In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death by Samuel Morris Brown

Author:Samuel Morris Brown [Brown, Samuel Morris]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2012-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

Adoption Theology

The rites by which Dr. John Bernhisel became Joseph Smith’s son in the eternities began simply, as a reinterpretation of the Protestant image of a believer’s adoption to Christ.18 What Latter-day Saints called the Law of Adoption after Smith’s death became a belief that worthy Latter-day Saints could personally recapitulate Christ’s role in the adoption of the New Testament. Just as God could adopt a person, so could other believers, whether an evangelist preaching the message to a receptive convert, a patriarch bestowing a ceremonial blessing, or an apostle adopting people close to him. The early Mormon theology of adoption held that the creation of new sacerdotal relationships could result in the salvation of the people entering these new relationships. This distinctive belief began as a sort of exposition of biblical and Protestant ideas about the process of the new birth in Christ. With time, adoption began to show the marks of Smith’s sacerdotal genealogy, culminating in a ritual shortly after the Prophet’s death with few if any equivalents in antebellum America, whereby adult believers formally became celestial parents to unrelated adults. More than anything, ritual adoption is a testament to the extent to which the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was meant to be the society of heaven and full membership in it the sign of and pathway to exaltation.

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