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Considering some of Brooke's thesis in "The Refiner's Fire"

Compilation by Kerry A. Shirts

"Awkwardly for Brooke’s thesis, though, Latter-day Saints today clearly do believe in the necessity of redemption through Christ. He is thus forced to posit a vast but previously unremarked theological revolution within Mormonism. He needs to account for the obvious difference between contemporary Mormon beliefs and what he asserts to have been "the Nauvoo theology" (p. 289). Thus he speaks, without adducing much, if any, evidence, of "the church’s new focus on Christ’s atonement" in the late nineteenth century (p. 292; cf. 294, 297), and declares that "the Mormon theological transformation since the 1890s . . . ‘re-Christianized’ [the Church] to the point of confirming the centrality of Christ’s atonement" (p. 296). Furthermore, Brooke claims to see in contemporary Mormonism a new " ‘neo-orthodox’ movement that "presses for further movement toward Christianity" (p. 297), and that teaches, innovatively, a concept of "sin from which only Christ’s atonement and God’s grace can save humanity" (p. 296). (Hamblin, p. 21)

Can Hamblin make any of his case? It is not likely since he bases so much of it on speculation and against all the evidence, or as Hamblin puts it:

"Is any of this even remotely plausible? Not in our opinion. For one thing, Professor Brooke’s claim of a change in language between the revelations received before and during 1833, on the one hand, and those received after 1833, on the other, loses some of its significance when one realizes that there are relatively few canonized revelations to Joseph Smith that date to the latter period. The vast majority come early in his prophetic career. Furthermore, those early revelations, with their language of grace and atonement, did not disappear. They were still possessed by, and read and believed by, the Saints. And then there is the Book of Mormon, which Professor Brooke waves aside as irrelevant to the view of Mormon doctrine that he wishes to advance (p. xiii). Yet the Book of Mormon, with its powerful and extensive teachings on atonement and redemption, was almost certainly the single most important factor in bringing people into the restored Church. It constituted a substantial part of the common bond that united Latter-day Saints throughout the world, as it does today.

This is hardly the place for an exhaustive analysis of what was taught about the atonement of Christ among the Latter-day Saints between 1833 and, say, 1890. But certain pieces of evidence can easily be assembled that strongly suggest that both Brooke and White are utterly wrong in their reading of Mormon doctrine in the nineteenth century." (p. 22)

And notice what evidence Mormons have for showing that it is not even remotely possible to keep the theory that the atonement was abondoned!

"It is fully possible, of course, that published materials in any given period do not adequately reflect all the beliefs or basic doctrines of the Latter-day Saints. Many beliefs are so basic that they are presumed in discussion, and there may be no need felt to make them explicit. Often, it is only problematic or disputed issues that receive explicit expression; what is commonly assumed hardly requires articulation. But this does not mean that such basic beliefs leave no trace. So where should we look for such traces in the case of nineteenth-century Mormons? It would seem that one good place to begin an examination of the beliefs actually held by members of the Church is in their hymns. Because the hymns are sung regularly and in various settings, they are at the devotional heart of the Church.

So what were the nineteenth-century Saints singing about? The very first Latter-day Saint hymnal, published in 1835 and used for years thereafter, included non-Mormon John Newton’s "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken," which tells, among other things, of

Blest inhabitants of Zion,

Purchased by the Savior’s blood;

Jesus, whom their souls rely on,

Makes them kings and priests to God.

Also included were Samuel Medley’s "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" and Isaac Watts’s "He Died! The Great Redeemer Died," which reads, in part,

Come, Saints, and drop a tear or two

For him who groaned beneath your load;

He shed a thousand drops for you,

A thousand drops of precious blood.

Obviously, the Latter-day Saints took over from earlier Christian hymnology language that strongly evinces a continuing belief in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But did they actually hold similar beliefs themselves? Clearly, they did. For the 1835 hymnal also included original works by Latter-day Saints, most notably by William W. Phelps. Phelps, whom Brooke identifies as one of those "alienated Freemasons" who accepted Mormonism out of openness "to a new way into the ‘ancient mysteries’ " (p. 168), is precisely the type of fellow who ought to be an ideal paradigm of Joseph Smith’s supposedly radical, atonement-neglecting, hermetic Mormonism. Yet, contrary to what Brooke’s theories would lead us to expect, Phelps’s hymns sing of Jesus Christ’s as "the only name in which the Saints can trust" and recall the "grace" extended to us by the Savior. "His love," writes Phelps of Jesus, "is great; he died for us." And perhaps the most famous passage about "that offering divine" written by Phelps, one still popular in the Church today, is "O God, the Eternal Father." It reads as follows:

That sacred, holy offering,

By man least understood,

To have our sins remitted . . .

When Jesus, the Anointed,

Descended from above

And gave himself a ransom

To win our souls with love . . .

How infinite that wisdom,

The plan of holiness,

That made salvation perfect

And veiled the Lord in flesh,

To walk upon his footstool

And be like man, almost,

In his exalted station,

And die, or all was lost.

Does this sound, even remotely, like a denial of Christ’s atonement? Can such lyrics possibly be interpreted to suggest that those who sang them were on the brink of denying the necessity of redemption, or of suggesting that humans can save themselves?" (pp. 23f)

Not only the hymns, but what about the Sacrament? Brooke has failed miserably to make his case stick in every sense of the word.

"Furthermore, throughout the interval between 1833 and 1890, as in all other periods of the Church’s history, Latter-day Saints were meeting regularly to partake of the sacrament of the Lord’s supper. In that ordinance, the prayer over the bread asks God the Father "to bless and sanctify this bread to the souls of all those who partake of it, that they may eat in remembrance of the body of thy Son." Similarly, the prayer over the water asks that it be blessed and sanctified "to the souls of all those who drink of it, that they may do it in remembrance of the blood of thy Son, which was shed for them." Once again, the most common ritual in the Church fails to provide any evidence for Professor Brooke’s daring reconstruction of Mormon doctrine and, indeed, suggests that he is wrong. But beyond the prayers, there were and are also hymns specifically associated with the ordinance of the sacrament. One of them reads as follows:

Again we meet around the board

Of Jesus, our redeeming Lord,

With faith in his atoning blood,

Our only access unto God.

