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- [00:00]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmont
When you want to look smart in Sunday school, if you want your friends to think you're cool, when you want to seem wise and not a fool, it's Christie's Corner.
- [00:11]
Dr. Richard Leduc
So in today's podcast, we're going to do part three of Section 93 of the Doctrine and Covenants. In part one, Garrett, you kind of set the table for why Section 93 is such a, an enormous revelation. And in part two, you talked a little bit about the nature of Christ is explained through this section. And so what are we going to talk about in part three?
- [00:34]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmont
Well, as promised, you know, we were, we talked about how we're going to. We're going to, we want to kick the blasphemy up a notch as far as it relates to the Christian world. We're going to, to talk about aspects of doctrine, section 93 that are actually even difficult for, I would guess, some Latter Day Saints to fully comprehend because it sometimes goes against what we generally think. So we talked about again, if you, if you haven't listened to part one and you haven't listened to part two, I don't know why in the world you'd start at part three. Actually, it would seem like that hopefully you got hooked with part one. You hope that it got better in part two and you came back to part three just because you're desperate for this to have had some meaning rather than the waste of time. So, but if you're just starting on part three, make sure you go back to part one, where we set the table in a lot of these discussions. But we left off talking about the fact that D&C93 explains this nature of Jesus, that Jesus did not receive a fullness at first. He goes on to say that I give unto you these sayings that you may understand and know how to worship. So why does this matter? You might even be saying right now by the time it's the third podcast, why does this matter? It matters because understanding who Jesus is and his divinity is what the Lord says here, that you may. That you may understand and know how to worship and know what you worship, that you may come unto the Father in my name and in due time receive of his fullness. That's verse 19 of D&C93. Why does it matter? Because God says that it matters that we understand who God is and why we worship him. But if we were to drop down to verse 21, remember last time we talked about John 1:1, right in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was, was with God, and the Word Was God that, that beginning statement of, of John in the New Testament. Think about that in your mind as we read verse 21. And now verily I say unto you, I was in the beginning with the Father and am the firstborn. Okay? So John 1:1 says in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Here the Lord is saying something very similar to Joseph Smith. I was in the beginning with the Father and am the firstborn. Verse 22. And all those who are begotten through me are partakers of the glory of the same and are of the Church of the firstborn. Here's where things get heavy. Verse 23. Ye were also in the beginning with the Father, that which is Spirit, even the Spirit of truth. So this is where we have problems right here in River City if we're talking about what a traditional Christian believes about God. Now remember we talked about this in the first, in the first part of this, this idea of God's aseity, right? Essentially only God and Jesus again it's a triune God. So together pre existing in the beginning there wasn't anything as far as a Christian's concern. Now in our Latter Day Saint sensibilities, like you know, you're thinking of God floating around in, in space and rocks and planets flying by or what? No, for a Christian this creation is this ex nihilo creation right out of nothing. This is creation ex nihilo, meaning this isn't God took a whole bunch of dirt and built a mountain. Dirt doesn't exist, mountains don't exist, space doesn't exist, time doesn't exist. Nothing exists except God. Now one of the doctrines that Latter Day Saints embrace, and one of the reasons why we embrace it is DNC93 but one of the doctrines we embrace that we don't realize how incredible it is is the idea of a pre existent life. But this isn't even just saying that you have a pre existent life. I mean maybe I might be able to wrap my head around the idea that God created my spirit just before he sent it to earth to, you know, be born somewhere where I never hear about Jesus and then burn in hell forever. But that's not what verse 23 is saying. So verse 21 says I was in the beginning with the Father. So the same way that Jesus was in the beginning with the Father, verse 23 says ye were also in the beginning with the Father. This is a