March 1980
Dear ….
I've thought quite a bit about your question regarding
what I consider the crux of "Mormonism" to be and like to share with
you what I believe it is. To me it is its concept of the God and man and
their relationship.
When the young and
unsophisticated Joseph saw the vision of God he Father and His Son in the grove
near his home, he saw two distinct personages. With this great revelation and
subsequent knowledge came the restoration and bringing together of several great
truths.' Among them are:
1). God does exist and is
actively concerned about the affairs of men ( is neither "dead' nor absent);
2). He is a glorified and
perfected being (not a vague metaphysical force for good);
3). His Son Jesus Christ is
in His express image and glory, and is a separate personality (not one in being
as most theologians unitedly and illogically suppose, but one in purpose)',
4). We are all the spiritual
sons and daughters of God, created in His image (not everlastingly inferior creatures
created by his good pleasure out of nothing solely to honor and worship Him)';
and
5). We have the capacity to
become like Him through the power of His Son's atonement and our individual
obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel. (not saved or damned by His
caprice of will through no act of ours). In short, the vitality of Mormonism (or
the essence of true Christianity) lies in the worship of a (of truly worth
worshipping and emulating--for lie is the idealization of all the highest aspirations,
attributes, and capacities latent within Man and Woman. In comprehending
His divine nature we more fully comprehend our own potential, as well as come
to understand the great worth and potential of every soul who has ever been
born, is being born, and shall yet be born. Perhaps in no other way do we become more
godly or appreciate what it is to be like God, than in using our talents,
strains, and efforts to lift and succor one another--particularly our own
families.
Let's analyze some of the
philosophical implications of this anthropomorphizing? Well, my lovely
cockatoo, what manner of creature do you suppose Jesus was (and is), you are, I
am, everyone is, was and will be? If religion is not the study of man-what he
is, what he is capable of becoming, and his relationship to others--can you
think of something it should rather be? Yet that seems to be what the
Christianity of the Dark Ages evolved into--something rather than man-oriented
when the theologians no longer conceived of God as a glorified, perfected
being. The simple doctrine of an anthropomorphic God found in the old and new
Testaments was corrupted and lost by the meaningless jargon of the creeds
(adopted at Nicaea that developed out of the intellectual mysticism and
confusion of the fourth century And these creeds and beliefs have largely continued
to this day. You know the creeds: "God is a spirit, eternal independent,
infinite and immutable, who is present
Everywhere, who seeth all
things and governs the universe”…and “He is supreme intelligence, who has
neither body or figure, or color and living cannot fall under the senses…”
Catholic Church
There is but one and true
sod, everlasting, without body or parts, of infinite power, wisdom and goodness
the maker and preserver of all things, visible and invisible; and in the unity
of this Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power eternity, the
Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost..." (Methodist
Church) is but one living and
true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit,
invisible, without body, parts or passions, immutable, immense, eternal,
incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute,
working all things according to the counsel of his immutable and righteous
will, for his own glory;....with all most just and terrible in his judgments;
hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty." (Presbyterian
Church).
How can anyone he expected to
understand, much less to love and be loved by, such an incomprehensible God as
the above tenets would lead him to worship? One would think that the
explanations that have developed out of these creeds would he beneath the
dignity of ministers of the gospel to promote.
Ludwig Feuerbach considered
such a conception of Deity to be "monstrous", anti-man, and
inconsistent with the real essence of Christianity (and life!) To elict it was
inconceivable" (and it is) In an attempt to analyze the God believed in by
Luther, Feuerbach described it as a "thought-being" who was the sum
of all our harshest tendencies and feelings, while the incarnate Christ was the
revelation of (God to man of ills will in terms that man could understand One
may ask: How can I honor then Father and seek to become like him (even the
pronoun him is appropriate)
without becoming unlike the anthropomorphic Christ) whom the theologians say we
can properly adore and worship and honor? How can two such broad extremes be
"one God"? If such an inconceivable corruption of Deity is not
contrary to the laws of nature, it is most assuredly contrary to reason.
