In the 1832 account of his First Vision, the Prophet Joseph Smith wrote that he saw:
[A] piller of firelight above the brightness of the sun at noon day come down from above and rested upon me and I was filled with the spirit of god and the <Lord> opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord. (source)
In this excerpt, Joseph said that “the Lord” opened the heavens and he saw “the Lord.” Some LDS apologists and historians have argued that the first Lord refers to God the Father and the second lord with whom Joseph conversed was Jesus (e.g., Steven C. Harper). While this has been denied by critics, most recently Dan Vogel, it does have strong biblical precedence (biblical exegesis and theology are not Vogel’s strong suits by any stretch of the imagination, so not surprising he is ignorant on this issue), all the more important in light of the influence the Bible had on Joseph Smith, so it would have influenced the language he used (something that is uncontested by LDS and non-LDS alike). We will examine this in this article.
Psa 110:1 (LXX: 109:1) is, next to Dan 7:13, the most quoted and alluded-to singular Old Testament verse in the New Testament. According to James Dunn in his book, Did The First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence, this verse "runs like a gold thread through much of the New Testament" (p. 103). The Hebrew of this verse reads:
נְאֻם יְהוָה לַאדֹנִי שֵׁב לִימִינִי עַד־אָשִׁית אֹיְבֶיךָ הֲדֹם לְרַגְלֶיךָ
YHWH says to my lord: Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet
In this verse, one Lord (YHWH) speaks (by oracle [that is the nuance of the Hebrew verb]) to “adoni” (“my adon” or “my lord”), a numerically distinct lord to the first Lord, YHWH.
With the later tradition of not pronouncing the divine name YHWH and with its substitution with Adonai (“my [sovereign] Lord”), later Jewish readers would have said, instead of YHWH says to my lord, it would have been rendered "Adonai says to my adon/lord" or, to render it into Hebrew:
נְאֻם אֲדֹנָי לַאדֹנִי
My Lord says to my lord
This is captured in the LXX rendition of this verse:
εἶπεν ὁ κύριος τῷ κυρίῳ μου κάθου ἐκ δεξιῶν μου ἕως ἂν θῶ τοὺς ἐχθρούς σου ὑποπόδιον τῶν ποδῶν σου
The Lord said to my lord: sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet
As a few examples of this verse's reception in the New Testament, consider the following:
And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he: And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him any question. And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David? For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The LORD said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool. David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son? And the common people heard him gladly. (Mark 12:28-37)
Why is this interesting? In this verse, Jesus understands the singular person of the Father is in view in Shema, and exhausts the referents thereof (cf. John 17:3; 1 Tim 2:5, etc), with the LXX translating YHWH as κυριος (“Lord”); instead, He was the second lord of Psa 110:1 (109:1, LXX), showing that there are “two lords” in view: The Lord God and the Lord Messiah. Indeed, the author of the Gospel of Luke picked this up rather cogently. In his infancy narrative, we read:
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:11)
The Greek for "Christ the Lord" is χριτος κυριος.
However, elsewhere in Luke 2:26, in the narrative of Jesus’ presentation at the temple, we read:
And it was revealed unto him [Simeon] by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ.
"The Lord's Christ" in Greek is τὸν χριστὸν κυρίου, so we can clearly see that in the Bible, there are two Lords: The Father and the “Lord’s Christ,” the “Lord Messiah” Jesus.
Other texts of Christological importance where Psa 110:1 is alluded to would include:
Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he saith himself, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, Until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. (Acts 2:30-36)
But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. (Acts 7:55-56)
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. (1 Cor 15:22-28)
And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? (Heb 1:10-13)
While not explicitly quoted in the Book of Mormon, this verse is alluded to a few times therein (which itself should serve to refute Modalism). Two of the clearest examples are the following verses:
Wherefore, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased because Christ hath ascended into heaven and hath sat down on the right hand of God, to claim of the Father his rights of mercy which he hath upon the children of men? (Moroni 7:27)
And may the grace of God the Father, whose throne is high in the heavens, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who sitteth on the right hand of his power, until all things shall become subject unto him, be, and abide with you forever. Amen. (Moroni 9:26; cf. Acts 7:55-56; 1 Cor 15:22-28)
Not only is Psa 110:1 alluded to, but coupled with the distinction of the person of the Father and the Son, such refutes the claim that the earliest “Mormon” Christology was a form of Modalism, contra Dan Vogel and other critics.
A number of revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants, pre-dating 1832, are also reliant upon Psa 110:1, further bolstering our thesis. Speaking of Jesus, we read:
And ascended into heaven, to sit down on the right hand of the Father, to reign with almighty power according to the will of the Father. (D&C 20:24)
Elsewhere, we read the following wherein the Father and the Son are numerically distinct from one another, coupled with another allusion to Psa 110:1:
Thus saith the Lord; for I am God, and have sent mine Only Begotten Son into the world for the redemption of the world, and have decreed that he that receiveth him shall be saved, and he that receiveth him not shall be damned--And they have done unto the Son of Man even as they listed; and he has taken his power on the right hand of his glory, and now reigneth in the heavens, and will reign till he descends on the earth to put all enemies under his feet, which time is night at hand. (D&C 49:5-6)
In D&C 76, a revelation dating from February 1832, written only a short time before the 1832 First Vision account, Psa 110:1 is clearly an influence on the theological vocabulary of the young prophet:
And we beheld the glory of the Son, on the right hand of the Father, and received of his fulness . . .For we saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the Only Begotten of the Father. (D&C 76:20, 23)
So it should be clear that, in light of the influence the KJV, especially the NT had on Joseph Smith, as well as the reception history of Psa 110:1 in the NT, the Book of Mormon, and even his pre-1832 revelations, speaking of two numerically distinct “lords” is not the stretch that critics like Dan Vogel claim it to be.
