Joseph Fielding Smith, 2 Nephi 2:22, and “Death Before the Fall” in Church History

As many of my readers may know, President Joseph Fielding Smith (1876-1972) considered evolution not just incorrect, but devilish; he believed scripture taught a young earth, with no death of any kind anywhere before the fall of Adam c. 4000 BC.  His key scriptural evidence was 2 Nephi 2:22-25, which he cited dozens of times in books, articles, and private letters.  I want to explore and document a few related questions here.

1. Does Smith’s understanding of this passage represent a clear and historically consistent Church position?
2. Does Smith, in essence, overclaim?

President Smith in 1910

As do we all, Smith made assumptions in determining what scripture meant. This is normal; as humans, we can’t help but make assumptions, it’s how we function.  Assumptions are like the lenses in our glasses; information passes through them. If our glasses are  smudged— or we deny we’re even wearing glasses!— it skews our perception. So taking stock of our assumptions is becoming aware that we’re wearing glasses, and cleaning our lenses. (N.T. Wright expands on this metaphor here.) What we can do is try to be as explicit as we can about the assumptions we make, and decide whether they are reasonable and well-grounded.  I’ve written and spoken extensively about Smith’s assumptions elsewhere (here for a post, here for a recorded formal presentation), so I’ll recap with application to 2Ne 2.

First, Smith believed scripture asserted scientific facts about biology, geology, etc. This wasn’t terribly unusual, it’s been the default assumption for many readers in the last few hundred years and Latter-day Saints in particular. (This is the assumption of Concordism)

Second, in contrast to contemporaries like James E. Talmage and John Widtsoe who thought the scientific facts were revealed by scientific work,  Smith believed that one achieved knowledge of these scientific facts  through “plain reading” of the scriptural text. God intended scripture’s meaning to be plain and self-evident throughout centuries and across translation; context and outside information were not really needed. Indeed, if scripture lent itself to multiple interpretations, it would render scripture useless, he argued. (This is the assumption of “plain reading” and is plentifully documentable in Smith’s writings. Smith termed it “literal” reading, but this is a mistake.)

Third, Smith believed in prophetic infallibility¹E.g. to Henry Eyring in 1950. “There is one place, however, where I feel that men are infallible. That is when they, as prophets, reveal to us the word of the Lord.” and divine micromanagement of scripture; that is, those scriptural assertions of scientific fact (#1) which were easily evident at face-value in scripture (#2) had to be correct, because scripture was inspired and revealed by God. God had put them in scripture from his omniscience, and approved them in scripture, which guaranteed their correctness; if they were wrong in any way, Smith believed, God would have stepped in and overruled the prophet to correct them.

Combining these three assumptions led to  Smith’s interpretation that a face-value reading of scripture provided more reliable scientific facts— because they came from an omniscient divine source—than  partial fallen human science could provide. But Smith repeatedly denied emphatically that he was interpreting at all. He merely collated and summarized the facts God had clearly revealed in scripture. Consequently, while he preached the inerrancy of the scriptural text, he practiced the inerrancy of his interpretation of the text. (I’m paraphrasing another scholar here; see bottom of post for explanation, source,  and long quote.)

Read through Smith’s lenses, 2Ne 2 established a scientific fact that there was no death before the fall of Adam c.4000 BC.  Are the assumptions generating that view reasonable? How do  they fit with other Church teachings? Scripture? Church history?  Let’s examine, briefly.

In 1931, an internal controversy led to Elder Smith and BH Roberts of the Seventy both presenting lengthy written arguments to the Quorum of the Twelve and First Presidency. These concerned  death before the fall, the existence of humans or human-like beings before Adam (i.e. “preadamites”), and also the age of the earth.  (While the topic was not evolution, just note that evolution requires an old earth, death before 4000BC, and preadamites.) Roberts thought death, preadamites, and an old earth indisputable; Smith was glad to dispute. ( For background, see here and here.)

Smith argued based on 2Ne 2  that scripture taught— and (Seventh-day Adventist) geology proved— the earth was young, and that “no death before the fall” was

a fact…. and no amount of sophistry can change this fact…. If I am wrong, then the revelations are wrong— I have not placed private interpretation upon them…. There is no alternative.

