Like many church members, I was curious about what the “big reveal” was going to be at General Conference. I didn’t expect anything earth-shattering, mostly because we don’t need a conference to announce changes (or to quietly insert them in the handbook and not tell anyone, then freak out when they are “leaked”). As it turns out, it was a fifth Proclamation, a statement of belief about the restoration that seemed largely uncontroversial in content. The only potential controversies I heard in what was read were:
- Specifying that the first vision was a “visit,” not just a vision, a distinction that is probably moot since we believe that visions are meaningful spiritual guidance and inspiration, so what the hey. After all, even if Princess Leia wasn’t physically there when Obi-Wan heard her message, he still got the gist.
- An official harmonization of the four versions of the first vision which are often contradictory and can be problematic for those who look too closely. This comes up with a single narrative, one that glosses over some of the trickier elements of the various accounts.
But I was left with the question: so what? Why are we so enamored with Proclamations all of a sudden, especially when we dog on everyone else for having creeds? You may say that “all of a sudden” is a stretch, but 3 of these were in the last 40 years, all during my lifetime, and the rest were in the 1800s. Growing up, I heard many times the phrase from the mouth of God in the first vision account in the Pearl of Great Price: “their creeds were an abomination to me.” My young brain puzzled at this idea. What were creeds? Mormonism didn’t have anything we called creeds. If the creeds of all other sects were wrong, and not just wrong but abominable (!), then was it that those religions or their leaders were so far off the rails that they were putting self-serving ideas in their creeds to lead their flocks astray?
I came up with a few possible theories about what this statement about creeds meant:
- The content is bad. Those specific creeds were wrong, but creeds in general might be OK. They were abominable because at some point, leaders in those religions codified their wrong thinking about God into a creed to force their flock to believe a wrong thing. They did this on purpose to win an argument or force their incorrect ideas to live on, even after they were dead. They did it for political or personal power.
- Creeds are inherently bad. The creeds were fairly innocuous as they go, not specifically nefarious in content, but an abomination in trying to define what is ineffable, like handing someone a testimony to read at fast & testimony meeting rather than allowing them to express what they truly believed. The existence of a creed was like being forced to wear and rely on a prosthetic limb when you had two perfectly good legs. It replaced what worked better. It was a substitute for personal revelation, one that was controlled by long-dead church leaders who may or may not have gotten things right. Having any creeds at all distances one from God and from personal spiritual experiences by forcing someone else’s words into your head, another human’s ideas.
My last thought was this:
- Creeds are inevitable. If you give a religion enough time, we all eventually go the path the Catholics have trod; the only difference between Mormonism and Catholicism is time. Mormonism had the benefit of being a fairly new religion that hadn’t gotten big enough to need to define or control its members’ beliefs, and we have such strong views on personal revelation and individual testimony-bearing that recited creeds aren’t an obvious, natural fit. Eventually, you have to do this or you go through schisms and heresies and your doctrine is not consistent. You lose the script. Or conversely, you eventually go through this because some people just eat that stuff up with a spoon. They love the Pledge of Allegiance. They get jazzed about all the Young Women reciting a values statement. It’s not my jam, but for some it’s a patriotic duty, as American as apple pie. Bruce R. McConkie went so far as to dissect and define what constituted a “proper” testimony. That may not be an actual creed, but it’s dang close.
Several years ago, I attended an incredible evensong at Westminster in London. As part of the service, the congregation had a printed card on each seat with the Apostles’ Creed written on it for us to recite in unison. I was rather uncomfortable with this form of high worship that was so unfamiliar, although the evensong itself blew me away. I didn’t really find anything objectionable to the content of the Apostles’ Creed. It just was weird to me to recite a statement of belief that wasn’t in my own words. When we got to this part, I knew I defined words a little differently than most others there, but it still worked:
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
To me, as a Mormon, the communion of saints meant church members meeting together as disciples and taking the sacrament. The word “catholic” just means something general, for all the people, or so Don Novello (playing Father Guido Sarducci) said in a Saturday Night Live Sketch once, and ever since then I’ve just thought of catholic by that definition, meaning roughly all-inclusive or including many things and people. I also associate it with chain smoking. Thanks, Don Novello.
