Join us for an eye-opening discussion with renowned scholars Sandra Tanner and Dan Vogel as we analyze a compelling video featuring BYU professor and prominent Mormon historian Steven C. Harper. In this thought-provoking conversation, we explore key challenges surrounding the First Vision narrative and Harper’s response to concerns raised by the CES Letter.
We delve into historical inconsistencies, including the evolving accounts of Joseph Smith’s vision, the role of revival movements in the 1820s, and the significant differences between the 1832 and 1838 accounts. Our discussion examines the impact of other Mormon historians such as Fawn Brodie and Richard Bushman, highlighting how their research has shaped the understanding of Mormon history.
Throughout the video, we address pressing questions: Why did the church keep certain documents hidden for decades? How have Mormon historians like Harper attempted to reconcile discrepancies in Joseph Smith’s accounts? What role does faith play in historical interpretation, and at what point do shifting narratives become problematic?
From exploring the influence of memory studies on apologetics to discussing the credibility of Mormonism’s foundational events, this discussion critically examines the evidence with an honest and scholarly approach. Whether you’re new to the topic or well-versed in Mormon history, this episode offers valuable insights into the ongoing debate surrounding the First Vision and the broader implications for those questioning their faith.
Don’t miss this deep dive into one of the most pivotal topics in Mormon history—watch now and join the conversation!
The original interview can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXHntOmMJRg&t=26s
Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Guests: Dan Vogel, Gerardo Sumano, Sandra Tanner, Winston Dehlin
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introducing the Episode and Guests
John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's December 20, 2024, and we are super excited today again to be covering Joseph Smith's first vision. It would seem the most simple and straightforward part of Mormon history, the founding of Mormonism that many would attribute the first vision to being. It should be as simple as Joseph Smith tells us what happened, and then God's one true church rolls forth like a stone kid out of the mountains without hands to consume all nations. But alas, it's not that simple. Right, Sandra?
Sandra Tanner [00:00:40] That's right.
John Dehlin [00:00:42] So it turns out that in one of the most bold CEO.
Dan Vogel [00:00:49] What is it?
John Dehlin [00:00:50] SEO plays in all of sort of Mormon discourse. In 2024, a new YouTube channel has popped up called CES Letters, which is just simply a brazen attempt at grabbing CES Letter SEO and then trying to promote apologetic, faithful beliefs through that attempt. That's what we're doing. This is an ongoing series of us, me, Gerardo, Sandra, Dan Vogel, and sometimes a special guest, basically responding to the Mormon Church's attempts in modern day to try to explain problems in Mormon Church history. So recently, BYU professor, I believe his name is Stephen Harper, who I believe is one of the founding authors of the Mormon Church's first vision essay in the Gospel Topics essays. He has recorded a new video through the CES Letters YouTube channel channel, trying to help us all feel better about and restore belief in the credibility of Joseph Smith's first vision. And since this series has been so popular, we are here for it to respond. So we have legendary scholar Sandra Tanner back with us. Hey, Sandra.
Sandra Tanner [00:02:15] Hi.
John Dehlin [00:02:15] Thanks for joining us.
Sandra Tanner [00:02:16] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:02:18] You and your late husband Gerald are the founders of Utah Lighthouse Ministry, is that right?
Sandra Tanner [00:02:22] Right.
John Dehlin [00:02:23] And you've now spent how many decades thinking about this stuff?
Sandra Tanner [00:02:26] Over 60 years.
John Dehlin [00:02:28] 60 years.
Sandra Tanner [00:02:29] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:02:30] And we've actually done first vision discussions on Mormon stories. But you're back. So you just can't get enough of this.
Sandra Tanner [00:02:39] That's right. Some people just don't know when to quit.
John Dehlin [00:02:44] Well, we're really glad you're here, so thanks for joining us. Also joining us is Gerardo. Hey, Gerardo.
Gerardo Sumano [00:02:51] Hey, John.
John Dehlin [00:02:51] Why did you want to do this again?
Gerardo Sumano [00:02:54] Because it was really fun the first two times. And then, you know, we want to respond to the founder of the. I think the founder of CS Letters YouTube channel, which I think Stephen Harper.
Sandra Tanner [00:03:08] He's.
John Dehlin [00:03:08] He's like the project manager.
Gerardo Sumano [00:03:10] Yeah, project manager. And honestly, I hadn't heard his name before. I get. I probably while watching Dan Vogel's videos, he came up but didn't notice, like, how influential he's been in the church, especially on this. Under this topic of the First Vision.
Winston Dehlin [00:03:26] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:03:26] If you're asked to be one of the original authors of one of the gospel topics essays, clearly the church sees you as important.
Gerardo Sumano [00:03:33] So he's a Joseph Smith Papers project editor and all that. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:03:38] Yeah. Well, if this. If these weren't enough heavy guns for you, we also have probably the top living official Joseph Smith scholar in the world today, Dan Vogel joining us. Hey, Dan.
Dan Vogel [00:03:52] Hi. Great to be here.
John Dehlin [00:03:54] How's Ohio treating you?
Dan Vogel [00:03:56] Well, it's just getting a little chilly. Not too bad yet.
John Dehlin [00:04:00] Yeah. Are you ready. Are you ready to respond to the apologetic scholar, Stephen Harper? Are you ready?
Dan Vogel [00:04:09] Yeah, of course. I'm well aware of Stephen Harper. I respect him. He's one of the top historians of Joseph Smith and the. Especially the First Vision. He's published a few books just on the First Vision, believe it or not. So it could be a big. It could be a big topic, and it's an important topic to believing Mormons. But I think we'll introduce some problems with the First Vision and give you a little bit of history about First Vision historiography. And because it has a long, long history, and it kind of got touched off with Wesley Walters, who was one of my favorite people when he was alive. And so. And I have, like, a. Maybe a different interpretation than a Harper and Walters, actually.
John Dehlin [00:05:12] Yeah. Well, we're excited to get your perspective, Cedar. You're a West Walters fan, right?
Sandra Tanner [00:05:17] Oh, yeah. Wes was a wonderful guy and a very meticulous historian.
John Dehlin [00:05:23] Right. Yeah. Well, speaking of meticulous historians, we have as a special guest for you today, a new, brand new guest on Mormon Stories podcast, we have Winston Dehlin. Hey, Winston.
Winston Dehlin [00:05:39] Oh, hi.
John Dehlin [00:05:39] How are you doing?
Sandra Tanner [00:05:40] Good.
Winston Dehlin [00:05:41] I didn't think that was me after that introduction.
John Dehlin [00:05:43] Are you a meticulous scholar of Mormonism?
Winston Dehlin [00:05:45] Yeah, I don't know about that.
John Dehlin [00:05:47] So this is my day to bring Winston on. It's bring your. Is it come with your dad to work day or bring your son to work day? Which is it? Yeah, something like that. And, Winston, we were talking about this, you know, you were wondering whether everyone would think that your childhood was basically talking in depth about Mormon history, but I'm not so sure that was your childhood. Is that right?
Winston Dehlin [00:06:10] Yeah, it definitely wasn't. I've been, like, pretty indifferent about Mormonism. You know, we haven't talked about it, like, pretty much at all. I. I don't know. A lot about these topics or the visions at all.
John Dehlin [00:06:21] So. So people would wonder, how could you be John De Lin's son and, like, grow up almost talking none about Mormon Church history? How is that possible?
Winston Dehlin [00:06:29] Well, it turns out, I think that. I think it's like. I think it gets old after a while. I don't think, like, when your job is talking about Mormonism, like, I don't think it's really fun to go home and talk Mormonism with your family.
John Dehlin [00:06:43] So you're saying I didn't come home wanting to talk about the first vision?
Dan Vogel [00:06:46] It wasn't my experience.
John Dehlin [00:06:47] Okay. We kind of avoided talking about it.
Dan Vogel [00:06:50] So this is all.
John Dehlin [00:06:51] This is all going to be pretty new to you, right?
Winston Dehlin [00:06:53] Yeah, for sure.
John Dehlin [00:06:54] Yeah. So the reason why we like to bring people like Zeke or Winston or others on is just to get kind of a younger, fresh, new eyes take on what's going on, kind of as a sanity check. Does that sound all right, Sandra? Okay, so Winston's gonna call your BS if you're all right.
Sandra Tanner [00:07:13] Good.
John Dehlin [00:07:13] Is that all right?
Sandra Tanner [00:07:14] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:07:15] Winston, you ready to challenge Sandra?
Winston Dehlin [00:07:16] Yeah, that's what I'm here for, for sure.
John Dehlin [00:07:18] All right. Dan, are you intimidated by Winston?
Dan Vogel [00:07:21] Well, you know, yes, because we'll have to explain a lot to him. It sounds like.
John Dehlin [00:07:28] No, no, no. He's just gonna ask a question or two or make a point here or there. Anyway.
Who Is Wesley Walters and Why He Matters
Gerardo Sumano [00:07:33] All right, should we explain who Wesley Walters is? Because he's going to come up quite.
John Dehlin [00:07:36] Okay, yeah. Yeah. Sandra, do you want to tell us who Wesley Walters is?
Sandra Tanner [00:07:39] Wesley Walters was a Presbyterian minister. He served for a while in New York and then later in Illinois. And because of the proximity to major Mormon sites, he had become interested in the Mormon story. So besides his theological duties and his work at his church, he started studying Mormon subjects and as, I don't know if you'd say a hobby, but as a sideline to his religious studies, and in the process, got intrigued with the challenges of trying to decide how the movement actually started and how the timeline would play out. And it occurred to him that Joseph Smith made specific claims in his published first vision account in the Mormon Scriptures, where he said that there were a revival in a neighborhood that caused him to go out in the woods to pray. And Wes thought, well, okay, I can't study whether or not someone saw a vision in the woods, but I can look into whether there was a revival like he talks about in his neighborhood and launched him into a very specific study of the whole New York area and the revivals. The Church growth and all those things that would have challenged Joseph Smith's narrative. And he published on it, did a number of articles and wrote a book with Mike Marquardt inventing Mormonism. And I believe that he kicked off the church's death deep dive into trying to reconcile their early church history. Well, and I think Harper acknowledges that when we see later the clip or whatever you're going to show about Harper, he acknowledges that Wes challenged the revivals in New York as Joseph smith claimed for 1820. And so it. He was a major factor in making the church historian's office seriously go back and re examine the story.
John Dehlin [00:10:07] Brilliant. Okay, well that's good context.
Gerardo Sumano [00:10:09] Wasn't he the one also who found some of the. A document about Joseph Smith treasure digging and the.
Sandra Tanner [00:10:16] Yes, the 1826 trial documents. He found them in Norwich, New York in the basement of the jail. And if it hadn't been for west finding those, they would have been forever lost to history.
Gerardo Sumano [00:10:32] Yeah, so he was, it was very important.
Sandra Tanner [00:10:35] Yeah, that's back in the 60s.
Guest [00:10:38] Yeah.
Sandra Tanner [00:10:39] Before most of you were born, right?
John Dehlin [00:10:42] Yeah, I was born in the 60s, 69. Does that count? All right, well, Gerardo, you kind of produced this one. Do you want to, you want to kick things off?
Winston Dehlin [00:10:54] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:10:55] How do you want to start?
Gerardo Sumano [00:10:56] So, well, I wanted to tell the story of going into being at byu, Idaho and getting on, starting to study church history and going into my faith crisis. One of the first things that I decided to do was take a class. I still had some religion classes that I had to take. So I decided to take a pearl of great price class because I was wondering how do they teach all of these issues that I'm learning about? And I remember when we got to study the first vision in class, the teacher, the professor wrote in the, in the whiteboard the timeline of the first vision according to Joseph Smith 1838 account. And he had some, you know, he had like the dates and like, or whatever like this happened here and this happened here and then the vision. And I raised my hand and I said, well, there's some problems with the timeline because this, you know, for ex. We're going to talk about it later. This Lucy Smith didn't join the Presbyterian church until after 1823, which would be three years after the vision. So that couldn't have been influential in Joseph's wanting to search for the true church and the kind of like the, the, the professor was kind of taken back by it. And then he came back the next class and he told me like I Studied it. And you were right. Lucy Smith didn't convert until later.
John Dehlin [00:12:28] So they're receiving Joseph's mom.
Gerardo Sumano [00:12:30] Yes. Yeah. So there are a lot of things that, you know, that Joseph mentions in. In this account, in the 1838 account that's canonized, that present big issues into the narrative and kind of where to. Where do you put in the timeline when this happened, the supposed first vision happened? And a lot of it is not going to be touched by Stephen Harper. So we're. We're going to have the opportunity to talk about it, but I just wanted to give that quick intro.
Fawn Brody as a Historian of Joseph Smith
John Dehlin [00:13:04] Okay.
Gerardo Sumano [00:13:04] And so first, to start, there are a couple clips. One of them was sent to me by Dan, where Dan, Sorry, Stephen Harper is giving his opinion on Dan Vogel. And throughout the whole clip that we're going to, the horror video that we're gonna show, he will mention Dan a couple times. But you will see that the perspective that he gives on this clip that we're gonna show first is a little bit different from how he'll talk about Dan later.
John Dehlin [00:13:32] Okay, so our first clip is Stephen Harper sharing his opinions about Dan Vogel Scholar.
Gerardo Sumano [00:13:37] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:13:38] Okay. All right, let's. Let's. And found Brody and foam Brody.
Guest [00:13:42] Okay.
John Dehlin [00:13:43] All right, let's roll the clip.
▶ Video Clip 1Video Clip 1 [00:13:45] So about the scholarship. Fawn Brody was not a good historian. She was a brilliant writer. Not a good historian. Dan Vogel knows his historical stuff.
Video Clip 1 [00:13:54] He does.
Video Clip 1 [00:13:55] Right. He knows his business. So the difference between how he would interpret things and how I would is simply faith.
Video Clip 1 [00:14:04] It's believing.
Video Clip 1 [00:14:06] It's a decision to believe Joseph Smith or not believe Joseph Smith. Now, the way you make that decision will determine how you read the exact same evidence.
Video Clip 1 [00:14:17] Right.
Video Clip 1 [00:14:17] You know the same facts, read the same documents, and, you know, so it's a decision about whether belief is legitimate or desirable and so on. It's really not a historical question at all.
Video Clip 1 [00:14:34] Yeah.
Video Clip 1 [00:14:34] At that point, both of us have to give interpretation. We have to read meaning into the historical facts, and we decide to.
John Dehlin [00:14:44] So if. If blasphemy is possible on Mormon Stories podcast, the closest thing you could do to commit blasphemy is to say Fawn Brody wasn't a good historian. So really quickly, that's only meaningful if you know who Fawn Brody was. So for those who don't know, Winston, you probably don't know. Fawn Brody was the niece of. Of an earlier Mormon prophet, David O. McKay. His niece, Fawn McKay Brody, published what I think is still among, let's just say, the top two or three best biographies on Joseph Smith. Because I have one of the authors here. I have to, I have to be careful to show proper respect to Dead Bogle. But I still think no Man Knows My History is among the best, if not the best biography ever written on Joseph Smith. And she had access to a lot of good source documents, maybe not all of them, but if I, you know, if people are going to read one book, it's still hard not to recommend no Man Knows My History. So Sandra, what's your immediate reaction to Harper claiming that just. Just waving legendary scholar Fon Brody off is not a good historian?
Sandra Tanner [00:15:50] Well, it's just so dismissive. She was so pivotal to the study launching us into history in early Mormonism. She took on the church official narrative clear back in 1945. And to challenge it was just unheard of. Members did not challenge the first vision story or the whole history of early Mormonism.
John Dehlin [00:16:21] So certainly not as the niece of the prophet.
Sandra Tanner [00:16:24] Right. And her book was a real thunderstorm when it came out. It caused tremendous ripples through the community because it was such a challenge to the regular narrative. And it was the very fact that it was well researched that sent the church into years of trying to defend the story against Fawn Brody's these attacks. And my story comes out of Fawn Brody's book. Her book influenced my mother, who in turn influenced me. Her book influenced Gerald. Her book influenced everyone. We all took Brody as our starting point as launching us into studying the different accounts. So to just dismiss her like, oh, she wasn't even a good historian. Oh my goodness, she launched Mormon church history.
John Dehlin [00:17:22] Yeah. And it's also weird because Richard Bushman himself.
Gerardo Sumano [00:17:25] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:17:26] Shows great respect to Fon Brody. He's a Harvard slash Columbia based historian. So that was weird. Julia was like gasping, but, but Dan Vogel, you also are, you know, maybe the top living Joseph Smith historian, I'd say. What do you think about waving off Von Brody is not a good historian.
Dan Vogel [00:17:48] Well, she is outdated because we have so many more sources and other perspectives from sociology and psychology and things like that that, that isn't in evident in her book. Although some people think she is a psycho historian. But not, not really. And, but she's the fir. I first started reading her as soon as I got off my mission. And from her I learned Joe Smith was a polygamist. I didn't know that before. I thought Brigham Young was the guy that launched it off, even though Joe Smith had a revelation. So I was in my early 20s when I read it. It had a great impact on me. I tried to meet her once. But she had already been, you know, sick and diagnosed with cancer and, and didn't come to her office that often. So when I was at UCLA trying to look her up, I missed her and she only came in to get her mail, I was told. But I was still a believer when I read it. So I had some things to work through still myself. But she, yeah, I want to say something. At the time, her, she was the state of the art. Okay. At the time she was the state of the art. Even though nowadays we've added a lot of more material and contours to Joseph Smith's personality that and I'm sure she would have been thrilled and just kept right up with it as long as she could. And anyway I, I count her as a legitimate, a good historian. I don't, I didn't certainly didn't agree with hear Nibley's criticisms and her, his little pamphlet. Little pamphlet. But yeah, she got a lot of, you know, response from the Mormon historians but it's mostly because she caught them flat footed. She was way ahead of them, put it that way.
John Dehlin [00:20:02] Yeah. Sandra?
Sandra Tanner [00:20:04] Well, people say today. Well and that's true what Dan brought out, she didn't have access to the documents we have available to today. But why is that? That's not her fault. It wasn't because she was a lazy learner or didn't study or didn't go to enough libraries. The church was sitting on the important material that she needed to know. Now in her first edition of her book, she raised the issue of some sort of problem with the first vision, but she didn't have access to the 1832 account on the first vision. And when that, and why was that?
John Dehlin [00:20:40] Cedric?
Sandra Tanner [00:20:41] Because Joseph Fielding Smith was sitting on it and had it hidden away in his fault. And when it came out later, she brought out a new edition of her book In I think 71 or 2, something like that. And she did put in more material. It had she lived, I'm sure she would have done the same further down the line with other things that came out. But for its day, it was monumental.
John Dehlin [00:21:09] Yeah.
Sandra Tanner [00:21:10] And yes, Dan and everyone else has brought the record forward with more material, but to denigrate someone that was such a groundbreaking research is just, it's just not fair to her. She, she did such a good job for what she had available to her. It's phenomenal.
John Dehlin [00:21:32] So give me a number. Sandra, if there's a pie chart of 100 facts, how much of what's relevant to the truth claims of Joseph Smith's overall history did Fawn Brody get right? What's. Give me a pie chart percentage.
Sandra Tanner [00:21:45] Well, I don't know. 95.
John Dehlin [00:21:47] Okay, 95 is pretty good, especially in 1945. Dan, would you say 95 or would you give her a lower number?
Dan Vogel [00:21:55] No, it's. We haven't really changed the facts that she brought forward. We've only added to it. But we have more different perspectives like she. For me, it was. I saw Joe Smith more as wrestling with a true religious aspect to his personality, whereas she kind of left that out of her picture because she, you know, was describing a con man. And. And that's usually the first thing you go to when you say, well, it's not true. And then you go to the con man thing. And later, I think other people started seeing things that she. She didn't or couldn't at the time. It's just. That's the way history is. It develops and grows, and whoever puts forward a better explanation, you know, starts influencing the community.
John Dehlin [00:22:55] Right.
Dan Vogel [00:22:56] Of. Of scholars.
John Dehlin [00:22:59] Yeah. So it's not that she got stuff wrong. What she wrote, she pretty much got right. We've just been able to add new stuff to it.
Sandra Tanner [00:23:06] Yes. Well, the difference of perspective like Dan was bringing out, whether you just flat out see him as a deliberate inventor of his story or you see him as a religious person trying to formulate some sort of religious movement, you know, how much sincerity do you want to grant him? And the scale goes from total fraud to total profit. Walking with God. And Dan and I would put our marks on that continuum In a little different space basis, I would probably give him a little more fraud than Dan would. Dan would be kinder and give him a little more sincerity. Yeah, pious. But the bottom line is so much of his story can be shown to be inaccurate that it leaves you fighting for trying to figure out what was the motivation and how much sincerity do you give him? His story, as told in the history of the church in the back of the Pearl of great price, just is not how Mormonism really started.
John Dehlin [00:24:26] Yeah. Really quickly, Sandra, what would be his motive for denigrating her? What would be Stephen Harper's motive for denigrating Fon Brody?
Sandra Tanner [00:24:33] Well, he knows her book was so important to so many people that he's trying to lessen its importance to people.
John Dehlin [00:24:41] Yeah.
Sandra Tanner [00:24:41] And the fact that it is such an older biography, it's easier to push it aside as being. Well, that's old stuff. We don't need to think about that anymore. But I think she still raises important questions that still have to be answered today.
John Dehlin [00:24:56] Yeah. It was certainly instrumental in Margi and my disaffection from the church. I can say that.
Gerardo Sumano [00:25:01] Well, it's so interesting is he has so much respect for Richard Bushman. He brings it up over and over and over and over again. And Richard Bushman quotes or uses Fon Brody more than any other source. One of his main sources for his most important book, Roast and Roll.
John Dehlin [00:25:18] You can't love Richard Bushman and hate Fon Brody because Richard Bushman quotes Fon Brody more than anyone else.
Sandra Tanner [00:25:23] Right, Right.
John Dehlin [00:25:25] Okay, Gerardo, do we want to. What next video?
Gerardo Sumano [00:25:29] Yeah. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:25:30] Okay, you've got one more video. Do you want to tell us what this video is about?
Dan Vogel [00:25:33] So I think.
Gerardo Sumano [00:25:35] So this is. These are clips from a podcast he went on with Mormonism with the mur. And the perspective he gives here about the first vision is quite different from the video we're gonna actually play. You can tell that he talks different when he. When he's. He knows he's talking to members, which the CS Letters videos are, and here where he's talking to skeptics.
John Dehlin [00:25:58] Or scholars.
Gerardo Sumano [00:25:59] Or scholars. So we're gonna play this one first and then. Okay, evaluate the rest of the video.
John Dehlin [00:26:05] All right, let's roll the clip.
Steven Harper [00:26:08] I don't find any reason to think Joseph Smith is trying to change his story or his theology over time. Now, that's different from saying there are no changes in the story or theology over time. I'll grant that there are no problem with that. That's what we would expect. Line on line, precept on precept. Interpretive memory. Okay, so I'll give you changes in the story over time and changes in theology over time. The question is how intentional is how. How manipulative is Joseph, how duplicitous how.
Dan Vogel [00:26:45] And I don't.
