Joseph Smith on “Feeling Nothing” and the Book of Mormon’s Pragmatic Epistemology on Faith as Uncertainty Growing to Experiencial Knowledge & the Criteria of the Ethically "Good" as Truth

 

From Joseph Smith, “Feeling Nothing”, and the Book of Mormon’s Pragmatic View of Faith by instrument_801:

Early accounts of Joseph Smith’s religious life suggest that both his experience and the Book of Mormon he produced frame faith not as emotional certainty, but as a pragmatic process of acting in hope and judging truth by its enduring fruits even if not felt.

 

Here are some musings I am working through. The story of Joseph Smith begins with a young man trying to find God. He was seeking redemption of his sins and trying to discern which church, if any, was true. In one of the Church’s First Vision videos, the narrative draws on an account I was less familiar with. In it, Joseph Smith states that he “wanted to feel and shout like the rest but could feel nothing.”

 

> Br Joseph tolt us the first call he had a Revival Meeting his Mother & Br & Sister got Religion, he wanted to get Religion too wanted to feel & shout like the Rest but could feel nothing…[See: Alexander Neibaur, Journal excerpt, 24 May 1844; in Alexander Neibaur, Journal, 5 Feb. 1841–16 Apr. 1862, pp. 23–24; handwriting of Alexander Neibaur; CHL.]

 

This experience aligns closely with how the Book of Mormon defines faith and knowing truth. Faith is explicitly not equated with perfect knowledge or emotional certainty. It is described as hope in things that are true but not yet fully known, followed by action in uncertainty (Alma 32:21, 27). Truth is tested through lived experience, and confirmation comes as the “seed” grows and produces a real impact on the soul and one’s understanding (Alma 32:28, 33–34).

 

Within this framework, feelings are not rejected, but they are not decisive on their own. What matters is what faith produces over time. The Book of Mormon provides a clear moral epistemology for judging truth: “all things which are good cometh of God” (Moroni 7:12). Individuals are given the capacity to judge by observing whether something invites them to do good, to believe in Christ, and to grow in light (Moroni 7:16–17). Is this how Joseph viewed his faith?

Scripture Focused: On Official Doctrine, The Standard Works & The Collective Witness Model: Knowing What is True, Authoritative and Binding on Mormons vs. Opinion, Conjecture, and a Yoking Burden

 

• The Case for "Scripture Focused Mormons" & What that Means?

• How the "Standard Works" (Mormon Canon) itself Teaches The Authority of Scripture over Fallible Leaders

• The Authority of LDS Scripture (Standard Works) versus the Tradition of the Elders?

• The True Law of Common Consent by Patrick (link to the site Uncorrelated Mormonism)

• Come in at the Gate of only Joseph Smith's Revelations (D&C 43: 2-7)

• 3 Bullets Point Summary On Scripture-focused Independent Mormonism that Is At Odds with Brethrenism

• Mormon Scripture through the Smith-Pratt Lens

• Comparing Jesus' Words in Mathew 15 & 23 in The Remedy to Brethrenism

• Mathew 23: Those Who Sit in Moses' Seat in The Joseph Smith Translation (JST)

• "Scripture Focused Mormon" Resources: Recommended Brighamite and Non-Brighamite Scriptures, Websites and other Restorationist Books, etc.

Mormonr article on Plural Marriage and LDS Population Growth in the 1800s

Excerpts from Polygamy and Population Growth by Mormonr.org:

Jacob 2 states, "For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people." ...

 

Did polygamy actually increase the population in Utah more than it would have otherwise? 

Yes, probably. Studies have shown that societies where a man can have more than one wife tend to have many more children than other societies,[2] and Latter-day Saints had a lot of children relative to the rest of the U.S. at the time, particularly while polygamy was practiced.[3] ... Polygamy leads to fewer unmarried women,[7][8] which increases the number of children born in the polygamous society overall even if plural wives had fewer children than non-plural wives in that society.[9]  ...

OUR TAKE [at Mormonr.org]

 

... The scriptures tell us that polygamy was to "raise up seed"—did that actually work?

