The Doctrine and Covenants reveals Jesus Christ through themes of glory, suffering, intimacy, and presence. A new book from Deseret Book portrays a Savior whose power comes through submission, whose bleeding body crosses porous boundaries, and whose nearness is both cosmic and personal. In this interview, Rosalynde Welch explains how writing Seven Visions: Images of Christ in the Doctrine and Covenants with co-author Adam Miller helped her recognize an invitation to see Christ—here and now.
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How is Christ’s power manifest as glory in the Doctrine and Covenants?
I take up glory as a theological idea in my letter on D&C 19, where, very memorably, the reader is shown Christ’s suffering in extremis in Gethsemane, where he trembles and bleeds and ultimately submits:
Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men.
D&C 19:19
I wanted to highlight the paradox that Christ’s glory and power arise from his submission and humility.
In the Doctrine and Covenants, we often see Christ portrayed in elevated and glorified terms. At the beginning of Section 19, he introduces himself as “I am Alpha and Omega, Christ the Lord; yea, even I am he, the beginning and the end, the Redeemer of the world” (D&C 19:1).
But we misunderstand the particular quality of his divine glory if we forget that it arises from his humility. The very next verse of section 19 reminds us that Christ’s power to subdue all things is a consequence of his submitting his own will to the Father: he “accomplished and finished the will of him whose I am, even the Father, concerning me” (D&C 19:2).
My interest in theological glory centers on that paradox. (Though I don’t address it in this book, a similar theology of glory operates in the gospel of John.)
What does glory signify in the scriptures?
For most of my life, I haven’t paid much attention to the language of glory in the scriptures. I read it as a content-free term that worked primarily to nudge scriptural language into an elevated register. It was only when I turned more seriously to theology that I discovered that the word has a very specific meaning.
The Greek doxa is usually translated as glory, and it refers to the brilliant light that radiates from God’s presence—in other words, glory is the visible manifestation of God’s presence.
When I started to read glory as “the sign that God is present in this place,” suddenly it was no longer a filler word. It took on actual meaning in the passages where I encountered it.
In the scriptures, glory almost always accompanies visions of God in which the divine presence is made visible, typically in dazzling light.
For instance, the children of Israel, covenanting with God at Sinai, declare that “the Lord our God hath shewed us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire” (Deuteronomy 5:24). For Christians, Jesus Christ is the revelation of God, and so Paul, for instance, goes temporarily blind from the dazzlement of the light that streams from Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 22:11).
How is glory mirrored between heaven and earth?
Inasmuch as earth and humanity are created and sustained by God, all matter bears some residue of God’s glory—some of his divine light—in the very fact of our creatureliness. When we praise and glorify God in song and prayer, it’s as if we are reflecting his own light back to him, like the moon casting the sun’s light back toward the solar face. That’s why declarations of praise to God are traditionally called doxologies: they return glory from creature to creator.
There’s an absolutely dazzling passage in 2 Corinthians where Paul plays on this idea:
God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:6.
God, Paul is saying, manifests in us his creative presence precisely in the fact of our createdness: his light shines in the hearts of his creatures. And how does it show up? As “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
What does “shrink” mean in D&C 19?
I was fascinated by the syntactical ambiguity of the word “shrink” in Doctrine and Covenants 19:18.
The phrase “would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink” can be read either as expressing a wish to avoid both drinking and shrinking, or as completing a list of what the suffering caused: trembling, bleeding, suffering, and ultimately shrinking from the pain, despite wishing only to avoid drinking the bitter cup.
What if “shrinking” were a positive rather than a negative?
We typically read it in the latter way, but I wanted to explore the possibility of the former.
What could it mean if “shrinking” were not a negative (a shrinking away from the enormous suffering of the atonement) but a positive—part of the work of drinking the bitter cup?
I explored the possibility that “shrink” here could mean the shrinking of Christ’s own will and his ultimate submission to the will of the Father. I think both meanings are available in the language of the scripture, and each is instructive in its own way.
What moves you about the imagery of the bleeding body of Christ?
I was put on this train of thought by the description of the city of Zion in Doctrine and Covenants 45, in which there is no need for defensive fortification because the warmongers voluntarily stay away, put off by the glory (there’s that word again) of Christ’s presence in the city (see D&C 45:67). Zion is an unfortified place of refuge, a castle with unlocked doors.
