The First Vision

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out. My name is Jim Bennett. I am here as always with Ian Wilkes. Ian, how are you, sir?

I'm doing well. I'm really excited to be here today, Jim.

I am too, because we once again welcome back Greg Prince. Greg, how are you?

I am well, thank you. Enjoying the East Coast spring.

Lovely. It's a lovely spring out here in the West as well. So, but I'm very excited about today's discussion because this is something that I don't think we've discussed in detail at any time up to this point. And it's one that I think is really, uh, important to a lot of people and has frankly catalyzed a great many faith crises. Uh, we're going to talk about the multiple accounts of the First Vision. Um, and I think maybe my take on this might be a little bit different, or quite a bit different, from both of your takes. So, but with that said, Greg, I'm wondering if you could just sort of frame the problem for us. You've done a great deal of research on this, have you not?

And I published an article on it that was widely unread.

Nice. I know what it's like to be widely unread. That's, that's kind of been my experience. You also had the experience of being widely read. Which is not an experience that I have had as often as I would like.

Well, the two faces of Greg, I guess.

There you go.

Or maybe the big deal for a lot of people, and this was on the top 10 list of historical questions that caused people to abandon the faith. That was the faith crisis survey we did in 2011. But the landscape has not changed on this one. The basic problem for people is, hey, there are multiple accounts of the First Vision created by Joseph Smith, and they don't coincide with each other. What's going on here? The story changed, and it changed materially, but the Church won't answer my questions. I think that frames the issue. So what I'd like to do, and with an apology in advance, we have to get down into the weeds because that's where this discussion resides. I want to spend quite a while talking about the what, and then we'll talk about the so what. And it's the so what that's tipping people over.

I love that framing. So let's do it.

Just the facts, ma'am. If you're in a court of law, you're dealing in some cases with undisputed facts. That's what we're dealing with here. These are data points in history that are not negotiable. They're documented. There is no record by any non-Mormon during Joseph Smith's lifetime of his First Vision. There is no historical evidence of persecution linked to the First Vision. Persecution surrounding the gold plates began months before the Book of Mormon was published, meaning in 1829. So if you can pardon the allusion here, think of Sesame Street, one of these things is different from the others. The vision was not public knowledge and was not a source of persecution. The gold plates were on both counts. There is no record of Joseph Smith talking about the First Vision in any detail in any public address. The earliest account published by a Latter-day Saint was in the early 1840s.

That's the Wentworth Letter, right?

Wentworth Letter's a little bit later than that, I think. Oh, and, and it wasn't published in the newspaper. It was published as part of one of the church accounts. The earliest published account by a non-Mormon regarding Joseph Smith's religiosity or lack thereof was in 1833. David Marks, who was both a newspaperman and an itinerant preacher, described his visit to Palmyra in March 1830. He was there one week before the church was organized. He stayed in the home of the Whitmers one evening. Joseph Smith was not there, but 8 of the 11 witnesses to the Book of Mormon were there. In 1833, he published an account of this. He said, "Passing through Palmyra and Manchester, where Joseph Smith resided, I made considerable inquiry respecting the character of Smith, and from those who were acquainted with him received the the following statements, namely, that he was an obscure, illiterate, awkward, and unpolished youth aged about 21 years, that previous to his declaration of having found the plates, he had made no pretensions to religion. There you go. We don't hear about that account. We should. It's not been buried. It's there in plain sight, but a lot of our crowd have chosen to plow around it. There are 3 accounts that were produced during the lifetime of Joseph Smith that go directly to him. In 1832, he wrote one account, which is the only one in his own handwriting. In 1835, a scribe wrote an account that he gave to an alleged Jewish minister, Jim Joshua, who turned out to be a fraud. But nonetheless, he shared that experience then, but privately. And then in 1838, the canonized version, which appears in our Pearl of Great Price, was written. There were others. Orson Hyde wrote one. In the early 1840s. Orson Pratt did. There are other secondhand accounts that are later. Those three are the ones I want to talk about. And actually, two of them, the 1832 and the 1838, are the pivotal ones. And both of them go directly to Joseph Smith. He wrote one, he dictated the other. Those two accounts differ in material ways from each other. The reason for Joseph going to the grove to pray. In 1832, it was forgiveness of his own sins. He wrote that he had already concluded from his study of the Bible that all churches were wrong. So why pray about that if you already had the answer? Whereas in 1838, 6 years later, The sole reason he gave for going to the grove was to find out which church was right, for he had concluded from his study of the Bible that the question could not be answered just by reference to that book. Those two are not reconcilable with each other. They are mutually exclusive. The personages— the 1832 account, he said the Lord appeared to me. In 1838, he had the Father and the Son appearing simultaneously to him. By the way, in the 1835, it was a hybrid. There was one personage who appeared to him, then left, then another personage came. And we can talk about that a little bit later. The message in 1832, the message was the answer to his prayer, and it was, your sins are forgiven, period. In 1838, there was no message about personal sin. The message was, none of the churches are correct. And finally, comparing the two, Persecution, 1832, there was no mention at all of any persecution. And as I said earlier, there's no contemporary account of any persecution that ever related to the First Vision. Whereas in the 1838 account, he devotes more verbiage describing the persecution than he did to describing the vision. Next point: the portrayal of deity in the First Vision accounts tracks exactly with an evolving doctrine of deity in Smith's other writings and sermons. In other words, if you look over time at the accounts of the First Vision, there is an evolution in his portrayal of the nature of deity. But if you look at other writings that he produces going through that same time progression and read laterally, they always agree. In other words, as his, as his understanding of deity is expressed in a new version of the First Vision, other writings written in the same time agree with that evolving concept. There is not a single element of Joseph Smith's first vision that had not already been published by others in the same region at the same time who also had visions. In other words, it did not differentiate his vision from any other vision in that time and place. And the final fact point— all of these are documented, they're not subjective issues— it was not made part of LDS proselytizing until the 1880s, after the canonization of the Pearl of Great Price made it common knowledge among church members. So we put enormous weight on the First Vision. Now, President Hinckley basically said everything rests on this. Most of the Church didn't know that there had been a First Vision, and they didn't know that for at least 50 years after the Church was organized. So that's where we start. That's the what. The so what is where it gets more problematic and where there are different ways of dealing with the data that produce different results. Unfortunately, a very common result is the church lied to me. I'm out of here. I don't trust it anymore. So let's go with that for a while.

