Why is this even a question? Doesn’t everyone know that Joseph Smith was 14 when he saw God and Jesus Christ in a grove? The answer is no. Some people think they know. That’s not the same as knowing.
So was Joseph 14 or not?
He probably was. Why the qualifier? Because the evidence shows that the answer isn’t so simple. The evidence says that Joseph began worrying about his soul when he was about 12. He continued to do so through his early teens. His memory of his age at the time of his vision was vague. Joseph usually remembered his age at the time as an afterthought.
Joseph’s 1832 autobiography says
“At about the age of twelve years my mind become seriously imprest with regard to the all importent concerns for the well fare of my immortal soul.” That led Joseph to search the scriptures and observe churches and Christians. He concluded that the scriptures and the versions of Christianity didn’t match. Joseph felt grief as a result. In 1832, he remembered that this process lasted “from the age of twelve to fifteen.”
Joseph did not specify his age in the 1832 account
He said simply that “while in the attitude of calling upon the Lord a piller of light above the brightness of the sun at noon day come down from above and rested upon me and I saw the Lord and he spake unto me saying Joseph my son thy sins are forgiven thee.” Frederick Williams later inserted the words “in the 16th year of my age” into the clause quoted above. No one knows whether Joseph told Frederick to do so or why he wrote “16th year.” Some people may think they know. That’s not the same as knowing.
Joseph’s scribe recorded
an 1835 telling of the vision in Joseph’s journal. In that telling, the last thing Joseph says about the vision is, “I was about 14 years old when I received this first communication.” On that day at least, his age at the time of the vision was an afterthought, and he approximated it. That line contrasts with the intense and emotional lines before it. The foreground in this memory is of discovering the truth, overcoming the unseen power that startled him, praying, seeing divine beings, and being filled with joy. His age at the time is background. It was important enough to him to try to recall at the end but not more important than that.
In his manuscript history
Joseph remembered that unusual religious excitement started “in my fifteenth year.” He was, in other words, fourteen. Of all the accounts, this one does the best job of establishing a date and situating Joseph in time: early spring, 1820. Compared to the others, this memory is uncharacteristically sharp about Joseph’s age and the date of the vision. Joseph remembered later in this account, “I was an obscure boy only between fourteen and fifteen years of age,” after which his scribe added “or thereabouts.” A later revision of this document is more typical. In it Joseph says he was “about 15 years old” during the “unusual religious excitement.” Estimating like that is typical of the way Joseph dated things in his vision memories. Certainty about dates and his age is uncharacteristic in his vision accounts. In his letter to John Wentworth, Joseph said, “When about fourteen years of age I began to reflect upon the importance of being prepared for a future state.”
The secondary accounts follow this pattern
Orson Pratt says, “When somewhere about fourteen or fifteen years old, he began seriously to reflect upon the necessity of being prepared for a future state.” Orson Hyde’s version is less wordy but no more precise: “When he had reached his fifteenth year, he began to think seriously . . . ” The journal of Levi Richards just says “when he was a youth he began to think about these things.” David Nye White quoted Joseph saying God “revealed himself to me first when I was about fourteen years old, a mere boy.” Alexander Neibaur’s journal entry doesn’t say anything about Joseph’s age at the time.
Those are the facts of the historical record
That’s the evidence we have on which to base an answer to the question with which we began: How old was Joseph Smith at his first vision? He typically said he was about fourteen, and usually as an afterthought. Once he said clearly that he was fourteen. His scribe added, “or thereabouts.” Another scribe said he was fifteen. Some people interpret the vagueness and variety as evidence that Joseph didn’t see the Father and the Son. Some people think they know that he could not possibly mis-remember his age if he actually saw a vision. That’s not the same as knowing.
Joseph didn’t remember exactly how old he was
He didn’t claim to. He claimed to see the Father and the Son. He knew that God knew it. He couldn’t deny it. “Some said he was dishonest, others said he was mad, and he was ridiculed and reviled, but . . . he had seen a vision. He knew he had, and all the persecution under heaven could not make it otherwise.”
In my last post I wrote about the dilemma between Joseph’s head and heart that led him to seek and receive the revelation we call his first vision. I promised to use this post to write about Joseph’s other dilemma, the one that kept him from telling his story, and that shaped the way he told it when he finally decided to do so. Here goes:
Joseph Smith was in his mid-twenties
He was hundreds of miles from home, anxious about his family and about his soul. He was in Greenville, Indiana, nursing Newel Whitney, whose leg had been badly broken in a stage coach accident. As Newel convalesced, Joseph went nearly every day to a grove just outside of town where he could be alone to vent his feelings in prayer. He remembered his past. He recalled his sins. He mourned and wept that he had let “the adversary of my soul . . . have so much power over me.” He remembered that “God is merciful,” and rejoiced that he had been forgiven and received the Comforter.
