Thursday, February 24, 2011

Joseph Smith's Re-Vision-ing of the First Vision

I don't have a lot of time to thoroughly flesh this out right now, so it is just going to be a series of notes and thoughts.

Some of the premises I want to begin with are:

1. Joseph and his contemporaries' understanding of visions and "seeing" did not necessarily mean seeing with physical eyes (stimulus of the retinas with physical light)--seeing with one's "spiritual eyes" or "mind's eye" were just as real to them as seeing with physical eyes.

2. Joseph's revelations in the D&C involved Joseph putting his impressions into a first person voice. They were not dictations of an audible (sound vibrations entering the ear) voice. In other words, the primary content of the revelations were not the dictated words, but were rather impressions. The first first person voice was Joseph's projection of those impressions.

3. Joseph did not live at a time when one's past words, acts, and images are readily available for review and maintenance of one's memory. Today we constantly have written notes, photos, facebook walls, journals, etc to help us remember things we experienced, saw, and said. Joseph did not have most of those things, and much of what he recorded wasn't actually written by him. Furthermore, there is no evidence that he did any serious systemic theological contemplations. Rather his revelations and explorations seem to have been rather off the cuff, without attempts to merge them with previous (especially older) theological claims.

4. We make a much bigger deal about the First Vision than Joseph ever intended, forcing certain assumptions on him and his experience.



Some explanations:

1. In the folk-magic world of Joseph, it was fairly common for people to see things with their "mind's eye" or "spiritual eyes." I imagine it was something similar to when I picture my wife's face "in my head," when someone asks me to spell something and I "see" the word in front of me as I read off the letters, or if someone describes a tall tree standing alone in a wide open park and I "see" that tree in my imagination. Whatever the case, it is clear that for Joseph and his contemporaries it was perfectly normal to "see" things that were not seen with one's physical eyes. D&C 76 is a record of Joseph and Sidney Rigdon "seeing" many things, while others watched them staring at a fireplace. Consider the language of Lehi's vision in 1 Nephi: "And being thus overcome with the Spirit, he was carried away in a vision, even that he saw the heavens open, and he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God." Later he equates visions with dreams: "And it came to pass that while my father tarried in the wilderness he spake unto us, saying: Behold, I have dreamed a dream; or, in other words, I have seen a vision." While today we might readily distinguish things we see with our eyes and see with our heads, for Joseph and many of his contemporaries they were just viable ways to see things. In fact, Martin Harris reportedly claimed that his witnessing of the golden plates were done with his spiritual eyes and not physical eyes, and were thus even more valuable as a witness.

2. In looking at the recently published Book of Commandments and Revelations (in The Joseph Smith Papers: Revelations and Translations: Manuscript Revelation Books), it has become readily apparent that the revelations recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants were not dictations of an audible voice (as Grant Underwood puts it, Joseph was not a fax machine), but were rather Joseph's attempts to give a voice to the spiritual impressions he was receiving. This is even more apparent when one considers the fact that Joseph went through and made several edits and changes to those revelations--which would have been a bit odd if those were actual dictated words of God/Jesus. If Joseph is giving (and "hearing") words that are his own projections from spiritual impressions, is it that different from him giving (and "seeing") images that are his own projections from spiritual impressions?

3. Much of what I write, say, and do are remembered by me because of my written record, philosophical contemplations, and photographed images. Without those things my memory would be much more malleable and subjective to new experiences and lapsing memories (my wife can attest to this already). Without many of these aids, how aware was Joseph of his own past theological claims, accounts, and revelations? How fixed were they? I contend that they were not that fixed--not only that, but on occasion he would claim something was fixed when we can historically show that they were not (see, for example, his claim that he has always taught the plurality of gods). This is further problematized when what is remembered is not a physical experience, but something more akin to a dream.

4. It wasn't until the early 20th century that the First Vision had the foundation role for the Church that it has today. While it was fairly well known by the end of mid-late 19th century, the story for Mormonism still largely began with the visitation of Moroni. Today Mormons treat the FV as if Joseph Smith left the grove knowing that the Father and Jesus were two distinct embodied personages and that Joseph had a fairly clear grasp of what he would later teach and do. Historically, this does not seem to be the case. Joseph, himself, said little of the experience and, even after briefly mentioning the FV, still told his own prophetic story beginning with Moroni's visit.