Ian, do you want to go with that for a while?

I, I, I'm going to try and respond to that. It's extraordinary. Uh, I'm trying to give my mind some kind of structure to this, uh, and kind of break it down and get into some of the detail. And I also wanna play a little bit of devil's advocate here, right? So we know that the first— in the early '80s, the missionaries taught me the story of Joseph Smith, and it was the first, uh, lesson in the missionary discussions. I remember it quite well, and we'll try and recount some of that if that's relevant. And well, will be relevant if that's appropriate in this conversation, because that lesson from those missionaries to a young man of 16, I was 16 years old, very impressionable, was taught as a material fact. That the missionaries taught and testified that the First Vision happened, was real, it was true, and in actual fact, Joseph Smith did see God the Father and Jesus Christ, and that the lesson, the main points in the lesson were that Joseph Smith had previously attended, came from a religious family, lived in a time, a place of religious revival. There was a sense of, quote, excitement, end quote, in the area about religion. And Joseph Smith had an inquiring mind. He read, he was pondering one day in the scriptures, and he read James 1:5. Did I get that right?

Yeah.

And the scripture, had an impact on his mind, significant impact in his mind. And the scripture goes something like, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God. And no scripture previously, uh, had actually, uh, impacted him in such a way to the point where he felt he should act upon it. And taking himself off into a grove of trees, uh, and, and prior to that had attended before he went to the grove of trees. He had attended different religious, Christian religious organizations and meetings, and each one taught different things, and he became confused. Again, this, I'm recounting what the missionaries taught me, and each minister or pastor were teaching a variant of Christianity that Joseph Smith found quite confusing, and he was trying to decide, again, this is what I was taught. Which church to, to join and which was the true church. Again, this is what I understood during those lessons. And there was a great deal of confusion in his mind with all the different, um, teachings and doctrines to the point that he felt inspired he should go to the grove of trees, to a place he found, he'd previously found before. He went to the grove of trees and kneeling down, he offered himself in supplication to the Lord., to ask which church to join, not to ask for repentance. That's— the missionaries specifically did not teach that, made any reference to that whatsoever. But just before Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ, prior to that, Joseph Smith was in his own record, in the record that was taught to me in the early '80s by the missionaries. Had an encounter with what Joseph describes as the devil, with Satan. So before this vision unfolded to him, Joseph Smith felt this darkness, this shadow upon his body, so much so that he felt it was going to consume him, that he was— I'm trying to remember the words as the missionaries taught— that he was doomed to utter destruction. I think, I know I've used some of the specific words. Word for word, some of them at least. And that this shadow, this, this power, this darkness, uh, was going to destroy him to the point where he, uh, he, uh, uh, became prostrate, prostrate on the ground. That's what I was taught. And that this power is trying to consume him and overcome him. And just at the point of the, the, the, the point where he felt he was doomed to sudden de— to utter destruction rather., this, this dark shadow, this power, this, this, this evil, uh, presence that was overcoming him, overwhelming him, lifted, and he saw a pillar of light exactly above his head. And so he then recounts, again, as taught by the missionaries, this extraordinary, uh, vision of, of literally seeing God. I, when I was listening, I was absolutely blown away. That this young man, and I was taking it all in and I was believing every word and I felt the spirit. I remember how I felt and the missionaries taught me that Joseph Smith, this young boy inquiring mind, saw God the Father and Jesus Christ and God the Father introduced Christ as his son, as the only begotten. That was the story. That's how I recall it. And the missionaries said, this is, and I said, this is extraordinary. And they said, this is the most important event in the history of mankind, aside from Jesus Christ and the resurrection and the crucifixion in the Garden of Gethsemane. This ranks, the first vision easily ranks alongside all of the major historical events associated with Christ and with Christianity. I was absolutely astounded by it and felt grateful that I was listening to the message. That was pretty much what they taught. And the church, the very fulcrum of the church, you know, hinges on two things. The two hinges primarily are the First Vision, as Greg has cited President Hinckley saying that, and the Book of Mormon. Either the First Vision happened or it didn't. If it didn't happen, then The church is a fraud, or the Book of Mormon either is real, those characters are real, really happened, and is, uh, the, the, the work and the, the gift of God and is a history of those people that, uh, came, uh, to, uh, so, you know, became in contact with Christianity, with Jesus Christ. That is a legitimate, honest, authentic book, uh, to be what the church claims to be, or it is not. And if it is not, then this work is a fraud. So they're the, if this is a door, they're the two primary Injus, at least in my mind. And so, uh, I, that was the story that I, uh, was taught. It was the story that I taught on our missions, Jim, when we were in Scotland. That was what I, it hadn't changed. And now, um, we now, uh, you know, from the, um, research people have done and the information that's been released, probably reluctantly by the church. The church has been forced to create a publishing essay talking about, I think, 7 accounts or 9 accounts, right, of the First Vision. I think there are 4 primary different versions of the First Vision, but there are other secondary accounts. So That's a long way of responding to Greg, but my response to you, Greg, is being this devil's advocate in the middle here. Isn't it possible, and again, I'm trying to, I'm going to quote some of the church as well. Isn't it possible that Joseph Smith didn't want to talk about the First Vision when he had it? Because did he not say that when he did try to talk about it, that he got pushed back? There was a lot of opposition from when he, in fact, he did say, I remember the missionaries teaching that he he did, after he had the first vision, he did try to speak to people. I'm not sure if it was his own family or other people in the community, and they said it was an experience by the devil. I think the missionaries did teach me that. So is it not possible that he did talk about it or tried to, but was shut down and was threatened and got opposition from all kinds of other organizations and people in the area, much more intellectual than he was at the time. And more powerful than he was. Is it not possible that he, uh, gave, uh, one primary account of the First Vision and didn't want to go into too much of the detail because he didn't think it was necessary? Or either he was trying to formulate the whole experience because, I mean, my goodness, that's just an extraordinary experience. How do you actually understand it and articulate and communicate it? And you might miss some things and you might not. Is it not possible that, uh, he had, he was trying to, again, trying to understand what happened, trying to, um, fathom and comprehend and was struggling with language and tried to describe the whole experience. Or is it not possible that he found it, some of it, too sacred to even talk about and wasn't ready for people to hear the First Vision at that time, and therefore it wasn't published at that time or known about at that time. Because it was too sacred and that people weren't aware. And the last point I wanna make, which is the church's comment, is it not possible that, uh, we are now seeing through the SAE, uh, the same experience, albeit through from different angles? Uh, I know I've got my own concerns with that question because you've mentioned, Greg, that in one account Christ shows up and God doesn't. I mean, that's a pretty significant difference, right? Um, or is it simply Joseph Smith understanding the experience from his own perspective and kind of dissecting it and looking at it from his, you know, from different angles from his own experience? So that's my attempt to respond to your, uh, information that you shared with some questions, sharing my personal experience, but also saying, you know, quoting or, um, reminding us that the reason why there were so many different accounts according to the church is, is that over time people's memories change, perspectives change, understanding changes, and we're able to piece it all together. And in so doing, we get a fuller picture. If we, if we, if we combine and amalgamate the different accounts, we get a more richer, more detailed analytical, uh, understanding of the First Vision?