We know this because Joseph wrote it all to Emma
his wife, of more than five years who was having her own ordeal trying to find a home for herself and daughter, Julia, in Kirtland, Ohio. The letter is in Joseph’s hand. It is composed of just two sentences. Their average length is about 300 words. In them, Joseph jumped from topic to topic. He was a jumble of emotions. He spelled creatively. He asked Emma to excuse “my inability in convaying my ideas in writing.”
The inability to convey his ideas in writing was one of the horns of Joseph’s dilemma
The other was that he had been commanded to convey his ideas in writing. The Lord had told him to keep a record, and in it to tell the world of his calling as a seer, a translator, a prophet, and an apostle of Jesus Christ (D&C 21).
Joseph had translated the Book of Mormon
Oliver Cowdery had written it. Joseph had recorded dozens of revelation manuscripts, mainly in the voice of Jesus Christ, and mostly dictated by Joseph as someone else wrote. These documents testified indeed that he was a seer, a translator, a prophet, an apostle. But none of them told the story of his first revelation. There was no record of it in June 1832 when he wrote to Emma.
Joseph had no problem preaching the Book of Mormon
Moreover, he was planning to publish 10,000 copies of the Lord’s revelations to him. His first vision was different, however. It was one thing for Joseph to pray his conflicted thoughts and deep feelings in the woods, out of sight and earshot. That, he had learned, was safe. God was forgiving and upbraided not. However, the first time Joseph told his vision (and the last until 1832, so far as we know), a minister upbraided him plenty. “Telling the story,” Joseph eventually explained, “had excited a great deal of prejudice against me among professors of religion and was the cause of great persecution.”
We can make sense of Joseph’s reluctance
to tell the story of his first vision, and of the varied ways he eventually told it, if we are aware at the outset of the two horns of his dilemma:
He had to tell his experience
He felt he was incapable of it
Joseph returned to Kirtland shortly after writing to Emma, and shortly after that he and his counselor/scribe Frederick Williams recorded Joseph’s first vision, probably for the first time since it occurred twelve years earlier. Frederick wrote this impressive introduction:
A History of the life of Joseph Smith Jr. an account of his marvilous experience and of all the mighty acts which he doeth in the name of Jesus Ch[r]ist the son of the living God of whom he beareth record and also an account of the rise of the church of Christ in the eve of time according as the Lord brought forth and established by his hand.
History, circa Summer 1832 – The Joseph Smith Papers
Then Frederick listed Joseph’s apostolic credentials: four impressive events in Joseph’s life that readers could expect to learn about in the pages that followed. First, “the testamony from on high,” or what Saints would later learn to call the first vision. Second, “the ministering of angels,” meaning Moroni’s mentoring of Joseph beginning in 1823. Third, “the reception of the holy Priesthood by the ministering of Aangels to administer the letter of the Gospel,” meaning the restoration of what saints would later call the Aaronic priesthood. Finally, “a confirmation and reception of the high priesthood after the holy order of the son of the living God.”
Note that this transcription is based on the one at josephsmithpapers.org. Bold typeface indicates Joseph Smith’s handwriting while the regular typeface is the writing of Frederick Williams. Angle brackets <like this> enclose words one of them put in afterwards. Strikeouts indicate words they deleted. Square brackets [like this] enclose text The Joseph Smith Papers editors supplied to improve readability.
No one knows why Joseph decided to pick up the pen right there and finish the thought, referring to himself in the third person, as Frederick had been doing: “the Kees of the Kingdom of God conferred upon him and the continuation of the blessings of God to him.”
Then Joseph dragged the pen across the page, making a line to separate the introduction from what came next. Below that line, Joseph wrote about himself in the first person, and all the confidence of the introduction vanished:
I was born in the town of Charon in the <State> of Vermont North America on the twenty third day of December AD 1805 of goodly Parents who spared no pains to instruct<ing> me in <the> christian religion at the age of about ten years my Father Joseph Smith Seignior moved to Palmyra Ontario County in the State of New York and being in indigent circumstances were obliged to labour hard for the support of a large Family having nine chilldren and as it required their exertions of all that were able to render any assistance for the support of the Family therefore we were deprived of the bennifit of an education suffice it to say I was mearly instructtid in reading and writing and the ground <rules> of Arithmatic which const[it]uted my whole literary acquirements.