As for the other famous creed, the Nicene Creed, it was the product of a council of early church leaders (circa 325 AD) attempting to define the beliefs of the faith as different cultures combined and clashed. From Wikipedia:
The actual purpose of a creed is to provide a doctrinal statement of correct belief or orthodoxy. The creeds of Christianity have been drawn up at times of conflict about doctrine: acceptance or rejection of a creed served to distinguish believers and deniers of particular doctrines. . .The Nicene Creed was adopted to resolve the Arian controversy, whose leader, Arius, a clergyman of Alexandria, “objected to Alexander’s (the bishop of the time) apparent carelessness in blurring the distinction of nature between the Father and the Son by his emphasis on eternal generation”.[11] In reply, Alexander accused Arius of denying the divinity of the Son and also of being too “Jewish” and “Greek” in his thought. Alexander and his supporters created the Nicene Creed to clarify the key tenets of the Christian faith in response to the widespread adoption of Arius’ doctrine, which was henceforth marked as heresy.
The Nicene Creed of 325 explicitly affirms the co-essential divinity of the Son, applying to him the term “consubstantial”. The 381 version speaks of the Holy Spirit as worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son. The later Athanasian Creed (not used in Eastern Christianity) describes in much greater detail the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The earlier Apostles’ Creed does not explicitly affirm the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit, but in the view of many who use it, this doctrine is implicit in it.
The argument the Nicene Creed set to resolve was because one clergyman objected to a bishop blurring the distinction between the nature of the Father and Son. Then that bishop accused him of heresy and denying the divinity of Jesus, and also being both “too Jewish” and “too Greek.” So the bishop got the last word in defining beliefs, putting the clergyman in his place and calling his views heretical.
Most Mormon apologists would say that the Nicene creed is the one that is “abominable” because it contains incorrect ideas about the godhead, although reading it, I just see a bunch of antiquated wording that makes it confusing. If I get past that, it seems fairly workable for any Christian. I’m not sure exactly what’s so objectionable about it. The argument at its foundation is long dead and completely off the radar for me, so I am left scratching my head about the word “consubstantial,” but otherwise, I see nothing specific written here that is necessarily different from what Mormons believe. If there’s an abomination, it doesn’t seem to be inherent in the words.
But maybe that brings us back to my third theory about creeds. They are inevitable. If you’re around long enough, somebody’s going to want to codify their view of what the doctrine is so that it’s binding on people even after they are dead.
Creeds make me nervous because, like scripture, they don’t always wear well. Who among us has not regretted sending an email that would have been better snuffed out while still a draft? It’s one of the beautiful things about fast & testimony meeting; it’s not written down. We can’t go back and pick it apart and twist the words to mean what we want them to mean or what we think they really meant. These testimonies appear and disappear like a puff of smoke in a Cathedral. The experience remains as an impression, but the substance is not preserved to haggle over.
Rather than getting into specifics on any of these Proclamations, I want to discuss the broader topics of creeds and proclamations. We don’t recite proclamations, so that’s a difference, but they do in essence define doctrine making them de facto scripture (in use if not actually canonized). None of them has ever been walked back to my knowledge.
- Are creeds inherently bad or just the creeds that contain wrong beliefs? Why are proclamations OK, but creeds are not?
- What is wrong with the existing creeds of other faiths? Is it a matter of their content, their interpretation, how they are used, or that they exist at all?
- Do you think these kinds of statements are helpful to a faith or cause more harm than good over the long haul? Defend your answer.
- Why do leaders create Proclamations or Creeds? What do they tell us about current Church culture and controversy?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
Joseph Smith and many of the early Church members were very much against creeds and, from what I’ve read, felt that creeds were inherently bad because they put limits on what you could or could not believe. On one occasion, when a man was brought up for church discipline for preaching a weird interpretation of Revelation, Joseph Smith told the people running the trial to knock it off because “I never thought it was right to call up a man and try him because he erred in doctrine. It looks too much like Methodism and not like Latter-day-Saintism. Methodists have creeds which a man must believe or be kicked out of their church. I want the liberty of believing as I please. It feels so good not to be trammeled. It doesn’t prove that a man is not a good man because he errs in doctrine.” (Joseph Smith, Discourse, 8 Apr. 1843, JS Collection, Church History Library). In fact, there was some stiff opposition to publishing the Doctrine and Covenants because some members felt it was too close to establishing creeds for the Church. I think that ultimately, though, they are inevitable, we just like to use semantics to avoid the word creed.
