Posted by:
summer
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Date: April 07, 2023 05:55PM
I was reading a Russell Nelson quote over on r/exmo --
"Love songs perpetuate a false hope that love is all you need if you want to be together forever." [General Conference, April 2019.]
Having been raised in mainstream Christianity, I would say that for the mainstream Christians, "love is all you need" pretty much sums it up. After you die, you will be reunited with your loved ones, both family and friends (and many Christians believe informally that pets are included as well.) Love is the tie that binds.
The first person to mention Celestial Marriage was not Joseph Smith, but instead, Emanual Swedenborg. From Wiki --
"A concept of celestial marriage was described by Emanuel Swedenborg as early as 1749. Swedenborg's Latin term conjugium coeleste was translated as "celestial marriage" by John Clowes in 1782. Two more recent translators have preferred the term "heavenly marriage."[15][16] In all his authoritative writing,[17] Swedenborg only mentions the term celestial marriage twice.[18][19] Swedenborg defined the celestial marriage or heavenly marriage as the marriage of love with wisdom or of goodness with truth. He wrote, "Truth and good joined together is what is called the celestial marriage, which constitutes heaven itself with a person."[20] Swedenborg does not use "celestial marriage" to refer to the marriage of husband and wife, although he says that the marriage of husband and wife has its origin in the heavenly or celestial marriage of goodness and truth.[21]
According to Swedenborg, true married love forms an eternal bond, an actual joining together of minds, so that married partners who truly love each other are not separated by death but continue to be married to eternity.[22] He writes that this love is "celestial, spiritual, holy pure and clean above every love which exists from the Lord with angels of heaven and people in the church."[23] None can come into this love, he says, but those who are monogamous and "who go to the Lord and love the truths of the church and do the good things it teaches."[24]
Craig Miller has investigated the possibility that Swedenborg influenced Joseph Smith, as there are similarities between some of their teachings. He concludes that Smith may have learned something about Swedenborg through third parties, but was unlikely to have read much if any of Swedenborg's works for himself. Among Smith's connections was Sarah M. Cleveland, who was married to a Swedenborgian at the time of her plural marriage to Smith in 1842.[25][self-published source?] It was shortly afterwards, in July 1843, that Smith recorded receiving a revelation regarding eternal marriage in Doctrine and Covenants 132.[4]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_marriageI'm not one to believe in coincidence. Joseph, the great borrower, surely lifted the concept of Celestial Marriage from Swedenborg. However, I would say that Swedenborg's conceptions about Celestial Marriage were firmly rooted in mainstream Christan thought. You would be reunited with your loved ones.
The entire justification for Mormon's somewhat unique belief in this matter is based on, "Joseph said so." But as an outsider reading D&C 132, what leaps out at me is *not* being married to your loved one forever. What stands out instead is Joseph's believe that men could become gods, and that church members could attain all blessings if they could avoid murdering one another. He mentions this several times, and seems consumed with members of his church avoiding the ultimate sin. Paranoid much?
And then there is the whole matter of whether or not one must be polygamously married to attain all blessings.