1. Introduction
Here we are! Sunstone Symposium in its 3rd year of the pandemic. Over the last couple of years we all have had a lot of changes in our lives; careers, hobbies, religious beliefs, and for many of us, death.
Death has especially been on my mind. In 2020 I married my wife and we immediately moved in with my mother-in-law who had terminal cancer; my lockdown experience was caring for my dying loved one, and holding her hand as she passed. In 2021 my grandmother died from old age. I have had 3 pets die since 2020. Just this February my unvaccinated father caught covid, and I also held his hand as he passed away.
The last 3 years I have experienced more death than I have the rest of my life combined. Seeing so many of my loved ones be embraced by death while I hold their hand has had a profound impact on my life. I sought solace from the scriptures, and what I found in Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verses 1-3 rang quite loudly in my ears. These verse reads as:
“So I reflected on all this, attempting to clear it all up.
I concluded that the righteous and the wise, as well as their works, are in the hand of God;
whether a person will be loved or hated —
no one knows what lies ahead.
Everyone shares the same fate—
the righteous and the wicked,
the good and the bad,
the ceremonially clean and unclean,
those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.
What happens to the good person, also happens to the sinner;
what happens to those who make vows, also happens to those who are afraid to make vows.
This is the unfortunate fact about everything that happens on earth:
the same fate awaits everyone.
In addition to this, the hearts of all people are full of evil,
and there is folly in their hearts during their lives—then they die.”
I have felt compelled to figure out what my relationship with death is, since it comes to all of us. I wanted to know what the afterlife is like. I wanted to know, when all is said and done, what eternity may be like. In short, I wanted to study eschatology.
I listened to what Restoration theologians and philosophers had to say, alongside scripture and their commentaries. I also studied what our understandings were across time, because if you want to know the future, you have to understand the present, and if you want to understand the present, you have to understand the past.
However, as I studied I found that there was very little commentary regarding eschatology from a Community of Christ point of view. This makes sense, since my church tries to focus on improving the here and now. However, as I was grieving this sort of content would have been a massive comfort to me. As the saying goes, “be the change you want to see in the world”, and so my topic today became self-evident.
Luckily, Community of Christ has developed what we call the “Scripture Affirmations”, which are a list of things to keep in mind when engaging with scripture. These became invaluable for me as I began to study eschatology. Affirmations 3 and 6 in particular were pivotal, and I would like to read them:
- “Number 3: Scripture is a library of books that speaks in many voices. These books were written in diverse times and places, and reflect the languages, cultures, and conditions under which they were written. God’s revelation through scripture does not come to us apart from the humanity of the writers, but in and through that humanity. In the earthen vessels of scripture we have been given the treasure of divine love and grace”
- “Number 6: Faith, experience, tradition, and scholarship each have something to contribute to our understanding of scripture. In wrestling to hear and respond to the witness of scripture, the church must value the light that each of these sources may offer.”
In light of this, I believe a natural conclusion is to understand that our theology developed organically as a product of its time and continues to do so. This reminds me of Doctrine and Covenants 161 verse 5:
“Be respectful of tradition. Do not fail to listen attentively to the telling of the sacred story, for the story of scripture and of faith empowers and illuminates. But neither be captive to time-bound formulas and procedures. Remember that instruction given in former years is applicable in principle and must be measured against the needs of a growing church, in accordance with the prayerful direction of the spiritual authorities and the consent of the people.”
With that in mind, my presentation today will be split into 6 parts:
- The Restoration period
- The Early Reorganization period
- The Late Reorganization period
- The Community of Christ period
- My Beliefs
2. Restoration Period
2.1. Alma 19 (LDS Alma 40-42)
by Darrell Thoams
The first time the Restoration really focused on the afterlife was with the Book of Mormon. There are hints peppered in about the afterlife throughout the whole of the book, but the place I would like to focus most on is Alma 19 (LDS Alma 40-42).
In the model presented in this chapter, after death human souls go to one of two places: “Paradise” or “Outer Darkness”. After this, humanity is resurrected and is judged by God. After that, people are permanently put into one of those two categories for eternity.
An interesting note is that Alma the Younger speculates in this chapter that moving from mortality to the spirit world could be thought of as a sort of resurrection, and explored, just a bit, thinking about that as the “First Resurrection”. Regardless, he clarifies that that’s not the theory that he holds to.
