Ben Spackman will be talking at the FAIR Conference on revelation. However, in his Pathos blog and otherwheres he has made the point that there is no such thing as “pure revelation.”
I’m partial to that outlook, as my posts on the frailty of language and the way our language, context and understanding affects reflect. As I understand it, God has to communicate to us in what we know. and then we have to work with that.
I’ve written on examples in the Old Testament, but with this year’s course of study being the New Testament, it is illuminating to look at the way the Church made changes in the New Testament. Ben Spackman’s favorite example is the way the Church stepped away from the rules in Leviticus. It all started with God speaking to Peter when Peter dozed off waiting for a meal.
What did God say to Peter? “Peter, arise and eat.”
https://biblehub.com/acts/10-13.htm for the text in many translations. Six words. Followed by “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” Ten words.
The vision was repeated three times, but Peter only got a total of 16 words to work with.
From there Peter has to figure out what God meant, how it should be applied, and if the rule differs depending on whether or not you were born in the Abrahamic covenant or outside of it.
Eventually there is a Church conference on it (and some other things). At that conference, this was Peter’s bottom line (https://biblehub.com/bsb/acts/15.htm):
19It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not cause trouble for the Gentiles who are turning to God.20Instead, we should write and tell them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood.
They then send out a letter and messengers to carry this rule out.
They support the letter with: ” It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” — that is, they have used reason, reflection and inspiration to set the rule.
The policy and revelation and implementation are not smooth and pain free after that either. Paul and Peter get into public fights that Paul writes about, and the issues take years to work out. And we know all of this history because it was preserved for us in the New Testament.
The New Testament teaches us a great deal about the implementation of doctrine and policy in the Church following direct revelation from God.
Was there revelation? Clear and direct. Was there still a lot of human input, friction and complication in working out what that meant? Yes, from people who had studied directly under Christ and who had clear visions from God.
What we have is an important, dramatic and was completely unexpected by Peter and others in the Church. Yet the way that the revelation was implemented had a great deal of room for human input and working things out — that is one of the major lessons of the New Testament.
Ben will have significant things to say.
- For a link (the actual presentation is not yet available): go here.
- For a related presentation by Ben Spackman.
- So What is Doctrine?
- Ben Spackman’s Blog. (This year on the New Testament — well worth reviewing for your Sunday School classes).
But this goes well, whether in reflecting on the Word of Wisdom or on other policies and approaches. Assuming that modern leaders are as inspired as Peter and Paul, this is the sort of pathway to implementation that we should expect from leaders who walked and talked with Christ and who had the heavens open to them more than once.
- So, what conclusions do you draw from how revelation was implemented in the New Testament?
- Should we expect more or less from modern leaders than the Church was able to expect from Peter and Paul?
- Why do you think that God speaks with us in our own language and leaves so much for people to work out and implement on their own?
Wheat & Tares 
It is James, not Peter, who makes the final decision and whom you quote in verses 19-20.
Cody, While in context it seems to me also that James was making the final decision, it also appears that the same Greek word translated “judgment” in other scriptural contexts might be more an expression of opinion or personal conclusion rather than an exercise of decision making authority Could it be that James was articulating what he thought was the consensus of the assembly rather than making a decision? It would take more language, and perhaps other, expertise than I have to evaluate whether that is a real possibility But I did note that when it comes to deciding to send (and whom to send) with the letter, that was a decision of “the apostles and elders, with the whole church” — suggesting a consensus of all present on those matters at least.
Good catch Cody.
It doesn’t say who speaks then, but from the context it really looks like it is James continuing to speak.
You are probably right. And it points out the multiple authors of the policy.
Peter has the revelation, he and Barnabas do the first implementation and then James promulgates the wording.
After they’ve got an agreement of sorts.
Thank you to you and JR.
Full context:
“10Now then, why do you test God by placing on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?
11On the contrary, we believe it is through the grace of the Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”
12The whole assembly fell silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul describing the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them.