Joseph confessed and exposed his mere literary abilities on the opening page. Here in his earliest autobiography, he highlights the horns of his dilemma: he has a marvelous experience to share, and he feels inadequate to share it. In a single sentence of 137 words, there are misspellings, awkward phrases, misplaced modifiers, and no punctuation. It’s natural to wonder why Joseph waited twelve years to write an account of his vision. Discovering how burdened he felt by that task leads us to appreciate the fact that he ever wrote it at all.
History, circa Summer 1832 page 2 – The Joseph Smith Papers
The document is not just the sum of Joseph’s literary limits
It also includes a raw, unfiltered, and beautiful account of one of the most marvelous and consequential events to ever occur. James Allen was a young history professor at BYU when he learned of Joseph’s 1832 autobiography in the early 1960s. He went to the Church Administration Building to study it and was overjoyed. This is Joseph Smith pure and simple, Allen thought, giving his feelings as best he could remember them and writing them out by himself.
Professor Allen joyfully told me about that day
“As I read that first account of the First Vision, there was that feeling that came over me that I don’t think I’d ever experienced before and not quite like anything I’ve experienced since. It said to me, ‘This young man is telling the truth.’ It was powerful story, a handwritten story that didn’t have very good grammar, nor punctuation.” Professor Allen said, “That confirmed the testimony that I already had, confirmed the reality and the honesty and integrity of the story of the First Vision.”
History, circa Summer 1832 page 3 – The Joseph Smith Papers
Read Joseph’s earliest account of his vision for yourself
What do you think? What do you feel? Do you hear the literary limitations that worried Joseph? Do you hear his marvelous experience? Can you sense the tension between those two forces?
At about the age of twelve years my mind become seriously imprest with regard to the all importent concerns of for the wellfare of my immortal Soul which led me to searching the scriptures believeing as I was taught, that they contained the word of God thus applying myself to them and my intimate acquaintance with those of differant denominations led me to marvel excedingly for I discovered that <they did not adorn>instead of adorning their profession by a holy walk and Godly conversation agreeable to what I found contained in that sacred depository this was a grief to my Soul thus from the age of twelve years to fifteen I pondered many things in my heart concerning the sittuation of the world of mankind the contentions and divi[si]ons the wicke[d]ness and abominations and the darkness which pervaded the of the minds of mankind my mind become excedingly distressed for I become convicted of my sins and by searching the scriptures I found that mand<mankind> did not come unto the Lord but that they had apostatised from the true and liveing faith and there was no society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new testament and I felt to mourn for my own sins and for the sins of the world for I learned in the scriptures that God was the same yesterday to day and forever that he was no respecter to persons for he was God for I looked upon the sun the glorious luminary of the earth and also the moon rolling in their magesty through the heavens and also the stars shining in their courses and the earth also upon which I stood and the beast of the field and the fowls of heaven and the fish of the waters and also man walking forth upon the face of the earth in magesty and in the strength of beauty whose power and intiligence in governing the things which are so exceding great and marvilous even in the likeness of him who created him<them> and when I considered upon these things my heart exclaimed well hath the wise man said the<it is a> fool <that> saith in his heart there is no God my heart exclaimed all all these bear testimony and bespeak an omnipotant and omnipreasant power a being who makith Laws and decreeeth and bindeth all things in their bounds who filleth Eternity who was and is and will be from all Eternity to Eternity and when <I> considered all these things and that <that> being seeketh such to worshep him as worship him in spirit and in truth therefore I cried unto the Lord for mercy for there was none else to whom I could go and to obtain mercy and the Lord heard my cry in the wilderness and while in <the> attitude of calling upon the Lord <in the 16th year of my age> a piller of fire light 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 and he spake unto me saying Joseph <my son> thy sins are forgiven thee. go thy <way> walk in my statutes and keep my commandments behold I am the Lord of glory I was crucifyed for the world that all those who believe on my name may have Eternal life <behold> the world lieth in sin and at this time and none doeth good no not one they have turned asside from the gospel and keep not <my> commandments they draw near to me with their lips while their hearts are far from me and mine anger is kindling against the inhabitants of the earth to visit them acording to thir ungodliness and to bring to pass that which <hath> been spoken by the mouth of the prophets and Ap[o]stles behold and lo I come quickly as it [is?] written of me in the cloud <clothed> in the glory of my Father and my soul was filled with love and for many days I could rejoice with great Joy and the Lord was with me but could find none that would believe the hevnly vision nevertheless I pondered these things in my heart
Now think back to the previous post. Are you hearing Joseph? Some readers are too quick to conclude what he means above when he says “the <Lord> opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord and he spake unto me.” There’s a lot at stake in the way that line is interpreted. Did Joseph see one being or two? Did he change his story over time? Can he be trusted? I’ll write about those issues in my next post.
