Joseph Smith called religious creeds an “abomination.” He protested against self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy, rejoicing instead in the freedom to believe without constraints while recognizing the inherent doctrinal tension of ongoing revelation. However, the Articles of Faith have sometimes been mislabeled as a creed, leading some to wonder why the Prophet published the 13 verses eventually canonized in the Pearl of Great Price. In this interview, Terryl Givens explains that while creed-like summaries of belief are nearly impossible to avoid, the Articles of Faith omit key Latter-day Saint doctrines and were likely not seen by Joseph as a creed.
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The Articles of Faith: Foundations and Familiar Ground
What are the Articles of Faith, and how did they come to be written?
Creeds have been at the core of Christian self-definition and self-understanding since the earliest centuries of Christianity, a phenomenon some would trace to Peter’s confession that Jesus was indeed the Messiah—a pronouncement that remains the most foundational element of Christian understanding.
Christian sects proliferated during the Second Great Awakening (early to mid-nineteenth century), and creeds were useful in clarifying boundaries between what any group considered essential tenets and heretical digressions.
Oliver Cowdery wrote and published a list of seven “We believe” propositions in 1834 in the Messenger and Advocate.
In subsequent years, the document was edited and enlarged by Joseph Young, Parley Pratt, Orson Pratt, and, in 1842, by Joseph Smith.
The Prophet’s version was published in the Chicago Democrat and is known to all today as the Articles of Faith.
What did Joseph Smith mean when he called the Christian creeds an “abomination”?
I believe Joseph’s language reflects two categories of objection.
1. Slanders against God’s character
The content of the creeds based on the Westminster Confession—and adopted by most Protestants in one form or another—explicitly maintained a number of propositions that were slanders against God’s character.
2. Specific creedal content
- The creedal God “predestinated” many souls to hell.
- He considered all humanity not just altered by but “guilty” of Adam’s sin, and deserving punishment accordingly.
- This God did not just allow, but “ordained” all things that come to pass (in other words, all historical events from slavery to the Holocaust).
- This God was declared incapable of being moved by anything that transpires outside himself (“without passions”), and so on.
Why do you say that Joseph Smith’s concern wasn’t just doctrinal, but structural—that creeds “set up stakes”?
Joseph Smith was clearly hostile to creeds in principle and in content. He repeatedly affirmed his desire to be “untrammeled” by creeds.
He protested against the self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy who set bounds to what people could believe, including Latter-day Saints.
Joseph knew that continuing revelation was in obvious tension with any attempt to explicitly or implicitly delimit revealed truth to a set of propositions.
Articles of Faith: Creation and Character
Why did Joseph Smith write the Articles of Faith, given his earlier critiques of creeds?
Rightly or wrongly, Joseph probably did not see the Articles of Faith as creedal in nature, since they contained an explicit rejection of the fixity and finality that creeds implied (“will yet reveal many things…”).
Joseph discovered, as did many of his like-minded contemporaries, that avoiding creedal-like summations of belief is virtually impossible if one has a message one wants to declare to the world.
What was the function of the Articles of Faith?
The Articles of Faith seem to me designed to do two things: to (1) preach something new while (2) affirming something familiar, in ways both bold and cautious.
Many articles were assurances to a dubious public that the Saints were indeed Christians.
For example, the first Article of Faith seemingly affirmed the Trinity, simply avoiding the unique aspects of Mormon Trinitarianism that quite clearly denied Nicene foundations (God and Christ as “of the same substance,” for instance).
Declaring the Book of Mormon to be the Word of God, on the other hand, made no attempt to soften the blow against “sola scriptura,” or the sufficiency of the Bible.
Do you think Joseph Smith would have supported the canonization of the Articles of Faith?
I’d like to think that Joseph would have been fine with their canonization in the Pearl of Great Price—with caveats.
As Elder Bruce McConkie suggested years ago, continuing revelation and changing cultural circumstances might suggest revisiting the ideal statement of Restoration faith from time to time.
Do the Articles of Faith function as a creed?
The Christian creeds emerged, in large measure, as definitive resolutions of contested doctrines. They were the inevitable step in self-definition and differentiation from others. In this sense, they established boundary markers between what the council declared to be orthodox and what it implicitly declared to be heresy.
Reformation creeds emerged in the same contexts: self-definition and differentiation. Heresy trials in Protestantism and Catholicism alike often (not always) took deviance from creedal positions to be grounds for heresy (hence the burning of a non-Trinitarian like Servetus in 1553).
The Articles of Faith don’t function that way because they are not a complete enough exposition of our faith to encompass most of the essential tenets or to fully distinguish our faith from others.
Human premortality, theosis and eternal progression, an embodied God, eternal marriage and eternal families—those are pretty fundamental and distinctive teachings to leave out of a creed, and they aren’t found in the Articles of Faith.
