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)