13When they had finished speaking, James declared, “Brothers, listen to me!
14Simon [Peter] has told us how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people to be His own.
15The words of the prophets agree with this, as it is written:”
So it is James speaking in terms of how Peter’s revelation should be applied.
Can you give specific source for this? “However, in his Pathos blog and otherwheres he has made the point that there is no such thing as “pure revelation.””
Thanks for the post, Stephen. I appreciated your depiction of things moving from Peter’s dream to Church’s policy. Your treatment was helpful in humanizing things for me. Here are my agnostic responses to your questions:
-The Book of Acts suggests to me that somewhere shortly after the prophet receives a revelation and increasingly as he reports it to followers, things get messy. Assuming an authentic revelation, likely culprits for the messiness would be agency, imperfect memory, and even a prophet willfully resisting a revelation they understood just fine when they received it.
–We should expect the same of apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as was expected of Peter and Paul. Today’s Q12 and First Presidency claim to be apostles just as Peter and Paul were. Based on that self-professed authority, they seem to expect the same high level of commitment and obedience that was expected in the primitive church.
-I can’t respond to the third question as written because I’m a skeptic. It seems to me that an all-powerful God would have the power to successfully communicate to a prophet in a way that precludes the prophet misunderstanding. Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God let a prophet walk away from a revelatory moment having missed the point?
“Ben Spackman will be talking at the FAIR Conference on revelation. However, in his Pathos blog and otherwheres he has made the point that there is no such thing as “pure revelation.””
That is a convenient position to take that allows the church leaders to proclaim something to be revelation and then later reverse that saying that the so-called revelation that they reversed was still a revelation, but was emphasized or implemented the wrong way. It is simply a clever position to make skeptics and those who point out seeming contradictions and backtracking appear wrong no matter what they say. It gives license to the leaders so that they can do and say mostly whatever they please and we can never call them wrong enough to justify rejecting them. He may not realize it or being willing to admit as much, but Spackman’s position while not absolutist in and of itself, enables and is a gateway to an unyielding absolutism that proclaims the leaders as always right and their critics always wrong. If a leader appears wrong, well, then just change the goal posts. If the critic insists on keeping those goal posts in the same position, just call them a closed-minded black-and-white thinker. That is Spackman’s strategy. And I have graced with the wonderful opportunity of engaging Spackman on many occasions and I can assure that he gets quite arrogant and uppity when you disagree with him.
I’m with John W on this one. If there is no such thing as “pure revelation”, then essentially, all bets are off and one can fudge almost anything. Was it revealed to Joseph Smith that he should marry a 14-year old? “Well, maybe. He had to interpret God’s will”. Was it revelation when Brigham Young said the doctrine of the negro would never be rescinded? “Well, maybe. It could be that he just mis-interpreted God’s will a little.” I mean, you can do this with literally anything and, as John W points out, leaders can basically do/say whatever they want when they have something like this in their back pocket. Also, consider the other implication of this line of thought: So God the Father, the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe, the being who created us, the earth, worlds without end, who flooded the earth, who destroyed cities, who begot the savior of mankind, the being who was capable of doing all of that can’t speak three clear sentences to his representative on earth? He can’t come down to President Nelson and say, “look, that whole POX thing, that’s wrong.”? He can’t appear to Joseph Smith or James or whoever and say, “no, dude, don’t write that, write this.”? How hard could that be? Either God’s supposed representatives on earth are just making this stuff up or God just doesn’t care a lot about these things and so isn’t intervening. I feel like once we’re on the whole “well, no revelation is perfect” line of thinking, we could easily be in the Warren Jeffs and David Koresh camp. And once we’re there, we’re on a one-way train to Crazytown.
John W,
Would you say the same thing about the scientific method? There are anti-science people out there who make almost the same argument with respect to scientists. In both cases, the critic is imposing a standard that the criticized doesn’t claim.