2.2. D&C 18 (LDS D&C 19)
by Lewis A. Ramsey
After the Book of Mormon was written, Joseph Smith Jr. and Martin Harris worked towards publication. They found a printer for the book, E.B. Grandin, and agreed to the price of $3,000 (equivalent of $85,000 in 2021). However, since this book was a risky investment, Grandin added a condition: he wanted all payment upfront.
Harris was not impressed at this stipulation, because as the financier, this meant that he would have to take out a mortgage on his property. Additionally, Harris was a Universalist and was troubled by some of the anti-universalistic rhetoric in the BoM. He was considering withholding his funding from the project, and so he asked Joseph Smith Jr. for a revelation to reassure him.
This revelation, which is now D&C 18, addresses Harris’s universalistic concerns when it states that “Eternal punishment” actually means “God’s punishment”, since “eternal” is just another name for God. Verse 2A even clarifies that this choice of words is essentially used as a scare tactic.
The addition of this revelation to the scriptural canon implies that “Outer Darkness” is not a permanent destination, and opens the door for a universal reconciliationistic theology quite early in our history.
2.3. “The Vision”
In June 1829, a leader in the restoration movement wrote about “The Three Kingdoms” or “The Kingdoms of Glory”. He believed that Heaven was organized into 3 different tiers, each of which represented the kind of life that you lived. These teachings were pivotal for people like Sidney Rigdon. However, I forgot to mention, this 3-tiered heaven was conceived of by Alexander Campbell of the Stone-Campbell Movement.
A tiered heaven isn’t unique to the Restoration either; in theologian Emmanuel Swedenborg’s 1758 work “Heaven and Hell”, he also described the structure of Heaven as being 3-tiered, with each successive tier being likened unto the stars, moon, and sun and the highest being called the “Celestial Kingdom”.
The Latter Day Saint movement didn’t have this concept of a tiered afterlife until February 16th, 1832. Sidney Rigdon, the former Campbellite and now a leader in the Latter Day Saint movement, and the prophet Joseph Smith Jr. had been working on the Inspired Version of the bible, which is also known as the “Joseph Smith Translation”, or “The Joseph Smith Biblical Revision Project”. They came across John chapter 5 verse 29, and wondered what the afterlife was like.
When about a dozen people were present, Rigdon and Smith entered into a joint vision which expounded upon 1 Corinthians chapter 15: verses 35 through 41, and D&C 76 is a close transcription of this shared vision. They saw a tiered afterlife, similar to what Swedenborg and Campbell had. Even some of the same terminology and symbolism was used to describe what they saw.
This tired-afterlife was the final destination, and the spirit paradise and prison dichotomy were seen as a sort of temporary layover. 3 of the tiers could conceivably be thought of as “Heaven”, and the last, “Outer Darkness”, could be thought of as a more stereotypical “Hell”.
2.4. The Alvin Vision
This tiered model left many questions, though, many of which have left us scratching our heads since. For example, what about people who died without having a proper understanding of the gospel? This was a topic that particularly concerned Joseph Smith Jr., since his older brother, Alvin, died prior to the Restoration beginning. On January 21, 1836 in the Kirtland Temple, Smith had a vision in which he sees his late brother in the Celestial Kingdom. In it, the prophet was told:
“All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God; Also all that shall die henceforth without a knowledge of it, who would have received it with all their hearts, shall be heirs of that kingdom;”
Since Alvin had not received the Restored gospel, for many, this has indicated that there must be movement between the tiers in the afterlife or that God Is simply more concerned about the character of your soul. Our cousins in Utah canonized this vision in 1976, however Community of Christ never has, which has relegated it to a sort of theological speculation, and people place varying levels of importance upon it.
2.5. School of the Prophets
The Kirtland temple is a holy place for the entire Latter Day Saint movement. The temple was the one place where we were all one movement. We were instructed in D&C 85 verse 36 to build it and what its purpose was to be. In short, the temple was designed not only to be a place of worship, but also a place of education. In the early days we fulfilled this with “The School of the Prophets”, which taught many different topics. However, one of the most pertinent to the presentation today is teaching Hebrew. During this time there were several courses which taught the basics of the language.
One of the things which astounded Joseph Smith Jr. was that the word “Elohim” is actually a plural term. Modern scholarship can now demonstrate how Christianity emerged from Judaism, and that Judaism emerged as a henotheistic sect from the local Caananite religions which had a pantheon of Gods. “Henotheism” is a type of polytheism which recognizes that there are many gods, but only one is worthy of worship. Moving away from the pantheon of gods to the one god is a constant battle which is documented in the Old Testament. As time went on, Judaism and Christianity moved even further away from that to “monotheism”, which is the belief in and worship of only one god.