This defenseless breachability reminded me of the bleeding body of Christ as we encounter it in sections 19 and 45.
Jesus tells his Father, “Behold the blood of thy Son which was shed” (D&C 45:4). He describes the sufferings that caused him “to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore” (D&C 19:18).
I’m moved by the porousness of Christ’s flesh in these scenes, the free passage of blood across the boundary of his body. It’s a porousness that leaves him vulnerable to loss and injury, yet underscores his love and trust.
What does it mean in D&C 76 when it says Christ is “in the bosom of the Father”?
The phrase “in the bosom of the Father” is a kind of leitmotif in D&C 76, appearing three times over the course of the vision (D&C 76:13, 25, 39). The image of Christ in the Father’s bosom echoes, of course, the opening of the Gospel of John, where “the only begotten Son” is pictured in the same way, “in the bosom of the Father” (John 1:18).
The root of the biblical word for bosom refers to “the upper part of the chest where a garment naturally folded to form a ‘pocket’…, the position synonymous with intimacy.” A vision of Christ “in the bosom of the Father” shows the Son in the closest physical contact with the Father—sitting in his lap or leaning into his side.
I drew on my own experiences cradling my newborn to my bosom.
The intertextual echoes in D&C 76 (also known as “The Vision”) suggest the intimacy and unity of the Father and Son in the premortal realm. I loved that image and found its small-scale, quiet intimacy to be a breath of fresh air in a vision that, notwithstanding its expansive soteriology, can seem remote and off-putting in its very grandeur.
I drew instead on my own experiences as a mother cradling my newborn to my bosom as a way to imagine the oneness with the Father and the Son that we hope for in salvation.
The message of The Vision is this: to triumph, Christ doesn’t defeat; he saves.
How does God’s throne compare with the image of Christ being in the bosom of the Father?
Christ beside the throne of God is a kind of counterpart image to Jesus in the bosom of the Father all throughout The Vision: the throne is grand and high, while the bosom is close and intimate. In Seven Visions, I used the contrast between these two seats of Christ to meditate on two different visions of God’s power.
The throne is the seat of a king who rules supremely, with supreme excellence, supreme wisdom, and supreme strength. The defining feature of a throne is its height, and in the scriptures (as in real life), height communicates power and preeminence to those below. The throne sets God and his Christ above creation. In the language of Doctrine and Covenants 76, the Godhead is “the highest of all,” secure in its title as “the Most High” (D&C 76:70, 112).
When exercised from the throne and viewed from below, divine power looks to Joseph and Sidney like “glory,” “power,” “might,” and “dominion” (D&C 76:91).
But when exercised from the bosom of the Father and viewed from the position of, say, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon in Kirtland, Ohio, on February 16, 1832, then Christ’s means of triumphantly delivering up the kingdom to his Father looks less like sovereign power and more like encircling arms.
How is the bosom of the Father essential to each stage of the plan of salvation?
While the prologue to the gospel of John uses the “bosom of the Father” in the context of Christ as the premortal Word, I was struck that Restoration scripture is full of images of divine embrace—not just for Christ, but for all humanity; and not just in the premortal realm, but at every stage of existence.
Death, too, is an embrace in God’s bosom. Alma taught that “the spirits of all men, as soon as they are departed from this mortal body… are taken home to that God who gave them life” (Alma 40:11). In fact, death as divine embrace is central to the temple liturgy. We rehearse our deaths each time the Lord opens his arms and clasps us to his bosom in the temple.
What does D&C 88 teach about seeking Christ?
The sobering message of Doctrine and Covenants 88 is that Christ has already come to us, but we’ve failed to recognize him. We’ve seen him but not perceived him. We’ve slept through our theophany: “Nevertheless, he who came unto his own was not comprehended” (88:48).
Again, drawing on the prologue to the Gospel of John, Christ affirms that “the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not” (88:49). We see the glorious light but don’t comprehend that it is God present with us.
Someday we will look back and perceive what it is we saw, but by then it may be too late:
Nevertheless, the day shall come when you shall … know that ye have seen me” (D&C 88:49–50).
Doctrine and Covenants 88:49–50
For me, one of the key insights of Doctrine and Covenants 88 is the constant temptation to suppress our recognition of God in the true light, the light of Christ that is the life of the world.
How does D&C 88 say we can enjoy the presence of God?