The point things really began to change was during the succession crisis. Brigham Young, Parley Pratt, and the other apostles had to start defining more of what was being published by the Church they led vs. the half dozen competitors claiming to lead the Church after Joseph Smith’s death (more or less the type of thing the correlation department handles these days). Then, later, came the problem of how to pass on what they believed to the next generation, so you start seeing catechisms being used and (as time went by), the Articles of Faith became a creed, of sorts, for us to memorize as young children to know what we believe. The Family: a Proclamation to the World is essentially a creed that tries to define what we believe on the subject (or at least what Church leaders in 1995 wanted us to believe), but creed is a bad word in the Church, so we use semantic terms like proclamations, declarations, gospel topics essays, etc. instead.
All that being said, I don’t think that creeds are inherently wrong, but they can be confining.
I’ve read about the distinctions between creeds and Articles of Faith (doctrines too). One place said it whether a belief is proscribed or described.
Can someone help clarify?
While many Mormons think of the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed in connection with JS’ statement of what he was told in vision, there is very little in them they could not subscribe to depending upon how the words are understood. I expect what JS had in mind may have been the Westminster Confession which includes the language that was put in the mouth of the non-Mormon minister in a former version of the endowment ceremony for the purpose of contradicting it and making fun of him. That language is clearly inconsistent with our Church teachings.
Creeds are not inherently bad if you do not accept them as limits. While the Wentworth letter may not have been intended as a creed, we have for decades used and taught the Articles of Faith to Primary children as a creed — never mind the ways in which it has been changed from what JS wrote, or the things in it that we don’t understand or actually believe.
Then there is the “Mormon Creed” that was once common and used to hang in the Logan temple: “Mind your own business.” It’s rather attractive — partly because it is open to so much varied interpretation as to what constitutes “your own business.” 🙂
Creeds are not inherently bad — depends on how they are used and sometimes on how they are enforced. I was interested on a memorable Trinity Sunday substituting as organist at a Presbyterian church when the minister introduced the congregational reciting of the Nicene Creed by saying, approximately, that he neither understood nor believed it and that those facts do not and should not prevent one joining in a communal recitation of what they could consider poetry with great historical significance in the history of the church. Such thoughts are hardly unique to him. Our Church leadership may not accept the idea, but over the years our Church has done exactly that regularly in singing hymns some of which have not expressed accurately what current Church doctrine appears to be.
I wonder if creating Proclamations may be an expression of or assertion of authority. Some early Christian creeds were used to define heresy and who was to be put out of the church. Is there still a definition of “apostacy” in the current handbook used for that purpose?
On the other hand in the case of the Proclamation on the Family, if I got the history right, it seems specifically needed as a “creed” to attach to a legal brief in support of the Church’s intervening in the second Hawaii same-sex marriage case, after the motion to intervene in the first had been denied.
Garee, I think you meant prescribed rather than proscribed. Yes, sometimes creeds are used that way. In a sense, some of the temple recommend questions (and expected answers) function as a creed in that way. But I don’t think there is a difference between creeds and the Articles of Faith or that either is always used in the same way.
The first twenty or so verses of section 20 of the D&C are essentially a creed. The articles of faith function as a creed. The TR questions are another version of a Mormon creed, one which is tied directly to LDS discipline, as so often Christian creeds are used to define and identify heretics. So plainly it is wrong to say that the Church eschews creeds. What the Church eschews is acknowledging that it uses creeds and using the word “creed.” It’s a case either of not acknowledging what one is doing or of simply not understanding what it is one is doing.
This “creed” discussion reminds me of the many discussions I’ve seen in the Church about doctrine vs. policy vs. culture. Seems to me that the lines between these three are often blurry. And the line between creed and proclamation is as well. And by the way, creeds and proclamations are often a product of the culture and contribute to the culture of the organization. Think of the Family Proclamation. Are you willing to make the case that the FP was 100% revelation from God? Or are you willing to accept the possibility that the FP is a product of the Church’s 1950s family culture?