There is some data from census records and other studies on how polygamy affected the Utah population. That data indicates that polygamy increased the population more than comparable non-polygamous populations at the time. It seems that though polygamous wives had fewer children, polygamous populations disproportionally increased because more women were married and could have children.

 

Understanding polygamy, and the reasons for it, is more complicated than simply stating that it was meant to increase the population. There are many more legitimate questions about polygamy, and it's okay to acknowledge the messiness and complexities of the topic. Commandments from God can have temporal justifications, but Latter-day Saints rely on faith as they make sense of something like polygamy.

My take on this is that plural marriage was practiced in order to raise up the seed of Ephraim among the first LDS members in the 1800s. So their was a selective birthing process where those from the "northern countries" (mostly from Britain and Scandinavia), that were declared the pure blood of Ephraim, were raising up their seed in particular. So that plural marriage selected for more of the Ephraimite women by giving them more opportunities to give birth to the seed of Ephraimite men at the time. 

 

Expiation & Cohesion: How "Let's Talk about Polygamy" book adds support for my Thesis "The Expiation of Sectarian Dogma" & Supports the early formation of an "Ephraimite Peoplehood"

 

In the book Let's Talk about Polygamy by Britney Nash, in chapter eight, pages 95-103 we read:

In the [LDS] revelation on plural marriage, one reason given for plurality was to “multiply and replenish the earth” (D&C 132:63). In the Bible, Abraham was promised to have progeny as limitless as the sands of the seashore (Gen. 22:17). Latter-day Saints saw themselves as members of the restored house of Israel, called to help fulfill this Abrahamic covenant and, in so doing, becoming recipients of the same blessings (D&C 132:29–33). The Saints were not simply to produce children, however. God intended that they “raise up seed unto me,” implying that, through plural marriage, a righteous man with multiple wives could father more children and thus raise a large and faithful posterity unto the Lord (Jacob 2:30; italics added). 

 

Significantly, however, the Book of Mormon establishes monogamy as God’s preferred order of marriage except if the Lord commanded polygamy to be instituted (Jacob 2:24, 27, 30). These scriptures specify that monogamy is the rule, but polygamy could, for a time, be the exception. ... 

 

... Early converts were excited by the Church’s assertion that the “dispensation of the fulness of times” had commenced and would bring a final “restitution of all things,” including a restoration of the laws, authority, ordinances, and blessings of previous dispensations (D&C 128:18; 132:40; Acts 3:21; Eph. 1:10).[1] Among those laws was plural marriage, practiced by the ancient patriarchs of the Old Testament, and many Saints accepted polygamy as being a component of the restoration ...

 

 As a young woman in England, Sarah Barnes joined the Church in 1842, believing that she had embraced “the same Gospel that the ancients had.” After learning that the Latter-day Saints practiced polygamy, she wrote, “I could plainly see that if plural marriage was a principle of the Gospel then, it must of necessity be so now.”[2] Sarah’s conviction of the necessity of a restoration of all things, including the reintroduction of plural marriage, was reinforced by her study of the Bible and served as the foundation of her acceptance of polygamy, and she later became a plural wife. ... 

 

Since the restored Church had direct roots in the Old Testament and Latter-day Saints viewed themselves as modern Israel (God’s people), they anticipated trials individually and collectively. Because Joseph Smith’s revelation on plural marriage mentioned Abraham and the sacrifice of his son Isaac, many nineteenth-century Saints saw polygamy as an “Abrahamic test” intended to purify the Saints ... 

 

... More broadly, the Saints believed that because they were God’s people, He required their trial and purification as a group. ...

 

... Polygamy created a sense of cohesion among the Latter-day Saints. God’s people were always chastened in some way, the Saints believed, and polygamy was a shared trial that set them apart from other religious groups, reinforcing the idea that, through hardship, God was molding His chosen people. The practice also established an insular, protective sense of community. As the Saints gathered in the Mountain West, the sense of being a people set apart deepened. Church members not only created extensive family networks through plural marriage but also banded together to defend their religious beliefs from an outside world that persecuted, rejected, and mocked them. ... 

