What lies did the Nauvoo Expositor print?

[_Uncertain]

How can you say that Jesus was actually inspired by God and not Judas the Galilean or Theudas or Simon bar Kokhba or any of the other messianic claimants of his era? What about Honi the Circle-Drawer or Apollonius of Tyana? One has to pick and choose.

Hi Nevo,

My own loss of faith in certain LDS truth claims has very little to do with early church history but I understand how someone can legitimately be bothered by how Joseph Smith practiced polygamy. As you point out there are many competing claims to divine inspiration and a person must pick and chose. What role if any does morality play in such decisions? Suppose for example I have two persons claiming to be inspired by a perfectly moral and loving God Jane and Joe. Jane is a spotless example of loving charity engaging all day every day in selfless service to her fellow men. Joe on the other hand seems to be a vicious sociopath spending his time hunting down and torturing innocents to death. Is it not reasonable to conclude based on their behavior Jane's claim to be in communication with a loving God is more likely to be true than Joe's same claim? Suppose Joe really believes his actions are dictated by a loving and perfectly moral God. Can we still not say his actions reduce the probability he really is being guided by a loving moral God? The point I am trying to make is when judging whether or not an individual is really and truly being guided by a perfectly moral loving God their actions are a legitimate way to judge their claims. Perhaps not the only such way but certainly something to take into account.

So the critical argument as I understand it is that Joseph Smith behaved in morally repugnant actions hence this should be taken into account as negative evidence when we evaluate his claims to being guided by a perfectly moral loving God. Sure maybe he really believed God wanted him to institute polygamy and this is the reason he behaved the way he did. But simply because a person who behaves in a morally objectionable fashion believes God wants them to so behave does not in fact mean God really does want them to.

Now a possible response is to point out God sometimes commands morally objectionable actions the Old Testament is a great resource here :). Now this response is dependent on the critic accepting the Old Testament or such resources as a reliable record of what God does and doesn't do which will be a questionable assumption for many. Still even if we accept that God sometimes commands or engages in morally questionable actions we can confidently say this is very rare. Hence most who claim "God told me so" as justification for the morally questionable acts they perform are very likely to be wrong even if a very small number of them are right. Hence questionable moral actions by those claiming divine inspiration can still reasonably be used as negative evidence for said claims.

Personally I think the best apologetic tact is to frankly acknowledge Joseph Smith behaved in a morally repugnant way and yes this can reasonable be viewed as negative evidence regarding his claims to be guided by a moral God. But that other positive evidence outweighs this negative evidence. For example personal spiritual confirmation of Joseph Smith claims (a terrible reason by the way) or perhaps various positive scholarly evidences regarding Book of Mormon historicity.

Best,
Uncertain

[_Spurven Ten Sing]

Hi Spurven. Sorry for the late reply.

How do I justify Joseph marrying women without Emma's consent? Well, he tried to get Emma's consent but she wouldn't give it. And when she eventually did give it, she soon withdrew it—though she seems to have remained conflicted right until Joseph left for Carthage (see the blessing she wrote for herself, quoted in Newell and Avery's Mormon Enigma).

Given Emma's intransigence (and who could blame her really?), and given his perception that his time was short (see the Esplin article I cited for more on this), what other choice did Joseph have if he really believed—as I think he did—that he would be "destroyed" if he failed to take additional wives?

Was Joseph correct? I don't know. If so, it raises the troubling theological question of why God would place Joseph and Emma in such a difficult situation, one that brought them so much grief and pain. But then the Hebrew God has been known to make difficult demands of his servants.

Nuclear Nevo:
I would point out real quick that Joseph Smith did not seek permission until after he had begun. Otherwise, I think your answer is good enough. You clearly recognize the troubling issue and I don't get the vibe that you judge apostates negatively for losing faith over this. Have you ever been tempted to take the easy way out--accepting the simpler thesis that Joseph Smith did this on his own for at least partially selfish reasons. It does account for the evidence without much massaging. I really appreciate your response.

[_Runtu]

Nuclear Nevo:
I would point out real quick that Joseph Smith did not seek permission until after he had begun. Otherwise, I think your answer is good enough. You clearly recognize the troubling issue and I don't get the vibe that you judge apostates negatively for losing faith over this. Have you ever been tempted to take the easy way out--accepting the simpler thesis that Joseph Smith did this on his own for at least partially selfish reasons. It does account for the evidence without much massaging. I really appreciate your response.

