036 How Do We Become Doctrinally Confident?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Scott Woodward (00:05):
Just before leaving home for college, 18-year-old Henry Eyring,
the future world-renowned LDS scientist,was invited by his father, Edward Eyring,
to sit down for some fatherly counsel.
After sharing his firm conviction thatJoseph Smith was a true prophet whom God
used to restore his church, Edward saidto his son, “Now, there are a lot of other

(00:26):
matters which are much less clear to me,but in this church, you don't have to
believe anything that isn't true.” Hmm.
“In this church you don't have tobelieve anything that isn't true.” This
idea is echoed in President Dieter F.
Uchtdorf's teaching, when he declared,“Latter-day Saints are not asked to
blindly accept everything they hear.

(00:48):
We are encouraged to think anddiscover truth for ourselves.
We are expected to ponder, to search,to evaluate, and thereby come to a
personal knowledge of the truth.”So how do we do this when it comes
to theological or doctrinal truth?
How can we confidently determine whatis and what is not reliable doctrine

(01:10):
so we can decide what to believe?
On today's episode of Church HistoryMatters, we dive into this very issue and
explore three vital questions to ask whenevaluating all doctrinal truth claims.
I'm Scott Woodward, and my co-host isCasey Griffiths, and today we dive into
our second episode of this series dealingwith truth seeking and good thinking.

(01:32):
Now, let's get into it.

Casey Paul Griffiths (01:35):
Well, hello, Scott.
How are you?

Hey, good, Casey.
How you doing, man?

I'm doing great, especially because I feel like we've
set the table with our first episode,and now this is the meaty part.
Like, I think it's really, reallyuseful and helpful in kind of defining
mature discipleship, you know?
Being a smart, thinking adult but alsoa faithful believer, disciple of Christ.

Yeah.
We set the table last time,and today is the main course.

Yep.

And speaking of food, Casey, stop me if you've
heard this quote before, okay?
A wise person once said, “Give a mana fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and you feedhim for a lifetime.” Have you
ever heard that quote, Casey?

I think I said that quote in our last podcast, so.

Oh yeah, shoot.

Here's the harder question (02:23):
do you know—okay, you can't look at our notes,
but do you know who said that quote?

I said it.
I made it up on the spot.

Did you make that up last time?

It was a pearl of wisdom that I've been
carrying around since a young child.

That is so funny.

But no.
No, who actually—who said that?
Where's it come from?

Okay.
Are you ready for this?
It came from Lao Tzu.

Ooh.
Nice.

The ancient Chinese philosopher.
Or it's an Italian proverb, I found.
Or it's from Maimonides,the ancient Jewish rabbi.
Or it's from a British girl namedAnne Ritchie in the mid-1800s.

Wow!
So in other words, nobody knows, but it'sone of those self-evident truths, and—

Yeah.

—as historians, we know that sourcing quotes is difficult.
It's just like Abraham Lincolnsaid, you miss a hundred percent
of the shots you don't take, right?

That's right.
That's right.
Didn't Abraham Lincoln said that youcan only believe, like, 65 percent
of what you read on the internet?

Right, right.
It's just like how Joseph Smithsaid, I never said it would be easy.
I only said it would be worth it, right?
So, anyway.

Nobody knows who said it.
I'm going to say Casey Griffithssaid it last episode, and it is wise.

I am hoping that at some point, you know, on some internet
site, that “teach a man to fish” thingshows up and my name is underneath it.

“Casey Griffiths.”

That would be great, honestly.

That's when you know you've arrived, really.

Yeah, yeah.
But that is essentially whatwe're trying to do here.

That's what we're aiming at in this series is we're
trying to help people learn how to fish—

Yeah.

—in the waters of doctrine and history, right?
Theology and history, so.

Yep.
In fact, you wrote this as theburning question of the series: What
mental moves are made by intelligent,critically thinking Latter-day Saints
whose faith is strengthened ratherthan damaged by diving deeply into our
church's history and doctrine, or whatframeworks of thinking do they use
when approaching scripture and history?

Yeah.

That's not nearly as pithy as—

“Teach a man to fish.”

—teach a man to fish, but it does
capture what we're doing here.

Yeah.

And in the last episode one of the things we emphasized
is that repeatedly throughout the Doctrineand Covenants, most prominently in section
88 verse 118, the Lord tells the earlysaints to be smart, to seek out wisdom
and learning, and the two words he usesare “even by study, and also by faith.”

Yeah.

I remember this talk where President Uchtdorf, back
when he was President Uchtdorf, saidfor Latter-day Saints education is not

just a good idea (05:01):
It is a commandment.

Yeah.

And so this is something that we've been
commanded to do, and that we've beenasked to do over and over again.
And last time we introduced a couple hugewords that maybe—should we go through
these really fast just again beforewe get to the meat of the discussion?

Yeah, let's do it.

Here's some of the words we introduced

last time (05:20):
epistemology.
Epistemology means what does itmean to know something and how do
we come to know things, and is thereany way we can be sure we're right?

Yeah.

Ontology.
Ontology is sort of measuring whatis real and what is existence.

Yeah.

Another term
Facts are true and verifiable,no matter what your perspective.
We brought up a couple facts.
Joseph Smith said that he showedthe plates to eleven witnesses.
That's a fact.
I don't think anybody'sdisputing that, right?

Meaning that the fact is that he said that
he showed it to eleven people.
That's the fact.

Yeah.
Nobody's disputing that, right?
There's all kinds of disputesover what the witnesses saw.

Yeah.

Or back and forth, but nobody's disputing that
that was a claim Joseph Smith made.

Yeah.

Or that Joseph Smith was a person who lived in the
19th century and started a religion.

Right.
Fact.

Inferences.
Inferences are snap conclusionsand meanings we give facts based
on our preexisting assumption.
So this is kind of when we—we seea fact, and all of a sudden we say,
“Oh, well, if this, then this.”That's an inference, all right?
We talked about this from the hermeneuticof faith and the hermeneutic of suspicion.
Hermeneutic of faith would be JosephSmith claimed he saw an angel.

(06:32):
Your inference is JosephSmith is a prophet.
A hermeneutic of suspicion inferencewould be Joseph Smith is a fraud.
Angels don't talk to people.
That kind of thing.
But it's all based on your assumptions,which brings us to assumptions.

What's an assumption?

Beliefs we suppose to be true, and we
use to interpret the world.
It's kind of our lens thatwe look at the world with.

We can't really get rid of assumptions, right?
Assumptions aren't bad, but what wetalked about last time is that we can
actually educate our assumptions, right?
Like
. . . Casey Paul Griffiths: Yep.
And you do that by getting better evidence.
Evidence educates assumptions.
So how do we get at evidence, Casey?

So we talked about four methods here, too.
Scientific method.
That's an empirical, evidence-based methodfor testing assumptions about how things
work in the natural, observable world.
So this is our how, what,when, where sort of thing.
We go—we experience something.
I had people tell me for years,“European chocolate is better than

(07:27):
American chocolate.” Couple weeks agoI went to Denmark, and based on my
scientific exploration of the subject—

Empirical research.

—it's true.
My empirical research—I went to abodega in Copenhagen and bought a
bunch of chocolate and ate it, andit was good, dare I say better.

Is it because it has less wax?
I've heard it has less wax and it,like, has more cocoa or something.
I don't know.

I don't know what they do.
They're magical people over therein Denmark that just do wonderful
things with chocolate, and Iappreciate them, and shout out to
Denmark for your good chocolate.

Denmark, way to go.