Yeah, first of all, nobody was with Joseph in the grove. So whether you choose even to acknowledge that there was a vision is a statement of faith, not of fact. We're talking about a supernatural experience that left no tangible evidence. If you make that statement of faith and say, okay, yeah, there was a vision, then the next step is, so what? What you talk about, Ian, is what the apologists, particularly the BYU crowd with the best of intentions, has been trying to do for years. And that is to create some complicated dance steps to maneuver around what's the obvious elephant in the room. And that is, it's not a straight line evolving story. It's not like you started with a small account that grew materially by adding to it details that hadn't been present before. You've got two major contradictions that you can't explain away. One is, why did he go to pray? Actually, three contradictions. The second is, what was the message in the grove? And the third is, what about the persecution? When you get to the canonized version, and he spends more time telling you about the persecution than the vision, and he doesn't even mention it in the earliest account, that's a problem. If you look at this as a theological narrative throughout, you come away with a much better result. And what does that mean? Well, I choose to accept that there was some type of epiphany. Some supernatural vision. I've never had one, so I don't know what it would be like to try to reduce that to writing. It probably would be quite a task. How do you do that? I've referred on this podcast before to what Arnold Freebird told me of what President McKay told him. The finite cannot comprehend the infinite. Don't even try. But nonetheless, What started as a historical event changed into a theological narrative. The problems that we have are twofold. Number one is, until the 1960s, we didn't know there were other versions that came directly from Joseph Smith. We knew the pamphlets that Orson Hyde and Orson Pratt had published in the 1840s. And if you only had one account from Joseph Smith, you'd be in much better position, because then you wouldn't have to deal with these contradictions in multiple accounts. Um, but that's what we have to deal with here. If you say, well, this was just additive, then you run into another problem, because the doctrine of deity that he is verbalizing in those three accounts is evolving in a distinctly different direction. The 1832 account, which also meshes with the doctrine of deity in the Book of Mormon, in the first edition of the Book of Mormon, is called modalism. What it means is there is one God who can appear in different modes on different occasions for different purposes. If you look at the First Vision of the Book of Mormon, there are 4 important verses in there, in 1 and 2 Nephi, One of them, for instance, says, "Mary was the mother of God." Three others express that same sentiment. In 1837, in Kirtland, the second edition of the Book of Mormon was published, and Joseph Smith fixed those four verses so that now it read, "Mary was the mother of the Son of God." rather than the mother of God. So it's not that he just forgot to mention it, it's that he had to fix it when his own understanding of the nature of deity evolved. That second philosophy is known as Benetarianism, binary, that there are two personages in the deity, and that they are different from each other. Not just the one's the father and the other's the son, but they are different species. Again, if we read laterally, at the same time that that second version of the First Vision, 1835, is related, the Lectures on Faith were written. They were published in the Doctrine and Covenants.

They were the doctrine.