Recognizing that any form of knowledge-gathering is imperfect seems unambiguously good to me. It is odd that you would criticize that.
Which brings me to my next point….
Jake,
Asking why God would not communicate perfectly seems to be missing the bigger question. Why would God place us in in imperfect world with a host of imperfections in the first place. Experiencing imperfection is a critical point along the road to perfection.
Jake—I think the point is we are not in life to react like mice in a Skinner box. I think the methods God uses are part of what it means to experience mortality.
I appreciate that many of our readers don’t like the idea that the modern church is like the New Testament church in seeing through a glass darkly.
But I appreciate your engaging the better question of why that is the way things are.
That is a better question to ask and the real start of theology.
Churchistrue—I’ve been reading and interacting with Ben for several years.
I’m afraid I can’t give you pin point citations without too much work.
I’d suggest you just ask him for some references.
For me, I’ve made that point several times in posts at Wheat & Tares.
It is a theme of mine. Which is why I like it when Ben makes the same point.
And I’ve not found him arrogant or impatient but then my interactions aren’t the same as others.
Dsc, I’ve never heard a scientist proclaim his or her ideas to be true to a congregation of followers, from whom they ask 10 percent of their income in donations, because of revelation from God. Scientists mostly seem to claim their ideas to be theories. Even ones they’re really confident in, such as the theory of evolution, are acknowledged to be just theories. Scientists tend to express much less certainty behind theories than religious leaders do behind particular religious doctrines. Plus, scientists revere past scientists such as Newton and Einstein all while refuting many of their ideas. The comparison between LDS prophets to scientists is really apples to oranges.
“the critic is imposing a standard that the criticized doesn’t claim”
D&C claims that Joseph Smith did more for mankind than anyone except Jesus Christ. LDS people are specifically instructed and expected to obey the words of the prophets. I’ve never heard anyone say, “obey the words of x scientist.” LDS leaders are to be revered as authorities. Scientists at most are looked at as experts whose ideas we can disagree with without significant backlash.
“Recognizing that any form of knowledge-gathering is imperfect seems unambiguously good to me.”
No modern mainstream scientist is claiming their published ideas to be based on revelation from God. The LDS prophets have claimed to have actually received revelation. Revelation is a much bolder claim than anything modern mainstream scientists are claiming. Even while knowledge-gathering is imperfect on the part of scientists, and they acknowledge as much, there is a body of knowledge that scientists have high confidence in. Consider what has been discovered and predicted by scientists over the past 200 years. Now, consider the same for the LDS leaders, and any religion for that matter. Even then, scientists claim that the most well-established ideas are theories. I can’t imagine an LDS leader saying, “here is our theory of salvation.” They proclaim that x is what you need to do to attain salvation.
John W,
Yes, it’s an apples and oranges comparison, but their still both fruit and share some things in common. And in this case, they are both by and large reliable but nevertheless imperfect methods of learning truth.
The D&C 135 quote you reference doesn’t say that Joseph Smith was perfect and incapable of mistake, or that revelation is a process that implies perfect transmission of unadulterated truth. You are, again, imposing a standard that’s not actually claimed.
If you’re point is that religious leaders should acknowledge the imperfection of the revelatory process, then I ask, why would you criticize the acknowledgment that the process is imperfect? You’ve created a lose-lose paradigm. Either acknowledge that revelation is not always received perfectly and be accused of creating a convenient out or claim that revelation is always perfectly received and be accused of lying when evidence shows otherwise. You are speaking out of both sides of your mouth, simultaneously claiming religious leaders never acknowledge imperfection (demonstrably false) and criticizing that very acknowledgement when they do.
Scientist ask for funding all the time and promise all sorts of tangible results.
DSC, Micro said that there is a forced argument there.