He left his Father’s courts on high,

With man to live, for man to die,

A world to purchase and to save

And seal a triumph o’er the grave.

Help us, O God, to realize

The great atoning sacrifice,

The gift of thy beloved Son,

The Prince of Life, the Holy One.

Significantly, the text of this hymn was written by Eliza R. Snow. She was the sister of Mormon prophet and apostle Lorenzo Snow (who, in Brooke’s mind, is prominently associated with the supposedly "hermetic" doctrine of human deification), the plural wife both of Joseph Smith and, later, of Brigham Young. She was the long-time president of the Relief Society, the women’s organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which role she was acclaimed as, among other things, the "leading Priestess of this dispensation." She was also, as Brooke notes (p. 258), the author of the famous hymn "O My Father," with its (purportedly hermetic) teaching of a divine Heavenly Mother. Surely if anyone understood Joseph Smith’s teachings, and if there was anyone who should have been an exponent of John Brooke’s claimed hermetic, radical, atonement-denying Mormon theology, it would have been Eliza R. Snow. But her hymns teach the standard Latter-day Saint doctrine of the atonement, just as the Church understands it today:

Behold the great Redeemer die,

A broken law to satisfy.

He dies a sacrifice for sin,

That man may live and glory win.

How great the wisdom and the love

That filled the courts on high

And sent the Savior from above

To suffer, bleed, and die!

His precious blood he freely spilt;

His life he freely gave,

A sinless sacrifice for guilt,

A dying world to save.

How great, how glorious, how complete,

Redemption’s grand design,

Where justice, love, and mercy meet

In harmony divine! (pp. 25f)

And why did Brooke ignore one of the most fiery Mormon orators in history, Orson Pratt? Why indeed! It seems critics just cannot come to grips with evidence which disproves their pet theories....

"And it is not only in the hymnology of the Church that an emphasis on Christ’s atonement is to be found. Orson Pratt, one of the Church’s most dynamic thinkers during the years between 1833 and 1890, was clearly teaching a concept of "sin from which only Christ’s atonement and God’s grace can save humanity" during the 1850s—right in the midst of the period when, according to Brooke and White, Latter-day Saints denied such notions.

Before sinners can repent acceptably before God, they must . . . believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has voluntarily suffered the penalty of the law of his Father in behalf of man. If there had been no innocent being to suffer in the stead of man, then man, having once broken the law, must himself have suffered its penalty, or else God would have ceased to be a God of Justice. Man, having once become guilty, could not atone for his own sins, and escape the punishment of the law, though he should ever afterwards strictly keep the law; for, "By the works of the law," or, by obedience to the law, "NO FLESH CAN BE JUSTIFIED." If a sinner, after having once transgressed the law, could purchase forgiveness by ever afterwards keeping the law, then there would have been no need of the atonement made by Christ. If the demands of justice could have been satisfied, and pardon granted, through repentance and good works, then the sufferings and death of Christ would have been entirely unnecessary. But if Christ had not suffered on our behalf, our faith, repentance, baptisms, and every other work, would have been utterly useless and in vain. Works, independently of Christ, would not atone even for the least sin.

Faith alone will not justify; faith and repentance alone will not justify; faith and baptism alone will not justify; but faith, repentance, and baptism will justify and bring remission of sins through the blood of Christ." (pp. 27f)

So much for Mormons not being Christians or having a different teaching about Jesus or even a different Jesus! But we live in the electronic era nowadays. It is simply inexcusable to be so blindingly ignorant of the fundament teachings, beliefs, and doctrines of the Mormons now. Historians need to be aware of this.

"Thus, Professor Brooke’s sweeping pronouncements about the development of Mormon theology—asserted rather than demonstrated—appear to be untrue. And the evidence adduced to refute them was gathered by one of the present reviewers, without the aid of any computerized concordance, in about a half hour. Subsequently, a quick computer search for the words "atonement," "atone," and "atoned" revealed that much more might, in fact, be done. Those terms occurred thirty-nine (39) times in the Nauvoo newspaper Times and Seasons (published 1839–1846), fourteen (14) times in the Messenger and Advocate (1834–37), and twelve (12) times in the Evening and Morning Star (1832–34). They occurred thirty (30) times in the so-called "Documentary History of the Church," which relates mostly to the period of Joseph Smith, and two hundred and six (206) times in the Journal of Discourses, which, covering the interval from 1854 to 1886, accounts for most of the period when, according to The Refiner’s Fire, Mormonism "came very close to . . . denying the necessity of grace and atonement in any form" (p. 259) Perhaps such entries, and others related to them, require closer study. Certainly they have received none from John Brooke.

Hamblin, Peterson, Mitton, Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, p.28

It is hardly surprising that Professor Brooke’s contention on this matter should prove false. Joseph Smith had never devalued or come close to denying Christ’s atonement. For example, the great revelation on the three degrees of glory and eternal progression that is recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 76—surely, by Professor Brooke’s standards, one of the most "hermetic" of Mormon documents—identifies the deified inhabitants of the celestial kingdom as "they who are just men made perfect through Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, who wrought out this perfect atonement through the shedding of his own blood." And, in a statement dated 8 May 1838—well into the period when, The Refiner’s Fire assures us, no such statement could or would have been made—the Prophet remarked that

The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it.

The context of Joseph’s statement was a kind of extended self-interview. "I published the foregoing answers," said the Prophet of this exercise, "to save myself the trouble of repeating the same a thousand times over and over again." Unfortunately, The Refiner’s Fire demonstrates that certain things cannot be repeated too often." (pp. 28f)

"Since there appear to be no explicit references to things hermetic or alchemical in early LDS writings, we would expect Professor Brooke to undertake careful exegesis of those LDS texts in which he claims to find his vague metaphorical allusions. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Brooke has not read Mormon scriptural texts with anything approaching sufficient care. A large number of his alleged examples of hermetic influence are plagued by tendentious misreadings of LDS texts and history that completely undermine his thesis. (p. 29)

His attempt at showing alchemy in the Book of Mormon is ludicrous at best!

