Excerpts from "... Words and Worlds of Early Mormonism" by Samuel Morris Brown

 Excerpts from:

 Joseph Smith’s Translation: The Words and Worlds of Early Mormonism by Samuel Morris Brown

Note: Words in bold, italics and underlined are my own for emphasis

Pages 69-75:

Life in Yon Time 

Joseph Smith’s primordialism is staggering; for him, the past had to be fully available in the present. With this as a goal, he implemented or proposed at least two striking practices that indicated the extent to which he expected that he and his followers would live in yon time. Both sound outrageous to a modern ear: biblical polygamy and animal sacrifice. (I discuss a third revival, the Nauvoo temple liturgy, in chapter 7.)

 Smith’s polygamy arose for multiple reasons. It resisted the shrinking Victorian nucleus, solved a logical puzzle from the Bible (the Sadducean thought experiment on remarriage after bereavement), served as a test of commitment that strengthened members’ resolve, integrated the ecclesiastical family, concentrated power in the hands of the Latter-day Saint hierarchy, and much else.[88]

 Many practicing Latter-day Saints have argued that, most importantly, God commanded it. But this polygamy also invited Smith and his followers to observe, bodily, certain customs of the Hebrew Bible. Abraham, Jacob, and David were notorious polygamists, and so would the Latter-day Saints be. (This was not the first time that Christian primordialism resulted in polygamy, as many critics observed, citing especially the sixteenth-century Munster Anabaptists.[89]) ...

The relationship between polygamy and time is important to understanding Joseph Smith’s theology. The main public argument justifying polygamy during Smith’s lifetime was the temporal displacement of remarriage after bereavement.[90] 

Polygamy resisted the separation that time imposed on serial monogamy occasioned by premature death. … In the official, confidential revelation sanctioning the practice (D&C 132), the Old Testament precedent played a central role. ... That the Saints felt they needed to adhere to ancient Hebrew marriage practices demonstrated that they were living ancient lives to an outrageous degree.[91] Early Church members weren’t just attempting to pattern their lives on biblical templates. They were reworking time. ... The rules of Smith’s marriage system “were instituted from before the foundation of the world” (132:5) and they would last beyond time [see 132:7, 13] … This is the language of sealing and binding, of merging earth into heaven. This language is deeply anti-secular: no marriage for time only is considered worthy. …

… Smith, ever worried about the implications of human mortality, made clear that he was, in polygamy, creating a system that would defy death by binding the transcendent realm by rituals performed on earth. ...

 … Polygamy has always defined people out of polite American society—the eradication of Latter-day Saint polygamy was one of the basic tenets of the Republican Party’s first platform and generated seemingly endless recriminations and persecution— … 

… Another radically primordial practice never made its way into Church life: liturgical animal sacrifice. … In the Visions of Moses [by Joseph Smith] … we encounter an expanded treatment … an angel comes to Eve and Adam, leading them in a brief Socratic dialogue to ascertain the reason for animal sacrifice ... (Moses 5:7–8). In this phrase, Smith’s revelation sets the tone for both the Latter-day Saint understanding of time and the persistence of animal sacrifice after the coming of Christ. ... ” ...

... This was Smith’s signature antidispensationalist primordialism brought to its apogee. The Latter-day dispensation included even “the offering of Sacrifice ... Specifically, Malachi 3:3 required that the “sons of Levi” should “offer unto the Lord an offering,” and Malachi had to be fulfilled.[94] This offering, Smith knew, was animal sacrifice, that powerful emblem of the sacrifice of Jesus that began right after the Fall. If baptism extended before Jesus, then sacrifice would have to persist after Jesus.[95] If Smith’s merger of all times was going to be real, then it would have to include even the strangest and most ancient aspects of the Bible.

 … Smith’s priesthood was assiduously concerned with returning ancient Hebrew priests to the modern world. … A few months after his October 1840 sermon (D&C 124:39), Smith indicated that one reason for building the Nauvoo temple was to provide an authorized space for “your memorials for your sacrifices by the sons of Levi.” The problem of dispensational restoration was still on his mind. He made similar reference to the restoration of “daily sacrifice” by priests in the Millennium in 1843.[98]

 ... Smith .... clearly intended to recover the ancient Hebrew— indeed, Edenic, according to Smith’s revelations—religion in its entirety. This would include all the trappings of ancient priesthood. These trappings would one day include real ritual sacrifice of animals at the temple. Smith and his peers would have been more familiar with the slaughter of animals than we are in the twenty-first century. …

… Note this time-erasing symmetry:  Smith’s Book of Mormon had ancient Hebrews worshiping Jesus in deprecation of the then-current Law of Moses, and his nineteenth-century Latter-day Christians could look forward to practicing key aspects of the Law of Moses and patriarchal Hebrew life. ... [Smith] was arguing that time could not constrain his followers.

Pages 215-224:

 The Priestess and the Multiplication of Power 

In addition to sacred pictography, another important theme in the grammar documents is the divinity of women. Given the centrality of Eve to the Garden of Eden story and the intimate ties—mediated through Abraham and Sarah— between priesthood and reproduction, we should not be surprised to see images of female power in the Egyptian Bible [that is, the LDS Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great  Price]. In fact, the Egyptian materials, especially the grammar documents, abound with accounts of women’s sacred authority. The gender association may have benefited from the depiction of several female figures in the papyri themselves. … Smith…had other things in mind for the figure of Eve. Eve permeated the grammar documents both directly and through her female offspring. Notably, Eve was the one God instructed to multiply and replenish the earth (Genesis 1:28) in the Bible account. That sense of multiplication, kindred to the notion of semantic ramification, played an important role in Smith’s Egyptian targum and its engagement of the priestess. Especially as it connected with the recreation of the world in the aftermath of the flood—when Noah and his wives received the same commandment as Eve, to multiply and replenish the earth (Genesis 9:1)—Smith’s Egyptian project contains accounts of female priestly power spread across multiple figures and scenes. This female sacerdotal power, tied to reproduction, is in many respects a prequel to the full flowering of Smith’s parental system of priesthood in the Nauvoo temple (chapter 7), in which women were formally ordained as queens and priestesses.[105] 

The priestess theme in Smith’s Egyptian Bible encompasses two main aspects. The first concerns the discovery of Egypt by a woman who is the eponym for the Egyptian nation. ...  

