Consecration and Stewardship Revelations

In addition to D&C 42, the core revelation for the Law of Consecration and Stewardship,  there are other revelations relevant to stewardship and consecration.

• D&C 48 [received at Kirtland, Ohio, March 10, 1831] discusses the process of land procurement for the Saints, both around Kirtland and in the (yet undisclosed) Zion.
• D&C 51 [received at Thompson, Ohio, May 20, 1831] discusses the process by which Bishop Partridge is supposed to accommodate the newly arriving Eastern Saints.
• The organization by the Divine Laws is not optional, but necessary (vv.1f)
• Partridge is to appoint the "portions, every man equal according to his family, according to his circumstances and his wants and needs" (v.3).
• Partridge fills out a certificate for each portion, that designates that assigned as the man's inheritance, which he will lose if he "transgresses and is not accounted worthy by the voice of the church" (v.4).
• Consecrated stuff belongs to the work of the church, even if someone leaves; only their deed stays with them (v.5).
• All this shall happen without violating the laws of the land (v.6).

to be continued

Religious Community Founding at Kirtland

There is a complex of revelations that together form the founding charter of the religious community that Joseph Smith Jr was setting up the Mormons and Campbellites in Kirtland to be.

The precondition had been D&C 38 (JS Papers version) given at the Fayette Church conference in New York, January 2nd, 1831, just before the departure (which had been established in D&C 37 (JS Papers version) as a response to the harassment of the Church in NY).

D&C 38 established (v18) that the Church members had been promised a land of "milk and honey" as part of the new covenant with God, which they would keep in eternity (v20). There they could segregate themselves from the wicked and their enemies (v31; v42) and live under God's law and be endowed from up high (v32). The revelation also announced that there would be several men (vv34-36) to take care of the poor and the needy, selected from among the Church members by the Church members--a foreshadowing of the role of the Bishop).

D&C 41 (JSP version) of February 4th, 1831 and D&C 42 (JSP Version Part 1, vv1-72, and Part 2, vv73-93) of February 9th and 23rd, 1831, respectively, together form the founding document of the religious community.

D&C 41 begins by recapping the expected revelation of a law for the religious community. It then provides for a home "to live and translate" in for the prophet (who had been working on an improved Bible translation, cf. D&C 37, v1), and a room for Sidney Rigdon (later amended to "should live as seemeth him good"). The remainder summarily calls Edward Partridge to the role of a bishop, leaving behind his "merchandise", without specifying any details concerning the task of bishop, "see to all things as it shall be appointed in my Laws in the day that I shall give them".

D&C 42 (in its two parts) establishes the community rules. In the earliest extant copy, the revelation is headed with "The Laws of the Church of Christ[,] Kirtland[,] Geauga [County,] Ohio".

The first part, after an opening (vv1-3), gives the call for the elders to go in pairs and preach the imminent Kingdom of God (vv4-9), with restrictions for Joseph Smith Jr and Sidney Rigdon (who are busy with the fullness of the Gospel, cf. v15), until Zion is revealed (at which point it is either too late to join or there is no point in building up congregations at other locales) (v9).

The exposition continues with the criteria of authorization to teach within the community (vv11-17). [(v10) which re-iterates the call to service of Edward Partridge as bishop, would have been castigated as an insertion by a later scribe in every other hermeneutic context, and the scribe called a dolt for missing the fact that the Laws of the Church of Christ as general rules of guidance are somewhat at odds with a particular temporary appointment. The closing formula of "Amen" would suggest that it had been a self-contained pronouncement previously.]

Next comes the exposition of the church rules in a more constrained sense (vv.18-29). [The emphatic "I speak to the Church" in (v18) is somewhat clumsy.] While the contents is very similar to the Ten Commandments,  the focus is on the possibility of obtaining forgiveness for the transgression---a key issue in an apocalyptic and millennial context, as the consequence is to be removed from the elect and thus to be counted among the lost. Furthermore, all the issues raised are inter-personal issues, and thus affect community cohesion.

