Scott Woodward:
Just before leaving home for college, 18-year-old Henry Eyring, the future world-renowned LDS scientist, was invited by his father, Edward Eyring, to sit down for some fatherly counsel. After sharing his firm conviction that Joseph Smith was a true prophet whom God used to restore his church, Edward said to his son, “Now, there are a lot of other matters which are much less clear to me, but in this church, you don’t have to believe anything that isn’t true.” Hmm. “In this church you don’t have to believe anything that isn’t true.” This idea is echoed in President Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s teaching, when he declared, “Latter-day Saints are not asked to blindly accept everything they hear. We are encouraged to think and discover truth for ourselves. We are expected to ponder, to search, to evaluate, and thereby come to a personal knowledge of the truth.” So how do we do this when it comes to theological or doctrinal truth? How can we confidently determine what is and what is not reliable doctrine so we can decide what to believe? On today’s episode of Church History Matters, we dive into this very issue and explore three vital questions to ask when evaluating all doctrinal truth claims. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today we dive into our second episode of this series dealing with truth seeking and good thinking. Now, let’s get into it.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Well, hello, Scott. How are you?

Scott Woodward:
Hey, good, Casey. How you doing, man?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I’m doing great, especially because I feel like we’ve set the table with our first episode, and now this is the meaty part. Like, I think it’s really, really useful and helpful in kind of defining mature discipleship, you know? Being a smart, thinking adult but also a faithful believer, disciple of Christ.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. We set the table last time, and today is the main course.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yep.

Scott Woodward:
And speaking of food, Casey, stop me if you’ve heard this quote before, okay? A wise person once said, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” Have you ever heard that quote, Casey?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I think I said that quote in our last podcast, so.

Scott Woodward:
Oh yeah, shoot. Here’s the harder question: do you know—okay, you can’t look at our notes, but do you know who said that quote?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I said it. I made it up on the spot.

Scott Woodward:
Did you make that up last time?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It was a pearl of wisdom that I’ve been carrying around since a young child.

Scott Woodward:
That is so funny.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But no. No, who actually—who said that? Where’s it come from?

Scott Woodward:
Okay. Are you ready for this? It came from Lao Tzu.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Ooh. Nice.

Scott Woodward:
The ancient Chinese philosopher. Or it’s an Italian proverb, I found. Or it’s from Maimonides, the ancient Jewish rabbi. Or it’s from a British girl named Anne Ritchie in the mid-1800s.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Wow! So in other words, nobody knows, but it’s one of those self-evident truths, and—

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—as historians, we know that sourcing quotes is difficult. It’s just like Abraham Lincoln said, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take, right?

Scott Woodward:
That’s right. That’s right. Didn’t Abraham Lincoln said that you can only believe, like, 65 percent of what you read on the internet?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Right, right. It’s just like how Joseph Smith said, I never said it would be easy. I only said it would be worth it, right? So, anyway.

Scott Woodward:
Nobody knows who said it. I’m going to say Casey Griffiths said it last episode, and it is wise.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I am hoping that at some point, you know, on some internet site, that “teach a man to fish” thing shows up and my name is underneath it.

Scott Woodward:
“Casey Griffiths.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That would be great, honestly.

Scott Woodward:
That’s when you know you’ve arrived, really.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, yeah. But that is essentially what we’re trying to do here.

Scott Woodward:
That’s what we’re aiming at in this series is we’re trying to help people learn how to fish—

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
—in the waters of doctrine and history, right? Theology and history, so.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yep. In fact, you wrote this as the burning question of the series: What mental moves are made by intelligent, critically thinking Latter-day Saints whose faith is strengthened rather than damaged by diving deeply into our church’s history and doctrine, or what frameworks of thinking do they use when approaching scripture and history?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s not nearly as pithy as—

Scott Woodward:
“Teach a man to fish.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Teach a man to fish, but it does capture what we’re doing here.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And in the last episode one of the things we emphasized is that repeatedly throughout the Doctrine and Covenants, most prominently in section 88 verse 118, the Lord tells the early saints to be smart, to seek out wisdom and learning, and the two words he uses are “even by study, and also by faith.”

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I remember this talk where President Uchtdorf, back when he was President Uchtdorf, said for Latter-day Saints education is not just a good idea: It is a commandment.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And so this is something that we’ve been commanded to do, and that we’ve been asked to do over and over again. And last time we introduced a couple huge words that maybe—should we go through these really fast just again before we get to the meat of the discussion?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, let’s do it.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Here’s some of the words we introduced last time: epistemology. Epistemology means what does it mean to know something and how do we come to know things, and is there any way we can be sure we’re right?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Ontology. Ontology is sort of measuring what is real and what is existence.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Another term: facts. Facts are true and verifiable, no matter what your perspective. We brought up a couple facts. Joseph Smith said that he showed the plates to eleven witnesses. That’s a fact. I don’t think anybody’s disputing that, right?

Scott Woodward:
Meaning that the fact is that he said that he showed it to eleven people. That’s the fact.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Nobody’s disputing that, right? There’s all kinds of disputes over what the witnesses saw.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Or back and forth, but nobody’s disputing that that was a claim Joseph Smith made.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Or that Joseph Smith was a person who lived in the 19th century and started a religion.

Scott Woodward:
Right. Fact.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Inferences. Inferences are snap conclusions and meanings we give facts based on our preexisting assumption. So this is kind of when we—we see a fact, and all of a sudden we say, “Oh, well, if this, then this.” That’s an inference, all right? We talked about this from the hermeneutic of faith and the hermeneutic of suspicion. Hermeneutic of faith would be Joseph Smith claimed he saw an angel. Your inference is Joseph Smith is a prophet. A hermeneutic of suspicion inference would be Joseph Smith is a fraud. Angels don’t talk to people. That kind of thing, but it’s all based on your assumptions, which brings us to assumptions.

Scott Woodward:
What’s an assumption?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Beliefs we suppose to be true, and we use to interpret the world. It’s kind of our lens that we look at the world with.

Scott Woodward:
We can’t really get rid of assumptions, right? Assumptions aren’t bad, but what we talked about last time is that we can actually educate our assumptions, right? Like . . .

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yep.

Scott Woodward:
And you do that by getting better evidence. Evidence educates assumptions. So how do we get at evidence, Casey?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So we talked about four methods here, too. Scientific method. That’s an empirical, evidence-based method for testing assumptions about how things work in the natural, observable world. So this is our how, what, when, where sort of thing. We go—we experience something. I had people tell me for years, “European chocolate is better than American chocolate.” Couple weeks ago I went to Denmark, and based on my scientific exploration of the subject—

Scott Woodward:
Empirical research.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—it’s true. My empirical research—I went to a bodega in Copenhagen and bought a bunch of chocolate and ate it, and it was good, dare I say better.