… the second is his connection between women, priesthood power, and the generations of time. The specific female figure—the eponymous matriarchal founder of Egypt—joined others in wielding female power in the expression of matriarchal authority over later generations. …. Repeatedly, then, glyphs for women represented royal power and authority. Commonly in early Restoration thought, such invocations of royal power were tied to priesthood.[114] 

.... We can trace this figure, Katumin, through the grammatical degrees of the GAEL. A series of glyphs follows her, an archetypal princess, through a process of maturation from a young virgin to an established mother. In other words, the grammatical degrees track her ascent along a reproductive hierarchy that parallels the extension of priestly power.[116] The grammatical degrees of reference run alongside the expansion of a genealogical priesthood power through marriage and reproduction in Katumin’s life. … . 

[114] The suggestion of a royal priesthood underlying the equivalence of kings and priests seems to be an exegesis of Revelation 1:6 and 5:10, which Smith understood to be using the term “kings and priests” as a synonymous couplet rather than a list of separate statuses. Smith used that imagery in his 1832 Vision (D&C 76:56–58), journal entries in 1843 (JSPJ3, 66, 86), and sermons in 1844 (Historian’s Office, General Church Minutes, April 7 and April 8, 1844, CR 100 318, bx. 1, fd. 19, CHL). ...

To recap, a princess named Katumin, bearing specially charged records, represents a lineage and exemplifies the idea of grammatical and reproductive degrees as fulfillment of the biblical mandates to multiply. 

The Egyptian Bible and the Cosmic Order 

 … appears to be tied to parenthood, procreation, and the cycle of generations. In other words, women are central priestly participants in the realization of the Abrahamic blessing in the world.[120] … Within the canonized Book of Abraham, the main reflexes of princess Katumin’s story are a brief reference to priestly virgins sacrificed by pagan priests (Abraham 1:11) and the ongoing emphasis on genealogy and reproduction. While the Book of Abraham doesn’t make this point explicit, this merger of reproduction and priesthood power suggests that the instructions to Eve and Adam to “multiply and replenish the earth” (Genesis 1:28), mirrored in the parallel instructions to Noah and his family (Genesis 8), were in fact priesthood callings. According to the Egyptian project, men exist with power parallel to that of women. One glyph for a powerful patriarch describes the “extension of power by marriage or by ordination,”[122] suggesting the ongoing interconnection of marital and priestly power. This reference again ties the priesthood that Smith associated with both Egypt and his temple to parenthood, a physical and metaphysical force in which both men and women participated. ...

... In the published scripture, God tells Abraham that he and his seed are, by definition, “Priesthood” (Abraham 2:11). ... In place of the relatively simple announcement of Abraham’s covenant in Genesis, Smith’s Abraham offered an expansive reframing in terms of a priesthood that could interconnect all of humanity.[124] As opposed to the terse promise of plentiful offspring in Genesis, the Book of Abraham reveals that Abraham’s progeny “shall bear this ministry and Priesthood unto all nations.” The ministry is the evangelism of strangers into Abraham’s family—“as many as receive this gospel shall be called after thy name and shall be accounted thy seed.”

[120] Hovorka, “Sarah and Hagar” suggests that women are involved in the Abrahamic covenants in the Bible. Hovorka probably did not go far enough in her appreciation of the power attributed to women in Smith’s Egyptian project. Stapley, Power of Godliness, does emphasize the role of women in that early notion of priesthood. 

... The Book of Abraham hammered home the deep and necessary dependence of priesthood (the power that converted believers and organized them in the church) on parenthood (biological multiplication), specifically that of Abraham and Sarah. Priesthood was thus explicitly the power by which Abraham’s and Sarah’s sacred parenthood could unfold across the globe. ... 

The promise of priestly power for women was exciting for many participants, even as it unfolded in the context of assumptions about the nature of gender that have not weathered the interceding decades well. Smith and Phelps were endorsing neither late modern gender equality nor Victorian sexual norms. The priestess theology of the Egyptian Bible engaged the intersection of heavenly and earthly powers as they concerned genealogy and reproduction.[125] In Smith’s Abrahamic system (especially as manifest in the Egyptian Bible and the accompanying temple liturgy), women were sources of power, although their power could only be wielded in company with men. This was true throughout the early Restoration—women had striking power, which they could not wield in isolation. … This was the combination consistently present in Smith’s thought—women had vast cosmic powers that they wielded with men who stood higher in an ontic hierarchy.[127] Smith’s Egyptian Bible highlights aspects of a female priesthood—centered in the fulfillment of the Genesis command to multiply and replenish the earth— that came to fruition over the course of the Egyptian project as it became the Nauvoo temple liturgy. While in the temple that female priesthood became formally codified and implemented, the textual tributaries appear in Smith’s Egyptian Bible. Women’s connection to life, mediated through the first mother Eve, makes the human family possible. Smith’s Egyptian Bible, with its focus on parenthood-based priesthood, brings women directly into the royal line. ...

… Women thus stand at the center of the Chain of Belonging, another major theme within the Egyptian project.

Pages 260-263:

Living the Temple 

The Nauvoo liturgy was pretty heady stuff. … The temple included preparation for evangelism, proxy baptism, anointings, an initiation ceremony, and celestial marriage (with celestial marriage divided into marriage per se and a royal anointing called the anointing for burial or Second Anointing). Celestial marriage encompassed the eternity of family ties, the postmortal durability of community, and the plurality of wives. We can’t blame participants for being distracted by polygamy—plural marriage was a huge pill to swallow for most people. We should also remember that only the elite participated in Smith’s live temple liturgy; the vast majority of Latter-day Saints only participated in temple rites after Smith’s death ... Most Saints encountered the rites under Young’s hand ...