Next comes the law of consecration proper (vv.30-39), with its notion of stewardship and the role of the Bishop's storehouse and the accumulation of residues. The exposition covers the logistics of the exchange (vv.30-32), the purposes of the storehouse contents (vv.33-36), and the how to handle the exit condition in the case of a casting out (vv.37-38). (v.39) is intriguing, as it suggests that the WASP Americans will even out the socio-economic status of the Indians.

The next section (vv.40-42) covers everyday behavior within the community, exhorting them to work and morally good exterior. Then (vv.43-52) the process for dealing with sickness in the community is outlined, and the success of the charismatic healing is tied to the faith of the individual (but not of the elders). The outcome of death in the case of laying on of hands is explained (vv.44-47), and the point raised that dying without a hope of resurrection is the worst (v.45).

The following sction (vv.53-55) returns to the problem of stewardship and represents a rejection of specific forms of communitarianism, by insisting on private property and intra-community trade (v.54) and directed all surplus again to the storehouse [of the Bishop] (v.55).

The next section (vv.56-69) talk about the role of scripture in guiding the behavior of the community members, and how the knowledge of Zion will be given, and mysteries that will be revealed to those that obey the commandments. [Confusingly, after earlier demanding that the missionaries go westward (v.8) and build up churches in all the regions there, the missionaries are now told to go eastward and get the converts to move West, to escape the secret combinations (v.64). For the future, missionizing in all cardinal directions is prophesied (v.63).]

The next section (vv.70-73) returns to the problem of remuneration of people from the storehouse, having the bishop and the counselors and the elders and the high priests either supported thence or provided with just remuneration.

The second part, originally revealed two weeks later, begins with adultery one more time (vv.74-83), before going into a distinction between the law of the Land and the law of God and how different deeds lead the miscreant to be turned over to one law or the other (vv.84-93). Thus stealing, lying and robbing are to be dealt with by handing over to the Law of the Land. These then are the rules of the religious community for expelling members into the broader social context without treating the expulsion as exculpation. But community internal things are to be regulated in the minimal context possible, even to the point of preserving secrecy (v.92).

Unavoidable temporal limitations of Revelation

The idea that revelations can only find expression from human thinking in temporally qualified forms is most likely first considered in Spinoza's Theologico-Political Tractatus (English Part I, Part II; German PDF).

If memory serves right, for it is many years since I read that work, Spinoza argues that the laws of the Old Testament either applied to the governmental structure of the times of the Ancient Hebrews, or the present. But if the applied to the present, then the revelations would have made no sense to the then-existing people, so it must have been exclusively to the past that this applied. Again, this is a mere outline of the argument.

I wonder if there is a similar argument that could be made that is the foundation of the true meaning of a book religion, namely a theory of how the temporal individualities of the context of revelation are unavoidable in a book religion, and that there is an expectation of "error" and "misunderstanding" that derives from its historical context of authorship. It is possible that such an apologetic move might be more effective than a stance that claims revelatory status of the entirety of the text, and is then trivially refuted in its entirety by a single erroneous claim.

Spinoza might provide the ramp for driving up here, by pointing out that it is specific humans, contextualized in their religious and social settings, that are recipients of revelation. Specifically, it is at minimum a socio-linguistic setting in which the revelatory production is captured.

Merely historically speaking, the revelations of the Godhead are recorded in Ancient Hebrew in the case of Isaiah and St Paul; in Koine Greek in the case of the Gospel writers; in Magadha, a Northern Indian dialect, in the case of Siddharta Gautama; in Fus'ha Arabic in the case of Mohammed; and in King James-like English to Joseph Smith Jr. Since the record is all that we have, the question of in what language the revelation itself was communicated---Reformed Egyptian for the Book of Mormon, the language that Gabriel spoke to Mohammed---is in some sense irrelevant; we cannot return to that layer of the communication.

Because the revelation is revelation into a specific situation, it includes references to that specific situation. The understanding of that situation must be understandable to the recipients, so it has to be couched in the conceptual models that the recipients have of themselves in that situation. (For obvious reasons, given the linearity of the time arrow, previous times will not benefit from the revelation.)

Thus, take the plague of Cholera striking the Camp of Zion during the march on Missouri. The present time (2014) understanding of cholera is that it is an infection of the small intestine caused by a bacterium conveniently named Vibrio cholerae. There is no reason for hubris here, i.e. one should not assume that this will be the understanding henceforth until the end of the human race. The then existing interpretation was some form of Jehovian displeasure with the Mormons.