Steven Harper [00:26:46] That's where I don't find the arguments compelling. I don't find Joseph to be insincere or a liar or somebody trying to pull wool over my eyes. There's nothing in the accounts that would tell.
John Dehlin [00:27:01] Okay. And that's exactly what Sandra just said.
Gerardo Sumano [00:27:03] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:27:04] So, yeah, today will partly be what. What were Joseph Smith's motives? Was it just honest? The fish is getting bigger because you just remember it bigger each time you tell the story. Or was he intentionally changing the story to manipulate and fool people? That'll be incredible answer today.
Gerardo Sumano [00:27:18] Yeah, that's. That's the question.
John Dehlin [00:27:20] Okay, really quickly, in the video we're about to watch, this will be my cold reaction to it. Do they tell what the original official narrative is. Do they start with that or should we just offer that very quickly?
Gerardo Sumano [00:27:31] I think we can, we can offer it.
John Dehlin [00:27:33] It's not going to be repeat with the video. Sandra, will you give us the official narrative of Joseph Smith's first vision? Let's just say a summary of the 1838 account.
The First Vision Account and Early Revival Context
Sandra Tanner [00:27:43] Well, in that account, Joseph tells that there was a religious revival in his neighborhood, in his town and area. And through the excitement of religion he was stirred up to pray, to know what church to join. All were making these different claims that competed with one another. So he goes out into the woods and praise as a 14 year old boy in 1820. And these dates are important, that as this 14 year old boy he goes into the woods to pray and two beings appear and one says to the other, this is my beloved son, hear him. And then Jesus talks to Joseph Smith and tells him he's not to join any church, for they're all wrong, they're all corrupt. And then after this vision later he, on his, when he gets back home, his mom asked him how things are going or whatever. And, and he says, I found out for myself that Presbyterianism isn't true. And this is important because in his first vision account he says the revival happened among the Methodist, Baptists and Presbyterians and that's when Lucy, the mom and several of her kids join the Presbyterian church. So it's important when he says, I learned for myself that Presbyterianism isn't true, that it's a response to his mom's interest in the Presbyterian church. Okay, then the first vision account goes on to talk about the angel coming in 1823. But the first vision part is set very specifically 1820, when he's 14. In the woods, two beings appear that are supposed to be God and Jesus. And they tell him that none of the churches are right and that it had never entered his mind before that that was the case.
John Dehlin [00:29:47] Okay, all right, so that's it. 18 20, 14 years old, God and Jesus appearing, doing it because he was trying to figure out which church was true because there was a revival preceding pretty close. And he was trying to figure it
Gerardo Sumano [00:30:02] out and his mom had.
John Dehlin [00:30:03] And he went and tells his mom
Gerardo Sumano [00:30:04] and his mom had. And his, and he says his mom and some of his siblings had joined the Presbyterian Church. Okay, so that's why he, when he, after he has a vision, he tells his mom, hey, guess what? That your church is not true.
John Dehlin [00:30:17] Okay. And then maybe, maybe most importantly, would a, would a mainstream Mormon ever be told there were multiple Versions of this vision and that this is a later account.
Sandra Tanner [00:30:30] No, when I was going to seminary, of course, it was clear. Back in the 1950s when I went to seminary and when I took institute classes, I never heard of anything about any account except the one printed in Mormon scriptures. The printed 1842 printing of the 38 written account. 1. One vision, one account, two beings, God and Jesus.
John Dehlin [00:31:00] Yeah. And we know now that the church had knowledge of and possession of the other accounts and intentionally and knowingly hid them for reasons that we'll discuss in a minute. But that's important. Dan, anything you want to add to kind of what the official narrative is and how it influenced, you know, how it. How it has impacted us today? You don't have to say anything. I just want to give you a chance.
Dan Vogel [00:31:23] Well, I. I would only add that it's kind of strangely written that. So Joseph Smith, he says that God the Father introduces the Son. This is my beloved Son, Hear ye him. And then Joseph says, no sooner did I get possession of myself that I asked the question. So he interrupts Jesus. It's so. It just reads so odd to me that why. Why is Joseph talking? Which church is true and which should I join? Jesus, he, the Father just said, listen to Jesus. So before Jesus could even talk, Joseph Smith interrupts him with a question. That's just the one thing, little thing I would add that it's. It's kind of a contrived account act to. In my. When I read it. Well, the whole first part of the history of the church, you know, 72 pages that just Smith supposedly worked on before he was martyred. The whole thing is myth.
John Dehlin [00:32:39] Julia, you're like gasping audibly. So I'm just gonna call an audible, have you join us and tell us why you're laughing and like throwing your arms up in the air. So I've studied this for a long time and I didn't.
Sandra Tanner [00:32:51] I've never thought about him interrupting Jesus.
John Dehlin [00:32:53] So like, this is just really funny to me.
Sandra Tanner [00:32:55] Like, hear him.
John Dehlin [00:32:56] And yet Joseph's like, wait a minute,
Sandra Tanner [00:32:58] hang on, I have to ask you a question. I've just never thought about that.
John Dehlin [00:33:02] You're saying if the Creator of the universe and of all things appeared to you in all his majesty, with his only begotten Son, the Savior of all mankind, you would go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait just one second before you continue. I got a question. You're saying that wouldn't be your first response?
Dan Vogel [00:33:21] No, I'd be.
Sandra Tanner [00:33:22] I'd shut up and listen. But like Dan, you're right.
John Dehlin [00:33:25] Okay. All right. Well, that's why we have Dan and Sandra on Winston. Any quick reactions so far?
Winston Dehlin [00:33:33] No major reactions. I mean, it's really funny. It's a funny story. But, you know, so far, it's all like. It's things that can be covered by the excuse of, like, memory is faulty. And I feel like there are. There are much more, like, you know, problematic errors, like, in the. In the differences of the accounts, I think.
John Dehlin [00:33:51] So we'll get that. We're getting there. All right. All right. We just want to set it up because, you know, a lot of people are learning this stuff for them.
Winston Dehlin [00:33:57] No, yeah, no, of course.
John Dehlin [00:33:58] Yeah, of course. Yeah.
Winston Dehlin [00:33:59] I just come from, like, a much more. I. I don't know, I guess, analytical place, but it's hilarious still, you know?
John Dehlin [00:34:07] All right. All right. Well, you jump at any time, all right?
Winston Dehlin [00:34:10] Yeah, yeah, of course I am.
John Dehlin [00:34:11] Okay. All right. So, Gerardo, do we go just to the video now?
Winston Dehlin [00:34:15] Let's do it.
Gerardo Sumano [00:34:15] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:34:16] Okay. So this is the video that we're going to be talking about today. And we'll just.
Gerardo Sumano [00:34:21] One and a half speed.
John Dehlin [00:34:22] Yeah. Oh, we want to do it one and a half speed because they're kind of slow speakers. Is that right? Why are you laughing? Dan Vogel, that's rude. You're through.
Winston Dehlin [00:34:34] I watched it at two times speed, and it was still boring.
Gerardo Sumano [00:34:36] It's slow.
Dan Vogel [00:34:37] Okay.
John Dehlin [00:34:38] All right. We're missing these camera reactions. Julia. Julia's in there, like, raising her arms, laughing hysterically, and she's not switching the camera. All right, she's still not switching the camera. Julia, switch the gosh dang camera.
Guest [00:34:55] I'm sorry.
Sandra Tanner [00:34:55] This is just funny to me.
John Dehlin [00:34:57] Why you like?
Sandra Tanner [00:34:58] Because, like, you're.
Winston Dehlin [00:34:59] They're right.
John Dehlin [00:34:59] Like.
Guest [00:35:00] Like it is.
John Dehlin [00:35:01] I had to watch it on really fast speed, too.
Guest [00:35:03] Anyway.
John Dehlin [00:35:03] Yeah, okay. All right. All right, let's switch it back. All right, let's go ahead and start. Any of you can stop at any time. Is that all right? All right, just say stop. Stop. Stop. All right, here we go.
Multiple First Vision Accounts and Scholarly Approaches
Steven Harper [00:35:15] So I read his book. He taught me all about the multiple accounts of the first vision. So my. My awareness and exposure to them came from a different philosophical approach than the way the yes letter or other skeptical approaches take. Right.
Dan Vogel [00:35:28] They.
Steven Harper [00:35:28] They say, well, did you know there are four Counts? And there's something sinister in that. And. And it's supposed to be disconcerting if you study with Milton Backman. So he's an Ivy League PhD, University of Pennsylvania PhD. He's a fantastic historian. Great at the Historical methodology. And he doesn't teach me that way. He says, my goodness, did you know there's these multiple accounts of vision? We get to study them this semester. Can you imagine a greater thing to do? So my whole orientation is different.
John Dehlin [00:35:51] All right, go ahead, Winston.
Winston Dehlin [00:35:53] To me, like, when I heard that so far, like, he's saying that he, he's coming at it from a perspective of like open mindedness to the, the changes in the four accounts rather than like being skeptical about it. And he says that a couple times in this video. It is like, it's just, You know, the truth is that differences in accounts is something that would discredit an idea. Generally. It's possible that someone's account could change over time. Four times, you know, but it's not that like, you know, we want to come at it from an angle of like, you know, this is fine, like, let's trust it anyways. You know, it is something that like would discredit it and you would want a good reason to believe it. Despite the story changing, you know, just from like a logical perspective, you're basically
John Dehlin [00:36:46] saying he's kind of owning his bias from the outset.
Winston Dehlin [00:36:49] Yeah, well, in this video he taught like, and you know, this is like the kind of the first time he says, you know, you need to come at these visions from a perspective of trust rather than being skeptical of the fact that they change. You know, when the fact that they change is, is problematic, you know, it's not the only reason that they're false, but you know that it's not something that you just, you know, ignore.
Sandra Tanner [00:37:12] Well, I think there's the most people would say, well, of course if you tell the story to different people, different times, there'll be some differences in how you tell the story. But the problem is, are we talking about differences of just what would happen in a normal. Telling it at different times to different people, or are they, are the differences significant enough that you would say, no, this is an actual changing of the narrative. This is more than just a little different angle than what you told at a different time. We can allow for some differences in people retelling a story, but if major changes happen, a difference of four years, difference of when it's supposed to have happened, a difference of whether it's God and Jesus or angels, I think is important whether he already knew the churches were all false or God had to tell him that because he had never thought of it before. Those are kinds of differences that would lead you to question the experience. They aren't the kind of things where you'd say, oh, well, I just forgot to mention this or that part before you're actually changing the narrative.
John Dehlin [00:38:32] Got it?
Dan Vogel [00:38:34] Yes, I have a comment to make on that. So the 18. So some accounts, you would expect for there to be added details or a little change details here and there. And that's true with the accounts that come after the 1838 account, like Orson Pratt's 1840 account, Orson Hyde's 1842 account, Joseph's letter to John Whitworth, Joseph Smith's interview with David White in the New York Spectator, and Alexander Nyber's journal. These all come after the 1838 account. They all. They follow the pattern of the 1838 account and. But they vary in detail. That's totally understandable. But the 1832 account has major differences that can't be reconciled with the 1838 account, as we'll see also, when he talks about the hermeneutics of trust and the hermeneutics of skepticism and doubt. And the thing is that any good historian has a methodological skepticism with everything. And that's the stance you should take with every account is skepticism so that you can ferret out the, you know, what's right and what's wrong, what's exaggerated, what's not. So it's not about trust. I mean, what historian talks about, oh, I trust this witness. I mean, why. Why historians would never say that phrase, oh, it's a matter of trust. I trust Jose. What. Historians don't do that. That's so. It really bothers me when. When Bush. It was Bushman that brought up the hermeneutics of trust and that there's something wrong. See, this is actually a disguised ad hominem, okay, that you. You're just distrusting. You know, that's why you can't trust. You get Joseph Smith and he contradicts himself, and you make too much out of these contradictions. And the thing is, is that we don't.
Sandra Tanner [00:40:50] The.
Dan Vogel [00:40:52] You are lo. If you're just trusting Joseph and you're just trying to explain them away, the contradictions, you're missing an opportunity, as every historian looks for an opportunity to learn something, for these contradictions, have something to teach us. Why are these contradictions there? They're just not there because he's telling the story in a different way, maybe to a different audience. They're there because his theology is also evolving so from one God to many gods. You know, as he gets. As he ends up in Nauvoo teaching many gods. So Joseph Smith theology is developing which. Which it should be used to interpret this development that Harper says he doesn't like this development. You know, historians look for development, you know, over time, and you. You can see it. See it in the narrative, but you can also see that some of the narrative is changing because of what's changing outside that narrative also.
John Dehlin [00:42:03] Yeah, yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:42:05] What's so interesting is that, Stephen, in that little clip that we showed, he. He acknowledged that there is change in theology between the different accounts.
Dan Vogel [00:42:13] Yeah, he does.
Gerardo Sumano [00:42:14] And he says, well, and then the question is, how malicious is this changing of theology? And I don't think anyone is making an argument that he's maliciously changing his theology. Rather, you know, he. He is evolving as he's learning more stuff. Not necessarily like he's seeing. Getting revelations from God, but he's just learning Hebrew and, you know, like reading the Scriptures more and getting, you know, evolving in what he thinks God is,
John Dehlin [00:42:44] but also changing the story and change it.
Gerardo Sumano [00:42:46] Well, I. Change evolving the story as he goes on. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:42:50] Okay. All right. Should we keep going? Let's keep going.
Sandra Tanner [00:42:55] Why?
Steven Harper [00:42:55] I. I felt this longing over time that I wish I could help people have that experience that I had. And then another major Catalyst is the 2008 summer seminar that Richard Bushman led at BYU for years and years. He would gather students, scholars together in the summer and they'd tackle some problem or other. And the opportunity I had to attend was in 08, and the topic was Joseph Smith and his critics. And Professor Bushman did what Professor Bushman does, which was take a charitable approach both to historical figures. Right. And to the critics and to their. To their victims, to those who are impacted by their attacks on. On the restored Gospel. He said, let's stop, you know, fighting with the critics. Let's turn our attention to those who are hurt by them, who. Whose faith is diminished or under undermined. What could we do for them? How could today we would use the term minister? What should be our ministry to them? And so with that way of thinking in mind, we sort of chose topics to write about. And I picked the First Vision. And it was a turning point for me because I had. I already knew the evidence, the historical record. I knew it pretty well by then. But what I had not done is thought about how would I respond to the critics of the First Vision, Fawn Brody or Reverend Wesley Walters, the Methodist minister even, who rejected it right out of hand? How would I respond to them, like Professor Bushman does, with faith and hope and with charity, you know, intense, well informed by the historical method. Not, not a sort of lackadaisical or nonchalant or mediocre approach in terms of history writing and thinking, but also not being a jerk, right? Not, not making the problem worse by, you know, responding without those, with, you know, Professor Bushman calls it the hermeneutic of trust. Let's take a trusting approach to Joseph Smith. That doesn't mean a non critical approach, a non analytical approach, but it means let's not start with the prejudice that he is a lying con man from the beginning. Let's see what the historical record offers us. And at the same time, let's not go in there with guns blazing toward people who don't believe him or haven't accepted his witness. Maybe we could imagine why there are sound or valid reasons for their choices too. Right. We could approach them with the kind of respect that, that human beings deserve. So that,
John Dehlin [00:45:25] so really quickly when, when I hear him talking there, and this is the first time I've heard this, I hear him just basically trying to say, let's be objective historians. Let's not bring our biases too much to our look at Joseph Smith's portrayal of the first vision. He is saying probably on the one hand that you can have a faithful perspective, but he's also just saying let's not come with our minds made up that he's a lying fraud. Let's try to be as objective as possible given our limitations. Isn't that fair or not?
Winston Dehlin [00:45:58] I hear something different. I hear him saying that on one hand he like, he keeps saying like the historical process or whatever scientific process, but the, the goal of like historical and scientific process is to come up with a theory and then try to disprove it. So, so you can see if it's wrong, you know, and, and he's flipping the, the script to like, well, let's see if you can make it work like in your brain like that, that this could make sense, you know, but that is completely not how the process works at all. And if you're using that as your methodology, the problem is, is that you look at like Muhammad's claims or like other religions and you're not going to be able to disprove them either from, from a standpoint of trust and trying to make things work in your head, you know.
Hermeneutics of Trust Versus Suspicion
Gerardo Sumano [00:46:43] Yeah, that's exactly how I saw it. And he, he, he talked about the critics and their victims.
John Dehlin [00:46:52] Yeah. How many victims do you have, Sandra?
Sandra Tanner [00:46:54] Well, quite a few.
John Dehlin [00:46:55] What's your body count, Sandra?
Sandra Tanner [00:46:57] I don't know what the Count is. But I, I think that he's, I think they are trying to be a kinder, gentler apologetics and not just throw out barbs at the opposition. However, he does, somewhere along in his interview, he says that all the facts are out there and there are legitimate reasons people believe or don't believe, knowing all the stories, all the accounts about the First Vision. And he can respect people that end up not believing. He can understand why they wouldn't, but he ends up on the side of believing. Well, that tells you that the Joseph Smith's story is not that clearly laid out as a matter of faith because he's conceding that those that end up without faith in Joseph Smith have legitimate reasons for that.
Dan Vogel [00:48:04] Yeah,
John Dehlin [00:48:06] well, I, I, oh, go ahead, Dan. Did you want to add something?
Dan Vogel [00:48:09] Yeah. So I heard him say he chose the First Vision as a ministry and that he was going to minister to other members who had questions about the First Vision, not with guns blazing against the critics or anything. What I wanted to hear him say is, well, I wanted to learn more about the First Vision and see where the facts would take me, because I didn't really know that much about the First Vision and I would learn about it. And so instead I heard him say that he, he already had his mind made up before he even started studying the First Vision.
Gerardo Sumano [00:48:50] Right.
John Dehlin [00:48:50] Yeah. I'm going to just also add just a tiny little interesting historical footnote. I attended one session of this 2008 seminar. I was able to find on the juvenile instructor, I think, which is an old, or maybe it's Mormon Chronicles. It's like somebody's summary of the 2008 seminar. I was in conversation with Richard Bushman at the time. I had interviewed him on Mormon stories. I had started doing my work on why people are leaving the church. By that time, I had produced my first YouTube video on why people are leaving the Mormon Church. I had interviewed people like Grant Palmer and others, and Bushman had me come down and presented to this seminar and some of the people that were there. Stephen Harper was there, Brian Haugland was there, Spencer Fluman was there, Carrie Muhlstein was there, and Richard Bushman was there among. Among others. So it was fun that they had even me come down. That was three years after Mormon story started and seven years before my excommunication. So I had a small part to play in that seminar as well.
Gerardo Sumano [00:49:56] Nice.
John Dehlin [00:49:56] Anyway, all right, should we keep going? Let's keep going with the video
Steven Harper [00:50:02] way of thinking and being more Christ like, you know, at the same Time more analytically minded and more Christ like is a major blessing to me. It really. I don't think we'd be doing CS letters the way we're doing it if I hadn't had that experience quite a long time ago. And I don't mean to suggest that I've mastered it the way Professor Bushman has, in my judgment, but I'm really grateful for that mentoring. And that's why I, from then on, I wrote a seminar paper, but I started researching the first vision, and as you said, you know, a series of books and articles come out of that, including the one you mentioned, was published by Oxford University Press. And I say that because that's a big deal.
Guest [00:50:41] Big deal.
Steven Harper [00:50:41] You know, Oxford University Press doesn't publish books that they think are hack or not passing muster, academically speaking. To reach that threshold shows that. That they think it reaches the highest standard of academic integrity and historical method, that its claims are defensible, and that it advances knowledge in a useful way. So to me, that was a really big deal. I wanted to accomplish that in my career.
Guest [00:51:09] Was it the book that took the most.
John Dehlin [00:51:10] All right, really quick. So, Winston, you wanted to pause? I'm curious.
Winston Dehlin [00:51:13] Yeah, sorry. I feel like I'm talking a lot. No, no, no. We're the least educated person here.
John Dehlin [00:51:17] But.
Winston Dehlin [00:51:18] But I would just like to say, I mean, saying that your book is published by a journal or whatever, and that means that it's like, held to this, like, really high standard. I mean, they've published books for Islam, they've published books for Hinduism. They've published books for like, everything. So to say that, you know, that your book is like, more credible because it was published by them. I mean, they've published things for all religions, so it really says nothing.
John Dehlin [00:51:45] Sorry. In terms of comparing religions in their truthfulness to each other, is that what you mean?
Winston Dehlin [00:51:51] Yes. In terms of like, the validity of. Of the things in your book.
John Dehlin [00:51:54] And I was really interested in the coincidence because we had Professor Ryan Craigen on recently on Mormon Stories podcast who just released a book about like, people leaving religion in the United States, and he published his book with New York University Press. And just jokingly, because it seems like everyone and their dog is publishing with Oxford, I my instinctively said to Ryan Craigen, why didn't you publish this with Oxford University Press? This is just last week. And he said, because it's a. It's not a super reputable press that like, they'll publish almost anything. Obviously there's some academic standard, but. But I was surprised to Hear Ryan Craigen's opinion of Oxford University Press to be quite low. Sandra or Dan, do either of y' all have a. Anything in response to what Winston said or to what Ryan Craigin has said about Oxford?
Sandra Tanner [00:52:45] Well, I'm not in a position to evaluate Oxford other than the fact that they seem to be in love with Mormonism. They just seem to print a whole bookshelf of things on Mormonism, and I don't know that that means Oxford's promoting Mormonism, but for whatever reason, they've chosen to publish their books.
John Dehlin [00:53:06] I didn't. Aren't most of Terrell Givens's books published with Oxford University Press? Yeah. Dan, anything you want to add about my hair?
Gerardo Sumano [00:53:14] Is book second. Second Class Saints.
John Dehlin [00:53:16] Was it Oxford University? No, it was not. No, I, I don't think so. But Herard, you fact check that, Dan. Dan Vogel, anything you want to say about Oxford Press?
Dan Vogel [00:53:31] Well, no, not really. Just because it's published by, you know, peer review. I, I. Peer review isn't really what. It's cut. It's cut represented to be really. I've learned. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:53:51] Well, I mean, that is an appeal to authority. And so it def. I guess the point is whether or not they're great or mediocre.
Gerardo Sumano [00:53:57] Are we. Have you. I. I haven't read the book. Have you, Dan? Have you reviewed the book? Oh, yeah.
John Dehlin [00:54:05] Have you reviewed Stephen Harper's first?
Dan Vogel [00:54:08] Well, I, I handle his arguments in. In my three videos on my YouTube channel.
John Dehlin [00:54:16] Yeah. Okay.
Gerardo Sumano [00:54:17] Basically, my understanding of what the book is is just interviewing a bunch of academics, psychologists and neuroscientists about how people re. How memory works, and kind of just.
Dan Vogel [00:54:32] That book I haven't read.
Gerardo Sumano [00:54:34] Okay.
Dan Vogel [00:54:34] Yeah, that's a new book that, you know, sounds interesting to me. I know his arguments on memory that he's going to get into, and I'll have a few comments when that comes up. But he's written several. Three books, I believe, on the first vision. I, I got those, but I don't have the one where he talks about memory. But he does talk about memory in association with the first vision.