Then there is the historical method.
Historical method is when wekind of do detective work.
We go back, and we find evidence,and we use the evidence to try and
put together a picture of things.
This can happen througharchaeological study.
You see a lot of that done with referenceto the Bible and even church history.
The church usually does anarchaeological study of a site.

(08:26):
I've been to the sitewhere Joseph Smith Sr.
and Lucy Mack built their first home.
They did an archaeological studythere to find out what kind of
crops Lucy Mack and Joseph Sr.
grew.
That was archaeological exploration.
Another way to do it isdocumentary exploration.
So you take documents.
One of the things Spencer McBride, fromthe Joseph Smith Papers, pointed out

(08:48):
is that when John Whitmer became churchhistorian, the number of documents
starts to multiply exponentially.
And we can use those documents tosay, “Hey, Joseph Smith wrote a letter
from Greenville, Indiana on this date.
In the letter, he saidthis and this and this.
That seems to indicate that this was goingon around that time.” We talked about last
time about that's how you actually datethe earliest account of the First Vision.

(09:09):
The account itself has no date, but youcan do detective work to say, “Well, in
this letter, he was talking a lot aboutthings linked to the First Vision, and
the history is written in Frederick G.
Williams’ handwriting,so we put that together.
Probably happened in the summer.” Thenwe have the philosophical method, which

is a rational approach (09:24):
getting to the truth of theoretical statements through
logic, reason, and argumentation.
This is where you take a statement andjust kind of logic your way through it.

Philosophy is also dealing with things like “What is good?”

Yeah.

Right?
“What is right?
What is moral?
What is evil?
What is real?” That kind of thing, right?
So really fundamental questions thatare hard to get at through a microscope
or through sifting through rocks anddirt or looking at historical documents.
It's more about, yeah, this rational,logical way to get at truth, and
it can be quite powerful, actually.

Yeah.
Then there's theology.
Theology, dictionary definition, “thestudy of things of God.” Rational
study synthesizing teachings inscriptural canon and one's own personal
experiences with God and a sense of God'sspirit, visions, appearance, angelic
ministrations, personal appearances.
Theology, we noted last time, isa word Latter-day Saints don't use

(10:23):
very much, but it's okay to use it.
Theology is a little more etherealthan doctrine, and that's what we're
talking about today is doctrine.
The two overlap to a largedegree, is that fair to say?

Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Doctrine is what?
Teachings.
The teachings, I think,is what doctrine means.
What's the teachings?
And theology is kind of theteachings about God or the study
of God and the things of God.
And so, yeah, what are the teachingsas you study the things of God?
Like, what are theteachings you can distill?
What are the truths you can distill fromthe most inspired theological sources?

(10:57):
Something like that, yeah.

Yeah.
Very good.
Okay.
Then we introduced one lastterm, which was complexity.
We fully recognize that in introducingall this stuff we're making your life
more complex And if you just want tosay, “Hey, the church is true, and
God lives, and Jesus is the Christ,and Joseph Smith's a prophet, and the
Book of Mormon is true,” that's okay.

Totally.
Hundred percent.

We're not trying to mess with that, but there are a lot of
challenges to each one of those claims,and I genuinely think that the tools that
we're using, or that we're explaininghere, can help strengthen your faith.

Yeah.

And we talked about this idea of simplicity on the other side
of complexity, that if you choose to enterinto this complexity, I sincerely believe
you'll come out the other side with thosesimple truths still intact but maybe
even a little bit more strongly imbuedin your heart and your spirit because
you've taken the time to test them.
You've examined them.

(11:51):
You've engaged in the wrestle,basically, to find out what's
right and what God wants you to do.

Yeah.
Okay, so kind of to summarize all whatyou're saying here, Casey, is that
all of these different methodologiesare basically ways to get at evidence,
at different kinds of evidence, basedon the nature of our question, and
that that kind of seeking is not onlyencouraged, but commanded by the Lord.
Is that right?

Yeah.

To use all the methods, right?
I mean, here's a great quotefrom President Joseph Smith.
He said, “We believe that we have a rightto embrace all and every item of truth
when that truth is clearly demonstratedto our minds and we have the highest
degree of evidence of the same.” Ilove that quote, that we want evidence.

(12:39):
We seek evidence.
We want in every way to find truthusing all the methods possible.

Yeah.

Like, here's another one.
“The Latter-day Saints have no creed,but we're ready to believe all true
principles that exist, as they are mademanifest from time to time.” So kind
of built into Joseph Smith's methodfor seeking truth is, like, well,
let's see what's the evidence, right?
What is the evidence?
If it's true, we'll believe it.
How do we know it's true?
We need evidence.

Yeah.

So Latter-day Saints don't shy away from evidence.
We'll look for it anywhere we canusing all the methods possible.
And so today we're just talkingabout doctrinal evidence.
We're trying to find out, like,how can we become confident in our
doctrinal understanding of truth?
But just because we're talking aboutdoctrine today doesn't mean we're not open
to all the other kinds of truth, right?

(13:26):
Joseph Smith was boundless in hissearch for and his expressions
to Latter-day Saints to gatherall the truth in the world.
He says if we don't gather upall the truth in the world then
we won't come out true Mormons.
That's Joseph Smith's approach,is that everything, everywhere
that's true, we believe it.

Today is doctrinal truth, and phew, this is a one that's of
supreme importance to Latter-day Saints.

Yeah.

But also one that is a little bit more complex.
And again, I don't say thatas if it's a bad thing.
It's a really good thing.
We have a lot of avenues and waysto know truth, but sometimes knowing
how to coordinate those ways andavenues is what's difficult for
Latter-day Saints—is to know, “Hey,what are the best sources to use?
And how do we determine what is or isnot an official teaching of the Church?”

Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths: And so on and so forth. (14:26):
undefined

That's right.

I'm going to credit you, Scott, for coming up with
the model we're going to use today.
You and I both teach something reallysimilar to our classes, but when we
put them side by side, yours was alittle bit more straightforward and
a little bit more clean than mine.
Can I say that?

Oh.

And so we're—you're driving the car today, so.

Okay.

Let's start the car and take it out for a
spin and see what you can do.

Okay.
Here we go.
Everyone buckle up.
So I guess I'd frame our questiontoday as simply this: How can we become
doctrinally and theologically confident?
And what are our inspired sourcesfrom which to distill truth,
and how can we best do that?
What I've gathered together is I'velooked through all the teachings of

(15:10):
the prophets and scripture on this.
I've found that there are three what I'mgoing to call “lenses” for discerning true
doctrine that basically are a synthesisof what the prophets have taught.
So here you go.

Here's the three lenses (15:23):
Number one.
As you're trying to thinkabout, “Is this statement true?
Is what I have heard true?
Is what I'm reading true?
Is what I'm hearing in thesacrament meeting talk true?
Is what I'm studying in thisarticle true?” Number one: Is it
taught in scripture repeatedly?

Number two (15:39):
Is it taught by prophets of God repeatedly, like modern prophets?

And number three (15:44):
Is it confirmed by Spirit?
And when you bring thesetogether, they kind of form what
I call a doctrinal heuristic.
Heuristic is another fancy word,I guess, which simply means any
type of imperfect but practicalprocess used to problem solve.
So it's pretty handy.
It works really, really wellto check the reliability of a

(16:05):
particular doctrinal statement.
So, for instance, if something is taughtrepeatedly in scripture and consistently
taught by prophets and confirmed by theSpirit, like, really quickly, you can have
pretty high confidence that that's true.

Yeah.