Certainly Carlyle's jibe of
an absentee God, "sitting idle ever since the first Sabbath on the outside
of His universe and seeing it go,"--is true of St Augustine and his
brother monks' corruption of deity. Perhaps it was not that God had deserted
man so much as it was that man was no longer -capable of comprehending God..
."How much did these men know of that greater revelation of God, the book
of nature, which flooded, the last century with light? Interpreting Deity, as
perforce they must, by the content of their experience, think what a narrow
emanation of the life of the Dark Ages their conception had to be!
"What of His physical
personality, considered from the standpoint of ascetics--men who devised the
human body as viler than the rags of a beggar? "What of His intellectual
personality, interpreted by an age dogmatic and un-scientific to the last
degree? What of Bus social and moral personality, mirrored in the imaginations
of men, whose highest social ideal was to shirk all contact with, and
responsibility for the world, by living in caves, convents, and monasteries?
"Is.it any wonder then,
that when men began to study science, when they went direct to nature for their
ideals, when they read od's purpose concerning man by studying man himself,
especially in his relation to social evolution,--is it any wonder that they
turned away from the artificial conception promulgated by theologians? Was not
this idea of God, after all, only an intensified conception of the medieval
monarch; whose approbation was to be gained, and whose anger appeased, through
the mediation of court favorites (saints, angels, the Virgin Mary, the Son of
God), who might be bribed or cajoled into pleading the sinner's c au s e?
"Such a conception could
not co-exist with ideals attained through the larger generalizations of life.
To find pleasure in the servile prostration of multitudes is not now conceived
a noble trait even in kings; les therefore, in the King of kings.
"To make life and death
dependent on the mere caprice of human will, we have now come to believe unjust
and dangerous, and accordingly have substituted the reign of human law; in the
same way, eternal life has come to be conceived as dependent, not upon the
favor or anger Deity (in the medieval sense), but upon divine law (i.e. the
laws of the universe).
"But in this shifting of
the ultimate Source of volition and responsibility, a great mistake was made.
instead of stripping from the Christ or Bible-type of Deity all the vagaries
and artificialities in which he had been clothed during the Dark Ages, and then
re-clothing Him according to the ideals of modern life, scientists overthrew
the type itself; and after awhile theologians caught up by substituting a vague
generalization--first fathered by Buddha and afterwards developed by
Plato--under the mistaken notion that such a concession was necessary in order
to patch up the breach between science and religion. I repeat that a great
mistake was made, for after all, what type of creative intelligence other than
the man-type, can the race possible come in contact with? Why, then throw away
the teachings of experience, from some fancy that it may be inadequate, and
build upon non-experience, which we know is inadequate?
The point of the foregoing
discussion, so far as the present volume is concerned, is this: Mormonism,
though starting as it did, in the blaze of the scientific age, yet took for its
object of worship the Bible-type of God; but it did not load itself down with
the incubus of medieval interpretation.
"Like Christ, God is
conceived as the perfected man; but as to the meaning of "perfected",
no theologian of the past, however wise, in the estimation of Christendom, can
have a voice: each man knows God to the extent that he has grown like Him; and
he has grown like Him to the extent that he as discovered and obeyed law.
"Mormonism thus finds in
life, not metaphysical speculation, its commentary upon Scripture. Accordingly,
let the reader come to this book, not with the pre-judgment that he is to
witness the setting up again of a conception which has fallen a hundred times
in previous polemical battles; but rather with the idea that Mormonism may have
something new and entirely/worthy of modern thought. For however true of the
Augustinian conception, Carlyle's jibe....has no meaning whatever in the
conception believed in by Latter-day Saints."-A
Let us consider the
accomplishments of modern “puny” and "mere morta1" anthropomorphic
man in just the last decade or so: "his computers store and impart
information that overwhelms the imagination, and his lasers give light to the
lunar landscape or remove tiny cataracts from the human eye. He predicts and,
in some measure, controls the weather. He has unleashed the atom to consume the
world or irrigate the waste places and run the faltering human heart. He walks
the wide expanse of space, builds his own small planets and dwells within, them
for months at a time, traverses the moon's surfaces while millions of others throughout
the world watch and hear it all happen. He maps the face of Mars and Venice in
minute detail, hurls missiles into the sun and onward everlastingly into space.
