Someone ought to do an in-depth write-up on the Mormon view of the soul and how it developed over time in Church history.

Note: I haven’t checked out the external links in these two posts yet.

Agreed that the KFD doesn’t get too specific on the topic.

Again, remarkably well-documented speech. I think it’s rather ridiculous how much we try to tiptoe around the speech and imply Joseph didn’t really mean what I think he pretty clearly did mean.

Why are we so uncomfortable with this speech?

I do agree that it is fun though!

The Clayton quotes in no way neccesitate the view that the Father lived as a Savior, or lived a sinless life, for the reasons already given. And the Laub quote stands alone, from what you’ve given me, as asserting that the Father ‘redeem(ed) a world’ – might this not have been a mishearing based on other things that were said? For instance, he may have been overstating the signficance of the ‘laying down life and taking it again’ as I think you are doing. Is that kind of language repeated in another source? I don’t see the Laub quote as more explicitly stating what Clayton reported, but as stating something else entirely. I don’t know – I’ll certainly grant that you are better informed on the text than me.

However,

I’m not trying to assert that your interpretaion is wrong or invalid, only not required. And is more suspect due to many years of understanding contrary to it, from more or less ‘authorized’ sources’, which you want to dismiss from the discussion, centering only on the text. If it is a definitive and canonized text, _maybe_ you can do that. Considering what it is, a confluence of sources based on a single hearing, I think you have to take very seriously the interpretations of those who knew Jospeh personally or were present that the time, or who would have been involved in all the discussion of the sermon that must have taken place. I’d love to hear antyhing from any of those people, however much later the discussion occured.

I’m sure, in any case, getting the answer right is a matter of revelation, not interpretation – and I’m certainly not claiming any of that. (I will aim for that, and once I’ve got it, I’ll be silent as the tomb.) I’m only defending my own prefered reading. And, actually, I’m kind of having fun, as I don’t usually engage in this kind of thing

~

Thomas, here are some of the sources:

These are incomprehensible to some but are the first principle of the gospel-to know that we may converse with [God] as one man with another & that he was once as one of us and was on a planet as Jesus was in the flesh