Scott Woodward:
Is it because it has less wax? I’ve heard it has less wax and it, like, has more cocoa or something. I don’t know.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I don’t know what they do. They’re magical people over there in Denmark that just do wonderful things with chocolate, and I appreciate them and shout out to Denmark for your good chocolate.

Scott Woodward:
Denmark, way to go.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Then there is the historical method. Historical method is when we kind of do detective work. We go back, and we find evidence, and we use the evidence to try and put together a picture of things. This can happen through archaeological study. You see a lot of that done with reference to the Bible and even church history. The church usually does an archaeological study of a site. I’ve been to the site where Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack built their first home. They did an archaeological study there to find out what kind of crops Lucy Mack and Joseph Sr. grew. That was archaeological exploration. Another way to do it is documentary exploration. So you take documents. One of the things Spencer McBride, from the Joseph Smith Papers, pointed out is that when John Whitmer became church historian, the number of documents starts to multiply exponentially. And we can use those documents to say, “Hey, Joseph Smith wrote a letter from Greenville, Indiana on this date. In the letter, he said this and this and this. That seems to indicate that this was going on around that time.” We talked about last time about that’s how you actually date the earliest account of the First Vision. The account itself has no date, but you can do detective work to say, “Well, in this letter, he was talking a lot about things linked to the First Vision, and the history is written in Frederick G. Williams’ handwriting, so we put that together. Probably happened in the summer.” Then we have the philosophical method, which is a rational approach: getting to the truth of theoretical statements through logic, reason, and argumentation. This is where you take a statement and just kind of logic your way through it.

Scott Woodward:
Philosophy is also dealing with things like “What is good?”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Right? “What is right? What is moral? What is evil? What is real?” That kind of thing, right? So really fundamental questions that are hard to get at through a microscope or through sifting through rocks and dirt or looking at historical documents. It’s more about, yeah, this rational, logical way to get at truth, and it can be quite powerful, actually.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Then there’s theology. Theology, dictionary definition, “the study of things of God.” Rational study synthesizing teachings in scriptural canon and one’s own personal experiences with God and a sense of God’s spirit, visions, appearance, angelic ministrations, personal appearances. Theology, we noted last time, is a word Latter-day Saints don’t use very much, but it’s okay to use it. Theology is a little more ethereal than doctrine, and that’s what we’re talking about today is doctrine. The two overlap to a large degree, is that fair to say?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Doctrine is what? Teachings. The teachings, I think, is what doctrine means. What’s the teachings? And theology is kind of the teachings about God or the study of God and the things of God. And so, yeah, what are the teachings as you study the things of God? Like, what are the teachings you can distill? What are the truths you can distill from the most inspired theological sources? Something like that, yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Very good. Okay. Then we introduced one last term, which was complexity. We fully recognize that in introducing all this stuff we’re making your life more complex And if you just want to say, “Hey, the church is true, and God lives, and Jesus is the Christ, and Joseph Smith’s a prophet, and the Book of Mormon is true,” that’s okay.

Scott Woodward:
Totally. Hundred percent.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
We’re not trying to mess with that, but there are a lot of challenges to each one of those claims, and I genuinely think that the tools that we’re using, or that we’re explaining here, can help strengthen your faith.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And we talked about this idea of simplicity on the other side of complexity, that if you choose to enter into this complexity, I sincerely believe you’ll come out the other side with those simple truths still intact but maybe even a little bit more strongly imbued in your heart and your spirit because you’ve taken the time to test them. You’ve examined them. You’ve engaged in the wrestle, basically, to find out what’s right and what God wants you to do.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Okay, so kind of to summarize all what you’re saying here, Casey, is that all of these different methodologies are basically ways to get at evidence, at different kinds of evidence, based on the nature of our question, and that that kind of seeking is not only encouraged, but commanded by the Lord. Is that right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
To use all the methods, right? I mean, here’s a great quote from President Joseph Smith. He said, “We believe that we have a right to embrace all and every item of truth when that truth is clearly demonstrated to our minds and we have the highest degree of evidence of the same.” I love that quote, that we want evidence. We seek evidence. We want in every way to find truth using all the methods possible.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Like, here’s another one. “The Latter-day Saints have no creed, but we’re ready to believe all true principles that exist, as they are made manifest from time to time.” So kind of built into Joseph Smith’s method for seeking truth is, like, well, let’s see what’s the evidence, right? What is the evidence? If it’s true, we’ll believe it. How do we know it’s true? We need evidence.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So Latter-day Saints don’t shy away from evidence. We’ll look for it anywhere we can using all the methods possible. And so today we’re just talking about doctrinal evidence. We’re trying to find out, like, how can we become confident in our doctrinal understanding of truth? But just because we’re talking about doctrine today doesn’t mean we’re not open to all the other kinds of truth, right? Joseph Smith was boundless in his search for and his expressions to Latter-day Saints to gather all the truth in the world. He says if we don’t gather up all the truth in the world then we won’t come out true Mormons. That’s Joseph Smith’s approach, is that everything, everywhere that’s true, we believe it.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Today is doctrinal truth, and phew, this is a one that’s of supreme importance to Latter-day Saints.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But also one that is a little bit more complex. And again, I don’t say that as if it’s a bad thing. It’s a really good thing. We have a lot of avenues and ways to know truth, but sometimes knowing how to coordinate those ways and avenues is what’s difficult for Latter-day Saints—is to know, “Hey, what are the best sources to use? And how do we determine what is or is not an official teaching of the Church?”

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And so on and so forth.

Scott Woodward:
That’s right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I’m going to credit you, Scott, for coming up with the model we’re going to use today. You and I both teach something really similar to our classes, but when we put them side by side, yours was a little bit more straightforward and a little bit more clean than mine. Can I say that?

Scott Woodward:
Oh.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And so we’re—you’re driving the car today, so.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Let’s start the car and take it out for a spin and see what you can do.