However, Spinoza would argue, future times do not share either the situation or the past understanding of the situation. [Fichte might interject at this point, and further research is needed here, that this is one of the reasons that all revelation can only be a re-iteration of natural religion, that is, the timeless aspect of revelations.]

Joseph Smith Jr would disagree and claim that the continuity of the Divine plan of salvation with its structure of covenants and their cycles of prophecy and fulfillment provide a shared situation with an ongoing valid understanding, the ordinances and prophecies and the laws of the Lord.

But there is a certain undermining to that continuity in the admission that continued revelations are necessary. Can you undercut the change in time by local revelations? Or is the necessity of local revelations in truth not an admission that the times are changing and that even the Lord cannot escape these changes?

The origin of this approach could be a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of Joseph Smith Jr, namely that revelation literature is precisely concerned with the absence of God's intervention. It is the fact that life sucks and God is doing nothing to fix it that requires revelation literature to bridge the day to day pain of waiting. The "original" Revelations of John of Patmos speak into the situation of the Christian persecutions to explain why the Son of Man has not returned yet, why God is holding back. Instead Joseph Smith Jr wants to get day-to-day instructions from God, whether it be on the organization of economic situations or on the details of temple construction. This is more the OT law giving interaction with God, from Sinai and the interactions with Moses, the setup of the perfect society, not the NT dealing with the delay of the parousia.

It is difficult to figure out if a literal inspiration approach to both the Hebrew and the Greek Bible gives one an adequate system for differentiating the various uses of revelation and prophecy. There is the giving of the laws in the OT; the social criticism of the OT prophets; and the apocalyptic descriptions of the coming judgement of the Lord; to name just these three.

Revelation as Unencrypted Communication

I think there is a nice way of reconstructing Fichte's argument for the Critique of all Revelation in a mode that uses just modern communication channels and cryptology.

Basically, we have a communication channel between God and some believer, say Joseph. We also have the Devil, who is the adversary and has all the advantages that adversaries have in cryptological setups, i.e. unlimited access to prior communications, channels, etc. Notice that due to the spiritual speed at which both God and the Devil can work (Boolos 1974), the usual mathematical "trapdoor" ciphers that humans use are pointless, because spiritual entities can bring arbitrary amounts of brute force to bear on cracking the cipher.

God is trying to send Joseph a message. The Devil can intercept and substitute part or all of the message. Joseph needs to be able to determine whether the message is from God or the Devil. Since the structure of the message can be forged, the determination has to be by the contents.

The clearest choice is to say something already known. By repeating something that God has already said, Fichte basically argues, Joseph can be convinced of the authenticity of the contents. Even if the Devil repeats something God has already said, the Devil has technically ursurped the channel, but made no progress in misleading Joseph.

Notice that it is insufficient to prefix new contents with known contents; the Devil can trivially do that as well (e.g. "God created Heaven and Earth. Kick ten puppies a day").

This means that for any true believer, all revelation is already over. For Fichte this was no problem, because he was convinced that all the properties of God that mattered, esp. the moral doctrine, could be deduced logically as natural religion anyway. For revelatory religions like Mormonism, this is a big issue; there is no way at all to provide the day-to-day guidance of the type found in Doctrines and Covenants. None of them are above the suspicion that they could be substitutions of the Devil.

Fichte vs Joseph Smith Jr

I managed to find the section today where Johann Gottlieb Fichte points out that the contents of all revelation cannot differ from what the moral imperative already states—to say it somewhat informally.

Here's the money shot:

Das allgemeine Kriterium der Göttlichkeit einer Religion in Absicht ihres moralischen Inhalts ist also folgendes: Nur diejenige Offenbarung, welche ein Princip der Moral, welches mit dem Princip der praktischen Vernunft übereinkommt, und lauter solche moralische Maximen aufstellt, welche sich davon ableiten lassen, kann von Gott seyn. 
—J.G. Fichte, Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung, §11, S.177.

That's not quite how Joseph Smith Jr saw the matter ... ;)