Exactly. I appreciate those like Nevo who seem to understand that these are troubling issues and should be troubling issues to reasonable people. I have no patience for the folks who wave this all off as just ignorant fault-finding on the part of critics.

[_Nevo]

This is crucial. What evidence do we have that he asked for her consent before marrying his other wives? There is evidence that he did so after the fact with the Partridge sisters, but do you have something specific in mind? Certainly there is no evidence that he asked Emma's permission before entering into a relationship with Fanny Alger.

It seems to me that the evidence points the other way: the secrecy came first, and Emma's intransigence came after.

Maybe so. I don't think the evidence is conclusive either way. The reality is that we know virtually nothing about Joseph and Emma's private conversations. If Joseph was already contemplating polygamy in the early 1830s, as Danel Bachman and a number of historians believe, then we can't reject out of hand the possiblity that Emma and Joseph discussed it prior to 1843. I have a hard time seeing how it could have failed to come up in the aftermath of the Alger scandal (if not before). I think it's reasonable to suppose that Joseph knew Emma's mind on the subject of polygamy no later than 1836. But I could be wrong.

I wonder if the Hebrew God demanded that Joseph attack the reputations of Sarah Pratt, Nancy Rigdon, and Martha Brotherton.

I rather doubt it. (Did he attack Martha Brotherton, by the way? I thought that was his brother William.) I grant that Joseph could be angry and vengeful on occasion, particularly if he felt slighted or betrayed. But I'm not sure that all of these women had unblemished reputations to begin with given their association with John C. Bennett.

[_Runtu]

I rather doubt it. (Did he attack Martha Brotherton, by the way? I thought that was his brother William.) I grant that Joseph could be angry and vengeful on occasion, particularly if he felt slighted or betrayed. But I'm not sure that all of these women had unblemished reputations to begin with given their association with John C. Bennett.

Joseph associated with Bennett, too. ;-)

[_Nevo]

Joseph associated with Bennett, too. ;-)

Who wasn't seduced by Bennett? Must have been the uniform.

[_badseed]

Joseph associated with Bennett, too. ;-)

Indeed.

[_Runtu]

Joseph associated with Bennett, too. ;-)

Who wasn't seduced by Bennett? Must have been the uniform.

by the way, you are right. William is the one who published the denunciations. That said, Joseph and Hyrum both strongly denied Martha's accusation in the April 1842 conference.

[_beefcalf]

I rather doubt it. (Did he attack Martha Brotherton, by the way? I thought that was his brother William.) I grant that Joseph could be angry and vengeful on occasion, particularly if he felt slighted or betrayed. But I'm not sure that all of these women had unblemished reputations to begin with given their association with John C. Bennett.

Joseph associated with Bennett, too. ;-)

Heck, even God thought J.C. Bennett was quite the guy!

[Anonymous]

I think the Mormon church should have never abandoned polygamy. It's clear it was a fundamental part of Joseph Smith's original intentions--which I think is why it has never been completely removed from LDS scripture and sealing practices. This shouldn't be read as personal endorsement of polygamy, however. While I have no problem with people arranging their lives in non-traditional and non-monogamous ways, there are deeply troubling aspects of many historical and contemporary polygamous practices.

I agree with Nevo on some points, too. I think that what Mormon polygamy became after the move to Desert was substantially different than what it had been before that. Smith's polygamy however, in practice and theory, was a work in progress: contradictory elements, unelaborated scriptural/spiritual legitimation, and various, perhaps distinct, forms of polygamy are all evident in the history. How he would have eventually meshed these, or if he would have, or even if he would have abandoned polygamy entirely, is hard to say (but interesting to speculate on, and perhaps sources will emerge to cast these things in a more conclusive light).

I think that characterizing Smith's experiments in polygamy as simply and entirely a matter of promiscuous sexual adventuring is inaccurate. That doesn't mean that there weren't episodes or instances of that. To me, that's why it continues to be troubling: it's hard to produce a satisfactory synthesis of dynastic sealing (of which there is evidence) with romantic attachments (of which there is evidence). Stated simply, it may not seem like a problem; looking into the histories of individuals it becomes a nearly impossible knot to untie.