They were the doctrine. The revelations were the covenants and commandments. They were pulled out in 1921, but they were there all those intervening years, and they were a constant problem if you look carefully, because one of those lectures contains a catechism And in that catechism, I won't quote it directly, but it says, how many persons, personages are there in the Godhead? The answer is two. The Father is a personage of spirit and the Son is a personage of flesh. That also jibes with that 1835 account of one appears and then disappears and then another one appears, that's consistent with them being of two different types of matter. The Father being a spirit, the Son being of flesh. When you get to the 1838 account, now it's called, um, tritheism, that you have three personages in the Godhead. And one of the— I think it's one of the sections of the Doctrine and Covenants that says the Father and the Son are both personages of flesh, and the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit. Well, that's evolution. It's not additive, it's reconstructing as you go along. It's changing the rules of the game. Now, is that deceitful on his part? I don't think so at all, because if we can allow that he grew in the office, that he grew line by line in understanding, then his knowledge of things eternal evolved, and he retold the story to coincide with whatever his current understanding was. If he'd lived another 10 years, would he have gone further on that? It's a good question. I don't know. Does, does that make some sense that there are real changes there, but it ceased to be a historical document maybe even in 1832? We're not sure what the date of that epiphany was because the different accounts give it when he was different ages. One, I think, was when he was 14, one was when he was 16. It's in the 1820 to 1823 era. Wesley Walters, who was a Lutheran minister and amateur historian, pointed out, gee folks, there was no Palmyra revival in 1820. And all the LDS scholars panicked and went looking because they were sure it was there, and Walters was right. So it may be that it was 1821 or '22 or '23, because there were Palmyra revivals, just not in 1820.

But it—

even if you say, all right, let's date it at 1820, that first account is 12 years later. Now look at the evolution between 1832 and 6 years later, 1838. Can you see that there likely was evolution in the 12 years between 1820 and 1832? So if you're trying to say this is a historical account that tells us exactly what happened in the grove, you're going to get into trouble on several levels. If you look at it instead as a, as a historical backdrop that has become a theological narrative, then it's quite consistent with our basic doctrine of, of continuing revelation. Because continuing revelation just, just doesn't mean putting one leg on top of the other. It means that our entire understanding may go through a paradigm change. And that's happened. Now, if you compare that To the other big scripture, the really big one, the Bible, same thing happens there. There are 3 accounts of the vision of Paul. They have some important differences between them, but I think even more instructive is the theology of Christology that we've talked about before. What was the event that signaled that Jesus was divine, that he was not just like the rest of us mortals? It changed over time, but it changed in one direction, and that is it always got earlier with the retelling. So the earliest gospel writer, the earliest writer in the New Testament was Paul. He, he is not a gospel writer, probably because to him the mortal Jesus was irrelevant. Everything for Paul was the resurrected Christ., and that's not only what drove his theology, I think it's what drove his storytelling. The next one along was Mark, who was about 10 years after Paul was writing, and Mark said, well, it was the baptism with the dove coming down and the voice from the heavens. The next writers are about 10 years after that, and that's Matthew and Luke, and they say, no, it was the birth and the events surrounding the birth, even though the two of them are telling different stories about the nativity. And then the last writer in the New Testament was John, and John says, well, he was God before he was born. So if you're trying to look at those as historical narratives, at most two out of the five can be correct. That would be it really happened with the birth, And so Mark and Luke, even though they got the details a little bit different, they got it right. It may be that none of them corresponds with the historical event. I just don't know. But it's clear that they are mutually exclusive if they are trying to pin down what was the event that marked him as divine. So just as was the case with the First Vision, you have some kind of historical antecedent, but then that narrative evolves quickly and becomes theological instead of historical. Modern historiography doesn't reach back that far. If you go back more than a couple centuries, they wrote history much differently than we do now, and it wasn't based on data. So you really need to shift your paradigm and say, okay, if we understand that this was a theological narrative, then it makes sense. Why the persecution in there? Because now it became the creation story of the church. We are the only church, and I didn't figure that out because I was reading the Bible. That doesn't sound very satisfying. God told me that this is, that all the others were wrong. And what about the persecution? Well, that's just a sign that we're the true church because we know that Satan will try to prevail against the true church of God. Once you get over that hurdle of historicity and look at the whole thing as an evolving theological document, You're fine. The problem is we've never taught it that way. And in fact, we've tried to teach around it and say just the opposite. And that's what gets you into trouble because you have all these data points that will not go away. Right, right.