Scott Woodward:
Okay. Here we go. Everyone buckle up. So I guess I’d frame our question today as simply this: How can we become doctrinally and theologically confident? And what are our inspired sources from which to distill truth, and how can we best do that? What I’ve gathered together is I’ve looked through all the teachings of the prophets and scripture on this. I’ve found that there are three, what I’m going to call “lenses” for discerning true doctrine that basically are a synthesis of what the prophets have taught. So here you go. Here’s the three lenses: Number one. As you’re trying to think about, “Is this statement true? Is what I have heard true? Is what I’m reading true? Is what I’m hearing in the sacrament meeting talk true? Is what I’m studying in this article true?” Number one: Is it taught in scripture repeatedly? Number two: Is it taught by prophets of God repeatedly, like modern prophets? And number three: Is it confirmed by Spirit? And when you bring these together, they kind of form what I call a doctrinal heuristic. Heuristic is another fancy word, I guess, which simply means any type of imperfect but practical process used to problem solve. So it’s pretty handy. It works really, really well to check the reliability of a particular doctrinal statement. So, for instance, if something is taught repeatedly in scripture and consistently taught by prophets and confirmed by the Spirit, like, really quickly, you can have pretty high confidence that that’s true.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But if it is not repeatedly taught in scripture—maybe it’s a one-off little verse—not really consistently taught by prophets—maybe there’s one statement out in the Journal of Discourses somewhere, you know, and the Spirit’s not really confirming one way or the other, then your confidence does not wax strong. Your confidence can be lower in that thing, right? You’re not sure if that is true. And that’s an okay place to be in, honestly. There’s a lot of statements that’s like, “Hmm, that could be true. Maybe, maybe not.” It’s just not verified enough through those three lenses for us to be highly confident, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So that’s the—kind of the general, like, you know, from a 10,000-foot view, those are the kind of the three questions you want to ask.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So maybe I’m jumping in too fast here, but . . .

Scott Woodward:
No, go ahead.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Just to give an example.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I know that this is actually a common thing my students bring up, more common than it should be, but let’s take a statement like, “Cain and Bigfoot are the same person.”

Scott Woodward:
Oh boy, okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And we run that through the lens: Is that taught in scripture repeatedly?

Scott Woodward:
Uh, no.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
No. It’s never taught in scripture as far as I know.

Scott Woodward:
Zero times.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Has it been taught by prophets repeatedly, once? It’s in a book by President Kimball. And it’s—actually the phrase, “Cain and Bigfoot are the same person”—

Scott Woodward:
It’s not in there.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—is not in the book either. President Kimball cites an experience told by David Patten, where David Patten said he saw Cain. And Cain was a tall man. He was taller than the donkey that Elder Patten was sitting on. But other than that, I don’t know any other place where that has been taught in the church.

Scott Woodward:
And President Kimball calls that—all he calls it is, “an interesting story.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
The end.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
The point of the story was the corrosive effect sin has on a person, not trying to establish anything weird. And then we’d say, “Is that confirmed by the spirit?” I honestly . . .

Scott Woodward:
I’ve never had a confirmation of that.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I’ve never had a spiritual experience telling me, yes, Cain is Bigfoot. So if we’re running it through these three lenses, we would say, “Boy, that fails on—you could probably say on all three, to be honest with you, if we’re using the word “repeatedly” here.

Scott Woodward:
Definitely. So let’s dig into, like, each of those lenses maybe one by one here so that we can kind of see how they’re—how they’re constructed.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So let’s talk about being taught in scripture repeatedly. So here’s President Hinckley. This is actually in a General Authority training meeting. So this is the prophet teaching General Authorities about where doctrine resides.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
And he says this: he says, “When all is said and done, the test of the doctrine lies in the standard works of the church. These have been accepted in conference and assembled as our doctrinal standards.” Like, boom. Like, once something is canonized in our scriptures, it’s now part of our doctrinal sort of reservoir. It’s part of the doctrinal standards. That’s why we call it the standard works. You know, it’s not something that’s equally as valid as something else outside the standard works. Like, it gains an elevated sort of status in terms of its doctrinal trustworthiness, and therefore is prime.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Elder Christofferson says it like this, too. He says, “The scriptures are the touchstone for measuring correctness and truth.” That’s pretty booyah. Elder McConkie, this one might be a little bit surprising, considering that this is coming from Elder McConkie. He said, “Wise gospel students do not build their philosophies of life on quotations of individuals, even though those quotations come from presidents of the church. Wise people anchor their doctrine on the standard works.” Whoa. Listen. Like, when I was, like, a late teenager, I started collecting quotes from prophets of God, and I started organizing them A to Z. I still have a little box that has all my little quotes that I started organizing. Then I started making Word documents, and I eventually made a website where I was collecting, like, everything that every apostle had said about any topic that was interesting, A to Z, to me. Like, if it was interesting to me, I wanted to know what had been said on the topic. I was doing exactly what Elder McConkie said to not do. I was starting to build my philosophy of life on quotations of individuals, many of whom were presidents of the church. You might say, “That’s not—that doesn’t sound like a bad thing, right?”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And I would agree that’s not bad, but Elder McConkie’s saying that’s not best. When it comes to doctrine, wise people are going to anchor their doctrine in the standard works rather than individual quotations or even a cluster of quotations from people who may have been even apostles, but their words have not been canonized in scripture. So this actually brings up an interesting point that of the three lenses, taught in scripture repeatedly, taught by prophets repeatedly, confirmed by the Spirit—of those three, one of those is more important than the other two when it comes to evaluating doctrine. These are not all equal, and the lens that is most important is, “Is it taught in scripture repeatedly?” That one trumps when we’re talking about doctrine.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Now, I’m going to insert a little drama into this and challenge you.

Scott Woodward:
Ah, shoot. Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And by the way, dear listener, we talked about this beforehand, so this isn’t me, like, dropping the hammer on Scott in the middle of this.

Scott Woodward:
No, man. Drop it. Drop it.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I want to push back against that a little bit, if that’s okay.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Please.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Because you’re saying, you know, we’ve got scripture. Words of prophets and the Spirit, and scripture is the most important of the three.

Scott Woodward:
When it comes to doctrine.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Okay, okay. Well, so I just want to know how you square this. There is a talk given by President Ezra Taft Benson, okay?

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It was originally an address given February 26, 1980, at Brigham Young University.

Scott Woodward:
Hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Later it was published in the Ensign as the First Presidency message. It has been quoted verbatim in General Conference by another general authority—his name escapes me as a member of the Seventy, but it wasn’t that long ago.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It’s called “14 Fundamentals in Following the Prophet.”

Scott Woodward:
Mm. Yes.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Classic talk. Point two. Okay, so here’s my point of contention.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
President Benson says the living prophet is more vital to us than the Standard Works. So President Benson is saying the living prophet is more vital to us than the Standard Works.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And then he cites this story from President Wilford Woodruff that happened in the days of Joseph Smith. So Wilford Woodruff said this: “I will refer to a certain meeting I attended in the town of Kirtland in my early days. At that meeting some remarks were made that there had been made here today with regard to the living prophets and with regard to the written word of God.” So they’re talking about what we’re talking about: prophets and scripture.