While Joseph Smith Jr. didn’t have access to this scholarship, it didn’t stop him from speculating. He wondered how there might be a whole pantheon of gods which engaged in the act of creation. He explored this concept with his Book of Abraham project, which re-told the creation story as having been performed by a pantheon of gods. This line of thought laid the foundation for the next Restoration era.
2.6. King Follett Sermon
The Hewbrew lessons in the School of the Prophets proved to be influential to Joseph Smith Jr. He wondered, though, how these Gods came to be. In the Nauvoo era, he speculated about this and concluded that it must have been through a system of apotheosis. “Apotheosis” is a very fancy term for “becoming a God”. I could drone on and on about what this entails, but I think Smith’s words actually do a good job of defining it.
On April 7, 1844, less than three months before he was killed, Joseph Smith Jr. gave a pivotal and controversial sermon at the funeral of a man named King Follett. In this sermon he said, in part:
“God himself, who sits enthroned in yonder heavens, is a man like unto one of yourselves, that is the great secret. If the veil was rent today, and the great God, who holds this world in its orbit, and upholds all things by his power; if you were to see him today, you would see him in all the person, image and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion and image of God; …
In order to understand the subject of the dead, for the consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friends, it is necessary they should understand the character and being of God, for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined that God was God from all eternity. These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are the simple and first principles of the gospel, to know for a certainty the character of God, that we may converse with him as one man with another, and that God himself; the Father of us all dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did. …
Here then is eternal life, to know the only wise and true God. You have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves; to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done; by going from a small degree to another, from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you are able to sit in glory as doth those who sit enthroned in everlasting power”
LDS Prophet Lorenzo Snow summarized this teaching with a well-known couplet:
“As man now is, God once was;
as God now is, man may be”
This afterlife is certainly a stark contrast from every other understanding that our movement had prior to this.
2.7. Polygamy and Sealing
There were conditions that needed to be met for apotheosis. The most noteworthy of this was polygamy. Joseph Smith Jr had been involved with many women, and it came to a boiling point between he and Emma in July of 1843. Joseph dictated what would become LDS D&C 132, and had his brother Hyrum give Emma this document to settle the matter, but Emma wasn’t impressed. This document, which was only ever circulated in secret in Nauvoo, claimed that polygamy was a requirement for celestial glory, and those who aren’t polygamists are damned.
This, yet again, was a drastic change in the theological beliefs of the church, and it even directly contradicted D&C 111 (then D&C 101) which explicitly forbade polygamy. Many members of the church didn’t know the intricacies of what was in this polygamy document, and many even claimed that this was all fabricated because of how outlandish it was. However, continuing scholarship has shown that Joseph Smith Jr. did indeed teach these things about the afterlife.
3. Early Reorganization Period
3.1. Clarifications
The Early Reorganization Period could be thought of as a sort of “Soft Reboot” of the Restoration. Many things were the same, but many things were also different. I think its important to clarify what some of those changes are, so you can understand the background of all of these eschatological understandings from here on out.
Canonization
One thing that I think is important to clarify is how the canonization process works in Community of Christ. First, the president of the church has to have an encounter with the Divine and write it down. Then they must present it to the body of the church. After that, the church votes on whether to incorporate it into scripture or not. This process is called “The Law of Common Consent” and is a fundamental principle in the Latter Day Saint movement. This law acts as a check and balance on the president of the church, so that the president doesn’t abuse their ecclesiastical position. If this law is not followed, then what the president is saying is rightfully considered theological speculation.
During the Nauvoo era this check and balance was tested, and largely ignored by Joseph Smith Jr. Many people came to see everything he said and did as being synonymous with God. In some ways, people worshiped him instead of God. This sort of blind faith was especially troubling considering the abuse that was being done in God’s name. The Nauvoo era was rife with this theological abuse and speculation, and very little, if any, of this speculation became canonized doctrine in Community of Christ.
Leadership
In its early days, the Reorganization was an umbrella for folks who had many different beliefs – folks who held an affinity for Kirtland theology and Nauvoo theology; former Strangites and Brighamites; and many other widely-varying folks. We all found ourselves within the same church, and had to learn how to get along.