If I were still a faithful, devoted, believing member of the church, completely devoted as I used to be, wanting and needing this story to be real and understanding the significance of how, uh, important the First Vision is to the very, um, purpose and meaning, uh, existence and validation of the church, a restored church. I think we're the only church that teaches that we're a restored church in that when Christ and the apostles were, um, removed, crucified, and killed and murdered. At some point, the priesthood authority of God left the earth and there was no authority, uh, official formal authority of God on the earth. And again, this is going back to what the Mishnah taught me. We entered a period of, um, multiple centuries we call the Dark Ages. And so the world was lost. It was roaming to and fro in the dark with no authority, no prophetic direction and, um, God's church was not on the earth. And then in 1820, 1823, et cetera, you know, the, the God decided to restore his church in its fullness. So if I was a still a faithful, uh, member of the church, the way I would make sense, if I may be so bold, is to say that Joseph Smith, I, I would be comfortable if Joseph Smith went to the grove of trees. And sought repentance. I'm okay with that. What's wrong with that? That's, you know, that's one thing that, that's natural. That's normal to go to God and, and say sorry. That's perfectly understandable. Normal, normal. Uh, Joseph Smith also went to find out which was the true church. Again, I find that rational. You know, I don't see if I'd have a problem with that. Um, I believe he went to a private space. Yes. I believe he had a spiritual supernatural experience. Did he see God and Christ? No, I don't believe that. I believe he saw something in his mind, his imagination. I think it was real to him. I think some of those things that he described probably happened in, in his mind. But again, continuing with trying to reconcile, uh, this, I, uh, would say, argue through my unquestioning testimony that Joseph Smith, to your point, Craig, that, you know, and we're all like this, we learn things line upon line, precept upon precept. Even the temple in the endowment ceremony when the video's showing and Adam and Eve are there and they covenant with God, uh, in those early stages where they make those initial first stage covenants. And I think Adam says, you know, are you, I, will you return? I can't remember all the words. And, um, the apostles there, uh, Pete and James and John the apostles say that they will return with further light and truth. The church teaches that even to this day, I believe. Jim Bennett can correct me on that. Um, and so the idea that Joseph Smith's mind and understanding evolved, and as he was trying to understand the experience, at least his experience, you know, as he describes it, Um, his understanding was expanded, his mind expanded, the revelation came through, and he had a, a more detailed, uh, understanding of what happened. He was able to communicate and write and articulate those experiences. Uh, perhaps he felt, and others since then felt that, uh, by providing too much detail, if you don't go with one version, 1838, I think it was. We don't go with the one standard version based on, um, some orthodoxy or some kind of Protestant model, you know, that some element of the Trinity, some kind of, uh, semblance of that, if you like. Um, if it, if it didn't go with that, then it would cause confusion. So they settled on the official version, which is the one I got taught, probably felt that The world wasn't ready for all the details until now. And you know, even now, uh, the current prophets, their minds are still learning about God and deity and the, the minds are unfolding and further enlightened truth is, is, um, is being revealed. And that's a continuous process, a continuous, uh, evolution or evolution of the human experience with, with God and with deity, et cetera, et cetera. And so as a faithful member, I would be okay with that if that was You know, if that was a way of reconciling that understanding, I'd be okay with that. And, and you know, we, we, we now getting more information about this and God has decided to give us more information about the First Vision now, uh, because we're ready for it. You know, meat before the milk kind of thing, right? So, but, but I also can see you raised some points there that Joseph Smith was completely alone when this happened. So there's no witnesses. Uh, the time of when it happened is completely different to when the Bible happened. You know, the Bible experience happened thousands of years ago. Some of them are, are, are I think reasonably factual to an extent. A lot of it is allegorical. I think that was your word in the past podcast. Nevertheless, you know, these accounts, uh, that happened, supernatural accounts of the Bible happened a long time ago. With Joseph Smith, that happened recently in the context of the Bible in the age of print. You know, the age of communication, early stage communication and print. If people wrote stuff down and, and there were witnesses and there's, there's more of a, it's much more recent. Um, and so I, I can see the other side to my argument. Um, that, uh, you know, the gaps in the actual first vision, uh, are problematic for a lot of people. See that. Um, not talking about the persecution. See that, although the mission said to me that he, he, he did feel persecuted. He tried to talk about the first vision and was shut down, uh, and was persecuted. He said that. I think that's in the account. He was persecuted for, um, stating the experience. Uh, but he could not deny it. Neither would he deny it. He says that, right? Uh, I, I have a problem with the, uh, not making it official. What was the date, Greg, when it became official part of the church teaching?

1881 was when the Pearl of Great Price was canonized. It had been published prior to that.

So I have a problem on the other side of my argument. I have a problem with that because there's something so important, so significant in the history of mankind, not just about the church, you know, God's church being restored. I mean, again, the Mishnah Torah, aside from Christ's birth, and Gethsemane and the crucifixion. The, I was taught that the Restoration is the second most important event in the history of mankind. And so why didn't they talk about this first extraordinary first vision back then? Was it because the church felt it wasn't ready? And again, flipping over the other side is maybe they were right that the world wasn't ready for the details and wasn't ready to talk about the first vision because My goodness, what an extraordinary event to happen. And so maybe 1881 was the time when God revealed now is the time to talk about it. And recently with the essays, now's the time for the church to reveal more detail on it. And now we get this much richer tapestry understanding of the layers, the layers of the account.

Let me just jump in and say, A major problem has been caused by the Church in that it's trying to put into the First Vision what isn't there. It was not the beginning of Joseph Smith's ministry. The Book of Mormon was. The Book of Mormon was not the beginning of Joseph Smith's authority. That came near the end of the Book of Mormon. That was the angelic visitations in 1829. All of that just screams to me, don't try to pack into the First Vision what wasn't there. What was it? It was personal. If you look at the 20th section of Doctrine and Covenants, verses 4 and 5, It gives a narrative that lays out in sequence several events. The first of those is this elder having had his sins remitted, fell into error or whatever you— whatever it says, and then was visited by an angel who gave him the plates. And then there was the restoration of the lesser priesthood and then the restoration of the higher priesthood, even though they didn't use the many words in those years. We're trying to put all of that up front in that First Vision. It wasn't there. Even if you allow for it to be embellished, he never said, even in his most embellished account of it, "This is where I was told to start a church. This is where I was given authority." It's not there. So I think we would be much better off and certainly more at peace with historical data if we just let the First Vision say what it's meant to say, which is this was the initial encounter with deity that a young boy had. And it wasn't such a big deal either for him at the time or for others because there were all these other accounts that were published before his account, and they were in the same time and place, and they said the same thing. That's why in that first account, he says, I mentioned it and nobody took it seriously. That rings true to me. It's not they persecuted him. Why would they persecute him when 1,000 other people in that area have reported visions? What they would do to a 14-year-old boy or whatever he was is ignore him. He doesn't have standing compared to the other pillars of the community who have had visions, who have talked about them, and who have published them. That make sense?

Yeah, that makes sense.