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There is a dilemma at the heart of Joseph Smith’s first vision accounts. It is hidden in plain sight. Once you see it you wonder how you missed it before.
There is a new book out from an esteemed university press.*
One of its chapters illustrates how easy it is to miss the dilemma Joseph emphasized. The author compares Joseph’s experience to some early American conversion narratives and concludes that Joseph’s accounts lack the angst and the typical “transformations of the heart.”
“Nowhere in Smith’s first vision is there a description of the agonies and ecstasies of conversion,” this author claims. Joseph “presents himself not as one whose heart needs changing but one whose mind needs persuading.”
Notice the either/or: “not as one whose heart needs changing but one whose mind needs persuading.” This author thinks Joseph’s accounts are about resolving “cognitive dissonance” or intellectual incongruity “rather than ravishing a sinful heart with infinite love.” These phrases sound fancy but they are uninformed. This is a false dilemma posing as analysis.
This author has not heard what Joseph is saying
“Nowhere in Smith’s first vision is there a description of the agonies and ecstasies of conversion.” Really? Joseph’s accounts describe both his agony and his ecstasy. (More on that in later posts.)
I remember the day I finally saw the dilemma Joseph describes
It was lunch time. I was sitting outside. I had copies of all the first vision accounts and was reviewing them again, trying to look at them in new ways, asking different questions. I had read each of them many times before. But that day I started paying attention to the number of times Joseph described what was going on in his mind. Then I noticed that he distinguished between his mind and his heart. Then I saw it: Joseph’s was trying to tell me that his mind and his heart were at odds.
Every story has a problem
When Joseph told his story, the crux of the problem was that his soul depended on knowing how to act relative to Christ’s atonement–and how to act he did not know.
The Presbyterian option made sense in his head
He knew he was sinful. He also knew he hadn’t been able to do anything about it. That’s what the Presbyterian option taught him to expect. It made sense.
The Methodist option appealed to his heart
He attended Methodist meetings and witnessed sinful souls like his feel God’s redeeming love, and “he wanted to get Religion too wanted to feel & shout like the Rest but could feel nothing.” Methodism taught him to expect to feel God’s love if he gave himself to Christ. That didn’t happen, however. No matter how much his heart wanted Methodism, it seemed to his head like the Presbyterian explanation fit best.
One of the options appealed to his heart and the other to his head
No matter how much brain power he put into it, he did not know if his conclusions were right, and no matter how much he tried to follow his heart, he did not know if it was leading him right. That was the problem. His head was telling him one thing, his heart another. How could he know which was right? The welfare of his immortal soul was at stake. It was a terrible problem. These slices of Joseph’s Manuscript History Book A1, excerpted in the Pearl of Great Price as Joseph Smith-History, verses 10 and 18, highlight Joseph’s dilemma:
10 In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said to myself: What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it? . . . .
18 My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)—and which I should join.
Verse 10 is about Joseph’s thought process, about what’s gone on in his head. He has often wondered whether all the options are wrong and how he will be able to decide. The parenthetical clause in verse 18 is about Joseph’s emotional vulnerability. He tells us he has kept the awful, recurring thought that all the options for forgiveness are wrong from entering “into my heart.”
In 1902, church leaders tasked BH Roberts
with turning Joseph Smith’s history, originally serialized in 1842 in the Times and Seasons, into published volumes. While in that role, he had gathered the serialized “History of Joseph Smith” from back issues of the Millennial Star, the Saints’ British periodical, and bound it into three volumes that he kept and annotated.
His notes show that he thought Joseph contradicted himself in the passages quoted above
Joseph said he “asked the personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right, (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong,) and which I should join.” Earlier, however, Joseph said that prior to his vision he had “often said to myself, what is to be done? Who of all these parties are right? Or are they all wrong together?”
The two lines seemed contradictory to Roberts
He knew that Joseph’s 1842 letter to John Wentworth said that at about age 14 he began to notice “a great clash” between churches and considered “that all could not be right, and that God could not be the author of so much confusion.” So Roberts silently elided the line for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong. That’s why those words are not in the published version of Joseph’s manuscript history (see top of page 6).
If BH Roberts couldn’t see
the dilemma Joseph tried to highlight, it seems wise to be humble and cautious about assuming that we have understood Joseph well. Working hard to listen to Joseph, using both brain and spirit, leads to seeing and hearing things in Joseph’s first vision accounts to which we may have been blind and deaf.
