking about two different things but didn’t explain it well enough for a guy like me to understand. Maybe he’d tell us that one of the statements is wrong and that he has no idea what he might have been thinking of when he wrote it. Maybe it’s something else. But “he made it all up” is pretty far down on my list of possible explanations.
On the general question of why he went into the grove, I would expect it to be complicated. If you asked Neil Armstrong (sorry, I have Apollo on the brain for obvious reasons) why he accepted the assignment to fly to the moon, I would expect that to be complicated too. And I would be surprised if you got the exact same answer every time. “Why did you fly to the moon?” and “Why did you go into the grove?” are essay questions, not multiple choice questions with a single correct answer. If you ask the question over a period of years, I would expect a different essay every time, with some similarities and some differences.
Roger, as far as having every detail of the experience etched in your brain, I’m skeptical. Without bothering to analyze every account, my impression is that most who report such events are left overcome by the experience and often don’t feel like they can adequately describe it. Heightened memory of detail isn’t the usual report we hear.
But again, nobody here is saying that he forgot that the Father was there. As far as I am aware, “forgetting” is not the customary understanding of anyone who addresses the question. We all talk about what we choose to talk about and nobody ever tells everything they remember. If they did, we would soon tire of hearing it. And nobody talks about things in order of “importance.” If they did, we’d all be somewhere else talking about more important things, not having this conversation. And all of our conversations would be a lot less interesting.
Re: And nobody talks about things in order of “importance.
People tell stories. The human brain understands stories (movie makers have an exact formula as to how best transmit experience via a medium into someone’s brain.) If Joseph cut half the story out when that half increased the interest, value, and significance of the story, he would have had a reason for doing so. What is that reason?
My guess?
We know very well that the brain reinvents it’s own memories/stories. (Google Free Brian Williams revisionist history for a clear cut example and explanation). This to me seems the most likely explanation.
Also while there is a pattern of understanding huge spiritual events taking time, I don’t know of any stories of the changes happening 10-15 years later. Does anyone else? I’m genuinely curious. Especially as to how the individual separated out truth from their own brain in action.
ReTx
I think we’ve pretty much covered everything by now. It seems that in terms of the number of personages, we agree that there is no logical inconsistency in the accounts. “I saw God and Jesus” is logically consistent with “I saw Jesus.” Where we differ is in whether we believe a person would ever describe the experience of seeing God and Jesus by saying “I saw the Lord.” That language seems obvious and natural to me. Apparently it doesn’t to others. But I’m not going to evaluate the veracity of an account based on a supposition of what someone 180 years ago “wouldn’t have said.” Your mileage may vary. But the idea that “nobody would describe it that way” seems a weak basis to conclude that the story is suspect. There are billions of people in the world. I don’t think we can be so certain about how any of them would describe an experience. But it does seem a safe bet that some of those billions of people might describe the experience in a way that neither you nor I would think.
There is no doubt that God the Father is the most “important” individual in the Grove. But that doesn’t make him the most important individual in the story. It doesn’t mean that the story becomes fundamentally different if he’s left out. As I have said, I disagree that the presence of the Father substantially increases the interest, value, and significance of the story. It’s not like talking with Jesus is a real yawner, and it’s not until you have the Father give an 8-word introduction that the story becomes really audacious. If my bishop gave a great talk on a certain subject today, I’m going to tell you about what the bishop said. I may or may not mention if an area authority was presiding and introduced the bishop. Sure by some standard, the area authority is the most “important” person in the meeting. But that doesn’t make him the most important person in the story. That doesn’t mean that I can’t or won’t ever talk about the meeting without mentioning him. Whether or not I mention the area authority, it’s the same meeting, the same story, and the same experience. The presence of the important area authority is cool and all, but if the bishop gave remarks that were valuable to me, that’s the thing I’ll be sure to talk about.
The few written accounts we have of the First Vision are like a fossil record. We have a few individual organisms that fossilized, but we don’t have direct evidence of the organisms that lived in between. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be assuming that Joseph only spoke of seeing one personage until 1835 when he started saying there were two. We don’t know that. He does say that he related the story before 1832, but we don’t know anything about how he may have described the experience. We can’t legitimately extrapolate backwards from the 1832 account and assume that represents the way he always told the story between 1820(ish) and 1832. We know that 1835 is the first surviving written account specifically describing two personages. But we can’t say that he never described it that way before 1835. To make the argument that his story “changed” in 1835 is assuming facts not in evidence. Aside from one “fossilized” account of 1832, we can’t say how he might have described it prior to 1835.
Just finished listening to the podcast yesterday. I think the main point, which most of the discussion has not touched on, is that the rendition of the first vision in Saints is carefully crafted to show that there is harmony and to reinforce the official version regardless of al;l the facts (or mines as RFM calls them).
Conclusion: the Church continues to promote narratives over facts. It continues to obscure to maintain a narrative.
“the Church continues to promote narratives over facts”
Building a narrative is the explicit purpose of Saints. It tells a story and is not intended to read like a history textbook. Having said that, the word for word accounts are made readily available to anyone reading Saints. It’s right there in the companion materials.
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That is true. One can spend the time parsing out the facts and deciding if a sentence one reads in Saints is consistent with all the source data. What was left out? What was included from a secondary source (that I can then check for its veracity)?
It would really be nice to have the confidence that Saints represents the historical data and that one would not have to do that to feel good about the historical characterizations. RFM’s exercise on this one topic does that and leaves Saints wanting.
I have noticed many such points where the text leaves out or colors the narrative. E.g., when Joseph was tarred and feathered and nearly castrated, Saints implies that the motivation for the attack was W.W. Phelps’ newspaper content and ignored that one of the instigators was angry about one of the Joseph’s wives and the manner in which she was “taken”.
Saints does read well. I like to listen to it. I suppose that is as deep into it as most will go. To me, it’s just another “faith promoting” telling of history.
Of course Saints is faith-promoting! The expectation or even hope that it would be anything else is absurd. The notable thing about Saints is that it doesn’t ignore inconvenient facts, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is history intended to tell the story of the Church from the Church’s perspective. There’s no attempt to be unbiased because there’s no reason to expect an unbiased history. There are a lot of books that try to do that.
I didn’t expect Saints to be anything other than what it is – and in fact it’s more balanced than many thought it would be.
That’s not the issue addressed by RFM. The question he asks is does the Church continue to hide, mask, and misdirect in support of its objectives? To him (and me) the answer is “Yes it does.”
Just because it would be absurd to expect something other than what it is doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be more directly truthful. Transparency that is buried three clicks away isn’t crystal clear.
“We’re as transparent as we know how to be,” said Elder Ballard. Saints is a long way from hiding the 1832 account in a safe for decades – but transparency (truthfulness) still has a long way to go.