But if it is not repeatedly taught in scripture—maybe
it's a one-off little verse—not reallyconsistently taught by prophets—maybe
there's one statement out in theJournal of Discourses somewhere, you
know, and the Spirit's not reallyconfirming one way or the other, then
your confidence does not wax strong.
Your confidence can belower in that thing, right?
You're not sure if that is true.

(16:39):
And that's an okay placeto be in, honestly.
There's a lot of statements that'slike, “Hmm, that could be true.
Maybe.
Maybe not.” It's just not verifiedenough through those three lenses
for us to be highly confident, right?

Yeah.

So that's the—kind of the general, like, you know, from a
10,000-foot view, those are the kindof the three questions you want to ask.

So maybe I'm jumping in too fast here, but
. . . Scott Woodward: No, go ahead.

Casey Paul Griffiths: Just to give an example. (16:59):
undefined

Yeah.

I know that this is actually a common thing my students
bring up, more common than it shouldbe, but let's take a statement like,
“Cain and Bigfoot are the same person.”

Oh boy, okay.

And we run that through the lens
taught in scripture repeatedly?

Uh, no.

No.
It's never taught inscripture as far as I know.

Zero times.

Has it been taught by prophets repeatedly, once?
It's in a book by President Kimball.
And it's—actually the phrase, “Cainand Bigfoot are the same person”—

It's not in there.

—is not in the book either.
President Kimball cites anexperience told by David Patten,
where David Patten said he saw Cain.
And Cain was a tall man.
He was taller than the donkeythat Elder Patten was sitting on.
But other than that, I don'tknow any other place where that
has been taught in the church.

And President Kimball calls that—all he calls
it is, “an interesting story.”

Yeah.

The end.

The point of the story was the corrosive
effect sin has on a person, nottrying to establish anything weird.
And then we'd say, “Is thatconfirmed by the spirit?” I honestly
. . . Scott Woodward: I've never had a confirmation of that.
I've never had a spiritual experience
telling me, yes, Cain is Bigfoot.
So if we're running it through thesethree lenses, we would say, “Boy, that
fails on—you could probably say onall three, to be honest with you, if

(18:14):
we're using the word “repeatedly” here.

Definitely.
So let's dig into, like, each ofthose lenses maybe one by one here
so that we can kind of see howthey're—how they're constructed.

Mm-hmm.

So let's talk about being taught in scripture repeatedly.
So here's President Hinckley.
This is actually in a GeneralAuthority training meeting.
So this is the prophet teaching GeneralAuthorities about where doctrine resides.

Mm-hmm.

And he says this: he says, “When all is said and done,
the test of the doctrine lies inthe standard works of the church.
These have been accepted inconference and assembled as our
doctrinal standards.” Like, boom.
Like, once something is canonizedin our scriptures, it's now part
of our doctrinal sort of reservoir.

(18:57):
It's part of the doctrinal standards.
That's why we call it the standard works.
You know, it's not something that'sequally as valid as something
else outside the standard works.
Like, it gains an elevated sort ofstatus in terms of its doctrinal
trustworthiness, and therefore is prime.

Yeah.

Elder Christofferson says it like this, too.
He says, “The scriptures are thetouchstone for measuring correctness
and truth.” That's pretty booyah.
Elder McConkie, this one might be alittle bit surprising, considering that
this is coming from Elder McConkie.
He said, “Wise gospel students donot build their philosophies of
life on quotations of individuals,even though those quotations come

(19:35):
from presidents of the church.
Wise people anchor their doctrineon the standard works.” Whoa.
Listen.
Like, when I was, like, a late teenager, Istarted collecting quotes from prophets of
God, and I started organizing them A to Z.
I still have a little box that has all mylittle quotes that I started organizing.
Then I started making Word documents,and I eventually made a website where

(19:57):
I was collecting, like, everything thatevery apostle had said about any topic
that was interesting, A to Z, to me.
Like, if it was interestingto me, I wanted to know what
had been said on the topic.
I was doing exactly whatElder McConkie said to not do.
I was starting to build my philosophy oflife on quotations of individuals, many
of whom were presidents of the church.
You might say, “That's not—thatdoesn't sound like a bad thing, right?”

Yeah.

And I would agree that's not bad, but Elder
McConkie's saying that's not best.
When it comes to doctrine, wise peopleare going to anchor their doctrine
in the standard works rather thanindividual quotations or even a cluster
of quotations from people who may havebeen even apostles, but their words
have not been canonized in scripture.
So this actually brings up an interestingpoint that of the three lenses, taught

(20:41):
in scripture repeatedly, taught byprophets repeatedly, confirmed by the
Spirit—of those three, one of thoseis more important than the other two
when it comes to evaluating doctrine.
These are not all equal, and the lensthat is most important is, “Is it taught
in scripture repeatedly?” That onetrumps when we're talking about doctrine.

Now, I'm going to insert a little drama
into this and challenge you.

Ah, shoot.
Okay.

And by the way, dear listener, we talked about this beforehand,
so this isn't me, like, dropping thehammer on Scott in the middle of this.

No, man.
Drop it.
Drop it.

I want to push back against that a little bit, if that's okay.

Yeah.
Please.

Because you're saying, you know, we've got scripture.
Words of prophets and theSpirit, and scripture is the
most important of the three.

When it comes to doctrine.

Okay, okay.
Well, so I just want toknow how you square this.
There is a talk given byPresident Ezra Taft Benson, okay?

Mm-hmm.

It was originally an address given February 26,
1980, at Brigham Young University.

Hmm.

Later it was published in the Ensign as
the First Presidency message.
It has been quoted verbatim inGeneral Conference by another
general authority—his name escapesme as a member of the Seventy,
but it wasn't that long ago.

Yeah.

It's called “14 Fundamentals in Following the Prophet.”

Mm.
Yes.

Classic talk.
Point two.
Okay, so here's my point of contention.

Okay.

President Benson says the living prophet is more
vital to us than the Standard Works.
So President Benson is sayingthe living prophet is more vital
to us than the Standard Works.

Yeah.

And then he cites this story from President Wilford Woodruff
that happened in the days of Joseph Smith.

So Wilford Woodruff said this (22:17):
“I will refer to a certain meeting I attended in
the town of Kirtland in my early days.
At that meeting some remarks were madethat there had been made here today
with regard to the living prophets andwith regard to the written word of God.”
So they're talking about what we'retalking about: prophets and scripture.

Scripture versus prophets, okay.

“The same principle was presented, although not as extensively
as it had been here, when a leading manin the church got up and talked upon
the subject and said, ‘You have gotthe word of God before you here in the
Bible, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine andCovenants.’” Pearl of Great Price hadn't
been published yet—that's an aside.
““You have the written word ofGod, and you who give revelations
should give revelations accordingto those books, as what was written

(22:56):
in those books is the word of God.
We should confine ourselves to them.’ Whenhe concluded, Brother Joseph turned to
Brother Brigham Young and said, ‘BrotherBrigham, I want you to go to the podium.
Tell us your views with regard to theliving oracles and the written Word of
God.’ Brother Brigham took the stand,and he took the Bible and laid it down,
he took the Book of Mormon and laid itdown, and he took the book of Doctrine and
Covenants and laid it down before him, andhe said, ‘There is the written word of God

(23:19):
to us concerning the work of God from thebeginning of the world almost to our day.
And now,’ said he, ‘when compared with theliving oracles, those books are nothing.
These books do not convey the word ofGod direct to us now as do the words
of a prophet or a man bearing the holypriesthood in our day and generation.
I would rather have the living oraclesthan all the writing in the books.’