Steven Harper [00:54:57] Yeah.
Dan Vogel [00:54:58] Which I know his arguments from that point of view.
John Dehlin [00:55:02] Well, Gerardo did a fact check, and he was right. The. The amazing book Second Class Saints by Matt Harris was indeed, according to Herdo, published by Oxford University Press. So clearly they do some good stuff.
Winston Dehlin [00:55:13] Yeah, I don't, I don't think that, like, I wasn't trying to say that they're not credible, but my point is just that if you're, if your point Is that, you know, they published your work on your religion because they thought it was credible. Well, you don't believe in all. Yeah. You don't believe in all of these other ones, and they published all of them, too. So the logic just, it doesn't work. It doesn't work for your own beliefs.
John Dehlin [00:55:34] Yeah. It doesn't make a church more or less true.
Gerardo Sumano [00:55:37] And he'll explain that the book is about, you know, again, interviewing academics and then saying, well, Joseph could have had faulty memory based on what this academic said. So, I mean, he's not saying the first vision happened, believe me, and then Oxford published it.
John Dehlin [00:55:54] Yeah. You know, the quality of the press doesn't, doesn't support or buttress your truth claims as a religion because they're going to publish books from all the religions.
Winston Dehlin [00:56:06] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:56:06] Yeah. Okay. All right, let's keep, let's keep listening.
Guest [00:56:10] Stafford, would you say.
Steven Harper [00:56:11] Yeah, in some ways it is. Right. It takes a decade to write a book like that.
Guest [00:56:15] Right.
Steven Harper [00:56:16] And I don't know if it took, you know, the most raw hours, but definitely you, you got to read widely.
Guest [00:56:23] Right.
Steven Harper [00:56:23] I, I, I realized along the way that the, the insight I could offer, the new dimension I could explore is what would happen if you married, you know, the historical method, reading the historical documents carefully and thoroughly and in light of, of their context. What would happen if you married that with the science of memory studies, with this, what, what psychologists and memory scholars have discovered about the nature of memory. And that's what the book is. It's the marriage of those two things, those two disciplines. So I could do the historical part myself. And then I had to consult the world's experts on memory formation and reformation or consolidation. And that was a lot of fun. It's, it's really a stretching, I'm sure, exercise, and I feel, I still feel proud about it. I'm really grateful for that book. Among other things, it makes it hard to say, well, Steven Harper doesn't know what he's talking about.
Guest [00:57:15] Right.
Steven Harper [00:57:15] You can say a lot of other things. Right. Granted, I'm not Richard Bushman, that's for sure, but I know you're also half his age. I know what I'm talking about when it comes to the first vision of Joseph Smith.
Guest [00:57:25] Right. It's really impressive. And I think that gives kind of a good preface to what we're going to be discussing today. And, and so just to, to kind of give a layout, and this is going to be a quick one. We already have two other episodes. This one we're just gonna Do a higher quality. So we're just gonna spend a couple minutes on each of four different accounts to the first vision for four different primary accounts of the first vision. Contradictions, late appearances of the. Of the first vision. And we'll look at the time and see where we go from there. The first thing, though, that I'd like to talk about is President Gordon B. Hinckley said, and this is at the beginning of this section of the CES letter, he said, quote, our whole strength rests on the validity of that first vision. It either occurred or it did not occur. If it did not, then this work is a fraud. If it did, then, then it is the most important and wonderful work under the heavens. Now, Steven, the First Vision has not always been the most important part of our church, but I feel like it's been stressed, especially the last couple decades. What is, how, how has that happened? Why is it, why is it all or nothing for the first vision?
The CES Letter and Raising the Stakes
Steven Harper [00:58:25] I wrote an article, as you may well know about that. Right. How the. How the first vision became all or Nothing, Raising the Stakes. It's available free online at BYU Studies. And it's a fascinating history, as you say. And as James Allen, another founding father of scholarly first vision studies who recently passed away, a hero to me, a mentor to me, like Professor Backman and Professor Bushman, as he showed in his research on the first vision, the earliest Latter Day Saints don't seem to be aware of the first vision. And to the degree that they may be, they don't talk about it as a catalyst in their belief. It's, they don't cite it when they're saying, that's why I believe so. They cite the New Covenant being restored and the evidence of that being the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. That's, that's how the missionaries approach them. So it'll be 1840, 42 before we start seeing published accounts of the first vision. And it'll be 40 years after that before it's canonized and really, honestly, before the prophets are even talking about it in the way that we talk about it in the church today.
Guest [00:59:26] Well, it's the first lesson for missionaries today.
Steven Harper [00:59:28] Yeah, right. That's what a historian expects. Is this kind of change over time. Now, if we're not a historian or if we're not careful in our thinking, we, we are, we, we bring assumptions to the table. We think, well, if there was a first vision, then Joseph Smith would have talked about it right then that day. It would have been in front page headlines in every newspaper in the land. And there would be records of it right then and there. And it would have been the basis of the church from day one. Well, none of those things is proof. They're just assumed. And there are plenty of good reasons to ask why. Why would we assume that? Why would we necessarily think that? Well, we would if we wanted to impeach Joseph Smith.
Winston Dehlin [01:00:07] Right.
Steven Harper [01:00:07] If our goal was not to understand him and assess whether he had a vision or not, sincerely seeking to know the answer to that question.
Guest [01:00:16] If.
Steven Harper [01:00:16] If that's our starting point, we're going to listen to what he has to say. This is what Richard Bushman does. He listens really, really well to everybody from the past that he's trying to study. Whether that's Muhammad or Jonathan Edwards or whoever. Joseph Smith, he treats them all with this kind of respect.
John Dehlin [01:00:33] All right, I gotta. I gotta call BS there. So what I just heard him say is, if you expect that between 1820, when Joseph Smith allegedly first saw God and Jesus, if you expect that between 1820 and 1832, he would have told anyone, that expectation is evidence that you're just trying to impeach or discredit Joseph Smith, that it's. I just heard him say that it's kind of ridiculously unrealistic to expect that in the 12 years after he saw the creator of the universe and his son, the savior of humankind, that he would have ever talked about it to anyone. Sandra.
Sandra Tanner [01:01:13] Well, the reason we expect that is because in his 38 writing of his story, he says just shortly after having this experience, he's in the company of a Protestant minister and tells him supposedly of this vision. And this man told him that he didn't believe any such kind of visions happen today. And Joseph goes on to say, all these people came out against him everywhere. Everyone was opposed to him. They. No one would believe him that there were angels or God or anyone visiting people. Today. Joseph sets us up to expect that he was persecuted right from day one for telling this story. And the problem is no one is aware of this story. For years, no one's aware of this story. If he was truly telling it far and wide to where it ro. Made gave rise to all of this persecution against him. Why isn't there any record of this? It isn't just that there is a published accounts, There aren't journal accounts.
Dan Vogel [01:02:27] Well, we have records.
Gerardo Sumano [01:02:28] That's the problem. We have records of people who are telling the story, like his mom, and she doesn't mention a first vision.
Sandra Tanner [01:02:34] Yeah, well, but it's a later account I mean, if we're talking about at the time, there aren't any contemporary journals of anybody pro or con, writing down. I talked to Joseph today and he told me this ridiculous story about seeing God and Jesus. I mean, there's just not that kind of criticism of him. When Alexander Campbell does his little article on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon right after Mormonism starts, he doesn't raise the issue of a first vision account of God and Jesus. What he is opposed to is the idea of Joseph using a rock and his hat to bring out this new book of Scripture. So if everyone was condemning Joseph for claiming this vision of God and Jesus, why didn't Alexander Campbell attack him on that point? It's the absence of any ministers saying they had this problem with him.
Lucy Smith's Biography and Early Family Memory
John Dehlin [01:03:32] Yeah, like Dan, I'm curious to get you in here, but can you tell us, you know, I guess Joseph Smith's mom would be the one. She wrote an entire book kind of retelling the Joseph Smith and the Smith and the Mormon Church story from her perspective. What can you tell us about what she included in her own account or didn't include? Maybe is more is more important.
Dan Vogel [01:04:00] Well, she didn't evidently didn't mention it. And that when it was the book was published, Lucy's history was published. They just inserted Joseph Smith's 1838 account. So.
John Dehlin [01:04:16] Wait, wait, wait, wait. Can I just make sure I understood you? Are you saying that she writes a biography and then some external force inserts the 1838 version of the first vision into her biography, even though that stuff she didn't include herself?
Dan Vogel [01:04:33] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:04:34] And it would make her story anachronistic.
Dan Vogel [01:04:37] Well, the store. The story begins with the angel appearing in 1823.
John Dehlin [01:04:43] What angel?
Dan Vogel [01:04:45] Well, later called Moroni.
John Dehlin [01:04:49] Okay, so she. Yeah. And. And again, the documents, the documents that we do have of what actually was happening in 1823, 1824, again corroborate. Do they corroborate Lucy's version that she writes in her biography before some external force, external person with motives, inserts the 1838 version into her biography? Does her story corroborate the extant evidence that we do have?
Dan Vogel [01:05:22] I didn't understand what you're driving at.
John Dehlin [01:05:25] If you look at. Are there, like Sandra said, there's no record between 1820 and 1832 of Joseph telling anyone about his first vision. Well, are there records or evidence that support in 1823 or 1824, Joseph talking about an angel visiting him, like his mother Lucy claimed in her biography, contemporary
Dan Vogel [01:05:51] accounts of the angel appearing? Yeah, in 1823.
John Dehlin [01:05:55] Yeah.
Dan Vogel [01:05:56] No, so it's very difficult to make an argument from silence. And the best way, the only way you can really make an argument of silence is if you have places where you expect it to be mentioned and it's not. So that would be. There are, there are newspaper accounts later that talk about Jesus appearing frequently, you know, to Smith and, and other believers and the articles and covenants of the Church of Christ in April or June, actually 1830, when the church was organized. The founding document, the Articles and Covenants gives in the, in the, the preface of that section. It's not a revelation really. It's a, it's, it's a document, founding document. There's, it gives a, A, in chronological order, the authority on which the church has been organized. And so it doesn't mention Peter, James and John or John the Baptist. So that's a, that's, that would be an argument of silence right there for those accounts. It does mention the angel later known as Moroni appearing in conjunction with the Book of Mormon. And it alludes to an event in Joseph Smith's life where he received a manifestation of the, of the forgiveness of his sins. So let's see if I can find. Oh, four. After that it was truly manifested unto this first elder Joseph Smith, that he had received a remission of his sins. He was entangled again in the vanities of the world, but after truly repenting, God ministered unto him by an holy angel, which is Moroni. So there's an allusion to an event in Joseph Smith's life before the 1823 appearance of the angel where he received a manifestation, whatever that was not a vision. It could be a vision, but the manifestation could be many things. And so I have reconstructed just miss early chronology and I believe that he had a born again experience like any other Christian at the time that attended revivals. And I based this reconstruction on the first chapter of the Book of Mormon in the Book of Mormon where Mormon gives a chronology of his life that matches up to Joseph Smith's. Pretty careful, you know, pretty well until it gets to Mormon saying. Hold on a second. He says it in his. He says Mormon says that in his 15th year he was visited of the Lord and tasted the sweetness of Jesus. Interesting. So, so, so both, both Mormon and Joseph Smith are named after their fathers. Both are large in stature. Both with their father moved with their fathers from the north country to the land southward at about age 10 or 11. Both, both their moves were followed by war with the Lamanite or Indians. And a period of peace. Andrew Jackson's army defeated the Seminoles in 1817 and 18. Both lived in a time of apostasy. Mormon says he lives in a time apostasy where there's no gifts or the spirit. Both had a remarkable, remarkable, remarkable manifestation of Jesus at age 15. Both lived in a time where Gadianton robbers are secret combinations. Slippery treasures and magic were prevalent. So I so the Book of Mormon I argue in my biography 2004 biography has a lot of autobiographical elements in it, most notably Lehi, Lehi's family and Nephi being a representative I believe of Joseph Smith and that he supports his father's visions. And Lehi even has a vision much like Joseph Smith seniors but a little different. It's a little different in very important ways that we won't discuss right now. But so my reconstruction is that there's no vision to talk about or report. He had a born again experience which is not very notable for anybody to take notice of. And so he was converted to Jesus which my in my family kind of dynamic interpretation of the Smith family. Josephus Senior was a Universalist Unitarian which holds that Jesus is the son of God only the same as anybody else being the son or daughter of God and that there's only one God and and that's the father. So just miss Senior I argue that Joseph Smith converted to Jesus at a young age, was attracted to the Methodist faith, you know in the rival attended revivals in 1820 around there other the thing that is that nobody's ever claimed that Joseph Smith couldn't attend a revival in 1820. He just didn't re. He just didn't attend the revival that he described which included the conversion of his mother and older siblings to the Presbyterian Church which didn't happen until after Alvin died on November 19, 1823. So we know that there was a revival and and this is where the historians agree with Wesley Walters. They don't disagree with him. The revival didn't happen in Palmyra in 1820.
Sandra Tanner [01:12:58] Okay.
Dan Vogel [01:12:59] There's no dispute there. They just don't like it. And so the revival that just Mitt described was the 182425 revival which Walter said that's what he's going to prove that the that it was the 182425 revival that Joseph Smith described and where the it started with the Methodists which is Reverend George Lane who's an ancestor of mine and Stockton. Reverend Stockton implied that Alvin had gone to hell in his funeral sermon about eight in 1823. And so Joseph Sr. Didn't want to go to that Reverend Stockton's church, but Lucy did, which divided, which made a division in the Smith family, much like the Lehigh Nephi family, over religion, over the meaning of just my seniors dreams. Just Ms. Senior's dreams were that none of the churches were true, that they were all false and Joseph Smith changed his vision to match his father's dream visions. So. Well, maybe we'll get into more aspects of that later. Why did Joseph Smith. Here's the question. This is the question that Harper doesn't ask. Because he's too busy defending Joseph Smith and has preoccupation with Wesley Walters and the revival. Because they can't. They're still so stubborn, they can't admit that they're wrong. So what's the question? Why did Joseph Smith feel it was important to put the revival back in 1820? Why did he move the revival from 182425 to 1820? To precede a vision story where he's told that none of the churches are true. Well, that's because Alvin died. The family was split over religion and Joseph Smith was trying to resolve that by saying that Jesus told him that none of the churches were true. But he couldn't say that. Okay, I don't mean to hog the time, but the difference between the 1832 account and the 1838 account is that in the 1832, Joseph Smith had already decided all the churches were false from reading the Bible. And when he went to pray about it in 1832, he. He was only praying to know how could he be saved if there's no true church on earth? You know, if I can't go to a church and be baptized or commune with them, how can I be saved? And, and the vision. Well, it wasn't a vision. It was a vision, but it wasn't a visitation. Okay? It was a heavenly vision. Joe Smith looked into heaven and the heavens were open and he saw the Lord still in heaven. He never comes down in the 1832 camp. Okay, so he.
The 1832 Account and What Was Omitted
John Dehlin [01:16:20] He's.
Dan Vogel [01:16:20] He's in heaven. He's speaking to Jesus in heaven. And Jesus tells him, all those who believe in me shall be saved. Sounds pretty Protestant, right? So, yeah, that's how Joseph Smith was saved. It isn't until the Peter, James and John story, the John the Baptist story are introduced in the mid-1830s that. Joe, that Mormons have an exclusive claim on. On authority. Yeah, well, yeah, that too. But before that, they were the. The one. The one in the true and living Church of God on Earth. Yeah, because they had the Spirit and apostles. So it isn't till Peter, James, and John. And the priesthood exclusivity is introduced in the mid-1830s. That is why Jesus tells him none of the churches are true. Their creeds are an abomination. This. They're. They're false. Don't join. Don't join any of them. Right, because they. They can't baptize you, they can't save you. Whereas before it was just faith and the Spirit.
John Dehlin [01:17:43] So let me. Let me try and summarize at least part of what I just heard when Joseph. Well, first of all, we've established that between 1820 and 1832, no one, not Joseph's dad, not his mom, not his siblings, not local pastors, no local newspapers, nobody wrote any account of him ever claiming to have had a conversation with God and Jesus, let alone being told to start God's one true church that's including his own immediate family. Is that right, Sandra?
Sandra Tanner [01:18:14] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:18:15] Okay. And then when he does write down an 1832 account, the substance of it is around, how do people get saved? How do people who die, you know, how do they get to go to heaven? And so when that is what he's thinking about, when that's a question that he's trying to answer in 1832, then he's talking to Jesus because Jesus is the author of salvation. He's our Savior, and he's saying, don't worry, we're all saved by me. And so that's what the 1832 account attempts to answer is how people get individually saved, how Joseph individually got saved, and how other people can get saved, too. Am I right so far?
Guest [01:19:00] Yeah.
Sandra Tanner [01:19:01] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:19:02] Another one, One more point is that at the time, Joseph believed that God and Jesus, God the Father and Jesus were one. So, like, for example, when he's Talking on the 32 account, Jesus says, joseph, my son, you know, and then talks as if he was Jesus who was crucified for the sins of people.
John Dehlin [01:19:23] So, so in 1832, we still believe that God and Jesus were the same being, which is also reflected in the Book of Mormon. That's also why it's just Jesus that he's talking to, not God and Jesus. By 18, what I'm hearing, Dan Vogel says by 1838, the church is trying to establish its authority as God's one true church. And, you know, Joseph Smith's theology has evolved to now believe that God and Jesus are separate beings. And so when he recounts the 1838 version, those are two of the main changes, sort of changes in situations on the ground that then are. Are what lead him to tell a totally different story. Am I kind of summarizing what I just heard Dan say?
Sandra Tanner [01:20:07] Yeah. I'd also point out that one of the reasons for moving the story back before 1823 is that he has to have a religious experience before the angel comes to his room to tell him about the Book of Mormon.
John Dehlin [01:20:30] And let me. But I want you to continue that thought, but let me just ask you, are There accounts between 1823 and 1830 of Joseph telling people that an angel visited him? So we have no accounts of him claiming that God and Jesus visited him, but between 1820 and 1832, are there accounts in 1823-1824-1825-1826 of Joseph telling people that an angel visited him? Sandra?
Sandra Tanner [01:20:59] Well, you have people that later give reminiscences of him telling them about the angel for the Book of Mormon.
John Dehlin [01:21:07] That's what I mean.
Gerardo Sumano [01:21:08] I mean, they were not written in those years, but they. The people talk about that. That's what Joseph was saying in.
John Dehlin [01:21:14] Okay, okay. Yeah, go ahead, Julia. Yeah, I just wanted to point out
Steven Harper [01:21:19] that they're in the Palmyra Freeman in 1829. He says that he was visited by God in a dream from the Almighty.
John Dehlin [01:21:25] And so that's.
Sandra Tanner [01:21:26] That was, I think, one of the first, first versions of the angel story where the. He was visited in a dream and
Steven Harper [01:21:31] then he was told where the plates were.
Winston Dehlin [01:21:33] But other than.
Sandra Tanner [01:21:34] And outside of those, like, a few
Steven Harper [01:21:35] other things, I don't really think it
John Dehlin [01:21:37] was, well, published as far as 18,
Sandra Tanner [01:21:39] before 1830, about the angel. Okay, but there were a few.
Steven Harper [01:21:43] There were a few things.
Sandra Tanner [01:21:44] I just wanted to point that out.
John Dehlin [01:21:45] Yeah, I mean, Joseph had to tell people, if he's talking about golden plates, you know, delivered by an angel and he's hiding them, he had to tell people something about prior to 1827 that he had had some type of divine interaction.
Gerardo Sumano [01:22:01] Isn't there like a trial because he was brought up for trial again because he was doing the peeping. But then Oliver says, oh, but this is done with the Urim and Thummim. And that was before 1830. Yeah, right, right.
John Dehlin [01:22:18] I don't know. I hope you see what I'm asking.
Dan Vogel [01:22:21] No. So the 1830 trial in July 1830 in, in South Bainbridge and then following that in Colesville, that was a reach, kind of a retrial of the 1826.
Gerardo Sumano [01:22:37] Right.
Dan Vogel [01:22:39] Trial. Cowdery wasn't there, of course, because he didn't come until April 1829. But Cowgill testified in the court they were trying to retry him in South Bainbridge. And that was. He got out of that because of the statutes of limitations was up. And so then they rearrested him and took him down to Colesville. And it was for. Joe Smith, in the History of Church says it was for preaching the Book of Mormon, but it was actually for using a sear stone to translate the Book of Mormon. And so Cowdrie testified at that trial, according to A.W. benton, 1831 account, that he didn't use the sear stone in translating.
Winston Dehlin [01:23:31] Right.
Dan Vogel [01:23:31] The stone in the hat thing. He used the spectacles that came with the plates.
Gerardo Sumano [01:23:38] Yeah.
Dan Vogel [01:23:38] And Benton says, well, isn't that just the same thing, you know, in his account? And so that was the first time, that was the first untruth regarding the manner in which the Book of Mormon was translated that became the official version. Right. It was the spectacles, not the stone in the hat. And Joseph and Oliver followed that official version of the translation of the Book of Mormon, although it wasn't true. Cowdery never saw us. He. He only saw the stone in the hat method. According to Emma Smith and Martin Harris, the.
Winston Dehlin [01:24:27] The.
Dan Vogel [01:24:27] The spectacles were long gone before Cowdery came around, if they ever existed.
John Dehlin [01:24:33] Sandra, I paused you in the middle of a point you were making.
Sandra Tanner [01:24:36] No, I just that. Well, this gets back to how you combine memories. If he's going to tell about a revival that causes his mom and family to join the Presbyterians, that has to be an experience that happens after Alvin's death. Because it's Alvin's. After Alvin's death, that we have these ministers on the scene that imply Alvin went to hell. So the dad won't go to the revival meetings, but the mom and sister and brothers go and they get converted to Presbyterianism. And Joseph decides that Presbyterians aren't true, but all of that has to be occurring in 24 or 25 or something. And so he's got to have a vision experience that predates the angel telling him about the Book of Mormon before Alvin dies, supposedly. According to Mother Smith, Alvin tells Joseph, be sure and get the book and finish the record. So you've already got the angel on the scene story, supposedly before Alva dies. But. So when does Joseph go out to pray to get forgiveness of sins? You can't have him do it because of a revival in 24, because it makes it so late. It makes it past the whole revival experience. So if he had some sort of experience in the woods as a younger teen. Then he could possibly hark back to that experience and think, oh, wait a minute, I could use that early experience as the launch of my career. And. And then marry this other part of the story later on with the 23 Alvin thing and the revival in 24, the family coming into the Presbyterian Church at that time. But it doesn't fit for him to pray in 24 to know what church is true because of the revival and
Gerardo Sumano [01:26:46] because the angel had already appeared, it's
Sandra Tanner [01:26:48] already had the angel vision in that. So the whole story gets confused if you try to marry the 1820 experience with the 1824 experiences.