. … Sarah Dearmon Pea Rich remembered her experience several decades later. She felt a strong need to justify polygamy, but she also had found a way to remain deeply committed to her faith for fifty years by the time of her reminiscence. In her account, what the temple brought above all else was a confidence about salvation and family. “We ware his chosen people and had embraced his gospel,” she reported. For four straight months, she had a sister wife watch her children while she and her husband labored in the temple from seven in the morning to just before midnight. “Many ware the blessings we had received in the House of the Lord which has caused us joy and comfort in the midst of all our sorrows and enabled us to have faith in God.” She continued, “if it had not been for the faith and knowledge that was bestowed upon us in that temple by the influence and help of the Spirit of the Lord our journey would have been like one taking a leap in the dark.” ... The special secrets of the temple contained a set of ritual knowledge and an approach to the holy that bound Church members together .... Rich continued to think through the meanings of the temple, explaining, “As the gospel with all its fullness had been restord to the earth through the Prophet Joseph Smith of course all the former ordenences were restord. Allso among other things celestial marriage was restord and the ordenences there onto ware performed in the temple just eluded to.” Reflecting and responding to the close relationship for participants between temple and polygamy, she explained, “I could not have [accepted polygamy] if I  had not believed it to be right in the sight of God and believed it to be one principal of his gospel once again restored to the earth that those holding the preasthood of heaven might by obeying this order attain to a higher glory in the eternal world and by our obedience to that order we ware blessed and the Lord sustained us in the same for through obedience to that order my dear husband has left on this earth a numers posterity like the ancient Apostles and Servents of God.”[107] In this account, Rich is working through polygamy and the Chain of Belonging simultaneously. Admitting that she’s writing in reminiscence, she says that she found in the temple a powerful reassurance that Smith’s Chain of Belonging made genealogy and salvation synonymous. One can see the threads coupling the different phases of the temple, especially its connection to marriage, reproduction, and the Abrahamic promise. Priesthood was tied to heaven, which was in turn tied to one’s offspring. The temple was about building a heavenly family modeled on that of Abraham and Sarah. Rich seems to have understood well what was at stake. The “higher glory” she refers to is a part of the deification of human beings effected within the Chain of Belonging. Mercy Fielding Thompson also essentially lived in the temple during its early operation. She was one of the few who received her endowment under Smith’s direction, in this case guided through the rituals by Smith’s first wife Emma. Of that initial endowment, she recalled primarily that Smith told her that the endowment ceremony “will bring you out of darkness into marvelous light.”[108] In this reference, he was retooling 1 Peter 2:9. Although other Christians wouldn’t read the passage that way, notably for his purposes, the verse starts with a reference to “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation.” For Smith the juxtaposition of generations, priesthood, royalty, and statehood seemed relevant to the promise of enlightenment associated with the temple rites. It was specifically the temple’s union of the various components that made its promise of enlightenment so portentous. He saw himself as expanding minds, translating bodies, and creating kingdoms. Mercy’s brother Joseph Fielding noted in his nearly contemporary diary regarding the Nauvoo temple, “I entered it for the first time, and I truly felt as though I had gotten out of the world.”[109] .... Phelps, reflecting shortly after Smith’s death on the prophet’s scriptural legacy—especially as it regards the Egyptian Bible, which played an important role in the Nauvoo temple—counterposed Smith’s revelations to the claims of “deists, geologists, and others.” The distance between the two was so great, in Phelps’s mind, “it almost tempts the flesh to fly to God, or muster faith like Enoch to be translated and see and know as we are seen and known!”[111] Phelps thus associated translation with obtaining knowledge. And not just any knowledge, but knowledge of the truths about human identity in the temple. 

After the Saints arrived in Utah and had a little more time to attend to and process the temple experience, some waxed more eloquent about its meaning. A woman writing under a pseudonym described the practice of saving the dead in the temple. She wrote, “not only are men favored with these great and sacred blessings but women also are saviors of women. There is no inequality even in ministering for the dead. Woman acts in her sphere as man in his. Therefore is man not without the woman, nor the woman without the man in the Lord. The work of performing the ceremonies requires as much labor and falls with as much dignity upon woman as man. Therein is the goodness of our Father to His daughters made manifest. Holy women now minister in the Temple of God.”[112] In this account, the writer drew attention to both the priestly power of women within the temple and a complex variant of the notion of complementary gender spheres. She maintained that the language of Paul (1 Corinthians 11:11) indicated that both men and women would work together within the temple. For participants, the temple had a great deal to say about the structure of the world and their prospects for power both in this world and afterward. There was in that a sense of movement between spheres. God too would straddle the spheres.

On the Church withholding information, supernatural claims and existential meaning

 On the Midnight Mormons episode Why Engagement with the Book of Mormon is the Solution to Faith Crisis (April 1, 2021), in response to the accusation that the Church withheld historical information (so that some LDS feel duped and become exMormon), Kwaku makes a good point:

If I open a restaurant and it gets five star reviews and then I open a chef school (a culinary school) and I say this is the best restaurant in the entire world; and I teach all of my students the best recipes I can think of. They get a great education. They get landed as chefs all across the country; and one comes out and says, "You never taught me ratatouille. How are you supposed to be the best restaurant in the entire world? How are you the best chef if you forgot to teach me Ratatouille?" Does that mean all the recipes you taught me are bad and you're not actually the best restaurant? Well, it's up to your opinion if you think I'm the best chef in the country; it's up to your opinion if you think I have the best restaurant in the country.  

I thought that was a really good point. When I think back to my own upbringing in the Church and all of the good ethical "recipes" of how to develop good character and have love/charity and a service-oriented attitude, it's clear to me that what the Mormon Church teaches is over 99% positive. Was I withheld some information in the 1980s and 1990s (like Smith’s use of a seer stone)? Yes, I think it's fair to say I was, or at least it was not readily available in the immediate sources and manuals provided by the LDS Church. The Mormon apologists are correct though that if I had done some really deep digging I would have found out most of the stuff in the Journal of Discourses, The Encyclopedia of Mormonism, or even in some Ensigns magazines.

I can also recall some of my more intellectually curious LDS missionary companions on my mission in the 1990s, mentioning things that seemed foreign to me at the time; like the LDS temple ritual having Freemasonic aspects; but I did not know what that meant and I did not investigate further at that time.

