Abr 3:16-20

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The Pearl of Great Price > The Book of Abraham > Chapter 3

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Questions

  • How should we interpret the teaching that spirits are eternal (v. 18) in light of LDS teachings about spirits being conceived by Heavenly Parents?

Lexical notes

Verse 18

  • "Gnolaum." See the Greek word `olam which is most commonly translated "for ever" in the KJV Old Testament. It comes from a root meaning "hidden or concealed."

Exegesis

Verse 16

Obviously a key term here is the word "therefore," but it is—at least at first—rather difficult to make sense of. At the very least, it implies that "Kolob is the greatest of all the Kokaubeam that thou hast seen, because it is nearest unto me" is somehow shown or implied by "If two things exist, and there be one above the other, there shall be greater things above them." But whatever this relation of showing or implication is, it is hardly clear. The difficulty is only heightened by the break in context effected by verse 15: the Lord seems to have brought the conversation to an end, or at least to have shifted subjects drastically. This thrusts the reader of the present verse—and Abraham when he actually heard it—into the task of interpreting the verse more or less without help. Hence, the best approach to this difficult verse would be to take each part up separately, and then to see how the one might point the way to the other as a kind of consequence, so as to work within the confines of the verse itself.

From the very start, the phrasing is somewhat difficult. What, for example, does "things" mean here? And what does it mean to say that one is "above the other"? And all of this must be interpreted according to the rigorous logic of an if-then statement: "If (1) two things exist, and [if] (2) there be one above the other, [then] (3) there shall be greater things above them." Thus, even within the first part of this complicated verse, there is something of an implication at work. Now, according to the strict rules of logic, an if-then statement does not describe things in the world (concretely), but relations between things in the world (abstractly). That is, the conditional "if" here does not suggest that there are two things existing (perhaps that is already presupposed), but it thinks about what such existence would necessarily entail: if any two things existed in some kind of hierarchical relation, then greater things would be above them in a still broader hierarchical system. In short, the first part of this verse is saying that the existence of two things (which obviously must be taken in the most abstract and undefined sense, more like variables than anything else) in a hierarchical relationship necessarily implies the existence of another thing in that same hierarchical spectrum.

The reasoning at work here is, admittedly, foreign. In one of his last discourses before his death, Joseph Smith made reference to this passage, calling this a kind of "reason": "I want to reason—I learned it by translating the papyrus now in my house—I learned a test. [testimony] concerning Abraham & he reasoned concerng. [concerning] the God of Heaven—in order to do that sd. [said] he—suppose we have two facts that supposes that anotr. [another] fact may exist two men on the earth—one wiser than the other—wod. [would] shew that antr. [another] who is wiser than the wisest may exist—intelligences exist one above anotr. [another] that there is no end to it." If what one must do in interpreting this verse is to make sense (to make reason, ultimately) of this "reason," then how does this "if" imply this "then"?

One way to interpret all of this is to suggest that Abraham's (and Joseph's) logic here reads into things only two possible states of affairs: that everything is either one or many. In fact, the logic of this passage might be read as suggesting that reality can never ultimately be a duality: two things always, somehow, imply a fully infinite multiplicity. Perhaps this logic can be connected up with D&C 76 and especially with Joseph's teachings, just before his death, that there are infinite degrees of glory in the heavens: the duality of heaven/hell itself implies or somehow entails the reality of so many different degrees of glory.

But it still remains unclear how this is to imply anything about Kolob as "the greatest." The second half of the verse needs, then, to be analyzed next. The phrase, "Kolob is the greatest of all the Kokaubeam that thou hast seen" seems pretty clear: Kolob is the greatest of all of the stars, quite straightforwardly. But emphasis should probably be placed on the phrase, "that thou hast seen." The implication seems to be that Kolob is not to be regarded as the greatest of all stars that may possibly be in existence anywhere, but that Kolob is the greatest of all the stars Abraham had been shown. In a sense, this seems to suggest that there is some kind of set of stars somehow defined by Kolob's government, and these are the Kokaubeam Abraham has witnessed.