declaration that in whatever way Jesus had a pre existent life. Somehow in whatever way we want to Describe it that we all had a pre existent life. Jesus was in the beginning with the Father, so are we. And in fact that's going to be expanded even beyond that. And verse 24 says, and truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come. And whatsoever is more or less than. This is the spirit of that wicked one who was a liar from the beginning. The spirit of truth is of God. I am the spirit of truth. And John bore record of me saying he received a fullness of truth, yea, even all truth. And no man receiveth a fullness unless he keepeth his commandments. He that keepeth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things. I mean, so already there this is going even further down the line, right? That, that we could somehow know all things. We could have omniscience. We, we could know all things. Those who keep their commandments, he that keep his commandments and receive with truth and light until he's glorified in truth knoweth all things. Now verse 29 is the whole reason why we want to do the podcast. It took us three parts to get to verse 29 just to talk about it so that. So hopefully the payoff is worth something. Otherwise, you know, it's. It's like you just watched a giant Avengers movie and in the end it wasn't very good. Yeah, you know, I mean that's, that wouldn't happen because it's Avengers movie. With this podcast, it could happen. Verse 29 is one of the things that really sets Latter Day Saints apart from, from other Christians. Verse 23 already alluded to it, but verse 29 is going to make it even more, more, more directly stated. Man was also in the beginning with God. So what do you mean by that? Well, we already said, you know, Jesus was in the beginning with God and in some way, some at least similar way, at least using the metaphors that we're looking at, man was also in the beginning with God. And if that's not blasphemous enough, right. If you're, if Chris claiming that instead of an ex nihilo creation, somehow we all have a pre existence and not just a pre existence like an before God created us on earth, but that we were in the beginning with God. The second part of verse 29 is even more problematic. Intelligence or the light of truth was not created or made, which. Okay, that's. That, that means that that's not ex nihilo creation. Then if it wasn't created or made. But it's the last part of verse 29 that creates a real problem. Intelligence, or the light of truth was not created or made. Neither indeed can be. So intelligence can't be created by God.
- [09:31]
Dr. Richard Leduc
So this strikes a blow to this just idea of this classical understanding of the omnipotence God.
- [09:40]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmont
Yeah, right. So I mean, if we were to say, here's the thing that God can't do. Well, I mean, again, for Latter Day Saints, we often view God, and I think in a more appropriate terms, but we often view God as having certain laws that God follows. Right. Well, while your traditional Calvinist would agree that God has laws that he follows, those laws exist because God said, those are the laws I'm going to follow. And of course he is going to follow them because God does whatever he wants to do. But the idea that there's something that God cannot create, that God can't do places some kind of limitation around whatever it is we call omnipotence. I guess we could ask it a different way. Could God save us if we chose to reject Jesus forever?
- [10:42]
Dr. Richard Leduc
No.
- [10:43]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmont
If. If we believe that the only way that you can be saved is through Jesus, could God save us anyway without. If we reject Jesus and we forever reject him?
- [10:56]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Answering as a Latter Day Saint, I guess so, yeah.
- [10:59]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmont
Or answer however you want. Answer. Answer. As a salesman, as a Latter Day.
- [11:04]
Dr. Richard Leduc
Saint, I would say no. Perhaps as a Calvinist, I might say, well, I mean, God's going to save who he wants to save.
- [11:11]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmont
Exactly. So in the Calvinist version of salvation, the sacrifice of Jesus is how the omnipotent God chose to save a very, very few, by the way, irredeemably wicked people who deserve to go to hell. Jesus sacrificed. That's how God chose to save them. Could God have chosen a different way to save them?
- [11:44]
Dr. Richard Leduc
As a Calvinist, I would say, of.
- [11:46]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmont
Course he wouldn't have, because. Right, that's. But if you were a Calvinist.
- [11:49]
Dr. Richard Leduc
But of course he could.
