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Reprising “Everyone Else Makes Such Lonely Heavens”

Reprising “Everyone Else Makes Such Lonely Heavens”

Last updated on: March 31, 2019 at 1:18 am by Dan Peterson

Reprising “Everyone Else Makes Such Lonely Heavens” 2019-03-31T01:18:39-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The Quetzaltenango Guatemala Temple (LDS.org)

The most recent instantiation of the biweekly Hamblin/Peterson column has appeared in the Deseret News:

“Exploring the Hindu scriptures known as the Upanishads”

***

It seems, though, rather futile to write. Why? Because at least certain people are so determined to have me say what they want me to have said that what I actually write seems, in many cases, completely irrelevant.

For example, in response to my recent essay “Research and More Research” in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, two or three of my more chronically misguided critics are agreed that my principal thesis in that short little piece is that, when it comes to the Gospel, ignorance is to be preferred to knowledge, because ignorance will help you to maintain your faith.

I would have been disappointed, in a way, if they had actually gotten it right. In a world of tumult and change, it’s nice to know that some things are constant.

***

The video that has been posted on the Church’s website under the title “Newsroom Has a New Name, Same Standard of Excellence” is actually considerably more interesting than that title suggests. It’s only 1:53 minutes long, and I hope that you’ll watch it:

“Newsroom Has a New Name, Same Standard of Excellence”

***

And here’s a link to the new 2019 video that’s been produced for showing at temple open houses. It’s just slightly more than nine and a half minutes long, and it’s certainly suitable for sharing on Facebook and your own blog or website if you have one:

https://www.lds.org/temples/open-houses

Speaking of which, here’s an item from the Richmond Times-Dispatch: “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints files plans for first Virginia temple in Henrico”

***

While I’m thinking about temples, here’s a piece that I wrote for the official Church website back in 2005, in connection with the bicentennial of the birth of Joseph Smith:

Everyone Else Makes Such Lonely Heavens [1]

For these defects, and for no other evil,
we now are lost and punished just with this:
we have no hope and yet we live in longing.
Dante’s Inferno[2]

The New Testament states unequivocally that, besides Jesus Christ, “there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.”[3] And yet hundreds of millions of souls, probably the majority of all who have ever lived, were never taught about Christianity and perhaps never so much as heard the name of Jesus Christ. Are these millions of souls lost for the eternities? If so, can God be considered just, let alone merciful?

The poet Dante Alighieri, upon entering (fictionally) into the next world, was astonished by what he saw: “I should never have believed,” he wrote in his Inferno, “that death could have unmade so many souls.”[4] Strikingly, despite his obvious admiration for Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the great Islamic philosophers Avicenna and Averros, and the chivalrous Muslim military hero Saladin, Dante felt obliged to place them all in Hell.[5] Even his guide, companion and “kindly master,” the Roman poet Virgil, was eternally barred from heaven. Virgil explains the reason to Dante as follows:

I’d have you know, before you go ahead,
they did not sin; and yet, though they have merits,
that’s not enough, because they lacked baptism,
the portal of the faith that you embrace.
And if they lived before Christianity,
they did not worship God in fitting ways;
and of such spirits I myself am one.
For these defects, and for no other evil,
we now are lost and punished just with this:
we have no hope and yet we live in longing.[6]

The founding Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, proclaimed a much more generous and expansive view of eternal possibilities. He pointed out that even the New Testament itself suggests a hopeful escape from this troubling prospect, citing the Apostle Paul’s reference to a practice long since forgotten or ignored by mainstream Christianity.[7]

Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead,
if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for
the dead?[8]

Though vicarious or “proxy” baptism is but briefly mentioned in the Bible, a restoration of this ancient Christian practice became a foundational doctrine of the Latter-day Saint faith.

Today, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints labor to gather genealogical records and to construct temples[9] in which baptisms for the dead and related ordinances can be performed. In striking contrast to the horrific atrocities committed by men and governments in the course of history, this vicarious temple service extends the love of God, with full salvational access, to every human who ever lived.

Proxy temple work best reflects the foundational Latter-day Saint conviction that the power of the atonement of Christ extends even to those who did not hear: every person who has ever lived is to be individually remembered, labored for and valued, thus vindicating the justice of God and illustrating the breadth of his redemptive love. Any rite performed in a Latter-day Saint temple on behalf of a deceased person, who yet lives as a spirit being, is a rite of offering only, exacting no forced compliance nor acceptance of the rite. There is no imposed change of identity, heritage or religious belief, nor is the individual’s name added to the membership rolls of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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