Item Detail
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6645
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0
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2
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English
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The Reflections of Brigham Young on the Nature of Man and the State
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BYU Studies
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Spring/Summer 1962
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4
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255-67
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""The religious consciousness asserts both the sovereignty of God and the freedom of man," according to Donald MacKenzie; and he added: "It is the task of theology to furnish a Weltanschauungconsistent with both these positions." The nature of man and his relationship to God are fundamental to the theologian. The nature of man and his relationship to society are basic to the political theorist. Brigham Young's homilies lacked the sophistication of a philosophical terminology; nevertheless his homely ideas constituted a Weltansichtwhich was not restricted by limits of time nor space. Man's mortal nature, free agency included, was important to Brigham Young in terms of immortality; tempus was only a small portion of a linear aeternitas. Brigham Young pictured life as a vision of a stream of water which appears to flow out of a cloud and disappears in another. Man is born, passes along a linear road of time, and dies. The bounds of man's existence appear to be birth and death; but, like the stream, the clouds block an eternal perspective. Brigham Young asked the question: "When was there a beginning?" And he answered: "There never was one; if there was, there will be an end; but there never was a beginning, and hence there will never be an end: that looks like eternity." Parting the clouds which bound mortality, Brigham Young viewed man as a being organized of element designed to endure eternally. He said: "We are all in eternity. . . . it is boundless . . . and we have never been out of it. Time is a certain portion of eternity allotted to the existence of these mortal bodies. . . ." The pre-mortal existence is a period of organization, growth, and purposeful development. "Our spirits are born of our Parents in heaven, divine, heavenly, angelic," explained Brigham Young. This organization of the spirits from the "intelligence" which is co-eternal with God is for the express purpose of exaltation, to become "Gods, like himself. . . ." The spirits have a degree of free agency, "a certain degree of light, and enjoy a certain glory . . .," but full independence of action requires a trial of faith, a probation period of mortality, a knowledge of good and evil commensurate with the knowledge of God." [Publisher's abstract]