Scott Woodward:
Scripture versus prophets, okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
“The same principle was presented, although not as extensively as it had been here, when a leading man in the church got up and talked upon the subject and said, ‘You have got the word of God before you here in the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants.’” Pearl of Great Price hadn’t been published yet—that’s an aside. ““You have the written word of God, and you who give revelations should give revelations according to those books, as what was written in those books is the word of God. We should confine ourselves to them.’ When he concluded, Brother Joseph turned to Brother Brigham Young and said, ‘Brother Brigham, I want you to go to the podium. Tell us your views with regard to the living oracles and the written Word of God.’ Brother Brigham took the stand, and he took the Bible and laid it down, he took the Book of Mormon and laid it down, and he took the book of Doctrine and Covenants and laid it down before him, and he said, ‘There is the written word of God to us concerning the work of God from the beginning of the world almost to our day. And now,’ said he, ‘when compared with the living oracles, those books are nothing. These books do not convey the word of God direct to us now as do the words of a prophet or a man bearing the holy priesthood in our day and generation. I would rather have the living oracles than all the writing in the books.’ That was the course he pursued. When he was through, Brother Joseph said to the congregation, Brother Brigham has told you the word of the Lord, and he has told you the truth.

Scott Woodward:
Bam.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
How do you square the idea that scripture is the most important of the lens with something like that, which is a story told by President Benson, who wasn’t the president of the church but becomes the president of the church—

Scott Woodward:
Right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—involves three presidents of the church. Wilford Woodruff tells the story, but he talks about what Brigham Young said and says that Joseph Smith backed up what he said there. Like—

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—that seems pretty strong to me—

Scott Woodward:
Totally.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—to basically say, “No, living prophets is the most important of the three lenses. How are you going to get yourself out of this one, Scott?

Scott Woodward:
No, that’s a fabulous question. In fact, that’s—when I first introduce this to students, that often will come up. “Well, what about that talk? What about President Benson’s talk?” Right? That’s actually a really important question to think about. So each of these three lenses can be considered the most important or the primary lens for different purposes. If we’re speaking about the most important lens in terms of, like, guiding the worldwide church in these latter days, then modern prophets are primary without question. And that’s what President Benson’s talking about. He says the prophets of God give us TNT, that’s what he says, which is today’s news today, meaning that the primary value of the president of the church is his guidance to us right now, his leadership to us now, his acting under the inspiration of the Lord to make changes in how we do things in the church today. How we should live our lives at this time, right? This is why a living prophet is so relevant and so crucial. And in that sense, he is more valuable to us than the scriptures, since the scriptures are not going to tell us about the particulars of what we ought to be doing right now or how the church should be governed today, right? So the primary value and benefit and function of a living prophet is not a doctrinal one. Rather, it’s one of guidance, direction, leadership, as the holder of the keys of the kingdom, the one through whom the Lord will reveal his present will. You cannot get that from scripture. Questions about what we as church members should be doing right now, how the kingdom of God on earth should be governed and led right now at the present—those aren’t doctrinal questions. Those are not theological questions per se, right? So if you want to ask which of those three lenses is most important for us in terms of, like, guiding the modern church today, no question, President Benson is telling you the truth. That’s actually accurate. Brigham Young was right. You stack up all the scriptures versus living prophets of God, living prophets will win every day of the week. But if you tweak your question, right? If your question was, you know, “Which of those three lenses is most important to guide us in making wise personal decisions day to day? Why then we’re probably going to have to argue that the Holy Ghost is the most important, right? The Spirit lens is most important in helping us in our personal lives. You’re not going to find out whether you should take that job in the scriptures or in the words of the living prophets. The guidance for you and your family, if you change the question to that, what should we do in our own particular sphere, like, the Holy Ghost is going to win out of those three—guided by the other two, supported by the other two, certainly, giving principles that are bounded on either side to help you not make stupid decisions, but the actual personal particulars will need to be guided by the Holy Ghost. That’s primary. So what we’re saying here is, if we’re changing the question to, okay, “Which lens is most important or primary when it comes to doctrine, Then that’s scripture. To back that up, this isn’t just Scott Woodward, this is Scott Woodward deriving this from the words of the prophets. So here’s another one from President Harold B. Lee. He says this: “If anyone, regardless of his position in the church, were to advance a doctrine that is not substantiated by the standard church works, meaning the scriptures, you may know that his statement is merely his private opinion.” And here’s another one: Joseph Fielding Smith. “Everything that I say and everything that any other person says must square itself with that which the Lord has revealed, or it should be rejected,” he said. Here’s another one: Hugh B. Brown, in the First Presidency, he said, “We are only bound by the four standard works and are not required to defend what any man or woman says outside of them.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So the prophets themselves are saying that when it comes to doctrine, we are bound by the standard works, not by what somebody says. Not by quotations of individuals, “even,” as Elder McConkie said, “if those quotations come from presidents of the church.” You would need to run that quotation through the standard works and make sure that it squares with what the standard works say. Elder McConkie backs it up like this: he says, “Though general authorities are authorities in the sense of having power to administer church affairs, they may or may not be authorities in the sense of doctrinal knowledge.” So that’s an important point to think about, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And then he says this: he says, “The standard works are the standard of judgment and the measuring rod against which all doctrines and views are weighed, and it does not make one particle of difference whose views are involved. The scriptures always take precedence.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Whoa.

Scott Woodward:
Scriptures always take precedence. We’re only talking about doctrine here, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
We’re talking about theology. Then the scriptures are primary.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So that would be my response to the President Benson contention, right? Like, he’s totally in alignment here. If our question is about what’s most important to us today in terms of this church being guided and led, that’s got to be prophet of God.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
But if you’re asking a different question about doctrine, then that’s scripture, and that’s what the prophets consistently teach.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Let me summarize what you’re saying here, basically. So—

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—if you want to know doctrine, like the fundamental truths of the universe: scriptures. The direction the church should go in today: living prophets are most useful. And when it comes to personal decisions, the Spirit might be the most important.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, that’s—that’s exactly right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Another thing President Benson said in the “14 Fundamentals,” he said beware of those who would set up the dead prophets against the living prophets.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Basically, in my mind, I—this is the analogy I used. C. S. Lewis once was asked, you know, “What’s more important, grace or works, when it comes to our salvation?” And he responded by saying, “Which blade in a pair of scissors is more important?” I think that scripture and prophets are meant to work together.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
The analogy breaks down when we add in a third thing, which is the Holy Ghost, but hopefully they never come into conflict, right?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But it might also be a question of “What situation are we in, and what’s the most useful tool when it comes to the thing we’re trying to navigate at this point?” If that makes sense.

