stemelbow wrote:Darth J wrote:1. Joseph Smith could not have been practicing polygamy in accordance with the Lord's commands prior to 1843, because he had not yet received the revelation giving him the terms and conditions. You are not helping him by emphasizing this obvious fact. You are digging him in deeper.
Let's consider two separate types of revelation to show that your theory here may not apply: First, revelation given through the prophet for the Church. That would be something like D&C 132. Second, revelation given to Joseph Smith for his own life. This type of revelation may not be recorded anywhere. As it is it is for Joseph himself. So if Joseph heard the news from God that he must start taking upon himself other wives pre-1843 we can assume it was commanded of him via personal revelation. Or we can be critical and pessimistic and assume that Joseph did not receive such revelation. Its our individual choice here.
This is one of the better demonstrations of how you don't understand the difference between an assumption and a conclusion. You are starting with the determinative belief that Joseph Smith was a prophet. Since this a priori belief
has to be true, you are assuming, with no supporting evidence whatsoever, that he must have received a personal revelation prior to D&C 132 that allows him specifically to have his own special rules that are contrary to the rules for everyone in general.
The first problem is that your defense of Joseph Smith is that Mormonism is a cult. And I mean that in the generally-accepted sense, not the polemical sense. You are explicitly saying that Joseph Smith gets to do whatever he wants, and no matter what he does,
God wills it!This is the same way
the Lafferty brothers attempted to justify themselves. It's really kind of pathetic that you are so desperate to
SAVE JOSEPH! that you are positing a God who demands absolute loyalty to a prophet who gets to do whatever he wants, no matter whether it is contrary to the rules for everyone else, and no matter how much it takes advantage of his followers. And there is no apparent purpose to why God would have Joseph Smith be doing this, in secret. This is simply desperate hand waving that neither explains anything nor provides any compelling reason to believe, with the side effect of conceding that Mormonism is a cult.
The second problem is that it is contrary to Mormon scripture and the faith-promoting narrative. The Doctrine and Covenants has many times where Joseph is chastised by the Lord for not following the commandments. Joseph Smith is said to have lost his translation powers for a while because of his transgressions. The story is that Joseph Smith had to go back to the Hill Cumorah for a few years before he was prepared to get the golden plates. And then there is the internal consistency and plain language of LDS scripture, which you are deliberately ignoring in preference to some unarticulated reading that is not "legalistic."
If you get to rest on your assertions and announce that it is just a matter of "choice" whether to believe an ad hoc, self-serving assumption, then likewise I will maintain that until it is conclusively disproved, I see no reason to doubt that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were gay lovers.
2. Joseph Smith did not follow the conditions the Lord requires for plural marriage after he purportedly received the revelation we know as D&C 132.
We can scrutinize this till our face turns blue, i suppose. In the end you may be right. But that really is beside the question of whether Joseph Smith could be a prophet and still have sinned. Your argument here would have to be that since Joseph Smith didn’t follow certain instructions given in D&C 132 then he couldn’t have been a prophet. I don’t see a reason to buy into that. For me its obvious people can still sin and be a prophet.
It is not that Joseph Smith did not follow "certain" instructions in D&C 132. He did not follow ANY of them. It may be "obvious" to you that people can still sin and be a prophet, but it is not quite so obvious to the Lord, if the D&C is to be believed----and read for what it says, instead of reading it with deliberate autism.
According to the Book of Mormon, which was translated by the Prophet Joseph Smith, adultery is the sin next to murder. So maybe that should be a factor in considering that by Mormonism's own terms, we're talking about something a little more serious than he said a swear word or was a little bit cranky one day. And he did it systematically for years, in secret, to the detriment of many people, with no apparent benefit to anyone but himself. Then he destroyed the press of a newspaper that brought this to light.
So while we're thinking about "possibilities," maybe we could entertain the idea that maybe, possibly, it might be the case that Joseph Smith's behavior was inconsistent with an innocent state of mind.
Or maybe by "possibilities," you mean that it is a foregone conclusion that Joseph Smith must have been a prophet, and so all conceivable explanations, no matter how improbable, contrived, and unsupported by evidence, must be given serious consideration so that the foregone conclusion can be reached.
3. Taking a single clause from one verse in D&C 132 out of context to suggest that Joseph Smith would be "justified in his transgressions" is an abysmally unreasonable reading of that verse. It is irreconcilable with the preceding verse, with rest of that section, the rest of the Doctrine and Covenants, and certain parts of the faith-promoting narrative (i.e., Joseph Smith temporarily lost the power to translate the golden plates because he disobeyed the Lord). It also requires D&C 3 and D&C 121 to be false when those sections unequivocally state that even a person who is called of God and ordained to the priesthood will lose their authority and power if they sin.
I just can’t agree with your far more hard-lined and legalistic reading of these passages, Darth J. I wish I could so we wouldn’t quibble about these details, but I can’t. There is no indication in D&C 3 nor in D&C 121 that suggest that if a person sins they will lose their authority and power. You are reading these too literally. You need to open up a little and realize each and every person sins, so it can’t be that restrictive. It simply can’t be for believers. It wouldn’t make sense when applied to reality.
D&C 3:4For although a man may have many revelations, and have power to do many mighty works, yet if he boasts in his own strength, and sets at naught the counsels of God, and follows after the dictates of his own will and carnal desires, he must fall and incur the vengeance of a just God upon him.
D&C 121
[color=#0000FF] 34 Behold, there are many called, but few are chosen. And why are they not chosen?
35 Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world, and aspire to the honors of men, that they do not learn this one lesson—
36 That the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.
37 That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.Yes, that could mean
anything!The thing is, Doctrine and Covenants is supposed to be the law of the Lord with respect to the Church. The word "law" is used repeatedly in D&C 132. Section 132 sets out the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. And in the current issue of the Ensign, a modern-day apostle explains to us what a covenant is:
Russell M. Nelson, November 2011 EnsignOne of the most important concepts of revealed religion is that of a sacred covenant. In legal language, a covenant generally denotes an agreement between two or more parties. But in a religious context, a covenant is much more significant. It is a sacred promise with God. He fixes the terms. Each person may choose to accept those terms. If one accepts the terms of the covenant and obeys God’s law, he or she receives the blessings associated with the covenant. We know that “when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.”A "legalistic" reading is
appropriate with the D&C, because it is
law (if you believe that the D&C is what it purports to be). That is not a distorted reading; it is a fair and reasonable reading. Not only have you not offered an alternative to taking the words at face value, you have not offered any reason besides apologetic desperation to do so.
The reason you don't want to follow what the words actually say under their plain meaning is simply because you cannot come up with a way to reconcile what the words say with what Joseph Smith did.