"Technologically
speaking, in other words, man has now attained a certain divinity, accomplishing
wonders many people once assumed would be impossible for any God 'handicapped'
with physical limitations. In the words of Archibald MacLeish...'ours is one of
the great ages in history...an age in which the old impossible heroic myths
have all come true.' (when We Are Gods? Saturday Review, Oct 1967,
p.22)."
In the realm of social evolution in recent years, women and minority groups, so long sup-pressed and underrated (and no wonder, considering the tyrannical gods Most of world has paid homage to!)have made great strides in emancipation and recognition. Our consciousness has been raised concerning the underprivileged and oppressed all over the world, and war is no longer perceived as glorious and heroic, hut as. the horrible and destructive evil that it really is. 'L
J
Joseph. Smith has written:
“Man possesses the faculty to
increase in knowledge, wisdom and power.
'He has subdued the earth and
rides upon the air and on the seas.
"He has harnessed the
lightings and the cataracts and made them
serve him.
"His inventive get1us
has brought the forces of nature to obey him.
“He has discovered hidden
secrets of the universe.
He builds great structures
reaching into the heavens, and improves and beautifies his surroundings.
“He has taken advantage of
the knowledge of past ages and by his observation and adaptation has increased
his knowledge and power.
"He has developed to a
high degree the gift of reason.
"He has inherited the
gift of speech and conveys his thoughts to his fellow man in a complex
language, both written and oral.
"He has learned to send
his thoughts out upon the ethereal waves almost instantly to all parts of the
earth.
"Neither land nor sea
stands in the way of his communications.
"In his higher
civilization he possesses an esthetic nature. He loves the beautiful and
appreciates things lovely and artistic. By these qualities he is able to touch
the hearts of his fellow men and sway them in their emotions. All of these
powers are increased as he draws nearer to his Creator and Father. When he
forgets the source of all these qualifications and turns from his God, then are
these blessings impaired and he sinks in ignorance and sin. Without the
guidance of the Divine Presence, whence he comes, he becomes a slave to
savagery and debased ignorance, for it is the Spirit of truth which enlightens
and sustains.”
Our spiritual and moral
aspirations and advancement has often seemed less focused and ambitions than
those in the domains of science and the arts. I do not in the least
join the ranks of orthodox theologians who, with self-righteous distain, look
upon the desperate search for knowledge, power, wealth and liberation, as well
as the indulgence in spiritualism, unlawful sex, and drugs,-- as
wholly hedonistic, permissive, and decadent Truman Madsen) The end view
the efforts of humanity to find self-realization and fulfillment as largely
misguided, and watch with sympathy (if not empathy!) the attempts of some to be
"turned on as but distorted concern for godly power, and often a sincere
desire to find escape or meaning in the very real pain, frustration, terror,
and alienation this life can have: Surely a large part of the blame for the
moral/spiritual fusion lies with theology itself. or the only type of God that
can have any meaning (and hope) whatsoever for man is a man-type of God and
when the theologians varied from the anthropomorphic God found in the simple
teachings of the Bible, perhaps considering it too puerile or
blasphemous (and both are utterly ridiculous!), or blinded by a too-long
tradition of metaphysical vagueness, they did humanity a grave dis- service. As
Marion Evans (Eliot), Feuerbach, and others would likely have understood, the
only conceivable experiences of man are human experiences; therefore, the only
conceivable God to man must be a glorified, perfected Man. A man-type of God is
the only type of God with whom we can identify, worship, and emulate.