Scott Woodward:
And on the rare occasions that they do come in conflict, the apostles are pretty consistent in saying, “Go with the scriptures.” Go with the scriptures. It doesn’t matter what someone’s church calling is: If it conflicts with what’s in the scriptures, then go with the scriptures. Now, here’s what’s interesting, though, about having a living prophet: It is the prerogative of a living prophet to introduce new scripture, right? That is possible. But it’s a process that everybody’s aware of. It’s not just, like, if he says something in general conference. It’s a process whereby the new doctrine would be presented to the twelve and the general authorities for sustaining vote, and then to the membership of the church, and then it would be—it would become part of the scriptural canon.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And so it’s not like this, like, private little process that nobody knows about. Like, if the president of the church wants to introduce a new doctrine, a new revelation—like section 138, for instance, introduced new doctrine about the spirit world, things we did not know about Christ’s spirit world ministry and that have actually profound implications for work for the dead. Like, that originally was a general conference talk, right? But it went through the process of eventually being upgraded to canon when it was put into the Pearl of Great Price and then later made Doctrine and Covenants 138. That’s a good example of kind of a recent doctrinal revelation that has become a part of our canon and is now part of the doctrinal measuring rod by which you can measure truth.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So that’s the process it can go by. So living prophets are crucial to add to the canon, but just because they say something doesn’t mean it’s automatically canon, right? And sometimes we do that as Latter-day Saints. I did that for the majority of the first half of my life. Like, if a prophet said it, boom, that was scripture. But the prophets themselves have kind of tempered me a little bit and said, “Hold on, hold on, hold on. Not everything we say”—let me give you another quote just so this is not just Scott saying this. Like this one from Elder Christofferson, this is from conference talk he gave back in April 2012. He said, “It should be remembered that not every statement made by a church leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine. It is commonly understood in the church that a statement made by one leader on a single occasion often represents a personal, though well-considered, opinion not meant to be official or binding for the whole church.” There you go.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Harold B. Lee: “It’s not to be thought that every word spoken by our leaders is inspired.” It’s not to be thought that every word spoken by general authorities is inspired, or that they are moved upon by the Holy Ghost in everything they write. I first—when I first heard these quotes, I kind of wrestled with them. If it wasn’t Elder Christofferson and President Lee saying it, I would have argued back, you know? But how do you argue with that, right? If I believe everything that Elder Christofferson says is true, then I have to believe, based on the logic of his quote, that not everything Elder Christofferson says is true, right? And so that sends you into a mental vortex, right? If not everything spoken by our leaders, as Harold B. Lee said, is inspired, but I believe that everything he says is inspired, then I have to wrestle with what he just said.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I think the value in that quote, too, is then to say, “Hey, it might not be the word of God. It could be a thoughtful, well-considered opinion.”

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Yeah. We have opinions, too.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Let me give you an example. When I was a seminary teacher, I had a young lady in my class who was the granddaughter of an apostle. I’m not going to say which apostle. But she would always come to class and we’d be having debates, sometimes dumb debates. One time we were having the whole, “Is caffeine against the Word of Wisdom” debate.

Scott Woodward:
Classic.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And she, in the middle of the discussion, said, “Well, my grandpa drinks Diet Coke.”

Scott Woodward:
End of discussion.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That ended the discussion. Like, everybody was like, “Oh, okay. Well, alright then.” To say that that apostle was trying to make a doctrinal statement when he drank a Diet Coke in front of his granddaughter, or even if he had just said to his granddaughter, “Hey, I think Diet Coke’s okay. It’s not against the Word of Wisdom,” might be pushing it too far. Like, these individuals are humans, and Joseph Smith thought a prophet is only a prophet when he’s acting as such.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Sometimes we take the smallest little thing that they say in any context and treat it as if it is the word of God, and that’s just too much pressure to put on these wonderful leaders that have been asked to serve. But I’ve got to imagine if you were a general authority, you’d constantly worry about saying the wrong thing and people taking it as doctrine. So we’ve got to give them a little wiggle room there.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, totally. I remember Joseph Smith saying that he didn’t like to give out his opinion because people would take it and garble it up and make it as though it was the word of the Lord.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And so he was hesitant about how he shared his opinions. And I remember in the first presidency news conference for our current First Presidency—this was on January 16th, 2018. This is kind of when you have all the—all the news media is there when the new First Presidency was announced, so it’s President Nelson and President Oaks and President Eyring there. And I remember president Oaks said this, and I typed it out after he said it. I was like, “Oh, that’s so good.” He said, “It’s a great comfort to me to know that I don’t have to take the statement or actions of one particular leader as expressive of the doctrine and expectations of the church.” He said, “We don’t believe in the infallibility of our leaders.” And so, you know, if we don’t believe in the infallibility of our leaders, then we do believe that our leaders can make mistakes, even doctrinal ones. And that’s fine.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So the way that we’re going to try to evaluate all of that is we’re going to bring it back to the scriptures.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
We’re going to need to become really good students of the scriptures so that we can evaluate statements as to their doctrinal reliability so that our own confidence can wax strong.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Now, I’m going to continue to play devil’s advocate here.

Scott Woodward:
Ah, shoot. Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But we have been talking about the infallibility of prophets.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Do we believe that the scriptures are infallible? I mean—

Scott Woodward:
Right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—you can’t make much of a case for that, too, because prophets, especially Book of Mormon prophets, seemed like they had a lot of anxiety to basically say, hey, we are men, and if there are errors in this work, they’re our fault. Are we claiming infallibility for the scriptures, then, and what are the cautions against putting too much trust in scripture?

Scott Woodward:
Excellent. Yeah, scripture has some challenges with it that we need to be aware of and learn how to navigate. And one of those you’ve highlighted is that we actually don’t believe in the inerrancy of scripture, right? We do believe that scripture contains error and even opinion. And also, the second thing is we believe that scriptural misinterpretation is real, right? Even if you’re looking at true scripture that is accurately translated, misinterpretation—I mean, that’s the history of Christianity, right, is misinterpretation of scripture. How do we mitigate that? Right? Those are realities that we need to be aware of, and we also need to learn how to mitigate that. How do we lower the severity of those concerns? And that’s where the genius of lens number one is, is “Is it taught in scripture repeatedly?” Not just is it in the scriptures, but is it repeatedly, consistently, harmoniously in the scriptures? Because there are scriptural outliers, right? Like here’s an example: 1 John 4:12. “No man hath seen God at any time.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I can think of five scriptures that contradict that line right off the top of my head.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And maybe it’s because I was raised a Latter-day Saint and some of them were scripture mastery, and maybe it’s because as a missionary this got brought up so much that I just got used to going, “Well, in Exodus 33:11, the Lord spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to a friend, so what do you do with that?

Scott Woodward:
Totally.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But that’s a great example, yeah, of if you’re placing all your faith in one scripture—

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—that’s only taught one time—

Scott Woodward:
Not a good idea.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
We’re not saying you’re wrong. We’re just saying be cautious with that.

