Re-reading the Plan of Salvation, part 1: The Diagram
Re-reading the Plan of Salvation, part 1: The Diagram
We all know the standard diagram. But while it's helpful, the diagram itself is not doctrine.
There’s a good chance we’ve all been taught the plan of salvation from the same diagram. It’s a series of circles representing pre-mortality, mortality, and post-mortality, culminating in three more circles representing the Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial Kingdoms. Whether you grew up in the Church and were taught this by Primary teachers, or joined the Church more recently and were taught this by missionaries, the result is the same. We have a common and shared understanding of the plan of salvation, thanks to this simple chart.
The diagram doesn’t show up frequently in Church-published materials, but features prominently in materials published by other entities. Here are some of many, many examples1:
There is ample scriptural support for the individual stages of the diagram, much of it in restoration scriptures. We have a compelling scriptural narrative about our pre-mortal life in D&C 138 and Abraham 3, we learn about the spirit world (including both paradise and spirit prison) in Alma 40, and get introduced to the three degrees of glory in D&C 76. Other details, such as passing through the veil (maybe Moses 7?) and of course the final judgment (Alma 12, 2 Nephi 9, Revelation 20, etc.) show up various places in the scriptures as well.
It’s not at all clear from these scriptures, however, that these theological events happen in this order or have these official names. Somewhere along the line, someone has done the work to assemble a variety of accounts—each describing only a part of the plan—together into a cohesive whole. They were likely inspired in doing so, and the result is something we’ve been taught as eternal truth and even put our faith in.
Given how important the plan of salvation is to our modern theology, it’s curious that we don’t see it spelled out even once in the scriptures, from start to end. It’s hard to think of something so universally taught in the modern church, and yet ancient prophets (and as recently as Joseph F. Smith in D&C 138) never described the plan in its entirety. And because of that, it’s possible that the diagram could be drawn quite differently, based on the same scriptural readings. But that is an exercise for another day.
A study of the plan of salvation highlights that the diagram is overtly focused on places. It’s a roadtrip, starting in God’s presence in the pre-mortal life. You leave there to go to Earth, then leave there and go to the spirit world. After judgment, your assigned degree of glory is again described as a place—a kingdom. But this isn’t at all how Church writings tend to describe the plan of salvation. Consider this definition, from True to the Faith:
The plan of salvation is the fulness of the gospel. It includes the Creation, the Fall, the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and all the laws, ordinances, and doctrines of the gospel.
Or this one, from Gospel Topics:
At a council with all of His children, Heavenly Father presented a plan, known as the “plan of salvation” or “the great plan of happiness” (Alma 42:5, 8). The plan includes all the laws and ordinances of the gospel necessary to gain eternal life, “the greatest of all the gifts of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 6:13)… Essential to the plan is the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
Noticeably missing from our standard diagrams are the theological concepts that actually make up the plan of salvation, such as the creation, the fall, and (especially) the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
Tyler Griffin, a BYU professor who you can also find on various YouTube channels, proposes an alternative diagram; not suggesting that the standard diagram is incorrect, but instead providing a different “camera angle” (his words) on the most important sequence of events in any of our lives. This diagram adds to the dialogue; the literal centrality of the atonement is refreshing and needed.
There’s a detailed article that explains this thinking, or a series of YouTube videos that gets the job done for shorter attention spans. The part that sticks out the most for me is these two questions:
What is the purpose of Heavenly Father’s plan? Did God give us his plan to help us get somewhere or to help us become something?
I can appreciate the value that the standard plan of salvation diagram has brought to the body of the Church. It has been taught for decades, at least. I taught it on my mission ~20 years ago. My dad taught it on his mission ~50 years ago, and it’s older than that.
But strangely, the “circles” diagram doesn’t commonly show up in official Church publications. When I taught it on my mission, it was with a set of cards that weren’t published by the Church but that I’d bought at a Church-centric bookstore. Adding to the intrigue, similar plan of salvation diagrams showed up in pre-production versions of the Preach My Gospel manual that was released in 2004—but were removed before the final printed version.
Variations of the diagram do show up in Church publications, but most commonly for Primary children2:
This similar-but-not-identical diagram shows up in a modern (-ish? It has a 2008 publication date, but is still sold in the Church’s Online Store) missionary pamphlet titled “The Plan of Salvation,”3 and is perhaps the most adult-targeted version of the diagram published by the Church:
There’s no smoking gun here; children tend to be visual learners, so it makes sense that their materials get more pictures. But the omission of this diagram from adult curricula in the Church suggests that while it’s a helpful visual aid, it may not be more than that. It doesn’t feel like a stretch to say that the diagram itself is not doctrine.
Establishing that point—that the diagram is not doctrine—opens up the conversation. Does the plan of salvation really work this way? Do we have everything in the right order? And perhaps most importantly, what does the plan of salvation, viewed through this lens, teach us about the nature of our Heavenly Parents and Jesus Christ, and our relationship to Them?
