Re-reading the Plan of Salvation, part 3: Order of Events
We know about the spirit world, the three degrees of glory, etc. But how confident are we in how they string together?
This is the third and final installment of this series on the plan of salvation. You might want to start with Part 1: The Diagram and Part 2: Who Gets Saved? This one’s kind of long… hang in there.
When Gideon Mantell first discovered bones of the Iguanodon in England in 1820, he tried to fit them together to be a skeleton of a giant crocodile. When he also found herbivorous teeth, which a crocodile wouldn’t have, he tried arranging the bones to be two separate animals. When he finally got the arrangement of the bones mostly correct—as far as we know, anyway—there were still mistakes. Early on, he drew a single horn on the Iguanodon’s nose; later discoveries would show that the horn actually belonged on the creature’s thumb.1
When it comes to the plan of salvation, we have dinosaur bones to work with. There are surprisingly few scriptural references describing the different elements of the plan. And even with those pieces at our disposal, we don’t have scriptures describing how the different parts of the plan—such as the spirit world, the pre-mortal existence, the atonement of Jesus Christ, the three degrees of glory—all fit together.
Given how universally we teach the plan of salvation in the Church today, it’s curious that no scriptural prophet ever outlined the plan in its entirety.
The way you assemble the plan of salvation depends on what story you are telling. The way we teach the plan of salvation today tells the story of being judged and rewarded based on our works in this life. In short, the better your works, the better glory you’ll receive at the end. While there is merit to this narrative, and this is the prevailing teaching in LDS circles, it leaves out the crucial points of the atonement of Jesus Christ, the infinite grace of God, and our Heavenly Parents’ love for all their children.
When we read plan of salvation scriptures, we tend to do so with this preconceived notion of a works-based plan; when you have a pile of bones and assume they make a crocodile, you start to fit them together to make a crocodile. But when we read these scriptures (especially Doctrine & Covenants 76) with fresh eyes and an open mind, it becomes clear that we don’t actually know that much about the plan and how it works. Instead, we have a lot of ideas based on conjecture.
Consider what President Dallin H. Oaks has to say on the matter, quoting Brent L. Top:
What do we really know about conditions in the spirit world? I believe a BYU religion professor’s article on this subject had it right: “When we ask ourselves what we know about the spirit world from the standard works, the answer is ‘not as much as we often think.’”2
The parts of the plan of salvation of particular interest here are those that happen after this life; specifically, the spirit world and the degrees of glory3. Two concepts emerge, as possible variations from our current understanding of the plan: First, the idea that heaven and hell are not places, and second, the idea that the degrees of glory are not our final state.
Let’s dig in.
Heaven and hell are not places
The post-mortal dialogue, both in the Church and in other Christian faiths, tends to revolve around where you will go. You’ll go to heaven, go to hell, go to the celestial kingdom, go to spirit prison, etc. Our standard plan of salvation diagram is oriented around the idea of places; you go from one place to the next, it’s perhaps less the story of salvation and more the story of a road trip.
D&C 76, which introduces the three degrees of glory, talks about them as just that—states of glory, and not places. The word “glory” shows up 36 times in that section. While that term is used in different ways and contexts, it far outweighs the 6 times that the word “kingdom” is used, none of which refers to the celestial, terrestrial, or telestial.
The counterpoint to this idea is Joseph Smith’s description of the celestial kingdom in D&C 137, in which he describes the gate by which people enter, and the streets of the kingdom. However, it seems likely that these descriptions are metaphorical; he describes the gate to the celestial kingdom as being “like unto circling flames of fire,” and the streets as having “the appearance of being paved with gold.” This aligns with other descriptions of the perhaps undescribable that show up with some frequency in scripture.4
Instead, D&C 76 focuses on the people, not the places they are in. Verses 50-70 comprise the first description of celestial glory, but do so without describing a location. The phrase “these are they” or “they are they” is used 12 times in those verses, always describing the people inheriting this glory:
They are they who are priests and kings [and priestesses and queens], who have received of his fulness, and of his glory; (v. 56, emphasis added)
These are they whose names are written in heaven, where God and Christ are the judge of all. (v. 68, emphasis added)
These are they whose bodies are celestial, whose glory is that of the sun, even the glory of God, the highest of all, whose glory the sun of the firmament is written of as being typical. (v. 70, emphasis added)
The only mention of it being a place is in one of these statements: “These are they who are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly place, the holiest of all” (v. 66).
The descriptions of the terrestrial and telestial glory are similar, as they describe the recipients of those degrees of glory, rather than of any particular place. Outer darkness, or the “location” of the sons of perdition, is not mentioned in section 76.
Descriptions of the spirit world in scripture are strikingly similar. Alma resists the urge to talk about paradise as a place, but instead describes it as a state; while he briefly mentions the wicked being “cast out,” he quickly clarifies that this is also a state of being (Alma 40:12-14, emphasis added):
12 And then shall it come to pass, that the spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow.
13 And then shall it come to pass, that the spirits of the wicked… these shall be cast out into outer darkness; there shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and this because of their own iniquity, being led captive by the will of the devil.
14 Now this is the state of the souls of the wicked, yea, in darkness, and a state of awful, fearful looking for the fiery indignation of the wrath of God upon them; thus they remain in this state, as well as the righteous in paradise, until the time of their resurrection.
Finally, in relating his vision of the spirit world, President Joseph F. Smith does not distinguish between spirit prison and paradise as places, but rather as gatherings of people (from D&C 138, emphasis added):
12 And there were gathered together in one place an innumerable company of the spirits of the just…
16 They were assembled awaiting the advent of the Son of God into the spirit world…
Understanding that our inheritances after this life may not actually be physical places changes the way we understand the plan of salvation. If a family member inherits a different degree than us, we won’t by definition be separated from them. It dissolves the image of Heavenly Parents who want to divide Their children into those they want to be with, and those they don’t.
