Saturday, December 2, 2023

Brian C. Passantino on Orson Pratt and the Lectures on Faith in the 1876 Edition of the Doctrine and Covenants

  

Orson Pratt had become fond of using the Pearl of Great Price in his sermons and teachings and had already taken two of its revelations (which would become Sections 77 and 87 in the Doctrine and Covenants) and incorporated them into his 1876 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. But now, he wanted to assure its canonicity. He sent two letters to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles requesting that the Pearl of Great Price be added to the Doctrine and Covenants. In order to accomplish this task, he suggested that a section of the Doctrine and Covenants entitled the “Lectures on Faith,” be omitted to make room for the addition. His request to omit the “Lectures on Faith” was denied, but the Quorum had confidence in the canonicity of the Pearl of Great Price. (Brian C. Passantino, “Orson Pratt and the Expansion of the Doctrine and Covenants” [MA Thesis; Utah State University, 2020], 21)

 

Woodford, “Historical Development,” 87; Turley and Slaughter, How We Got the Doctrine and Covenants, 95. The “Lectures on Faith” were a series of theological discourses that were given to Church leaders in the winter of 1834 – 35 in Kirtland, Ohio. These lectures were transcribed and included in the earliest versions of the Doctrine and Covenants. While little documentary evidence remains as to who was the principal person in charge of the lectures, recent studies have concluded that Sidney Rigdon, one of the early leaders of the Church, was responsible for most of its content, with Joseph Smith acting as an overseer. One of the lectures described the nature of God’s corporeality in a way that contradicted later teachings of Smith. The fifth lecture stated that “[t]here are two personages who constitute the great, matchless, governing and supreme power over all things… They are the Father and the Son: The Father being a personage of spirit, glory and power: possessing all perfection and fulness: The Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, a personage of tabernacle, made, or fashioned like unto man, or being in the form and likeness of man, or, rather, man was formed after his likeness, and in his image.” Explaining the Father as a “personage of spirit,” and the Son as a “personage of tabernacle,” did not square with Latter-day Saint theology in 1876 that taught that the Father and the Son were resurrected and embodied beings, both housed with bodies of “flesh and bone.” Pratt probably recognized the contradiction, which may have contributed to why he lobbied for its removal. In order to solidify the Church’s stance on the nature of the Godhead, and correct the erroneous teaching from the “Lecture on Faith,” Pratt inserted the teaching of Joseph Smith as contained in William Clayton’s journal and canonized it as Section 130. It explained the “true” Latter-day Saint doctrine on the nature of God and usurped the statement in the “Lectures on Faith.” Section 130 clarified that “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s.” (Ibid., 21 n. 63)

 

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