(23:40):
That was the course he pursued.
When he was through, Brother Josephsaid to the congregation, Brother
Brigham has told you the word of theLord, and he has told you the truth.”

Bam.

How do you square the idea that scripture is
the most important of the lens withsomething like that, which is a story
told by President Benson, who wasn'tthe president of the church but
becomes the president of the church—

Right.

—involves three presidents of the church.
Wilford Woodruff tells the story,but he talks about what Brigham
Young said and says that JosephSmith backed up what he said there.
Like—

Yeah.

—that seems pretty strong to me—

Totally.

—to basically say, “No, living prophets is the
most important of the three lenses.
How are you going to getyourself out of this one, Scott?

No, that's a fabulous question.
In fact, that's—when I first introducethis to students, that often will come up.
“Well, what about that talk?
What about PresidentBenson's talk?” Right?
That's actually a reallyimportant question to think about.
So each of these three lenses can beconsidered the most important or the
primary lens for different purposes.
If we're speaking about the mostimportant lens in terms of, like,

(24:38):
guiding the worldwide church in theselatter days, then modern prophets
are primary without question.
And that's what PresidentBenson's talking about.
He says the prophets of God give us TNT,that's what he says, which is today's
news today, meaning that the primaryvalue of the president of the church
is his guidance to us right now, hisleadership to us now, his acting under the

(25:00):
inspiration of the Lord to make changesin how we do things in the church today.
How we should live ourlives at this time, right?
This is why a living prophetis so relevant and so crucial.
And in that sense, he is more valuableto us than the scriptures, since
the scriptures are not going to tellus about the particulars of what we
ought to be doing right now or how thechurch should be governed today, right?
So the primary value andbenefit and function of a living

(25:24):
prophet is not a doctrinal one.
Rather, it's one of guidance, direction,leadership, as the holder of the keys
of the kingdom, the one through whomthe Lord will reveal his present will.
You cannot get that from scripture.
Questions about what we as churchmembers should be doing right now,
how the kingdom of God on earth shouldbe governed and led right now at the
present—those aren't doctrinal questions.

(25:45):
Those are not theologicalquestions per se, right?
So if you want to ask which of thosethree lenses is most important for us
in terms of, like, guiding the modernchurch today, no question, President
Benson is telling you the truth.
That's actually accurate.
Brigham Young was right.
You stack up all the scriptures versusliving prophets of God, living prophets
will win every day of the week.

(26:06):
But if you tweak your question, right?
If your question was, you know,“Which of those three lenses is
most important to guide us in makingwise personal decisions day to day?
Why then we're probably going tohave to argue that the Holy Ghost
is the most important, right?
The Spirit lens is most importantin helping us in our personal lives.
You're not going to find out whether youshould take that job in the scriptures

(26:28):
or in the words of the living prophets.
The guidance for you and your family,if you change the question to that,
what should we do in our own particularsphere, like, the Holy Ghost is going
to win out of those three—guided bythe other two, supported by the other
two, certainly, giving principles thatare bounded on either side to help
you not make stupid decisions, butthe actual personal particulars will

(26:48):
need to be guided by the Holy Ghost.
That's primary.
So what we're saying here is, if we'rechanging the question to, okay, “Which
lens is most important or primary when itcomes to doctrine, Then that's scripture.
To back that up, this isn't just ScottWoodward, this is Scott Woodward deriving
this from the words of the prophets.
So here's another onefrom President Harold B.
Lee.

He says this (27:06):
“If anyone, regardless of his position in the church, were
to advance a doctrine that is notsubstantiated by the standard church
works,” meaning the scriptures, “youmay know that his statement is merely
his private opinion.” And here'sanother one: Joseph Fielding Smith.
“Everything that I say and everything thatany other person says must square itself

(27:27):
with that which the Lord has revealed,or it should be rejected,” he said.

Here’s another one (27:32):
Hugh B.
Brown, in the First Presidency, he said,“We are only bound by the four standard
works and are not required to defend whatany man or woman says outside of them.”

Mm-hmm.

So the prophets themselves are saying that when it comes to
doctrine, we are bound by the standardworks, not by what somebody says.
Not by quotations of individuals,“even,” as Elder McConkie said, “if
those quotations come from presidentsof the church.” You would need to run
that quotation through the standardworks and make sure that it squares
with what the standard works say.

Elder McConkie backs it up like this: he says, “Though general authorities are (28:02):
undefined
authorities in the sense of having powerto administer church affairs, they may
or may not be authorities in the senseof doctrinal knowledge.” So that's an
important point to think about, right?

Yeah.

And then he says this: he says, “The standard works are the
standard of judgment and the measuring rodagainst which all doctrines and views are
weighed, and it does not make one particleof difference whose views are involved.
The scriptures always take precedence.”

Whoa.

Scriptures always take precedence.
We're only talking aboutdoctrine here, right?

Yeah.

We're talking about theology.
Then the scriptures are primary.

Mm-hmm.

So that would be my response to the President
Benson contention, right?
Like, he's totally in alignment here.
If our question is about what's mostimportant to us today in terms of
this church being guided and led,that's got to be prophet of God.

Mm-hmm.

But if you're asking a different question about doctrine,
then that’s scripture, and that'swhat the prophets consistently teach.

Let me summarize what you're saying here, basically.
So—

Okay.

—if you want to know doctrine, like the fundamental

truths of the universe (29:04):
scriptures.
The direction the church should go intoday: living prophets are most useful.
And when it comes to personal decisions,the Spirit might be the most important.

Yeah, that’s—that’s exactly right.

Another thing President Benson said in the “14
Fundamentals,” he said beware ofthose who would set up the dead
prophets against the living prophets.

Yeah.
Yeah.

Basically, in my mind, I—this is the analogy I used
S.
Lewis once was asked, you know,“What's more important, grace or
works, when it comes to our salvation?”And he responded by saying, “Which
blade in a pair of scissors is moreimportant?” I think that scripture and
prophets are meant to work together.

Yeah.

The analogy breaks down when we add in a third thing,
which is the Holy Ghost, but hopefullythey never come into conflict, right?

Yeah.

But it might also be a question of “What situation
are we in, and what's the mostuseful tool when it comes to the
thing we're trying to navigate atthis point?” If that makes sense.

And on the rare occasions that they do come in
conflict, the apostles are prettyconsistent in saying, “Go with the
scriptures.” Go with the scriptures.
It doesn't matter what someone'schurch calling is: If it conflicts
with what's in the scriptures,then go with the scriptures.
Now, here's what's interesting, though,about having a living prophet: It is
the prerogative of a living prophetto introduce new scripture, right?
That is possible.

(30:22):
But it's a process thateverybody's aware of.
It's not just, like, if he sayssomething in general conference.
It's a process whereby the new doctrinewould be presented to the twelve and
the general authorities for sustainingvote, and then to the membership of the
church, and then it would be—it wouldbecome part of the scriptural canon.

Yeah.

And so it's not like this, like, private little
process that nobody knows about.
Like, if the president of the churchwants to introduce a new doctrine,
a new revelation—like section 138,for instance, introduced new doctrine
about the spirit world, things we didnot know about Christ's spirit world
ministry and that have actually profoundimplications for work for the dead.
Like, that originally was ageneral conference talk, right?

(30:59):
But it went through the processof eventually being upgraded to
canon when it was put into thePearl of Great Price and then later
made Doctrine and Covenants 138.
That's a good example of kind of arecent doctrinal revelation that has
become a part of our canon and isnow part of the doctrinal measuring
rod by which you can measure truth.