Kwaku continued to make a truly profound point that I agree with: that ultimately the most important question is whether or not the LDS Stories provide existential meaning in life; which according to Viktor Frankl is one of the most important things for a human being to have emotional well-being. Kwaku puts it this way:

Ultimately what the Book of Mormon suggests is that if an angel came to Joseph Smith and led him to [gold] plates, regardless of if the Book of Mormon is something that compels you, if that actually happened what does that suggest for humanity? That suggests that one, we're not alone in the solar system or the world, that there are multiple realms; that there is a level of mysticism that is real and that humanity is not alone. If that act alone happened everything we know and the way we know the world is different and everything is changed; and if you want people to be empty slates who are afraid to look forward to death because you don't believe they have any eternal worth and you don't actually matter [from a cosmic perspective], you would never ever want them to believe that those things happened to Joseph Smith. If you just want people to believe this is life, I die and that's it, and I don't really have much meaning [in this life], then by all means discount Joseph Smith. But if you actually want things to have meaning and there to be true beauty, you can't discount Joseph Smith. That's what it comes down to: does this world have meaning and do I matter [from a cosmic perspective, so that it ultimately matters if you died tomorrow]; ... because we're all going to clock out one day [and die].

The story of Joseph Smith is so much more important than just, 'well what about ... How'd ya get the name Nephi (did you steal him from Nephilim); and more of: if this actually happened, that changes the reality of everything; and [regarding] people like [John] Dehlin, or people like the ex-mormon critics (the Vogels' and everyone), ultimately you can have as much fun making as much money doing those podcasts as you want, thinking that you got duped by the church, but at the end of the day, once you reject that you've taken away true meaning from your life; and I don't want to be in that position.

Source: 24-27 minute mark

This got me thinking about how Kwaku is someone born with a natural disposition toward high confidence and well-being. He is also clearly intelligent, especially for his age, and so I think he has an intuition (that most don't develop until later in life) that when you remove the layers of meaning and purpose provided by your religion, and do a deep into extreme critical thinking and debunk your religious views; then existential meaninglessness will likely eventually follow. For, as you remove the layers of religious meaning and Life-purpose-giving foundations, you will eventually end up removing all the meaning- making scaffolding; so that you eventually remain spiritually "naked" in the cold, in the philosophical pit of despair, that is nihilism.

Kwaku knows this intuitively and so because his highest value seems to be his own personal power and well-being and thriving, he's not willing to subject his psyche to the woundedness resulting from extreme skepticism, cynical reductionism, and atheistic nihilism.

 This got me thinking about how, unlike Kwaku, I myself was willing to remove the layers of meaning and purpose, because I had an idealistic notion of objective Truth when I began questioning the LDS Church around 2001. I was so obsessed with "Truth" with a capital T that I was willing to go through the Dark Night of the Soul and remove all meaning and purpose from my life and even question my very existence as as a self (as the Buddhists do); and my extreme skepticism did eventually lead me to denying the existence of a soul. 

So at one point I had removed all of the former meaning and purpose in my life (I developed as a Mormon), and I'd entered a state of Existential Depression; for in my mind "I" did not exist (according to atheism) and everything was purposeless and so what was the point. So for a time I stopped dating and stopped focusing on money or a having family or anything really; because I was stuck in an existential sinkhole: believing I don't exist and nothing matters in the grand scheme of things. I remained in this existential funk for quite a few years just maintaining part-time work and spending all my time reading and philosophizing, which was the only thing that gave me any stimulation.

I was willing to go through this out of a romanticized notion of seeking the glorious Truth. However, what happened was I sank into a deep state of despair and meaninglessness for quite a few years; believing I had no soul, life had no meaning, and I became very close to being like the character Russ Cole in the HBO series True Detective season 1.

For me personally, the only thing that got me out of this funk was re-establishing some of my former Christian beliefs, even if it was done from a more scholarly, psychological and pragmatic perspective by reading the work of Marcus Borg and Jordan Peterson, and others. And this led me to reconnecting with my Mormon Heritage; and when that happened I began to feel my existential despair dissipate and feel more existential confidence and well-being reconnected to Something Larger than Myself.

So I think Kwaku is correct that the anti-mormon activist, on some level has to have a self-conceit and lack of empathy, to be so willing to subject people to this deconstructive path that so very often leads to deep existential despair and meaninglessness. Because most of these "anti-Mormonism types" are not reformers seeking to better the LDS Church or encourage the reversal of some policy or anything like that, for many of them want the wholesale deconstruction of the LDS Church and it replaced with something like far-left political ideologies. Of course there are exceptions, and not all ex-mormons are the same; but in my experience, after 20 years interacting with many ex-mormons, the most popular and loudest voices very often have very pessimistic, reductionistic and nihilistic worldviews, with a deconstructive attitude, rather than a more constructive or reformational attitude.

Christpower & The Call to Dominion

In the poem below we see something very similar to what Nietzsche called the will to power, only the concept of an expanding universe and growing life energies is framed as "Christpower."

Christpower – thoughts of Spong in verse

Lucy Newton Boswell Negus puts in free verse the thoughts of Bishop John Spong. (Spong’s explanation follows after the poem)

Christpower

Far back beyond the beginning,

stretching out into the unknowable,

incomprehensible,

unfathomable depths, dark and void

of infinite eternity behind all history,

the Christpower was alive.

This was the

living,

bursting, pulsing,

generating, creating

smoldering, exploding

fusing, multiplying,

emerging, erupting,

pollenizing, inseminating,

heating, cooling

power of life itself: Christpower.

And it was good!

Here

all things that we know

began their journey into being.

Here

light separated from darkness.

Here

Christpower began to take form.

Here

life became real,

and that life spread into

emerging new creatures

evolving

into ever higher intelligence.

There was a sacrifice here

and

a mutation there.

There was grace and resurrection appearing

in their natural order,

occurring, recurring,

and always driven by the restless,

creating,

energizing

life force of God, called the Christpower,

which flowed in the veins of every living thing

for ever

and ever

and ever

and ever.

And it was good!

In time, in this universe,

there emerged creatures who were called human,

and the uniqueness of these creatures

lay in that they could

perceive

this life-giving power.

