# Divine Aspirations: Creation, Ritual, and Authority

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8suLv7WfwE

*Recorded: 2015*


This presentation critiques the standard top-down model of divine authority in Mormonism—where God delegates power downward and refuses to recognize unauthorized rituals—and proposes an alternative bottom-up model rooted in Mormon scripture. Drawing on Doctrine and Covenants 29 and 121, the speaker argues that God’s power derives from honor freely given by those who trust in divine love, not from coercive imposition. Using analogies from computer science, including certificate authorities and distributed systems, the talk reframes authority as emerging from community consent and ritual as aspirational rather than mechanically efficacious—a projection of faith toward a future divine community that will ultimately validate the covenants made in hope.

## Transcript

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Mormonism claims divine authority, focused on the unique authority to perform saving ordinances for the living and the dead. Associated with this is the declaration in Mormon scripture, in the voice of God, describing the LDS Church as the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth. These claims raise a number of challenging issues that are difficult to resolve in the standard model of divine authority and ritual. I want to describe what I see as the standard model, outline some of its problems, and then propose a different but still distinctively, if not uniquely, Mormon approach to divine authority. rooted in Mormon scripture and teaching that addresses many of these problems. My model draws on Mormon concepts of creation, of God’s power, and on the efficacy of ordinances, and I will illustrate with some examples from computer science.

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Often, when we talk about the need for authority in Mormonism, we employ a top-down model. This is the typical model. A typical articulation of this is that authority allows someone to act on behalf of someone who is in a higher position of authority. For example, a priesthood holder can act in the name of God in performing ordinances, or, more secularly, an administrator in the DMV can issue a driver’s license on behalf of state authorities. This top-down model implies that the ultimate authority resides at the top with God, and that the necessity for authority Is that God will refuse to recognize covenants or rituals that are not performed by God’s authorized delegates, no matter how well-intentioned? See, for example, Doctrine in Covenants 132.

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This model introduces some difficulties. For example, my son, now serving a mission in Alabama, once asked me, what happens if an ordinance is performed by an unworthy priesthood holder? But the investigator is faithful. I was told that it still counts. If ordinances still work, even if the priesthood holder is unworthy, why is authority important? What if someone who doesn’t have the priesthood but claims to baptizes people? Does that count?

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In the middle of the twentieth century, there was some controversy in the church about the proper way to confer priesthood authority. Under President Heber J. Grant, the recipient was simply ordained to priesthood office without an explicit accompanying conferral of priesthood. which was a difference from past practice, and the question was raised to top authorities in the church. Eventually, during the administration of President David O. McKay, our current standard procedure was fixed. An explicit conferral of priesthood prior to ordination to priesthood office. But many, particularly Mormon fundamentalists, have asked What are we to make of ordinances performed by those in the interim period who were merely ordained to priesthood office without an explicit conferral of priesthood? Or what do we make of those who trace their line of authority through someone later deemed unworthy?

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The origins and apparent arbitrariness of ritual are also challenges for this top-down model. Why does God established precisely these words and these actions for covenants and rituals? And how do we explain the similarities between forms of authorized ritual, such as the temple endowment, and other systems such as Freemasonry?

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Some other problems of the standard model of authority and ritual are that ritual is not guaranteed to be efficacious. So in addition to questions about administrator unworthiness or questions about validity of authority, errors in administration also can create difficulties. I’ve been in more than one sacrament meeting where a priest’s error in reciting the sacrament prayer went uncorrected. Other factors that influence the efficacy of ordinances include dependence on the faithfulness of the recipient. And the fact that ordinances are subject to a change of mind or heart on the part of the recipient. For example, a couple married in the temple may choose to divorce. And we also acknowledge the agency of the deceased, for whom we perform proxy ordinances, to reject those ordinances. And these difficulties and questions are all rooted in this top-down model of authority.

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But Mormonism also articulates a bottom-up model of authority that I argue is more fundamental than the top-down model. This model of authority implies that authority is granted to act on behalf of someone in a lower position of authority. Doctrine in Covenants 29:36 describes God’s power as honor. The devil rebelled against me, saying, Give me thine honor, which is my power. And Doctrine in Covenants 121 more explicitly describes the connection between honor and power. No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood. only by persuasion, by long suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and love unfeigned, by kindness and pure knowledge Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly. Then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God, and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distill upon thy soul as the dews from heaven. The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, thy sceptre an unchanging sceptre of righteousness and truth, and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee for ever and ever.