Dan Vogel [01:27:01] Right. So the question of which church is true didn't come up in the Smith family until after Alvin's death. And that was an important time to solve the problem of which church is true because Lucy was pressuring the family to join the Presbyterian Church. And Joseph Sr. Wouldn't do that because that was like denying his own dream visions. Right. His dream vision says they're all false. And it wasn't just that. He didn't. He disliked Reverend Stockton for implying Alvin had gone to hell because the Smiths didn't baptize their children. So in 1820, the 1832 account, the earlier account, is actually more accurate even though it has an actual vision of Jesus in heaven anyway, rather than just being born again and being visited of the Lord in a. In a way that is more like born again rather than a vision, an actual visitation. So the 1832 account is actually more accurate which. Which historians would grant that the 1832 account is more accurate. So the question of which church is true was answered by the Book of Mormon later. Really? Or while he was talking to his family, he could have mentioned some religious aspects that answered some of their questions while the book was still in the hill. So the. He. The question is so important to Joseph Smith, to his development as a prophet later, that he puts the answer in 1820. But it's anachronistic. Yeah, it's. It doesn't belong there.
Timing Problems and Apologist Needs
Gerardo Sumano [01:29:07] That's something I wanted to point out as I'm thinking about it, because apologists need the first vision to have happened before 23 like it needs to happen before Moroni. But then why would Lucy and three of. And a few kids join the Presbyterian Church after God and Jesus already told Joseph that none of the churches were true, that none of the churches were true? Because apologists will acknowledge that Lucy joining the Presbyterian Church couldn't be before 23. I don't think there's, there's any apologists out there saying that lucy joined before 23?
John Dehlin [01:29:53] Yeah.
Sandra Tanner [01:29:54] They all make it after Alvin's death.
Gerardo Sumano [01:29:56] Yeah. It has to happen after Alvin's death.
John Dehlin [01:29:58] Yeah. Because they're worried about Alvin's soul.
Gerardo Sumano [01:30:01] Right, Right.
John Dehlin [01:30:01] And whether they're going to see him again. Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:30:03] But if God and Jesus already told Joseph, you're gonna restore the true church, because that's what apologies try to do. They're trying to merge all of the accounts and make it one, make them all true.
Guest [01:30:15] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:30:15] Like, make it so, like, he receives remission of his sins. He's also told that. That he's going to restore the true church, that none of the churches are true, and to not. To not join any of them. So if you go by that and try to say that everything that Joseph said is true, then why is Lucy joining the Presbyterian Church years later?
John Dehlin [01:30:35] Yeah.
Sandra Tanner [01:30:36] And why did Joseph Smith try to join the Methodists in 1828 and doing
Gerardo Sumano [01:30:41] the treasure digging and being brought, brought up to court for doing pressure digging and deceiving people.
Sandra Tanner [01:30:48] Right. The, the problem with the Mormon apologetic for the first vision and this early, the way they're trying to reconstruct this is they're ignoring the larger picture of his life. It isn't just that we have four accounts that we've got to reconcile. You have to reconcile the whole history of everybody else around him, how they fit into the story, and it just doesn't work. I mean, the, the people around him that give the reminiscences, they aren't talking about hearing this first vision story. They. Their memories of what Joseph was talking about are very different than this later 1838 account. It doesn't fit with what we know from everybody else. The emphasis, the teachings that he's supposed to get from the vision, all are anachronistic to the setting of the church at that time period.
John Dehlin [01:31:48] Winston, I just want to check in with you for a second. I. I know we probably should have just had you read the 1832 account and the 1838 account before you, you know, ask you to comment on this, but is it, is it problematic for you if in the 1832 account, he says the Lord visited him, but in the 1838 account, after he's developed a new theology that God and Jesus are separate? He claims in the 1838 account that. That God and Jesus both appeared to him in the flesh right in front of him. You know, does that seem problematic to you or not?
Winston Dehlin [01:32:25] I mean, it's definitely problematic, but you know, at the same time, I could see apologists saying he didn't understand what he was seeing.
John Dehlin [01:32:33] Right, that's exactly what they say.
Dan Vogel [01:32:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:32:39] There is one point that we.
John Dehlin [01:32:40] What about. What about claiming that. Claiming that in response to a revival he attended, he. He went to God to ask which church was true in. In the 1838 account. But then we find out that there was no revival private, prior to 1820, when he claimed.
Sandra Tanner [01:33:00] Well, they want to tie. They want to tie into different religious meetings and camp meetings and things that happened before 1820.
John Dehlin [01:33:11] Apologists do.
Sandra Tanner [01:33:12] Apologists do. But what they are not showing is that a revival like Joseph describes happened in 1820. What he describes happened in 1824.
John Dehlin [01:33:25] Yeah. Does that seem suspicious to you, Winston, or.
Dan Vogel [01:33:28] Yeah, I mean.
Winston Dehlin [01:33:29] Yeah, of course.
John Dehlin [01:33:30] Okay.
Winston Dehlin [01:33:30] It's not a very clear story at all.
John Dehlin [01:33:32] Yeah, yeah. Not substantiated. Okay. All right, let's.
First Vision as a Pivotal Story in Mormonism
Gerardo Sumano [01:33:36] There's one point that we didn't address. And this actually conversation started because they talk about the first vision not being a pivotal story in Mormonism at the beginning of Mormonism. And I don't think we're gonna have time to read them all. But if you go to Mormon think, just look for the first vision. They have different quotes from Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, all of whom say that the Lord and God didn't not and didn't. Didn't come themselves to restore the church, that the restoration started with Moroni. And it's really clear that this first vision story was not the foundational story for Mormonism. And when, you know, the first missionaries would go out to preach Mormonism, they would talk about Mormonism started with Moroni appearing, not God and Jesus.
John Dehlin [01:34:29] Yeah.
Sandra Tanner [01:34:29] Well, Harper admits that the emphasis of the first vision didn't really come in until 1880 time frame because he talks about it being 40 years after the Joseph Smith time period of the printings of 1840 and 42 of the first vision story. And he Sundays, and then 40 years later, before the church started emphasizing it, which would make it 1880. I mean, that's real late for this monumental vision to be talked about.
Guest [01:35:01] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:35:02] Let's take a pause and just kind of read a few comments from our viewers and listeners. Thanks to Fred Larger Lang for support. I should put my glasses on for this. I'll read the next comment from. From Mark. Here are my glasses. The comment is from Mark Crispin. Thank you, Dan Vogel, Sandra Tanner, and the entire staff of Mormon stories for everything you do each day. Our pleasure, Mark. Thank you for the support, my dear. Friend Brett Hutchins, who's always trying to get me to play basketball. Every Thursday night, he writes, hey, John, please use the super chat to take Sandra to lunch. So Sandra, looks like a free lunch is in your future.
Sandra Tanner [01:35:45] Oh, okay.
Winston Dehlin [01:35:47] I'll play basketball with you, Brett.
John Dehlin [01:35:49] All right. Winston says he'll play basketball. I have invited Winston. So anyway, Brett writes, take Sandra to lunch. I met her at her bookstore right before she retired. What an amazing woman. So glad that you are that you continue to have her on the podcast. She's truly a treasure. Sorry. I believed she was a daughter of predition for over 50 years. How does it feel to be a daughter? Predition?
Sandra Tanner [01:36:15] Well, it's. That's not a new title.
John Dehlin [01:36:20] Thanks for that, Brett. And then finally, Ray Allen writes to me, this is a moot point. If Joseph Smith was indeed a true prophet of God, the church he founded no longer remotely resembles what he restored and is now an apostasy. If he wasn't a prophet, then it's always been apostate. So he's basically saying the church is false. Either way, regardless of all this silliness
Winston Dehlin [01:36:43] about the first vision, I actually agree with that a lot because. Well, the other thing I was thinking about is that, you know, as a Mormon, watching, like, either like, this video or the video we're reacting to, like, you could easily start to think like, oh, well, if this is a reliable, like, account and like these, there's some way that these accounts could work then, you know, or. Or if the accounts were good, then histories historians would agree with them more. But the. The truth is they could be the most consistent and, like, sensical things and. And people, you know, it still wouldn't be accepted that, you know, the Mormon Church because it still doesn't make sense. Even if the accounts were. Were made any sense either, you know,
John Dehlin [01:37:25] if there was complete documentation, yes, that was consistent and supported everything. It's still a little malarkey, is that what you're saying?
Winston Dehlin [01:37:33] Yes.
John Dehlin [01:37:34] Okay.
Sandra Tanner [01:37:36] There still are no horses in America, and tapers don't count.
John Dehlin [01:37:41] Okay. All right, now can we go to the video?
Sandra Tanner [01:37:44] Gerardo?
Gerardo Sumano [01:37:45] Let's do it.
John Dehlin [01:37:46] All right, let's go to the next clip.
Steven Harper [01:37:50] Others, Dan Bogle or others start from a different beginning point, and that is I don't trust you at all. I know you're lying to me, and
Guest [01:37:56] I'm gonna prove it.
Steven Harper [01:37:57] I'm gonna prove it.
Dan Vogel [01:37:57] Yeah,
John Dehlin [01:38:00] we gotta stop there. You start. You start. Dan Vogel, from the premise of Joseph Smith's a liars. Is that how you do history, Dan Vogel, you just got impugned or maligned there.
Dan Vogel [01:38:14] Yeah, well, I think the evidence shows that
Sandra Tanner [01:38:19] you're a liar.
John Dehlin [01:38:21] No, aren't those fighting words? Aren't those fighting words, Stan Vogel?
Dan Vogel [01:38:26] Yeah, well, I think the evidence shows that the Book of Mormon's not history. And if it's not history, then there was no angel. There was no angel, there was no plates, there was no place. There's no Nephites. Joe Smith is telling, telling. I, I have just as much faith in that story as I do the ones he told when he was a money digger and things he saw in his stone Indian. Two Indians fighting over each other and burying the treasure and killing one and throwing his body in with the treasure. All that stuff is make believe.
John Dehlin [01:39:03] But what he's doing there, you know, he's doing ad hominem there isn't. He's trying to malign your character and say, you, Dan, you just, you're sitting around one day in your 20s and you're like, I need to prove this Mormon Church is false because I'm a bad person. So I'm going to become a historian with the beginning motive to just show the world that Joseph Smith's a lying sack. Like, it seems like he's trying to discredit you there throughout homonym. But that's what I took from it. What did you take from it?
Dan Vogel [01:39:35] All I can hear is when he says that Dan Bogle knows his historical stuff.
John Dehlin [01:39:46] That was good. Any other response to Stephen Harper maligning you?
Dan Vogel [01:39:51] Well, well, I'm so numb to it after 40 years of so Sandra, I'm sure.
John Dehlin [01:40:00] Have you been blind? Have you been lying?
Sandra Tanner [01:40:02] It has been rumored that I have been maligned.
Guest [01:40:04] Yes.
Winston Dehlin [01:40:05] Well, I like the response that I mean, like, yes, the evidence shows that he is a liar. So I do believe that he's a liar. You know, if you saw the evidence supporting that he's a liar, then you would start from believing he was a liar as well, you know? Yeah, that's really what's important.
Sandra Tanner [01:40:19] Well, I don't know about Dan, but I know my start did not start with Joseph's a liar. My start was where's the evidence for the Book of Mormon? Because I believe it's really true. Not because I don't believe it's true, but because I believed it was true. I thought there would be evidence.
Dan Vogel [01:40:42] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:40:43] And my start was like, yeah, I believed it my whole life. And then I was asked to teach seminary and I'm like, oh, I want to, I want to Brush up on my Mormon history. So let me learn more and deeper because it'll just reinforce my testimony more. It certainly was not, you know, Joseph's a liar and let me prove it.
Sandra Tanner [01:41:02] Well, you look at all the people that have written into your programs through the years, time after time. It's someone that started out wanting to verify Mormonism, agonizingly looking for the evidence that it was true, hoping it would be true. They didn't want to lose their family. They didn't want to be disinherited. They didn't want to be cut off from their grandkids. They were forced to these conclusions because the evidence just isn't there. I mean, right off the bat, there is no evidence for the Book of Mormon, there's no evidence for the Book of Abraham, then what do you do with the rest of the story? If those two are not historical artifacts that he genuinely was working with, then of course we look at the story with skepticism.
Winston Dehlin [01:41:51] Yeah, it's painting this picture that, like, people who are denying Mormonism are coming from a place of already not believing it when a lot of, like, Mormonism's like, greatest. I feel like opposers are people who, you know, had everything to lose by losing Mormonism. And, you know, we're actively acting against their, their biases and like, you know, wanting to seek like, confirmation of the religion. Yeah.
Dan Vogel Responds to Harper's Characterization
John Dehlin [01:42:17] Anything else you want to say in defense of yourself, Dan Vogel, you got a lot of explaining to do. Stephen Harper is making me question whether we should have even had you on the show, honestly.
Dan Vogel [01:42:26] Oh, okay. So. But that's an ad hominem, of course. And then Stephen Harper has to answer, why does he start from faith? Where did he. How did he start? I started from faith and I ended up where I am at. And. But he started with faith before he even studied the first vision, so. But it really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter where an argument or evidence comes from. You should focus on the argument. Is it a sound argument or isn't it? Is there evidence for this or isn't there? It doesn't matter. The person could be biased for whatever point of view you want to name and be right still, you know, just accidentally picked the right side of the argument because his bias led him there. Who cares how he got there? Or she. And it only matters the. The evidence that is bring that they're giving you for their belief. It doesn't matter if they're biased or not. It. It's irrelevant.
John Dehlin [01:43:43] Yeah. And if we're going to be maligning motives, like, you know, of all of us here, like, you know what, what's what could be Stephen Harper's bias. He probably has a six figure salary with really good benefits, you know, a career and a really good pension and his entire reputation coming from, coming from the church. Right. And, and so like, if we want to play that game, I think he's gonna lose if we, if we play that game. Right. Because he's literally on the church's payroll. Am I wrong, Dan?
Dan Vogel [01:44:19] Well, this is one of the flaws of Mormon historians. They'll go, oh, that's, that's a enemy of Joseph Smith's. You can't believe what they say. And so they only believe a belief, a fellow believer back in 1830s, what they say, but they're. The believers are just as biased as the non believers. But historians have ways of working through bias in, in accounts.
John Dehlin [01:44:48] Yeah. You look at the.
Dan Vogel [01:44:49] Using multiple accounts and.
John Dehlin [01:44:51] Yeah.
Dan Vogel [01:44:52] Which one has the most credibility? So just because what they're setting themselves up for, they're building a paradigm, a circular system of thought that only verifies itself and, and has no way of ever introducing negative evidence or disconfirming evidence. You, by definition, you block out whole categories of testimony.
John Dehlin [01:45:22] Yeah, yeah. It's a convenient ploy. All right, well, now that he's maligned to you, let's go ahead and continue with the video, what Professor Bushman calls
▶ Video Clip 2Video Clip 2 [01:45:31] the hermeneutic of trust or the hermeneutic of suspicion. You arrive at a different place. Now, the important thing to notice is they are, they both use the same body of facts. They both have access to the same historical record. The documents are the same. One of them doesn't have a pile of evidence that the other one doesn't know about. And so it had the determinant here is what you're going to decide the facts mean. It's really like the glass half full or half empty example. Right. You can see the exact same facts. There are four accounts, primary accounts of the first vision. They give versions of the story that are not precisely the same over time. They change over time. And you could decide to interpret that in a variety of ways, believing ways and unbelieving ways.
Video Clip 2 [01:46:10] Right.
Video Clip 2 [01:46:10] And it's not, it's not satisfactory to simply say, well, you're dumb if you treat it believing or unbelieving. Right. The people who are not believing are not dumb. They're well informed. All right, I, I share a completely different reading of the accounts than Professor Ann Taves does, but she is a phenomenally brilliant scholar. Who knows all the same evidence? I do. That is to say, really well informed people can come to different conclusions about this evidence. It's not the evidence itself that is the determinant of belief or not.
Video Clip 2 [01:46:42] Right.
Video Clip 2 [01:46:43] You have to decide whether you're going to approach these things with faith in God and Christ and that they pick Joseph Smith or not.
Video Clip 2 [01:46:50] Right.
Video Clip 2 [01:46:50] I really want people to understand that there's a thought out there that if you just knew the evidence, you wouldn't believe. And alternatively, if you just knew the evidence, you'd be forced to the conclusion of belief.
Video Clip 2 [01:47:01] Right.
Video Clip 2 [01:47:01] Neither one of those is true.
Video Clip 2 [01:47:03] Right. I think it's important we talk about this often is triangulating the evidence. And in my opinion, when we're talking about religious, spiritual things, one of those things that we should triangulate the evidence with is the Spirit has to be that way.
Video Clip 2 [01:47:16] How can you know whether Joseph Smith is telling the truth about seeing the Father and the Son in the woods of western New York? Unless the Father or the Son reveals that to you, you cannot know it.
Video Clip 2 [01:47:25] Right.
Video Clip 2 [01:47:25] You can know what he says about it. You can believe that you've disproved it because you've amassed these facts. That's not the same as knowing one way or the other.
Video Clip 2 [01:47:35] Right.
Video Clip 2 [01:47:35] This you can bring the historical method to bear. Reverend Wesley Walters did this in the 18 or, sorry, the 1960s. He's a Presbyterian minister, and for him there's an immense amount at stake. As you know, the manuscript history account of Joseph's vision says, mom, I learned for myself Presbyterianism isn't true. Well, Presbyterianism means the world to Wesley Walters. Right. He's a young man who feels like he is going to hell forever. He, he grows up in a Baptist context and he hasn't had the, the experience of being born again in Christ. And then he goes to a revival. And the Reverend Donald Barnhouse speaks and gives this wonderful analogy about how Christ's saving work occurs in our lives. And Reverend Walters, then a young man, teenage Wesley Walters, is filled with the spirit of it. He's. He gets the experience he had longed for, well, for the rest of his life. He's going to defend that.
Video Clip 2 [01:48:31] Right.
Video Clip 2 [01:48:32] And I don't doubt any of that. It doesn't. I think that's the greatest thing, except that there's another step beyond that. I, I think the restoration adds to that. And so I'm. I feel similar with Joseph Smith. Right. This is the version of the Gospel, the restored version is the one that does the work in my life that the Reverend Donald Barnhouse's version of the gospel did for Wesley Walters. All this means that I can sympathize very much with Wesley Walters when he says, I am going to dig through every archive, every Methodist newspaper, every report of any kind of camp meeting I can to show that there was no unusual religious excitement on the subject of religion in Joseph's region when he said there was. And if that didn't happen, then the vision didn't happen. So that was his case.
Video Clip 2 [01:49:16] He.
Video Clip 2 [01:49:16] He thought it was proved in some ways it seems proved, but not if you keep digging.
Video Clip 2 [01:49:21] Right.
Video Clip 2 [01:49:22] Which Professor Backman did and Professor.
Wes Walters's Motives and Harper's Framing
John Dehlin [01:49:25] All right, let's go ahead and pause there. I think that's a good place to pause Any, any comment, Dan or Sandra, you want to make about his comments about Wesley Walters, his motives.
Sandra Tanner [01:49:36] Well, first off, Wes, yes, Wes was a Presbyterian minister and yes, he'd tell you about his born again experience of coming to Christ. But to try to make his research as just a response to defending his denomination is a great disservice to Wes's historical inquiry. Now, Wes and I belong to different denominations, and yet Wes was not hammering me all the time to be a Presbyterian. Wes was not that motivated on the basis of trying to defend his church. Yes, he was trying to defend Christianity in that he felt Mormonism was a great disservice to the Christian message because he saw Joseph Smith as truly leading people astray with a false gospel. But to emphasize that, oh well, he was upset because Joseph claimed Presbyterian isn't true is to belittle Wes's serious historical research. Wes was a very accommodating person to everybody doing research. And I know that Dan would have experienced this as well. It didn't matter what you believed. Wes would share his research with anyone. He was a historian at heart. It wasn't just to defend his church.
John Dehlin [01:51:10] Okay, Dan, anything you want to add about Wes Walters?
Dan Vogel [01:51:16] Wes had a lot of integrity when it came to making his arguments for his point of view. And he did he. When he. The. His research on the first vision stands still. They. They have not moved what he discovered. They might say, well, no, you know, in the country, in the region of district of country or whatever. It's a larger area. So it wasn't just in the place where we lived, you know, and, and that's completely wrong because just the just mis account says is in the place where we live. There was an unusual excitement on the subject of religion. You know, priest contending against priests and comedy against comfort and goes on and on. Well, the place where they live was Palmyra. And like I said before, the 1824 revival matches. It began with the Methodists in Palmyra.
Sandra Tanner [01:52:19] It.
Dan Vogel [01:52:20] And it spread to the other denominations. There was a large. People were added to all the various churches. Converts filed off for. To one church or the other. And so Wes. Wes's research still stands. They have an apologetic maneuver they like to take, you know, to try to get out of that problem, but it's not convincing at all. Okay. So. And. And it's very sad to see the younger generation like Harper follow in Backman's footsteps because his apologetic was really very amateur. And so let me tell you a story, my story about my encounter with Milton Backman. So I was, you know, very. In my early. Shortly after my mission, and I was doing research at byu and I had read Wes's and the exchange between Wes Walters, Backman, Bushman's thing. And let me. Let me show you this. This is Wes's new light, new light on Mormon origins from the Palmyra New York revival. This is how he published it to begin with. This is the little pamphlet published by Arthur Budvarson, 1967 in this little. His research in this little pamphlet was republished in the Dialogue of Journal of Mormon Thought. And Bushman responded to it, and it was pathetic. So. And I was still a believer, okay, I was still somewhat of a believer, you know, still wrestling with how I was going to come down on this. And so I was researching in the library and Milton Beckman comes in and sits in the table right in front of me, okay? So I decided, well, and I heard that I didn't know him by sight at this point. And the person said. Mentioned his name when they brought materials to him in this. We were in the special collections part of it. And. And I said, oh, Backman, oh. And I started. Struck a conversation with him and we went back and forth on the first vision. And I said, well, you know, I. I can't remember the details of it after, you know, 35 years probably. And Backman would say, give his spiel, you know, his apologetic. And I said, well, you know, Walter says this about that. What do you have to say about it? And he would come back. And I go, well, you know, that. And we went back and forth and. And until finally he goes, what'd you say your name was?
Guest [01:55:19] He.
Dan Vogel [01:55:20] He says, you sure know your stuff. And I said, well, you know, I think I'm. I'm a believer still. You know, I'm a believer, but I still think we need to be honest about who is winning this debate? So that's my experience and that's kind of how I work my way out of the church in a way.
Evaluating Harper's Treatment of Historical Facts
John Dehlin [01:55:42] Yeah, my, my biggest problem with kind of this little segment is Harper seems to be saying, okay, there's facts. The facts are out there. We're all working for the same facts. And you know, some people who have disbelieving, you know, motives to malign Joseph Smith, they're going to end up as non believers and as critical historians. But then if you have a faithful hermeneutic and you just simply want to believe, you're just as reasonably going to end up as a believing historian. And he talks about that as if the facts don't really determine where someone ends up. The facts are just the facts and you could go either way and the facts support any conclusion equally, faith or non faith is simply a matter of choice. Whether you just choose to be a positive, shiny, happy, full of light believer or a dark, critical, cynical, skeptical, non believer. But the facts, you know, could, could put you either way. And I don't think that's fair. I think you look at the facts, they really do point in one direction. And so I think it's kind of a slight of hand when he makes it sound like belief or non belief is simply a matter of choice. You know, it's just you choose to believe or you choose not to believe. And then there's the facts.