In my next post I’ll write about Joseph’s other dilemma
the one that kept him from telling his story, and that shaped the way he told it when he finally decided to do so. Stay tuned.
*Grant Shreve, “Nephite Secularization; or, Picking and Choosing in the Book of Mormon,” chapter 8 in Elizabeth Fenton and Jared Hickman, editors, Americanist Approaches to The Book of Mormon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 207-229. Quoted passages are from page 208.
There is so much more to the story of Joseph Smith’s first vision than is commonly known
Besides the familiar account included in the Pearl of Great Price, there are three other known accounts by Joseph and five known reports of people who heard him tell his experience. As a historian and as a believer, I’m thrilled that Joseph Smith’s first vision is probably the best documented vision of God in history. But some Latter-day Saints are troubled when they learn that there are several accounts of the story.
Like accounts of the Savior on the Mount of Transfiguration
or instituting the sacrament, or suffering in Gethsemane, or appearing after his resurrection, the accounts of Joseph’s vision are not identical, and that fact is unsettling to some. It wasn’t unsettling to me because I learned it from Professor Backman, who wrote the book on the accounts and was thrilled, as a historian and a believer, to have such a richly documented vision of God to study. His motive was to teach me the vision in a way that was true to the historical facts and sustaining of my faith. But there are other motives out there. Other people present the same facts as Professor Backman taught me, but their motive is to undermine faith.
On its face, the fact of multiple and varied accounts is not a problem
The fact of multiple and varied accounts only upsets faith if the person assumes that multiple or varied accounts of the vision is incompatible with the first vision. In other words, there is nothing inherent in the facts of the matter that ruins faith. Faith in the first vision, or loss of it, depends entirely on what a person decides to do with the facts. Faith in the first vision, or loss of it, is not a matter of knowledge or sincerity. Some people on all sides of this issue are both informed and sincere. Others on all sides are neither. And some on all sides are informed but insincere while others are sincere but not well versed in the facts of the matter. None of those things seem to be the determinant of whether a person has faith in Joseph Smith’s first vision.
The determinant is each individual’s agency
We are not acted upon by knowledge. We act upon knowledge. We exercise our God-given ability to decide for ourselves whether to exercise faith in Him, His Son, and in Joseph Smith as their choice to restore the gospel. I am well-informed about the facts. I have studied the accounts of Joseph’s vision for several years and I find them harmonious and complimentary on the core elements of the story, namely: Joseph craved more light and truth about God and couldn’t find it in the existing churches. He studied the Bible and that inspired him to pray in the woods, where God answered his prayer directly.
Critics counter this claim
by highlighting ways the accounts are inconsistent with each other or with other known facts, and some critics claim that Joseph embellished his experience over time. It comes down to deciding whether to trust Joseph or not, and if you want to make that decision based on a consensus view of Joseph’s reputation, you’ll find that Moroni accurately predicted that Joseph’s name would be known for good and evil in every place on the planet. You’ll have to choose whether you can trust him. No one else can make that choice for you.
By predisposition, prayer, and lots of study
I have decided to trust Joseph Smith. I have studied all the accounts of his vision carefully and in context. I have published books about the vision with both academic and devotional publishers. My testimony is that Joseph Smith told the truth, and that those who knew him best believed him most.
In celebration of the 2020 bicentennial of Joseph’s vision
President Russell M. Nelson invited Latter-day Saints to study it seriously. I expect there will be many lessons and discussions about it. Some of these will focus on why it matters. I invite you to reconsider the way you might answer that question—why does Joseph Smith’s first vision matter? Many talks and lessons over the years have answered that question by saying that the vision showed that God and Christ were separate beings. That is true, but it’s not what mattered most to Joseph. It’s not what he wrote in his accounts. What was it about his vision that was most important to him?
First, Joseph testified that the Lord forgave his sins.
“at about the age of twelve years my mind became seriously imprest [p. 1] with regard to the all importent concerns for the wellfare of my immortal Soul which led me to searching the scriptures . . . thus from the age of twelve years to fifteen I pondered many things in my heart concerning the sittuation of the world of mankind the contentions and divi[si]ons the wicke[d]ness and abominations and the darkness which pervaded the of the minds of mankind my mind become excedingly distressed for I become convicted of my sins and . . . . I felt to mourn for my own sins and for the sins of the world . . . . therefore I cried unto the Lord for mercy for there was none else to whom I could go and to obtain mercy and the Lord heard my cry in the wilderness and . . . . a piller of fire light 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 and he spake unto me saying Joseph <my son> thy sins are forgiven thee. . . . I am the Lord of glory I was crucifyed for the world that all those who believe on my name may have Eternal life.”