"Brooke attempts to transfer his own obsession with alchemical metalworking to Joseph Smith (p. 160). He does so by noting that various metals are mentioned in the Book of Mormon, along with terms such as "refine," "furnace," and "fire" (pp. 160–61). The existence of such words, although in completely nonalchemical contexts, is seen as evidence of Joseph’s latent hermeticism. But the crowning evidence for hidden alchemy in the Book of Mormon is that "on three occasions Smith <as the author of the Book of Mormon> referred to Nephite disciples, including the character of Mormon, as ‘cast . . . into furnaces of fire and . . . [coming] forth receiving no harm’ " (p. 161, square brackets and elipses in the original; angled brackets ours). But is this so? First, Mormon was never cast into a furnace. Where did Brooke get such an idea? Second, although there are three references to the three Nephite disciples being cast into a furnace (3 Nephi 28:21, 4 Nephi 1:32, Mormon 8:24), they are three references to a single incident! In this one incident they are cast in three times because they were not killed in the first two attempts (3 Nephi 28:21). At the same time they were also cast into prisons, into pits, and into dens of wild beasts without being harmed. Thus, although the same events are repeated in the same order in the three places in the Book of Mormon (3 Nephi 28:19–22, 4 Nephi 1:30–33, Mormon 8:24), all three references are to one single incident which happened to the three Nephites. Brooke’s multiplication of the furnaces allows him to speak with mock weariness of "the usual furnace scenes" (p. 176) and "the requisite saintly disciples [who] survive being cast ‘into furnaces of fire’ " (p. 176, citing 4 Nephi 1:32), without informing us how one single incident can be seen as "usual" or "requisite." And why focus on the furnace? Why not mention the prisons, or pits, or beasts? If Joseph was really so obsessed with alchemical imagery, why does the term "furnace" occur only five times in the Book of Mormon, but 30 times in the King James Bible? Were the ancient Hebrews also obsessed with alchemy? (p. 29)

"Brooke’s claim that "the Book of Mormon made the white race morally superior to the red" (p. 216) and "depicted the Lamanites as the essence of evil" (pp. 217–18) is a gross and misleading oversimplification. When discussing the well-worn distinction between "Iron Rod Saints and Liahona Saints," Brooke derives the former symbol from "rods . . . given the Nephites in the Book of Mormon, by which God . . . pulled the rod holder to the Tree of Life" (p. 296). But no such rods exist, and the Book of Mormon never describes God as using a rod to "pull" anybody anywhere. Brooke also resurrects the hackneyed old anti-Mormon claim that Jacob 2 condemns polygamy (p. 217), while he conveniently ignores Jacob 2:30. (p. 31)

So far, nothing supporting Brooke. It is just as bad with the other LDS scriptures as well. Brooke has no evidence at all for vast influences of Hermetical thought in early Mormonism...

"The Doctrine and Covenants fares no better under Brooke’s scrutiny. His identification (on p. 201) of a hybrid "Adam-Christ figure" in Doctrine and Covenants 76 and 93, while obviously helpful to his attempt to locate a Mormon parallel to "the godlike powers of the primal Adam" of hermeticism (pp. 200–2), has no basis whatsoever in the documents he cites. Brooke maintains that Doctrine and Covenants 29:46–47 "ended with the comforting universalist note that children were innocent of original sin. Within months he [Smith] would totally abandon the doctrine of original sin, contradicting passages in the Book of Mormon" (p. 189). It is understandable that Brooke never informs us which passages in the Book of Mormon Doctrine and Covenants 29:46–47 is supposed to contradict, since it is in fact a paraphrase of the ideas presented on child baptism in Moroni 8. Citing Doctrine and Covenants 84:5–19, Brooke tells his readers that Joseph Smith’s "revelations restoring the biblical priesthood of the [sic] Melchizedek in the early 1830s included similar passages on the passing of the priesthood from Adam through Enoch to Solomon . . . as Masonic mythology proposed" (p. 166). But the relevant verses never mention Solomon at all, and, since he is the crucial figure in "Masonic mythology," Brooke’s case collapses. In another passage on the same page, Brooke identifies Joseph as "a latter-day Solomon," stepping in to supply evidence for his thesis when the historical record obstinately fails to do so. Similarly, when he tries to show, on the basis of Moses 6:6–7, that Joseph Smith equated priesthood with the Adamic language, he actually inserts two of his own words into the text (p. 195)—words without which he would have no case whatever. He equates "sealing powers of Elijah" with being "sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise" (p. 256, cf. 260) despite the fact that his source, Doctrine and Covenants 132:7, never mentions Elijah. (p. 31)

"Brooke’s presentation of early Mormon history is likewise plagued by repeated blunders. His depiction of a Joseph Smith who is "bitter," "suspicious," and "anxious" (p. 135)—a description helpful to Brooke’s environmentalist reading of the Book of Mormon—flies in the face of Brooke’s own claim that "by all accounts he was a gregarious, playful character" (p. 180; cf. JS-H 1:28). It may also seem remarkable to some that Joseph believed that "the simultaneous emergence of counterfeiting and the spurious Masonry of the corrupt country Grand Lodge in the early 1820s was an affliction on the people, the consequence of their rejection of Joseph Smith as a preacher of the gospel" (p. 177), since Joseph had not yet restored the gospel or begun to preach in the early 1820s. Brooke has Joseph and Oliver being "baptized into the Priesthood of Aaron" (p. 156), even though their baptism and their ordination to the priesthood were clearly two separate events. Furthermore, he uses the alleged counterfeiting activities of Theodore Turley, Peter Hawes, Joseph H. Jackson, Marenus Eaton, and Edward Bonney to propose a continued Mormon fascination with counterfeiting, and thereby, with alchemy (pp. 269–70), despite the fact that Jackson, Eaton, and Bonney were not LDS! And Brooke seems unsure as to whether John Taylor’s Mediation and Atonement "was of great significance doctrinally, because it marked the rejection of the Adam-God concept," (p. 289) or whether the "rejection of the Adam-God doctrine [was] something that John Taylor had not really attempted" (p. 291).