But more still, because the verse goes on to root this label of "greatest" in nearness: "because it is nearest unto me." Again, there is a kind of logic at work within this second half of the verse, just as there was in the first. If the first part of this second half of the verse places an emphasis on a limited set that Abraham has witnessed (thereby implying that there are stars beyond sets of stars), this second part almost points away from the stars entirely! The verse certainly sounds as if the Lord is at some absolute, star-and-planet-less point in space, to which point Kolob is the nearest celestial body. But obviously, the verse itself calls for a more careful reading: the verse itself does not pretend to address the question of God's location, but rather the ground of Kolob's greatness within a certain set of stars. That is, the verse only mentions the location of the Lord so that Kolob's place relative to the Lord becomes the mark of its greatness or its governing position.

In fact, once one looks quite carefully at the language, one sees that the verse does not require the Lord to be planet-or-star-less at all: "that thou has seen" may just as well be applied to "it is nearest unto me" as it is to "of all the Kokaubeam." That is, "Kolob ... is nearest unto me" specifically "of all the Kokaubeam that thou hast seen." Again the limitation is a question of the set of stars Abraham is given to see, and Kolob is the greatest star that Abraham has seen, and that greatness is connected with its nearness to the Lord.

At last, it is necessary to draw the two halves of this verse together, to take a look at the curious logic at work here. The logic of the first half of the verse (the existence of two things in a hierarchical relationship implies an infinity of hierarchically ordered things; the only two options are monism or infinitism) somehow implies ("therefore") the logic of the second half of the verse (Kolob's nearest-ness to the Lord among a particular—revealed—set of stars marks its relative greatness). Perhaps the best way to read this "therefore" would be to suggest that the emphasis of the second half of the verse is on the fact that Kolob is only the greatest within a particular set: the hierarchical nature of the set implies that there is something beyond it (the verse mentions at least the Lord as being beyond), though the set is all that Abraham is being given to understand as of yet. In other words, the logic of the first half of the verse implies that there is something beyond everything Abraham has seen (something beyond Kolob, which he already recognizes as the greatest of the stars he sees), and the logic of the second half of the verse draws from that implied beyond-ness that the greatest-ness of Kolob derives from what lies beyond it, not from its relative greatness among the stars Abraham can see. To put things quite simply: Kolob's greatness derives from its relation to what is above it, not from its relation to what is below it. In other words, greatness is here marked as a (personal?) relation to the above rather than a (comparative?) relation to the below. In a sense, this shifts the burden of government to the concrete from the abstract: Kolob's greatness within a given set (or even system) is not a function of its position within the system (which would be, ultimately, an abstract power), but of its relationship to something beyond the set or system (a concrete relationship to something outside the system). Kolob's relations within the set are essentially governed by its relations without the set: Kolob at once constructs and deconstructs the set of stars in light of its concrete nearness to a personal being (the Lord).

Verse 17

The "Now" with which this verse begins breaks the terse logic of the former verse, but precisely by confirming it. The verse immediately concretizes (and therefore confirms) the logic of the first half of verse 16: two implies infinity. However, there are some differences at work here that need to be worked out. Perhaps the most important difference is the collapse of necessity here: "it may be." Whereas in verse 16 it appeared that two necessarily implied infinity, here it seems that the infinity is not necessary but only possible. But no sooner is necessity demoted to possibility than the seemingly misplaced second half of this verse imposes itself as a point of clarification: the possibility is all that is, at least logically, implied, but "the Lord thy God" will always and unfailingly realize that possibility. In a sense, this verse seems to call into question the necessity of logic generally: logical implications or relationships of necessity point, in the end, not to abstract laws of being but to the faithfulness of a God who "will do" all He "shall take in his heart to do." The implication (if one can so speak in light of the meaning of the present verse) of all of this is that infinity is, speaking quite strictly, a realized possibility rather than a necessity, and that infinity is realized precisely by the radically faithful "Lord thy God."