Second, Joseph testified that the vision brought him joy and love
“I called on the Lord in mighty prayer,” he said, “a pillar of fire appeared above my head, it presently rested down up me head, and filled me with Joy unspeakable.” In another account he testified, “my soul was filled with love and for many days I could rejoice with great Joy.”
Third, God is more powerful than the adversary that opposes Him and us
Fourth, we can choose to call upon God in faith in order to be delivered from the enemy of our souls, who is an actual though unseen being. Fifth, when we are perplexed, distressed, and anxious in a confusing world, God invites us to seek and receive the love, wisdom, forgiveness, and healing we need from Him.
God loves us
That’s what Joseph learned in the grove. “I had found the testimony of James to be true,” he said, “that a[nyone] who lacked wisdom might ask of God, and obtain, and not be upbraided.”
What difference does it make if God and Christ are separate
embodied beings if they no longer reveal themselves, if they don’t hear and answer the prayers of anxious teenagers who ask in faith, if they don’t forgive sins or fill us with love and joy? Presbyterians of Joseph’s day believed that God was without body, parts, or passions. Latter-day Saints respond by emphasizing how the vision proves that God and Christ have bodies. But what does it matter if they have bodies unless they also have passions, including redeeming love for us?
Joseph’s accounts testify of a loving, responsive God
and show how we can reach him. They show how an anxious soul can make the courageous choice to exercise faith. Sarah Edwards lived a century before Joseph. She was married to the great Presbyterian preacher Jonathan Edwards, whose most famous sermon explained God’s mercy by emphasizing how abhorrent we are to God, so the fact that he is temporarily sparing us from the pains of the well-deserved hell we will most likely inhabit real soon is evidence of his mercy.
Sarah secretly preferred a different God
She had a deep desire to “call God my Father” and wondered whether she really could. She sought him in private prayer and felt
“the presence of God was so near, and so real, that I seemed scarcely conscious of any thing else. God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, seemed as distinct persons, both manifesting their inconceivable loveliness, and mildness, and gentleness, and their great . . .love to me.”
Sarah struggled to communicate, as Joseph would a century later, “the peace and happiness, which I hereupon felt.” It “was altogether inexpressible.”
Sarah Edwards was typical of many people then and now
Terryl Givens explained, “Long before Joseph Smith offered his first prayer, thousands and millions of people must have yearned, as Sarah did, for the assurance that God was not the severe, distant, impersonal deity of Jonathan Edwards, but the kind, loving, and very personal God that Joseph found in the Sacred Grove.”
That is why Joseph’s first vision is so vitally important
It is the answer to all our prayers, our hopes for God’s acceptance, love, and forgiveness. It is the archetype for seekers everywhere. It reveals the antidote to our fears and anxieties and dilemmas. When Joseph entered the grove, it seemed to his teenage soul as if he were one of very few who could not feel God’s love and forgiveness. Then God filled him with love. Experiencing that love is the reason to choose to exercise faith in the God who revealed himself to Joseph Smith. The Father and the Son who appeared to Joseph are so loving and lovable. They respond to anxious teenagers, forgive their sins, and fill them with love that helps them cope with their fears and frustrations and causes them to rejoice with great joy.
In answer to his simple, faithful prayer
Joseph Smith saw our Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ in the woods. After anxiety, perplexity, distress, and guilt, he felt their love, received their forgiveness, and experienced unspeakable joy, and so can you.
In philosophical terms, Joseph’s first vision is epistemological (e-pis-tem-a-loj-i-cal). Epistemology is the philosophy of knowing. It seeks answers to such questions as: What is knowledge? What do I know? How do I know? Joseph’s vision is about knowing. “How to act I did not know,” he said about his pre-vision self. But after the vision he knew. “I had seen a vision, I knew it, and I knew that God knew it.”
“For how to act I did not know.” History, circa June 1839 – circa 1841. [Draft 2] P. 2 – The Joseph Smith Papers
This post is also epistemological
I’m asking, what can be known of Joseph’s experience and how? I recognize that there are severe limits on what I can know about the vision and how. But there are things I can know and some good methods of knowing. So I’m seeking answers based on the historical method and on spiritual experience.
We can only know through Joseph
He was the only witness. He created the evidence we have to evaluate. It is best to seek learning by faithfully studying Joseph’s accounts. It is worst to assume what his experience must have been like and how he would respond to it. But that’s exactly what many people do.