Yeah.

So that's the process it can go by.
So living prophets are crucial toadd to the canon, but just because
they say something doesn't meanit's automatically canon, right?
And sometimes we do thatas Latter-day Saints.
I did that for the majorityof the first half of my life.
Like, if a prophet said it,boom, that was scripture.
But the prophets themselves havekind of tempered me a little bit and
said, “Hold on, hold on, hold on.

(31:40):
Not everything we say”—let me giveyou another quote just so this
is not just Scott saying this.
Like this one from Elder Christofferson,this is from conference talk
he gave back in April 2012.
He said, “It should be rememberedthat not every statement made by
a church leader, past or present,necessarily constitutes doctrine.
It is commonly understood in the churchthat a statement made by one leader on

(32:02):
a single occasion often represents apersonal, though well-considered, opinion
not meant to be official or bindingfor the whole church.” There you go.

Yeah.

Harold B.

Lee (32:12):
“It's not to be thought that every word spoken by our leaders is inspired.”
It's not to be thought that everyword spoken by general authorities is
inspired, or that they are moved upon bythe Holy Ghost in everything they write.
I first—when I first heard thesequotes, I kind of wrestled with them.
If it wasn't Elder Christoffersonand President Lee saying it, I
would have argued back, you know?
But how do you argue with that, right?

(32:33):
If I believe everything that ElderChristofferson says is true, then I
have to believe, based on the logic ofhis quote, that not everything Elder
Christofferson says is true, right?
And so that sends you intoa mental vortex, right?
If not everything spoken byour leaders, as Harold B.
Lee said, is inspired, but I believe thateverything he says is inspired, then I
have to wrestle with what he just said.

I think the value in that quote, too, is then to say,
“Hey, it might not be the word of God.
It could be a thoughtful,well-considered opinion.”

Yeah.
Yeah.
We have opinions, too.

Yeah.
Let me give you an example.
When I was a seminary teacher, Ihad a young lady in my class who
was the granddaughter of an apostle.
I'm not going to say which apostle.
But she would always cometo class and we'd be having
debates, sometimes dumb debates.
One time we were having thewhole, “Is caffeine against
the Word of Wisdom” debate.

Classic.

And she, in the middle of the discussion, said,
“Well, my grandpa drinks Diet Coke.”

End of discussion.

Casey Paul Griffiths: That ended the discussion. (33:27):
undefined
Like, everybody was like, “Oh, okay.
Well, alright then.” To say that thatapostle was trying to make a doctrinal
statement when he drank a Diet Coke infront of his granddaughter, or even if
he had just said to his granddaughter,“Hey, I think Diet Coke's okay.
It's not against the Word ofWisdom,” might be pushing it too far.

(33:49):
Like, these individuals are humans, andJoseph Smith thought a prophet is only
a prophet when he's acting as such.

Yeah.

Sometimes we take the smallest little thing that they say
in any context and treat it as if itis the word of God, and that's just too
much pressure to put on these wonderfulleaders that have been asked to serve.
But I've got to imagine if you werea general authority, you'd constantly
worry about saying the wrong thingand people taking it as doctrine.

(34:19):
So we've got to give thema little wiggle room there.

Yeah, totally.
I remember Joseph Smith sayingthat he didn't like to give out his
opinion because people would takeit and garble it up and make it as
though it was the word of the Lord.

Yeah.

And so he was hesitant about how he shared his opinions.
And I remember in the first presidencynews conference for our current First
Presidency—this was on January 16th, 2018.
This is kind of when you have allthe—all the news media is there when
the new First Presidency was announced,so it's President Nelson and President
Oaks and President Eyring there.
And I remember president Oaks said this,and I typed it out after he said it.

(34:53):
I was like, “Oh, that's so good.” Hesaid, “It's a great comfort to me to
know that I don't have to take thestatement or actions of one particular
leader as expressive of the doctrineand expectations of the church.”
He said, “We don't believe in theinfallibility of our leaders.” And
so, you know, if we don't believe inthe infallibility of our leaders, then

(35:14):
we do believe that our leaders canmake mistakes, even doctrinal ones.
And that's fine.

Yeah.

So the way that we're going to try to evaluate
all of that is we're going tobring it back to the scriptures.

Yeah.

We're going to need to become really good students
of the scriptures so that we canevaluate statements as to their
doctrinal reliability so that ourown confidence can wax strong.

Now, I'm going to continue to play devil's advocate here.

Ah, shoot.
Okay.

But we have been talking about the
infallibility of prophets.

Yeah.

Do we believe that the scriptures are infallible?
I mean—

Right.

—you can't make much of a case for that, too, because
prophets, especially Book of Mormonprophets, seemed like they had a lot
of anxiety to basically say, hey,we are men, and if there are errors
in this work, they're our fault.
Are we claiming infallibility forthe scriptures, then, and what
are the cautions against puttingtoo much trust in scripture?

Excellent.
Yeah, scripture has some challengeswith it that we need to be aware
of and learn how to navigate.
And one of those you've highlightedis that we actually don't believe in
the inerrancy of scripture, right?
We do believe that scripturecontains error and even opinion.
And also, the second thingis we believe that scriptural
misinterpretation is real, right?
Even if you're looking at truescripture that is accurately translated,

(36:43):
misinterpretation—I mean, that'sthe history of Christianity, right,
is misinterpretation of scripture.
How do we mitigate that?
Right?
Those are realities that we needto be aware of, and we also need
to learn how to mitigate that.
How do we lower theseverity of those concerns?
And that's where the genius of lensnumber one is, is “Is it taught

(37:04):
in scripture repeatedly?” Notjust is it in the scriptures, but
is it repeatedly, consistently,harmoniously in the scriptures?
Because there arescriptural outliers, right?

Like here's an example (37:15):
1 John 4:12.
“No man hath seen God at any time.”

I can think of five scriptures that contradict that
line right off the top of my head.

Yeah.

And maybe it's because I was raised a Latter-day
Saint and some of them were scripturemastery, and maybe it's because as a
missionary this got brought up so muchthat I just got used to going, “Well,
in Exodus 33:11, the Lord spoke toMoses face to face as a man speaks to
a friend, so what do you do with that?

Totally.

But that's a great example, yeah, of if you're
placing all your faith in one scripture—

Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths: —that's only taught one time— (37:52):
undefined

Not a good idea.

We're not saying you're wrong.
We're just saying be cautious with that.

Right.
And President Harold B.

Lee, he says it like this (38:00):
he says, “Let me give you safe counsel.”
He says, “It's usually not well touse a single passage of scripture
in proof of a point of doctrine.
To single out a passage of scriptureto prove a point is always a hazardous
thing.” It's a hazardous thing, right?
If someone wants to use 1 John 4:12 to saythat nobody's ever seen God, like, that's

(38:20):
a hazardous move, like, not a smart move.

Yeah.

Because there's so many other verses of scripture that
talk about people actually seeing God.
In the Bible, yes.
Book of Mormon, yes.
Doctrine and Covenants, yes.
In fact, what's ironic to me isthat John himself in Revelation
5:2-5 talks about seeing God.
Like, he saw God on his throne.
And so I don't know what washappening in 1 John 4:12—maybe he
wasn't feeling very well that day.
Maybe he ate something thatgave him a sour stomach.

(38:46):
He was in a bad mood whenhe wrote that—I don't know.
Nobody knows why he wrote that.
That could be a bad translation.
There is a JST footnote on that onenow in Latter-day Saint scripture.

Yeah.
And I think the JST correctsit in a beautiful way.