The leadership absolutely set the tone for this to be possible, and Joseph Smith III was uniquely poised for leadership when he accepted his prophetic calling. He was raised in Nauvoo by his mother, and he saw all of the fallout from his father’s mistakes. Instead of repeating them, however, he learned from his father and strove to avoid making his same mistakes.
One of the largest distinctions from many other sects was the reliance upon the Law of Common Consent. Conference in the Reorganization is most similar to a legislative session, where you are able to bring things to the attention of the entire church and vote upon it. At next year’s Conference I am actually putting forward a piece of legislation for the church to vote upon! This has allowed a democratization of our theology that hadn’t been this present since the Kirtland days.
Additionally, as president of the church, “Young Joseph” was adamant that there would be NO tests of fellowships. He reaffirmed this many times throughout his whole tenure as prophet. He made it very clear that people could hold personal beliefs. This enabled our church to be a diverse place, and he rightfully earned the nickname “The Pragmatic Prophet”. In fact, many people point to these efforts as one of the reasons why one of Community of Christ’s Enduring Principles is “Unity in Diversity”, which absolutely includes diversity of thought.
Because of this diversity of thought, moving forward throughout our history is a bit difficult. The Doctrine and Covenants focuses mostly on priesthood callings and contemporary advice for THIS life, and doesn’t really focus on the afterlife. I have tried my best to find the people whose thoughts were best articulated and well respected so I can give a glimpse as to how our eschatological thought evolved over time.
3.2. David Hyrum Smith
One of the brightest and most well-respected men in the church was David Hyrum Smith, who was the youngest son of Joseph and Emma. David was an early missionary for the Reorganization, and was well-known for holding his own during theological debates. After his return from his mission he went on to become the 2nd counselor in the First Presidency.
David’s theological work quite often was expressed through art; he was a gifted painter, singer, and poet. His art often spoke of Divinity while invoking the beauty of nature, of which he was also quite fond of. In one of his musings entitled “De Profundis”, he contemplated how nature and God are intertwined, and how the Divine relates to the afterlife. I would like to read a couple of selections from this work of his:
“There is unity in the universe. Man is a tide, a stream flowing over the earth; our individuality is only in part – members of a family, a state, a church, a race. No wonder that the prophet styles the nations “many waters”, granules of a fluid, ere we dissolve, we impart our being and flow onward in posterity. Well for us if then our individuality be of that nature to gravitate to the host of the holy on high, to be in union with God and the lamb. …
What is the inner meaning of the great Force? We cannot speak of it as a force, because it is one that comprehends all forces; as a power, because it embraces all powers; as an entity, because it moulds, moves, and handles all entities.
At the pushing forth of a grass blade; at the birth of a butterfly; at the waking of an earthquake; at the marshaling of millions of worlds; in you, and around you; it is there, and underlies them all.
Listen to its inner meaning, to the arcane of the ages, ‘It is God!’
When we go out into the depths and look from afar at the wide realms they present to us, we are near Him; let us abide in Him, and He will put us forth to full fruition like a vine from its root. … He was defined by some of the earlier church worthies to be ‘that mysterious chain that binds all things together,’ and its impress leaves the mark of its unity.”
To me, this seems reminiscent of “henosis”. “Henosis” is the classical Greek word for mystical “oneness”, “union”, or “unity” with what is fundamental in reality, in this case the term used being “God”. This was an unorthodox perspective, and unfortunately David didn’t expound upon it much. Just a couple of years later he suffered a mental breakdown and was hospitalized the rest of his life. Additionally, while David was well-loved, this theological viewpoint didn’t win out.
3.3. George F. Weston
The Adventist movement was founded in the 1830s, and believed that the “2nd Advent of Christ” was imminent. In the second half of the 19th century Adventist preachers were known for having elaborate and artistic charts which contained scenes and citations from the bible, and the preachers then used these to attract attention and to preach from.
One of the Adventist apocalyptic predictions was for the end of 1873, and the Irish-Catholic newspaper “The Boston Globe” sent a reporter to write an article on the gathering of adventists that was occuring in anticipation of the arrival of Jesus. In this November 1873 article, a vivid description of one of these charts was given. This description ended up catching the eye of Joseph Smith III, who was the editor of the RLDS publication “The True Latter Day Saints Herald”, and had it reprinted in the December 1873 edition of his publication.
RLDS missionaries and preachers were intrigued by this, and many started purchasing these Adventist preaching tools. However, in the twilight of the 1800s RLDS preachers began to create or commission their own, and add theology and eschatology that could be found in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants.
