Cosmology in Mormonism and Platonism

 We continue our look at unscriptural Mormon doctrines by focusing now on their teachings on cosmology. We shall see yet again, the Mormon views are identical to Platonic views, and have no support in Scripture or the early Church.

Mormonism says: Abraham brought knowledge of astronomy to the Egyptians, as recorded in the Book of Abraham. Is this true?

The LDS Book of Abraham reads as follows (3:2-3)

“And I saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; and there were many great ones which were near unto it; And the Lord said unto me: These are the governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest.”

On page p. 282 of his book “Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon” (2nd ed. McFarland & Co., Inc.,(Jefferson) 2000), Persuitte reports “in his explanation of Facsimile No. 3, Jospeh stated , ‘Abraham is reasoning upon the principles of astronomy in the king’s court.’ Joseph was claiming Abraham had brought astronomy to the Egyptians, an idea related by the Jewish historian Josephus.” (Persuitte, op. cit p. 282)

But Persuitte goes on to show that the Egyptians knew of astronomy before the time of Abraham! Where did Smith get the astronomical ideas for the Book of Abraham? They certainly didn’t come from Abraham, and certainly not from the Bible.

 

In fact, we discover that they have correlations in the works of Plato.

Fawn Brodie, [in her biography of Smith, "No Man Knows My History" (Vintage Press, New York, 1995)] noted that some of the astronomical ideas in the Book of Abraham appear to have had their source in Thomas Dick’s “Philosophy of a Future State”. Persuitte notes also how this book was certainly available to Smith at the time of writing. (Persuitte p. 283)

In Fawn Brodie’s biography of Smith, we read on page 171:

 

“Joseph’s new concept that the earth had been “organized out of already existing matter rather than created out of nothing”"

Brodie continues (page 171):

“He had recently been reading Thomas Dick’s Philospohy of a Future State.[Brookfiled. Mass. 2nd ed. 1830] a long-winded dissertation on astronomy and metaphysics. Dick’s elucidation of the thesis that matter is eternal and indestructible Joseph had found convincing, and had logically concluded that God must have made the heavens and the earth out of materials He had on hand.”
…Joseph created Abraham an eminent astronomer who penetrates all the mysteries of the universe. Abraham relates that there is one star, Kolob, lying near the throne of God, which is greater than all the rest. One revolution of Kolob takes a thousand years, and from this revolution God Himself reckons time. Kolob and countless lesser stars are peopled by spirits that are eternal as matter itself. These spirits are not cast in the same mold, but differ among themselves in quality of intelligence as the stars differ in magnitude.
These concepts…came directly from Dick, who had speculated that the stars were peopled by “various orders of intelligences”, and that these intelligences were “progressive beings” in various stages of evolution towards perfection.” (referred pages are in Dick p. 101, 230, 241, 249)

 

OK, but what did Plato himself say about astronomy? We see that Joseph Smith perhaps took his astronomical ideas from a couple of books of the time, but what exactly did Plato say on the matter?

Plato’s Timaeus (this text from the Jowett translation) Chapter 7 describes how each soul assigned to a star:

“Now, when all the stars which were necessary to the creation of time had attained a motion suitable to them, -and had become living creatures having bodies fastened by vital chains, and learnt their appointed task, moving in the motion of the diverse, which is diagonal, and passes through and is governed by the motion of the same, they revolved, some in a larger and some in a lesser orbit-those which had the lesser orbit revolving faster, and those which had the larger more slowly.”

 

More examples:

So what do we learn from all this? It appears Joseph Smith picked up his ideas of pre-existence, cosmology, eternal progression etc. from Dick’s book. (Smith actually donated this very book to the Manchester county library in 1844.) But there is another source book involved, which Persuitte identifies in his book “Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon” , namely, a possible connection between Smith’s views on astronomy and a book entitled “The Six Books of Proclus, the Platonic Successor, on the Theology of Plato” written by one Clarence F. Packard and translated by Thomas Taylor, first published 1816. Taylor added one book to the corpus, and very interestingly, in the words of Persuitte p.283 “it appears to have been the source of much of the astronomical material found in the Book of Abraham.”

On pages 283-285 of Persuitte’s book is a parallel comparison of the astronomy accounts in the Book of Abraham and the sources Dick and Taylor. Points of convergence include the “throne of God” as a point in the universe (Abraham 3:2); eternity of intelligences (Abraham 3:18); planets called “governers” (Abraham 3:4).

The reader is encouraged to consult Persuitte’s book for the full list of striking comparisons. Thus we can see the striking Platonic parallels in the Book of Abraham. not been certified that Smith found his Platonic ideas from Taylor’s work, this is not relevant to the point I’m trying to make throughout these papers. This point being, on the one hand there is no Scriptural or Early Church support for several Mormon doctriens, and on the other hand, these very doctriens are identical to Platonic doctrines, a fact whic nullifies the LDS accusation that Greek philosophical influence poisoned the doctrine of the Early Church (a supposed “proof” of their “apostasy” doctrine). It is enough to make my point to show the Platonic correlation with Smith’s new “revelations”.

 

Conclusion: Smith’s, and hence Mormonism’s views on astronomy were heavily influenced by Platonic thought. Nowhere are these views taught in either Scripture or in the writings of the Fathers. Yet again, we see that Mormonism has another false doctrine not founded on Scripture or the Early Church, but on philosophy alone. In contrast the Catholic Church’s teachings, as we have said before, are based on Scripture and the Tradition of the Early Church. Any use of philosophical terms by the Catholic Church clarifies the existing revelation, it does not add new revelation. This is the crucial difference, with which we shall deal further in section II.

 

 
Footnote: note also that Joseph Smith in the Book of Abraham chapter 4 referred to “Gods” and not to “God”:

“And then the Lord said: Let us go down. And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth” (Book of Abraham 4:1)”

This also has a parallel in the writings of Plato and Philo See the website Book of Mormon Studies for more details. Joseph Smith was wrong here also, of course, as he should have realized there are seven Names for God in the Old Testament and the proper name for God is Yahweh, a singluar, not a plural noun. (See Ludwig Ott “Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma” (TAN; 1974), page 24).

So we see from Part I that the Mormon doctrines of pre-existence, denial of creation ex nihilo, eternity of matter, three degrees of heaven, and cosmological ideas are all unsupported by Scripture and by the Early Church, and in addition, have strong correlations in the writings of Plato. This observation shows the futility and self-cotradiction of Mormon attempts to point to “Hellenization” of the Eary Church as evidence of the so-called “apostasy.”