Helen Mar Kimball
My theory, which I explore in more detail in my site The Phases and Strategies of God, is in brief: simply that, as Joseph Smith explains in the King Follet discourse, the Saints needed to know the true nature of God the Father as to His having a tangible body of Flesh and Bone; and that the Saints needed to "learn how to be a God [themselves]." It is my view, that to learn how to be a God themselves the Saints needed to ultimately achieve theosis by first expiating on the temple altar (metaphorically representing Plural Marriage as a sacrifice) their Augustinian mentality. Thus the "sacrifice" of plural marriage was meant to remove puritanical ideas from their consciousness. In order to learn to be a god in the heavens they needed to practice the liberated nature of the Gods; as the Gods were tangible beings of sensual flesh who engaged in consensual sex as celestial beings. The practice of polygamy was therefore a temporary ritual designed using Masonic midrash techniques, in order for the Saints to rethink sexuality as not depraved and that God "is more liberal in his views" when it came to human sexual expression (as Joseph told Nancy Rigdon).
In the BYU publication, No Weapon Shall Prosper by Millet as editor (2011), in the essay A Subject that Can Bear Investigation by Spencer Fluman, one of Joseph Smith's youngest plural wives, Helen Mar Kimball is discussed and Fluman acknowledges "... evidence for physical intimacy between Joseph Smith and some of his wives is compelling ..." (p. 106). As we can see this leading Utah-based LDS Church scholar acknowledges the sexual nature of the practice. Fluman points out that later in her life Helen had a "conviction the principle of plural marriage came from God" and she had a "sense that she had passed an Abrahamic test" (p. 106). The abrahamic test I believe was about the willingness of the saint to change their attitudes about God and the body (from the sectarian creeds to the restoration of God's true nature) and to learn how to eventually be a God themselves in the heavens.
Fluman writes on pages 110-112, "... baptisms for the dead would function as a 'welding' link (see D&C 128: 18). Certainly, celestial marriage would function as another [welding link]..." In other words, it was not just sexual attraction but a desire to link himself to friends and whole families, that motivated Smith. For to be like the Gods was not just to be sexually liberated but to live communally united in a celestialized sociality (D&C 130:2).
So what was being sacrificed on the metaphorical altar in the temple (where plural marriages took place), was the expiation of Augustinianism and the Protestant culture of individualism; and toward a new vision of becoming like celestial Gods with tangible bodies who socialized and loved one another. Fluman then writes
[Heber] Kimball and the Prophet Joseph Smith seem to have been collecting kin as much as wives. In the words of one historian, 'Joseph did not marry women to form a warm, human companionship, but to create a network of related wives, children, and kinsmen that would endure into the eternities. ... Like Abraham of old, Joseph yearned for familial plentitude.'
Complicated though they may be, these doctrinal points help make Heber Kimball's 'offering' of Helen more comprehensible ... Helen cast herself as "a modern sacrificial offering" and said her dad "...willingly laid her upon the altar." ... In the Kimball family narratives, Helen's offering was thus marked by anguish and faith, the twin inheritances of any redemptive sacrifice in Latter-day Saint theology.
Helen later wrote of plural marriage, "It was to be a life-sacrifice for the sake of an everlasting glory and exaltation ..." and of those engaged in plural marriage, she writes "... in obeying this law it has cost them a sacrifice nearly equal to that of Abraham." "...Latter-day Saint women, she wrote, bravely stood with Sarah, Rachel, Leah, and other godly women, 'lawful and honored wives' in sacred history who had heard God's word and obeyed."
It is my view that her sacrifice was meant to ultimately change the consciousness of the Saints at large, as the Saints did in fact over time as a People moved away from the sectarian Creeds (a god without parts and passions) toward the new Restored Theology of tangible Gods who experience sensual joy within a communal society.
Fluman then says how Helen then wrote of the blessings of plural marriage: "Their souls will be expanded, and in the place of selfishness, patience and charity will find place in their hearts" (p. 113). Fluman then documents how she found happiness in plural marriage despite the sacrifices.
From Fluman's essay, we can see that among the plural wives themselves, they interpreted it through the interpretive lens of Abrahamic sacrificial thinking. The sacrificial altar upon which they sacrificed and expiated Protestant ideas from their consciousness, led to their eventual exalted glory as an expanded soul in dynastic unions.
Such sacrificial language is not foreign to the Bible. The Apostle Paul, preached his holy ones (i.e. Christians) were "living sacrifices" to God; and for Paul, to die was gain in anticipation of his death (or martyrdom). Paul was up against Rome and gods like Zeus and god-men like Caesar (called Lord); in turn, Smith was up against Augustine, Luther, Calvin and the sectarian creeds. As Smith said God told him "all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; …" (Joseph Smith History 1:19). Part of that corruption was the sectarian concept of a god without a sensual body, without parts or passions, and the anti-sexual ascetic ideal and it's accompanying despising of the body and self-loathing as the sectarian Creeds were ultimately in attack on human nature. Joseph Smith was attempting to restore the ancient hebraic understanding of human nature: when humans were literally made in the image of Yahweh and his Divine Council (as explained in the modern scholarship of Michael Heiser's book The Unseen Realm and God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou).