They could name it

and embrace it

and grow with it

and yearn for it.

Thus human life was born,

but individual expressions of that human life

were marked with a sense of

incompleteness,

inadequacy,

and a hunger

that drove them ever beyond the self

to search for life’s secret

and

to seek the source of life’s power.

This was a humanity that could not be content with

anything less.

And once again

in that process

there was

sacrifice and mutation,

grace and resurrection

now in the human order,

occurring, recurring.

And it was good!

Finally, in the fullness of time,

within that human family,

one

unique and special human life appeared:

whole

complete

free

loving

living

being

at one

at peace

at rest.

In that life was seen with new intensity

that primal power of the universe,

Christpower.

And it was good!

Of that life people said: Jesus,

you are the Christ,

for in you we see

and feel

and experience

the living force of life

and love

and being

of God.

He was hated,

rejected,

betrayed,

killed,

but

he was never distorted.

For here was a life in which

the goal, the dream, the hope

of all life

is achieved.

A single life among many lives.

Here

among us, out from us,

and yet this power, this essence,

was not from us at all,

for the Christpower that was seen in Jesus

is finally of God.

And even when the darkness of death overwhelmed him,

the power of life resurrected him;

for Christpower is life

eternal,

without beginning,

without ending.

It is the secret of creation.

It is the goal of humanity.

Here in this life we glimpse

that immortal

invisible

most blessed

most glorious

almighty life-giving force

of this universe

in startling completeness

in a single person.

Men and women tasted the power that was in him

and they were made whole by it.

They entered a new freedom,

a new being.

They knew resurrection and what it means to live

in the Eternal Now.

So they became agents of that power,

sharing those gifts from generation to generation,

creating and re-creating,

transforming, redeeming,

making all things new.

And as this power moved among human beings,

light

once more separated from darkness.

And it was good!

They searched for the words to describe

the moment that recognized the fullness of this power

living in history,

living in the life of this person.

But words failed them.

So they lapsed into poetry:

When this life was born,

they said,

a great light split the dark sky.

Angelic choruses peopled the heavens

to sing of peace on earth.

They told of a virgin mother,

of shepherds compelled to worship,

of a rejecting world that had no room in the inn.

They told of stars and oriental kings,

of gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

For when this life was born

that power that was

and is

with God,

inseparable,

the endless beginning

was seen

even in a baby

in swaddling clothes

lying in a manger.

Christpower.

Jesus, you are the Christ.

To know you is to live,

to love,

to be.

O come, then, let us adore him!

(Source)

Compare the above poem to D&C 88 below. 

D&C 88 (words in bold my own for emphasis):

6 He [Jesus Christ] that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth;

7 Which truth shineth. This is the light of Christ. As also he is in the sun, and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made.

8 As also he is in the moon, and is the light of the moon, and the power thereof by which it was made;

9 As also the light of the stars, and the power thereof by which they were made;

10 And the earth also, and the power thereof, even the earth upon which you stand.

11 And the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings;

12 Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space—

13 The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things.

… 45 The earth rolls upon her wings, and the sun giveth his light by day, and the moon giveth her light by night, and the stars also give their light, as they roll upon their wings in their glory, in the midst of the power of God.

46 Unto what shall I liken these kingdoms, that ye may understand?

47 Behold, all these are kingdoms, and any man who hath seen any or the least of these hath seen God moving in his majesty and power.

From this point of view section 88 produces clarity in that Christ is in all things and is moving within all things, so the holy is not separate from organic life but Christ is of matter and in matter, as the Beating Heart of emerging forms in all life. All spirit is matter and all matter is spiritual, being infused with Christpower: an expanding force of plenty.

Since, as D&C 88 puts it, the spirit of Christ is in and through all things and makes that which moves come into being and become, it stands to reason that Christpower is the power of our organic drives to thrive. In this sense, Joseph Smith was fully "godly" in a sense, in that he manifested the truth of scientific cosmic expansionism and the organic life powers through his natural instincts and desires to grow and expand and gain power and dominion.

See also Moses 1: 32-33 (words in bold my own for emphasis): 

And by the word of my power, have I created them, which is mine Only Begotten Son … And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten.

In Smith's revelations Christ is the source of all power and this power is extended to Latter-day Saints. For example:

D&C 100:1 (words in italics for emphasis):

"Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you, my friends Sidney and Joseph, your families are well; they are in mine hands, and I will do with them as seemeth me good; for in me there is all power." 

D&C 95: 8:

Yea, verily I say unto you, I gave unto you a commandment that you should build a house [temple], in the which house I design to endow those whom I have chosen with power from on high;

Joseph Smith said you've got to learn how to become Gods yourselves. Well what is God? We will see that according to Mormon scripture, God is the manifestation of the will to power, or to use a more LDS sounding phrase: the call to dominion, or what the poem above calls Christpower. To become like God is to become an expanding force of plenty like God.

What is God?

DC 109:77 O Lord God Almighty, hear us in these our petitions, and answer us from heaven, thy holy habitation, where thou sittest enthroned, with glory, honor, power, majesty, might, dominion, truth, justice, judgment, mercy, and an infinity of fulness, from everlasting to everlasting.

1 Nephi 22:24

And the time cometh speedily that the righteous must be led up as calves of the stall, and the Holy One of Israel must reign in dominion, and might, and power, and great glory.

Hence God can be defined as a manifestation of the infinite fullness of all Power. What does God want for humans? What is God's ultimate will for mankind?

DC 76: 10: 

For by my Spirit will I enlighten them, and by my power will I make known unto them the secrets of my will—....

What is God's will? 

"This is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39).

God glories in upright men becoming like him: that is manifestations of power and dominion like the Gods. As LDS President Lorenzo Snow put it with some modifications, “As man now is, the Powerful Gods once were; as the Gods now are in Power, men may become equal in status and Power.” The goal is not to grovel before the throne of a god nonstop but for a man to become an eternally creating being like God. 