Hamblin, Peterson, Mitton, Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, p.33

Occasionally, historical evidence flatly contradicts Brooke’s portrayals. Thus, for instance, he asserts that Joseph Smith was convicted of disturbing the peace as a "glass-looker" in an 1826 trial in Bainbridge, New York (pp. 154, 364 n. 19). While the evidence is ambiguous, one of the most thorough reviews of the legal issues concludes, with Oliver Cowdery, that the case was a preliminary hearing, not a trial, and that Joseph was acquitted. Furthermore, contrary to Brooke’s claims, Joseph Smith never "announced in 1832 that he himself was the prophet Enoch" (p. 166)—nor, for that matter, did he ever do so at all. Still, Brooke imagines not only that Joseph Smith claimed to be Enoch, but that he also, somewhere, sometime, somehow, "presented himself as the Nephite, the prophet of the coming Kingdom" (p. 181), claiming that "rebuilding the temple of Nephi . . . would fulfill prophecy and advance the Second Coming" (p. 198). No evidence for this false assertion is provided. And Brooke’s assertion that "[Martin] Harris did not claim to have had the vision [of the angel and the golden plates] but accepted that Smith had seen the angel" (p. 186) flies in the face of all the evidence. And it is difficult to credit the claim that, from the days of Brigham Young in the early 1850s, "the faithful were not to expect miracles or visions, rely upon their endowments, or search out the mysteries" (p. 284; cf. 291). Brooke further claims that "the Cowderies [sic] [Oliver and Warren], the Whitmers [David and John], their brother-in-law Hiram Page, the Johnsons [Luke and Lyman], and Warren Parrish . . . provided the core of the Reorganized Church" (p. 225), despite the fact that none of them joined the RLDS Church. (Indeed, half of them were dead before the reorganization in 1860!)"

(Hamblin, p. 32)

"Over and over again, Professor Brooke misreads Latter-day Saint doctrines, and his misreadings fatally weaken the parallels he claims to find with hermeticism. For instance, since both Mormons and occultic Neoplatonists reject the idea of creation ex nihilo, from nothing, Brooke concludes that the Neoplatonic concept of emanation (creation ex deo) and the Mormon doctrine of the eternity of matter are equivalent (pp. 10–11, 15, 16, 23, 24, 202). But this is rather like saying that, since water is a liquid, while hydrogen and lead are nonliquids, hydrogen and lead are essentially the same thing. It is true, of course, that neither creation as emanation nor creation as organization of preexisting matter can be equated with creation from nothing, but this hardly makes them synonymous. They are, in fact, utterly and absolutely foreign to each other. The emanationist view posits God as the only "thing" that is truly real, with the entire cosmos, visible and invisible, regarded as an unfolding of his being. (Neoplatonic thinkers routinely use images of overflowing fountains and radiating lights and open perfume bottles to express their concept of creation.) Nothing, on this view, is ontologically independent of God. The theory of creation as organization of preexistent matter, in sharp contrast, sees God and matter as coexistent realities, with neither one ontologically dependent upon the other. Nonetheless, Brooke thoroughly confuses the two doctrines, and his resultant misunderstanding of the relationship between spirit and matter in Mormonism, which he labels "the core of Mormon cosmology" (p. 15), leads him into bizarre errors (as at 215).

(Hamblin, p. 35)

So how about the Cabbalah? Nothing again! Brooke missed with Magic, Hermeticism, Alchemy, Masonry, and even Cabbalah! He is looking in all the wrong directions.....

"According to Brooke, Joseph "reproduced the three heavens of the Cabala and hermeticism in the three Mormon heavens, the telestial, terrestrial, and celestial kingdoms" (p. 12, cf. 199, 205). Here Brooke ignores the obvious antecedent in Paul (1 Corinthians 15:40–42), which is extensively paraphrased in Doctrine and Covenants 76. But, just as important, he misreads the text: Where is the telestial kingdom described as a "heaven" in the Doctrine and Covenants? In fact, the three references to "heaven" in Doctrine and Covenants 76 (vs. 63, 68, 109) refer either to the sky or to the place where God and Christ judge (D&C 76:68). The "heavens" are called upon to "hear" (76:1), the heavens weep (76:26), and they bear record (76:40); but nowhere in this revelation are the three degrees of glory themselves called "heavens." Quite the contrary, the telestial kingdom is explicitly associated with "hell" (76:84, 106), not "heaven." In fact the terrestial and telestial glories are called "worlds" (D&C 76:71, 98, 109). But even if we allow Brooke the latitude to interpret Doctrine and Covenants 76 as referring to three "heavens," we must then ask: Precisely how many heavens do we actually find in hermeticism? In fact, the usual number is not three, as Brooke claims, but seven! So why should we think that Joseph got his concept of three heavens from the seven heavens of hermeticism, instead of from the three heavens so prominently mentioned by Paul (2 Corinthians 12:2)? (Hamblin, p. 35)

With even Modern Mormonism Brooke pulls some howlers out of the bag...

"Brooke’s understanding of contemporary Mormonism fares no better. Many endowed Latter-day Saints will no doubt be bemused to learn that, since the early twentieth century "only the dead who had died outside the faith explicitly required the saving powers of temple ordinance [sic]" (p. 292). And readers of the Ensign may be excused for doubting Brooke’s claim that "since 1950 references to Joseph Smith have declined just as fast as references to Jesus Christ have grown" (p. 305). Following O. Kendall White, Brooke sees the contemporary Church as being pushed by "neo-orthodox" thinkers into abandoning its true, hermetic roots (pp. 296–97; cf. 283, 305). In fact, he says, because of "significant departures from its nineteenth-century origins" (p. 293; cf. 295) "modern Mormonism may well soon become essentially indistinguishable from conservative Christian fundamentalism" (p. 282; cf. 284, 295, 303–5, 404)—a trend that our numerous, vocal, evangelical Protestant critics seem to have overlooked. Yet he acknowledges that there is opposition to this supposed tendency, identifying Hugh Nibley and D. Michael Quinn as allies who "see the survival of Mormonism in the embracing of this hermetic tradition" (p. 301). But this identification exposes the problematic nature of Brooke’s depiction, since—however dubiously—his source, Kendall White, singles Hugh Nibley out as one of the leaders of the purported "neo-orthodox" party in modern Mormonism. Both White and Brooke have seriously misunderstood Nibley on these matters.