The most notable of these artistic preachers was George F. Weston. Weston was a professional artist who had joined the church in the 1870s. Throughout the 1890s Weston developed these preaching charts to be used, and even created facsimiles of them and sold them through the Herald.
From these charts, Weston was able to depict what the eschatology of his day looked like in a way which was “Pleasing to look upon, and easy to understand”. From a couple of his charts we are able to discern a few of things:
- Immediately after this life humanity is segregated into Spirit paradise and prison
- Only the “righteous” get to go to the Celestial kingdom, whereas everyone else who was in paradise goes to the Terrestrial. Contemporarily, this increasingly came to mean that only members of the RLDS church go to the most favorable afterlife, afterall at the time we believed that we were the “One True Church”.
- The Celestial Kingdom increasingly came to be associated with “The Holy City” or an incarnate Zion. This often is illustrated by a domed building. Some have thought that this was meant to be the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, But conceivably this could be meant to illustrate what Joseph Smith III envisioned the Independence Temple to be like in 1878.
As a side note, I wanted to point out some of the sillier things that we believed. “The Broad Way” led to Spirit Prison and eventually Outer Darkness, and steps to getting there included card playing, dancing, and going to theaters. We were basically the footloose town.
4. Late Reorganization Period
4.1. Herald and Question Time
Community of Christ has a publication that we started in 1860 and has been in continuous publication since that time. Today it is called “Herald”. Herald has been described as the “Source code of our history”, since so much of our thought has been written in it over the years.
There was one person named Charles Fry who I believe best articulated the eschatology of his day. Fry was a church employee for many years, and even served as the editor of several church publications until he retired in 1947. Starting in 1955 he spent a large portion of his time answering questions in the “Question Time” column of the Herald. He was known for answering about 35% of all questions that were asked there. The ones that seemed to intrigue him the most were the ones regarding eschatology, and he wrote quite a lot about it.
In the latter part of his life he was working on a project which he entitled “Eschatology or Man’s Final Destiny”, which laid out his full thoughts on the matter. Luckily, his great-nephew, Frank Utterback, came into possession of the unfinished manuscript, edited it, and published it for others to read. This work now stands as the most thorough glimpse into the eschatological beliefs of the first half of the late reorganization period.
This period, to me, seems to be a more polished version of the early reorganization period’s eschatology. The 3 kingdoms, no movement between them, certain behavioral requirements, only RLDS members would achieve Celestial glory, etc. The hallmark of this era was that they were able to cite scriptures far more extensively, and wrote far more about it. In addition to this, there were a number of people that came to hold too tightly to this escatological understanding, which in turn prevented them from further theological growth.
4.2. The Position and Presidential Papers
Position
In the late 1960s the Joint Council (First Presidency, Council of Twelve, and Presiding Bishopric) had a series of historical and theological lessons which were taught by a Methodist theologian named W. Paul Jones. Eventually they realized how woefully out of date the church’s curriculum was. Instead of updating the old one, it was decided to throw it out and have the Department of Religious Education start from scratch with the goal of talking about controversial historical and theological topics in such a way that it would be a gentle move towards a new understanding for the whole church.
The head of the Department of Religious Education, Don Landon, proposed a collection of essays be written which spoke bluntly about topics for the Curriculum Consultation Committee to talk about and for things that he thought the new curriculum should touch on. These essays were informally called the “Position Papers”, and to say that they were controversial is an understatement. These essays signaled a shift away from the traditional conservative outlook, and a willingness to continue growing and learning as a movement. They were so controversial that they ended up being leaked to the general membership of the church, which caused division amongst the progressive and conservative members of the church.
Among these essays was one called “The Nature of the Gospel” by Irene Jones, which was written in October 1967. Jones articulates a progressive outlook regarding the afterlife. She argues that achieving salvation through adherence to a set of “certain prescribed principles and regulations [is] … an understanding of the gospel [that] is inadequate.”
She then offers some alternative views regarding the afterlife that proved to be influential to the young theologians who would inevitably read her leaked essay. She suggests that:
“Salvation is concerned with how life is lived, with man’s ability to appropriate the fullness of life. The salvation inherent in the gospel frees men to be truly human. … Thus the salvation to which the gospel addresses itself has to do with bringing men to the fullness of their being … Salvation frees men to be human, to be whole. It is deliverance from sin and recovery of a spirit of love.”