Gerardo Sumano [01:57:06] But he also wants to say, like, all these researchers, Fram Brody and, and, and Walters, those are old researchers, but there's this new like Batman apologist who has found new evidence and all of that is resolved so we don't have to worry about it.
Winston Dehlin [01:57:28] I was gonna say pretty much exactly what you said. Like, he's painting this picture of like, well, you know, I'm really smart, you know, I'm a scholar, I know all the facts, you know, and I've know a lot of people and pretty much, you know, it's 50, 50, you know, I understand why they don't believe it, but, you know, I know everything and I do believe it. You know, they're smart. I'm smart. So you don't even, you know, it's almost like devaluing like evidence and like learning because it's like, well, I, you know, us who know everything, you know, it's like it's still 50, 50. So just because, you know, trust me, because I said so, you know, and
Sandra Tanner [01:58:03] I don't think the evidence leads us with 50, 50.
John Dehlin [01:58:06] Yeah, that's what I'm Trying.
Winston Dehlin [01:58:07] It's not even close.
Sandra Tanner [01:58:07] Yeah, yeah, it is. Not a 50.
Guest [01:58:11] Yeah.
Sandra Tanner [01:58:12] There is so much of Smith's story, so much of Smith's product of his scriptures that absolutely can be shown to be modern inventions and not ancient history, that of course it leads one to doubt the rest of his story where there may not be as much evidence. You of course approach it more skeptically when you see major parts of a story obviously don't check out. I mean, the book of Abraham itself is so obviously not what he claimed it to be. That then, yes, historians are going to be a little more careful in looking at the rest of what he says. If, you know, at certain times. Absolutely. The evidence comes down on the side against him, then people are going to be more skeptical on the whole picture.
John Dehlin [01:59:07] Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you really think about it, it's not just whatever evidence we can find around the first vision. It's the fact that the church hid versions of the first vision from us. What does that tell us? You know, basically in effect lied to us about it. But then you add to that his treasure digging, his running afoul with the law, the fact that the first vision story changes over time. But then you've got the book of Abraham and the Kinderhook plates and the, you know, Joseph Smith revision of the New Testament and the invention of the Melchizedek priesthood late. And the copying of the Masonic Lodge temple ceremony into, you know, into the, the Mormon temple ceremony and the fact that he's propositioning 14 year olds for sex and 16 year olds and mother daughter pairs and sister pairs and you know, and the list just goes on and on and on. It would just seem that a historian even is even employed by the Church. Like Stephen Harper would acknowledge that this is a real uphill battle, not some sort of 50, 50 question that, that any reasonable person could sort of choose to go either way, you know, but they don't do that and you know, part of that has to be because of who signs his paycheck. All right, let's. Should we go to the next, next clip?
Winston Dehlin [02:00:30] Wait, no, hold on. All right, maybe he could believe it. It might not be that he's.
John Dehlin [02:00:35] No, no, for sure. But, but there is that Upton Sinclair quote that it's impossible to get a man to see a point of view when his livelihood depends on not seeing it. Yeah, but, but you're right, I'm not saying he's not a sincere believer.
Winston Dehlin [02:00:49] Yeah, I mean, it's not literally impossible. I'm just saying like, you know, we Want to, you know, be good faith and believe that he actually believes what he just, you know, saying. Because he, you know, is paid, too.
John Dehlin [02:00:59] Yeah, I'm not saying he's lying, but I'm saying that there would be really steep consequences if he were to change
Winston Dehlin [02:01:05] his belief, like, very highly motivated to believe the things that. It would be catastrophic if he. For him, if he. If he lost faith.
John Dehlin [02:01:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah, tell me about it. Okay, let's go ahead and go to the clip.
Steven Harper [02:01:18] Allen and Richard Anderson and Richard Bushman. So Truman Madsen, philosophy professor at byu, was sort of heading up a special issue of BYU Studies and other efforts to respond to Wesley Walters. They actually had a pretty fun exchange at Southern Illinois University. They were both attending an event there, and Professor Madsen sees Wesley Walters name tag, and he said, wesley Walters, you're the one who dropped the bomb on byu. They're giving us all the money we need to respond to you. Right. They have this pleasant exchange. And. And so Professor Bushman, right off winning the Bancroft Prize, the ultra prestigious prize for an American historian, is invited to respond to Wesley Walters, which he does in his characteristic style, with charity, with a thoroughly informed response, and with critical analysis that's really hard to. To impeach. And so that's the way this conversation has been going for well over 50 years now. And people who know the exact same evidence thoroughly come down on different sides. They interpret the evidence to mean different things. And I interpret it to mean that Joseph Smith was picked by Jesus Christ to be his servant. But before that, he was told, joseph, my son, your sins are forgiven. He was an angsty teenager thinking that Presbyterianism was probably right, which meant that he felt a lot like Wesley Walters did as a teenager, like that salvation boat had passed him right by.
Guest [02:02:39] Right.
Steven Harper [02:02:40] And Joseph longed for Methodism to be right because that would mean he had a chance. He could. He could affect salvation in Christ by sort of willing himself to receive God's grace. Whereas at the time, the Presbyterian version was, God has already decided that, and there's nothing. It's his inscrutable sovereign will. There's not a thing you can do about it. But Joseph hoped Methodism was right, but he thought that probably Presbyterianism better fit his lived experience. And he had to know. He had to know, and that's why he went to the woods. And the vision taught him that. Neither one of these versions has it exactly right, but you are forgiven of your sins, and I'll make the fullness of the gospel known to you at some future point. I Believe that. I believe Joseph tells me the truth. Now, a person would say. And I would say, why? Why do you believe that? What. What's at stake here? What are. What are your motives? Right. Are there prejudices you're trying to. To deal with here? Are there things you're, you know, what's the psychological component of this? And I think everybody ought to ask themselves those questions. Everybody ought to think critically and carefully. But thinking critically and carefully does not mean coming to the conclusion that it didn't happen. That often is a result of not thinking terribly critically or very carefully about it and maybe not examining your own motives and intentions.
Dan Vogel [02:03:51] Right.
Guest [02:03:51] Think slow.
Steven Harper [02:03:52] Think slow so you know how you know what you know.
Guest [02:03:54] Right.
Is Richard Bushman's Work Unimpeachable
John Dehlin [02:03:55] So really quickly, is it true that, Stephen, that Richard Bushman's work on Joseph Smith is unimpeachable?
Sandra Tanner [02:04:04] Because I don't think so.
John Dehlin [02:04:05] Huh.
Dan Vogel [02:04:07] Wes impeached it and the Tanner published it.
John Dehlin [02:04:11] What do you mean?
Gerardo Sumano [02:04:13] He responded.
Dan Vogel [02:04:14] He responded to Bushman. Yeah, response. He impeached. He impeached it. Bushman was doing the apologetic thing. I mean, he did a scholarly job of it, but still it was off the mark. It was just way off the mark.
John Dehlin [02:04:35] Maybe he means rough stone rolling and not.
Gerardo Sumano [02:04:40] He meant the dialogue response.
Dan Vogel [02:04:42] Yeah, yeah, dialogue. So when they published. When they. When they republished this in Dialogue, A Journal of Mormon Thought, which I have up there on my shelf, then Bushman wrote a response and Wes wrote a rejoinder to. To Bushman writing dialogue. But even after that, Wes wrote a response to all. All of the critics of his first vision research.
Sandra Tanner [02:05:17] Well, you have signature books printing Wes Walters book with Mike Marquard, Inventing Mormonism. And Wes gives recounting of the problems of the first vision there and of the revivals and the retelling of the story and the events that would have to have happened for the 1820 version to be acceptable. So Wes laid it all out even as late as in Inventing Mormonism, which was printed about 1991 or so it was. Wes had died before the publication actually came out in print. But he lays out his case even that late in the 1990 time frame.
Dan Vogel [02:06:04] Yeah, I. I was miss spoke when I said that the Tenors published his response to Bushman.
John Dehlin [02:06:10] He.
Dan Vogel [02:06:10] It was to Dr. Clandestine. Yeah, on. On the first Vision, which was Mike Quinn. And then subsequently Mike Quinn published a really long, irrelevant tirade on. It just. It totally pissed me off because he kept repeating this footnote about Walters trying to make him appear dishonest because he should have known this or that. And it Just irritated me because he kept repeating it in the footnotes, this accusation against Wes. But it was Quinn. I, I responded to Quinn in my three videos, and it's Quinn that's way off on a lot of stuff. He tries to move the revival to the, to June of 1820, be June, okay, in the summertime, you know,
Steven Harper [02:07:13] because
Dan Vogel [02:07:13] there's a, an account in the Palmer newspaper that there was a, the, there was a revival out on the outskirts of Palmyra. But then, you know, I reminded him of. Well, you know, there's an added part to Joseph Smith's account that in the handwriting, Willard Richards added, uh, like, I think it's note A or B or see, I can't remember which. In 1840 or 42, Willard Richards, Joseph dictated part that he came home and he leaned up against the hearth and told his mother that Presbyterian is, he learned that Presbyterianism isn't true. So, and then Harper here seems to go on about Joseph Smith being attracted to Presbyterianism. But no, he was a, he was inclined towards Methodism because it's, you know, the revival and the spirit and all that kind of stuff. Presbyterianism is more conservative type of revivals that they had. Not as, not as wild as the Methodist.
John Dehlin [02:08:35] Let me just ask, is any of Richard Bushman's work on Joseph Smith that any of you know of Sandra or Dan? Like, has any of his work on Joseph Smith received accolades? Like, do his peers at Columbia or Harvard or Yale or wherever, are they like, wow, Richard, your work on Joseph Smith, Rust Unrolling, that was groundbreaking. Or is it more a book written either to faithful Mormons or to help people investigating Mormonism give Joseph a faithful look? Do we know if Richard Bushman's Joseph Smith scholarship has deep respect amongst secular academic peers?
Sandra Tanner [02:09:23] Well, I think he has respect.
John Dehlin [02:09:24] No, I mean his work on Joseph Smith.
Sandra Tanner [02:09:26] Well, they wouldn't know enough to know how to evaluate his work.
Dan Vogel [02:09:30] Who would care what they thought anyway?
John Dehlin [02:09:33] What do you mean?
Dan Vogel [02:09:35] Non Mormons don't know what they're talking about? Even, even, even Jan Taves or Antaves, excuse me, and Taves is, is a non Mormon and they all try to come to the Mormon meetings and contribute some special thing that. But I've never been terribly impressed with non Mormon historians. Mormon historians, they have, you know, an advantage over the non Mormon who, who comes at it. They sometimes given a contribution. That's interesting, but it's far and few between that. In my experience. I, I, I prefer even the most biased Mormon historian like Bushman to a lot of the non Mormons who come and try to contribute.
John Dehlin [02:10:30] Interesting. I see. I can just imagine like some historian writes about William Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson. There's going to be other people who aren't necessarily experts in Emily Dickinson or Shakespeare but who know the time period and who read historians and other figures and just know enough about the time period and care enough about the time period or about the subjects at hand where they would be able to say well this is great history or this is or, or they would just ignore it. And you're basically saying if you're not really a Mormon historian or an ex Mormon historian, your opinion about Bushman's writings around Joseph Smith really would be ill informed to begin with.
Sandra Tanner [02:11:16] The ill informed. Yes.
John Dehlin [02:11:17] Okay.
Dan Vogel [02:11:18] So, so Bushman, those regarded highly for his biography of Benjamin Franklin. I think Harper said something someone else but, and he has it a history on the New England Puritans. I think that's regarded quite highly now. I, you know, I liked a lot of parts of Rough Stone Rowing. I mean it's a one volume thing. It had some apologetic stuff. Bushman is an apologist but he came to a lot of the similar position as I have on the Smith family dynamics. And I think he came to them independently because he, he has had some training in psychology. His, for, for all the criticism Von Brody received for being a psychobiographer, Bushman did a similar thing with Benjamin Franklin
John Dehlin [02:12:22] and, and wrote a biography on Benjamin Franklin. Yeah.
Dan Vogel [02:12:26] So he told me that, oh, he's learned the weaknesses of doing psychobiography from that. But his is a full, you know, his Brody's wasn't too psychological. I mean it's very Freudian. Okay. And I came at it more of a family systems approach, you know, family dynamics, kind of a sociological study of the family. That's kind of how I describe it rather than Freudian and psychoanalysis and. Right. I, I did delve into looking into psychobiographies and Freudian methods and I just was not impressed with that method. So I didn't use it even though I kind of, you know here and there. You can't do psychology without a little bit of understanding of Freud and anyway, so, but Bushman, I, I, I like Bushmen. I even like Harper. I, I think Harper is probably a wonderful teacher there at BYU and I just disagree with him. See, he's talking about disagreements but he admits his bias. And it's typical among Harper and other apologists just to say everybody's biased. They try to, they're like levelers, you know what I mean? Like they want everyone's biased equally, you know, and so, and then you get into Muelstein, Kerry Muelstein in the Book of Abraham, and he says, I just let my bias free, you know, and I just interpret everything the according to the gospel, and I feel I'm justified because that's, everybody has biases. And that's just, you're supposed to try your best not to do it, but you can't triangulate with the Spirit. What is that? We need to triangle with the spirit. I mean, you can't pray to resolve historical problems. Prayer is not one of the methods. And if you're going to be a historian, that's a game, okay? You have a certain game, certain rules. You got to stay there or else you have no credibility if you, if you, you know, try to fudge things because you have a testimony which, and they're going to bear their testimony here at the end, if we get that far. I have a testimony, they say, of the first vision. Really?
Winston Dehlin [02:15:06] You do?
Dan Vogel [02:15:08] I mean, and therefore I know it, you know, God and Christ appear to just me. Do you, you don't know that.
Sandra Tanner [02:15:19] I would say that if you, if you were a Mormon listening to this program and you wanted to read the best Mormon defense of Joseph Smith, that I would say read Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman. I think it's the best the Mormon apologists can do. I don't think it covers the problems, though. And I think that many people read Bushman and come away realizing it sounds like there's more to the story. And I've talked to many people that have left Mormonism after reading Bushman. Not that that was Bushman's intent, but they end up realizing that there was a lot of apologetics and special pleading along the way in Bushman's account. So, but for a Mormon, I think that's your best bet. If you want to try to reconcile things, go read Bushman. But if you want to get a little closer to scientific history, try Vogel or Brody.
John Dehlin [02:16:32] All right. I hear that, I hear that Turley is working on a biography of Joseph.
Sandra Tanner [02:16:39] Yes.
John Dehlin [02:16:40] And he's got like 10 years of funding to write a biography on Joseph Smith. You're rolling your eyes, Sandra. Why are you rolling your eyes?
Sandra Tanner [02:16:46] Well, because I think he's too much of a believer to write an objective story.
John Dehlin [02:16:52] Yeah. Yeah, Dan?
Dan Vogel [02:16:54] Well, I don't expect an objective story. I, I, I want them to write really the best biography that they can. But if the Saints history is any indication, we can't set our sights too high with or Expectations too high on that. But yeah, they uh, he has like a army of uh, researchers. You know, even Brian Hales is. He has and his what new wife are on the. Working for Turley to write this biography and looking to get sources and things.
John Dehlin [02:17:37] I'm just dying to know what new light Richard Turley is going to shed on Joseph Smith. I mean maybe he'll find something really interesting and groundbreaking, but.
Sandra Tanner [02:17:45] Well, I think all you can do is bring new interpretation to the facts that are already out there. I don't know how much new material can actually be brought forward unless the
John Dehlin [02:17:54] church has been hiding more stuff and they're finding a new Bible. But he's going to get 10 years in an army of research support to write a new biography. Like that's interesting. All right, let's keep going with the video.
How Many First Vision Accounts Exist
▶ Video Clip 3Video Clip 3 [02:18:08] So Steven, how many accounts of the first vision were there?
Video Clip 3 [02:18:11] What we know of is four that came to us from Joseph Smith or someone he was working closely with. So he worked very closely with Frederick Williams in the late summer or fall of 1832 to give us this six page autobiography, a history of the life of Joseph Smith and the marvelous things that Jesus does through him. It's a awesome little record, raw and rough from Joseph's perspective and a modern readers, but also beautiful and profound. And it's our earliest one that we have, mostly written in his own hand. Three years later, he's giving a spontaneous account of the vision to a visitor from New York and his scribe captures a version of it in Joseph's journal. So November 9, 1835, journal entry gives us an account of the vision. The next one is going to start in 1838 before the Saints are exterminated from Missouri. But then he's going to go through that Liberty Jail experience before he sits down again and revises and captures it in the version we have today, which is in his manuscript history book A1, and it's excerpted for us in the Pearl of Great Price. That's the one that's most commonly known. And then the fourth of the four that we get from him during his lifetime is a letter to John Wentworth, a newspaper editor in Chicago, where Joseph responds to his invitation to furnish primary evidence that Wentworth's friend could use to write a history of New Hampshire. We don't have the letter Joseph sent to Wentworth, but they published it. The Saints published it in their own newspaper in the Times and Seasons. So we have that version of it. It's short, it's designed for a kind of a public Consumption for an audience. It's designed to do PR work. The manuscript History one is very much characterized by the violent persecution that the saints are suffering. It's as if Joseph is saying, where did this persecution start? Oh, it started when I was an infant almost. It started the minute that I told the minister about my vision and he slammed me. So he's looking back on his life in this particularly combative present, and he finds this moment of bitter persecution. So that one is understandably and very interestingly the most intense and most shaped by the persecution the saints suffer in Ohio and especially in Missouri. A few years later, when things are at a comparative lull, the Nauvoo Charter is making things safe. Joseph revises that account interestingly, and he cuts out a lot of that intense persecution part. Right. The whole beginning, owing to the many reports put in circulation by evil, disposing, designing people. He just cuts that off and says, I was born in Sharon.
Video Clip 3 [02:20:33] From now, let's make it a little bit more peacemaker. Yeah.
Video Clip 3 [02:20:36] And we all remember our past in the present, that people might say, duh. Well, thank you, Professor Harper. What a Captain Obvious, right? But there's a lot of implication to that. We don't store memories intact, autobiographical memories. We make them up right here, right now. We make them out of what Harvard psychology professor Daniel Schachter calls traces. Nobody knows quite what to call this stuff or how to describe or even where it is, but have these pieces at our disposal. And when we need to make a memory, we take those things that we've stored from past experience and we mix them with our present situation and context, our present purposes and prejudices and so forth, and we create the memory right there in real time. That's why it's fascinating to study these memories from 1832, 35, 38, 39, 1842. They are. They are. They are combinations of what Joseph experienced in the Grove and what he was experiencing at the time he did the remembering. And that's the best way to look at them and to learn why they say what they say and how they work, the way they work, what they're doing, what they're for.
Video Clip 3 [02:21:42] So.
Video Clip 3 [02:21:42] Right. And as a matter of fact, if he said it word for word the exact same every time, it would seem as if it was more of a fictional story, one that he's created. And I need to remember point A and point B and point C, and this is my point, and blah, blah, whatever, and it's different every time. Tell us why that's okay. Why is it Not a bad thing that it's different every time.
Video Clip 3 [02:22:02] Well, you're on to a great question here. Why would I assume that it is bad that it's different every time, right? You're, you're, you're noticing that people who make that claim are asserting a premise that is far from proved. What if we did that with the resurrection accounts of Jesus? Well, we'd have to res. We'd have to reject it, right? What if we did it with the accounts of Saul converting? We'd have to reject it that ever happened. What if we did with, with, with Alma the younger? And what if we did it with our own lives, Right? You could take anybody out there who has willing and honest and open, and you could survey them about the most important past experience of their life. And you could ask them, you could interview them over time, or you could have them sort of tell it in various spots and different ways over the course of a year. And you would get something very similar to the first vision accounts of Joseph Smith. This is the way people remember. His accounts are not anomalous. They're characteristic. They're typical of the ways people remember. Stephen Prothero, a very highly regarded religious scholar at Boston. This is what he said. This is what he concluded in his book about American Jesus. Is your very point there?
Gerardo Sumano [02:23:05] Right?
Steven Harper [02:23:05] People are hypercritical of these accounts of Joseph, but those people are not typically historians or lawyers who are used to working with various accounts from people of the same experience and realize you can expect variation, you can expect difference. And that doesn't, that does not necessarily, it does not necessarily follow. They lied to me flat out. There may be things they got wrong. There may be distortions there. It would, it would be shocking if there are not memory distortions. That's not the same as lying or getting it wrong.
Guest [02:23:35] We, me and my friends are.
John Dehlin [02:23:36] All right, so let's go ahead and just address that. He's basically saying memory is, you know, a constant. Memory is constantly evolving. We're mixing what we stored with what we retrieve with what we're experiencing in modern day. Joseph changed. Joseph's changes in those four primary accounts of the first vision are pretty much just like any, you know, any way that any of us would retell any story that we experience over time. In fact, it would be weird if they weren't changes in the accounts. In fact, it's almost a testimony to the truthfulness of Joseph Smith's accounts, the fact that they change. And if, if it were more consistent, that would be more of a cause to Be suspicious than, you know, than the evidence lays out. So basically, we should have more faith that these stories change than. Than actually doubt them more.
Sandra Tanner [02:24:34] Well, and if you look at the last two accounts of the first fish, and they want to mention the one that's now printed in the Mormon scriptures and then compare it with the Wentworth letter, which are both things that are published in the 1840s. Yes, there are differences, but not of substantial, major differences. They would fit into the kind of framework where he's talking about, oh, you know, like, I'm not going to emphasize so much the persecution thing at the start. Let's tone that down or whatever. Yes, that's what you expect in different tellings of the same story. But how do you reconcile that with the 1832 account? These are so radically different that I don't think that idea works with the 32 account. We're talking about a radically different story in 32 than the 1842 account that gets printed in the Times and Seasons. I mean, if you're going to say he, okay, he has later concerns that he puts back into the story, then how do we know what really happened at the original event? So am I to then say, oh, well, he could have had Jesus show up and tell him his sins are forgiven and. And the other parts are later additions and weren't really part of his experience. When are they going to make this idea of the Father and Son having physical form, when does that concept come into the story? Was it there at the beginning, or is this one of these later things that he folds into his memory? It just doesn't add up to try to dismiss the problems that way.
Why the Changing Accounts Are Theologically Significant
John Dehlin [02:26:25] One of the most condemning things, I think, in this whole story is not. Not only does Joseph Smith's version of his first vision change along with his evolving theology from 1832 to 1838, but the book of Mormon itself, the text of the Book of Mormon changes along with both Joseph Smith's evolving theology about God and with the changes in the first vision. So you've got Joseph Smith's theology about God and Jesus evolving, and both his first vision story and the Book of Mormon, the text of both change along with his changing and the revelations.
Gerardo Sumano [02:27:07] Because I think I. After 35, he never had revelations where he kind of mixed the identity of Jesus and the father. Before 35, he was doing that in the revelations. Is that right? Did I?