“I had seen a vision, I knew it, and I knew that God knew it.” History, circa June 1839 – circa 1841 [Draft 2] P. 4 – The Joseph Smith Papers
Many people do hypothetical history
That’s when a person imagines how the past should have been rather than working to discover how it actually was. One problem with hypothetical history is that it’s easy to disprove. For example, without ever looking at the evidence, some assume that if Joseph saw God and Christ he would obviously tell his family right away. He would remember his precise age at the time. He would write the experience immediately. And surely he would relate it the same every time he told it. None of those assumptions is supported by Joseph’s accounts of his vision.
Joseph’s way of knowing can be our way of knowing
In other words, if we seek as Joseph did, we can come to know what he knew as he knew. A well-known statement of this is Moroni 10:3-5 in the Book of Mormon. Sometimes people sum up this passage as, “just pray about it,” but those few words hardly capture the formula, which includes more than one hundred carefully chosen words. It says you need two ingredients to begin: someone’s testimony or statement, and the ability to test its veracity. We must have the testimony in order to verify it. But simply knowing about a testimony is not the same as knowing that it is true. So Moroni says we have to do extensive brain work: reading, remembering, pondering, all with real intent or focused purpose. We also have to add spiritual work: faith in Jesus Christ, sincerity, prayer. When a seeker invests all of the required elements—intellectual and spiritual—the promise is that “by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things” (Moroni 10:5).
Verses 3-5 of Moroni 10 from an original Book of Mormon
An early Latter-day Saint newspaper article explained this way of knowing
“Search the revelations which we publish, and ask your heavenly Father, in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, to manifest the truth unto you, and if you do it with an eye single to his glory, nothing doubting, he will answer you by the power of his Holy Spirit: You will then know for yourselves and not for another: You will not then be dependent on man for the knowledge of God.”
The principle of independent verification by revelation
That’s how Dallin H. Oaks described this epistemology. Simply put, it’s seeking. There are other ways to think about knowledge. Rationalism and the scientific method emphasize observation and the intellect but discount spiritual possibilities or dimensions of knowing. These epistemologies are good at revealing proximate truths but fail when it comes to knowing ultimate ones. They can’t verify the existence of God, or whether he appeared to Joseph in a grove.
These ways of knowing are appealing
They provide satisfying certainty about perplexing problems like the causes of sickness or natural disasters. They are good at explaining how, but incapable of ultimately explaining why some things happen. They are powerless to verify or disprove Joseph Smith’s testimony of his first vision. People who think in these ways alone can assume, as one scholar did that “the revelation to Moses as recorded in the Old Testament can hardly be taken literally as an event in which the Divine handed over or dictated to Moses Ten Commandments,” but he doesn’t know that. He stated it forcefully as a foregone conclusion but it’s still just a personal opinion based on his assumption about what is possible.
Agnosticism, or not knowing, is another alternative
It is the conviction that ultimate things are unknowable. As with Joseph Smith’s epistemology, agnosticism is based on personal experience, or lack thereof, with God. Agnostics know that they don’t know, and some agnostics assume that no one else knows either.
From all the alternative ways of knowing, Joseph Smith chose to be a seeker
The Oxford English Dictionary defines seek as to approach or draw near to God in prayer. It defines a seeker as “a searcher, and explorer, one who endeavors to find something hidden or lost, as in seeker after truth.” Joseph Smith recognized that he lacked the ultimate knowledge of salvation. He desired it badly. He thought, read, observed, analyzed, and finally prayed to find it. He worked hard for it. He struggled. Seeking is active, not passive. Seeking is not spiritual or intellectual. Seeking is spiritual and intellectual. Seeking requires the whole soul, all of one’s faculties. Seeking is the investment of one’s best brain work, spiritual sensitivities, moral judgments, and emotional vulnerabilities. Seeking is humble. Seeking is hard. And seeking is ultimately satisfying.
Assuming is the enemy of seeking
Assume has many definitions. The ones meant here are to pretend to possess, to put forth claims or pretensions, to take for granted as the basis of argument or action, to suppose. To assume is to avoid the hard work of seeking. Assumptions are not knowledge, but often those who hold them do not discern the difference. At best, assumptions are hypotheses—the beginning, not the end, of knowledge. At worst, assumptions masquerade as knowledge, pacifying those who hold them and keeping them from seeking. Assumptions thus prevent us from ultimate knowing. Assuming is intellectually and spiritually lazy. It is arrogant. It is easy. And, though temporarily attractive, it is ultimately unsatisfying and it can be spiritually devastating.
D&C 88:118: “And as all have not afaith, seek ye diligently and bteach one another words of cwisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best dbooks words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.”