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Legacy, Institutions, and Modern Implications
You’ve described Mormonism as a restoration rather than a reformation. How do the Articles of Faith illustrate that distinction?
What we call orthodox (lower case “c”) Christianity is defined by the fourth and fifth-century creeds that focused on the nature of the Trinity (Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all “consubstantial”) and of Christ in particular (fully divine and fully human, unmixed in one person).
Joseph Smith did not—as almost all Christians—take those creeds as a point of departure.
Rather, he posited teachings and principles he believed preceded the great councils.
Even more emphatically, Joseph explicitly and implicitly rejected Reformation developments as increasing rather than diminishing distance from an ancient gospel.
It’s not that Reformation didn’t go far enough—it went in the wrong direction.
It’s not that Reformation didn’t go far enough—Reformation went in the wrong direction by any measure we associate with Joseph Smith.
The magisterial reformers denied an ordained priesthood, sacerdotalism, sacramentalism, work of any kind (even prayer) for the dead, free will, and more.
At the same time, we have given restoration more shades of meaning than Joseph (or scripture) had in mind. Certainly, some aspects of what Joseph “restored” were principles that the creeds had excised from Western Christianity (such as a God of body, parts, and passions, and a much more robust conception of moral agency and theosis).
But Joseph (like the Book of Mormon) emphasized the restoration of a covenant people more than an organization.
Does the modern Church define orthodoxy?
“Orthodoxy” is a very vexed term in the Latter-day Saint culture. It is certainly my view that official orthodoxy constrains individual belief much less than cultural norms (and Elders Quorum members) suggest.
It seems highly significant to me that the only orthodoxy test that exists in the Church is the temple recommend interview. Christ’s divinity and atoning work, the Church President’s possession of priesthood keys, a testimony of the Restoration, and a few other doctrinal questions are posed.
Yet we have no official theology of Atonement, no definition of that Restoration, no required views about gold plates or polygamy in heaven, and a hundred other topics.
“It feels so good not to be trammeled,” said Joseph.
Final Reflections on Joseph Smith and the Articles of Faith
What one thing do you most want people to understand about the 13 Articles of Faith?
The ways in which the Articles of Faith are not a creed strike me as more important than the ways in which they are.
The Restoration was infused from the beginning with a spirit of curiosity, boundlessness, possibilities, and searching.
“Creeds” and “creedalism” have too many connotations that work against those energies to be accurately applied to Joseph Smith’s brief sketch of the church’s teachings found in the 13 Articles of Faith.
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About the Scholar
Terryl Givens is a senior research fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. He has written several highly-respected books about Joseph Smith and early Latter-day Saint scripture like the Articles of Faith, including All Things New: Rethinking Sin, Salvation, and Everything in Between (Faith Matters, 2020), The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism’s Most Controversial Scripture (Oxford University Press, 2019), and Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought (Oxford University Press, 2014).
Further Reading
People interested in Joseph Smith and creeds also read these From the Desk articles:
- How Did Ancient Christians Understand the Divine Nature of God?
- Why Did Eerdmans Publish a Book on Latter-day Saint Theology?
- How Has Temple Worship Evolved Since Joseph Smith’s Time?
- Does Atonement Theory Matter to Latter-day Saints?
- Who Was the Early Mormon Jesus?
- What Is the 1832 Account of the First Vision?
Joseph Smith, Creeds, and the Articles of Faith
Read what top scholars and publishers say about Joseph Smith, creeds, and the Articles of Faith:
- Creeds and Communing: Joseph Smith’s Views on Other Religions (Joseph Smith Papers)
- The Abounding Church: Interrogating the “Fullness” of the Gospel (Wayfare)
- The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism’s Most Controversial Scripture (Oxford University Press)
- Mormons and Creedal Christians: Common Ground? (First Things)
- “Lightning Out of Heaven”: Joseph Smith and the Forging of Community (BYU Speeches)
One reply on “Why Did Joseph Smith Reject Creeds—Then Write the Articles of Faith?”
Thanks to you and Terryl Givens for this interview. You would both enjoy BYU Philosophy Professor Emeritus Daniel Graham’s short, cogent paper on the Creed of the Restored Church: D&C 20:17-36. Even the language style mimics the ancient formula. Note to Terryl’s point on rejection of Calvinism particularly, verses 32 and 33 are zingers to differentiate ‘our true creed’ from the faulty one. Of course, the very social foundation of uncreated intelligences in conversation over interpretations of the common good (‘what ought we do together next’) assures no one will ever have the first or last word in developing functional creeds–rules of order–that help fulfill the measure of our creative purposes. Onward . . . in untrammeled loving contestation over where joyful edification takes us next!