Continuing Revelation

Almost every scriptural religion closed its canon at some point and then argued about how to interpret what was inside it. The Latter-day Saint movement did not. The ninth Article of Faith, published in 1842, states that God has revealed, does now reveal, and will yet reveal many great and important things, and the Doctrine and Covenants is the standing evidence: a book of scripture assembled from revelations received in the 1820s and 1830s, added to since, and formally open at the end.

The additions are few and they are documented. Two sections were canonised in 1976, one of them Joseph Smith's 1836 vision of the celestial kingdom and the other Joseph F. Smith's 1918 vision of the redemption of the dead. Official Declaration 1, the Manifesto of 1890 ending plural marriage, and Official Declaration 2, the 1978 revelation ending the priesthood and temple restriction, are both canonised. Each was presented to a general conference of the church and accepted by a sustaining vote before it took its place, and that procedure is itself part of the doctrine: revelation is announced, not imposed silently.

An open canon has a cost the movement lives with. If God can still speak, then a practice taught as doctrine in one generation can be ended in the next, and the church must then explain what the earlier teaching was. That question is live for plural marriage and for the priesthood restriction, and the answer the church gave in its 2013 Gospel Topics essay, that leaders had advanced theories which the church now disavows, is a direct consequence of holding the canon open.

Latter-day Saint teaching distributes revelation rather than concentrating it, and the organising principle is jurisdiction. The president of the church may receive revelation binding on the whole body. An apostle receives it for the assignment he holds, a stake president for his stake, a bishop for his ward, a Relief Society president for the women in her charge, a parent for a family, and any member for their own life and no one else's. A member is taught to seek personal revelation as a matter of course, and the Book of Mormon closes with an invitation, Moroni's promise, to ask God directly whether the book is true rather than to accept it on authority.

The boundary is what does the work. Personal revelation carries no weight outside the stewardship of the person who receives it, and a claim to revelation for the whole church from anyone other than its president is treated not as an error of judgment but as the marker of apostasy. Several of the movement's divisions turned on exactly that point: James Strang produced a letter of appointment and his own plates in 1844, and later fundamentalist groups have claimed authority conferred outside the presidency. The rule is the movement's answer to the problem every charismatic tradition faces, which is what happens when two people receive contradictory instructions.

In ordinary practice the doctrine shows up quietly. Decisions in a ward council are prayed over before they are taken, a calling is described as extended by inspiration rather than by selection, and a member who disagrees is told to take it to God rather than to a committee.