Sandra Tanner [02:27:22] Yeah, he's changing the revelations. He's also changing things in his translation of the Bible as he's evolving his idea of God, the Changes he makes along the way show an evolution of his theology. There isn't this concept from day one of the father and son being two separate physical beings. It just isn't in the early record of Mormonism. It's a later edition.
John Dehlin [02:27:49] Dan, what do you want to add to this part of the conversation? Anything.
Dan Vogel [02:27:55] So, I mean, no one's going to argue that memory can change over time, but at what point do you say that it's changed too much and it's evidence that the person has impeached themselves? I mean, in court of law, if you, if you gave this as an excuse every time, you would never be able to prove anything, and so you'd never catch anybody. I doubt if he uses the same principle when his children come to him with excuses and, and, and lie or change their story. Oh, you changed your story. I bet he doesn't do that in real life. He only does it as an apologetic tool. So it's a true principle. This would be a fallacy of principle. Meaning it's a true principle. But misuse. It's a misuse of a true principle. Does it, does this principle translate to an apologetic device? And behind it all is an assumption that the vision was real. So he's begging the question. I mean, he's already assumed what he's trying to prove, and it just comes out as an excuse. And then John's point was right on point because you have these things changing along with the first vision. It's just not a memory thing. You can show that there's design behind the change. I mean, did he pray? Did he go and pray about which church was true or didn't it? He would. Did he forget when he told it in 1832 that he prayed to ask which church was true? And any. Did he forget that and then just make up something on the spot that said that he already knew the churches were faults and he was just praying for his own salvation? You know, did he. What did Jesus tell him not to join any of the churches? Or did Jesus tell him that he was already saved, you know, through faith? So it. They're diametrically opposed. The 1832 account, the other ones, you know, small details, sure could be added and subtracted or whatever, whatnot. So I just think he begs the question. He assumes that it's a real vision. And really, in the end, does it matter that if there was a true vision or not, I mean, we can't retrieve that vision. We can only go according to what Joseph Smith told and he changed the story and that's all you know, you can't make.
John Dehlin [02:30:46] You.
Dan Vogel [02:30:46] You don't know that he's misremembering or you can't tell if he's mis. Remembering or intentionally changing the story to, to suit his own purposes at the time, which, you know, what does it really matter if it was there was a real story behind it or not? We can't really get a history except through the stories that were told. So he mentioned this himself that you want to find. This is what historians do. I mean, we, we can reconstruct the past, but we can't prove it like you do in science. You can't have a theory and then prove it. You can only reconstruct the past. It's totally lost forever. And when you reconstruct it, you're looking for the reconstruction that is the most defensible among all the others. And, and I would maintain that Harper's reconstruction is not the most defensible. The most defensible is the one we've been discussing, that there is an evolution which it. Which then bears fruit by what John mentioned about it going along the same line as just miss theology. So it all ties in and you can, once you. You're honest about the evidence and the contradictions, and these contradictions lead you to interpretations. This is how you discover and reconstruct the past, that there's a development and why there's a development. And this tells you about who Joseph Smith really is, what he's thinking. That's all we can know is what he's thinking. And his thinking is changing. And there seems to be a reason for this thinking changing. There's. This is a more defensible reconstruction than Harper's.
John Dehlin [02:32:57] Yeah. Winston, I just want to sanity check with you really quick. So let's just say there's. They're saying there's four, but I think there's up to nine different versions.
Dan Vogel [02:33:06] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:33:06] Depending on how you count. Right, Right.
Dan Vogel [02:33:08] Original. So it must be counting all the ones that branch off of the 1838 as. As four main ones.
John Dehlin [02:33:18] Yeah. And so I remember reading, like, the differences between all the different nine accounts. And Winston, I'm just going to ask you, in your opinion, if, if you were to find out that between the nine accounts of Joseph Smith telling his story, his age changes from 14 to 15 to 16. It's anywhere between 14, 15 and 16 as a first thing. Now he's remembering back to when he saw the creator of the universe and the savior of mankind, or not, or just Jesus. Either way, how problematic is that for you, that he. He can't get his age. Right.
Winston Dehlin [02:33:54] Well, and he's. But he's. I mean, yeah, it's pretty problematic. It is, yeah. It's. This is like, coming out like. Like over a decade later though, right?
John Dehlin [02:34:04] Yeah.
Winston Dehlin [02:34:05] So, you know, you could say, like, you know, that's a detail where as. As an apologist, you could. It could be explained by, like, memory loss. Like, it felt like. It feels like the whole, like, you know, memory is like, imperfect thing. It is an explanation for some differences, but there are, like, very important preference, like, more pressing differences that it just can't begin to explain. Like that, oh, you know, memory changes over time or something.
Gerardo Sumano [02:34:32] I would just say that the problem is that it's not an isolated event. So there was a lot of things happening during that decade. You know, Moroni coming four times or three times or whatever, him retrieving the plates and, like, receiving instruction by Moroni and, and. And the first vision happening before that. So there it's. It's kind of like the same thing as when you, you know, like, it's not hard for me to know when I received the Aonic priesthood, because I know that happens at 12 and when I got, you know, the Melissic priesthood, I know that happens at 18 and happens several years late. You know, so I think if it was an isolated event that's kind of small and insignificant, that happened, you know, at 12 and I'm telling it 10 years later. Yeah, I, I guess I would agree with that. But since there's a lot of things that are going on around that it's hard to. I don't know. To me, it's a bigger deal.
Dan Vogel [02:35:27] Yeah.
Winston Dehlin [02:35:28] If it was just that he forgot his age or something and like. And that, like, you know, he said it was one age and then it was another, I wouldn't hunt. Like, that wouldn't be, like, super, like, damning, like, oh, that could never be true. He said he was 10, but he was 11, you know, but it's like there's a million. There's. It feels like there's so many things that are. That are wrong with the story that it's, like, hard to explain. And I really liked what Dan said about, like, the court of law. Like, if this was a court and this guy was a judge, like, are you, like, giving more credit to stories that are changing and, like, have errors because they're less thought out or something? Like, like, this is how you test your, Your logic and your biases to see if they work in the Real world. Because this logic of. Of this story changing gives it merit. It doesn't work at all in the real world.
John Dehlin [02:36:17] What about. This is kind of the big one. What about who visited him? Changing from the 1832 account where he just says, the Lord came to me. He literally just says, the Lord. And then by. By. By 1838, he's saying, God the Father appeared with his son. And one said, behold, you know, behold, this is my beloved son. Hear him. And then he introduces the Son. And then the son speaks. How. How catastrophic or damaging is that difference to you? Winston is kind of fresh eyes on this.
Winston Dehlin [02:36:54] I mean. I mean, that's pretty bad. I mean, again, like, I could explain it, you know, like, if I. If I really wanted to, you know.
Sandra Tanner [02:37:04] Yeah, well, to me, it's like if you are telling the story of these. The important people came to town today, and I was able to meet the vice president, and we had this great conversation. It was so wonderful to talk to him for a while. And then a few years later, you're telling the story to someone and you say, well, oh, yeah, I remember the day when the President of the United States and the vice president were there, and they came and talked with me, and I got to talk, and the president said, xyz, and then the vice president said, XYZ and all that. You would wonder, well, in your first telling, would you really forget to mention that the president was there and you would only mention the vice president? Yeah, I mean, it doesn't make sense. The creator of the universe who never shows up for anybody, but he's going to show up for you and introduce Jesus to you and. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that. Yeah, the Father was there as well. Yeah, sorry about that.
Winston Dehlin [02:38:06] I mean, it would have to be unclear, like, who was who. Like, you would have to have to, like, thought that it was like, oh, you know, it's like a bright light or something. And I thought it was, you know, this deity, but it's the other one.
Sandra Tanner [02:38:19] I can't imagine anything more astounding than to. If you would take this story literally. If you really believed the creator of the universe showed up and you forgot to mention him. That's a little hard for me.
Winston Dehlin [02:38:39] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:38:41] Okay. All right, well, I think we made that point. Let's. Let's go to the video.
▶ Video Clip 4Video Clip 4 [02:38:49] We were playing a game last week, and part of the game was you had to tell an embarrassing story from the past. And this girl started telling her story, and she finished. She goes, I forgot to say the embarrassing part. She had said the whole story, but forgot the one most important part. So then she went back and retold the story. And even though it was the same story two minutes apart from each other, there were more details the second time. There was a different perspective on the second time. And then she got to that important part. Likewise, Joseph Smith, some of these accounts, it's on the fly. He's I'm going to share this experience. And it was an incredible experience. Other times it is planned, thought out. He's thinking about the sentences he should say, he's thinking, like you said, he took out part of it when he went back the second time. And so some are planned where he's going to be able to think it through a little bit more. Some are just him talking to his friends.
Video Clip 4 [02:39:29] Professor Schachter calls the difference that you're noticing spontaneous memory. That's what Joseph does in 1835. And when Joseph does that, it moves faster and it's less freighted down by his concern about his limitations in writing. When he does what Professor Schacter calls strategic memory, that is today I'm going to write my past. He feels burdened by that. It's hard for him to do. He starts with a disclaimer both in the 1832 autobiography and the 183839 manuscript history. And so you're exactly right. This is human remembering. And, and it can be frustrating. People want to say, well, just tell me what happened. Just, just do the past. And when I started out in history, I thought that, that, that I could do that. I thought I can recover a perfect past. You just show me the primary sources and I'll show you exactly what happened. And along the way, wise people like Professor Bushman and others said, son, you cannot do that. And thinking you can do that is a cognitive distortion in itself. It's not a very well considered view. And this is how Dan Vogel's biography of Joseph Smith starts out. He says, since there are these multiple records over time, how certain can we be that Joseph remembered the vision that actually happened at the time? And his point there is clearly he can't. He didn't remember it as it happened. He made it up or he misremembered. And then the next thing Vogel says is, so I'm going to tell you what actually happened. I call that subjectivity squared. Right? If you think I can take Joseph's subjective accounts and turn them into an objective account, how, by what magic or miracle? You can't Professor Bushman teach this. You can only take Joseph's subjective accounts. And you can study them super carefully and well, and you can add your own subjectivity to it. You've just multiplied subjectivities. You haven't arrived at some perfect, pristine version. We can only approximate the past with the historical method. And then we have to decide, well, am I going to believe? Am I going to believe the gist of the. The. The idea that God called Joseph Smith, he visited him and. And forgave his sins and so forth. That's a matter not of historical proving or not proving. Historian lacks the tools to prove any of that. Beyond any kind of doubt, there'll always be doubt.
Video Clip 4 [02:41:39] Unless they have a time machine.
Video Clip 4 [02:41:40] Yeah, that'd be cool, wouldn't it?
Video Clip 4 [02:41:41] Wouldn't it?
Video Clip 4 [02:41:42] I. I would pay a lot for a magic school bus.
Video Clip 4 [02:41:44] But then. But then it wouldn't be hit.
John Dehlin [02:41:46] Okay, so, Dan, he invokes your name, so I got to give you a chance. And then I think Winston may have a comment as well. Anything you want to say to that?
Dan Vogel [02:41:54] Okay, so. So there's so much there. He mischaracterizes what I said in the introduction to my biography, because this is what I said. When Smith fails to mention foundational visions until years after the event, like Peter, James, and John, and gives conflicting and. And anachronistic accounts of them, like Moroni saying that Elijah would come with the priesthood. In the 1838 account, which he. In 1823, he's saying Elijah is going to come and restore the priesthood. Come on. How certain can one be that Joseph relates events as he experienced them at the time? Okay. So I'm questioning whether he experienced them or not. Okay. I don't think he experienced them. Okay. I am bouncing off of what Bushman said, okay. In his biography, his first. I think it's his first biography, Joe Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, which he is bouncing off of Robert F. Burkhoffer's A Behavioral Approach to the Book Historical Analysis. And Burkhofer, in his 1969 book, says that we should try to understand such experiences in the way in which the actors themselves understood them. Okay? He's not talking about supernatural events. He's just talking about your everyday stuff. Then Bushman says in his 1984 biography, My Method has been to relate events as the participants themselves experience them. Insofar as the revelations were told a reality to them. I have treated them as real in this narrative, which I. I don't have a problem if, if somebody had a vision, actual vision, okay, and had a religious experience and they described them, I Wouldn't be saying anything about it, you know, because I, I would just say, you know, I. Humans hallucinate, you know, so they, they have the ability to hallucinate. So I would just go with what they described. I wouldn't have to necessarily turn that into a naturalistic explanation every time. But. So I was bouncing off Bushman. So he's assuming that the participants have experienced these things, that Joseph Smith experienced the first vision or the angels and. Or whoever. So he assumes them. And I'm. He just says, I'm just gonna not be critical at all. I'm just going to describe the story as they described it and as we've been talking, which time? Which one are you going to choose to describe? So how can you describe the event, the first vision, as Joseph Smith experienced it, when he contradicted himself? Don't you need to address that as a historian? If you're going to be a critical historian, you can't just like, you know, brush that aside and just give some, you know, vanilla version of stuff.
John Dehlin [02:45:38] You know, the way the church is handling that in, in the modern era is to say they're all true. They're basically saying they're all true. They just each tell incomplete, a non full story. So what we do is we combine them all. Yeah. They've even produced videos in, in the past 5ish years that basically tell, tell an account as if all the versions are true. Right.
Dan Vogel [02:46:02] So you could theoretically get postmodern on us and start trying to talk about, you know, multiple truths and all that and, you know, what is truth and all that kind of stuff. But Bushman is proclaiming that he's going to describe it as they experienced it. How can you do that? You can't do that. You only can talk about the text, the narrative. That's all you can talk about. Right. And you can make the most. The most probable reconstruction, one that is the most defensible. Okay. Which is what we've been doing.
John Dehlin [02:46:42] Yeah, yeah. Winston, did you have a quick reaction?
Winston Dehlin [02:46:46] Oh, I just thought I was amused by the. You know, my friend forgot the punchline of a joke at a party. So it makes sense that Jesus would. Or that Joseph Smith would forget that he saw God.
John Dehlin [02:46:58] Why is that funny?
Winston Dehlin [02:47:00] Oh, you know, it's just. It's just. I feel like it's. They're very different scenarios.
John Dehlin [02:47:05] One's a glib, funny, superficial thing and the other is.
Winston Dehlin [02:47:10] Yeah. Something that you'd remember, you know.
Sandra Tanner [02:47:14] Well, at the start of his clip, he says, well, you know, some of the accounts were just off the cuff comments to friends. But then you have the ones that are the serious. Where you sit down and deliberately try to tell your story. And I'm thinking, yes, and the 32 count was one where he sat down and deliberately tried to write out his story. And the problem is that's the one that contradicts the later accounts. Yes. The middle one, the 32, 35 account, where he's just talking to somebody, you can say, oh yeah, he could make a mistake and misspeak on off the cuff account. But what do you do with the ones that are deliberately written out and
Gerardo Sumano [02:47:59] contradicting themselves and in his own handwriting? Yeah, yeah.
Winston Dehlin [02:48:04] I just get the sense that like you can grant the memory issues and you can grant that, you know, maybe he was writing a different, you know, he was, made a mistake when he was talking to someone. You can grant all of these like, you know, arguments they have and their story still doesn't make sense.
Sandra Tanner [02:48:21] Yeah, right.
John Dehlin [02:48:24] Yeah. Because God don't. God, Gods don't deliver books to people on golden plates. That's not how the world works, I don't think.
Dan Vogel [02:48:34] Well, a little more sense.
John Dehlin [02:48:39] Yeah,
Dan Vogel [02:48:42] Yeah.
Winston Dehlin [02:48:42] I mean, could he have at least like manufactured some golden plates instead of like having to make up like the lie that they disappeared, you know, make up gold plates?
Sandra Tanner [02:48:53] He couldn't afford it.
John Dehlin [02:48:54] Yeah, but Dan, do you think he manufactured like tin plates? Right.
Dan Vogel [02:48:59] Yes. And Ann Taves thinks he did make tin plates as the most probable explanation. And. But that somehow he believed that they transmuted, just like the Eucharist to the, in the Catholic church, transubstantiation believed that the templates that he made turn magically into gold plates.
Gerardo Sumano [02:49:25] But he knew he. They couldn't pass visual inspection, so that's why he would cover them.
Dan Vogel [02:49:32] My argument is that no one saw them uncovered, not even the eight witnesses.
Gerardo Sumano [02:49:37] Right.
Dan Vogel [02:49:37] The best analysis of their statements, all of their statements taken as a whole, a show that it was a visionary experience, but a physical experience with the touching through the, through the cloth in the box some way. And, and I use Martin Harris as one example. I mean, John Whitmer said they were shown to us by a supernatural power. That doesn't sound like the plate sitting on a log to me. So Martin Harris said that they didn't see them with their natural eyes, implying that it was a spiritual eyes that they saw them with. But how? Well, Harris goes on to say, according to Stephen Burnett's 1838 letter, that Harris went on to say in public, a public meeting, any of the eight witnesses that were alive could challenge him. And he said ice. He saw them many times. He told Joel Tiffany in 1859 the same thing. I saw them many times where they were in. Wrapped in a cloth, sitting on my knee. That's what he told Joel Tiffany. Then he told the public in 1838 in Kirtland that he saw. He saw the plates as you see a city through a mountain with the eye of the imagination. And so I think that's. That is what he, he is saying that the eight witnesses, how they experienced it.
Winston Dehlin [02:51:29] Right.
Dan Vogel [02:51:29] And that's why the eight witnesses weren't highlighted in, in the 1830s or 40s. You know, they weren't highlighted. It was the three witnesses because they saw an angel and the plates, and the eight witnesses only saw them spiritually.
John Dehlin [02:51:45] Interesting, isn't it? Just like on its face. Ridiculous. I've got the plates. God gave it to me through an angel. But you can't see them.
Dan Vogel [02:51:54] You're right.
John Dehlin [02:51:57] Yeah.
Sandra Tanner [02:51:58] Yeah. Well, you read the statement of the three witnesses, and it's obviously a supernatural vision experience. It's not literally setting the plates out on the table for them to look at because they have to go out and pray about this. And Martin doesn't get the vision and has to separate from David and Oliver for them to have the vision of the plates. And then later Joseph meets with Martin Harris and they pray together. And then Joseph recounts that the same vision was opened to him and Martin as had been open to Oliver and David. Then we aren't talking about people seeing a real object. We're talking about a hallucination. Vision, dream, experience, not reality.
Dan Vogel [02:52:49] Yeah, well, I don't try to decide whether the vision was real or not. I don't get in. I try to avoid that metaphysical argument.
Sandra Tanner [02:53:01] Vision were true. The point is they didn't physically sit on the table.
Dan Vogel [02:53:06] No, but my, my answer to that is that to decide whether the vision was real or not was a hallucination because you can't tell the difference. People who hallucinate think it's real. You know, so. And, and you know, God would communicate with us that way is kind of strange when he knows that humans hallucinate. But. So the way to decide whether it's a real one or not is whether the Book of Mormon's history. If the Book of Mormon's not a true history, then. Then there were no Nephites and there were no plates. And Moroni couldn't appear to the three witnesses because he didn't exist.
Sandra Tanner [02:53:51] Right. Very good.
John Dehlin [02:53:53] Well said, dude. All right, let's go to the video history then.
Guest [02:53:58] It'd just be like journalism, because you're actually seeing it. You're right there with it.
The Physical Nature of God and the Vision
Steven Harper [02:54:01] Yeah. And I'm not entirely positive that if I were there in the woods of western New York on that spring morning, that I would see what he saw. I might be standing right next to him and not invited Right. To the vision. I don't know.
Guest [02:54:11] As were many of the visions that Joseph Smith had.
Steven Harper [02:54:13] Certainly in February, 1832, he and Rigdon were privy to a series of visions that people standing in the room with them.
Guest [02:54:18] Right.
Steven Harper [02:54:19] Did not see.
Winston Dehlin [02:54:19] Right.
Guest [02:54:20] There's an incredible book.
Dan Vogel [02:54:21] What?
John Dehlin [02:54:22] Hurray. Do you think that's significant?
Sandra Tanner [02:54:23] Why?
John Dehlin [02:54:23] Yeah, why?
Gerardo Sumano [02:54:24] Because he's talking about. He's admitting it was not a visitation.
Dan Vogel [02:54:28] Probably like it was not a natural, supernatural.
Gerardo Sumano [02:54:33] Right.
Dan Vogel [02:54:35] Richard Anderson called it a natural supernatural experience. Meaning the angel came down right. In the woods. He was there physically before the witnesses.
John Dehlin [02:54:46] That's a really good point.
Dan Vogel [02:54:47] If plates were there and the table was there and all the other objects were actually there. That's what Richard Anderson tried to argue. But David Whitworth Whitmer made it very clear that he. And he was questioned by James Moyle, who was a young man. I forget the day. 1850s. I can't remember the. The date of it. But James Henry Moyle was in law school, and he was coming back to Utah, and he stopped by and interviewed David Whitmer, and he questioned him specifically. This is where the answers you get from the witnesses is as good as the person doing the interview, you know, because he asked him specifically, was it material? You know, because in other accounts. Oh, yeah, it was solid as this and that. But James here in your Moyo went away. He wrote in his diary at the time, and he's published other statements saying that he was disappointed in the answer because it wasn't. It was more spiritual than I had anticipated. And he said. He described something like a soft haze, you know, seeing it in a soft haze. So it was a. It was an experience that was not in the environment, but superimposed on the environment.
Gerardo Sumano [02:56:23] Yeah.
Dan Vogel [02:56:23] The haze is part of the. What researchers would call part of the vision. The light. If he appears in a light. Well, the light is. Is the vision part of it superimposed on the natural world? Not part of the natural world.
Guest [02:56:41] Yeah.
Dan Vogel [02:56:41] So that. That's the testimony a lot of the apologists don't want to highlight.
John Dehlin [02:56:47] Yeah. And Gerardo, you really made it audible. Almost gas said that. And I. I think it's actually, it's a smoking gun for this entire conversation, in my view and the way I was taught Mormonism. Because what's one of the, you know, what are some of the distinguishing features of. Of modern Mormonism? One is that God and Jesus are two separate beings and are, you know, with bodies. But obviously one is that they're not a trinity, all three, but one. One but three, but that they're two separate beings, that Jesus is literally the son of God with God coming down and somehow impregnating Mary. And a baby comes out and that's Jesus. And then when Jesus grows up, gets killed and is resurrected, he's up there in heaven as a separate physical body. That's the second part. With 10 fingers, 10 toes, his own beard, like full anatomy. But that also that God has a full human anatomy like Jesus. So they're physical beings appearing to Joseph Smith in the Grove in 1830, you know, the year 1838 version. And if that's true, and that is Mormon theology and doctrine, the whole temple ceremony is based on this, then why in the world would Stephen Harper say that if I were there in the Grove and God and Jesus appeared with their 10 fingers and 10 toes and beards and full body, that he wouldn't see anything? That makes no Mormon sense to me at all. It's an admission that there's something wrong with this story, in my view. Am I over blowing that? I think you're right.
