The following are my notes and commentary after reading and listening to the audiobook Wrestling the Angel by Terryl Givens:
Cosmic Materialism/Physicalism
Year 1833:
Smith begins production of his theologically richest revelations, covering an array of topics that gave radical redefinitions to the universe as well as the Creator, the creature, and their relationship. He introduces ideas like original innocence (rather than Augustine's original sin) and the glorious destiny of humans. Thus he begins to provide a metaphysical framework for the work of the restoration.
During this time, Smith begins combining the modern scientific ideas of his day into a new spiritual cosmology. In the 1830s, Smith rejected creation ex nihilo and presented the cosmic elements as eternal along with man. Smith presents eternalism: an uncreated and unending Cosmos. Basically, he introduces something very similar to the modern scientific view that matter and energy are uncreated. It was a materialist/naturalistic cosmology at odds with Protestant and Catholic tradition. Rooted in the metaphysics of spirit as matter.
Terryll Givens then documents how the doctrine of creation ex nihilo did not actually arise in original New Testament Christianity but developed after the third century.
Givens then brings up Thomas Dick's book Philosophy of a Future State and how that influenced Smith's thinking.
Chapter 6: Monism
Smith rejected the dualism from Plato to Paul and presented instead a union of spirit and matter. Smith thus had more in common with Spinoza's substance monism. Givens discusses various Christian philosophers who agreed with this type of Monism. He then points out the radical nature of Smith's physicalist-monism as it radically differs from traditional Western Dualism, from "platonic privileging of intellect over physicality" to "the Pauline elevating of spirit over flesh ..."
Chapter 7: Laws physical and spiritual
Instead of nature being created by God, Smith argued that Nature and God were coeternal. Listening to this, it occurred to me that in doing this Smith avoided the idea that nature is corrupt and you need to escape nature to this "pure" non-natural realm. If God himself is of nature, as refined spirit matter, then the earthly or flesh is not inherently "bad."
Givens points out that Smith's argument that there is natural Divine Law resolves Plato's "Euthyphro dilemma."
Chapter 8: The Godhead
Givens explains that the Sectarian Creedal God had removed the original Hebrew God's body, parts, and passions. To paraphrase: Greek Philosophical thinking led to an impersonal Triune vaporous No-thing/No-body. In contrast, Smith presented a God that weeps in the Book of Moses chapter 7: "How is it thou canst weep?" Hence, Smith rejected the emotionless creedal god as early as 1831. Then he embodied God and sexualized "God" as male and female divinities in the 1840s:
"That which is without body or parts, is nothing" ~ Joseph Smith, 1841
This statement is similar to Thomas Jefferson's statement:
"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise ... "
Chapter 11: Embodied God
Givens explains that Smith taught a Fortunate Fall:
"A man is a moral, responsible free agent. It was foreordained he should fall." ~ Joseph Smith, February 5, 1840
Givens then compares and contrasts Augustine's Original Sin with Joseph's Fortunate Fall, stating:
It is no exaggeration to say that Augustine's view of Original Sin was to become the center of the Western Christian tradition. As another cultural historian notes, "Augustine did more than anyone else in the Christian church to convince the world that unbaptized infants, because of the sin they had inherited from Adam, would burn in eternal torment. …"
... As for Calvin, Original Sin shifts to a hereditary depravity extending to all the faculties of soul. ... Even infants, he adds, are subject to this condemnation, [saying they] bring from the womb a nature odious and abominable to God.
In contrast, Joseph Smith radically affirmed human nature and free agency with his revealed Scriptures instead teaching that in fact, we were born and grow up and are able to determine right from wrong and learn the sweet from the sour and embrace an opposition in all things as the whole is the purpose of man's existence in learning to experience joy (see 2 Nephi chapter 2). Thus he radically affirmed the body by rejecting an inherited "Sin" virus as preached by Calvin and Augustine.