Scott Woodward:
Right. And President Harold B. Lee, he says it like this: he says, “Let me give you safe counsel.” He says, “It’s usually not well to use a single passage of scripture in proof of a point of doctrine. To single out a passage of scripture to prove a point is always a hazardous thing.” It’s a hazardous thing, right? If someone wants to use 1 John 4:12 to say that nobody’s ever seen God, like, that’s a hazardous move, like, not a smart move.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Because there’s so many other verses of scripture that talk about people actually seeing God. In the Bible, yes. Book of Mormon, yes. Doctrine and Covenants, yes. In fact, what’s ironic to me is that John himself in Revelation 5:2-5 talks about seeing God. Like, he saw God on his throne. And so I don’t know what was happening in 1 John 4:12—maybe he wasn’t feeling very well that day. Maybe he ate something that gave him a sour stomach. He was in a bad mood when he wrote that—I don’t know. Nobody knows why he wrote that. That could be a bad translation. There is a JST footnote on that one now in Latter-day Saint scripture.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And I think the JST corrects it in a beautiful way.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
No man hath seen God at any time except he hath borne witness of the Son, which harmonizes a lot of these things. That’s the word I usually use is—not just is it taught repeatedly, but is it harmonized in the scriptural canon, too? Is there a way to make sure it works with other scriptures. We use multiple data points to make our point. That’s why having additional scriptures, like the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, is so useful.

Scott Woodward:
Yes.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But we can’t resolve everything, either, so.

Scott Woodward:
No. Like, President Packer, to your point, he says, “Every verse, whether oft quoted or obscure, must be measured against other verses.” There are what he calls complementary and tempering teachings in the scriptures which bring a balanced knowledge of truth, right? So all scripture needs to be compared against all other scriptures, particularly on that point, just so that you can know that you’re not misinterpreting. This is going to mitigate the misinterpretation, and it’s going to help you to see, like, if it’s not a one-off statement, this is consistently taught over time in scripture, over the centuries by multiple prophets, like, you can probably take that to the bank, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Take that to the bank.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Take that to the bank and cash it, yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But that’s the punchline on this point is simply, like, to become doctrinally confident, we need to become serious students of the scriptures, all the scriptures, and compare them across all other scripture.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And don’t claim to know what you can’t show. You know, if you can’t show it, don’t claim to know it. When it comes to doctrine, that’s particularly important.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Johnny Page, Wilford Woodruff, John Taylor, and George A. Smith, they once wrote this letter of the Quorum of the Twelve out to the missionaries of the church. This is back in 1842. They said this to the missionaries. Here’s their advice, and I would say this is good advice for all teachers in the church: “Study the Word of God and preach it, and not your opinions, for no man’s opinion is worth a straw. Advance no principle but what you can prove, for one scriptural proof is worth ten thousand opinions.” I would add to that multiple scriptural proofs are worth even more, you know? So let’s make sure it’s consistently taught. And then when you teach, you’re going to teach with power because you’re going to be confident that what you’re teaching is true.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That’s lens number one.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Okay. So that was a lot to get through lens number one, but we’re covering a lot of territory here.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Let’s move on to lens number two. Lens number two: Taught by the prophets repeatedly. So we’re using the same word with the scriptures and the prophets here to say it needs to be taught repeatedly. Explain a little bit about what we mean there.

Scott Woodward:
And for repeatedly, I think you could substitute the words “consistently” and/or “unitedly,” right? If something’s unitedly taught by all fifteen, I’m counting that as repeatedly, but that’s, like, fifteen of them, all at once saying the same thing. So here’s a thought from Elder Andersen, Elder Neil L. Andersen: he said in 2012, “There’s an important principle that governs the doctrine of the church. It is not hidden in an obscure paragraph of one talk. True principles are taught frequently and by many. Our doctrine is not difficult to find.” Excellent, excellent point. True principles are taught frequently and by many. So if someone brings up some obscure quote from the Journal of Discourses, “Did you know that Orson Hyde said,” and it’s this kind of one-off quote, it doesn’t mean it’s automatically not true, it just—I wouldn’t place a lot of confidence in it.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So is it taught repeatedly? Why repeatedly? Because again, the problem or the challenge with even living prophets and apostles—we’ve quoted many quotes from them themselves—is that they have opinions, well-informed opinions. Not every word they say, as President Harold B. Lee said, is inspired, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So how do we mitigate against that? Again, prophetic repetition. That’s key.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Joseph Fielding Smith, this is 1961, he once said with a lot of confidence, “We will never get a man into space. This earth is man’s sphere, and it was never intended that he should get away from it. The moon is a superior planet to the earth, and it was never intended that man should go there. You can write it down in your books that this will never happen.” That’s 1961. And then, of course, in 1969, we made it to the moon. It happened.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So they say, Scott.

Scott Woodward:
Oh, geez.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. No, no, no. We made it to the moon. Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And then in 1970, Elder Smith becomes president of the church, like, one year after we make it to the moon. And the story goes that at the press conference for that first presidency, someone raised their hand and asked, “Hey, what about your moon statement?” You know, what about that? His reported response was, “Well, I was wrong, wasn’t I? Next question.” I just love that. I just love this, like, yeah, that’s fine. Like, we can have opinions, even strong opinions. Apostles can have strong opinions, but are they all teaching that? Were all the apostles united in teaching that man would never make it to the moon? No, they were not. What’s consistently taught, right? So, basically, two guides here. We have two guides. Number one, everything that they say ought to be squared with the scriptures, right? And then, is it also repeatedly taught among the modern prophets? They don’t have to be living. They could be recent, or it could be back to Joseph Smith’s day, to our day. But has it been consistently taught by the apostles? And if it’s not, that doesn’t mean it’s not true, it just means our confidence in that is lower. I like that idea of doctrinal confidence levels rather than true or false. I don’t know that any of us are in a perfect position to be able to say “That’s true” or “That’s false.” But what we’re talking about is as it’s more consistently taught, your confidence grows. It waxes stronger and stronger—that that is true and you can take that to the bank. So that’s the idea of repeated.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
We’ve got to have multiple statements from multiple prophets that align with the scriptures.

Scott Woodward:
Yes. And here’s a dirty trick, by the way, that you’ll see sometimes online, is someone will pull up some obscure quote from Brigham Young or Orson Hyde or whatever to try to make Latter-day Saints look stupid, right? Like, you could do that with that Joseph Fielding Smith quote about we’ll never get to the moon.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm. Let me share an example. Joseph Fielding McConkie was one of my teachers in my graduate program.

Scott Woodward:
Uh-huh.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
He was a mission president. He said two missionaries came in to him just absolutely in distress, like, “President, we’ve got to talk.” And they sat down and basically it was they ran into a guy who said, “Is it true”—they told the mission president, “Is it true that we teach that God and Adam are the same person?” And Brigham Young did teach that on a couple occasions.