Seeking is a commandment
Over and over the scriptures enjoin us to seek. A single verse, Doctrine and Covenants section 88:118, commands three times that we should seek. It tells us why to seek: because we lack faith. It tells us what to seek: learning. It tells where to seek: out of the best books. It tells us how to seek: diligently, as well as by study and also by faith. Similar instructions are everywhere in the scriptures. Sometimes the command to seek is modified by an adverb, as in seek diligently, or seek earnestly (D&C D&C 46:6, 88:118). Sometimes we are told what to seek (Amos 5:4-6, 14; D&C 6:16; 11:7, 21; 25:10; 46:8, 88:118; Jacob 2:18). Sometimes the scriptures say what not to seek (D&C 6:7; 11:7; 22:4; 66:10; Jacob 4:10; Alma 39:14). Some of the most beautiful passages are the ones that attach specific promises to seeking. “Seek the Lord, and ye shall live,” says one (Amos 5:6), an if/then formulation reiterated in the Doctrine and Covenants: “Seek the face of the Lord always, that in patience ye may possess your souls, and ye shall have eternal life” (101:38; see also 11:23, 88:83). Seeking is the means to knowing God. We could spend a long time profitably studying the scriptures that teach us how and what and where to seek.
There are no scriptural instructions to assume
This philosophical and dictionary work has a lot to do with the way we decide to study Joseph Smith’s first vision. Anyone concerned about knowing whether Joseph told the truth approaches the issue either as a seeker or as an assumer. A seeker comes to the quest open-minded, open-hearted, desiring to know whether and in what ways Joseph’s testimony is true and willing to use any means—spiritual and intellectual—to gain that knowledge. An assumer, whether believing or unbelieving, pre-supposes that they have knowledge. What more is there for them to learn? They are narrow-minded, closed to at least some of the possible means of knowing. Rather than hold assumptions tentatively and subject them to testing and verification, assumers have already arrived at the conclusion. They do not want to know any more. They do not seek to know every bit of evidence Joseph left us, asking what it might reveal. Rather, they pick and choose bits that match their assumptions.
The historical method
Is the means that seekers can use to gain knowledge of the accounts of Joseph’s vision. It is a disciplined way of thinking that identifies and sorts different kinds of information. It seeks knowledge of the past from those who created the knowledge. It discerns the difference between historical facts and interpretations of the facts or opinions about them. Historical facts are pieces of knowledge about the past than can be verified, and that are the same regardless of how one chooses to interpret them.
Here are some historical facts
Joseph Smith, Jr., son of Lucy Mack and Joseph Smith, was born in Vermont in 1805
Several documents created by Joseph Smith and his associates declare that he experienced a vision
These documents were written in the 1830s and 1840s
Those are historical truths that can be verified using the historical method. Notice, however, how little these facts actually reveal. The historical method is limited. It can tell us whether Joseph Smith was born in Vermont in 1805. It cannot tell us whether he was visited by God in New York in 1820. It can show us several documents that testify that Joseph envisioned heavenly beings. It cannot tell us whether his testimony is true or false. It can prove that the documents were written in the 1830s and 40s. It cannot prove whether they accurately represent Joseph’s experience in the grove. The historical facts do not prove or disprove whether Joseph experienced a vision.
Seekers need more than the historical method
The combination of seeking by study and by faith enables seekers to discern whether Joseph’s accounts tell the truth. The foremost historians of the first vision are seekers of the study and faith variety. They are disciplined, highly skilled students of the historical method who were trained in esteemed universities. And they choose to exercise faith in Jesus Christ and seek to know by spiritual and intellectual means.
What about people who lose their faith after learning of the multiple first vision accounts
I have visited with and studied many of these sincere souls. Compared to the first vision scholars, they are ignorant of the evidence and of the historical method of studying it. They are generally poorly-informed people who assumed they were well-informed. Their crisis of faith began when they encountered evidence that overturned their assumptions. They did not practice a disciplined method of seeking. They did not seek by diligent, systematic study as well as by faith. Googling is not a synonym for seeking, nor is depending on secondary evidence or antagonistic witnesses. The hard work of seeking by study and by faith often prevents the painful process these people experience.
Joseph was a seeker
He not only created historical documents that testify that he experienced a heavenly vision. He also left us evidence of his effective epistemology, his way of knowing. By richly documenting his first vision, Joseph gave us a testimony to verify and illustrated how it could be done.
In 2020, I’ll post all year about Joseph Smith’s First Vision and the Book of Mormon. Subscribe if you’re a seeker, or want to be. Leave me a comment if you have questions about the First Vision or the Book of Mormon you want to discuss. Finally, share these posts with anyone you think they might edify or help.