- [11:50]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmont
But if you say that he did, I mean, again, it goes back to God created everything out of nothing. He created the plan out of nothing. He created the whole idea. When someone's like, well, there are certain laws that even God has to follow. A Calvinist would laugh at that. God created the laws. We don't know anything about God. We can't understand his wisdom at all. So of course there's no law that God is bound by. But. But for Latter Day Saints, it starts with Section 93, but it's going to keep rapidly Progressing until Joseph's going to reveal this even more. So this idea that not only can we progress to become like God, which is certainly what DNC93 is saying, it's certainly what DNC76 is saying. It's certainly at least implied by what his other revelations are saying. But when things really become radical is when Joseph Smith explains this plan isn't just how we can become like God. God himself through some means came to become God. Now we started off in, in lecture one of this, you know, part part one of this, part three, maybe part four by the time I'm done part 11 podcast, right? We have four people that are listening. Three of them are my mom, that, that by by. We started off in part one talking about this Christian conception of the aseity of God. In fact there is one thing that a Christian will say that God can't do and that is God can't make you always have existed because you haven't. Right? Sometimes Latter Day Saints, you know, we don't understand when we talk to people and we say, well we believe we can become like God. And a Christian thinks that that's blasphemous, right? Well you can't become like God. You know, we might even say to them, you might even have said on your mission, well don't you think if God's all powerful, he could make me like him? But that's only talking about the power of God. It's not talking about the nature of God. God's very nature according to a Christian, is that he has always been God. If that's the case, if God has always been God, then he can't make you exactly like him. Because if you're not God right now, and I don't know if any gods are listening, if you're not God right now, then you can't, however much power God gives you, you can't have always been God. That's that aseity of God. God is a self existent being. He is not created. But this is what verse 29 just said. Man was in the beginning with God, intelligence was not created. So this is destroying several aspects of this, this idea that there's no pre existence, the idea that God creates everything out of nothing and of course the idea that God that there's literally nothing God can't do.
- [15:32]
Dr. Richard Leduc
So in Latter Day Saint teachings, this is some of the deeper teachings that really help to explain obviously a lot of.
- [15:41]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmont
Right, well this is mainly. This is a sleep aid at this point. This is because I've been having a Hard time. Ambien's not working for me. Turn on Dr. Dirkmont.
- [15:51]
Dr. Richard Leduc
So when you teach Doctrine and Covenants, Section 93 to your students, are there some students that maybe haven't thought of this or that struggle with this is maybe you're presenting it?
- [16:04]
Dr. Garrett Dirkmont
Absolutely. Because many of them haven't thought deeply about this concept at all. I mean, the reality is most of us don't learn in CTRB class about the aseity of God. So I don't expect them to know that that's what their Christian friends think and believe. I don't expect them to know that. I didn't know that. I wasn't taught that. So how in the world would any. You know, I mean, like, it's. It's an expectation I have, but what I want is, I want them to understand some of these deeper theological questions that exist and why it is that what Latter Day Saints believe is so radically different. Look, we love our Christian brothers and sisters. I'm grateful to their faith, I'm grateful for their goodness. I'm grateful for all the positive they are in the world. But it can sometimes be troubling to us, like you mentioned in our first podcast, that those same people that we want to be on the same side with because they also believe in Jesus, sometimes see us as as heretics, as. As devil worshipers, as people who don't worship the same Jesus. This is part of the reason why, because the first part of DNC93 we talked about, Jesus himself became, at the very least, even for that brief time in mortality, he didn't have all of the fullness of the Father until after his baptism. There was at least that time period that Jesus didn't have all the powers in heaven, on earth. So that's a blasphemy. Then you go to verse 29, which is stating unequivocally that the same way the Word was with God in the beginning, man was also in the beginning with God. And to make it even more direct, intelligence was not created, which, that might be a statement. I might be able to get away from the idea of ex nihilo creation, but how can I get away from the last part of that sentence, that intelligence cannot be created? Not only are we saying God didn't create everything, we're actually saying there's some things that God apparently cannot create. Now, obviously I'm not excited to make a giant list of things I don't think God can do, but this plays into this understanding. Verse 31 says, Behold, here's the agency of man. And here's the condemnation of man, because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifested unto them, and they receive not the light. And every man whose spirit receiveth not the light is under condemnation. For man is spirit. The elements are eternal. And