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It seems like everyone is familiar with those diagrams with various circles that explain Mormon cosmology, and which outline the progression of the human soul through eternity (do an image search for “plan of salvation” for some beauties). I thought it would be fun to sketch out the Plans of Salvation for various sources.



The most simple is that found in the Book of Mormon. It is essentially the Christian conception of eternity, with perhaps one radical change. Some people read Alma 40:11 and Alma 13:3 as saying the spirit existed before birth. Personally, I don’t think that these verses are arguing for that, but will concede it is a possible reading. Hence the question mark.

Things get interesting fast. The Book of Moses (and D&C 93) certainly brings in some radical new ideas. Angels are humans, and existing before creation. The Vision, which was wildly controversial, introduced the three heavens and “outer darkness.” A close reading indicates key conflicts with JS’s later revelations, namely the idea that those who don’t accept the gospel “in the flesh” are destined to the Terrestrial Kingdom. Some argue that progression between kingdoms is the consequent resolution. Progression indicated by a question mark.

In Nauvoo JS does three important things: 1) he repeatedly teaches that human spirits cannot be created or made and that “God never did have power to create the spirit of man at all.” 2) He reveals the Nauvoo Temple liturgy, which dramatically recasts the entire narrative. 3) He at least lays a foundation for the idea of Mother in Heaven, if not teaching it privately. It is only the last of these three that people seem to have run with after JS died. [Update: So I didn’t really like the diagram I had originally posted. I’ve updated it with what is now shown. I am convinced that JS was teaching that the kingdoms are entirely relational, and not geographic, and that the sealings materialize heaven. As it relates to the image, I think that the more speculative aspect relates to the endowment liturgy, which seems to indicate that people pass through kingdoms as part of their progression.]

After JS died Orson Pratt, Parley Pratt, and Brigham Young each promoted models that have important similarities and important differences. All of them run with the idea of Mother in Heaven and adopt the idea of a celestial sexual procreation. I call this concept of “viviparous spirit birth” a wildly popular folk belief. To accommodate this, BY took JS’s argument that if a spirit could ever be created, it must also be able to be destroyed, and flipped it. Spirits were created just as human babies were created, except with spirit element. If you merited perdition, just as you were created, you would also be destroyed, and the spirit matter recycled. Not enough info to conclude yay or nay on progression between kingdoms.

Orson Pratt is the source for all sorts of Mormon weirdness. He kept JS’s eternal spirits but atomized them. These intelligent atoms then self organized, resulting in increasing levels of complexity through spirit vegetation and animals. This had some consequences for OP’s conception of divination, and BY pretty much hated all of it. Cleon Skousen and Orson Scott Card, however, likey. Progression between kingdoms? I don’t know.

There was this thing in Utah during the nineteenth century. There isn’t a lot of concrete description, but it pops up in a lot of places because it agitated so many people. Inherent in BY’s Adam-God teachings was the idea that resurrected people could become mortal (e.g., Adam and Eve). It appears that some people ran with that and got “baby resurrection,” that is, you got resurrected as a baby. Sounds like reincarnation? A lot. Anyway, Orson F. Whitney seems to have gotten on the band wagon, at least for a while. To be honest, because documentation is not particularly granular, this one is essentially a guestimation. It also got stamped out pretty quickly (except, as I understand it, among some fundamentalist groups, who also like Adam-God teachings).

James Talmage, as he was wont to do, took the pioneer teachings, stripped them down considerably and then bolstered them with texts. I think he probably landed on progression between kingdoms because of his interaction with the temple liturgy.

B. H. Roberts being a student of JS’s teachings, and preparing many important sermons for publication saw the conflict between JS’s common teaching that spirits could not be created, and BY’s triumphant spirit creation. He, along with a few others, proposed a model that I have called tripartite existentialism. Roberts posited that there was a non-spirit entity that was the core of human personhood, and which was never created or made. This “intelligence” got a spirit body through spirit birth. Consequently no annihilation. Roberts’ idea caught on with some important folks like John A. Widtsoe. However, for a number of reasons (see WVS’s forthcoming book on all of this, it is so great) many hated it. JFS and Penrose squashed it, and it wasn’t until the rise of Truman Madsen, who liked the idea for the same reasons as Roberts that it started catching on more widely. I’d venture, in fact, that Roberts’ is the most commonly imagined model among Latter-day Saints today. Progression between kingdoms? Not enough info.

Do you know who else hated Roberts’ shtick? Bruce R. McConkie. He basically took BY’s model, ignored annihilation, and said that “intelligence” was the same thing as “spirit element.” But he was emphatic that this was just non-intelligent matter, and personhood began with spirit birth. He also said that spirit prison and paradise are geographically discreet places, and one couldn’t travel between them without a pass. His son, JFM disagreed with him on this latter point, as I imagine most people have. Also progression between kingdoms is one of the “seven deadly heresies.”

As mentioned above, I think that B.H. Roberts has taken the day. It has just so much grass-roots appeal, and people haven’t thought about it enough to recognize conflicts (often because of coded language such as BRM’s intelligence/spirit matter move). While the church is doubling down on spirits being children of heavenly parents, my sense is that the idea of spirit adoption is gainging some traction over viviparous spirit birth (which also obviates the need for BHR’s “intelligences.” I think that the seven deadly heresies squashed progression between kingdoms for a generation of Latter-day Saints, but Terryl Givens is publishing the idea with Deseret Book and more people are pointing to James Talmage’s support. It also reduces a tremendous amount of anxiety, confusion, and cog diss over proxy temple work. When my ward discussed this in Gospel Doctrine, there appeared to be unanimity in support for progression between kingdoms. I also understand that my ward may be anomalous.