I’m not saying creeds are good or bad. But they must be understood to be part of the doctrine / policy / culture mix.
The Mormon Creed, defining the line between orthodox and heretic, is the Temple Recommend, with each question slightly altered into a declaration. The Articles of Faith would also be a strong contender for Official Creed of Mormonism.
(Although, as you can see from my use of banned church monikers, I’m slightly unorthodox myself.)
chadlawrencenielson: I have to agree with you that I don’t really buy that “those” creeds are wrong, but creeds are good. I often recall JS’s phrase “It feels good not to be trammeled.” To me, that’s the essence of Mormonism. Unfortunately, to many of our leaders it is not. They would like to dictate what we can believe and feel, whether our personal revelation is valid or not, and so forth.
Dave B: I agree with your additional list of things that are creeds without claiming to be creeds. I was thinking the TR interview, AoF, and even the RS theme which was set to music recently all qualify.
It ought to be mentioned that George Albert Smith had a personal creed, which he wrote in his mid-30s, and made a prominent part of his ministry. It’s included in the first chapter of his corrolation-approved Teachings Of… series that we used as priesthood manuals.
The proclamation on the First Vision is premature; there is so much more to be learned and revealed about Joseph Smith’s first vision(s); dogmatization will be a stumbling block where flexibility and interpretation might otherwise open understanding.
Travis: we already have 4-9 versions of the First Vision. You’re saying there is more to learn about it?
Well, the way the Church has approached it has been: (1) claim there is one official version (2) recognize there are other versions (3) claim that all the versions are in harmony. #1 worked until aggressive historians forced the issue, which led to #2. And #3 is now the new narrative (ever since the Gospel Topic essay) and we are supposed to see all versions as one, as opposed to seeing them as conflicting stories. You know, if you cant beat them, join them.
The Church wants us to take the best pieces of each version and combine them into one great narrative while adhering to the 1938 version. Yes, we have more to learn. I’d like to learn which parts of each version are false and which are true. They can’t all be correct.
The problem with creeds is that they are hard to change. There is hard evidence of “this is the way it used to be or it’s supposed to be”. This would really impede the current leaderships’s ability to change what used to be the doctrine or practice (throwing past leaders under the bus) and trying to get away with “this is the way its alway been” or “this is what Pres. X meant”. It takes gaslighting out of the toolbox.
Creeds become well documented inconvenient truths. Joseph didn’t like them because they were restricting and for the same reason and it has carried on.
When you have 14 guys who spend decades waiting to sit in the big chair, a lifetime of “this is what I want to do when I become prophet”, not having creeds becomes an unspoken creed in itself.
Continuing revelation, an open canon, and the ongoing restoration will prevent official creeds for the foreseeable future.
And when you can’t resist leaving a legacy – come up with a proclamation.
In other words, if you can’t leave a creed, leave a screed, aka, a proclamation. Especially, one on the “family.”
For centuries people have tried to harmonize the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But the resulting mishmash is always a disaster, at least theologically. It’s the differences that matter: Who wrote each, when, to whom, and why. They each play an important role in understanding Jesus Christ. Maybe the same approach would be helpful in understanding Joseph Smith Jr.’s first vision experience rather than canonizing something as the One True Account.
I believe in Adonis Johnson.
I don’t think the canonized version of the first vision requires that we reject the creed’s per se. The quoted dialog after labeling creeds an abomination actual gives more detail into why Christ calls them unclean or idolotrous (the biblical sense of abomination)
First , the ministers (not the creeds) “draw near to me with their lips.” This is a positive statement. In Christ’s estimation, at least some of the things they say are a reasonably good approximation. Where the ministers of the time failed is contrasted with this by “but”. Then we get a list of failings; their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrine the commandments of men, and they deny the power of God(liness). All of these errors are separate from the creeds themselves. Desires and commands are separate from statements of belief. The creeds only become abominable because they affirm the power of God while in practice the adherents were cessationalists, they did not believe God continued to perform miracles.
joshuah,
There are a lot of versions of the prophet Joseph Smith’s First Vision. This doesn’t bother me if I am willing to make a concession: the concession is—the First Vision like the Restoration—MAY NOT be a singular event, but the cumulation of events; in other words, the varying and seemingly contradictory versions are parts of a bigger picture, a larger vision, so to speak.