On Free Will vs. Theological Determinism
Givens then makes a good point that the pre-existence of the soul as an eternal Intelligence, avoids the problem of Augustinian predestination dogma and the lack of full free will in Augustinianism. If God creates the soul ex nihilo and God is the ultimate controller, even the swirling of every atom, then man is not responsible and does not have free agency. This is essentially the god of Catholicism and Protestantism. Joseph Smith rejected this inhumane and illogical theology. If, as the Book of Abraham says, the soul of man is eternal and there were Intelligences that God organized into human form, then humankind chose to come to earth; and we are punished for our own mistakes and do not have an Augustinian original sin (as article of Faith # 2 puts it). This makes Mormonism more humane theologically I think, compared to other versions of Christianity.
Joseph Smith was a product of a zeal for Liberty. Joseph Smith said, "It is the love of liberty which inspires my soul." Smith wrote "Civil and religious liberty, which was diffused into my soul by my grandfathers, both revolutionary war veterans, while they dandled me on their knees." Givens goes on to point out that Smith went beyond mortal freedoms and life, with a cosmic freedom with the good Gods at odds with evil forces seeking to take away the happiness of man.
Chapter 19: Embodiment
Givens' writes on God's materiality that "Mormonism endows an unequivocal role on the physical and bodily." Givens goes on to point out the anti-body tendencies in Augustinian Christianity. He then quotes several Catholic and Protestant Christians that saw the body as depraved and sexual pleasure as at odds with the inner asexual spirit. He then points to Plato and Greek culture for understanding the source of the problem of separating the physical body from the spiritual "mind." He points out that Christianity could not escape its being influenced by Platonism regarding the separation of the body and the soul; and that the soul in its sensuality should be seen as impure and bad in comparison to the pure state of the soul as good.
Givens points out that some modern scholars interpret Paul's discussion of the soul and the body and "that his principal dichotomy, that of between the flesh and the spirit, is about the divided inclination of the will (the contest between worldliness and holiness) not between physical body and immaterial spirit." Adding my own thoughts, I would say that Paul may not have been as anti-body as some think. In fact, it should be noted that in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul emphasizes the mutual sexual gratification of each partner, including the man being responsible for giving pleasure to the woman as she desires (this was not a common view during that time). Thus affirming sexuality to a large degree.
Givens then points out that it was the heretical Gnostics that had the attitude and theology that all physical materiality was corrupt and evil, and only in the immaterial/non-physical "spiritual" realm was there the good way to be by being absent from the physical body.
Givens goes on to point out that even the Catholic and partistic Church Fathers had a nuanced view of the body and didn't always see materiality or physicality as completely depraved and corrupt; but in many ways the body was a manifestation of God's good creation. Nevertheless the traditional and cultural attitude within Augustinian puritanical Christianity maintains the view that the body is corrupt and depraved and "ugly" due to an inherited "Sin sickness." As Givens points out, it is Augustine who unleashes a negative view of human sexuality. At location 4500 of the ebook, Givens writes:
This critical development in theology’s treatment of the body comes when Augustine narrows the locus of human depravity to concupiscence, and centers the problem of human evil on sexual appetite. His contributions in this regard have been characterized by one not atypical scholar as a fusion of Christianity “with hatred of sex and pleasure into a systematic unity.”[27] While such a judgment may be slightly overstated, its accuracy as a matter of historical perception is evident in the wry definition of a Puritan (an Augustinian descendent through Calvin) as someone who cannot sleep at night, fearing that somewhere, someone may be having fun. Augustine set in motion a reading of Paul that finds in bodily appetites the greatest obstacle to spiritual purity. And here we find the strongest correlation with, if not product of, the Platonic heritage. Nietzsche was only one of the most influential critics who thought Christianity’s dominant feature was this animus directed against the body and all its natural inclinations. In his view, the loathing for the body so prominent in Christian history “would perhaps lead the looker-on to infer that our earth is the essentially ascetic star,—a corner of malcontent, conceited and ugly creatures, unable to rid themselves of a deep chagrin at self, at the earth, at all life.”Religious asceticism is but the purest form of an attitude wherein “physiological thriving itself,–especially its expression, beauty and joy, is viewed with dark and jealous eye.”[28]