And now some conclusions/speculations I am drawing from these premises:

1. Joseph did not physically see God (or anything). If someone happened upon Joseph Smith when he received the vision, they would have seen a 14 year old boy staring up into the trees. Rather than seeing the divine with his physical (natural) eyes, he saw them with his spiritual eyes, with his "mind's eye," and in his head--something that would have been completely natural for him and his contemporaries--and just as real as seeing them with his physical eyes.

2. Just as Joseph's dictated revelations were his putting a voice to a spiritual impression. His vision was his putting an image to the powerful spiritual experience he had in the grove. His seeing God and/or Jesus was not the content of his spiritual experience, but rather his seeing--his vision--was a projection or vision-ing of a deep spiritual experience.

3. Just as with my own spiritual experiences, Joseph's understanding of what happened, and what he visioned, in the grove was not fixed. There was no photograph, recorder, or journal record to solidify his experience. He apparently didn't even tell many of the experience, but instead kept it to himself. Without talking about and recording a memory it remained malleable. The malleability of the experience is further complicated when it is not a memory of something physically seen, but a memory of a spiritual experience and internal vision. Because at what was at the heart of Joseph's experience in the grove was a spiritual experience and not a visual experience, how he would later vision (or re-vision) that experience would change and evolve with experiences and new spiritual impressions that changed and evolved his understanding of God and his own mission. When Joseph was primarily concerned about his own and his family's salvation, he visioned the experience as a communion with Jesus and a confirmation of his forgiveness; later when he was concerned with his role in the Church and had a new understanding of God he re-visioned his experience as a meeting with two persons and a confirmation of his prophetic duties. Different accounts of the vision occur because they are simply different visions projected from a common experience.

4. We unfairly place expectations and demands on Joseph's First Vision. While our use of his 1838 account may represent how he understood that experience at that time (though there is evidence that he did not write it himself), we cannot force his other visions of that experience to comply with this one. Each account is its own vision (his own re-vision-ing) of a powerful experience he had as a teen in a grove of trees. How did he vision it that day? Did he vision Jesus forgiving him of his sins? Did he vision God? Did he vision two personages with a plan for him? Did he vision God, Jesus, and angels? Or was it just a pillar of fire? Whatever it was that he visioned, it at least seems clear to me that he left the grove with a powerful private knowledge that he was loved by God--and perhaps that is all that should really be at the heart of his first visions.

15 comments:

  1. This is very much along the lines of how I've been working it out and coming to understand the experience and the development thereof myself. I like it.

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  2. Nice post, overall. You'll want to read Christopher Jones' upcoming article in JMH, where he analyzes JS's first vision accounts within the broader genre of Methodist conversion narratives (it's a revised chapter from his MA thesis). Chris argues that one thing that makes JS's accounts different from those of (other) Methodists is the literalness of JS's language--that is, he's not using the "methought I saw" or "I saw in my mind's eye" phraseology, which leads Chris to speculate that that was one reason why JS remembered being persecuted for the vision, whereas others recounting similar experiences in less concrete language were not.

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  3. Dave G. I'll have to check it out. I recently heard Mark Staker argue, based on the 1838 account,that perhaps Joseph was persecuted because he equated the common spiritual manifestation with God (twisted tongue, unable to speak) with Satan. I have difficulty though with taking these later recollections without an eye of cynicism. Along with my post, if Joseph did experience the tongue-tying, did he experience that as Satan at the time, or is that another re-vision of the experience. For example I have heard ex-Mormons re-vision their initial spiritual confirmation of the BofM as a Satanic inspiration, as well as heard ex-Pentecostals recast their spiritual experiences with glossolalia as being Satanic or merely psychological.

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  4. Nice post, Loyd, and thanks for the plug, David.

    In my article, I'm much more interested in how JS understood his visionary experience and especially in the Methodist discursive community that gave shaped his understandings, whereas your post seems more focused on the theological implications for contemporary Mormons (and I'm inclined to agree with your conclusions).

