Joseph Smith Jr.

Background

Joseph Smith Jr. (1805–1844) was the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement and producer of its Restoration scriptures: the Book of Mormon (1830), the Doctrine and Covenants, and the revelations and translations gathered in the Pearl of Great Price. The founding datum of the movement is his First Vision narrative, canonized in Joseph Smith—History: "When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me... This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!" (Joseph Smith—History 1:17, PGP 1913). Asked which sect to join, he "was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong... all their creeds were an abomination in his sight" (JS—H 1:19, PGP 1913) — the disagreement with creedal Christianity is thus foundational, not incidental. This wiki presents his tradition from its own canonical texts, at full strength.

Positions held in this wiki

• Mormon Christology vs Nicene Orthodoxy — the sole first-order proponent view. Smith's scriptures teach a high Christology (the premortal Christ as Jehovah and creator, "worlds without number have I created... and by the Son I created them," Moses 1:33, PGP 1913; the "Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father" born of the virgin, 1 Nephi 11:21, BoM 1830) inside a theology proper creedal Christians do not share: Father and Son as numerically distinct personages seen together in the First Vision, eternal intelligences, and creation as organization by "the Gods."

Key works in our corpus

• Book of Mormon (1830 text, Gutenberg) — including the "condescension of God" vision (1 Nephi 11:16-27) and the christological loci the article analyzes (Mosiah 15; Alma 11; 3 Nephi 11; Ether 3).
• Pearl of Great Price (1913 ed., Wikisource) — Books of Moses and Abraham, Joseph Smith—Matthew, Joseph Smith—History, and the Articles of Faith ("We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost," AoF 1).
• Corpus defect: the file catalogued as the Doctrine and Covenants (raw/by-tradition/mormon/d-and-c.txt) contains Mayne Reid's novel The Scalp Hunters (Gutenberg #23268), not the D&C; the classic proof-texts (130:22; 76; 93) and the King Follett Discourse remain unsourced pending re-ingestion.

Principal critics

• Athanasius of Alexandria — creation "out of nothing, and without its having any previous existence" as the first article of "the godly teaching" (De Inc. §3) stands against eternal intelligences and organized pre-existing matter.
• Augustine of Hippo — "all substance that is not God is creature; and all that is not creature is God" (De Trin. I.6) denies the third category (divine species, unoriginated spirits) Smith's cosmology requires; Augustine likewise rejects corporeal conceptions of God as accommodated language.
• Philosophical critics press the tritheism charge against any three-self doctrine of God (SEP 'Trinity' §2.3).

See also

• James E. Talmage — the tradition's systematizer and editor of the 1913 Pearl of Great Price in corpus.
• Orson Pratt and B. H. Roberts — the tradition's speculative theologians (not in corpus).