Sandra Tanner [02:58:32] Well, but I can see how the apologist would say, well, yeah, you wouldn't see it because you're an unbeliever.
John Dehlin [02:58:41] No, but it's a physical body. That's the whole point. It's not a vision. It's two physical bodies appearing above Joseph.
Sandra Tanner [02:58:49] The telling of the story as they appear in a glorious light. And so that puts it in the framework of a heavenly visitation, not just two guys physically standing next to you.
John Dehlin [02:59:02] I mean, I. So like God is physical. So God and Jesus. Let me try and make this. Make sense of this, Sandra. It's fun that you're playing the role of the apologist and the believer and I'm the skeptic.
Sandra Tanner [02:59:13] Yeah. What time do you want to argue?
John Dehlin [02:59:17] No. So somehow God and Jesus have physical bodies, bones, flesh bones, celestial blood, all the anatomy, 10 fingers, 10 toes. But when they actually appear to Joseph in a physical place, in a grove where Joseph's there and they're there, that somehow they're going to say, well, we're going to make it so we disappear to the natural human eye and only Joseph's going to see us because we've got some sort of. It's almost like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter invisibility cloak where they're like. They're physical beings, but they're wearing. What's the cloak in Harry Potter? Winston. The one that makes Harry Potter invisible?
Winston Dehlin [03:00:01] Invisibility cloak.
John Dehlin [03:00:02] Okay, so they're physical bodies, but they're wearing some invisibility cloak so that you can only see them if you're a name Joseph Smith or B of the Eye of Faith. But that Stephen Harper, if he had been there, wouldn't be able to see them at all. I mean, this is really starting to strain credibility.
Sandra Tanner [03:00:20] John, John, wait.
John Dehlin [03:00:22] Don't I have a little faith?
Guest [03:00:24] You.
Sandra Tanner [03:00:24] You just have not prayed about this. If you had asked sincerely, with real
Gerardo Sumano [03:00:29] intent, I thought about it as, like, start, but to me, he's thinking more about it as like, this Star wars, you know, like where they communicate with other people. Where. What? What?
John Dehlin [03:00:42] I don't know. Jedi. Jedi mind sort of communication.
Gerardo Sumano [03:00:45] Yeah, that kind of stuff.
John Dehlin [03:00:47] So they're not actually speaking with their layer, their voice. They have mouths. God and Jesus have mouths.
Gerardo Sumano [03:00:52] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:00:53] They have vocal cords like the resurrection was real. So they've got all these physical bodies. They just hide them and don't use them whenever they want to appear to somebody.
Sandra Tanner [03:01:02] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:01:03] Is that right? So why do they have them? Like, what's the point?
Gerardo Sumano [03:01:08] Or like a call, you know, like a virtual call. Like they're in call up and then they're like. Like appearing.
John Dehlin [03:01:14] They're like holograms.
Gerardo Sumano [03:01:16] Yeah, like holograms.
John Dehlin [03:01:17] So they're. They're actually not physically there. They're projecting. They're.
Dan Vogel [03:01:21] They're.
John Dehlin [03:01:22] They're casting forth projections as holograms in Joseph's mind, but they don't know they're there. They're just his mind.
Gerardo Sumano [03:01:28] Yeah. Because then Stephen Harper couldn't see it, so he has to be in Joseph's mind.
Winston Dehlin [03:01:33] Basically, God has a physical body, but he decided that it was better, you know, to just make it like, you know, a vision. Yes. Hallucination. Why?
John Dehlin [03:01:47] Why? But why have the body if you're not going to use the body? Why have it? Right. If you're going to hide it, why have it? What's the point?
Gerardo Sumano [03:01:55] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:01:56] And then what's. How is it a special thing? Why didn't Joseph just say, like, that's the thing they want. The church wants their cake and eat it too. Or in the 1838 version, he wants his cake and he wants to eat it too? Because he's saying God and Jesus appeared to him. He's not saying I had a dream and in my dream I saw God in Jesus. He's saying I knelt down in a forest in a physical place and I prayed and I looked up. Like, why is he looking up? He could be asleep. Like, why does he need to look up? If it's, if they're just nowhere and they're just in his mind, so then God's projecting an image such that he would look up. That almost makes God a deceiver.
Winston Dehlin [03:02:38] Right?
John Dehlin [03:02:38] If God's not really there, but he's making Joseph look up as if he actually is there.
Sandra Tanner [03:02:43] Almost like television. You're looking at the screen.
John Dehlin [03:02:48] Yeah, it's like these dudes in blue screen who are pretending that they're fighting Thanos, but really they're, they're wearing little skin tight exercise joggers, you know, miming in front of a blue screen. But they notice is it actually there? But they're pretending like he is. Like it just seems.
Sandra Tanner [03:03:06] But that's unbelievable. That's why the historian has to deal with just what the accounts say. We can't determine whether or not there was a vision happening in that grove, but we can examine all of the data that we have about the event to try to determine what happened. That we can conclude from the records that we do have.
John Dehlin [03:03:31] But I'm more interested in why Stephen Harper would feel compelled to say that if he were there, he wouldn't see anything. Like, that's interesting. Isn't that interesting?
Winston Dehlin [03:03:40] I don't know. To me it's like it's compared to the other mental gymnastics. It's not that much, you know, to just say that God would do it like a hallucination instead, like there, we're talking about some, you know, there are some pretty serious, you know, like.
Sandra Tanner [03:03:57] Well, you're getting into the metaphysics.
Gerardo Sumano [03:04:00] To me, it just shows that he doesn't believe it the way that most Mormons would believe the vision happened.
John Dehlin [03:04:05] Yeah, but once you're there, once you have adopted, once you're like an employee of the church, an official church historian, you're teaching students at byu and then you believe a completely different narrative. Then you know, the church has taught everyone for a long, long time, including when their missionaries are going out and bringing people into the church, like you have it is it isn't there some point where you have an ethical duty to not just tell a little limited audience on a YouTube channel where you know, they're going to be people who are questioning or doubting may watch. Like, if you believe a narrative fundamentally different than the prevailing narrative that the church is telling everyone, there's an ethical problem or obligation there, in my view.
Winston Dehlin [03:04:50] I think I. I was wondering if what, like, what he was trying to say is just that it wasn't an important detail to him. Like, doesn't matter how he showed up, but it does go against like the. Like, there's definitely like a narrative that they're trying to make it seem like a physical body.
John Dehlin [03:05:06] My point is there is no more important detail than whether two physical bodies showed up that day.
Gerardo Sumano [03:05:11] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:05:12] Is there a more important detail? In all of Mormonism, we were all
Sandra Tanner [03:05:16] raised to view that as evidence that God had a physical form that was given to us. As one of the purposes of the vision was for us to know that the Father has a physical form.
Gerardo Sumano [03:05:31] Right?
John Dehlin [03:05:31] That's the whole reason we were sent to earth. The whole plan of salvation is we were spirits before we came to earth. Then we were sent to earth. Why? Why, Gerardo? Why were we sent to earth? Sandra, why were we sent to earth? To get our bodies to have a body. So then we were sent to earth to have a body so that when we were resurrected and appeared to people, we could hide the fact that we actually have a body and make it obscure and questionable. That's just weird.
Winston Dehlin [03:05:57] I just want to know, like, what did Joseph Smith do that he gets to be the one that gets to know for sure, but everybody else, like, we intentionally take away all evidence so that we all have to be able to like, believe without any evidence, like for us to be able to be saved. But he just gets to do it, like for, you know, he gets all the evidence.
Sandra Tanner [03:06:16] Well, I have to tell you my little kid's story. As a young Mormon, as a child praying, I was so sure that all of this was literal, that if, if 14 year olds prayed that you could get a real vision, real stuff happened, that I would pray at night. God, I need the, you know, XYZ precept. Keep my puppy from dying, whatever, but don't send an angel. I don't want anyone to show up because that does scare me to death. Because I assume from my teaching, I assumed this stuff literally happened, that if a young person prayed, God could show up. And it terrified me. So it's kind of funny when Mormons say, well, you didn't really believe, man, I believe so much that I didn't dare pray for fear I was going to get a vision and I was scared of the dark. I didn't want anyone showing up.
Gerardo Sumano [03:07:20] Does Dan have any?
Sandra Tanner [03:07:22] No, I was just going to say, but it all was presented to us as a very literal experience is the point.
John Dehlin [03:07:30] That is the point is that in Mormonism, God and Jesus have physical bodies and that they physically appear to Joseph Smith. So for me, that's a major concession and it makes me feel good about our title, which is basically Mormon historian admits first vision problems raised in the CES letter. Right.
Gerardo Sumano [03:07:49] Wait, well, he already said it's 50 50, right?
John Dehlin [03:07:54] Yeah. You were gonna stand if he had any comments on this.
Gerardo Sumano [03:07:57] Yeah, well, just like if he has. If you have any ideas, Dan, of why he would be compelled to say something like this.
Dan Vogel [03:08:07] Joseph Smith.
John Dehlin [03:08:10] Why is Harper.
Dan Vogel [03:08:11] Harper. Okay, why would he say I have no problems with what Harper said about those without spiritual eyes would not see even a physical being? I mean, so that's just a metaphysic deal. Who knows? Nobody has any first hand knowledge of this stuff.
Gerardo Sumano [03:08:33] Yeah.
Dan Vogel [03:08:34] So they can do anything. I would only add that the Father having a physical body didn't come to Joseph smith until the 1840s in Nauvoo. So the question is how, how did Joseph Smith understand even what, even though it didn't happen, how did he understand or want his followers to understand how he saw Jesus and, and the Father? So I, I would refer you to the Doctrine and Covenants at the time had the lectures on faith. Right. And the fifth lecture on faith said that the Father is a personage of spirit and the Son is a personage of tabernacle and that they're joined by the same mind. So it doesn't say the Father has a, is a personage of spirit and flesh. And it doesn't say the Son is a personage of tabernacle and spirit. You see where I'm going? So you know, in the Book of Mormon there's that modalism, right, where the Father actually comes down. Jesus is both the Father and the Son. The Father. This is Mosiah, chapter 15. The mosa the. He's the Father. Jesus is the Father because of the spirit and the Son because of the flesh. So, and they both have. And the, there's the will. Both of them have the will. The, the will of the Son is swallowed up in the will of the Father. Well, all this is talking about is that the, the Father is separate than the Son. The Son is just the flesh. The flesh has a will of its own. And it's like, just like us, supposedly. Supposedly. And we're supposed to submit the will of the flesh. To the will of the Spirit. Right. So you can have Jesus has the, the mind of the Father, he's filled with the spirit of the Father, and he. In this mo. This type of modalism, the Father can appear as a spirit and the Son can appear as the flesh. And they're, they're the same person, really. So I'm suggesting that Even though there's two, and even in DNC 76, they saw the, the sun on the right hand or the glory of the Son on the right hand of the Father. And in the 1832 account, he says, I am the Lord of glory. Right. Which means that he has the body and he was glorified in being resurrected. He's the Lord of glory. So even though the Mormons like to read the 1838 account as oh, that proves that the Father and Son are separate. It doesn't really.
John Dehlin [03:12:03] Good point. Thank you, Dan. I'll just say one final thing. It is absolutely true. Two things are absolutely true. Tell me if I'm wrong, Sandra and Dan. One is that the lectures on faith paint a very different picture about the nature of God and Jesus than the 1838 account of the first vision. Is that correct?
Lectures on Faith and Joseph's Evolving Theology
Sandra Tanner [03:12:26] Yes.
John Dehlin [03:12:27] Second is that the lectures on faith used to be part of the Mormon scriptural canon. Correct?
Sandra Tanner [03:12:34] Yes.
John Dehlin [03:12:35] And the third part is what, Sandra?
Sandra Tanner [03:12:38] I don't know. Where are you going?
John Dehlin [03:12:39] That they were removed. They were conveniently removed from the scriptural canon.
Sandra Tanner [03:12:43] And part of the reason they're removed is because they had a confusing view of God. Yeah, the leaders saw it as being confusing.
John Dehlin [03:12:52] Right?
Dan Vogel [03:12:52] Well, they were the part that says doctrine.
John Dehlin [03:12:57] Right. That was the doctrine of the Doctrine
Sandra Tanner [03:12:59] and Covenants and Lectures on Faith.
John Dehlin [03:13:01] Yeah. Right. But they were removed because they represented Joseph's view of the Godhead at the time he was 1935. Right? Yeah. And so again, they remove. They conveniently just yank out the doctrine out of the Doctrine and Covenants as yet another evidence of Joseph's both evolving view of, you know, of, of God, of the Godhead, but also of the church's willingness to brazenly, you know, change his history or, or change or alter or destroy, you know, inconvenient past beliefs that are conflicting. All right, let's, let's keep going with the video. We're actually kind of getting closer to the end.
Guest [03:13:47] And this is a little bit of a tangent by Carl Ricks Anderson, Savior in Kirtland. And he talks about how they're secondary visions where the person isn't experiencing the vision, but they're seeing People having the vision. And for one of the accounts, the woman's like, I know that they were having a vision because they were bright, they were illuminated, even though I couldn't see the vision they were having, which is just incredible to me. It's pretty cool. Sorry, that's a tangent. But the last thing I'd like to talk about today, and to me, I think that this is one of the biggest concerns I know many people have is late appearances of the first vision. So before we dive into why that might be, I want to first ask Joseph Smith has his first vision. Boom. Well, who does he tell immediately after? And. And I do this test with my friends, my roommates, often, and they're immediately like, well, he went and told his dad. They're thinking about the story of Moroni coming. They say he goes and tells his mom. Because he goes and tells his mom. She says, what's the matter? He says, well, I just know Presbyterianism isn't true. We don't know if he tells her the whole first vision. Likely he didn't. Unless you want to correct me if
Steven Harper [03:14:46] I'm wrong, I think it's likely that he didn't. Yeah.
Guest [03:14:49] But long story short, he didn't tell these people. So who all did he tell? And why didn't you tell more people?
Steven Harper [03:14:54] Terrific question. So I'm going to answer it with precision. I'm going to do what we invite everyone to do. Think slow, right? So you know how you know what you know what you're asking me what do I know about who Joseph told and how do I know it? Well, what I know. We want you.
Dan Vogel [03:15:06] You.
Steven Harper [03:15:07] I hear this all the time, but everybody out there listen super carefully. I don't know who he tells and when he tells. What I know is what the historical records say about that. And what they say about that is that the earliest account of the vision, 1832, history says I could find no one who would believe the heavenly vision. He does not say who he tried to find, who he told, just I could find no one. We have nothing else in the historical record from Joseph about who he told until we get to the manuscript history when he says, some few days after this vision, I happen to be in company with a Methodist minister who was influential in the aforementioned religious excitement. I took the occasion to tell him of the vision, and he responded with great contempt, saying, it's all of the devil. That is all historical record says about who Joseph tells and went. Now, as a careful thinking person, will limit themselves to that. They will not pretend to know anything other than that about who he tells. A not carefully thinking person will say, well, of course he tells his mom and dad. Of course he tells everybody else.
Guest [03:16:07] To which they do some presentism. If this happened to me, I go and tell my family. So I wouldn't just Smith tell his family.
Steven Harper [03:16:12] Exactly. And I call that as, you know, hypothetical history. If this happened to me, this is how it would have gone down. To which I say, how do you
Guest [03:16:18] know it didn't happen to you?
John Dehlin [03:16:20] Yeah.
Steven Harper [03:16:20] You don't know what you would do if you were Joseph and in that environment. And in those circumstances, you don't even know what you would do or I would do. Right. It's nothing more than my imagination about what would happen. If that's a terrible, terrible, terrible way to find out what actually happened in the past, it sets you up for being devastated because your knowledge is your imagination. And then you compare. Finally you get around to the historical records and you find they don't confirm your imagination. And you think the history never happened the way you knew it happened. All you did is thought too fast and too lazily and. And were devastated. That what you assumed is not a sound assumption. Well, people who think slower and more carefully don't have that problem. And people who are taught the historical record the way I was taught it by Professor Backman and taught interpretation of the historical record the way I've been taught it by Professor Allen or Professor Bushman, they don't have that trouble. It's another way to say this is. It's not people who know too much about the first vision who disbelieve it. It's people who think they know more than they do.
Winston Dehlin [03:17:22] Right.
Steven Harper [03:17:23] About the first vision.
Dan Vogel [03:17:24] Yeah.
Guest [03:17:25] And I think the most.
John Dehlin [03:17:27] All right, I just got to check in on that. So, Winston, I want to sanity check that. He's basically saying it's. It's ridiculous to expect anything. Once you find out that, you know, Joseph had this vision, that that's just. It's off, off limits to expect any behavior because none of us would know what we would do, let alone what Joseph would do. What do you think about that argument?
Winston Dehlin [03:17:53] I mean, it would be weird if he didn't tell anyone, but it's not impossible.
John Dehlin [03:18:00] Okay.
Winston Dehlin [03:18:01] I don't know. What do you guys think?
Dan Vogel [03:18:03] Well, I think that I'm with Winston.
Sandra Tanner [03:18:08] Well, let's think about this a minute. Okay. We don't have cooperating accounts of Joseph telling within three days or so of this vision, a minister about the experience. If we're going to talk about recovered memories that you intermingle with what really happened or whatever. Are there accounts of his having problems with ministers or church leaders? And I would say yes. And I think this is one of those memories that he has pulled out to put in a different place in his story. Because in 28, 1828, when he tries to join the Methodists and he signs up for their class for the period of training you would take before membership to be sure that you have been converted, his name is on the records for a period of time. But then the people that ran the class who were, I think Emma's cousins, the Heils, they say we wouldn't let him join because of his necromancy. We did not think it was proper to have a necromancer as a member of the church. Now it's a late recollection, but we have that late account challenged by another man from the class who says, well, his name was only on the class roll for a few days. It wasn't on there for a long period of time. Joseph took it off voluntarily. So you have different members of the class arguing about how long his name stood on their records, not whether or not the class was there, not whether or not Joseph attended the class and not arguing over whether or not there was a problem with him joining. Everybody knows he didn't join so why didn't he join? The fellows running the class said we wouldn't let him join because of his magic involvement which they saw as a work of ill repute amongst the Christian community. We didn't think it right to have a necromancer in the church. So I see Joseph as a taking that effrontery from those men and moving it into his first vision story to make it after his first vision account rather than being rejected by the clergy because of his money digging.
John Dehlin [03:21:00] Dan, is it ridiculous, is it presumptive and bad history and even ridiculous to assume that he would tell anyone for 12 years?
Dan Vogel [03:21:14] Well, we should all at least acknowledge that it is strange if he didn't. So maybe he didn't tell anyone. So that's a problem. I mean in court of law
Guest [03:21:32] if
Dan Vogel [03:21:32] you were testifying and then you said in your testifying, testifying about something that happened in the past to bring someone forward that heard you talk about it in the past rather than making it up to impugn somebody in the present, right? I'm thinking, let's say sexual impropriety recently in some test testimony against certain politicians or justices and they go, well, did you tell anybody at the time? That would help us, you know, believe what you say. You know, you're making it up now because you don't like this person. Right. So that would help, but we don't have it. So that's a problem for his credibility, you know, so. But Sandra is saying that, you know, the minister that he told and the minister. What did the minister say in the 1838 history? It's very odd. It's an odd statement.
Sandra Tanner [03:22:43] So according to Smithy, no visions today.
Dan Vogel [03:22:47] You're right. There's no more revelation. Right. There's no more revelation now, given God doesn't give revelations anymore, which is really weird for a Methodist to say since they're in the revivals, people are speaking in tongues and seeing into heaven, having heavenly visions. But to say God gives no more revelations nowadays, well, it sounds to me like Joseph didn't tell him about the first vision. He told him about the Book of Mormon, about the plates, about the necromancy.
Sandra Tanner [03:23:24] Yeah.
Dan Vogel [03:23:25] Right. So. But Sandra's idea that he may have actually experienced that in 1828 would be. That's kind of an interesting idea. I have wondered if it was just Willard Richards. I mean, really. Willard Chase. Excuse me? Willard Chase was a Methodist clergy, according to later census records, and a Methodist clergy. Minister or clergy. And maybe. I doubt if he's actually talking to one of the, Like Reverend George Lane, you know, it. But I do think it was probably during the 1824, 25 revival that he's talking to this minister and mentions the plates and then he gets the answer. Well, God doesn't give revelations. That makes sense.
Gerardo Sumano [03:24:25] Yeah. You know, there can't be more.
Dan Vogel [03:24:27] No more Bible, no more revelation. So that's how I've suggested that was. This is an interpretation that, to me, seems to make more sense than the story that Joseph actually told.
Sandra Tanner [03:24:45] Right. Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:24:47] Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, we're getting close to the end. Let's go ahead and play the final few minutes.
Guest [03:24:55] Important thing that I would say, at least that I'm getting out of today is go and study the primary accounts for yourself and then triangulate it with the spirit.
Steven Harper [03:25:04] Right.
Guest [03:25:04] Allow God to tell you what is the truth. Allow Joseph Smith himself to tell you what is the truth. And then let's test. Let's. Let's go into it. Let's read the. Why are there these differences? How can I work through these. But I'm here to testify that the first vision happened. I think you, who have studied it more than just about anybody we could get, would testify that it happened.
Steven Harper [03:25:22] I testify that it happened.
Guest [03:25:24] But it only comes by your personal study. It doesn't matter what you say. It doesn't matter what I say.
Steven Harper [03:25:27] That's right.
Guest [03:25:28] It matters what God says to you as you study it.
Steven Harper [03:25:30] Yeah, it's a, it's a fallacious or an error. An error for me to try to tell people you should believe it because I'm an authority and I believe it. I don't. That's not what I'm saying to anyone.
Sandra Tanner [03:25:40] Right.
Steven Harper [03:25:40] I'm saying I've done a lot of work on this, a lot of work, and I believe it. And I'm offering that as an invitation to anyone else to do that work themselves. And I don't know that they'll arrive at the same conclusion I have, but I know that they can't tell me that I don't know what I know. I'm inviting them to have the same wonderful experience that I've had. I hope they do. And you know, that's what, that's all I'm asking for.
Guest [03:26:05] And if they do not, it doesn't discount what you have experienced.
Steven Harper [03:26:08] That's exactly right. That's exactly right. I mean, think of it. Somebody's going to get on my case for bearing my witness. Well, the critics are bearing their witness. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt the first vision didn't happen. And you know my question, right? How do you know? How do you know? They, they've got to make a case that is similar to mine. Well, I've studied the historical record, so I doubt you've studied them more than I have. Well, I know there's no spiritual witness. I know there's no revelation. How do you know? How do you know? How can you prove a negative that there's no spiritual witness? There's no revelation.
Dan Vogel [03:26:38] Right.
Steven Harper [03:26:38] So I feel confident in my own epistemology, my own way of knowing which it combines hard headed historical methodology trained by the very finest scholars whom the academy has recognized as the finest scholars. Not they didn't get an award from, from the church, they've been awarded and recognized by their peers. And I've learned from them not only how to think carefully about historical records, but I've also learned from them and from Joseph himself, above all, how to ask in faith and seek and receive.
Guest [03:27:07] Right.
Steven Harper [03:27:08] It works. It works.