But the First Presidency rejected his assumptions and interpretation. They ruled that the Church had no doctrine one way or the other on death before the fall OR preadamites.  They evidenced disagreement with and undermined Smith’s assumptions when they wrote a memo to all General Authorities to

leave geology, biology, archaeology and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind, to scientific research

Science belonged to the realm of scientists, and couldn’t be extrapolated from scripture in the way Smith claimed. Moreover, the First Presidency held that neither death before the fall nor preadamites had “to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind.”

Smith had preached in public that human science was irrelevant to such questions.

“I do not care what the scientists say in regard to dinosaurs and other creatures upon the earth millions of years ago that lived and died and fought and struggled for existence…”

Why?

“I will state frankly and positively that I am opposed to the present biological theories and the doctrine that man has been on the earth for millions of years. I am opposed to the present teachings in relation to the age of the earth which declare that the earth is millions of years old. Some modern scientists even claim that it is a billion years old. Naturally, since I believe in modern revelation, I cannot accept these so-called scientific teachings, for I believe them to be in conflict with the simple and direct word of the Lord that has come to us by divine revelation.” ²Answers to Gospel Questions, 5:112

It was simple. Scripture said it was young, so anything to the contrary— no matter how well-established, how heavily proven, how strong an argument— simply had to be false. If you believed scripture, you accepted a young earth.

To counter-balance Elder Smith’s public preaching which downplayed science, the First Presidency approved Elder James E. Talmage, PhD,  to give a  public speech, which he did.  The First Presidency read “Earth and Man,” approved it,³This has been disputed, but is clear from President Grant’s diary and personal letters from Talmage and others. and after he delivered it in the Tabernacle, published it in the Deseret News, as an official Church pamphlet (more than 10k copies!), published it in the British Church magazine, and even had it translated into German for Der Stern.

Talmage’s First-Presidency-approved sermon included clear statements that the earth was very old, and death had been operative for a very long time.

Smith was unmoved by the First Presidency’s ruling or any of the arguments from others in the Quorum. He labeled Talmage’s talk “false doctrine,” “not edifying,” and “a sweet morsel to the evolutionists.” A few years later, he elevated death-before-the-fall to a “fundamental doctrine, ” writing that “the fundamental doctrine of the church is that death was brought into the world through the transgression of Adam. See 2 Nephi 2:22.” But of course, the First Presidency had said there was NO doctrine on this, and it WAS NOT central.

Smith evidenced his unchanged assumptions again, this time about scripture being micromanaged by God.

“According to [2 Nephi 2:22-25] —and it must have been approved by the Lord or it would not be in the Book of Mormon—there was no death of any living creature before the fall of Adam!“ ⁴Answers to Gospel Questions, 5:112

And again, about scripture being entirely clear and “approved”

“the words of Lehi are perfectly clear and evidently they carry the endorsement of our Eternal Father, for he approved of what was written and commanded the Witnesses to teach it in all the world.”⁵Private letter, 1957.

But still other General Authorities took other views. In the 1940s, Elder Smith sharply criticized President J. Reuben Clark for accepting an old earth and death before the fall, even in the Garden of Eden itself. Clark, in good lawyerly fashion, pointed out that Smith was wrongly attributing technical terms to general words and that Smith was… interpreting. 

President McKay (1873-1970)

During the 1960s, President McKay implied death-before-the-fall over the pulpit in General Conference.  McKay had become a proponent of theistic evolution during or before his Presidency.
Talmage’s “Earth and Man” was reprinted in The Instructor in 1965, part of a series of pro-science articles; one took a detailed pro-evolution view, and that article was explicitly read and approved by President McKay.

In 1987, the Church solicited a BYU geology professor (and Stake President) to write an Ensign article on fossils. That article was reviewed by nearly everyone in the Church office building for a year, and then it was published with minimal changes. In that approved form, it quoted Talmage’s “Earth and Man” and affirmed that dinosaurs and other fossils had died hundreds of millions of years ago. Even the title made clear that this was about science and scripture. 