Givens then goes on to quote Calvin saying we should basically despise the body which is reminiscent of Nietzche's writings in his Zarathustra on the despisers of the body. Givens writes:
Calvin urges Christians to “despise[e] the present life,”and “to use the world as if he used it not.”[32] At the same time, he urges that God created food “not only for our necessity, but also for our enjoyment and delight,”and clothing, “in addition to necessity, comeliness and honor.” Sheer beauty and appeal to the senses is part of God’s purposes, for in sweet odors and the adornments of nature, “has he not given many things a value without having any necessary use?”[33] And though Calvin does use “the body,” and “the flesh”as interchangeable terms describing our subjection to “the power of concupiscence,” he reads both terms as metaphorical designations for two sides to our nature. The spirit is that part of the soul “which has been regenerated by God,”while the flesh is “the corrupt and polluted [version of] the soul.”[34]
Givens goes on to quote the Protestant Reformers Luther and Edwards who had a consistent and clear negative attitude of the sensual body, that has persisted in popular Christianity to this day. Givens writes:
Luther could see only Christ’s debasement, not man’s elevation, in Christ’s incarnation. “The body also of Christ Himself was human, like ours. Than which body, what is more filthy?”[35] The Bishop of Salisbury was a kindred spirit who glossed the Anglican Articles as follows: “That God is without body, parts, or passions. In general, all these are so plainly contrary to the ideas of infinite perfection, and they appear so evidently to be imperfections, that this part of the article will need little explanation. We do plainly perceive that our bodies are clogs to our minds.”[36] American theologians of the era were largely in accord. As Jonathan Edwards would put the case, we mortals are weighed down with “a heavy moulded body, a lump of flesh and blood which is not fitted to be an organ for a soul inflamed with high exercises of divine love. … Fain would they fly, but they are held down, as with a dead weight at their feet.”[37]
Givens' points out that this body-negative attitude even led to Wesley discouraging joyful play among children:
One scholar has even explained the bizarre charismatic manifestations of camp meeting revivalism in terms of a perceived antithesis between the heavenly and earthly that makes up the human self: “The result of the radical disjuncture between the body and the divine for those who participated in charismatic experiences was often painful. As the divine presence, holy, perfect, and entirely Other, filled their bodies, the sinful flesh responded by contorting and jerking to-and-fro.”[38] As a consequence of the general suspicion of the body, some Christians condemned pastimes rooted in physical activity. Wesley, for example, extended his disapprobation even to childhood amusements. “For he that plays when he is a child,”he said, “will play when he is a man.”[39] Not surprisingly, then, the Methodist Episcopal Church in America ruled in 1792, “We prohibit play in the strongest terms.”[40] In fact, one American historian notes that Mormonism early developed what he called “an ‘ideology’of play at a time when most other American clerics still thought of play as the devil’s invention.”[41] Those who exhibited a contrary perspective often wrote outside the pale of orthodoxy. Most notable in this regard would have been the English mystic and poet William Blake. He considered the essential Christian error to be its tripartite teaching “1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul. 2. That Energy, call’d Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, call’d Good, is alone from the Soul. 3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.”In his anthropology, the body was as divine as the soul, only it happened to be discernible by the senses. And the “energies”it gave rise to were synonymous with “eternal delight.”[42]
In contrast to this, Givens points out that original Mormonism (what I call the Smith-Pratt paradigm) rejected all this anti-body ideology. As Givens writes:
In its embrace of the eternalism of matter, its explicit rejection of a triune God “without body, parts or passions” in favor of a corporeal deity, and by its association of marital bonds with eternal states and relationships, Mormonism—like Blake—cast the earthly as a sacred sphere and rejected the dichotomies and valuations that necessitated a guarded response to worldly pleasures. It is thus a synthesis that Mormonism effects, and not, as one observer believed, “a repudiation of spirituality in favor of materiality.”[43] Here as elsewhere, the polarity that underlies conventional conceptions of sacred distance collapses, and materiality becomes spiritualized. Smith’s definitive statement in this regard came in 1833, when he declared that only when spirit is combined with element and “inseparably connected”can humans find “a fulness of joy.”[44] As was so often the case, it was Parley Pratt who first elaborated the implications of Smith’s conflation of heaven and earth: “In the resurrection, and the life to come, men that are prepared will actually possess a material inheritance on the earth. …[T]hey will eat, drink, converse, think, walk, taste, smell and enjoy.”[45] …