now again, if the elements are eternal, then and have always existed well, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fullness of joy, and when separated, man cannot receive a fullness of joy. Verse 35 continues. The elements are the tabernacle of God. Man is the tabernacle of God, even temples and whatsoever temple is defiled, God shall destroy that temple. The glory of God is intelligence, or in other words, light and truth. Light and truth forsake that evil one. And then we get a little bit of a pretty strong refutation of the idea of original sin, the idea that everyone is born irredeemably sinful. They have a sin nature that they cannot escape. Why do. Why is. Is there a question from that Calvinist theologian I was listening to about whether or not a baby is saved if a baby dies? Well, because your baby born sinful. All. All are born sinful. All deserve to go to hell. Without faith, they can't be saved. But verse 38 says every spirit of man was innocent in the beginning, and God having redeemed man from the fall, men became again in their infant state, innocent before God. Now, I know you've all seen a baby and you've seen, of course a baby's innocent. You know, you don't hold a baby against the crimes against. Of his parents against a baby. In fact, you'd see that as the most unfair thing in the world. And yet the idea of the fall of mankind in Christianity is, however innocent that baby might be, you know, being held in his mother's arms is. Is sinful, is a fallen creature destined for hellfire. Here in verse 38, the Lord teaches Joseph something very different, that every spirit of man was innocent in the beginning, and in their infant state, they are innocent before God. It means we actually all start out innocent. We don't start out sinful. Well, then how do we become what we are today? How do we become sinful? Well, verse 39, that wicked one cometh and taketh away light and truth through disobedience from the children of men and because of the tradition of their fathers. And then verse 40, which is really, I think, the point of this revelation, but I have commanded you to bring up your children in light and truth. That seems to be that what spurred this revelation in the first place. Was there was some kind of chastisement that these men were receiving for not properly educating and teaching their children. And the way that God decided to teach it is this. Let me explain to you the nature of Jesus, then let me explain to you your own nature. And then once you've understood that, let me explain to you the nature of your children. It's kind of this progressive thing. First the Son of God, then you, then your kids, and, and really giving them this idea. And look, in a Calvinistic world, it was not uncommon to simply believe that the reason why your child was not a good child was God never chose to save them. God doesn't choose to save most people. So if it seems like your son or your daughter just seems to be filled with, you know, too much sin and they're, they're, you know, they're constantly causing you a problem, the reality is you might eventually come to the conclusion that, that God never gave them the gift of faith. The reason why it seems like they don't have saving grace in them is they don't. God never intended to save them. It was a limited atonement. The atonement was only for the people that God intended to save. And again, you can only come to that conclusion because if God's all powerful, then that means God is going to save whoever he wants to save. And if he chooses to not save somebody, you have to say that's God's will. Well, this is something very different. Instead of throwing your hands up in the air and saying, well, if my son doesn't reform, it's clearly because he was never given the gift of faith in the first place. Instead, the Lord is teaching in the beginning in the Spirit, and then in their infant state, all children were innocent. Something happened between the innocence of birth and the sinfulness you see now. But it's not because God doesn't want to save that child. In fact, God desperately wants to save everyone. It's the glory of God to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. One of the reasons why I love Latter Day Saintism rather than Mormonism, if we want to say that, is the expansive nature of God's desperate desire to save everyone. But this pre existent life is more than just a good explanation for why it is that we, you know, we chose to come here. It's an explanation of how it is we can believe the things we believe. One of the reasons why a Christian says you can't become like God is you haven't always existed. DNC93 is saying, you Have Joseph Smith is going to expand upon this in fact and in. In. In multiple places, say I might with boldness declare that God never had the power to create the spirit of man at all. Now that is top shelf blasphemy that you're pulling down. It's the, it's the expensive bottle of blasphemy in the Christian world. But what Joseph is saying, the spirit of man is eternal and there is no creation about it. In some way. And we don't have this fully revealed and there's all kinds of theories that people have about it. But whatever the theory is, in some way you have always existed. And I don't just mean the molecules that make you up have always existed. You have always existed in some way that is intelligible intelligence or the light of truth is not created or made. Neither indeed can be. Part of the reason why we believe that you can become like your heavenly Father or your heavenly Mother is. You are the same type of being they are. Whatever type of being that is, you are the same type of being. Now, to fully