Scott Woodward:
He did.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Brother McConkie looked at them and said, “Okay, guys. Answer me this question: How long have you been members of the church?” And they were like, “We both got baptized when we were eight.” He goes, “Do you go to church regularly?” “Yeah.” “Did you go to seminary?” “Yeah.” “Did you go to institute?” “Yeah.” “Do you study the scriptures every day?” “Yeah.” “Did you go to church last week?” “Yeah.” He looked at them and said, “and you’ve never heard that taught before.” And they go, “No.” And he looked at them and said, “Then how likely is it that that is an official teaching of the church?” They’d never heard it, and they’d been members their entire lives. And then he just leaned over the desk and said, “Don’t let anybody tell you what we believe. You’re the experts on what we believe. If you’ve never heard it taught before, it’s probably not something that we believe.” And, I mean, if you run that particular teaching through the lenses we’re setting up here, it’s not a doctrine of the church. I don’t know why Brigham Young said it, whether he was being speculative.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I don’t know what was going on there, but nobody else has taught it.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. He felt pretty confident in it. I mean, Elder Orson Pratt’s going to kind of debate him on that, and they’re never going to see eye to eye on that doctrine, but time has proven that he was wrong. Scriptures themselves don’t back that up. Prophets themselves have said that’s not accurate since his day, and why did he say that? Don’t know. Was he right? He was not.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
He taught some amazing doctrine that is true. Brigham Young got it right a lot. That’s just one example of when he didn’t.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
In terms of united, here’s a quote from Elder Ballard: he said, “When the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve speak with a united voice, it is the voice of the Lord for that time.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Brigham Young said, “In trying all matters of doctrine, it’s necessary to obtain a unanimous voice. In the capacity of a quorum, the three first presidents must be one in their voice, the Twelve Apostles must be unanimous in their voice, and whenever you see these quorums unanimous in their declaration, you may set it down as true.” That’s good. When you see the apostles united, that’s pretty solid. Like Family Proclamation, Restoration Proclamation.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
There’s some pretty solid doctrinal truths that they’re slinging in those proclamations, and our confidence can be pretty high that those are true because of the united declaration.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But they’re all subject to filtering through the scriptures as well. See if there’s scriptural support for the statements in there.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And that’s the perfect way to go about that, I think.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I have had members come up to me and say, “Do we still believe in the Family Proclamation? You know, it was issued in 1995, which is coming up on 30 years.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But let’s run that through some of these lenses. Number one, was it a statement of the united First Presidency and the Twelve?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. One hundred percent. That’s what it says right on the document itself.

Scott Woodward:
“We, the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, solemnly proclaim.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Number two, is it taught repeatedly? I would say after the scriptures themselves, the Family Proclamation is among the most quoted documents in official church settings. Now, have they made some clarifications to certain terms in the proclamation? They have.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
They absolutely have. But the fact that it was issued by the entire First Presidency and Twelve, and that it’s still repeatedly taught by the current First Presidency and Twelve, and I’ll add your last test here: it aligns with the scriptures.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Seems to say, hey, this is a document we can place a high level of trust in.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. In fact, I remember when President Hinckley first introduced the Family Proclamation. Listen to what he said, and think about it in terms of these three lenses. He said, “In furtherance of this, we of the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles now issue a proclamation to the church and to the world as,” listen to this, ”a declaration and reaffirmation of standards, doctrines, and practices relative to the family which the prophets, seers, and revelators of this church have repeatedly stated throughout its history. I now take the opportunity of reading to you this proclamation.” That’s how they wrote the proclamation, was looking what has been consistently taught by the Apostles since the beginning of the church.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And synthesizing them together in a one-pager, right? And so, yeah, I’m with you. I think that’s a doctrinal booyah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay.

Scott Woodward:
So that’s lens number two. That’s lens number two. Lens number two. We need to be serious students of what the modern prophets teach.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
All right, third lens.

Scott Woodward:
Third lens. Is it confirmed by the Spirit? Hmm. Let me share a few quotes that sort of set this up. So Brigham Young said this: “Suppose I were to teach you a false doctrine.” It’s kind of funny to bring this quote up right after what we just—what we were just talking about. “Suppose I were to teach you a false doctrine. How are you to know it if you do not possess the Spirit of God?” And then he said, “I say to you, live so that you will know for yourselves whether I tell the truth or not. That’s the way we want all saints to live.” So Brigham Young says you got to have the Spirit of God to be able to discern whether I’m teaching a true doctrine or not.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Here’s another one, from President Harold B. Lee. He said, “We can know or have the assurance that they,” meaning the general authorities, “are speaking under inspiration if we so live that we can have a witness that what they are speaking is the word of the Lord. There is only one safety,” he says, “and that is that we shall live to have the witness to know.” So that’s two quotes. There’s more. We’ll just do a third. Why not?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, go ahead.

Scott Woodward:
This is a member of the First Presidency, J. Reuben Clark, Jr., back in 1954. He said, “How shall we know when the things they,” that is the apostles, “have spoken were said as they were moved upon by the Holy Ghost?” Like, how can we tell when they’re being—like, they’re speaking inspiration? His answer: “We can tell when the speakers are moved upon by the Holy Ghost only when we ourselves are moved upon by the Holy Ghost.” So that’s where we’re getting this third lens, that truth is confirmed by the Spirit. And even the words of apostles and prophets, they need to be confirmed by the Spirit.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Now what are the challenges with spiritual confirmation? Like, why should the Spirit not be our only source of doctrine?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Well, I mean, the first one would be are we worthy to receive guidance from the Spirit? Spirit withdraws when we’re involved in sin.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But the one that probably gets brought up more commonly is how do you know that it’s actually from the Spirit? To cite kind of a weird example, John Krakauer is this famous author who wrote the book Under the Banner of Heaven.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Under the Banner of Heaven is basically a story about the Laffertys, which were this family who actually lived in my wife’s ward, who became very fringe to the church and started following their own directives, and to make a long story short, received what they felt was a spiritual confirmation that they were supposed to kill two people. They killed a young woman and her baby. It’s one of the most horrible stories you’ll ever hear. But in the book, Krakauer is basically attacking this principle of revelation to basically say in a church where anybody can get revelation, how do you know when the revelation comes from God? And the problem here is Krakauer doesn’t act like there aren’t any safeties against that. There aren’t any controls. And I would say if a person just relies on the directions of the Spirit and never tested against the prophets or the scriptures, yeah, you can get into major trouble.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So it has to be used in concert. In fact, talk a little bit about that.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, I think you’re highlighting with a very extreme example. Thank you, Casey.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Sorry to go right there, but that’s what came to mind.