Jones goes even further – she puts forward a theological ideal which started earlier in our history that salvation isn’t about rugged individualism; its a team sport. She said:
“The idea of earned salvation in the afterlife not only ignores the role of God’s grace in human redemption, but also tends to erode the significance of life in this world by pointing men to the preeminence of the next world and associating salvation with it alone. … The gospel is designed to save us from ourselves, and to save us for each other. It designs men to live together in mutual helpfulness. The full fruition of the gospel’s intent comes about when persons live in a social order in which God is the center. Thus salvation cannot be thought of in narrowly personal terms. It is social as well.”
Presidential
Several years after the Position Papers were leaked, the First Presidency, under Wallace B. Smith, commissioned 7 more essays again with the goal of moving the church forward historically and theologically. All of these essays were just as controversial as the Position Papers and were again leaked to the general membership of the church and caused even further division. However, the First Presidency gives us a fascinating and candid look into what they believed regarding our relationship with the afterlife and the Divine.
In the essay entitled “The Identity of the Church” which is dated January 9th, 1979, the First Presidency put forward an interesting theological statement:
“The gospel message we declare to the world is the good news appropriate to the life needs of those persons to whom the good news is spoken. Human life is lived in internal chaos which grows out of separation from persons and from God. The good news of the gospel is that unity and reconciliation are present in ways appropriate to the needs of persons to their current situation.”
With this, it seems as if an element of moral relativism had been speculated upon, and the gospel – God – being the secret ingredient to achieve that favorable afterlife for everyone. God would take everyone’s personal situations into account.
However, the controversies from this essay don’t end there. Later they say:
“The message of the gospel is concerned with the deepest human needs. It offers no solutions for the problem of collective evil, the question of death, nor even a solution for sin.”
In short, they essentially say that the point of the gospel is NOT to achieve a favorable afterlife. This was big shock for a number of folks, but again for many this seemed to be a self-evident truth. The First Presidency then goes on to try and describe what the purpose of the gospel is and how the Divine treats us in the afterlife:
“The gospel is the assurance that all is changed in Christ. It is this assurance in the believer that there is purpose and hope in life … The message of the gospel is about life — life as it is here and now, and the faithful promise that it can be new in Christ. It is about forgiveness, and the lifting of the burden of guilt from the past, and release from the fear and dread of the future. The gospel is the assurance that God’s grace is sufficient unto every situation and that life may be lived today with joy and meaning. Therefore among the themes of its message are love, grace, incarnation, atonement, justification, sanctification, salvation, joy, forgiveness, gratitude, eternal life, and presence of the Spirit. Its call is to the life of faith and fellowship among the community of disciples who comprise the Body of Christ.”
In short, the Late Reorganization Period began as a solidification of the Early Reorganization’s beliefs. However, if there’s one thing that the 1960s-1970s and God have in common, its smashing our pre-conceived notions and a shift toward egalitarianism.
5. The Community of Christ Period
5.1. Robin Linkhart
The Community of Christ period has brought us even more insights, many of which extend beyond our traditional symbols, ideas, and language. For this era, I wanted a contemporary feminine perspective on the afterlife, so I reached out to Apostle Robin Linkhart and she was gracious enough to sit down for a chat with me.
One thing that she wanted to reiterate was that the scriptures are a result of humanity interacting with the Divine. How she spoke was very reminiscent of the “Scripture Affirmations”, which again is basically a list of good suggestions on how to approach scripture.
Robin was also eager to point to Doctrine and Covenants section 147 verse 7, which says:
“Instruction which has been given in former years is applicable in principle to the needs of today and should be so regarded by those who are seeking ways to accomplish the will of their heavenly Father. But the demands of a growing church require that these principles shall be evaluated and subjected to further interpretation. This requisite has always been present. In meeting it under the guidance of my spirit, my servants have learned the intent of these principles more truly.”
Robin expounded upon this verse, and said that we are just one of God’s many people, and that salvation is wholistic and universal for all of humanity. She encouraged me to learn from our tradition, but also from all global religions, because the Divine speaks to all of us. She also stated that we should try to avoid an “us vs them” mentality, because ultimately there is only “Us” – our human family.
Robin also wanted to talk about the earth in regards to salvation. She spoke about how poorly we are treating our home, which cares for us all. She spoke about how the earth’s salvation means our salvation, and the earth’s destruction means our destruction. She spoke about how she had seen some of this eco-salvation during the lockdowns of 2020. Her and I chatted about how amazing it was seeing the earth heal a tiny bit during that time. We speculated what earth would be like if we sought this cleaner environment on a permanent basis.