LDS religious leaders are asking people to hold them and their predecessors to a much higher standard than I have ever heard any scientist ask of him/herself or other scientist colleagues. I’ve never heard kids singing, “follow Stephen Hawking, follow Stephen Hawking, he knows the way.” You’re straining to make a comparison between two completely different things. Also asking for donations for particular causes (research for some cure for a disease) is quite different than telling members of an organization to pay 10% of their income because God is commanding them to do so.
D&C 135 pretty much calls Joseph Smith second to Jesus. It doesn’t call him perfect, but what is it then? Joseph Smith is just a regular guy like the rest of us, or is he a pretty significant whose words we should think twice before questioning? LDS leaders since Joseph Smith have told followers to revere him as this amazing revelator who communicated regularly with God. However, over the years the leaders have been forced to walk back praise of Joseph Smith particularly in the face of claims that can be directly falsified. So then praise of him as this near perfect revelator gets downgraded to mostly perfect revelator with a few flaws. As for Joseph Smith’s claims that cannot be objectively verified, those claims will always be extolled as these amazing unadulterated revelations. Then, of course, why stop there? Lay into the critic and attack him with a strawman argument for foolishly expecting Joseph Smith to be perfect and not being willing to accept imperfection. This is nothing more than a red herring. For the issue never was about the critic, but about how heroically the leaders and members treat Joseph Smith. You can’t seriously be telling me that the church and the members don’t place Joseph Smith and subsequent prophets on an extremely high pedestal. For if Joseph Smith and his successors are just regular guys, why invest so much time, money, and mental effort in following them?
John W,
Speaking of attacking straw men…
Leaders and members devote their lives to and build their identities around the teachings of Joseph Smith and repeatedly heap praise on him. The critics aren’t overreacting to something like news that Joseph Smith had a sip of alcohol or made a poor leadership decision in a tough moment. They’re reacting to the very disconcerting idea that Joseph Smith completely made up the BOM, D&C, and BOA and was a serial philanderer who actively sought sexual experiences with lots of different women.
I used to like Bill Cosby. I could have imagined continuing to like him if I seen a video of him losing his temper or something like that. That would have been a minor, but common and forgivable flaw. But drugging women and raping them is not a common flaw. Knowing that he did what he did completely casts him in a different light and makes it difficult to look at that man with any modicum of respect.
If it is true that Joseph Smith made up scripture and had sex with teenagers and other men’s wives, these are not common forgivable flaws that we can just overlook. This completely casts him in a different light. So this argument that critics foolishly and naively expected Joseph Smith to be a near perfect person and are overreacting to trifling matters is a strawman argument in the extreme. Critics and ex-Mormons appear to have to perfectly fine with some common flaws. What their reacting to is the idea that Joseph Smith may have been a libidinous con-man of the likes the world has rarely seen.
And for the record, I’m not making the case that Joseph Smith was this horrible person, I am merely pointing out how many believers are finding bad excuses to causally dismisses the critics’ reactions to the LDS church and are not fully trying to understand their points of view.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-caps-melt-gore-2014/
That is a good review of claims around science and calls for a sacrifice of much more than 10%.
Interesting discussion in the comments all in all, though I was hoping we would get into how such a lesson about revelation using the example of the New Testament would be taught and the need for it.
I try and step back and look at this concept of revelation from a 30,000 foot viewpoint and ask myself what would things look like if there was no actual revelation—just people who think it exists. When I consider this possibility, I think that what we see is exactly what I would expect to see if revelation is just solely an internal process and there is no interventionist deity as source.
On the other hand, if revelation does actually exist, then I would expect to see it manifest itself in a more clear manner than what we observe. What I see instead is prophets who have made claims to receiving clear and direct revelation, only to find out afterwards that they got it wrong.
Either God only has the ability to communicate in this vague and unclear manner, chooses to only do so for his own reasons, or doesn’t do so at all and we just imagine it as part of our religious beliefs.
If I am being honest, I think the last option is by far the most likely conclusions and that is based on my own personal experiences as well as everything I have heard and read about the variety of other’s religious revelatory experiences, both in and out of the church.