Yeah.

No man hath seen God at any time except he hath
borne witness of the Son, whichharmonizes a lot of these things.
That's the word I usually use is—notjust is it taught repeatedly, but is it
harmonized in the scriptural canon, too?
Is there a way to make sure itworks with other scriptures.
We use multiple datapoints to make our point.
That's why having additionalscriptures, like the Book of Mormon
and the Doctrine and Covenants, thePearl of Great Price, is so useful.

Yes.

But we can't resolve everything, either, so.

No.
Like, President Packer, to your point,he says, “Every verse, whether oft
quoted or obscure, must be measuredagainst other verses.” There are what
he calls complementary and temperingteachings in the scriptures which bring
a balanced knowledge of truth, right?
So all scripture needs to be comparedagainst all other scriptures, particularly
on that point, just so that you canknow that you're not misinterpreting.

(39:46):
This is going to mitigate themisinterpretation, and it's going to help
you to see—like if it's not a one-offstatement, this is consistently taught
over time in scripture, over the centuriesby multiple prophets, like, you can
probably take that to the bank, right?

Yeah.

Take that to the bank.

Take that to the bank and cash it, yeah.

But that's the punchline on this point is simply, like, to
become doctrinally confident, we needto become serious students of the
scriptures, all the scriptures, andcompare them across all other scripture.

Yeah.

And don't claim to know what you can't show.
You know, if you can't showit, don't claim to know it.
When it comes to doctrine,that's particularly important.

Yeah.

Brigham Young, Heber C.
Kimball, John E.
Page, Wilford Woodruff,John Taylor, and George A.
Smith, they once wrote this letterof the Quorum of the Twelve out
to the missionaries of the church.
This is back in 1842.
They said this to the missionaries.
Here's their advice, and I would saythis is good advice for all teachers

in the church (40:34):
“Study the Word of God and preach it, and not your opinions,
for no man's opinion is worth a straw.
Advance no principle but what youcan prove, for one scriptural proof
is worth ten thousand opinions.” Iwould add to that multiple scriptural
proofs are worth even more, you know?
So let's make sure it'sconsistently taught.

(40:55):
And then when you teach, you'regoing to teach with power because
you're going to be confident thatwhat you're teaching is true.

Yeah.

That's lens number one.

Okay.
So that was a lot to get throughlens number one, but we're
covering a lot of territory here.

Yeah.

Let's move on to lens number two.

Lens number two (41:21):
Taught by the prophets repeatedly.
So we're using the same word with thescriptures and the prophets here to
say it needs to be taught repeatedly.
Explain a little bitabout what we mean there.

And for repeatedly, I think you could substitute the words
“consistently” and/or “unitedly,” right?
If something's unitedly taught by allfifteen, I'm counting that as repeatedly,
but that's, like, fifteen of them,all at once saying the same thing.
So here's a thought fromElder Andersen, Elder Neil L.

Andersen (41:46):
he said in 2012, “There's an important principle that
governs the doctrine of the church.
It is not hidden in anobscure paragraph of one talk.
True principles are taughtfrequently and by many.
Our doctrine is not difficult tofind.” Excellent, excellent point.
True principles are taughtfrequently and by many.
So if someone brings up some obscure quotefrom the Journal of Discourses, “Did you

(42:07):
know that Orson Hyde said,” and it's thiskind of one-off quote, it doesn't mean
it's automatically not true, it just—Iwouldn't place a lot of confidence in it.

Yeah.

So is it taught repeatedly?
Why repeatedly?
Because again, the problem or thechallenge with even living prophets
and apostles we've quoted many quotesfrom them themselves is that they
have opinions, well-informed opinions.
Not every word they say,as President Harold B.
Lee said, is inspired, right?

Yeah.

So how do we mitigate against that?
Again, prophetic repetition.
That's key.

Mm-hmm.

Joseph Fielding Smith, this is 1961, he once said
with a lot of confidence, “Wewill never get a man into space.
This earth is man's sphere,and it was never intended that
he should get away from it.
The moon is a superior planetto the earth, and it was never
intended that man should go there.
You can write it down in your books thatthis will never happen.” That's 1961.

(42:57):
And then, of course, in1969, we made it to the moon.
It happened.

So they say, Scott.

Oh, geez.

Yeah.
No, no, no.
We made it to the moon.
Yeah.

And then in 1970, Elder Smith becomes president
of the church, like, one yearafter we make it to the moon.
And the story goes that at the pressconference for that first presidency,
someone raised their hand andasked, “Hey, what about your moon
statement?” You know, what about that?
His reported response was,“Well, I was wrong, wasn't I?
Next question.” I just love that.

(43:29):
I just love this, like, yeah, that's fine.
Like, we can have opinions,even strong opinions.
Apostles can have strong opinions,but are they all teaching that?
Were all the apostles united in teachingthat man would never make it to the moon?
No, they were not.
What's consistently taught, right?
So, basically, two guides here.
We have two guides.
Number one, everything that they say oughtto be squared with the scriptures, right?

(43:50):
And then, is it also repeatedlytaught among the modern prophets?
They don't have to be living.
They could be recent, or it could beback to Joseph Smith's day, to our day.
But has it been consistentlytaught by the apostles?
And if it's not, that doesn'tmean it's not true, it just means
our confidence in that is lower.
I like that idea of doctrinal confidencelevels rather than true or false.

(44:12):
I don't know that any of us are in aperfect position to be able to say “That's
true” or “That's false.” But what we'retalking about is as it's more consistently
taught, your confidence grows.
It waxes stronger and stronger—that thatis true and you can take that to the bank.
So that's the idea of repeated.

We've got to have multiple statements from multiple
prophets that align with the scriptures.

Yes.
And here's a dirty trick, by the way,that you'll see sometimes online,
is someone will pull up some obscurequote from Brigham Young or Orson
Hyde or whatever to try to makeLatter-day Saints look stupid, right?
Like, you could do that with thatJoseph Fielding Smith quote about
we'll never get to the moon.

Mm-hmm.
Let me share an example.
Joseph Fielding McConkie was one ofmy teachers in my graduate program.

Uh-huh.

He was a mission president.
He said two missionaries came in tohim just absolutely in distress, like,
“President, we’ve got to talk.” And theysat down and basically it was they ran
into a guy who said, “Is it true”—theytold the mission president, “Is it true
that we teach that God and Adam arethe same person?” And Brigham Young
did teach that on a couple occasions.

He did.

Brother McConkie looked at them and said, “Okay, guys.

Answer me this question (45:18):
How long have you been members of the church?” And
they were like, “We both got baptizedwhen we were eight.” He goes, “Do you
go to church regularly?” “Yeah.” “Didyou go to seminary?” “Yeah.” “Did you
go to institute?” “Yeah.” “Do you studythe scriptures every day?” “Yeah.” “Did
you go to church last week?” “Yeah.”He looked at them and said, “and you've
never heard that taught before.” Andthey go, “No.” And he looked at them

(45:39):
and said, “Then how likely is it thatthat is an official teaching of the
church?” They'd never heard it, andthey'd been members their entire lives.
And then he just leaned overthe desk and said, “Don't let
anybody tell you what we believe.
You're the experts on what we believe.
If you've never heard it taughtbefore, it's probably not something
that we believe.” And, I mean, if yourun that particular teaching through

(46:00):
the lenses we're setting up here,it's not a doctrine of the church.
I don't know why Brigham Young saidit, whether he was being speculative.

Yeah.

I don't know what was going on there,
but nobody else has taught it.