In the introduction of their book The Christ Who Heals, Teryll and Fiona Givens discuss the early Church Fathers and summarize those of them who held views in line with LDS restoration theology, and those like Augustine who departed from the LDS point of view. One of their examples is:
Gregory of Nyssa
(ca. 335--ca. 394 AD, Asia Minor)
... Unlike so many who tended toward asceticism and self-loathing, Gregory celebrated human nature and potential … Why did God create humans? Because no "aspect of the divine nature should remain idle with no one to share it."
(pg. xiv-xv)
Similar to Gregory of Nyssa, Smith presented a God that wanted to share the divine nature of having a flesh and bone body: a body that can procreate and expand the divine seed into eternity producing an extended family of mothers and children and social bonds of love; combined with the joys of sex absent asceticism and self-loathing.
The Saints were to sacrifice on the altar their sectarian victorian mores, and restore to Zion an Abrahamic sensualism and seeded expansionism that would produce psychologically a new People. As their consciousness moved away from Augustinian original sin and instead embraced the second Article of Faith and the Book of Mormon theology of Adam and Eve falling upward so men might have joy in the body. As this upwardly body-affirming theology was eventually ritualized in Nauvoo in order to restore the hebraic mindset of: sensual joy and communal friendship in dynastic unions as symbolically representative of the ultimate "happiness" as sensual happiness which is "the object and design of our existence" (see Letter to Nancy). Thus, plural marriage was a method of sacrifice to learn how to be like a God themselves who are sensual beings in communal bonds of intimacy. As "that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there [in the Celestial Kingdom], only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy" (D&C 130: 2). And that "eternal glory...we do not now enjoy" is experienced in a body like God the Father who "has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s ..." (D&C 130: 22, words in bold my own). So a tangible flesh-body is designed for our mutual pleasure and joy by intimately connecting sensually.
Plural marriage as a temporary practice was also in my view meant to psychologically reproduce a new consciousness and mentality among the saints. Thus, Joseph Smith's revelations speak of "an increase" of seed (see D&C 131: 4; 132: 19-21), yet LDS scholars have pointed out that Joseph Smith did not necessarily believe in the later spirit-birth doctrine but instead believed that all human souls were eternal and thus not "celestially birthed." Smith in fact produced scripture stating that people's soul or spirit has "no beginning; they existed before, they shall have no end, they shall exist after, for they are gnolaum, or eternal" (Abraham 3: 18). Instead, the Gods organized these souls or intelligences in the pre-existence together and gave them an opportunity to become humans on earth (see Abraham 3:18–19). So the increase of "lives" in D&C 132 via seed within the bonds of plural marriage, had as much a psychological and cultural dimension as a physical one; in other words, the Saints were raising up seed via polygamy which would psychologically and theologically reproduce a new mindset: a post Augustinian mentality as a new Abrahamic Zion People.
The celestial realm in Joseph's revelations is not an ascetic place of celibacy and harp playing by individual angels atop clouds who are without a material body of flesh and bone and bodily sexuality; instead Joseph Smith revealed that
There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by burer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.
(D&C 131: 7-8).
So the "eternal glory...we do not now enjoy" is a material glorification of the body with that "same sociality which exists among us here [on earth]," but with the ability to have celestial sex like the Gods do now. So that the temporary practice of having wives and concubines in order to expand one's seed and bear the souls of men (see D&C 132: 63) was in my view referring to restored souls who did not have the Augustinian mentality but achieved the theosis described in Lectures on faith 7, by having a change in mindset toward a celestial consciousness. To enter into God's glory was to enter into plural marriage (see D&C 132: 4) as the ultimate way for the Saints to learn how to be Gods themselves; the LORD says the practice "was instituted for the fulness of my glory; …" (D&C 132: 6). In my view, God's glory is in part His celestial body and his children also being glorified. Plural marriage was thus a temporary sacrifice to change the mind of the Saints.
The man and woman/women who accepted the Abrahamic law of the eternal increase of their seed through plural marriage in the 1800s were able to psychologically reproduce a new Mormon People. I interpret these verses from D&C 132 below as representing that when the Mormon dies he will have the opportunity to also organize intelligences who will take on bodies so that they too can learn to be Gods themselves:
[They] shall pass by the angels, and the Gods, which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things, as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.
Then shall they be Gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them. Then shall they be Gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye abide my law [of plural marriage] ye cannot attain to this glory.
(D&C 132: 19-21)
… as I [the Lord] was with Abraham, thy father, even unto his exaltation and glory.
(D&C 132: 57)
Again, it all ties back to Abrahamic sexuality, before Tertullian and Augustine made sex an "original sin." What Joseph Smith does through his revelations is restore the ancient hebraic shamelessness in regards to the joys of sex; by reintroducing the Abrahamic way of multiple marital partners for procreation in order to increase one's seed, Smith presents the tangible flesh body as godly and divine.