In 2016, a short article appeared in the New Era teaching an old earth and the long operatively of death.

Did dinosaurs live and die on this earth long before man came along? There have been no revelations on this question, and the scientific evidence says yes. (You can learn more about it by studying paleontology if you like, even at Church-owned schools.)

Just recently, a new Church resource appeared which seems somewhat relevant, even if it doesn’t explicitly address death before the fall. The Answering My Gospel Questions- Teacher Material has a micro-training segment on over claiming.

We overclaim when we assert knowledge beyond what the Lord has revealed through both ancient and modern prophets. We underclaim when we present the basic truths of the gospel in ways that are unclear, tentative, or uncertain.

We are being dogmatic when we express our opinions as if they were indisputable facts and are intolerant of ambiguity when there are not clear answers. We are timid when we fail to stand up for what we know to be true.

If we don’t know an answer to a question, the best response is simply to say something like “I am not sure,” “I don’t know,” or “Good question; let’s learn more about that together.”

Smith, I believe, was being dogmatic and overclaiming, on the basis of his assumptions.  They weren’t entirely unique. Latter-day Saints do have a tradition— at least partly inherited from our 19th century restoration context— of reading scripture as a divine encyclopedia, as facts from God in prophets’ mouths, which are understandable at face-value and without any kind of context.

This kind of framework has much in common with the Protestant development of the doctrines of inerrancy and fundamentalism which happened in the late 19th and early 20th century. Latter-day Saints critique this kind of “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” among Evangelicals, but then do the same thing in LDS settings. That kind of thought and argument is evident in reading Smith’s public and private thoughts, so much so that one scholar who did founding research on this LDS history described Smith as “a Protestant fundamentalist in a Mormon setting.” Significantly, Smith’s views and assumptions became VERY common in the Church in the mid and late-20th century.

Smith’s framework of revelation, scripture, and interpretation is not the only one in LDS history, however.  Another thread of Latter-day Saint interpretive tradition saw scripture as divinely-inspired-but-human, requiring interpretation, context, recognition of the human factor in prophetic reception and interpretation of revelation, as well as the necessity of context and research. Apparently, the First Presidency  in 1931 felt this way; Talmage, Widtsoe, Richards, and other Apostles left evidence of this view.

For example, Talmage wrote in “Earth and Man” that humans could misunderstand and misinterpret science and scripture

The Creator has made record in the rocks for man to decipher; but he has also spoken directly regarding the main stages of progress by which the earth has been brought to be what it is. The accounts cannot be fundamentally opposed; one cannot contradict the other; though man’s interpretation of either may be seriously at fault.

By contrast, Smith thought human science was subject to misinterpretation, but scripture was clear and obvious; Latter-day Saints who held to  an old earth simply did not believe or accept scripture. Smith conflated his own interpretation of scripture with scripture itself.

Talmage expressed his viewpoint further in a private letter, to someone who took issue with “Earth and Man.”

I cannot agree with your conception that there was no death of plants and animals anywhere upon this earth prior to the transgression of Adam, unless we assume that the history of Adam and Eve in Eden dates back many hundreds of thousands of years. The trouble with some theologians – even including many of our own good people – is that they undertake to fix the date of Adam’s transgression as being approximately 4000 years before the birth of Christ and therefore about 5932 years ago. If Adam was placed upon the earth only that comparatively short time ago, the rocks clearly demonstrate the life and death had been existent and operative in this earth for ages prior to that time…. I think we should be very careful in taking what we consider the one and only interpretation or application of a passage of scripture, and sweeping away as utterly wrong all accumulated knowledge that may seem to point to another interpretation…. We have to recognize fact whether it be called scripture or science; and it is unwise to attempt to pass upon demonstrated fact and call it false because it has been brought forth through the labors of trained men in the field of science.

President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.

 

When President Clark responded to Elder Smith in 1946, he wrote this.