The point of this verse is, then, remarkable, because it amounts to a kind of radical relativism: infinity itself depends on the faithfulness of the Lord, and not on some kind of eternal natural laws. And if this conclusion is linked up with the relationalism explored in the last paragraph of the commentary on verse 16, there might be some rather fruitful work to be done. The two points: systematicity is at once brought into existence and canceled by relationship to the Lord, and infinity itself is predicated upon the faithfulness of the Lord. Taken side by side, these two points might be read to articulate the two sides of a lord-servant relationship: the servant's relationship to her lord is infinite only in the (graceful, excessive, giving) faithfulness of the lord to the servant; and the lord's infinite faithfulness establishes and disestablishes the systematic autonomy of the servant (provides her with something that is her own and yet swallows up that ownership inasmuch as the lord is lord). At the very least, something here is articulated about the nature of hierarchical relationship.

Verse 18

This wording of this verse clearly suggests that it is picking up from the previous verse: "Howbeit that he made the greater star." The phrase is somewhat archaic today, but its meaning is quite clear: "notwithstanding that he made the greater star." That is, this first phrase seems simply to be confirming what was said about the above verse, that the infinity implied in the hierarchical relation of two things points to the fact that the greater planet/star is a realized possibility in that the Lord in His faithfulness created it. But the burden of this verse is ultimately the remainder of it.

The short "as, also" bit introduces what is at work in the remainder of the verse: the logic of two=infinity is about to be extended to another sphere, that of "spirits." The language of greatness therefore gives way to the language of intelligence: "if there be two spirits, and one shall be more intelligent than the other...." However, as soon as this first half of the logic is introduced and one is expecting to hear the obvious conclusion that there will be another more intelligent still, the flow is disrupted with the word "yet." But before looking at that disruption, it would be worth looking carefully at the word "intelligent." The word had, in Joseph's day, the same basic meaning it has today, though perhaps without such a sense of privilege about it: an intelligent thing was something "endowed with the faculty of understanding or reason." In other words, intelligence is probably best read here as referring to a kind of potential or capacity, a being's ability to know.

But, as mentioned, the logic is disrupted with a rather shocking revelation—a revelation that has had nearly infinite repurcussions in LDS theology: though the hierarchy of planets and stars was created ("he made the greater star"), "yet these two spirits ... have no beginning." And here the full weight of the "notwithstanding" to be found in the verse should be felt: the revelation is admittedly shocking, and it would seem, at first at least, to contradict what one already understands. This performs a retroactive interpretation on the logic of the previous two verses. The wording makes this clear: "yet these two spirits, notwithstanding one is more intelligent than the other, have no beginning." The hint is that the hierarchical relation should imply a beginning or a creation. The shocking revelation here, one that requires the Lord Himself to place a "notwithstanding" in the middle of His presentation of the idea, is that among spirits there is a "natural," an "eternal," hierarchy of intelligence.

One should notice, then, that while there is a continuity between the stars and the spirits here, there is also a radical break between them, and two different senses of infinity are being explored. That is, the stars are not shown to Abraham so that he can come to understand how they are like spirits, but precisely how they are not like spirits: planets and stars are created, but intelligences are not created. And hence, there are two very different senses of infinity at work here. On the one hand, there is an infinity that derives from the infinite grace of the Lord, and this infinity is related to His gracious work of creation. On the other hand, there is an infinity that simply is, in itself, there, apparently without beginning or end: this infinity outstrips even the Lord, as these intelligences quite simply are.

It is curious, in light of all of this, that verse 18 never moves towards an infinite number of spirits (though verse 19 does). It seems to be primarily concerned with articulating the relationship between two uncreated and uncreatable spirits. Here one might notice a double parallelism that provides the contours of thinking about the uncreated existent: 

  these two spirits ... have no beginning
     they existed before
  they shall have no end
     they shall exist after

This language is interesting in a number of ways. For one, beginning is parallel to end, and before to after, even as beginning is quite obviously paired with before and end with after. But precisely in these several relations, the meanings of beginning and end are delimited in a curious manner: "before" seems to fix "beginning" as an event, just as "after" seems to fix "end" as an event. In other words, it is not that these spirits are simply existent in some abstract sense, but they existed before the beginning and shall exist after the end: they are related to—might be thought in relation to—events (the "beginning" and the "end"). But this calls for further thinking.

Related links

  • Some of the greatest teachings about the eternal nature of spirits are found in Joseph Smith's 1844 King Follett discourse.


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