What kind of eternal being is God? God is the ultimate ground of power and dominion (as we saw in D&C 109:77 and 1 Nephi 22:24). The goal for humans is to inherit the same power and dominion in eternal life through “obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel” (Articles of Faith 1:3). At the time this was written the central law and ordinance of the gospel was the call to dominion through plural marriage; which was how men and women became Gods and gained power and dominion through their expansion via their seed/progeny increasing. Even going back to the Lectures on Faith in 1835, we see an emphasis on Power and Dominion. We read in Lecture on Faith # 7:

As we have seen in our former lectures, that faith was the principle of action and of power in all intelligent beings, both in heaven and on earth … 

... Christ: all will agree in this that he is the prototype or standard of salvation, or in other words, that he is a saved being. And if we should continue our interrogation, and ask how it is that he is saved, the answer would be, because he is a just and holy being; and if he were any thing different from what he is he would not be saved; for his salvation depends on his being precisely what he is and nothing else; for if it were possible for him to change in the least degree, so sure he would fail of salvation and lose all his dominion, power, authority and glory, which constitutes salvation; for salvation consists in the glory, authority, majesty, power and dominion which Jehovah possesses, and in nothing else; and no being can possess it but himself or one like him: Thus says John, in his first epistle, 3:2 and 3: Behold, now we are the sons of God, and it doth not appear what we shall be; but we know, that when he shall appear we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And any man that has this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure.—Why purify himself as he is pure? because, if they do not they cannot be like him.

… And the Savior says, Matthew 5:48: Be ye perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect. If any should ask why all these sayings? the answer is to be found from what is before quoted from John's epistle, that when he (the Lord) shall appear, the saints will be like him: and if they are not holy, as he is holy, and perfect as he is perfect, they cannot be like him; for no being can enjoy his glory without possessing his perfections and holiness, no more than they could reign in his kingdom without his power.

(Source)

From Imitating the ascetic celibate martyr to imitating the action and power of Abraham, and the fecundity of Solomon and God himself:

According to biblical scholarship, which I've linked to throughout my blog posts, the Apostle Paul had repeatedly said to imitate him as he imitates the Messiah. Fully imitating Paul would have meant you being celibate and willfully suffering and dying a martyr in imitation of the Suffering Messiah. Pauline Christianity was a protest-mythos against the masculine power of Rome. The Greek and Roman gods were powerful icons of bravado and victory. Paul inverted that Roman mythos with the Christ as a deity that willingly suffers and dies on the cross. In this way, rather than the cross being a symbol of defeat, weakness, and low status, Paul turned it into a symbol of victory of Christ over the cosmic Powers and Death itself. Only, in Paul's mythos, victory was obtained in death not in living. Victory was obtained by suffering and dying in imitation of the Messiah.

Paul’s martyr-centric mentality made sense in the context of his literal belief in the imminent/very soon return of his Conquering Messiah who would conquer and destroy the Romans and annihilate from the earth all mortal beings; and only his Christ-followers enacting the role of being "virgin brides" and seeded/enseminated supernaturally by the Christ Spirit (including his "male brides") would reside on the newly immortalized earth after the the coming of Yahweh with His Messiah (and their armies to set up a theocracy on the earth). In this context it makes sense why he encouraged his single followers to remain as he is (unmarried and celibate).

Yet the imminent return of the Messiah did not come as Paul expected. Instead, hundreds of years passed and America was established. Decades and decades of priestly renunciation and celibacy was no longer practical and there was no longer a Roman Caesar to protest against as a willing martyr. A new day had dawned.

When Joseph Smith first began his prophetic career in the mid 1820s to early 1830s, he was heavily steeped in a culture of revivalist Protestantism; and so he naturally channeled the Protestant Mythos into his scriptures as LDS Scholars Blake Ostler and Terryl and Fiona Givens discuss in detail. But by the 1840s, new revelations through the Prophet Joseph Smith revealed the restoration of all things, which I consider to be at its core a return to the lifeward power and organic vitality of the Old Testament mindset, and what I call Abrahamic Expansionism: where one becomes holy (set apart) and perfect ("complete") not through ascetic life-renunciation and celibacy but by imitating the Old Testament Patriarchs and entering into the embodied practice of plural marriage in order to glorify an embodied God through the continuation of the seeds/lives. What really distinguishes Joseph's "restoration of all things," is the overcoming of the Protestant denial of the reproductive body and its attack on sensuality through a return to the Old Testament celebration of the fruitful and multiplying body, when the procreative sensual body was deemed good. 

Joseph Smith restored the goodness of the natural drives toward progression, dominance, and dominion; as one finds in the Hebrew Bible's Heroes, with its call to dominion through acting out the organic lifeward powers of the goodly body. To imitate Solomon and Abraham as sexually vital men was also to imitate God himself who is also a virial sexual Man of Power. As the Encyclopedia of Mormonism puts it:

According to Enoch's record, Man of Holiness is one name of God: "In the language of Adam, Man of Holiness is his name, and the name of his Only Begotten is the Son of Man, even Jesus Christ" (Moses 6:57). God further declared in the revelation to Enoch: "Behold, I am God; Man of Holiness is my name" (Moses 7:35). This name reinforces the observation that God the Father is an exalted man of flesh and bones (D&C 130:22), and that every aspect of his character is holy.

Every aspect of God's character would include his tangible sexual body, so that being "holy" becomes being sexual and procreative, not celibate or overly ascetic. In fact, when Joseph Smith produced the Articles of Faith in 1842, it mentions being "chaste" in #13, which was written when Smith was practicing plural marriage (not monogamy nor celibacy). Meanwhile, in Smith's theology only those who have sex with multiple partners through plural marriage gain the highest exaltation and "are worthy of a far more...exceeding...eternal weight of glory" (D&C 132: 16; the word in bold my own for emphasis). 

What might this analysis above about what it meant to be "worthy" and "chaste" in 1842, have to say for the current more puritanical attitude that one finds in the Utah-based Institutional LDS Church and Chapel culture today?

 In Joseph Smith's Pro Sensual Vision, one is to imitate God by progressing toward the same power and dominion as God through his law and ordinance of plural marriage (in imitation of David, Solomon, Moses, and Abraham):

D&C 132 (words in bold my own for emphasis):

1 Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph, that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I, the Lord, justified my servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as also Moses, David and Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines.