I believe that the best explanation for this purification process was the "expiation" of the sectarian Creeds, and their anti-body ideologies, from the psyche of early LDS members. For those Creeds were declared an abomination in Smith's First Vision.  When Nash says, "Polygamy created a sense of cohesion among the Latter-day Saints," this supports what I argue in my posts here and my documents here, where I argue that polygamy acted as a kind of funnel for producing a close knit quasi-ethnic tribe in the 1800s. Nash's book continues:

Victorian Sexuality and Polygamy

 

People in the nineteenth century were simultaneously horrified and fascinated by the sexual possibilities of polygamy. During the Victorian era, there was a dramatic rise in prostitution, and it was considered one of the great social problems of the day. Those not of the Latter-day Saint faith considered polygamous marriages illegitimate and scorned plural wives as being adulterers, prostitutes, and concubines. Latter-day Saints perceived a great hypocrisy between accusations that they were sexually immoral while the sexual indiscretions of Victorian men, such as employing prostitutes, were at that time figuratively swept under the rug. Apostle Orson Pratt suggested that plural marriage was an antidote to fornication and adultery. In the August 1853 issue of The Seer, he took the stance of a social reformer, arguing that polygamy could eradicate prostitution because men would not be tempted to have extramarital relations and women would each have the opportunity to marry able providers (124–25). Elder Pratt’s reasoning was not grounded in scripture or doctrine, but it became a popular defense of polygamy used by Latter-day Saints to publicly justify the practice.

 

... For a woman who desired to marry, plural marriage expanded her opportunities to find a husband. ...

 

This affirmation of biological desire by Pratt and others shows the pro-body nature of Mormonism. The book continues on, and we read in the Conclusion, pages 143-144:

“Plural marriage, as it was practiced, served its purpose.” —Elder Quentin L. Cook, 2020 

 

... The Gospel Topics Essays published on the official Church website suggest that the lasting effects of plural marriage were “the birth of large numbers of children within faithful Latter-day Saint homes,” the availability of marriage to “virtually all who desired it,” equalized wealth per capita, “ethnic intermarriages,” and aid in uniting “a diverse immigrant population.”[1] Polygamy provided a sense of group solidarity as Latter-day Saints saw themselves as separate from other religious sects, a “peculiar people” (1 Pet. 2:9). Indeed, in its purpose to “raise up seed unto [the Lord],” polygamy was remarkably effective (Jacob 2:30). Research suggests that 20 percent of living Church members descend from those who practiced polygamy.[2]

 

When plural marriage was discontinued, polygamists, too, reflected on its purpose and many believed it had been fulfilled. Said one plural wife, “Polygamy has served its day. We helped to populate Utah and to make it possible for every woman to become a mother. . . . We have served our purpose and polygamy has gone.”[3] ... Apostle Quentin L. Cook, reflecting on nineteenth-century polygamy, shared that “plural marriage, as it was practiced, served its purpose. We should honor those Saints, but that purpose has been accomplished.” ...

 

This is exactly what I had argued in my blog post here. So reading this book after I had written that post made me realize that the book substantiates my theory.

 

Why I'm "Mormon" (& Not Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist or Atheist)

 

• Bullet Point List of Why I'm a "Worldview-Mormon": Or Why I'm Not a Catholic, Protestant, or Secular-Atheist  & Want the LDS Church to Thrive (Even If/When I'm not a Chapel-Mormon)

• Why I'm a "Heritage Mormon” (Not Protestant, Catholic, Greek or Russian Orthodox, or Buddhist): The Case for Mormonism as an Ethnolinguistic Ancestral Religion like Ethnic Religions such as Jewish Judaism or Japanese Shintoism, etc.

• My Journey: Reconstructing a New Mormon Worldview

Witnesses to the Book of Mormon as Anglo-Saxon Oath-Helpers (Excerpts)

Excerpts from Witnesses to the Book of Mormon as Anglo-Saxon Oath-Helpers by J. Max Wilson:

 

... I recognized an interesting parallel to the early Norse and Anglo-Saxon origins of English Common Law ... the medieval legal traditions of the Norse and Germanic cultures [is] from [out of] which English Common law, and subsequently American law, developed. As a result, a number people have at least a cursory familiarity with the Athenian forum while far fewer are familiar with the Norse Thing or the Anglo-Saxon Folkmoot, or the later British Witenagemot.