Yeah.
He felt pretty confident in it.
I mean, Elder Orson Pratt's going to kindof debate him on that, and they're never
going to see eye to eye on that doctrine,but time has proven that he was wrong.
Scriptures themselves don't back that up.
Prophets themselves have saidthat's not accurate since his
day, and why did he say that?
Don't know.
Was he right?
He was not.

Yeah.

He taught some amazing doctrine that is true.
Brigham Young got it right a lot.
That's just one example of when he didn't.

Yeah.

In terms of united, here's a quote from Elder Ballard
“When the First Presidency and Quorum ofthe Twelve speak with a united voice, it
is the voice of the Lord for that time.”

Mm-hmm.

Brigham Young said, “In trying all matters of doctrine, it's
necessary to obtain a unanimous voice.
In the capacity of a quorum, thethree first presidents must be one
in their voice, the Twelve Apostlesmust be unanimous in their voice,
and whenever you see these quorumsunanimous in their declaration, you
may set it down as true.” That's good.
When you see the apostlesunited, that's pretty solid.

(47:07):
Like Family Proclamation,Restoration Proclamation.

Yeah.

There's some pretty solid doctrinal truths that they're slinging in
those proclamations, and our confidencecan be pretty high that those are true
because of the united declaration.

Yeah.

But they're all subject to filtering through the scriptures as well.
See if there's scriptural supportfor the statements in there.

Yeah.

And that's the perfect way to go about that, I think.

I have had members come up to me and say, “Do we still
believe in the Family Proclamation?
You know, it was issued in 1995,which is coming up on 30 years.”

Yeah.

But let's run that through some of these lenses.
Number one, was it a statement of theunited First Presidency and the Twelve?

Yeah.

Yeah.
One hundred percent.
That's what it says righton the document itself.

“We, the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles, solemnly proclaim.”

Yeah.

Yeah.

Number two, is it taught repeatedly?
I would say after the scripturesthemselves, the Family Proclamation
is among the most quoted documentsin official church settings.
Now, have they made some clarificationsto certain terms in the proclamation?
They have.

Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths: They absolutely have. (48:06):
undefined
But the fact that it was issued by theentire First Presidency and Twelve,
and that it's still repeatedly taughtby the current First Presidency and
Twelve, and I'll add your last testhere: it aligns with the scriptures.

Yeah.

Seems to say, hey, this is a document we
can place a high level of trust in.

Yeah.
In fact, I remember when PresidentHinckley first introduced
the Family Proclamation.
Listen to what he said, and think aboutit in terms of these three lenses.
He said, “In furtherance of this, weof the First Presidency and the Council
of the Twelve Apostles now issue aproclamation to the church and to the
world as,” listen to this, ”a declarationand reaffirmation of standards,

(48:44):
doctrines, and practices relative tothe family which the prophets, seers,
and revelators of this church haverepeatedly stated throughout its history.
I now take the opportunity of readingto you this proclamation.” That's
how they wrote the proclamation, waslooking what has been consistently
taught by the Apostles sincethe beginning of the church.

Yeah.

And synthesizing them together in a one-pager, right?
And so, yeah, I'm with you.
I think that's a doctrinal booyah.

Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Okay.

So that's lens number two.
That's lens number two.
Lens number two.
We need to be serious students ofwhat the modern prophets teach.

Casey Paul Griffiths: All right, third lens. (49:30):
undefined

Third lens.
Is it confirmed by the Spirit?
Hmm.
Let me share a few quotesthat sort of set this up.

So Brigham Young said this (49:38):
“Suppose I were to teach you a false doctrine.”
It's kind of funny to bring thisquote up right after what we
just—what we were just talking about.
“Suppose I were to teachyou a false doctrine.
How are you to know it if you donot possess the Spirit of God?” And
then he said, “I say to you, liveso that you will know for yourselves
whether I tell the truth or not.

(49:59):
That's the way we want all saintsto live.” So Brigham Young says
you got to have the Spirit of Godto be able to discern whether I'm
teaching a true doctrine or not.

Yeah.

Here's another one, from President Harold B.
Lee.
He said, “We can know or have theassurance that they,” meaning the
general authorities, “are speakingunder inspiration if we so live that
we can have a witness that what theyare speaking is the word of the Lord.
There is only one safety,” he says, “andthat is that we shall live to have the
witness to know.” So that's two quotes.

(50:31):
There's more.
We'll just do a third.
Why not?

Yeah, go ahead.

This is a member of the First Presidency, J.
Reuben Clark, Jr., back in 1954.
He said, “How shall we know when thethings they,” that is the apostles,
“have spoken were said as theywere moved upon by the Holy Ghost?”
Like, how can we tell when they'rebeing—like, they're speaking inspiration?

His answer (50:48):
“We can tell when the speakers are moved upon by the Holy
Ghost only when we ourselves are movedupon by the Holy Ghost.” So that's
where we're getting this third lens,that truth is confirmed by the Spirit.
And even the words of apostlesand prophets, they need to
be confirmed by the Spirit.

Mm-hmm.

Now what are the challenges with spiritual confirmation?
Like, why should the Spirit notbe our only source of doctrine?

Well, I mean, the first one would be are we worthy
to receive guidance from the Spirit?
Spirit withdraws whenwe're involved in sin.

Yeah.

But the one that probably gets brought up more
commonly is how do you know thatit's actually from the Spirit?
To cite kind of a weird example, JohnKrakauer is this famous author who wrote
the book Under the Banner of Heaven.

Yeah.

Under the Banner of Heaven is basically a story about
the Laffertys, which were this familywho actually lived in my wife's ward,
who became very fringe to the churchand started following their own
directives, and to make a long storyshort, received what they felt was
a spiritual confirmation that theywere supposed to kill two people.
They killed a young woman and her baby.

(51:57):
It's one of the most horriblestories you'll ever hear.
But in the book, Krakauer is basicallyattacking this principle of revelation
to basically say in a church whereanybody can get revelation, how do you
know when the revelation comes from God?
And the problem here is Krakauerdoesn't act like there aren't
any safeties against that.
There aren't any controls.
And I would say if a person justrelies on the directions of the

(52:19):
Spirit and never tested against theprophets or the scriptures, yeah,
you can get into major trouble.

Yeah.

So it has to be used in concert.
In fact, talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, I think you're highlighting with a very extreme example.
Thank you, Casey.

Sorry to go right there, but that's what came to mind.

No, that’s how bad it can get, right?
But to whatever extent, like, evenwhen we're worthy, like, we're still
susceptible to revelatory confusion.

Yeah.

Like, here's a quote from Elder Howard W.
Hunter.
He said, “I get concerned when it appearsthat strong emotion, or free-flowing
tears, are equated with the presence ofthe Spirit.” Then he says, “Now, certainly
the Spirit of the Lord can bring strongemotional feelings, including tears,
but that outward manifestation oughtnot be confused with the presence of
the Spirit itself.” Tears don't equalthe Spirit, he's saying here, right?

Yeah.

But I've thought that a lot of times, that because I'm
starting to feel a little emotionalthat I'm also feeling the spirit.
That doesn't automatically mean I'm notfeeling the spirit, but it also doesn't
automatically say that I am, right?
So it could be a little confusing.

Yeah.