    I do have one question: When you say that "seeing with one's 'spiritual eyes' or 'mind's eye' were just as real to them as seeing with physical eyes" and that "Rather than seeing the divine with his physical (natural) eyes, he saw them with his spiritual eyes, with his 'mind's eye,' and in his head--something that would have been completely natural for him and his contemporaries--and just as real as seeing them with his physical eyes," what do you mean by "real"? If you mean either method was acceptable for genuine religious experience, I think you're right. But it deserves noting that evangelicals of this period were very careful to distinguish between physical manifestations and seeing with one's spiritual eyes, seeing something in a dream, etc. Any ambiguity or allusions to "spiritual eyes" is notably missing from JS's statement that "it was nevertheless a fact, that I had had a vision. . . . I had actually seen a light and in the midst of that light I saw two personages, and they did in reality speak to me. . . . I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it.”

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  5. "I recently heard Mark Staker argue, based on the 1838 account,that perhaps Joseph was persecuted because he equated the common spiritual manifestation with God (twisted tongue, unable to speak) with Satan."

    Can you clarify what you (or Mark) means here? Is the assumption that references to having one's tongue bound and losing the ability to speak was associated with God and not Satan (except in JS's account)? Because there's pretty extensive documentation of evangelicals crediting Satan with doing all he could (including in some instances binding their tongue, violently throwing them to the ground, etc) to prevent them from seeing a heavenly vision and experiencing conversion.

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  6. Loyd:

    I come from a Pentecostal background. As a kid and early teen, I participated in glossolalia, as what was then viewed by me as an uplifting spiritual experience. I'm still working on re-visioning those experiences. In the past, my revisioning had flip-flopped between "undisciplined charism" and "psychological". Never went down the "Devil made me do it" road. It still makes my wife super uncomfortable that I participated in such experiences as a youngster.

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  7. Chris,

    By "real" I mean that they are both valid for not just religious claims but also for (and I use this loosely) empirical claims. I am no historian, and while you are probably correct with evangelicals distinguishing between the two, it is my understanding that those with a more magical worldview did not make this distinction. Please correct me if I am mistaken.

    Concerning his 1838 account, two things strike me as pertinent. First, unlike his revelations, this account is not written with scriptural language (the scriptural flare). Accordingly it lacks the "in the spirit," "with power of God," "taken away" language that nearly all the D&C accounts of seeing involve (including seeing the plates). (Also, it seems that other accounts of the FV by Joseph use these). If Joseph (or the 1838 account's author) had written this account with a more scriptural flare, would it have included these?
    Second, I have a distinct memory of being at Yellowstone when I was younger and seeing hundreds of gallons of water pour out of the clouds like water from a giant pitcher. I believed for years that I had actually seen this until I was older and realized how absurd it what. If a distinction between the reality of seeing things with one's mind's eye and physical eyes was non-existent for Joseph, could the latter have become the former in his own memory?

    I'm more inclined to go with the first of these, though the latter seems quite possible as well.

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  8. "Can you clarify what you (or Mark) means here? Is the assumption that references to having one's tongue bound and losing the ability to speak was associated with God and not Satan (except in JS's account)?"

    If I recall what Mark said correctly, a common manifestation of experiencing God while praying was a tongue-tying and inability to talk or move.

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  9. Chris,

    Also, with the 1838 account I think it is pertinent to ask what the account is trying to address. Joseph (or the author) was writing against the "evil-disposed and designing persons" following the Kirtland apostasy. If he was attempting to reassert his authority and place in the Church it seems possible that he may have intentionally left out the spiritual eyes language in order to strengthen his claim.

    Though I am still convinced that the use or lack of those clauses were rather merely rhetorical for Joseph. This can, of course, agree with your paper, as Joseph's purported persecution may have simply come from his lack of utilizing the scriptural rhetoric/flare/clauses when sharing his experience with others as a teen.

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  10. "It is my understanding that those with a more magical worldview did not make this distinction. Please correct me if I am mistaken."

    I suggest in my article that JS was influenced most prominently by the Methodists with whom he associated in his early years. And even the more radical early American Methodists were careful to make the distinction, always hedging their claims by noting that they saw with their "spiritual eyes" or noting that "it seemed" that God spoke to them. Here's a relevant snippet from my article:

    Benjamin Abbott and Philip Gatch thus each qualified their visions by noting that it was “by faith” that they saw Jesus Christ (and in Gatch’s case, God the Father). Dan Young likewise saw and conversed with Christ but was careful to explain that it was not a literal vision but rather “a very singular dream” while he slept. Most commonly, individuals described their visions in ambiguous terms. Henry Boehm, for example, described that he “had a view of the atonement of the Son of God,” and “by faith, I realized my interest in it,” while Ezekiel Cooper expressed his conversion in equally vague terms: “I had an opening to my mind of the infinite fullness of Christ, and of the willingness of the Father, through his Son, to receive me into his favor.”

