Thursday, March 25, 2021

Benjamin F. Cummings, III on "Spirit" in the King Follett Discourse

 

 

One of the problems in interpreting Joseph Smith centers around the meaning of spirit. On the one hand, he says that spirit is material. If we assume that everything is either body or spirit, and both are material, then it might be concluded that his doctrine is Materialism. But in his phrase “the intelligence of the spirit,” something very different from material seems to be meant, and the traditional dualism reappears. It is not Body-Mind, or Body-Spirit, but Body-Intelligence that names the dualism. Yet because custom in English to distinguish the non-material from the material by applying to the first the word “spirit” in contradistinction from “matter.” Joseph Smith uses “spirit,” for which he had no other name, nor has such a name evolved since. For this uncreated core or essence of personality, the designation “primordial Self” is proposed for the purpose of the study. The difficulty for him and for us arises from the utter uniqueness of the concept itself. (Benjamin F. Cummings, III, The Eternal Individual Self [Salt Lake City: Utah Printing Co., 1968], 36)