game this out, we'd have to go and have a conversation about the King Fallet sermon, which I'll probably hold off on for a little while. I need you to trust me more after this discussion of acidity. But the. The reality is DNC93 is talking about our eternal natures. But let's go back to our triangle. Remember I told you to drop the triangle and at the top you have omnipotent, right, that God's all powerful. On the left side of that, the left point of the triangle you have that God's all good. But then we have the problem of how horrible this world is. Even if we want to say that so much suffering in this world comes from agency, which it certainly does. Even if we want to say that, the reality is there's suffering and evil in this world that doesn't come from agency. When a three or four month old baby dies suddenly, what's the agency there? The reality is agency describes some of the suffering we have in this world, but it doesn't describe all of it. How do we then get past the idea that God is both all powerful and all good? Couldn't God, if he wanted to have saved us without us having to come here? We say this life's a test. But you know, doesn't God already know the answers to the exam? Doesn't he? He already have our bubble sheet filled in. Doesn't he already know that's why understanding the nature of how God Came to be God, which is this sentence I just said is the most blasphemous sentence in all Christianity. That God progressed to become God is essential in understanding how it is we hope to someday progress to become like God. But there is a very stark difference between the Christian world and their attempt to explain away or describe suffering. Frankly, for Calvin, he would simply say, it's the wisdom of God. And if you say, well, I don't think it's very much wisdom that there's this much suffering, Calvin's response would be, that's exactly what I expect an unrepentant, unregenerate sinner to say. Of course you'd question God. That's what you do. But we have to trust that, that whatever happens is God's will. Somehow there's a benefit to it. You'll actually hear this all the time, or you hear it all the time. You shouldn't hear it in a latter saying saint church, but you hear it all the time. Everything that happens is God's will, right? Oh, I believe every single thing that happens happens for a reason. That's easy to say when you, you know, miss your bus, but because you did, you met someone walking to work and you were able to share a Book of Mormon with them. It's a lot more difficult to say when there's some kind of horrific, inexplicable disease, accident, death, suffering. In reality. What we gain from this knowledge of the pre existence is the fact that we chose to come to this wicked world and we weren't tricked into it. God didn't play a game of a shell game. And he's, and he's got the ball underneath the shells and he's moving them really quickly. Oh, sorry. It's going to be really suffering and all horrible evil there. According to Moses, there are many worlds that have passed away, right? And we were in the beginning with God, which means we have seen, I don't know how many eons, how many passages of time away we have seen, of mortalities then and gone. We've seen it. We knew full well before we came to this earth that it was going to be terrible. In fact, we knew, as Joseph Smith would later teach, that that's how God came to be God, that he was once a man and once on an earth like us. And he, through whatever means becomes God. So we knew that the way our Father became who he was and the way that Jesus became who he was was through this mortal experience. And knowing that, I mean, we knew it again, we weren't tricked we could see it that if you choose to come to Earth, you're going to have loved ones die before they should. You're going to be subject to disease and death and famine and, and, and the harshest of cruelties and, and hate and, you know, just every type of evil and unfairness that could possibly exist. And knowing that we still chose to come to Earth, why we say it actually all the time in Primary, we just, I just don't know that we believe it, but we say it all the time in Primary. We say we had progressed as far as we possibly could without coming to Earth and getting a body. Do we believe that? If we believe that, then that. What that means is that there is some aspect to mortality that isn't just incident to a plan. There's some aspect of mortality that is apparently essential to becoming like God. Could God make us like him against our will and without any effort? And if he could, well, why doesn't he? Why doesn't he just snap his fingers and all this suffering is over and we're all gods and goddesses and it's the greatest time ever. Bring some chips to the party. Why doesn't God just make it all go away? Jesus asks a very similar question. Father, if thou be willing, let this cup pass from me. Why do you think it is that the Father didn't? If there was some other way of saving mankind that wasn't through the abject and horrific suffering of God's only son, don't we hope, don't we wish that God would have done something different? I know that we sometimes feel like if we lessen the power of God, that that's a scary thing to us. I want to believe that God has single power that's ever existed, but then we run into the similar problems that other traditional Christians run into. And that is if you believe God is truly all powerful, then fundamentally all suffering is meaningless. Because even if you say, well, my suffering makes me know more about God, it teaches me something, it brings me closer to God. Even if you say that, if you're claiming that God is classically all