The Anglo-Saxon folkmoot, like the Norse Thing, was a governing assembly consisting of the free members of the community or district. The folkmoot protected the people against anarchy and tribal feuding by mediating disputes and grievances according to the Common Law (Old English folcriht, literally “right of the people”) and in theory provided each free man a single vote ... The Folkmoot and Thing are the early precursors to our modern legislative assemblies and trials by jury. Later, the folkmoots developed into hundred courts, borough courts, and shire courts.


Lawsuits were heard before the folkmoot. The procedure was for a number of “oath-helpers” to testify of the innocence of the defendant, who himself made an oath of innocence. The word “Juror” comes from the Latin iurature, which means “swearer” or “oath maker.” The defendant had to secure a certain number of oath-helpers to establish his innocence . The number of oath-helpers was traditionally twelve, a number that has carried through to our modern juries. If he failed to secure enough oath-helpers, the defendant was judged guilty.


... As the translation of the Book of Mormon neared completion, however, he was permitted to show the plates to a few individuals who are known as the three witnesses and the eight witnesses. It occurred to me that the testimony of Joseph Smith plus those of the three witnesses and then the eight witnesses made a total of twelve testimonies to the real existence of the plates. In a sense Joseph plus the other eleven witnesses filled the ancient role of the twelve Anglo-Saxon oath-helpers needed to establish the fact of their existence. In this way the witnesses of the Book of Mormon fit into a deep rooted cultural tradition that still wields power in our society.


(Unrelated trivia for The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter fans: The Entmoot attended by Merry and Pippin with Treebeard in “The Two Towers” is based on the Anglo-Saxon Folkmoot; the Wizengamot, or high court of wizards of which Albus Dumbledore is the head in the Harry Potter books, is based upon the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot—Old English witan means “wise man”)

How Greek Cynic-Acestism and Sin-Sex Syndrome of Augustine Changed the Hebrew Bible's "Sanctity of the Physical" into a Virginal Jesus & A Celibate Ideal. Excerpts from "The Case for a Married Jesus" by William E. Phipps

 

In my blog series on a pro-body Christianity, I have argued that a major aspect of the Smit-Pratt Restoration Movement is the affirmation of bodily life and the sexual body. I then ran across the article The Case for a Married Jesus by by William E. Phipps, that further substantiates my case:

Appreciation is overdue for a Mormon who had the insight and courage to revive a Hebraic viewpoint toward Jesus’ relationships with women. Orson Hyde, the President of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, in a sermon delivered at Salt Lake City in 1857, maintained that Jesus was married. He argued: “If he was never married, his intimacy with Mary, Martha, and the other Mary also, who Jesus loved, must have been highly unbecoming and improper, to say the best of it.” In that same sermon President Hyde even suggested that the story in John 2 of a wedding at Cana is a record of Jesus’ marriage to a Galilean woman.[Source: Orson Hyde, The Journal of Discourses of Brigham Young, 4 (1857), p. 259.]

 

Hyde’s striking belief in Jesus’ marriage gained wide acceptance in the pioneer Mormon community. ... 

 

Recognizing that the Bible provides no explicit information on Jesus’ marital status, what could have stimulated Hyde to assert what no Christian had claimed for many centuries? ... Hyde was sent to Palestine to do missionary work among Jews .... 

 

That cultural association doubtless made him more aware than most Christians that marriage in traditional Judaism—either single or plural—was prerequisite to righteous man hood. Since Jesus was addressed as “Rabbi” and was a devout Jew, he would in all probability have married. 

This essay will explore in some detail the way in which Hyde’s position on Jesus’ marital status was in accord with the Hebraic outlook. It will also show why this significant matter pertaining to the historical Jesus was long lost. Even the discussion of Jesus’ marital status became taboo and remains so to the present time for most Christians. 