"The only conception
that any people can possible have of Deity is one which comes within their
mental horizon-- the horizon bounded by their experience into His personality
they will think their highest and noblest ideals. What they love most, fear
most, admire most, will somehow be found among his attributes. To the extent,
and in the direction, that they are civilized and enlightened, to that extent
and in the-direction will lie be idealized.
It was therefore a profound
remark of our behavior, that to know God is to have eternal life. Io one can
know Him save as he becomes like Him. To know him absolutely, is therefore to
be perfect as He is perfect, which of course could be nothing else than eternal
life.
"By the same reasoning,
to know him in part is to be like Him in part, and therefore to be saved in
part; or to generalize, we are saved (i.e. we have eternal life assured unto
us) no faster than we learn to know -god; in other words, no faster than we
become like Him.'''
"But becoming like him
implies a progressive means of getting ideas about Him. Let us take time to see
how this thought works out in practice.
"To know (God is to have
adequate notions of His personality in, say, five different aspects:
physically, intellectually, socially, morally, and spiritually. Manifestly
these notions can come to man only as God reveals them. The germ ideas
respecting his personality are to be 'found in Scripture; but these are
meaningless, save as man thinks into them the content of his experience. The
real revelation of God to man is, therefore, too and in that which gives man
experience: in life--nature--law.
'If a man would have the
noblest ideal of (God's physical personality, let him master all that is known
of physiology and hygiene--and conform his own life thereto; if he would
realize his intellectual personality let him become familiar with the Elements
of intellect in man, then calculate what must be the intellect that could
create and control a solar system with all the myriad forms of life and being
therein manifested; if he would know God's social personality let him study
sociology, determine what qualities in man lead to love and harmony: in the
home, in the state, in the nation, in the world,--and then consider that God
has so mastered these that heaven (ideal social harmony) is His eternal
habitat; and so of God's moral and spiritual personalities: to the extent that
man discovers and lives moral and spiritual law,--to that extent he will know
God.
"It follows therefore,
from the very nature of things)that the honest man's conception of God is a
progressively growing ideal. As day by day, he discovers law (truth), and
especially as he conforms his life to law (obeys truth), so must his ideal of
the Ordainer of law charge...." and ecclesiasts who would
presume to lay an embargo on Hi5 soul by pronouncing what God is or is not, are
merely ascribing their own limitations and imperfections when they declare that
he cannot be anthropomorphic. It is their own self-revulsion that makes a
man-type of God seem repulsive.
It is in seeing upward that
we really see inward. "No being can thoroughly learn himself without
knowing more or less the things of God; neither can any being learn and
understand the things of God without learning himself; he must learn himself,
or he never can learn God.0 It is in comprehending the nature of God that we
more fully comprehend our own natures, and in comprehending our own natures, we
more fully comprehend his. As essential as a correct notion of God is a correct
notion of man himself as a child of God, possessing all the attributes of
Divinity in embryo. The man whose faith is to remove mountains (of sin)
"must feel himself...differing in degree, but not in kind from his Father
in Heaven, potentially free as a moral agent, and actually free, to the extent
that he has emancipated himself from sin; capable of becoming perfect as God is
perfect (Matthew 5:k8)."
The greatest freedom. is the
freedom to become This is the whole intent of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Truth
is knowledge of things as they really are, were, and are to com; Gospel truths
(divine laws and ordinances) are knowledge of who we really are, were, and are
capable of becoming And as we apply them, we unlock, enliven, or
"free" our divine potential. Faith then, is no blind leap, no
desperate gullibility, no "sense of being crucified on the paradox of the
absurd (Kierkegaard’s expression); rather, "it is the expression of the
inner self in harmony with a whole segment of one's prior experiences."
Faith in God as an exalted "Man of Holiness” ‘is the striving after of our
own highest ideals, noblest attributes, and fullest potential.