… 38 David also received many wives and concubines, and also Solomon and Moses my servants, as also many others of my servants, from the beginning of creation until this time; and in nothing did they sin save in those things which they received not of me.

39 David’s wives and concubines were given unto him of me, by the hand of Nathan, my servant, and others of the prophets who had the keys of this power; and in none of these things did he sin against me save in the case of Uriah and his wife; and, therefore he hath fallen from his exaltation, and received his portion; and he shall not inherit them out of the world, for I gave them unto another, saith the Lord.

… 19 And again, verily I say unto you, if a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law, and by the new and everlasting covenant, and it is sealed unto them by the Holy Spirit of promise, by him who is anointed, unto whom I have appointed this power and the keys of this priesthood; and it shall be said unto them—Ye shall come forth in the first resurrection; and if it be after the first resurrection, in the next resurrection; and shall inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions, all heights and depths— ...; and shall be of full force when they are out of the world; and 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.

… 62 And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified.

63 But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man, she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed; for they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, and to fulfil the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world, and for their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men; for herein is the work of my Father continued, that he may be glorified.

Note here the clear explanation of why men are to take many wives and concubines: it is for expanding one's power and dominion like David and Solomon; and your propagation and exaltation glorifies the Gods that came before you. To be a God is to acquire power and dominion by multiplying your seed with wives and concubines that you've acquired as a sign of your power. This restores the Hebraic theology when noble hebrew men were to gain wealth and dominion through conquests in battle, gaining land ownership and cattle, as well as wives and concubines. Smith coopted this hebraic way of being and amplified it so that Mormons expand their power through the procreative act and the continuation of the seeds; which was a sign of power and dominion not just on earth but throughout eternity.

In the Hebrew Bible, God gives to David his wives and concubines as a sign of his kingly status and power; and Joseph Smith expands this idea into the afterlife so that Mormons are to imitate King David on earth in order to become like God (who lives like King David in the afterlife). In this way the Protestant god without parts or passions (without bodily form) is restored back to bodily form (as described in the Hebrew Bible); and the bodyless, sexless deity of Protestantism is recast as a bodily Man of Holiness with wives and concubines.

Rather than the negation of the organic sexual body and the denial of the dominance hierarchies of Life (through monastic status-renunciation and celibacy), Joseph Smith restored the life-centered organic philosophy of the religion of Jesus and its path of the masculine hero in the Hebrew Bible. 

The Protestant God was described as a non-gendered, asexual, bodiless Vapor without parts or passions. This was a direct reflection of Greek philosophy and the monastic attitude that negated the energies of life. Joseph Smith on the other hand saw in his study of the Hebrew Bible references to the Gods plural, and multiple passages of God having an anthropomorphic (human-like) body. From this he could also see clearly that the God of the Old Testament endorsed plural marriage and was more liberal in his views about sex compared to the Victorian Puritans of his day. From this he engaged in his own version of midrash just like Paul did and he envisioned a God with a tangible body, in fact a sexual body; so that celibacy and renunciation was not the path to becoming like God but instead the true path was becoming more life-affirming, more joyful and happy through an active embodied life that is sexually fulfilling. This was the path to Godhood. 

This is why Joseph Smith says in the King Follett discourse that you have got to learn how to become Gods. That is you need to understand that the purpose of life is not groveling before a vaporous bodiless dictator in the sky and denying your body of flesh and passions, hiding in a monastery being celibate or seeking to escape your depraved flesh by dying a martyr to escape life. Instead the goal is to live an embodied life of sensual pleasure, joy, play, and laughter. Aligning with the lifeward energies which are of Christ as Christ is the Christpower in and through all things; so that the energies of life are of God: that drives men to seek strength, status and territory, and in Smith's mythos will eventually lead to them achieving thrones and dominion in the afterlife: as an imitation of God himself who was once a man and progressed to Godhood through the same embodied lifestyle and call to dominion. 

In Joseph Smith's own words in the King Follett discourse (words in bold my own):

“You have got to learn how to make yourselves Gods in order to save yourselves and be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done—­by ­ going from a small capacity to a ­great capacity, from a small degree to another, from grace to grace, ­ until the resurrection of the dead, from exaltation to exaltation—­till you are able to sit in everlasting burnings and everlasting power and glory as ­those who have gone before, sit enthroned.

If we compare this (above) to the earlier scriptures Smith produced (quoted below), we can see clearly what it means when Joseph said you have got to learn how to become Gods yourselves:

DC 109:77 

O Lord God Almighty, ... where thou sittest enthroned, with glory, honor, power, majesty, might, dominion, ....

1 Nephi 22:24

... the Holy One of Israel must reign in dominion, and might, and power, and great glory.

Comparing the King Follett discourse to these above scriptures makes it clear, to become like God is to be enthroned with honor, power and dominion; and D&C sections 130 to 132 makes it clear that this is accomplished through the sensual body and through imitating Abraham and King David and Solomon in expanding your territory and gaining higher status through wives and concubines and having singular servants minister unto you; multiplying your seed and enlarging your genetic boundary through sensually expressing your manly procreative powers through all generations of time and throughout all eternity. 

In all of this there is an affirmation of the Life-expanding energies of organic thriving and progressing in dominion and power. There is no denying of life's energies and the fecundity of the Life-producing good earth like in monastic forms of Catholicism and Protestantism. The manly energies of status-seeking, territory and wealth accumulation, and expanding in strength and vitality and purpose, is not repressed and denied in Mormonism but given a mythological outlet, a fraternal symbolic world of expressed masculine power.

Rather than a vaporous bodiless and passionless deity one finds in the sectarian creeds, Joseph Smith presents an embodied God of parts and passions, of ultimate power and dominion. From this point of view we can understand why in Smith's History he says in verse 19, that the Gods declared that the sectarian creeds "were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt" and "they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” Recall our analysis above of Doctrine and Covenants 132. There we saw that "the power thereof" is the power to "seal" in order to act out the "form of godliness" which is accomplished through plural marriage. The sectarian Creeds denied the tangibility of God and the sensual nature of God. The Creeds presented a vaporous no-thing and had no priesthood sealing power. 