 

 From the opening pages of Hebrew Scripture onward, the sanctity of marriage as a part of the divine creation is a prominent theme. Sexual relations between those “joined by God” was considered a necessary good, not a necessary evil. The writer of the Garden of Eden story believed that the unmarried state was “not good/’ and that every man (adham) should utilize the sexual impulse and other gifts of nature for human fulfillment. The solitary state is the first thing the Lord pronounced undesirable. Genesis 2 tells of man’s ecstasy when his loneliness is relieved by female companionship and when his “rib” is returned to form a “one flesh” wholeness. Masculine and feminine inter dependence and complementariness are exquisitely expressed in that ancient story. There is no indication that its writer or any other biblical writers believed that sexual desire was contaminated because of the sin of the first human parents. Marriage was expressly required for the Levitical priests, for they transmitted their office by family inheritance. The burning love of a couple which “many waters cannot quench” was admired by the prophets and poets of Israel. ....

 

... Sociological practice in biblical culture with respect to marriage was in accord with theological doctrine. Marriage was considered a sacred obligation in Judaism and was fulfilled at an early age. In the many centuries of biblical history there is no instance of lifelong celibacy. However, two persons, Jeremiah and Paul, abstained from marriage for part of their lives because they considered themselves to be in special crisis situations. Jeremiah temporarily refrained from marital life to dramatize the senseless deprivation which would result from fighting against the Babylonians. Paul indicated that he had once been married but was either a widower or separated from his wife when he wrote to the Corinthians. The apostle was convinced at that period of his Christian career that the finale of history was near. That predicament reconciled him to his own unattached state and caused him to recommend it for others with a similar disposition. ...

 

... In my study, Was Jesus Married? (Harper and Row, 1970), the alleged New Testament evidence for Jesus’ celibacy was weighed and found wanting. Paul, who provides the earliest record of Jesus and who personally thought at one period of his life that the single were not obligated to marry, did not point to Jesus as a model for the unmarried. In 1 Corinthians 7, where appeal is made to the teaching of Jesus on marriage, the apostle explicitly admitted that he knew nothing of Jesus’ position on celibacy. Since the voluntary “eunuch” was unheard of in Judaism and hence would have attracted much attention if someone professed such a status, it is inconceivable that Paul would not have been aware of Jesus’ condition had he and some of his fol lowers vowed to renounce marriage for life. 

In I Corinthians 9:5 Paul asserted in passing that travel with wives was the standard practice of the apostles. It is unlikely that this would have been the case if Jesus had been single and had expected the devout to follow his example. Moreover, in the Pastoral Letters, marriage is laid down as a qualification for those who hold church office. This requirement is unaccountable had not Jesus and his apostles been married. ... 

 

... Assuming that Joseph discharged his duty as a righteous father, he must have arranged for Jesus’ betrothal.

 

... In 1945 an ancient Christian folio volume, the Gospel of Philip, was dis covered in Egypt. It explicitly states that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ “consort.” If that document preserves an authentic tradition, as it well may, then it affords evidence that Jesus married. ... It is therefore possible that Mary was his wife and that she belonged to that group of women-wives who are occasionally mentioned in the Gospels as traveling with Jesus and his male disciples. 

It would be contrary to both ancient and modern notions of virtuous behavior if Jesus were closely associated day after day with a group of unattached women. Hyde has perceptively commented: 

I will venture to say that if Jesus Christ were now to pass through the most pious countries in Christendom with a train of women, such as used to follow him, fondling about him, combing his hair, anointing him with precious ointment, washing his feet with tears, and wiping them with the hair of their heads … he would be mobbed, tarred, and feathered, and rode not on an ass, but on a rail. 

 

... If Jesus married, why is it that the opposite assumption has been dominant throughout the history of Christianity? The moral dualism of Hellenistic philosophy that infiltrated Gentile Christianity in the post-apostolic era has been mainly responsible for the dogma that Jesus was perpetually virginal. That dualism held that the pure immaterial soul was imprisoned in the defiled flesh during this earthly existence. Consequently, the best way of freeing the spiritual essence even before death was by a practice of rigid abstention—which is now designated as asceticism. Some of his major interpreters in church history have, on the basis of an anti-biblical psychology, assumed that Jesus had no sexual desire or that he could not have expressed it in relations with a woman.