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In other words, treating people with love, gentleness, meekness, etc. , results in them trusting you enough to grant you honor, power, and authority to represent them and act on their behalf. As recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus articulated this another way: Neither be ye called masters, for one is your master, even Christ, but. He that is greatest among you shall be your servant, and whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased, and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

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These and other scriptures undermine the traditional top-down model of authority. God doesn’t exercise authority to impose a top-down will on others. Rather, God loves us so deeply that we choose to cede authority to act on our behalf to God, trusting that it will be to our benefit. This Mormon model that I propose posits this bottom-up view of authority. Divine authority is always granted, never imposed.

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Now this doesn’t mean that an authority figure can’t impose consequences on the governed or ever govern in a top-down manner. In fact, the concept of authority without something like this is vacuous. It really isn’t authority at all. The point of the consent of the governed is precisely to grant this kind of authority. This authority figure acts as a proxy for the governed. But one key point is that this authority can be withdrawn. In Doctrine and Covenants 1. 21, Amen to the priesthood. In the Mormon model, even God can theoretically cease to be God.

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The very concept of authority is based in community, and one key function of authority is to act as proxy for one-to-one interactions In large groups. Small groups can theoretically function without explicit models of authority because issues of scale do not substantially complicate processes for reaching agreement. However, as a community grows, mechanisms for reaching agreement become increasingly cumbersome, and authority plays a role in facilitating agreement.

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Let me give a couple examples from computer science. Every computer on the internet has a numerical address, but numbers are hard for people to remember. And to complicate matters further, multiple computers might be used for a single purpose, like serving up a website. When you type transfigurism. org in your browser, your computer goes to get the addresses of transfigurism. org from a set of computers called Name authorities. These are computers that are authorized through a set of distributed authorities to associate that particular name with its addresses.

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Similarly, if you want to buy something over the Internet, you really want to be sure that you’re dealing with the appropriate party and not someone pretending to be, say, Amazon. com. And this works through the use of encryption using public keys and certificate authorities. So in order to prove its identity and make sure it’s not an attacker, you get a public key from the server. But you can’t store all of the keys from every website on earth yourself. The database would be too big, updates would be too frequent. And so to solve this, we have certificate authorities, which come when you install an operating system or a browser. And you can change those. You can decide not to trust this one and to add another one over here. The difficulty by creating your own is that you’re the only one who trusts it. So it’s not very useful for public websites. So there’s some Model of central authority that helps with these issues of scale of operations, security, and trust. And trusted certificates are a model of Propagating this and think about things like a temple recommend or a certificate to allow someone to ordain someone else or perform an ordinance in a religious context.

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This is also much how authority is intended to function in the scientific community. We can’t all be the foremost expert in every field, so we need to build mechanisms that enable trust-based authority.

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Now, this is all also keyed in on boundaries, which are essential for security. Imagine if we didn’t have cell walls, or if there was no boundary between our bodies and somebody else’s. Security would be a nightmare, but also for meaning and for identity. Second Nephi 2. It must needs be that there’s an opposition in all things. If not so, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness. neither holiness nor misery, good or bad all things would be a compound in one, and it would remain as dead, having neither life nor death, nor corruption nor incorruption happiness nor misery, sense or insensibility, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught, and there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. And while we can read this opposition in all things in terms of conflict, the elaboration here seems to me to emphasize contrast rather than conflict.

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Doctrine and Covenant, Section 93, describes conditions necessary for existence. All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself. as all intelligence also. Otherwise there is no existence. And note the inclusion of the sphere or the boundary. Existence and purpose and meaning all depend on boundary distinctions

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This is especially noticeable in scriptural accounts of creation. God separates light from darkness, waters above from waters below, dry land from seas, and so forth. And it is this separation and contrast that constitute creation, because in Mormonism there is no creation ex nihilo. Creation is differentiation and boundary distinction.

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Now, thinking about this in terms of computer science. There’s an Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology speaking about open distributed processing. It says openness means bridging enterprise boundaries and not abolishing them. Boundaries not only reflect organizational structures, but also define and delimit the scope of concepts, rules, and policies. And these can be technical or they can be social, they can be political or cultural.