… Sometimes, Mormon inclination to indulge the sensory pleasures created consternation among converts from more abstemious backgrounds. One Mormon immigrant remembered that “after all was settled the ship did plow its way over the briny deep and what did we the Swiss hear and see. Hand organ, violin music and then dancing. We did not like that and asked one another what kind of people is this? One of our elders, …[who] could …speak English fluently, told us they were all Mormons. We were horror stricken in hearing this. We never expected that Latter-day Saints would indulge in such worldly pleasures. We were disgusted.”[50] They would have been a great deal more horrified if they had visited the Mormon temple, holiest edifice in the church, there to find a small orchestra and dancing, as was occasionally the case.[51] Once in Utah, such practices became institutionalized with repercussions that continue to the present. In what Time magazine called “the dancingest religion,”such church-endorsed bodily expressiveness becomes an emblem, if not a direct outgrowth, of a longstanding commitment to righteous reveling in physicality.[52]
At location 4600s of the ebook, Givens goes on in the section on sexuality to write:
… Jerome did more than any other early writer to transform Paul’s warnings against “the flesh”into a preoccupation with the dark dangers of sexuality.[55] The sexual organs, Augustine sermonized, were the very “site of original sin within us.”[56] Marriage mitigated but did not entirely resolve or contain the conundrum of human sexuality. As an early Christian commentary put it, “Remove the utility of being born and the reason for marriage is explained …the work of reproduction is characteristically a fleshly act that we share in common with animals.”[57]
The association of celibacy with a higher sexual standard, and the Protestant relegation of intercourse to the child-producing function, further nudged marital relations to the far side of spiritual life or eternal purposes. As late as 1851, the Methodist liturgy explicitly characterized sexual relations in those terms: marriage was “ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication: that such persons as have not the gift of continency, might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.”[58]
With this cultural context in mind, Joseph's saying "God is more liberal in his views" to Nancy Rigdon, begins to make sense as he is counteracting the anti-body puritanical culture of the time: with a theology and practice that instead radically affirmed the body and thus aimed at removing Augustinian body despising dogma from one's consciousness.
Givens continues:
Some dissenters from the Puritan-influenced party line emerged from time to time, like the poet mystic William Blake. For him, as the critic Alfred Kazin wrote, human sexuality “meant enjoyment framed in wonder.”[59] In his inversion of the early Christian view, sexuality is not a consequence of fallenness; the shame associated with sexuality is. His dictum that “Shame is Pride’s cloak”is not the scandalous provocation of a libertine, but the earnest attempt of a devout Christian mystic to turn back the clock on the Platonization of Christianity, to combat the prudish disdain for God’s crowning creation—the human body. To the Augustinian disparagement of the female body, Blake replied stubbornly, “The nakedness of woman is the work of God.”[60]
Mormonism’s fullest early statement on the sanctity of the marriage relationship and conjugal affection was written by Pratt in 1844. His essay on “Intelligence and Affection”is a celebration of divine physicality. Proceeding from the premise that God—like all divine entities—is embodied (one conclusion of his essay “Immortality of the Body”), Pratt argued that the prejudice of Platonism and Puritanism against the bodily was groundless. Ascribing our natural affections to a fallen and corrupt nature as creedal Christianity does (“wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body”) mistakes “the source and fountain of happiness altogether.”[61] Those true mainsprings are, first, our natural affections and second, our social nature. Pratt held that asceticism does not transcend the carnal but, rather, rejects what is inherently god-like. The direction and cultivation of the passions, not their repression, is God’s intention for humans, he wrote. And foremost among these human affections is the reciprocal desire of a man and his wife. There is, in fact, “not a more pure and holy principle in existence than the affection which glows in the bosom of a virtuous man for his companion.”[62]
To sum up, the Smith-Pratt Movement is the radical affirmation of the sensual body and joyful play, dancing and having fun, in contrast to the body despising attitudes of Augustine and the most prominent Protestant Reformers.