As a matter of fact, Brooke seems to have read little or nothing of Nibley, nor of the unidentified writers to whom he refers as "Nibley’s students" (p. 301). In a cavalier passage—less than a paragraph—he characterizes in the narrowest way Nibley’s entire work (about 20 volumes!), showing no real acquaintance with his significant contribution to the study of Mormonism, much of which is quite germane to the issues Brooke is discussing (p. 301). He never cites the Encyclopedia of Mormonism and shows little awareness of faithful Latter-day Saint scholarship. He mentions passingly only one book from the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, despite the publication of several books and articles related to his topic.

It is striking, too, that Professor Brooke seems to have sought no feedback from reputable Latter-day Saint scholars before going public with his work. "The first test that a research project undergoes," he comments in his preface (p. xix), "is the scrutiny provided by public presentations. I am very much indebted for the opportunity to develop my ideas and my evidence—and for commentary and critique given free of charge—at a variety of forums." He thereupon lists a number of places at which he has presented his theories of Mormonism, some of them quite prestigious (e.g., the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Viola Sach’s Colloquia at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme at the University of Paris, the Andover-Harvard Divinity School Church History Seminar, and the Atlantic History Workshop at Johns Hopkins University.) But, one wants to ask, why did he evidently never submit his speculations to the evaluation of informed Latter-day Saints at the Mormon History Association or, even, at a Sunstone Symposium? Why, when, on the same page, he thanks scholars like Jan Shipps, Larry Moore, David Hall, and Jon Butler, who read his manuscript in whole or in part, are there no thanks for reading the manuscript to respected Latter-day Saint historians such as Thomas Alexander, James Allen, Richard Lloyd Anderson, Leonard Arrington, Milton Backman, Davis Bitton, Richard Bushman, or Grant Underwood, etc.? (How would Cambridge University Press regard a Christian or Muslim writer who had submitted to them a major revisionist work on Judaism, but who had egregiously failed to engage in dialogue with contemporary Jewish scholars?) Yet Professor Brooke could have avoided many embarrassing errors had he opted to take a look at current Latter-day Saint scholarship, or to submit his musings to competent Latter-day Saint evaluation. Thus, to choose just one example from scores that could have been selected, when he alludes in passing to "the already shaky edifice of the Book of Mormon, a historical revelation far too accessible to the historian’s prying eyes" (p. 304), his is an uninformed judgment that relies far too confidently on the work of professional anti-Mormons like Jerald and Sandra Tanner (pp. 363, 380), to say nothing of Walter F. Prince’s widely-ridiculed speculations about the origins of Book of Mormon names (pp. 169, 368)."

Hamblin, pp. 36f)

"Professor Brooke’s ignorance of contemporary Mormonism hurts him in amusing ways. Even the cold fusion claims made at the University of Utah a few years ago are pressed into service as illustrations of Mormon hermeticism: They are interesting, Brooke declares, "given Mormon doctrines on the nature of matter" (p. 299). He never troubles himself, though, to explain how the experiments of the two non-Mormon chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman are even remotely helpful as indicators of Latter-day Saint attitudes and beliefs.

Hamblin, Peterson, Mitton, Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, p.39

It is probably significant that Brooke’s mistakes are not random; rather, his presentation consistently misrepresents LDS scripture, doctrine, and history in ways that tend to support his thesis by making LDS ideas seem closer to his hermetic prototypes. These are not minor errors involving marginal characters or events in LDS scripture and history; nor are they mere matters of interpretation. Rather, for the most part, they are fundamental errors, clearly demonstrating Brooke’s feeble grasp of the primary texts. By analogy, if a biblical scholar were to discuss John’s vision on the road to Damascus, or Peter’s revelation on the isle of Patmos, he would be laughed out of the American Academy of Religion; such work would certainly not be published by Cambridge University Press. "This book," says Harvard’s David D. Hall, praising The Refiner’s Fire on its rear jacket cover, "changes the shape of American religious history." He is absolutely right, though probably not in the sense he intended. It is a sad reflection on the sorry state of knowledge of Mormonism among non-Mormon scholars that errors of such magnitude could pass undetected in the writing, reviewing, and editing process of The Refiner’s Fire." (p. 38)

The Methodological Imperative: Biblical vs. Hermetic Antecedents

"Brooke recognizes that the question of "how to specify the role of hermeticism in relation to the many obviously Christian elements in Mormon theology" (p. xiv) is one of his major methodological problems. Yet the solution to this problem is, in fact, quite simple: Brooke must provide evidence for uniquely hermetic or alchemical terms or ideas in Mormonism—terms or ideas which are not paralleled in the Bible. Ignoring this principle, though, Brooke consistently downplays, and frequently altogether suppresses, the obvious and explicit biblical antecedents of Mormon thought in favor of obscure and vague parallels to hermetic, alchemical, Masonic, and occult texts and ideas, which themselves often derive from the Bible.

It is universally acknowledged that biblical quotations, paraphrases, and imagery fill all early LDS scripture, writings, and sermons. Time and again early Latter-day Saints explicitly point to biblical precedents for their doctrines and practices. Joseph Smith and all the early Mormon elders taught and defended their doctrines from the Bible. Even in the great King Follett discourse—which Brooke sees as a cornucopia of "hermetic" doctrine—Joseph declared "I am going to prove it [the doctrine of multiple gods] to you by the Bible." The text is filled with biblical quotations and allusions. Never do the early Saints claim they are following hermetic or alchemical precedents. Brooke, however, generously sets out to correct this lapse for them, as the following examples will demonstrate.

• Anabaptists "posit Christ as . . . the Second Adam" (p. 14), as do Mormons; likewise, "touched by hermetic thought, the revolutionary [Protestant] sects interpret Christ as a Second Adam" (p. 204). No mention is made of 1 Corinthians 15:45–49 as the clear source for this idea.