Christ was not only a
manifestation to man of God as He really is, but He is also a manifestation of
what man may actually become. In Him was the law when we keep His commandments,
we too become manifestations of
the Divine". "If
any man iii do is wil1 (the will of the Father's), he shall know of the
doctrine?." taught the Savior (John 7:17). We become our own proof and
witness of the gospel's verity. True knowledge is a state of being.
To know God is to be like God
and be perfect as he is perfect. Eternal life is the type and quality of life
that tie lives, and immortality is an extension of--not a replacement of--the
same habit patterns we form in mortality. In contemplating the potent statement
"The kingdom of God is within you" (Luke) 17:21), one realizes that
the varied kingdoms of glory (that we inherit in the here-
after) are the natural
outcome of the kinds of beings we have become and are on the way to becoming
here.'
The gospel of Jesus Christ is
much more than just a system of laws. Its whole intent and purpose is the
advancement of man.' Man is a progressive, evolving being "with a mind
capable of instruction, and a faculty which may be enlarged in proportion to
the heed and diligence given to the light communicated from heaven to the
intellect the nearer man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views, and
the greater his enjoyments, till he has overcome 1he evils of his life and
lost every desire for sin,"....and arrives at a point in faith where he
achieves the glory and presence of God. "But we consider that this is a
station to which no man ever arrived in a moment...." Our very
relationship to such an exalted and advanced Being puts us in a position to
progress and advance as well.' Even the great Einstein concluded that "the
harmony of natural law reveals an intelligence of such superiority that compared
to it all the scientific thinking and acting of human beings is an entirely
insignificant reflection." (From The World As I See It, as quoted by Mark
E. Peterson.) "Just as one may, with sufficient commitment, study, and
sensitivity, gradually comprehend the genius of an Einstein, a Beethoven, or a
da Vinci, he may also come to comprehend more and more fully the greatest
creative mind o± all, that of the Creator himself."
In pondering the nature of
man, the psalmist queried thousands of years ago--"What is man, that thou
art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him,(Psalms
8:4 It was almost as if in direct answer to this
that the Lord underscored His own purpose and existence to Moses: "For
this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life
of man." (Pearl of Great Price, Moses 1:39) He also emphasized what He
must surely considers the greatest, most demanding and fulfilling of all
careers – parenthood.
What greater aspiration can a
man have than to choose as a role model an all-powerful, all-loving
God-personage, who—of all the titles he has earned and deserves-prefers most to
be addressed as simply “Father”? And what more exalted view of woman can there
be--for was there, will there, ever be a father without a mother9 The ultimate
fulfillment then of either sex lies in union with the other; and if either sex
is diminished or suppressed, then the whole is lessened "Neither is the
man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord," wrote
Paul. God established the basic equality of the sexes when He ordained that.
neither men nor women can attain the greatest eternal heights without the
other. "In the heavens, are parentsn single?" penned the
poet-prophetess Eliza R. Snow, "No, the touu makes reason stare!/ Truth is
reason, truth eternal/ Tells me I've a mother there...."
"Mormonism" is no
new religion to appear in an already befuddled world nor even an aberration of
already existing forms. It is as old as man (who may, after all, have had no..
beginning). The God who appeared to Joseph Smith
is the self-same (God who
walked and talked with Adam, spoke face to face with Enoch, Moses, and the
brother of Jared (see Book of Mormon, Ether), and was the friend of
Abraham Joseph Smith was able to teach quite clearly and scripturally: "It
is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of
God, and to know that we may converse with Him as one man converses with an other,
and that He was once a man like us; yea that Father of us all dwelt on an earth
the same as Jesus Christ himself did; and I will show it from the
Bible...."