“You seem to think I reject the scriptures, or some of them. I do not intend to do so, but obviously I am no more bound by your interpretation of them than you are by mine…. as to what the earlier brethren have said— where they have declared themselves as speaking under inspiration and by the authority of the Lord, I bow to what they say. But where they express views based on their own understanding and interpretation, then none of us are foreclosed from exercising our own reasoning powers, inadequate though they may be; but the earlier views do not foreclose us from thinking. This is particularly true, where we come to interpreting their interpretations.”

Similarly,  Elder Stephen L. Richards (who later served in the First Presidency under McKay) preached this principle in the April 1932 General Conference.

“The revelations of the new dispensation, as well as those of the Bible, were in the beginning and are now interpreted by men, and men interpret in the light of experience and understanding…. In the interpretation of scripture and doctrine they are dependent on their knowledge and experience….Old conceptions and traditional interpretations must be influenced by newly discovered evidence. Not that ultimate fact and law change, but our understanding varies with our education and experience.”

From the Church Image Collection

I believe Lehi in 2Ne 2  was doing as all prophets do; he “spoke in part and prophesied in part” per 1Co 13:9. Lehi was reading Genesis through his sixth-century Israelite “experience and knowledge,” as is apparent from some other things in that chapter;⁶I don’t think “opposition in all things” in 2Ne 2 has to do with resistance or antagonism, but the mode of creation in Gen 1. God creates by separating, defining, and naming. the fact that  it appears in the canonized and inspired Book of Mormon does not automatically render it an ultimate revelation of eternal scientific fact from the mind of  God, which overturns all evidence to the contrary. The combined First Presidency in 1931 did not see it Smith’s way, nor have Church leaders in 1946, 1965, 1987, or 2016; they, “interpreted Lehi interpreting Genesis” per Clark’s dictum above.

If,  to take one theoretical option, God “reset” creation within the Garden so that Adam had to fall and RE-introduce death, it is clear that death was operative for millions of years before that point, as Talmage and others have said. As Latter-day Saints, we should not be preaching that NOTHING died EVER before 6000 years ago, because that is clearly NOT what Church leaders have collectively taught.

Further resources: 

• Lest anyone try to attribute the antiquity of dinosaurs and fossils  to “fragments of planets” that the earth was “assembled from recently,” see this article in Religious Educator and this recent video.  That idea was shot down by General Authorities and scientists repeatedly, but it apparently still circulates among Latter-day Saints.
• The official Saints podcast, on the Church and evolution (and death) in the 1920s and 30s.
• A series of guided readings, podcasts, etc. about assumptions and interpreting scripture, science, and Church history.
• All my posts on interpretation and assumptions.

Addendum on Smith

I have struggled to capture in words how Smith’s denial of his own interpreting affected his rhetoric. I found that language in this evangelical-on-evangelical critique, in a book with argument and counter-argument about what inerrancy entails. I’ve emphasized the portion I paraphrased, but I think the whole thing applies to how Smith saw scripture.

Mohler says that “I do not allow any line of evidence from outside the Bible to nullify to the slightest degree the truthfulness of any text in all that the text asserts and claims.”  There are three problems here.
First, Mohler does not distinguish between the text and his interpretation of it; he conflates them. The result is that he preaches the inerrancy of the text but practices the inerrancy of his interpretation.
Second, Mohler’s unyielding commitment to the Bible turns out to be a type of extreme fideism, and in practice it means a closed-mindedness to examining all the evidence, pro and con, concerning the Bible and his interpretation of it.
Third, Mohler has a faulty view of revelation. He forgets that God’s Word comes to us in God’s world so that God’s revelation of himself in Scripture (i.e., special revelation) is taken in tandem with God’s revelation of himself in nature and history (i.e., general revelation). The problem is that Mohler wants to interpret nature and history in light of Scripture, but not Scripture in light of history or nature. That means that whenever there is a dissonance between the claims of special revelation and those of general revelation, Mohler will always find the error to be in secular interpretation of general revelation, whereas the error might just as well reside in his interpretation of special revelation!

-Bird,  in Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy, 69–70. (That is an Amazon Affiliate link, and I receive a small percentage of sales made through that link.)

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