powerful, then that means he could give you that knowledge without you suffering. Only Latter Day Saints believe that the purpose of this life is to learn and grow to become more like God. Certainly Christians think that you, by being righteous, you certainly bring glory to God, you certainly become a better person. But we believe that we always existed and that God created this world for the purpose of us growing to become like God. And apparently the way that we become like God is through maintaining obedience to God's commandments, being faithful in a mortality that is terrible. Frankly, it's. It's actually what Jesus teaches, right? My kingdom is not of this world. In the world you will have tribulation. But fear not, I have overcome the world. The point of Christianity is that this life is going to be at times terrible. But it's not about this life. The difference between us and traditional Christians is that, yes, you are going through sufferings in your life. You're going through them right now. We all are. But you chose to come to this world. You saw how horrible it was. And even knowing that, even seeing that, you said, if this is the only way that I can become like my heavenly father and my heavenly mother, that I'm going to do it. Now we just don't remember that we made that choice. But the by virtue of the fact that we are here means we all made that choice. And we know there are billions of spirits who didn't make that choice, who chose to follow Lucifer in the rejection of God's plan doctrine. Coming section 93, studied, prayed about, put into context can help a Latter Day Saint understand who they really are. And actually that's the purpose of God giving it to Joseph in the first place. He says it so you can understand God, so you can understand yourself, so you can have a better insight into who you are as an eternal being. You were in the beginning with God. You are not just some footnote that God created 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 70 years ago. I don't know how old anyone listening to this is. Anyone who's over 100, I'm sure is already asleep. But however old you are, that is not the point of your creation. We sing it in. You know, if you could hide a co op, do you think that you could ever, through all eternity, find the generations where gods began to be? The answer to the question is no. Brigham Young will talk about this. He will say that it's our minds can comprehend eternity going before us. We can understand that after every tomorrow, there's another tomorrow. We get that. We, we've been living in time. Now it gets a little bit harder to comprehend. Billion years from now, there'll still be another tomorrow, right? I can barely make it through next week, right? So it's harder to comprehend that idea. But we still get it. We get our minds. We can wrap around the fact that I now have an eternal spirit that can never be destroyed, that will always, always exist. But Brigham Young explains all that came before us. We can't comprehend. In fact, he says we are not. Capacitated is the word he uses to comprehend. We don't have the ability to understand having existed for eternity. And already you're probably thinking, well, what about this, what about that? There's all kinds of what abouts and, and the reason why is we don't have the ability to understand how it is that we, like God, have always existed. It's easy to think about a pre existence when it's just like an hour before we came to earth. Much harder if we talk about ourselves being an eternal being. So hopefully you'll study doctrine, covenant, section 93 for the powerful revelation that it is and recognize it as one of the things that sets us apart from other Christians but in such a great and glorious way. There is suffering in this world, but our pre existent eternality means we chose to come here. I'm not saying you chose your, your sufferings. I'm not saying you chose how you would, you know, how horrible things would be for you when you came. But I am saying that God didn't trick you into coming. He explained the plan to you, and after hearing the plan, you said, if that's how we have to do it, then that's how we're going to do it. So think of yourself more as this eternal being trying to figure out who you are. The reality is you are an eternal being. And as the light of truth rests upon you, you will more and more recognize that you aren't someone who was just created a few decades ago. You are an eternal being. Man was also in the beginning with God, which is the reason why this life matters so much. We've existed forever and we're gonna exist forever. And we have this teeny little bit on earth where we can grow to become like our heavenly Father and our heavenly mother. So hopefully this has been insightful for you and I promise on the next podcast we're going to talk about something completely different. What? You know, maybe some other Latin term perhaps rather than ex nihilo or something like that. Let's talk about. We'll try to find a Greek one. I know. Homo usion. We'll talk about that. Just kidding. It'll be something. Yeah. What a teaser. Yeah. If you can tune in next week, we'll talk about hetero usion and homo and no, we'll. We plan to talk about some of the early antagonisms that Joseph Smith faced, people attacking Joseph for what he, what he believed, and get back into the meat of history. And you can bid a thankful ado to theology, and maybe we won't talk about it very much going forward. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast hosted by historian Dr. Garrett Dirkmot and Dr. Richard Leduc. If you know of anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. Until next time.