Closing Thoughts and Final Reflections
Guest [03:27:09] Steven, do you have anything to add before we conclude?
John Dehlin [03:27:12] All right, so that, I mean, he kind of threw down the gauntlet there, you know, he's basically admitting that we shouldn't. I mean, that was good. He admitted that we shouldn't believe him just because he has credentials and, you know, is a scholar and has studied stuff, but he's basically, you know, holding himself up, is saying, you can know all this stuff and still believe. So believe if you want.
Dan Vogel [03:27:40] I don't know.
John Dehlin [03:27:41] What'd you guys think of that little.
Gerardo Sumano [03:27:42] He also testified that. He said. I testified the vision happened, but then also said that if he was there, he wouldn't see it. So that's interesting.
Sandra Tanner [03:27:52] Well, he wants to make an appeal to history on the one hand, but then turn right around and say, but besides that, I have this spiritual confirmation that it's true. But if the historical evidence shows a confusion of the story to the point of wondering what really happened and when it was supposed to have happened, then how sure could we be that if we got a positive feeling that that would be trustworthy? I. I don't know how you have a checks and balance in the system when the spiritual experience obviously over shadows anything of the facts, triangulate it with
Winston Dehlin [03:28:35] how you're feeling while. While you're reading it. Yeah, and he's putting this like. Like, I believe without a shadow of a doubt, doubt like language on us. Like, I would never use that language talking about anything. Like, what secular skeptic would ever say that they know that Joseph Smith didn't have a vision without a shadow of doubt? Nobody would. Religious people talk like that.
John Dehlin [03:29:00] He was. Yeah, he was basically thinking of you, Sandra, and you, Dan. Y' all start, y'. All. Sandra, he's saying you would bear your testimony that, you know, Joseph Smith didn't have a vision. That's what he was basically putting on you.
Sandra Tanner [03:29:14] Well, he's not just saying that. He's saying we start from a premise there couldn't have been a vision. I'm not saying there couldn't have been a vision. I'm saying all the facts that he's given about it don't add up.
Winston Dehlin [03:29:27] They don't make any sense.
Sandra Tanner [03:29:28] So that I have a credibility problem accepting his story. Not that I can't accept anyone could have a vision.
John Dehlin [03:29:35] You're a believer in visions in Christ?
Sandra Tanner [03:29:37] I believe in. Yes, I believe in Christianity. I'm not saying he couldn't have had a vision, but what are the historical evidences to back up his story? And they don't add up.
John Dehlin [03:29:49] Dan, what do you think about the allegation that you would bear your testimony that Joseph Smith never had the first vision? What do you think about that sort of allegation to discredit you as someone who. But you Know, can prove a negative. Basically,
Dan Vogel [03:30:08] well, gee, where do I go? I, so, you know, I, I'm a naturalist. I don't believe in the supernatural. And, But I wouldn't say the supernatural doesn't exist. This is what I wrote in the introduction to my biography that he referred to that I would never say the supernatural doesn't exist. I only say that there it. The evidence upon which it rests. There's no evidence for it existing. So
John Dehlin [03:30:47] it kind of.
Dan Vogel [03:30:48] I only go according to the evidence. And, and, and of course, you know, there might still be ev. Things. Claims that I don't know about. I could only go according to what is presented in that extraordinary things require extraordinary evidence kind of thing. I'm not even asking that, actually. So I'm just asking for some consistency, some credibility. Joseph Smith doesn't have any credibility. He's. He's blown his credibility so many ways.
John Dehlin [03:31:23] Joseph or Harper?
Dan Vogel [03:31:27] Well, Joseph, but Harper. Now, I realize he's a religious guy and he has. Welcome to his religion. But if you should at least admit. If just, if you just look at it as a historian and historians can't prove that there's no supernatural is. We just don't have those kind of tools. But you should at least admit, like I said to Backman all those years ago, that you should at least admit that Wes Walters won this debate so far. I mean, you need better arguments, better evidence. That's what I was asking for when I was still a believer in, in my early 20s. We need to work on this a little harder. And then I, then I, when I, as a young man, I saw the apologetic, very weak, flimsy, you know, bs, you know, oh, it's not, it's not the whole Americas. It's this little tiny geography thing that, that didn't fly with me as a young Mormon. I knew they were, you know, blowing smoke, you know, and the same thing with the first vision. Bushmen, Backman, they were just building apologetic devices to get out of trouble, you know, but the trouble was still there. Their devices don't work. It's a fairy tale. You know, what they, they spin every time to try to get, you know, the DNA. You know, it's one excuse after another of why they don't have evidence or why the evidence is really bad for Joseph Smith in his first vision. You know, I, I don't say that somebody else, somebody else's vision isn't true necessarily. I'm a naturalist, of course, I, I don't believe we have to go outside the natural world to explain what happens in it?
John Dehlin [03:33:32] Yeah, yeah. Well, I feel like he was throwing down a straw man and an ad hominem at the same time, which, yeah, takes quite a bit of skill because he was basically claiming that you all denied something that you don't deny and then using that to make it sound like you. You go beyond the bounds of what's ethical or proper as a human being and as a historian, you know, he was, he was characterizing a position that you don't have, propping it up to then knock it down and dismiss you as unethical historians, I think.
Sandra Tanner [03:34:06] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:34:06] Yeah.
Sandra Tanner [03:34:07] Yes.
John Dehlin [03:34:08] All right, well, final concluding thoughts. I think we made it through the video three and a half hours to do a 45 minute video that's. That's on Brand, right, Sandra?
Sandra Tanner [03:34:18] Yeah. Right.
Gerardo Sumano [03:34:19] We play the entire video.
John Dehlin [03:34:20] What?
Gerardo Sumano [03:34:20] We played the entire.
John Dehlin [03:34:21] We played the entire video except for like the last minute.
Gerardo Sumano [03:34:24] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:34:24] I'm gonna give each of you a chance to give your final concluding thoughts. So, Winston, just to put you on the spot, final thoughts for today. Welcome to Mormon Stories. It's been fun to have you. I think the audience is going to say you performed exceptionally well as a 20 year old who has studied Mormonism. Almost none. But what do you have to. What do you have to say for conclusion?
Dan Vogel [03:34:50] Lucky him.
Winston Dehlin [03:34:54] My concluding thoughts are, I guess, just that it's, you know, an interesting discussion about the consistency of Joseph Smith's story. And even if Joseph Smith's story was extremely consistent, I still wouldn't believe in it.
John Dehlin [03:35:13] All right, Gerardo, you're next.
Gerardo Sumano [03:35:17] I'll just say that the videos that Dan Bogle has put out on the first vision, they're a couple years old, but they're still really good. And he engages with Stephen Harper's arguments at the time and he and Michael Quinn and all the apologists. So it's. They're really good. There are three of them, so I recommend anyone to go watch them because there's a lot there that we didn't talk about. Like the model is modelist view that Joseph Smith would have had of the. Of the Trinity.
John Dehlin [03:35:54] All right, so shout out to Dan. So it's a segue to you, Dan. Final thoughts.
Dan Vogel [03:35:59] Thank you, Gerardo. Well, I will not bear my testimony that the first vision is not true. But I'll say the evidence is, as we explained here, that the 1832, 1838 account are vastly different from one another. It. Joseph Smith has a credibility problem with that. The West Walters was right about the revival not occurring in 1820. They've done nothing to change that. They've just tried to make an excuse to get around it, and they haven't. They've missed an opportunity to be real historians. Real historians, and, you know, analyze the data and what it means when Joseph Smith, you know, added the 1824, 25 revival. There's a lot more to learn, there's a lot more to interpret. And they're just like, stunting their development by doing this, what I call the apologetic treadmill. Around and around and around and around. They would just keep recycling these old, tired apologetic excuses instead of grasping onto them and using them as tools to interpret and get more nuance to Joseph Smith.
John Dehlin [03:37:38] Thank you, Dan. All right, Sandra.
Sandra Tanner [03:37:41] Well, I think people have to keep in mind that the story of Joseph Smith is much broader than just this straight looking at the timeline of a first vision story that all happened within a bigger context of his life. At the same time as these different accounts are going on. You have his involvement in magic and money digging, his 1826 trial on being a glass looker and a con man. With that, you have the other events that are happening in his life that explain a lot of these ideas that pop up in his different visions. The way he changes his story is consistent with the way he changes everything else. He makes changes in his scriptures, he makes changes in his story. He's always revising everything. So the credibility problem enters into this. How seriously can I take this first vision account when I see that his whole life is a pattern of rewriting and reformulating his story? It takes a much broader look at his life to have a sense of his credibility beyond just the first vision problems.
John Dehlin [03:39:00] Yeah, the book of Abraham's a fraud. His, his alleged translation of the kinder plates is shown to be a fraud because the plates themselves were frauds. The, the, you know, we now know that the revision of the New Testament that he put together just came from a biblical commentary that we know he had in his possession. Like.
Gerardo Sumano [03:39:22] But you know what's interesting, just thought about as Sandra was saying that in the first video we did, Richard Bushman acknowledges that Joseph Smith goes back and revises his story to make it more convenient to him at the time, even if he's lying. Richard Bushman acknowledged that Joseph Smith changed the story of the stone and a hat when he was embarrassed by it later on when it was not convenient for him to tell that story. So we have apologists acknowledging that Joseph is a revisionist of his own story.
John Dehlin [03:39:55] Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, I mean, it's a, it's A really. And you know, we're not even mentioning again propositioning 14 year old girls for sex and 16 year old girls for sex and mother, daughter pairs and sister pairs and lying about it. And when Oliver Cowgill finds out he's in the barn with Finni Alger excommunicating him, like what, what do we need to. To just say this guy lacked basic integrity? You know what I mean? Why should the first vision story get a pass when almost every other part of his life was deeply, not just, you know, semi problematic, like deeply problematic. And he was killed, you know, he was killed for violating the law and in hiding and lying, you know, his behaviors and, and you know, just goes on and on and on. Anyway, I'll just say finally that I just have a real problem structurally with, you know, with the church's continuation of this practice of hiring paying, you know, scholars six figure sums with, you know, retirement and fantastic benefits as employees of BYU to sort of use their degrees and their knowledge and, you know, their intellect as a way to say, I'm, you know, I've reviewed the Papyru and I went to Yale and so, you know, if I can believe in the Book of Abraham is historical, you can too. It's basically mixing oil and water. They're trying to rely on the traditions of science and of scholarship to bolster credibility and then in a sleight of hand get you to then believe when those two things don't belong together. Belief just doesn't belong with academia and scholarship. They should have scholarly discussions with BYU professors about what did or didn't happen, but then not end with bearing their testimony if they want to bear their testimony. Bear your testimony at church, bear your testimony at a fireside where you're not talking about the history, but don't invoke the tradition of academia and scholarship and credentials and then end with your testimony because those things don't. Those things don't fit. Right, right. They're separate things, are they not? Separate things?
Sandra Tanner [03:42:29] No.
John Dehlin [03:42:30] Yeah, yeah. Bear your testimony all day long. Just don't do it as a professor of BYU in an academic conversation about history. That's what I think anyway. That's my rant. Winston, thanks for joining us.
Winston Dehlin [03:42:47] Yes, of course.
John Dehlin [03:42:48] It's so great to have you.
Winston Dehlin [03:42:49] Can I say one more thing?
John Dehlin [03:42:50] Yeah.
Winston Dehlin [03:42:50] I think at the beginning of the video they said that that video, that was like a response that he'd been preparing for like Dan or, or someone. Um, and in my understanding, like when you understand a concept well and you're really Just trying to like, like, figure out what's true. Like, you would be willing to have a discussion with someone like Dan instead of, like, prepare a response and then just like go on like a 40 minute, basically like, monologue with no actual, like, challenge to the things you're saying.
Gerardo Sumano [03:43:18] Right.
Winston Dehlin [03:43:18] You would be willing to talk to someone who will raise some important questions that you're never gonna, you know, be able to raise for yourself. And I don't think that, like, good and intelligent scholars are like, you know, just avoiding the opposing opinion and making videos by themselves.
John Dehlin [03:43:38] So, Dan, what would happen if you said, hey, Stephen Harper, let's appear in public at an event or on a podcast and let's each lay out our claims and our positions and have a robust dialogue about each of our positions? Because Winston asked, would Harper ever, Would Harper ever talk directly to Dan? Would that in a million years would that ever happen? Dan Vogel? And then I'm asking, are you the same question?
Dan Vogel [03:44:06] Well, I think BYU puts a damper on things like that. They won't even let him go to Sunstone, you know, But I'm not much into trying to debate people unless it's the right person in the right time place and people have the right attitudes. You know, I have, have debated though, a few times, but with who it was about the Spalding thing.
John Dehlin [03:44:43] Lars. No,
Dan Vogel [03:44:47] I don't think that would work. But, but I mean, to Winston's point,
John Dehlin [03:44:53] would any of these. Would Richard Bushman, would, Would Stephen Harper, Would any of these dudes ever be willing to, even if the church were to let them? Well, I guess we wouldn't know. I guess when some part of the problem is the church won't even let them. What does that say?
Winston Dehlin [03:45:09] Well, I don't even mean, like, I don't, I don't really love like, public debate or anything either. I don't think it's like an effective way for people to learn. But like, he would like, maybe send you an email or like, be like, hey, let's call and talk about this sometime. Because we obviously, you know, we're both historians and we see it really differently.
John Dehlin [03:45:26] You know, how about that would. Dan Vogel would see. Have you all talked on the phone or tried to talk through these issues just directly?
Dan Vogel [03:45:35] I've seen Harper at the meetings, historical meetings and things, but I do have. I, I write, I answer, whoever, whatever emails I get, I've written, like, say, Brian Hales even. We've had a correspondence back and forth. And I'm not, I'm not adverse. I, I admire a Lot of the foreman historians, actually. And I. And I. People's beliefs don't. I don't. I'm not out to deconvert people. I don't care about those kind of questions. I. And, well, I'm like Wes and Mike Marquardt. They were. We. We three used to get together and talk a lot on the phone. And we will help anybody. You know what I mean? We will help anybody that I like to have a cooperating spirit about myself. I'm. I don't push people to disbelieve, and I'm not going to, like, hammer on people, you know, it. I. I don't care if they're Mormons or not. I don't care how many Mormons in the world there are, you know, and I'm mostly interested in Mormons who have passed on a long time ago.
Winston Dehlin [03:46:58] Well, I guess I was just saying if, if he was really interested in, like, truth, he would be really interested in talking to you. You know, especially as someone who he admitted he thinks is smart. Right.
Dan Vogel [03:47:09] Well, there's lots of political things that go on between the various camps and how it would look. And there's. Some people are more or less conscious of the political boundaries. And I'm aware that I'm, like, sequestered in a certain way. I don't mind it that much. But if I make people feel uncomfortable, I don't want them to feel obligated to, you know, interact with me. That's fine. I'm. I'm good.
Guest [03:47:51] But
Dan Vogel [03:47:54] the. Shoot.
John Dehlin [03:47:59] I'll just say, while you're thinking, Dan, I'll just say, Winston, you may be interested to know that, like, again. And Winston, I don't even if you'll believe the story, but basically I think it was Sandra who learned that this, this 1832 version of the Joseph Smith account that we're all talking about was withheld intentionally from the church membership, probably for, I don't know, anywhere between 50 and 150 years. And Joseph Fielding Smith, who was church historian at the time, who was the son of a former prophet and the grandson of Joseph Smith's brother, Hyrum Smith. Joseph Fielding Smith as church historian, in around what decade do you think Joseph Fielding Smith found the 1832 account?
Sandra Tanner [03:48:45] Well, we don't know. Maybe in the 30s.
John Dehlin [03:48:48] He stumbles on this 1832 account, which he realizes immediately isn't consistent with the 1838 official account. Can you guess what he did with it?
Winston Dehlin [03:48:58] Winston tried to destroy it.
John Dehlin [03:49:01] He literally ripped or cut it out of the journal that it was found in and hid it in a vault. Yeah, until Sandra and Gerald found out about it, wrote publicly about it in the 60s. And then guess what happened to that account that had been ripped out?
Winston Dehlin [03:49:21] Did it get exposed?
John Dehlin [03:49:23] It got magically taped back in to the journal. Like, is that condemning?
Winston Dehlin [03:49:30] I mean, that's awesome.
John Dehlin [03:49:32] And this is the woman. That's why I say this is a. You're, you're speaking with some legends here because, yeah, Sandra played an important role of allowing all this to come to public consciousness.
Winston Dehlin [03:49:43] And I would say that he should, you know, come talk to Sandra, but he obviously, you know, like, probably thinks she's evil or something.
Sandra Tanner [03:49:50] Yes. None of the historians want to engage with me. I, I don't qualify as a historian. I don't qualify as a scholar. Unlike Dan, I'm not out there in the academic world. And so I'm just another layperson telling what I've been able to glean from the historical record. But I, I mean, for years I sat at my bookstore and anyone was welcome to come by and challenge me, talk with me anytime they wanted. They just. The only ones that came by were the people like Lou Mitchley that wanted to come in and make trouble. But yeah, but like Dan was trying to point out, there are different camps. And for the Mormon historians, there are certain ramifications of being known to hang out with those of a more critical nature. And there's a guilt by association. And so those that are protective of their position in Mormonism have to watch who they hang out with, who they study with. And so it's a political problem of going across lines on discussions and that,
John Dehlin [03:51:09] but that, that's ultimately maybe the most damien compelling thing of all, Winston. Because in the, in the 60s and 70s and 80s when this history started emerging and Sandra and Gerald and others started making this history that had been hidden from the members for 150 years when they started making this public. And there was this golden era in the 70s and 80s where BYU professors, church historians would attend conferences with critics like Dan, like Sandra, like others, guess what happened?
Winston Dehlin [03:51:40] They shut it down.
John Dehlin [03:51:41] The church basically said if any church historians or BYU professors are caught at these conferences with people like Dan or Sandra, they'll be fired from their jobs.
Sandra Tanner [03:51:52] And some of the Institute of religion and BYU people came to see us in the late 60s and early 70s. But when Reed Durham in 1972 gave his talk at Mormon History association about Joseph Smith's Jupiter Talisman and he got in trouble for the talk, that was some sort of Signal. And from then on out, the church people more and more distanced themselves from coming and talking with us because there was this fear of guilt by association.
John Dehlin [03:52:35] Yeah. So ultimately, I mean, we're all going through this because of decisions the top church leaders made. Right. We're all just, you know. Yeah. Anyway, what a wonderful discussion. Sandra, thank you for joining us today on Moment Stories. We hope you'll come back. We're so grateful that you come out of retirement occasionally.
Sandra Tanner [03:52:54] Yeah, every once in a while, I come out of my little hideaway.
John Dehlin [03:52:59] Gerardo, thanks for making this possible. Thank you, Winston. It's so fun to have you join us. Hope you'll come back.
Winston Dehlin [03:53:04] Thanks.
John Dehlin [03:53:05] And Dan Vogel from Ohio. Thanks for joining us, Dan, it's great to have you.
Dan Vogel [03:53:11] Well, thanks for inviting me. I enjoyed it. I hope you all do well this holiday season.
John Dehlin [03:53:20] Absolutely. Keep up the good work. Keep writing books. Dan, will you do that?
Dan Vogel [03:53:26] That's all I do every day.
John Dehlin [03:53:28] All right. And Dan, you can check out. Pretty much all your books, Dan, are published with Signature books. Is that right?
Dan Vogel [03:53:34] Yeah. Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:53:35] I can't think of a better holiday gift for you and your loved ones than a. A book by Dan Vogel. Right, Right, Dan.
Dan Vogel [03:53:41] Yeah. Yeah. The. The Charisma Under Pressure is your latest
John Dehlin [03:53:48] book about Joseph Smith during the middle
Dan Vogel [03:53:51] years, Kirtland and Missouri.
Gerardo Sumano [03:53:54] How can we get Signature Books to reprint the first one?
John Dehlin [03:53:57] Yeah, how do we.
Dan Vogel [03:53:58] Well, they have it in Kindle the making.
Gerardo Sumano [03:54:02] But we want. We want the physical copy.
Dan Vogel [03:54:04] Yeah, well, you know, I don't. They're under new management.
Gerardo Sumano [03:54:10] We'll have to talk to.
John Dehlin [03:54:11] We'll talk to Barbara.
Dan Vogel [03:54:12] Barbara. Yeah.
Winston Dehlin [03:54:14] All right.
John Dehlin [03:54:14] Well, check out Dan Vogel's books from Signature Books. It's a perfect holiday gift. Sandra Tanner, if people want all the great publications, you are a scholar. You're one of the Mormon scholars. If people want to get copies of your books, how do they do it?
Sandra Tanner [03:54:29] Well, they'd have to go to our website@utlm.org and at our website, we have all our books up on the Internet for free where you can go read them. Unfortunately, we aren't printing them anymore. But you can read them on the Internet. If you wanted, you could print them off of the Internet for your own copy. But all our stuff is there on the Internet on our website.
John Dehlin [03:54:53] And Julia, someday you're going to be providing printed copies of all of UTLM books. Is that right? Is that your goal? Julia, add yourself to the chat. If Sandra lets me, I would love that. Julie wants to become your new publisher. Printer.
Sandra Tanner [03:55:08] Oh, well, I'M not sure where all that's gonna go, but.
John Dehlin [03:55:11] But you, have you, have you approached her yet?
Sandra Tanner [03:55:13] Julia talked to me about it. I have, yeah.
John Dehlin [03:55:16] All right. Well, there's always hope. Hope springs eternal.
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Sandra Tanner [03:55:19] Okay.
John Dehlin [03:55:20] All right. Anyway, Julia, thanks for also playing a role in today.
Sandra Tanner [03:55:24] Yeah, of course.
Dan Vogel [03:55:25] I miss Julia. I missed her contribution.
Winston Dehlin [03:55:31] She's.
Dan Vogel [03:55:32] She's very knowledgeable, too.
Sandra Tanner [03:55:33] Oh, thanks.
John Dehlin [03:55:35] Yeah, Julie is great. Julie's great. We're just thinking, do we have six people on this panel? Do we want to go four or five hours at some point? Anyway, Julia, thanks for what you do. Maven. Also, thanks for joining us. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Thanks to the donors. If any of you are donors out there within the sound of my voice, we couldn't do this without you. Thank you for your donations. If you're not a donor, you can help keep this program alive and shows like this alive by going to MormonStories.org, clicking on the Donate button, and becoming a monthly donor. Also, you help support us by watching those dang YouTube commercials or Spotify commercials. We apologize if they annoy you, but that's literally partly how we pay the bills. So please don't hate us for monetizing our content. Everybody else is doing it. We need to pay the bills just like everybody else. You can also support us by subscribing on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for allow for as long as it exists along with Facebook. You can like our episodes, comment on them, and you can share them. Those are all the ways you can support us in addition to becoming a donor. Thanks again for joining us. We hope to do more in the coming days, weeks, months ahead. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we will see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. So take care, everybody.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
One Response
It is literally called “the first vision” y’all.
Also, what’s wrong with trying to harmonize the multiple versions into a single telling? If it’s harmonious, I don’t see the problem.