The fact that we read the spirit world and degrees of glory today as places reinforces the common meritocratic narrative: the good go to one place, and the bad to another.
The degrees of glory are not our final state
We know that after Jesus Christ was crucified, He organized the faithful spirits in the spirit world to teach those who had not received the gospel. Consider these verses that describe this happening—again, this is in the spirit world:
1 Peter 4:6 For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.
D&C 138:36-37 Thus was it made known that our Redeemer spent his time during his sojourn in the world of spirits, instructing and preparing the faithful spirits of the prophets who had testified of him in the flesh; That they might carry the message of redemption unto all the dead…
D&C 76:88 And also [they] receive it of the administering of angels who are appointed to minister for them, or who are appointed to be ministering spirits for them; for they shall be heirs of salvation.
Here’s the rub, though—that last verse isn’t describing the spirit world (go back up, read it again)! Instead, it describes something very similar for those receiving telestial glory. While it’s not something that comes up often, Joseph Smith describes a process where those receiving terrestrial and telestial glory are taught, through the ministration of others:
86 These are they who receive not of his fulness in the eternal world, but of the Holy Spirit through the ministration of the terrestrial;
87 And the terrestrial through the ministration of the celestial.
The way we’ve been taught about this ministration—that the righteous spirits in paradise teach the gospel to those in the spirit world, who did not have a chance to receive the gospel—makes logical sense. In order to be judged, everyone needs to hear (and presumably accept) the gospel.
But what’s the purpose of ministering to those receiving a lesser degree of glory? One option is that people are given a chance to advance to a greater degree of glory, which would meaningfully change our understanding of the Final Judgment and the eternities. Another option, somewhat unexpectedly, is that maybe we’ve been picturing the plan of salvation wrong.
Here’s the story we have, in a couple of different places:
At some point, people are divided, one group being those who accepted the gospel in this life, and the other being those who didn’t.
The Savior organized the faithful to teach the others.
This gives those who didn’t receive the gospel the opportunity to receive it, and receive a glorious eternal reward.
Alma talks about this happening “between death and resurrection.”5 D&C 76 appears to talk about this happening in both the terrestrial and telestial kingdoms.6 So which is it?
Well, what if these were the same thing? What if spirit paradise is the same thing as celestial glory, and spirit prison is the other two degrees of glory? Possibly supporting this idea is D&C 76:72-73, which indicates that the terrestrial glory is given to those who did not receive the gospel on earth, either before or after being taught it post-mortality. This verse works better if the terrestrial glory is a place of learning, because otherwise it disqualifies people from the celestial kingdom if they didn’t receive the gospel on earth, which doesn’t sound right:
72 Behold, these are they who died without law;
73 And also they who are the spirits of men kept in prison, whom the Son visited, and preached the gospel unto them, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh;
If you take a universalist view of the plan of salvation, and believe our Heavenly Parents want to have us all back, this actually works out pretty well. It helps if we stop thinking about the words “Celestial,” “Terrestrial,” and “Telestial,” and even “Paradise” and “Spirit Prison” as names of places—and instead think of them as descriptions.
Instead of this portion of the plan of salvation looking like this:
We end up with it looking more like this, with a focus on learning and ultimate reconciliation with God:
Is there still an Outer Darkness in this scenario? That would align with Alma’s description of a heaven and hell after the resurrection. But ultimately, I side with President Dallin H. Oaks, who describes outer darkness and Sons of Perdition as “exceptions too limited to consider here.”
Why does all of this even matter? Why take a different look at something we’ve taught so many times? It matters because if the eternities are meritocratic based on our works on Earth, then the atonement of Jesus Christ is a nice add-on but ultimately lacks the power to save us all. It means the the toxic perfectionism was right all along, and it means our all-loving Heavenly Parents will be satisfied if only some of us return to Their presence. This alternate reading of the order of events in the plan of salvation illustrates a greater dependence on grace than we normally talk about in the Church.
There are lots of unanswered questions if we read the plan of salvation this way. But there are lots of unanswered questions the normal way, too. We forget that even these scriptural authors didn’t know everything, and their descriptions don’t always agree. That’s probably why they didn’t spell it all out—it’s possible that none of them had a complete enough picture to do so.
I don’t know if any of this is right, and I don’t have any authority to dispense doctrine anyway. If it doesn’t help you, feel free to keep on walking. But if thinking about the plan of salvation this way helps you feel the love and grace of God in your life, it can’t be all bad.
Here are the notable scriptural pieces we have to work with, on these topics:
D&C 76 is the clearest and most comprehensive description we have of the three degrees of glory, but it doesn’t appear to talk about the spirit world.
D&C 138 is the clearest and most comprehensive description we have of the spirit world, but it doesn’t appear to talk about the three degrees of glory.
Alma 40:7-14 provides another good description of the spirit world.
Luke 23:43, John 5:25, 1 Peter 3:18-20, and 1 Peter 4:6 all make passing mentions that can be read as being about the spirit world.
D&C 88:20-39 gives lengthy, though seemingly repetitive, commentary on the three degrees of glory.
1 Corinthians 15:40-41 mentions the names of the three degrees of glory.
That’s it.
The book of Revelation, for sure, is filled with this kind of imagery. Consider, among many other verses, Revelation 5:6, which describes the Savior as having seven eyes and seven wings; ultimately this is not a physical description, but symbols of His knowledge and power.