The exalted-man promise
exalts God. Which God is more worthy of worship and emulation: A od who has
never suffered weakness--or one who having suffered all, has conquered all, and
enables others to do the same one whose nature forbids peers--or one who
desires them?....One who would make us everlastingly inferior creatures--or one
who would make us co-creators, and give us not only all that He has, but all
that He is? One who would save or damn us by His caprice of will or good
pleasure--or one who would not only save us all, but establish laws whereby we
might advance like unto Himself? Consider the empathy with which God the Father
must view our own struggles, for he has journeyed the entire course, knows
every stone, pitfall, and obstacle. He has groped his way in storm and
darkness, swum the rivers, traversed the barren desert and the teeming
wilderness, found at times his places of respite, and surmounted the final
peaks into the sunlight. In righteousness he has fought the good fight and
prevailed, vanquished every foe, attained that prize which surpasseth understanding."
It is now his work and. glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life
of His posterity. He is the personification of love and sacrifice in ways
challenging to fathom,' yet so very natural and worthy of worship a emulation.
In contemplating His exalted nature, one is led to say like Charles W..
Penrose:
"The person whom I
worship I acknowledge as my Father. Through Him I may learn to understand the
secrets and mysteries of eternity, those things -which never had a beginning
and-will never have an end. He has ascended above all. things after descending
below all things. He has fought his way up from the depths up to the position
He now occupies. He holds it by virtue of His goodness, of His might, of His
majesty, of His power. He occupies that position by virtue of being in perfect
harmony with all that is right, and true, and beautiful, and glorious, and
progressive. He is the embodiment and expression of the eternal principles of
right. He has won that position by His own exertions, by His own faithfulness,
by His own righteousness."
I have seen no vision, heard
no voice, but I know that these things are true. I know that od the Father is a
perfected and exalted Man, and that the whole intent of the gospel plan is
designed for our fullest potential, "which is eternal progression and the
possibility of godhood. “I know that Jesus the Christ was the only begotten son
of God in the flesh, and that His mission and atonement was to bridge the gap
between God and man, so that we--spiritually begotten sons and daughters of
God-might also mature into manifestations of the Divine I know that Joseph
Smith was a prophet of God because I know that the things he taught and
revealed are scriptural, philosophically sound, and true, and I appreciate the
clarity and greater understanding they give to the Savior's gospel. And I know
that this church--The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--is the
Lord's true and living church upon the earth today, possessing the "keys
of the kingdom", and guided by a prophet who is like unto Moses', yet so
right and needed in this generation in time. I love the gospel of Jesus Christ
as I love my own life--for by it, and through it, my life has meaning,
direction, and purpose. very fiber of my being seems to cry out in witness, and
the greatest desire of my life is to live increasingly more true
to it. -
I know that these things are
true and so will you. In fact, there is no excuse for you not to eventually
come to know their truth. If you are skeptical of all this--study the life of
Jesus the Christ. Make Him your "spiritual father" in all things He
is living divine proof of the eternal and divine capacity of man. If you will
walk in paths He has ordained, you will become proof as well. I hope that you
will strive to gain a personal relationship with the Savior, so that in
understanding His divine nature, you come to more fully comprehend and desire
your own as a son of God.' You, who considered becoming a Catholic priest
because you were enthralled by the absurd idea of making god" out of mere
bread and wine (emblems of his flesh and blood) ! Why do you not make
"alive" the god of your own being--by partaking of the eternal
principles and divine power that He has?
It will not be easy. Nothing
of great value and attainment ever is. "If you are to find it, you must
pay more by a thousand fold than you ever paid before, reach farther than you
have ever reached, use more courage, and self-discipline than you ever knew you
had but at the end of all that comes the promise...." It's not too late.
Do not be discouraged and do not give up. Conversion is not an event; rather it
is the spiritual maturation process that begin with where you are and leads to
endless possibilities with in my heart I pray that the eternal Father of us
both will bless you, guide you, enlighten you, enlarge you, and bring you to
both know and become like Him. If I were truly a friend, would I desire
anything less? May you ever grow wise and rich in being, my dear, and through
you, may others--especially your family—become--so.
Best Wishes--always,
Suzanne Gardiner
Mrs. Gardiner and family