Time to point out an abomination from the other religion that Joseph mentions in his narrative. Several religions teach sola scriptura and the Baptist churches seem especially susceptible to this.
The obscurity of the first three proclamations belie their significance. The fourth and sixth don’t move the ball doctrinally and will probably encounter the same fate. The fifth is quite controversial for being developed as a tool to fight against gay marriage. However, as gay marriage becomes more acceptable, it too will probably fade into obscurity. One can see precedence for this with how the third proclamation is not only ignored, the church now operates 180 degrees out of step with what was proclaimed. The third proclamation was primarily a petty attack against Lucy Mack Smith’s History of Joseph Smith with a screed against the writings of Orson Pratt thrown in as well (which had to be humiliating for Orson Pratt because not only was he reprimanded for his writings and his role in getting Lucy Smith’s book published in the first place, he had to append his name to the reprimanding proclamation.)
On Lucy’s book the proclamation states: “We now wish to publish our views and feelings respecting this book, so that they may be known to all the Saints in all the world. In Great Britain diligence has been used in collecting and disposing of this work, and we wish that same diligence continued there and also exercised here, at home, until not a copy is left.” “…We wish those who have these books to either hand them in to their Bishops for them to be conveyed to the President’s or Historian’s Office, or send them themselves, that they may be disposed of…”
But today, without rescinding the third proclamation, the Church now sells Lucy Smith’s History of Joseph Smith through its Deseret Book. So if history is our guide, proclamations will come and they will go.
Dave C., Interesting. The first three are not linked as the 20th century proclamations are in “How Rare a Proclamation: A Look at Today’s and the 5 Previous Proclamations in Church History” by Scott Taylor, Church News managing editor, 5 April 2020 on the Church website.
In listing the names of the signers of the third, Robert Matthews, in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism on Proclamations did not include Orson Pratt. He did point out:
“An apparent major purpose of this Proclamation was to emphasize the established order of the Church, that new doctrine is to be announced only by the First Presidency. A paragraph near the end of the Proclamation states:]
It ought to have been known, years ago, by every person in the Church-for ample teachings have been given on the point-that no member of the Church has the right to publish any doctrines, as the doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, without first submitting them for examination and approval to the First Presidency and the Twelve. There is but one man upon the earth, at one time, who holds the keys to receive commandments and revelations for the Church, and who has the authority to write doctrines by way of commandment unto the Church. And any man who so far forgets the order instituted by the Lord as to write and publish what may be termed new doctrines, without consulting with the First Presidency of the Church respecting them, places himself in a false position, and exposes himself to the power of darkness by violating his Priesthood (MFP 2:239).”
I think that part of the third proclamation has not gone, though it seems sometimes to be ignored.
Wondering, you are right about Orson Pratt not signing it. I misread Orson Hyde’s name as Pratt’s and made the mistake of thinking Pratt signed it. The church does link to a complete copy of the proclamation here: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/restoration-proclamation – see the 1865 link in the second to last paragraph.
Unfortunately, it appears to me Robert Matthews intentionally bypassed the controversial part about Lucy’s book. I point out that Lucy’s book was the proclamation’s primary purpose because:
1. It is addressed first by the proclamation
2. The lead into the Orson Pratt section begins “When we commenced this article we did not think of extending our comments beyond the work already alluded to. We consider it our duty, however, and advisable for us to incorporate with this, which we have already written, our views upon other doctrines which have been extensively published and widely received as the standard and authoritative doctrines of the church, but which are unsound.”
So the second half is made to appear as an afterthought. It looks to me that Brigham Young, not satisfied with the reprimand he give Pratt for publishing Lucy’s book in the first half, is further seeking to de-legitimatize Pratt in the eyes of the church by appending a previous criticism. So in that sense, the two sections are still related. Kudos to the church for recently linking to the complete document.