 

Sexual asceticism was found in early Greek philosophy and it became increasingly prominent in the Hellenistic age. As this side of the Greco Roman civilization is not admired in modern secular culture, little attention has been given to its influence. From the Renaissance to the present day, the ancient Greeks have been associated with a balanced ethic—”nothing overmuch.” Of course, beginning with Homer that rational moral mean can be traced. But some of the more recent studies show that ascetic movements were also significant. In the Roman era an extreme ethic was popular among eclectic philosophers who drew on the earlier asceticism of Pythagoreanism, Platonism, and Cynic-Stoicism. Philosophers such as Cicero, Philo, Plotinus, and Porphyry—all scathing in their denunciation of physical pleasure—had a powerful impact on what came to be known as the Christian ethic. This ascetic tendency among philosophers, coupled with the popular veneration for virginity in cults of the Mediterranean area, partially eclipsed the biblical belief in the sanctity of the physical. ...

 

... In orthodoxy, Jesus became the model for virginity among males and Mary among females. By means of a grotesque typology, Bishop Irenaeus presented Jesus and his mother as anti-types of Adam and his wife. According to that influential church father, our first parents lived in an unconsummate marriage until they sinned. Jesus and his mother, unlike Adam and Eve, never indulged in sex, and thereby they restored corrupt mankind to the good graces of God.[5] In the third century the earlier tradition held by some Christians that Jesus married was squelched and the speculation by others that Jesus was perpetually virginal coagulated into unquestioned dogma. 

 

In the fourth century some church fathers replaced martyrdom with virginity as the supreme virtue. With the rise of monasticism a rift between secular and sacred vocations emerged, and celibacy gradually became the sine qua non of the holier life. The monks assumed that pain was purer than pleasure, so much attention was given to ridding life of all fleshly satisfactions except those absolutely essential for individual survival. 

 Augustine is most to blame for the sexually ascetic ethic of Latin Christianity. His training in the pagan classics, coupled with a guilt complex resulting from youthful excesses, caused him in later life virtually to identify pleasure with sin. Augustine believed that couples who fall in love also fall in morality. Cupid love effects a lowering of virtue while spiritual love, divorced from sexual intercourse, causes a heightening of virtue. Indulgence of the tender passions was considered incompatible with total consecration. 

Augustine denounced Bishop Julian who held that sexual desire was not necessarily defiling and that it was intrinsic to human nature. Julian concluded that Jesus had sexual desire and that Christians who marry are not second class citizens in the kingdom of God. But the Bishop of Hippo argued that it was impossible for Jesus the perfect man to have sexual desire which is tainted with evil. Julian, who was condemned as a heretic, was closer than Augustine to the authentic biblical ethic pertaining to sex and marriage. A propos of ironical heresies such as this, David Mace laments: 

It is a great pity that the inhibited Christian mind has obscured for us all too often those wholesome features of Old Testament marriage. Some of the statements of the early [Christian] fathers, with their implications concerning the unspir- itual and even unwholesome nature of the appointed means of human generation, would have sounded gravely heretical in Hebrew ears.[6]

Jesus, who endorsed the marital standard embodied in the Genesis creation story, would also have rejected Augustine’s sexual ethic.

 

Augustine and Aquinas, the main pillars of medieval orthodoxy, differed little in their sexual asceticism. Both damned marriage with faint praise by making invidious comparisons of its lower good to the higher good of virginity. Both believed that marriage was a concession to human weakness and that the curse of sexual desire had been perpetuated throughout history from the aboriginal disobedient pair. 

In modern history all Christian churches have made efforts to de-escalate the medieval anti-sexual crusade and restore an awareness of the sanctity of sexuality. The sin-sex syndrome which came into Christianity from Hellenistic dualism has been the cause of an apostasy that has been most difficult to extricate. Yet it is becoming increasingly apparent to most Christians, as it was to Orson Hyde, that the intimate encounters between husband and wife can enhance the life-style of even the holiest of men. More psychosomatic wholeness would result if there were revived the Hebraic outlook that marital coitus is at least as hallowed as virginal abstinence, and that a married Savior need not be regarded as less pure than one who was a lifelong celibate.