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In Doctrine and Covenants 76, we have a description of this, and the vision of the degrees of glory gives clear indication that these various kingdoms that it describes are bounded communities. within which there is variety among individuals. As one star differs from another star in glory, even so differs one from another in glory in the telestral world.

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Returning to the Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology, the concept of authority helps in understanding the relationships at boundaries. Conventional, or think top-down, distributed systems are mostly characterized by monolithic or hierarchical approaches, where a single authority controls the systems. In open distributed processing systems, think the bottom-up model, a federated approach is necessary, which allows for multiple authorities that pursue a common goal and coordinate their actions across boundaries. This approach is mostly based on negotiations, agreements, and contracts, or think covenants in religious language, about the common objectives, the way to achieve these objectives, the actions allowed, and the delegation of authority to agents. Which execute such actions.

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So in the bottom-up model, authority is distributed. This is not merely a top-down delegation, but a truly shared authority. This is a model in which God really shares power. In this model all are invited to share in God’s power and become co participants in the governance of the kingdom. And this means that authority and ritual are inclusive. As well as exclusive. Boundaries are not static, and they should be negotiable. And we are all invited inside the boundary of the Godhead. that they all may be one, as Thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.

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And much of the foregoing has focused on the need for and the benefits of authority in a large community to provide security, identity, meaning and scale in working toward common goals. These all are reflections of the desires and needs of individual members of the community, not merely the whims of the top down authority.

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So what of ritual and its efficaciousness? The authority and rituals that are ultimately effective are, quite simply, those that are ultimately effective. We recognize that the mere performance of a ritual is no guarantee of its effectiveness. So, how does my proposed model address this issue? It does so by recognizing that authority and ritual are aspirational toward a desired future and a desired future community.

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Whatever present effects ritual may have, and there are very important present effects of ritual, ritual is future-oriented. It is a projection of our desires into the future. Our participation in Mormon ritual is an outward sign of our commitment to an as yet unrealized vision of the future, an act of faith. The fact of the matter is, we or other participants may choose to no longer exercise our faith in the envisioned future that led us to participate in the ritual. And what I believe this means is that we should understand claims about the efficacy of authorized ritual to mean that in some desired future, the acts we participate in now will be acknowledged as valid. In the eyes of the future divine community. To put it another way, our claim is that eventually the community of gods will say, Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter.

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This model provides a basis for pluralistic understanding of efficacious ritual and recognized authority. It serves better than the top-down metal to accommodate these. We have examples of this in Mormon Scripture. For example, while Isaac obtained the covenant from his father Abraham. Moses received the priesthood from his father in law Jethro, a high priest of Midian, who was a descendant of Ishmael, not Isaac. Alma the Elder authoritatively baptized in the wilderness, independent of the authority of Mosiah the seer. Jesus established a second independent set of apostles among the Book of Mormon peoples. Mormons also recognized the validity of ancient Jewish ritual that was not only superficially but substantively different from the rituals we engage in today. And these examples are difficult to reconcile with the top-down model. Why would God be the author of so many different sources of authority and different forms of ritual?

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In the bottom-up model, we see peoples striving to cooperate with God to establish authority and ritual that will eventually lead to validation within the future divine community. The divine community can choose to acknowledge any authority and ritual that serve to fulfill its aims, and each can, in a non-contradictory way, properly claim to be authorized and efficacious.

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An aspirational model allows for, and even relies on, epistemic humility, the recognition that we don’t already know all the answers for certain. Without undermining the aspirational claims and acts of faith that these rituals and authority will eventually be efficacious and recognized by the divine community.

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It is worth noting that LDS rituals seek to bring about the very divine community they aspire to be valid for. The grand vision of Mormonism, as articulated in Doctrine and Covenants 128, is a welding link between the members of the family of God. For we without them cannot be made perfect, neither can they without us be made perfect. The divine community emerges from these welding links.

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I believe this model of an emergent divine community is also the best context in which to read the statement in Doctrine and Covenants one, verse thirty. About the only true and living church. Reading a bit wider in this section, we see that God has given power to servants to bring the church forth out of obscurity and out of darkness, the only true and living church. Bringing the church forth out of obscurity and darkness is its teleological emergence into the divine community. The divine aspiration is to use ritual and authority to create the future divine community that will recognize the authority and ritual that was efficacious to bring itself about. What better kind of prophecy than one that, when faithfully pursued, is self fulfilling?

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Thank you.