That does make sense. I want to jump in here, uh, and, and maybe derail the discussion a little bit in that, uh, you know, when I was writing my CES letter reply and going through genuinely troubling issues with the Church and came to the issue of the First Vision. One of the things I wrote was, "There are many issues with the Church that I find genuinely troubling. The multiple accounts of the First Vision are not one of them." Now, Greg, you may need to set me straight here a little bit.

No, no, that's, that's a legitimate experience for you, Jim. What we know both from the Faith Crisis survey that we did with 3,000 people in 2011 and the more recent one that you've talked about, uh, with the book Torn, where he interviewed 15,000 people, it is a stumbling block for a lot of people. And a big enough stumbling block that it'll take them right out of the church if they don't get resolution. Those for whom it's not a stumbling block, life goes on.

Right, no, and I am not trying to delegitimize anybody else's concern with this, but I want to maybe point to why I've arrived at this place. And why I think others could arrive at similar places that could kind of remove this as a stumbling block. And Greg, you've outlined, I think, maybe the simplest way, which is to see this as a theological event and not as a historical event. And I see a lot of value in that. You mentioned earlier the apologetic arguments, and I, I'm a big fan of Dan McClellan, the Data Over Dogma guy, who says that apologetics is not about proving something happened. It's about proving the plausibility that something could have happened, to kind of leave the door open wide enough to say, well, yeah, uh, but it's possible. I mean, he says apologetics sometimes settles for not impossible. Now, Occam's razor says that the simplest explanation is usually the best one, and so apologetic arguments rarely focus on the simplest explanation. They try to focus on the explanation that they want to be true and then try to show ways that it is possible that it could be true, even if it is the least likely answer for what, for what actually happened. And so I, I am aware that perhaps the narrative I've constructed has some of that not impossible stuff and is bypassing Occam's razor. So I want to stipulate that up front. But here's what the reason why I don't think it's a big deal. I think these accounts to a large degree are more reconcilable than we, we claim they are. For instance, the one particularly jumps out at me. Um, why did he go into the grove to pray? And in the first account in 1832, he says, I went in the grove to pray because I wanted my sins forgiven, and I already knew all the churches weren't true. 1838, I went in the account to know which church to join. Um, and, uh, what's— there is a section in the 1838 account where he says that his question is going to be, which of the churches is true, or are they all wrong together? Uh, so he's open to the possibility in 1838 that they could all be wrong. He seems very convinced in 1832, 6 years earlier. But also in the 1838 account, there is a verse where he says, it had never entered into my heart that they were all wrong. And yet several verses earlier, he said that it could— they could be all wrong. And so, so, so, okay, so here's the Jim Bennett narrative of what happens. I'm going to sidestep all the other problems. I'm going to focus on the why did he go into the grove to pray. I think that in 1820 or 1821 or whenever it happened, I don't— that doesn't bother me at all that The records aren't clear on that. Joseph Smith, whenever this happened, was not keeping records. Um, but okay, so he goes into a grove of trees, has this experience, and he's asking a question and is unburdening himself. I believe that which church is true, and, uh, please forgive my sins. Are to a young boy in 1820 the same question. The idea that you can have your sins forgiven independent of any kind of connection to a church is, I think, a postmodern idea. I don't think it's a 19th century idea. I think in the 19th century, the idea that you could seek salvation, that you could connect with Jesus outside of the confines of organized religion, uh, I, I think that would have been a radical idea. And I don't think it even occurred to Joseph Smith to clarify the difference between the two, that, that question, or that, that sort of church, uh, is essentially a variation on a theme that would have been very clear to Joseph as being a similar theme. So before I get into how I've reconciled the other stuff, I want both of you, but Greg particularly, with your research on this, to tell me if I'm up in the night or if that's, if that's an apologetic, well, it's possible, because that strikes me as actually very plausible. That, that, that we are attaching modern assumptions to a 19th century event. What do you think?

I think it's more problematic because of something you left out, and that is, in the 1832 account, he said, I'd resolved the issue already by reading the Bible. There's no doubt in his mind.

Okay. Um, okay.

And in 1838, he said all the infighting amongst the religion, arguing over the Bible, made it clear you can't resolve the issue from the Bible. Those are not reconcilable with each other.

Uh, they're not. Um, what, what I think is reconcilable is, um, I mean, that to me strikes me as, as, uh, Joseph Smith. I mean, that's an evolution. I mean, I, I, I am not trying to say evolution does not take place, but I, I think it's very easy to sort of, um, rewrite your own memory on subjects.

And clearly that's what happened. Clearly that's what happened. With us, if you keep a diary as long as I have, which is 60 years.

Oh my goodness.

You go back and you see that what you think now isn't the way you wrote it then. That's common. What we need to allow is to say, yeah, that's what happened here, that not just the story evolved, but that the theology girding up the entire church evolved at the same time, at the same speed.

No, I—

there was change in the theology of deity, and that change was always mirrored in whatever the current version of the First Vision was.