Honestly, in every way! That’s genuinely the plain sense of the revelation: Christ is present with us now. He has already come.
Section 88 reads to me like a turning point in Joseph Smith’s prophetic ministry: the dawning understanding that his people didn’t need to wait for the Second Coming, didn’t need to wait until Zion was built and prospering, to see Christ and enjoy the presence of God. They could build a house for God now and meet him there.
It’s worth emphasizing the central revelation of this text: “Any man who hath seen any or the least of these [sun, moon, and stars] hath seen God moving in his majesty and power.” In case we missed it, D&C 88 immediately reiterates, “I say unto you, he hath seen him” (D&C 88:47–48).
How could the text be more emphatic? We are already in the divine presence.
Where does Christ fit into the “sociality” mentioned in D&C 130?
I had one of those “duh” moments when I was studying to write my letter on Doctrine and Covenants 130. I’ve quoted D&C 130:2 many times to make the point that our eternal relationships will be of the same kind, and embedded in the same sacred network, as our sealed earthly relationships:
And that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.
D&C 130:2.
This is the “families can be together forever” teaching, and I treasure and believe it.
Christ is at the center of that circle of sociality.
But all these years, I think I’ve missed the most important, very obvious, point of that verse: Christ is at the center of that circle of sociality both here and there.
In other words, “That same sociality [including myself, my associates, and the Savior] which exists among us here will exist among us there.” This means that the quality of relationship that I am willing to share with Christ in this life, here and now—my “sociality” with Christ in the present—is essentially the same quality that will define my eternal life in his presence.
Whatever intensity or fullness is added by the coupling of eternal glory, it doesn’t radically change the fundamental basis of the relationship. That tells me I better get awfully close to Christ now, in this life.
What do you see as the purpose of scriptural canonization?
For Protestants, the status of canon imparts dogmatic authority on a text: it is now normative for determining church teaching and practice. But canonization can’t function the same way for Latter-day Saints because scripture does not exercise first-order normative authority over Church doctrine and practice for us—the prophet does, through continuing revelation.
So, that frees scripture from under the burden of normativity to function more freely.
I see canonization as setting apart particular revelatory texts for at least two purposes:
First, to mark the extent of the religious tradition. A Mormon is someone who accepts that the Book of Mormon is canon.
Second, to set apart a certain group of texts as a sacred realm in which to seek Spirit-aided revelatory experiences. If Moses sought God in the tent of meeting, we seek God in the text of meeting. (This is not my formulation, but Sandra D. Schneiders’.)
In that sense, the purpose of canonization is something like the dedicatory prayer for a temple: to set apart a space as the sacred place of encounter with God.
What have you learned from your deep reading of Joseph Smith’s visions?
The most meaningful takeaway for me has been what it means to dwell in and with Christ—and of his dwelling in us—right here and now in the physical world.
I now understand revelation as the presence of Christ shot through time and carried forward by an ongoing chain of texts of prophecy and fulfillment. After all the study, insights, and understanding, I’ve learned that the crucial thing is to come unto Christ.
Writing these letters in Seven Visions (and reading Adam Miller’s letters to me) nourished my desire to know Christ’s face and find his presence. It assured me that there is no bar to my beginning here and now.
Did You Enjoy This?
About the Scholar
Rosalynde F. Welch is the author of Seven Visions: Images of Christ in the Doctrine and Covenants. She is also Associate Director and a Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. Her research focuses on Latter-day Saint scripture, theology, and literature. She holds a PhD in early modern English literature from the University of California, San Diego, and a BA in English from Brigham Young University.
Further Reading
- What Did Joseph Smith Teach About Christ?
- Are There “I AM” Statements in the Book of Mormon?
- Adam Miller: The Christ Child
- Does Atonement Theology Matter to Latter-day Saints?
- Maxwell Institute: Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants
Maxwell Institute Seven Visions Resources
- Seven Visions: Images of Christ in the Doctrine and Covenants (Deseret Book)
- Adam Miller & Rosalynde Welch: How to Have a Conversation with God (Faith Matters)
- A Review of Seven Visions: Images of Christ in the Doctrine and Covenants (Times & Seasons)
- Seeing God in Our Lives with Rosalynde Welch and Adam Miller (LDS Living)
- Watch and Learn: A Book Review of Seven Visions by Adam Miller and Rosalynde Welch (Wayfare)