Scott Woodward:
No, that’s how bad it can get, right? But to whatever extent, like, even when we’re worthy, like, we’re still susceptible to revelatory confusion.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Like, here’s a quote from Elder Howard W. Hunter. He said, “I get concerned when it appears that strong emotion, or free-flowing tears, are equated with the presence of the Spirit.” Then he says, “Now, certainly the Spirit of the Lord can bring strong emotional feelings, including tears, but that outward manifestation ought not be confused with the presence of the Spirit itself.” Tears don’t equal the Spirit, he’s saying here, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But I’ve thought that a lot of times, that because I’m starting to feel a little emotional that I’m also feeling the spirit. That doesn’t automatically mean I’m not feeling the spirit, but it also doesn’t automatically say that I am, right? So it could be a little confusing.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I’ve been in lots of meetings where Elder Bednar has said things like this: he said, “The one question that is asked most frequently by those with whom we meet,” because Elder Bednar always opens up things for Q&A—that’s his favorite format with a large group. And he says, here’s the question we get most often, “How can I tell the difference between my emotions telling me what I want to hear and the Holy Ghost telling me what I need to hear?” So he’s just underscoring the basic point that recognizing revelation is challenging. That’s a question all of us have had, right? Was that me, or was that the Holy Ghost? And so we just need to be aware of that. Also, one more point that President Packer brings up: he said, “On the one hand, you have inspiration from the Holy Ghost, and on the other hand, you have sin-spiration from the angels of the devil.” Like, it is actually possible to have counterfeit revelation. I’m thinking of D&C 28 with Hiram Page, right? Hiram Page was claiming that he actually got revelations about the location of Zion and other interesting things, which D&C 28 then rebukes and says, that’s not correct, and commissions Oliver Cowdery to go explain to Hiram Page that he’s been getting his inspiration from the wrong source.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
It’d be sin-spiration. Korohor claims the same thing, right? He says, an angel of light appeared to me, and that’s where I learned what I’m teaching. And so there is such a thing as counterfeit revelation. So all of those things make this challenging, right? So how do we mitigate those concerns? Casey, you’ve already started talking about that. How do you mitigate the concerns about revelatory confusion?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Well, let me go back to the example you just cited, which is Hiram Page.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Because when you look at this really closely, it actually shows an interesting interplay between the three lenses we’ve been talking about. So basic story: The church is less than, I don’t know, four months old when this happens.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And the church is basically three families: the Smiths, the Whitmers, and the Knights. One of the things that Joseph Smith has taught is that anybody can seek revelation. And if you look at the early documentary evidence, Joseph Smith is getting revelations on behalf of people. All of a sudden, our first major ecclesiastical crisis, Hiram Page, who’s one of the—he’s a Whitmer brother in law; he’s married to Catherine Whitmer—receives a revelation through a seer stone, like Joseph has been doing, that contradicts. In fact, look at how Joseph Smith approaches this. This is from Joseph Smith’s history.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
He wrote, “Hiram Page, one of the eight witnesses of the Book of Mormon plates, began receiving revelations through a stone concerning the upbuilding of Zion and the order of the church, and so forth, but which were entirely at variance with the order of God’s house as it’s laid down in our scriptures and in our own late revelations.” So Joseph Smith has taught anybody can get revelation, and I don’t think he’s upset or even surprised that Hiram Page is getting revelation, but you can see right there the first red flag that Joseph Smith raises, which is it contradicts the scriptures.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And it contradicts the other revelations, I’m assuming the Doctrine and Covenants revelations, that hadn’t been canonized at that point. So there’s red flags. Then I mentioned there’s one other family in the Church, the Knights. Newell Knight, who is the most prominent son that stands out in the record, said, “I found Brother Joseph in great distress of mind on account of Hiram Page, who had managed to get up some dissension of feeling among the brethren by giving revelations concerning the government of the church and other matters, which he claimed to have received through the medium of a stone he possessed. He had quite a roll of papers of these revelations, and many in the church were led astray by them. Even Oliver Cowdery and the Whitmer family had given heed to them, although they were in contradiction to the New Testament and the revelations of these last days. So a second person, Newell Knight, is saying, yeah, the revelations didn’t square with the scriptures. So they’re using that first lens to say, this doesn’t fit the scriptures.

Scott Woodward:
I love that.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And then Joseph is saying, lens two, it doesn’t fit the revelations I’ve received as the prophet of the Church. So all three of the lenses are working together.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, great deep dive into the Hiram Page episode, man. That was awesome. Love that. So that’s it. That’s how we mitigate the concern of the Spirit, right? Revelatory confusion’s real how do you mitigate that? Well, compare it to what’s been taught in scriptures and by the prophets.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. We have to be wise and educated believers who have these kind of lenses that God has given to us to know truth from error.

Scott Woodward:
And they’re kind of like checks and balances.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
People can get weird about scripture. And so let’s look at is it repeatedly taught in scriptures? Are you sure that’s right? Right? It’s hard to get weird when you look at consistency across all scripture, and if living prophets are teaching that as well, and have been consistently since Joseph Smith’s time, now you’re getting grounded, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
They’re checking each other. People can get weird about a statement from a prophet or some singular statement backed by Orson Pratt in the Journal of Discourses and can kind of have these little pet doctrines. As we just talked about, people can get weird about the spirit. This pushes against that, right? This is saying, no. Sound thinking is bringing all of these in conjunction with one another. These lenses need each other, and when it comes to doctrine, scripture is primary. But when prophets are repeatedly teaching what can also be verified in scripture, boom, that’s doubly solid. Our confidence waxes even stronger. And if it passes the test of being taught repeatedly through scriptures and prophets, and it’s confirmed by the Holy Ghost, take that to the bank.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Boom.

Scott Woodward:
I’ll just say in closing, though, like, is this a foolproof system to answer all of our doctrinal questions with absolute certainty? No. But this is very useful. That’s why I’m calling it a heuristic, right? This is a solid, three-part heuristic that gives us a solid place to begin to evaluate the truth claims that we read about, hear about, then to develop levels of confidence relative to those teachings. And the better we get at using them, the more doctrinally confident we become. At least that’s been my experience.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. So, Scott, we have solved all the doctrinal problems in the church right now.

Scott Woodward:
No, man.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It’s all fixed. We did it.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
What do we tackle next? What’s next on the agenda?

Scott Woodward:
You know what would be fun? Should we just have a fun episode? We should do an episode next where we just practice. We just practice using the three lenses by using random statements or scriptures or arguments and just kind of testing and see what our listeners think about, what they might say in reference to the doctrinal reliability of said statements. Would that be fun? Think that’d be an okay use of an episode?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, that could be kind of fun.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
We’d just come in and put statements out there and say, yeah, this is the real deal or not the real deal?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. How confident are you that this is true?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Okay.

Scott Woodward:
Okay, so in our next episode, we’re going to play a game called, “How Confident Are You in That Doctrine?”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Okay.

Scott Woodward:
That sound good?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Sounds good.

Scott Woodward:
All right. We’ll see you, everybody. Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. Join us next week as Casey and I put on something of an informal doctrinal workshop by spending the episode evaluating various theological statements through the three doctrinal lenses we discussed today. It’s pretty different from anything we’ve done so far, but it should be fun. If you’re enjoying Church History Matters, we’d appreciate it if you could take a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti and Scott Woodward, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. And while we always try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.