I've been in lots of meetings where Elder Bednar has

said things like this (53:22):
he said, “The one question that is asked most
frequently by those with whom wemeet,” because Elder Bednar always
opens up things for Q&A—that's hisfavorite format with a large group.
And he says, here's the question weget most often, “How can I tell the
difference between my emotions tellingme what I want to hear and the Holy Ghost
telling me what I need to hear?” So he'sjust underscoring the basic point that

(53:44):
recognizing revelation is challenging.
That's a question allof us have had, right?
Was that me, or was that the Holy Ghost?
And so we just need to be aware of that.
Also, one more point that PresidentPacker brings up: he said, “On the
one hand, you have inspiration fromthe Holy Ghost, and on the other hand,
you have sin-spiration from the angelsof the devil.” Like, it is actually

(54:04):
possible to have counterfeit revelation.
I'm thinking of D&C 28with Hiram Page, right?
Hiram Page was claiming that he actuallygot revelations about the location
of Zion and other interesting things,which D&C 28 then rebukes and says,
that's not correct, and commissionsOliver Cowdery to go explain to
Hiram Page that he's been getting hisinspiration from the wrong source.

Mm-hmm.

It'd be sin-spiration.
Korohor claims the same thing, right?
He says, an angel of lightappeared to me, and that's where
I learned what I'm teaching.
And so there is such a thingas counterfeit revelation.
So all of those things makethis challenging, right?
So how do we mitigate those concerns?
Casey, you've alreadystarted talking about that.
How do you mitigate the concernsabout revelatory confusion?

Well, let me go back to the example you
just cited, which is Hiram Page.

Okay.

Because when you look at this really closely, it actually
shows an interesting interplay betweenthe three lenses we've been talking about.

So basic story (54:59):
The church is less than, I don't know, four
months old when this happens.

Yeah.

And the church is basically three families
Smiths, the Whitmers, and the Knights.
One of the things that JosephSmith has taught is that
anybody can seek revelation.
And if you look at the early documentaryevidence, Joseph Smith is getting
revelations on behalf of people.
All of a sudden, our first majorecclesiastical crisis, Hiram Page, who's
one of the—he's a Whitmer brother in law;he's married to Catherine Whitmer—receives

(55:26):
a revelation through a seer stone, likeJoseph has been doing, that contradicts.
In fact, look at how JosephSmith approaches this.
This is from Joseph Smith's history.

Okay.

He wrote, “Hiram Page, one of the eight witnesses of the
Book of Mormon plates, began receivingrevelations through a stone concerning
the upbuilding of Zion and the orderof the church, and so forth, but which
were entirely at variance with theorder of God's house as it's laid down
in our scriptures and in our own laterevelations.” So Joseph Smith has taught
anybody can get revelation, and I don'tthink he's upset or even surprised that

(55:58):
Hiram Page is getting revelation, butyou can see right there the first red
flag that Joseph Smith raises, whichis it contradicts the scriptures.

Yeah.

And it contradicts the other revelations, I'm assuming the
Doctrine and Covenants revelations, thathadn't been canonized at that point.
So there's red flags.
Then I mentioned there's one otherfamily in the Church, the Knights.
Newell Knight, who is the most prominentson that stands out in the record, said,
“I found Brother Joseph in great distressof mind on account of Hiram Page, who

(56:28):
had managed to get up some dissensionof feeling among the brethren by giving
revelations concerning the governmentof the church and other matters, which
he claimed to have received throughthe medium of a stone he possessed.
He had quite a roll of papers ofthese revelations, and many in the
church were led astray by them.
Even Oliver Cowdery and the Whitmer familyhad given heed to them, although they
were in contradiction to the New Testamentand the revelations of these last days.

(56:51):
So a second person, Newell Knight,is saying, yeah, the revelations
didn't square with the scriptures.
So they're using that first lens tosay, this doesn't fit the scriptures.

I love that.

And then Joseph is saying, lens two, it doesn't
fit the revelations I've receivedas the prophet of the Church.
So all three of the lensesare working together.

Yeah, great deep dive into the Hiram Page episode, man.
That was awesome.
Love that.
So that's it.
That's how we mitigate theconcern of the Spirit, right?
Revelatory confusion's realhow do you mitigate that?
Well, compare it to what's been taughtin scriptures and by the prophets.

Yeah.
We have to be wise and educated believerswho have these kind of lenses that God
has given to us to know truth from error.

And they're kind of like checks and balances.

Yeah.

People can get weird about scripture.
And so let's look at is itrepeatedly taught in scriptures?
Are you sure that's right?
Right?
It's hard to get weird when youlook at consistency across all
scripture, and if living prophets areteaching that as well, and have been
consistently since Joseph Smith's time,now you're getting grounded, right?

Yeah.

They're checking each other.
People can get weird about a statementfrom a prophet or some singular
statement backed by Orson Pratt inthe Journal of Discourses and can kind
of have these little pet doctrines.
As we just talked about, peoplecan get weird about the spirit.
This pushes against that, right?
This is saying, no.
Sound thinking is bringing all ofthese in conjunction with one another.
These lenses need each other, and when itcomes to doctrine, scripture is primary.

(58:16):
But when prophets are repeatedlyteaching what can also be verified in
scripture, boom, that's doubly solid.
Our confidence waxes even stronger.
And if it passes the test of beingtaught repeatedly through scriptures
and prophets, and it's confirmed bythe Holy Ghost, take that to the bank.

Boom.

I'll just say in closing, though, like, is this a foolproof
system to answer all of our doctrinalquestions with absolute certainty?
No.
But this is very useful.
That's why I'm callingit a heuristic, right?
This is a solid, three-part heuristicthat gives us a solid place to begin to
evaluate the truth claims that we readabout, hear about, then to develop levels

(58:53):
of confidence relative to those teachings.
And the better we get at using them, themore doctrinally confident we become.
At least that's been my experience.

Yeah.
So, Scott, we have solvedall the doctrinal problems
in the church right now.

No, man.

It's all fixed.
We did it.

Yeah, right.

Casey Paul Griffiths: What do we tackle next? (59:11):
undefined
What's next on the agenda?

You know what would be fun?
Should we just have a fun episode?
We should do an episodenext where we just practice.
We just practice using the three lensesby using random statements or scriptures
or arguments and just kind of testingand see what our listeners think about,
what they might say in reference to thedoctrinal reliability of said statements.

(59:35):
Would that be fun?
Think that'd be an okay use of an episode?

Yeah, that could be kind of fun.

Yeah?

We’d just come in and put statements out
there and say, yeah, this is thereal deal or not the real deal?

Yeah.
How confident are you that this is true?

Okay.

Okay, so in our next episode, we're going to play
a game called, “How ConfidentAre You in That Doctrine?”

Okay.

That sound good?

Sounds good.

All right.
We'll see you, everybody.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode of Church History Matters.
Join us next week as Casey and Iput on something of an informal
doctrinal workshop by spending theepisode evaluating various theological
statements through the threedoctrinal lenses we discussed today.

(01:00:16):
It's pretty different from anythingwe've done so far, but it should be fun.
If you're enjoying Church HistoryMatters, we'd appreciate it if you
could take a moment to subscribe, rate,review, and comment on the podcast.
That makes us easier to find.
Today's episode was produced byScott Woodward and edited by Nick
Galieti and Scott Woodward, with shownotes and transcript by Gabe Davis.

(01:00:37):
Church History Matters is a podcastof Scripture Central, a nonprofit
which exists to help build enduringfaith in Jesus Christ by making
Latter-day Saint scripture and churchhistory accessible, comprehensible,
and defensible to people everywhere.
For more resources to enhance yourgospel study, go to scripturecentral.org,
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(01:00:58):
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And while we always try very hard to behistorically and doctrinally accurate
in what we say on this podcast, pleaseremember that all views expressed in
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