From a metaphorical perspective, the Creeds had denied the cosmic drive to thrive and enact the organic powers of growth and development toward Abrahamic expansion in power and dominion. 

From this point of view, was not Joseph Smith searching the scriptures and manifesting not only the power dynamics therein but the very power dynamics of the Cosmos? Think about it: according to the majority of scientists our universe originated as a singularity, of unimaginable power, with a cosmic event of great explosive power and magnitude; which led to our universe continually expanding!

 Our universe originated from a singularity into an expanding dominion with properties that emerged and organized and formed into atoms and galaxies and then life evolved on earth in an evolving struggle for power and dominion. The Hebrew Bible echoes these realities with the Hebrew God organizing chaos into order and encouraging humans to likewise create order out of the chaos on the earth and conquer the environment themselves. Would not then, to be in God's image (as his creation) to be like unto his creations (an expanding force of plenty)?

From this life-ward Cosmic perspective, it makes sense that the virile Joseph Smith would describe the Gods as those who live like Abraham and King David and Solomon, and are not infected with the Fundamentalist Protestant "shaming of the body," but are healthy sexual beings engaged in sexual expression. In a previous post I explained how Mormonism is at its core a theology with a sexual God with a sexual body.

In his writings Nietzsche laments the emasculation of men he sees in the mid 1800s, and the attack on the "rank order" of Life. In a visual presentation, Jordan Peterson reads from the section The Tarantulas, about those who want forced equality and the eradication of competition, hierarchy, and elite men (like athletes) or other men of Aristotelian excellence. When this is combined with, what Nietzsche calls the despisers of the body you have within these ascetic versions of Christianity the total negation of Life. As SparkNotes puts it:

Those who assert that the self is really spirit [absent the tangible body] are "despisers of the body" who have a sick body that hates life and wants to die.

(Source)

Jordan Peterson is himself a Christian (a Pragmatic Jungian Christian), and in a discussion with a priest, Peterson points out that Nietzsche is a great critic of versions of Christianity that are indeed problematic. As far as I know Joseph Smith knew nothing of Nietzsche's writings, and the two men philosophically disagreed as much as they might have agreed on things. Yet the same pro-organic-Life energy one finds in Nietzsche's writings, are also deeply rooted in Joseph Smith's psyche and expressed in his scriptural productions. I see the same Lifeward energy manifesting in books like No More Christian Nice Guy. 

What Joseph Smith does is affirm the order of Nature and combine it with the fair minded egalitarian ideals of Christianity. Joseph Smith did not remove hierarchy and masculine vitality (as one finds in many emasculating versions of Christianity) but combined both masculine and feminine energy within his theology. For example, while Nietzsche saw women as a mere plaything and vessel of the future Superman species, Smith in contrast sees the woman as co-equal with the man in that it is the relationship of the man and the woman that shall make them divine. Smith also allowed for women to have more than one earthly husband. Meanwhile, he distributed great power to women through the Relief Society. Among the most popular Christian sects, only in Mormonism do you have a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother, what is referred to as Heavenly Parents. 

In this post I made the argument that the Mormon method of polygamy is made better sense of through the interpretive lens of the Nietzschean will to power. This does not mean that I encourage plural marriage or endorse these passages literally. In fact, some historians believe that toward the end of his life Joseph Smith may have considered abandoning polygamy completely due to its problematic elements. 

What can all this mean for modern Latter-day Saints and cultural Mormons? How does one exercise their faith or heritage and the "principle of action and of power in all intelligent beings, both in heaven and on earth"? Without practicing plural marriage, how can one metaphorically live out the goal of inheriting "thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions, all heights and depths— ... 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"? 

Many modern Saints find ways to resolve this, such as remaining active members in the Utah Church and practicing monogamy but not having a negative attitude about human sexuality; and expressing Christpower and the Call to Dominion through being really good at their chosen sport or physical activity and competing with others in their career and gaining greater wealth and sharing their surplus with others. 

One thing Joseph Smith did not foresee was the Mormon Church of the 1900s returning to the Protestant Puritan mindset and the repression of the sensual body. I'm not advocating polygamy or free love or anything like that. But as I see it, to be true to the spirit of Joseph Smith's original Nauvoo theology, there needs to be some understanding and recognition that Joseph Smith envisioned not the repression of the drive to thrive but the expression of the desire to rise in power and dominion and express oneself sexually through their goodly tangible body; which was at the heart of his philosophy and theology. Joseph Smith was not a repressed monk hiding in a monastery devoted to celibacy and lashing his skin to overcome any desire to masturbate. Joseph Smith was an athletic and virile man of valor and personal power. He did not deny the sensual powers of the flesh that God gave him, but worshipped an embodied God of Power by imitating an embodied God through the pursuit of sensual pleasure and happiness, power and dominion.

What this means for me philosophically is not becoming a polygamist but asking myself how I can metaphorically accept the Call to Dominion? How can I express the cosmic drive to thrive in my personal life? Am I living in my body actively, or hiding in my head too much with my nose in books which I tend to do sometimes. Am I overthinking things or engaging in a more active lifestyle like Joseph Smith modeled? 

This whole video lecture is good for understanding Nietzsche's philosophy on slave and master morality, but I especially recommend the 1 hour and 30 minutes to the 2-hour mark, where he talks about the "King David instinct." Note that I reject Nietzsche's dichotomous splitting of "master and slave morality" and instead agree with the video presenter, that the best course is a melding and integration of the two extremes. I think Joseph Smith manifested this balancing integration quite well. So I ask myself, how can I live out the King David Instinct as a modern civilized American?

Dan Vogel argues persuasively that among other motivations for composing the book, Joseph Smith dreamed of uniting his family by exercising his creative talent in producing The Book of Mormon. Am I pursuing my own dreams with manly ambition and expressing my own artistic talents to achieve great things?

Am I rising in rank at my job or progressing in my career like Joseph Smith becoming a mayor, city planner, and a general of a large army? Am I raising my status and increasing my own strength and vitality, and gaining civil dominion as an American? 

As an Independent Mormon this is what the Mormon theology of Power means for me.