Tales from the Archives: Joseph Fielding Smith, Utah Geology, and Premises

President Joseph Fielding Smith took his understanding of geology and cosmology from his readings of scripture. One of his central premises was that scripture consisted of divinely-revealed facts of religion but also science and history; and therefore, scripture— as he interpreted it—  should take precedence over limited and flawed human theorizing, i.e. modern science.

On two occasions, Smith commented on the mountains of Utah, and these illustrate his premises.

First, back in 1931, in the conflict with BH Roberts, he presented a lengthy paper arguing for a young earth, no pre-adamites, and no “death before the fall.” Therein, he relied on Seventh-day Adventist George McCready Price for geological arguments, as well as his own apparently hemispheric understanding of Book of Mormon geography.

Our geological friends, while admitting that these [Utah mountain] ranges are ‘young’ from the standpoint of geological time, yet declare that they have been in this broken and fragmentary condition for untold ages. In the Book of Mormon we have the story how they were so broken up and the time is fixed, less than two thousand years ago!

Smith in 1910 after Apostolic ordination. LDS.org

Smith apparently thought the account of changes of the land in 3 Nephi covered the entirety of north and South America,  and thus included the Utah mountains. And thus, geologists were wrong about how old they were and how they were formed. He extrapolated backwards that there were not really mountains before that time.

EDIT: A friend points out that this idea has roots in nineteenth-century LDS thought. Parley P. Pratt wrote that at creation, 

the surface [of the earth] was smooth, or gently undulating, and delightfully varied.

And then on p. 22-23, it is implied that in the millennial age, it will return to its flatter state.

Smith reiterated this view in more detail in a lengthy 1957 letter.

It is easy to see, when we look at the mountains of the Wasatch range that some great cataclysm at some period of time took place that has broken up the unity and created fissures and faults. I never ride over highway #91, and look at our mountains without taking a good look at the upturned and broken strata, but when I do I do not see them in the same way, perhaps, that you might see them. My mind goes back to the days of the crucifixion of our Lord. For I am confident that that was the time of this great upheaval…. [lengthy scriptural quotation from 3 Nephi.] This evidence concerning the upheavals of the earth recorded in the Book of Mormon are, in my judgment, in conflict with the conclusions reached by those who make the geological investigations….
I am glad to say there are other geologists and scientists who do not hold to these views.

These other “scientists and geologists,” at least those cited in the letter,  included Price, Immanuel Velikovsky geology book Earth in Upheaval— which Smith had read the previous year— and H.H. Howorth’s 1887 book,The Mammoth and the Flood.

Smith elaborated on the futurity of the mountain ranges, with

one word further on the geological formation of this earth. This too is scriptural in the main, for to me this is the safest and surest evidence we have. [At creation] there were no exceeding high mountains as we have them today, for in the promised restoration of the earth, all the land surface will be brought back again and the mountains will be abased, that is lowered again.

Smith cited Genesis, Ezekiel 38:19-20, Revelation 6:14 and Rev 16:18-20 but “more definitely” D&C 133:20-29 to make this point. Apparently, the earth had been created with minimal elevation differences, and would be returned to a flattish Pangea-like state in the future. (Notably his son-in-law Elder Bruce R. McConkie shared his interpretive premises, read D&C 133 the same way, and wrote that interpretation into the chapter heading.)

Joseph Fielding Smith was a prophet, and the tenth President of the Church; but his interpretive premises did not descend out of heaven anymore than anyone else’s. To paraphrase,¹Malcom Thorp says something like this in “James E. Talmage and the Tradition of Victorian Lives of Jesus,” Sunstone 63 (January 1988): 13. Latter-day Saints like to think that we get all our views directly from scripture and revelation, rather than from traditions that need to be made explicit, critiqued, and defended through rational discourse. See here for two examples.

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