• "Michael Quinn," Professor Brooke reports, "has noted that the idea of three heavens, or degrees of glory, was available in Emmanuel Swedenborg’s cosmic system, in which three heavens—topped by a ‘celestial kingdom’—were associated with the sun, the moon, and the stars" (p. 205). But Michael Quinn also knows that "the idea of three heavens, or degrees of glory, . . . associated with the sun, the moon, and the stars" can be derived from 1 Corinthians 15:40–42 and 2 Corinthians 12:2. Is Professor Brooke unaware of this?

Hamblin, Peterson, Mitton, Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, p.40

• The Paracelsan and Joachimite "hope that an Age of Spirit [the third dispensation] would commence with the second coming of Elijah" (p. 15) is posited as a source of "the visions of Elias and Elijah received by Joseph Smith" (p. 28). Brooke fails to mention Malachi 4:5 and Mark 9:11 as obvious sources for this idea.

• "The godly Monarchy prophesied in the Book of Daniel [is] a typology popular among both the chiliast Munster Anabaptists and the Latter-day Saints at Nauvoo and in early Utah" (p. 24)—and, we might add, with every other Christian and Jewish millenarian group in history.

• The "visions and revelations" and "powers of healing and exorcism" of early Mormons are "like those of early Quaker leaders" (p. 28). No mention is made of the fact that these precise supernatural powers existed in the apostolic church, the obvious source for both Quakers and Mormons.

• Mormon "baptism for the dead [is based on] Spiritualist doctrine" (p. 28) and on the "radical heritage" of "the German pietist mystics at Ephrata" (p. 243). Why does Professor Brooke make no reference whatsoever to 1 Corinthians 15:29 as the unquestionable source for this idea in all of these movements?

• "In words replicated in Mormon doctrine, the high priest in the Royal Arch [Masonry] was to be ‘a priest forever after the order of Melchizedec’ " (p. 101). Professor Brooke omits mention of Hebrews 5:6 as the indisputable source for this precise quotation. Although he is elsewhere aware of Hebrews as the source for the Masonic material (p. 194), Brooke still perversely argues that Mormons got the idea from Masonry rather than from the New Testament.

• Brooke informs us that "The Pearl of Great Price, the title of a collection of Smith’s writings from the 1830s, . . . had ancient mystical and alchemical connotations" (p. 161). He does not tell his readers that Matthew 13:46 is the obvious source for the title.

• Brooke would have us believe that the idea of "treasure in heaven" in the Book of Mormon derived from "a theme that his [Joseph’s] grandfather Solomon Mack had developed in his Narrative" (p. 175, cf. 176, 274), rather than being related to its obvious biblical antecedents (Matthew 6:20, etc.).

• "Christ is described as a master alchemist in powerful imagery drawn from the Book of Malachi: ‘Like a refiner’s fire,’ he would ‘purify the sons of Levi’ " (p. 185, citing 3 Nephi 24:2–3). In fact, this passage is not alchemical "imagery" at all, but is an exact quotation from Malachi 3:1–3, a document written before the development of alchemy. One might well ask how a prealchemical document can be describing a "master alchemist." And if it was not alchemical for Malachi, why is it suddenly alchemical for Joseph Smith? (pp. 39ff)

• The LDS United Order "had parallels in other millenarian groups such as the Ephrata celibates and the Shakers" and "the Munster Anabaptists" (p. 192). Nothing is said about the obvious source for all Christian communitarian movements, the apostolic church as described in Acts 4:31–5:11.

• "The idea of an earthly sealing [power] was first introduced in the Book of Mormon, when Nephi was granted powers of salvation and damnation: ‘Whatsoever ye shall seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven’ " (p. 194, citing Helaman 10:7). Brooke makes no mention of Matthew 16:19, where the same power is granted to Christ’s apostles.

• Brooke’s claim that "the pulpit veils [in the Kirtland temple] had their contemporary analogues in Royal Arch Masonic symbolism and had legendary origins in the veils in Solomon’s temple" (p. 220) is rather baffling, since the Masons themselves drew this idea from the Bible, where the temple veil is not "legendary" but is described in considerable detail (Exodus 26:31–35; cf. Matthew 27:51, etc.).

• "Joseph Smith . . . invoked an image of witchcraft and black magic when he condemned the dissenters in Missouri as a ‘Nicolaitaine band’ " (p. 230, citing D&C 117:11). Brooke says nothing about the Nicolaitans referred to in Revelation 2:6, 15. (p. 42)

Notice how Brooke ignores the precedents everytime in order to build his case...

"Given this consistent pattern of ignoring biblical antecedents for Mormon ideas, we are left to wonder whether Brooke is merely ignorant of the Bible, or whether he has consciously suppressed biblical parallels in order to bolster his weak case. His recognition that "proto-Mormon families were certainly immersed in the language and the promise of the Bible" (p. 72) indicates that he should have been aware of possible biblical antecedents. However, his acknowledgment, on one issue, that he is "obliged to Jan Shipps" for a point having an obvious biblical basis (pp. 72; 341 n. 45) leads us to suspect he may simply be biblically illiterate. At any rate, his case for hermetic influences on early Mormonism can only be made if he can demonstrate unique hermetic ideas in Mormon thought that have no biblical antecedents. This he utterly fails to do. (p. 43)

And of course, it is important to utilize the methodology of D. Michael Quinn's book "Early Mormonism and the World Magic View", severely flawed though it is. And Brooke's book is all the worse for it, and in every single way!