In summary, Robin seemed to espouse a universalistic outlook in regards to eschatology, which also has strong elements of eco-theology. I very much appreciated Robin’s thoughts. She is a life-long member of Community of Christ, and has been such an active part of it that she has also been someone who has helped form our contemporary theology.
5.2. John Hamer
While Robin’s thoughts were lovely, during our discussion it was difficult to get her to speculate on what the afterlife will actually be like for us as individuals. I sought out others who might be willing to speak on what the afterlife will be like for us, and one of John Hamer’s lectures immediately came to mind.
John has been an influential Seventy not only to the church but to me personally. John is a good friend of mine, who also happens to be a historian and theologian who gives frequent lectures on a very wide variety of topics. Back in January of 2022 John gave a live lecture over youtube entitled “Joseph Smith’s Redefinition of God”. After his lecture he opened it up to questions, and someone asked what Joseph Smith Jr would have thought about Spinoza, who is one of my favorite theologians. John brought up that one of the hallmarks of the theology of the Age of Enlightenment was an obsession with the material world. This age had more-or-less just concluded when Joseph Smith Jr. began his ministry, but the materialism is still present in Smith’s theology.
John, however, is a unique theologian. He is a well-educated scholar whose studies have chiefly focused on the medieval age. This time period did not have the same hang ups regarding materialism that Smith’s time did or our time does.
So, during this same lecture, I asked John: What does Community of Christ currently believe about the next life? John’s answer was relatively concise, so I would just like to retell it now:
“So, people have different beliefs. …
My general feeling about afterlife is that whatever afterlife we’re experiencing is going to be extremely different, and almost inconceivable from how this life is. In other words, it’s not going to be like you die and you’re going to be more-or-less the same as you are right now and doing the same kind of things forever on a cloud with harps or whatever. Rather, it’s another frame of existence. In general, though, it’s not about separation; it would be about oneness with God; about being connected to goodness and love and so forth.
[That] is somewhat speculative; I am not saying that we know or understand the other life…”
6. My Beliefs
6.1. W. Paul Jones
Among all of the most well-known theologians in Community of Christ that I have met, there seems to be a trend: an aversion to our traditional language, symbols, and concepts. Many are hesitant to re-approach things like the Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial, and would rather leave them in the past.
When I spoke regarding the Position and Presidential Papers, I briefly mentioned a Methodist theologian named W. Paul Jones. While he was and is not a member of Community of Christ, he is a very beloved and dear friend who has encouraged and helped us grow over the years.
In 1996 he gave a presentation at the John Whitmer Historical Association where he spoke about the growth we had done over the years. He begins by talking about the tension between those who are theologically conservative and progressive in the church, and says:
“The present-day suspicious standoff between conservatives and liberals begins with the conservative question, “What uniqueness is left?” When the liberal response seems to devalue all uniqueness, the defensive overreaction is to clutch onto a literalism of former times, as a last ditch defense against liberal minimization. … I am intrigued by what might happen if liberals whose orienting perspective has been that of demythologizing (de-myth-all-oh-gizing) the [Community of Christ] tradition by reducing it to “only symbols” would relax sufficiently to explore what it might mean to affirm it imaginatively as truly symbolic.
My fear is that unless that happens, there will be an increasing liberal dilution until [Community of Christ] simply becomes one more Protestant denomination of which we already have too many.
We need to pass beyond the battle between an objective defense of a literalized history and an aggressive minimization born of a secret hunch that Joseph Smith Jr. may be a charlatan. What is called for is re-symbolization as an imaginative re-appropriation of the Joseph Smith SAGA. … what we have, and what we need to deal with creatively, is the saga of a unique event which has had the power to evoke in millions a renewed sense of what Christianity is called upon to be. … The truth of your tradition is the power of your vision. Real restoration means rediscovering in the unique [Community of Christ] saga a means for re-calling the Christian Church to a wholeness of renewed faithfulness. The call of your church is no longer to be unique from the others, but to be unique for them. Then may the new name of “Community of Christ” become appropriate for all of us, together.”
I could not agree more with Jones. I believe that we need to re-embrace what makes us unique and distinct – our place and identity within the Restoration – while also keeping all the wisdom that we found from our decades of deconstruction so that we can breathe new life into our identity and symbols to fit our needs today.
I am quite fond of this idea, and have worked on a number of projects to re-symbolize things within Community of Christ. I want to try and do the same with the afterlife for you today.