No, I agree with that 100%, uh, and I think that that's entirely reconcilable with a historical event. I don't think it's unreasonable that Joseph in 1838 now sees this as, no, I really was wondering which church was true. It hadn't entered into my heart entirely. I really wasn't convinced that they were all wrong, whereas in 1832 with the fire of youth. I guess, I don't know, 6 years is not a really long time, but there's more certainty among young people about things than, you know, I look back at things that I was absolutely certain of on my mission. Ian and I were talking before this podcast began about just how certain we were about things that we would testify to our investigators that we now look back and go, oh, I wasn't really that certain, but I pretended to be, or at least I convinced myself that I was. I mean, so, so yeah, I am not trying to— so I guess I'm not trying to shoehorn all this into, oh no, no, no, there isn't an element here of evolution. There isn't an element of an evolving theology. I'm trying to say that I don't think that evolution is irreconcilable with the idea that a First Vision where there really was an appearance of God and of Christ took place. And, and the, the one contradiction that I think you really can't get around at all is, is the 1832 account of seeing the Lord and That's it. I saw the Lord. Now, the church likes to say, well, that doesn't preclude. Yeah, that he saw both. But I think the idea of, of, you know, if you're seeing God, genuinely seeing God, that's not something you get wrong. And that's not something that's easy to evolve. Now, the way I look at that, um, or try to reconcile that— and again, tell me if I'm up in the night on this— um, the 1832 account, my understanding is that's Joseph's personal journal. Is that correct?

Uh, it wasn't his personal journal. It was an early history of the church. Frederick Williams was the scribe, and he's taking dictation Then the hand changes, and you have in Joseph's hand the story of the First Vision. Then he hands the pen back to Frederick G. Williams, who continues the historical narrative.

Okay, uh, well then maybe that shoots my whole theory in the foot, uh, but because, because one of the, one of the things when you start talking about modalism, for instance, I don't think Joseph Smith understood what modalism was. Uh, um, I don't think a lot of members of the church now understand what modalism is. Um, you know, Arianism is another sort of, um, now considered heresy by, by strict Trinitarians. Uh, but the evolution of Trinitarian doctrine, understanding of that My sense of that is that Joseph goes back, edits the Book of Mormon, um, and takes out all of the Mother of God phrases. Uh, my guess is not because they're non-Trinitarian, or because they are Trinitarian, but because they're Catholic. I, I think the phrase Mother of God is so uniquely tied to the Catholic Church, that that unsettles Joseph, where he's trying to clarify, no, no, no, I don't mean it the way—

that's, that's one of the four key verses. She's not in the others, so that, that doesn't carry the day on the whole thing.

Well, there are a number of other verses. Uh, the Book of Mormon, in terms of a plain reading thereof, is more trinitarian than the Bible is. Uh, you have Jesus in 3 Nephi saying, I am the Father and the Son, in a way he never said in the New Testament.

Yep.

Uh, you have, um, Abinadi talking about how the very Eternal Father will come and he will be the Father and the Son, uh, in a ver— in a, in a text that I've seen all kinds of BYU professors twist themselves into pretzels. To try to say it isn't Trinitarian. And it's, it's very Trinitarian. It's more Trinitarian again than most biblical scripture. So, but he left all of those untouched. He did. I mean, there's— he left so much material in there that if his goal was to go in and purge it of all Trinitarianism, He failed miserably. And my sense is that a lot of the later, uh, the later accounts of the First Vision, uh, are, are essentially informed— and I think this is kind of what you were saying to some degree— uh, they're informed by his growing understanding of theology. So he understands in later accounts how significant it is to mention the two people that are there in a way that he didn't think was necessary. And the reason I asked, it was his personal journal, is that he's recording this to some degree for himself and so doesn't see it necessary to sort of explain it, explain the theological implications of that. He knew what happened, and he's describing the important part, And, and when you talk about in 1835 that he talks about one person coming after the other, that's how I actually see the account. Because, uh, the— I mean, that, that's what I think actually happened, in that every scriptural account of Christ appearing, quote, resurrection, particularly in the Book of Mormon, um has the Father, uh, bearing record of the Son, and then the Son shows up and does all of it. And even in the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, where he's trying to deal with the phrase— with the scripture in John that says, 'No man hath seen God at any time,' Joseph adds, 'No man hath seen God at any time except he hath borne record of the Son.' So I can imagine, and again, this is plausibility, this is not Occam's razor, and I recognize that, but I think it's entirely plausible to imagine a scenario where that scriptural model is followed. The Father appears, announces that, come listen to my Son, my Son is going to speak And then, then the entirety of the interview is not the way Church art depicts it, which is these two guys standing there and the one guy is the father and he's just standing there with nothing better to do. Son talks. I, I, if the father shows up, leaves, the entire interview, uh, is with Jesus and not with the father. Uh, that strikes me as a plausible way why he would say in a much more private setting I saw the Lord because the interview was— the conversation was with Jesus, even in all of the accounts. So I don't see the accounts contradicting themselves in ways that demonstrate a willingness or an eagerness or even an intent to deceive. Or an intent to, uh, I see them as legitimate evolutions in Joseph's thinking applied to an event that, uh, Richard Bushman offers something interesting in that he says one of the reasons why Joseph did not talk about the First Vision was not because, as Ian says, it may have been too sacred. It's because it was too commonplace.

Yes.

People were going into the woods and seeing Jesus on a daily basis.

What I said earlier.

Yeah.

Nobody paid attention to him.

Well, nobody paid attention to him because this was such a common thing that happened. And Joseph didn't want to be lost in, in that kind of model.

But we don't want it to be that. We want to pack much more into it. We want to make it the creation story, and it wasn't.