    While those quoted in that paragraph come from all over the spectrum of Methodist spirituality, you'd be hard pressed to find Methodists much more visionary and charismatic than Gatch and Abbott.

    Sue Juster makes the point in her Doomsayers that “Evangelicals were very careful in the language they used to describe their visionary experiences, always conscious of the porous line separating faith from superstition. They used words like ‘seemingly’ and ‘by faith’ to signal their awareness of the enormous channels of truth and knowledge. . . . In general, visions should be seen--not felt or heard in any physical way--and seen by the ‘eye of faith’ alone" (pp. 115-16).

    My sense is that almost all visionaries distinguished between spiritual eyes and literal sight, and that those who spoke unambiguously about seeing something (as I read JS consistently doing in his rehearsals of the vision), they knew exactly what they were doing and were fully aware that it was pushing the boundaries of acceptable evangelical orthodoxy.

    Re: what empirically happened to JS, I'm quite agnostic about and am inclined to accept your proposed interpretation as much as I am the more orthodox view. But it seems clear to me that JS persistently believed that his visionary experience was "real" in a way that other evangelical visions were not.

    "If I recall what Mark said correctly, a common manifestation of experiencing God while praying was a tongue-tying and inability to talk or move."

    Hmm. This area is a bit tricky, but there is ample evidence of folks claiming Satan showed up right as they began to pray for conversion and provoked bodily harm on them. One female convert, for example, recalled that her “Nerves and Sinews contracted,” and her tongue “felt like an Iron bar in her Mouth," while Methodist preacher William Glendinning “was so distraught by ‘Lucifer’s’ alarming presence during his conversion that he suffered a nervous breakdown.” I treat this briefly in my article, but Christine Heyrman's chapter on "Raising the Devil" in Southern Cross is excellent at teasing out some of these issues. She notes that "as evangelical pastors well knew, what sometimes accompanied the first throes of repentance was a sinner’s sheer terror of being snatched into hell by a devil trying not be cheated of triumph.”

    Anyway, sorry for the lengthy comments and for entertaining my interests here.

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  11. "My sense is that almost all visionaries distinguished between spiritual eyes and literal sight, and that those who spoke unambiguously about seeing something (as I read JS consistently doing in his rehearsals of the vision)"

    What do you make with these?:

    1832: "a pillar of {fire} lightabove the brightness of the Sun at noon day come down from above and rested upon me and I was filld 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."

    Wentworth: "I retired to a secret place in a grove, and began to call upon the Lord; while fervently engaged in supplication, my mind was taken away from the objects with which I was surrounded, and I was enwrapped in a heavenly vision, and saw two glorious personages

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  12. Er, that last sentence should read "sorry for the lengthy comments and thanks for entertaining my interests here."

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  13. Isolated they seem a bit ambiguous (though not as much as explicitly saying "it seemed" or "I saw by faith"); when read within the larger corpus of JS's FV accounts, they seem remarkably straight forward and literal.

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  14. Great discussion.

    I really enjoyed this post, Loyd. I don't always agree with your views (especially in the political arena), but you offer fruitful, challenging ideas that cause me to reflect on my own biases, assumptions, and viewpoints (hell, I picked up 'The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology' because of you). You (and others who hold similar views) have been to source of some of my intellectual growing pains.

    Thanks for keeping me on my toes.

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  15. LOVE IT! I remember teaching adult Sunday school years ago and putting something into historical context and having an elderly sister get upset with me because her ancestors had sacrificed to come across the plains, etc. (As I remember I said something about how the early members in Kirtland were behaving toward their gentile neighbors...) She wanted everything to be literally true AS SHE KNEW IT rather than to be put into historical context. She said she could not listen to me talk that way about the pioneers. Reminds me of how some people responded to your testimony. I thought I was being respectful, but apparently not in her eyes.

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