"Building on the "pioneering" methodology of Michael Quinn, much of Brooke’s argument rests upon the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence, including tenuous genealogical and geographical relationships (as at pp. 25, 50–51, 59–60, 63, 70–71, 73, 95, 266, 270, 359). He admits that much of this material "required some speculation and inference" (p. 336). That is putting it mildly. It is rather like using an alchemical recipe to make New England chowder by merely boiling water in the same room with the clams—never mind that the two never come together. Thus we learn that a certain Thomas Ingersoll had "connections to the Smiths’ circle of money-diggers" (p. 173). But what was the nature of those connections? Thomas "was either a brother or a third cousin of Peter Ingersoll, whom the Smiths had [allegedly] tried to recruit into their [alleged] money-digging club" (p. 174). And what significance is there, really, in the datum, noted above, that the counterfeiter Joseph Bill was "a second cousin once removed of Samuel Bill, who would marry Joseph Smith’s aunt Lydia Mack in 1786" (p. 108)? How many readers of this review, we wonder, can name a second cousin once removed of their maternal aunt’s husband? How many have been significantly influenced by him or her? Brooke also finds "a happy symmetry" in the fact that Heber C. Kimball’s first mission to England took him "to the birthplace of Lawrence Clarkson, who two centuries before" had held a few notions vaguely parallel to ideas Brooke claims to find in Joseph Smith (p. 238). Many readers will find it, as we do, irrelevant. Most amusingly, Brooke spends several pages (pp. 50–53) detailing the eighteenth-century occultic religiosity of Joseph Stafford and describing the "magical documents" his family preserved from him after his death, only to admit, in passing, that it was a different branch of the family—his brother David’s descendants, who did not have those documents—with which the Smiths had contact a century afterwards (p. 53).

Brooke seems to sense that some readers may be skeptical of his claim of hermetic origins for Mormonism. In part, he deals with this by affirming that hermeticism was really there, only rather invisibly and clandestinely: "Hermeticism explains the more exotic features of the inner logic of Mormon theology, but given the secret nature of this inner logic before 1844, and its relative obscurity to this day" (p. xvii), we shouldn’t expect to find much evidence of it. One can hardly fail, here, to recall Rule 17 ("In place of evidence use Rhetoric!") and Rule 18 ("Use lack of evidence as evidence!") from Hugh Nibley’s immortal "How to Write an Anti-Mormon Book (A Handbook for Beginners)." (pp. 48f)

And now is where James and Co. need to prick up their ears. The Masonic issue is still with us, alive and well, but only because of the superficial methodology employed by those who rejkect Joseph Smith's words as to how it all came about.

The Masonic Connection

"The one point where Brooke’s argument has any semblance of substance is in his claim that Joseph was a Mason and therefore could have been influenced by Masonic lore and symbolism. Nonetheless, Brooke insists on arguing for Masonic influence on Joseph during the writing of the Book of Mormon, nearly fifteen years before he became a Mason.

The ever-helpful Sidney Rigdon is therefore enlisted as a conduit of Masonic lore during Joseph’s early years, since he "had Masonic connections of his own, becoming a Mason later in life" (p. 195). And what precisely are Rigdon’s "Masonic connections?" While it is quite true that Rigdon became a Mason, he became such in the 1840s, a bit late to have passed any esoteric lore on to Joseph in the 1830s. Professor Brooke also notes that a John Rigdon and a Thomas Rigdon were Masons in 1829, but fails to demonstrate that these Rigdons had any relationship, beyond name, to Sidney. And Brooke indulges in another ante hoc fallacy by claiming that the Mormon temple ceremony could have been influenced at its origin by "the European Lodges of Adoption" (p. 250), despite the fact that "the Rite of Adoption . . . has never been introduced into America." (A failed attempt was first made in 1855.)

Brooke seems to recognize both the paradox that the alleged Gadianton-Masons would be an indication that Joseph was anti-Masonic, and therefore would not have borrowed ideas from the Masons, as well as the ante hoc problem of Joseph being influenced by Masonic ideas before he became a Mason. He attempts to solve the anti-Masonic problem by claiming—without a shred of evidence, since the Prophet never made any statements about Masonry in his early years—that "Joseph Smith bore contradictory feelings about Freemasonry: he condemned the spurious tradition, while embracing the pure tradition" (p. 169). In other words, any positive links Brooke imagines between Masons and early Mormonism arise because Joseph was copying the "pure tradition," while his alleged anti-Masonry represents Joseph’s rejection of the "spurious tradition." Such a theory has the great advantage of being utterly unfalsifiable—everything can be influenced by Masonry, any piece of evidence can be accommodated.

Repeating an old anti-Mormon assertion, Brooke claims to find the source for the story of the discovery of the golden plates in the tale of Enoch’s pillars in Royal Arch Masonry (pp. 157–59). But, in fact, the differences between the two stories are far greater than the alleged similarities: Enoch is not mentioned in the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. The main Enochian text is inscribed on a stone pillar, not on golden plates. The gold plate in the Enoch story was a single inscriptional plate, not a book; it was triangular rather than rectangular; and it contained the ineffable name of God, which plays no role in the Book of Mormon story. When Brooke suggests that Joseph discovered the golden plates "in a stone vault" (p. 159), or in an "arched vault" (p. 165), these are in fact Brooke’s own words, used to create a parallel with the Masonic tale that doesn’t really exist. Joseph’s golden plates were in a small stone box, while Enoch built a huge underground temple complex with "nine arches" and a huge "door of stone." And whereas the Book of Mormon is composed of history and sermons, Enoch’s pillar contains "the principles of the liberal arts, particularly of masonry."

Brooke concludes that "Joseph Smith claim[ed] to find golden plates and Masonic artifacts in a stone vault atop the Hill Cumorah" (p. 159). But Joseph most emphatically did not! It is Brooke who claims that the golden plates, the sword of Laban, the Urim and Thummim, and the breastplate are Masonic artifacts—Brooke himself puts these words in Joseph’s mouth in order to make them seem similar to the Masonic sources he cites. Joseph never made any such connection.

Following standard environmentalist explanations of the origins of the LDS temple endowment, Brooke maintains that "there is overwhelming evidence of the continuity between Masonic and Mormon [endowment] symbolism" (p. 249). In fact, however, we find that the similarities are limited to only a few motifs, which can be understood in several different ways. And even these few symbols which seem similar usually have a quite different meaning in the endowment from their counterparts in Masonry, and in ritual the meaning of the symbol is all important. The same actions, gestures, etc., if understood as having a different interpretation, are not really the same ritual at all, because the meaning of the symbolism is different. Differing markedly from Freemasonry the Mormon ceremonies have intense Christian relationships and very rich parallels throughout the gospel and the Bible. Given this fact, it is not surprising that those followers of Joseph Smith who were intimately informed about both rituals were not disturbed by superficial similarities.