Yeah, I, and I, I agree with that. I, I think that's, that's, that's probably accurate. And we do put more weight on this experience than Joseph did, certainly, and probably than the experience can bear. But I do think that you don't have to throw out the baby with the bathwater when you encounter these contradictions and say, oh, these are contradictions, and let's— so this must not have happened, this must be a fraud. In fact, one of the things that— and again, tell me, push back on me on this. If this is nonsense. Um, if Joseph had decided, okay, I want to invent an encounter with God and Jesus Christ, uh, to give myself legitimacy, to, to prove that I'm a prophet, to what, for whatever reason, if this is an invented experience just made up out of whole cloth, Joseph just made it up, Uh, that would belie the possibility of these kinds of evolutions in how the story is told. It seems to me if you're a con man, you get your story straight at the outset. You don't vary from it because you know when you vary from it, it kind of undermines confidence in it. And, and if Joseph had known in 1832 that he was making up a foundational story that didn't happen. I can't imagine him revisiting that story 6 years later and modifying it as much as he did. Uh, what Joseph did in modifying in 1838 is very much what I think all of us do, is we recontextualize things based on what we have learned in the interim. And, and I don't think that's deliberate deception, but I do think it leads to these kinds of contradictions. Whereas if this were made up out of whole cloth, I think you would be less likely to see variation. Is that— is that rationalization?

I think that's right. But we get back to a fundamental problem we've talked about before, that most members of this church are literalists.

Yes.

They don't know allegory as it applies to religion. And so they will never be satisfied with an evolutionary framework for the First Vision or any other gospel topic that clearly has evolved. To them, it's all pre— God is unchangeable, inerrant, scripture is literal, period, end of score, story. Um, there's not much point in trying to dialogue with people like that because they're immovable. And if that works for them, fine, out here.

But, well, but it's a faith, they're a faith crisis waiting to happen.

They may, or they may go through their whole life and not experience experience that, and they're blessed that they can do that.

Well, but that's a very brittle, unsustainable faith.

Well, it, it may sustain them their whole life.

Okay.

It doesn't work for us, and that's why we're here. Gentlemen, I have a hard stop in a couple of minutes. Can we wrap it up?

Let's wrap it up. Ian, any final thoughts?

Yeah, this has been fascinating. I wish I had more time. I just want to, uh, we We haven't got time to go into some of the points I wanted to talk about in the essay, but I want to read, uh, real quick here, the conclusion in the essay that the church published. Uh, previously that talks about embellishment and talks about evolution and talks about, uh, the things that we've talked about before. But conclusion, this is from the, uh, the essay that the church published. Joseph Smith testified repeatedly that he experienced a remarkable vision of God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, neither the truth of the First Vision nor the arguments against it can be proven by historical research alone. Knowing the truth of Joseph Smith's testimony requires— very important that— knowing the truth of Joseph Smith's testimony requires each earnest seeker of truth to study the record and then exercise sufficient faith in Christ to ask God in sincere, humble prayer whether the record is true, which I did, by the way, and got a testimony of that. The 1838 version was correct. If the seeker asks with real intent to act upon the answer revealed by the Holy Ghost, the truthfulness of Joseph Smith's vision will be manifest. In this way, every person can know that Joseph Smith spoke honestly when he declared, I had seen a vision, I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it. Um, you know, had the missionaries told me about the other first visions that were happening at the time, So I think I probably would've joined the church cuz I was quite inquisitive like Joseph Smith. So I, I, I, uh, I see both sides of the coin. I see it being plausible. I think he had an experience. I think it was developed and embellished over time. I think like any great story, you look at any, uh, great programs or movies or ideas, it's really ess— essentially, uh, stories that get embellished because it's entertaining, it's interesting, and it's quite quite dramatic. I think there's an element of that to this as well. And I think, uh, it's, I think it's a mixture of everything that we, we've, we've said. I do believe he had a profound spiritual experience, not in the way it's been presented by the church. Uh, however, that message that I heard back then completely transformed my life and changed my life from that literal moment. You know, when I knew Joseph was a prophet, it changed everything for me. And you, you know, when you had that first vision, So that's my final comments. Uh, Greg, over to you. I think you wanna, you, you gotta leave in a minute or so. Go ahead.

Yeah. Uh, I, I think the important message for your listeners is what we're trying to do with these podcasts is to help people for whom these subjects are a problem. That does not mean most of the church. Most of them don't even know there's a problem sitting there. And they don't care even if they did know it. Uh, it's not my job or our job to go out and proselytize and make them aware of problems they could care less about, or problems that might tip them over if they knew about them. What we're concerned about is the people in the church who have studied enough to realize there are some historical issues that haven't been resolved and to help them get to a point where they're comfortable either resolving them or being able to understand that they're not resolvable at this point and to live with the ambiguity.

Yeah, the ambiguity is so unsettling to so many people. And I think, uh, I, I think, you know, that all of these issues to some degree are a ticking time bomb. Because we're reaching a point where it's not going to be possible to sort of glide through life without encountering these things. The internet has so democratized information that, that eventually people have to confront this. And if you don't have a framework that allows for ambiguity, your faith shatters like glass. And, and that's something that I hope this podcast can help people avoid.

And it's going to be more problematic for the younger demographics because they have not already set their course in life.

100%.

This is where they can get unglued in a hurry.

100%.

So it's interesting, real quick. So real quick, just real quick here, 10 seconds. Uh, I know somebody really well, Jim, that is well versed on this stuff, especially this topic, but chooses to kind of shelve it because the alternative to leave the church and the family and all the temple and the whole cultural experience in the church is so painful, is quite happy to say there's problems. It might not have happened the way the church said it was, but he is basically shelved it all off, right? And is quite happy to live this amazing life. He's got a great life in the church and it works for him. And I think that a lot of people that are like that and the shelf will never come crushing down with these people. And he's, this person's told me this, he doesn't care. All he cares is what is— he's cut— he said the real world is a lot more difficult than this pretend world in the church. And there are people like that that exist. But you—

all right. Well, we want to respect Greg's time. We're going to wind this up. Thank you both. This has been a wonderful discussion. Thank you, everybody, for listening. We'll see you next time on Inside Out.