6.2. Preface to My Beliefs
Before get into it, I want to clarify a couple things:
- My beliefs are just that; beliefs. I don’t claim to have the ultimate truth, and I am instantly skeptical of anyone who claims that they have it. I have studied my own tradition and a couple others, and these symbols and terms are how I am most comfortable understanding what ultimately happens to me after I die.
- I am a theologian in Community of Christ, but as I have illustrated we have a wide diversity of thought. I know for a fact that there are many people in my church who will pretty strongly disagree with my understanding of the afterlife.
- I do not care for the term “kingdom”, because it is a monarchical term, which is a system of government that I have absolutely no connection to. In place of this I use the term “Realm”, which I believe conveys the same concept in a much more modern way.
That said, let’s dive into what I believe.
6.3. Movement
We were Divinely created with the capacity to change and grow. For the Divine to eternally condemn or reward us based on a roughly 80-year period is unconscionable and completely contrary to who God made us to be.
I believe that even in the afterlife we will continue to grow and improve, and we can take as much time as we need. I have found that our traditional eschatology with the three realms provides a beautiful framework for this growth.
The different realms could almost be thought of as different classrooms for the different spiritual maturity levels. Once you have learned the lessons you need to in a specific realm, you move onto the next. On top of that, the people in the higher realms minister to and teach those in the lower realms; they seek to help their family and friends grow spiritually.
In this way, the three realms symbolize a caring and understanding framework for the afterlife.
6.4. Telestial
I also wanted to go over how I perceive the individual realms, and what their purposes are. These are works of art that I created to help illustrate my eschatological understanding.
Those in the Telestial Realm are chiefly those people who put themselves before others at the detriment of others. They lie, con, use their sexuality to harm others, oppress the oppressed, and in general have isolated themselves through their own willful actions.
The Telestial, which is traditionally symbolized by a star, shows that people here are able to have their own slice of the Realm where things are as they want them to be, and they share it with no one. This Realm is a lonely place, and here is depicted as being gray.
In this Realm people are focused on how to treat others with basic dignity and respect.
6.5. Terrestrial
Those in the Terrestrial Realm are people who have learned mental habits which are not necessarily good, but they are committed to learning more and to growing.
The Terrestrial Realm, which is traditionally symbolized by a moon – in this case many crescents – , shows how some people are still isolated, but as they go deeper they start to get closer to others, and the more their crescents overlap with others.
In this Realm people are focused on learning about more of the intricacies and nuances of treating creation well, learning how to work and exist with others, and giving up the negative habits they are conditioned with.
6.6. Celestial
Finally, the Celestial Realm. Here, people have become one with all of creation. There is complete harmony, unity, peace, and love.
This Realm, which is traditionally symbolized by the sun, is bright and colorful. At the center the distinctions between all the people sort of dissolve together. People here are truly of “one heart and one mind”.
The quote I have found which best expresses my relationship with the Celestial Realm comes from the TV show called “The Good Place” which is a masterpiece and I highly recommend it.
Towards the end, one of the main characters says:
Picture a wave in the ocean.
You can see it, measure it – its height, the way the sunlight refracts as it passes through – and it’s there, you can see it, and you know what it is, it’s a wave.
And then it crashes on the shore and it’s gone.
But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be for a little while.
The wave returns to the ocean where it came from, and where it’s supposed to be.
I believe that the Divine will walk with and teach each of us until we all find this peace – this Zion among all of creation.
7. Conclusion
I have lost many loved ones over the last several years, and death has been on my mind a lot as a result.
I wanted to find what I believed in regards to the final destination of our souls, and I turned to our scriptures and our history to understand it. I then turned to people in our community today for insight. Ultimately, I had to come to my own conclusion.
I believe that we are put where we are most comfortable, and will always be gently encouraged to continue to grow. I believe that ultimately all of creation will be in Celestial harmony.
In the meantime, however, we have this beautiful human life to enjoy. We should “wake up and do something more than dream of your mansion above”.
I began this presentation by reading Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verses 1-3, and I feel it is fitting to conclude with verses 7-10:
“Go, eat your food with joy,
and drink your wine with a happy heart,
because God has already approved your works.
Let your clothes always be white,
and do not spare precious ointment on your head.
Enjoy life with your beloved wife during all the days of your fleeting life
that God has given you on earth during all your fleeting days;
for that is your reward in life and in your burdensome work on earth.
Whatever you find to do with your hands,
do it with all your might,
because there is neither work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave,
the place where you will eventually go.”
Thank you.