Neither Brooke’s nor any other environmentalist explanation has ever attempted to account for the vast number of striking differences between Mormon ideas and symbolism and those of the Masons. For example, Webb’s Freemason’s Monitor—a source Brooke claims influenced Joseph (pp. 157, 365 n. 26) and which contains the Enoch legend alluded to above—mentions many ideas and symbols that have absolutely no parallel in Mormonism. Where in Mormonism will we find the symbolic significance of the Royal Arch (pp. 201–2); Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian architectural styles (pp. 57–59); the five senses (pp. 60–65); the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences (pp. 67–69); a sword pointing to a naked heart (p. 79); the anchor (p. 79); the forty-seventh problem of Euclid (pp. 79–80); the hour-glass (p. 80); scythe (pp. 80–81); chisel and mallet (p. 85); lodge, Grand Master, and Deputy Grand Master (p. 92); the Junior Warden (p. 107); Orders of Knighthood (p. 165); Knights of the Red Cross (p. 166); Knights Templar and Knights of Malta (pp. 179–95); the Knights of Calatrava (p. 196); and the Knights of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary (p. 196)? If Joseph really borrowed his ideas from Masonry, why are the similarities limited to only a few items, many of which have known parallels to more ancient mysteries?

Brooke sees significance in the fact that "the first Masonic degree, the Entered Apprentice, included a recitation of the first three verses of the Creation Story in Genesis" (p. 249), which he sees as a "very specific parallel [to] the ritual drama of Creation and the Fall from the Garden of Eden" (p. 249) in the LDS temple ceremony. Yet the significance of this brief citation from Genesis diminishes dramatically when we note that ten pages from Webb’s Freemason’s Monitor include lengthy quotes from Exodus (pp. 147, 150, 153), 2 Chronicles (p. 145), Psalms (pp. 131–32, 147–48), 2 Thessalonians (p. 140), Haggai (p. 151), Zechariah (p. 152) John (p. 153), Deuteronomy (p. 153), Numbers (p. 154), Hebrews (p. 154), and Amos (p. 154) in relation to Masonic ceremonies. Considering the frequent use of quotations from the Bible in connection with early Masonic ceremonies, why should we presume that Joseph was decisively influenced in the development of the LDS temple creation drama by three verses from Genesis in a Masonic manual, verses which he had already read many times in the Bible? The Masonic rites as a whole have absolutely nothing to do with the preexistence, the creation, or the Garden of Eden.

Brooke also maintains that Joseph was somehow influenced by George Oliver’s The Antiquities of Freemasonry (pp. 165–66). Yet even a brief skimming of Oliver suggests quite strongly that Joseph had never read this book. For example, Oliver quotes or cites Herodotus (p. 46), Berosus (p. 46), Ammianus Marcellinus (p. 47), Rabbi Gedaliah ben Joseph (p. 47), Jamblichus (p. 92), Palladius (p. 115), and Augustine (p. 111), among many other ancient sources. Where, then, are the influences, or even the mentions, of these sources in early Mormon writings? Brooke also maintains that Joseph fabricated the Book of Abraham (Brooke, 211); if so, and if he had access to Oliver’s Antiquities of Freemasonry, why do we find no reference to the Egyptian places, people, or gods cited by Oliver, such as Thoth (p. 46), Orus [Horus] (p. 91), Hermes (p. 92), Amenophis (p. 114), Tanis (p. 115), Thusimares (p. 102), Janias (p. 102), and even Trismegistus himself (p. 115)?

What, then, is the significance of the alleged similarities between Masonry and LDS doctrine and the temple endowment? In reality, the fact that early Latter-day Saints might have borrowed and transformed a few symbols from the Masons, even were it conceded, would no more explain Mormon origins or the temple endowment than the fact that early Christians borrowed the crux ansata from the pagan Egyptian ankh explains the origins of early Christianity. Symbols, like words, are readily transferred between cultures or religions. When this occurs, we usually find that, although the symbols or words may be recognizably similar, their meaning in two cultures can be vastly different: Contrast the symbolic meaning of the swastika in the late twentieth century with its original Indo-European meaning as an auspicious symbol of the Sun-god, which it retains still today in Hinduism.

An adequate explanation of the relationship between Mormonism and Masonry must explain not only the alleged parallels, but also the very significant differences between the two traditions. Furthermore, it must also explain the even more spectacular parallels between the LDS temple endowment and Mormon esoteric doctrines on one hand and the religious ideas of Judeo-Christian antiquity on the other. Brooke’s claim that it is "in Reformation Europe and revolutionary England . . . [that] we find the closest analogues, indeed critical antecedents" (p. 5, emphasis added) to LDS esoteric doctrines is demonstrably false. On the contrary, there is a large body of work which indicates that the closest analogues are to the rituals and esoteric doctrines of early Christianity and Judaism in the eastern Mediterranean in the first two or three centuries before and after Christ.

The methodological key to solve this problem is comparison between ideas which are unique to Mormonism and antiquity, but which are not found in the hermetic, alchemical, or Masonic traditions, or in other nineteenth-century sources. With this in mind, all of Brooke’s vague links between Masonic Enoch legends and Joseph Smith pale in the face of Nibley’s identification of the proper name "Mahujah" in the Aramaic Enoch materials from the Dead Sea Scrolls, paralleling Moses 6:40 and 7:2. There is a vast and growing body of evidence showing increasingly complex analogues between Joseph’s ancient scripture, the LDS temple endowment, and uniquely ancient religious ideas and practice.

Hamblin, Peterson, Mitton, Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, p.58

Unless Brooke can demonstrate that his body of analogues is superior both in quality and quantity to those adduced to Joseph’s claimed ancient sources, his thesis will remain unproven. But however the question of the relationship between Mormonism and antiquity is resolved, the fact remains that whatever legitimate parallels Brooke may have discovered between Mormonism and the hermetic or alchemical traditions can best be explained by the fact that both traditions drew on the same biblical background. (pp. 52-57)

These were the strongest parts of the review I felt. It is always an education to see what bad history scholars come up with to replace what Joseph claimed, simply because it is easier to ignore primary evidence than accept Joseph's own story. It is also sad, because such unbelief does nothing toward enlightening us toward reality at all.