The Philosophy of a Future State

CES Letter Core Question

Did Joseph Smith steal ideas found in Abraham chapter 3 from a novel by Thomas Dick?

Click to Read the Original CES Letter Claim

The Philosophy of a Future State

There is a book published in 1829 by Thomas Dick entitled The Philosophy of a Future State. Joseph Smith owned a copy of the book and Oliver Cowdery quoted some lengthy excerpts from the book in the December 1836 Messenger and Advocate.

Klaus Hansen, an LDS scholar, stated:

The progressive aspect of Joseph’s theology, as well as its cosmology, while in a general way compatible with antebellum thought, bears some remarkable resemblances to Thomas Dick’s ‘Philosophy of a Future State’.

Hansen continues:

Some very striking parallels to Smith’s theology suggest that the similarities between the two may be more than coincidental. Dick’s lengthy book, an ambitious treatise on astronomy and metaphysics, proposed the idea that matter is eternal and indestructible and rejected the notion of a creation ex nihilo. Much of the book dealt with the infinity of the universe, made up of innumerable stars spread out over immeasurable distances. Dick speculated that many of these stars were peopled by ‘various orders of intelligences’ and that these intelligences were ‘progressive beings’ in various stages of evolution toward perfection. In the Book of Abraham, part of which consists of a treatise on astronomy and cosmology, eternal beings of various orders and stages of development likewise populate numerous stars. They, too, are called ‘intelligences.’ Dick speculated that ‘the systems of the universe revolve around a common centre...the throne of God.’ In the Book of Abraham, one star named Kolob ‘was nearest unto the throne of God.’ Other stars, in ever diminishing order, were placed in increasing distances from this center.

The Latter-day Saint scientist and author Erich Robert Paul offered an important discussion on Joseph Smith's cosmology in comparison with other 19th century cosmologies, and specifically discussed the Book of Abraham and Thomas Dick, in his 1992 book published by University of Illinois Press.

Paul writes:

Although [Fawn Brodie] implies that Joseph Smith derived his notion of Kolob from Dick's idea of the throne of God, Dick views God as omnipresent, universal, and ethereal, which would preclude Joseph Smith's idea of a universal center upon which God, as being, dwells. Joseph Smith, and many others, shared Dick's and the eighteenth-century philosophes' view of the perfectibility of man. But Joseph Smith argued for the ultimate divine perfectibility of humans, a concept Dick rejected. On such crucial doctrines of eternal progression, creation ex nihilo, and the eternal nature of matter, there is also wide divergence of belief. Moreover, Dick espoused a dualistic metaphysics, while Joseph Smith became a strict monist.

Theologically, Dick claimed that humans are utterly contingent upon God, while Joseph Smith eventually argued that humans are necessary. On the nature of evil, sin, and the fall, the two also held polar views. After an exhaustive analysis of the external evidence and doctrinal issues dealing with God, man, salvation, and other theological and metaphysical views, at least one contemporary writer, Edward T. Jones, concluded there are so few similarities in their thinking that Brodie's assertion must be rejected.

Paul concludes that it is "unlikely that Joseph Smith benefited significantly from Dick's ideas," and that the Prophet otherwise "likely did not use available literary materials" such as Dick "as primary sources for his own version of pluralism." Paul concludes:

The idea that Joseph Smith may have borrowed from cultural sources cannot, of course, be totally discounted–––or confirmed. Yet asserting indigenous sources requires at the very least an explanation for both his deviations from the available sources and his integration of his pluralistic ideas with his scriptural writings. In the pluralist concept Joseph Smith seems to have deviated significantly from the mainstream of those writing on the subject, whether evangelical or deistic.

The author of The CES Letter fails to do just this, and as such his conclusions should only be accepted with great skepticism. As Paul explains:

The mere availability of pluralist views is in itself not an adequate argument for Joseph Smith's coherent system of beliefs. Ideas by themselves do not form an integrated and consistent system without the dimensions of a broader conceptual structure.

If Joseph Smith was slavishly cribbing from Dick, as the author of The CES Letter asserts, then he must explain the Prophet's departure from Dick. He must also account for the entirety of the cosmological vision in the Book of Abraham, and not merely cherry-pick the parts thereof that seem to support his argument.