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CES Letters Introduction

Updated: May 15


Introduction to the CES Letters

A supplementary podcast to this letter can be found here.



To the Seeker of Truth,



In 1969, the year before I was born, BYU Studies published a special issue focused on Joseph Smith's first vision. 


It was in response to a potent argument published in 1967 by the Presbyterian minister Wesley Walters. For more on that see here. 


The Spring 1969 issue of BYU Studies included articles by Professors James Allen and Milton Backman, the founding fathers of scholarly first vision studies. 


It included Dean Jessee's edition of two accounts of the vision (1832 and 1835) that had only recently been rediscovered in the Church's archives.


In 1970, the April issue of the Improvement Era (church magazine) featured James Allen's sophisticated but accessible article, "Eight Contemporary Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision: What Do Learn From Them."


The article made a decade of recent research accessible to lay Latter-day Saints without dumbing it down. It's a remarkable piece of historical scholarship.


In 1971, Professor Backman published the first scholarly book on the first vision. It included all of the known vision accounts and rich context for them, including Backman's research (in response to Reverend Walters) about the unusual religious activity in Joseph's region. 


At the turn of the twenty-first century, Latter-day Saint leaders and educators took for granted that Joseph Smith's first vision would automatically be transmitted to you. 


Church curriculum hardly touched the vision at all. It was taught in Sunday School only once every four years—probably less regularly to children and teens. High school students who chose to attend seminary could hear it once in four years. College-aged students at the Church’s universities or Institutes of Religion, though required to take sixteen credits of religion, commonly did so without covering Joseph's first vision.


The manual published in 1989 for Religion 341, the elective early Church history course, silently incorporated elements from all four primary accounts of Joseph's vision. Nothing but the endnotes told students there was more than one account. The manual said nothing about when the accounts were written, why, or how they compared. The manual emphasized that the vision really occurred, God and Christ were separate, Satan opposed Joseph Smith, sectarians persecuted him, and saints could trust that “all else of which he spoke is true.”


It was more catechism than history. There was no description of sources, nor of the complexity historians had discovered. That complexity included these facts: early saints generally didn't know about the vision; the earliest known account of it was written twelve years after Joseph said it occurred; the multiple accounts didn't match precisely; and Joseph was not unique in claiming a heavenly vision after praying in the woods of western New York. 


Jeremy Runnells was a life-long Latter-day Saint and “fully believing” returned missionary in early 2012 when he read an online article reporting that saints were leaving the Church due to historical problems. Shocked, Jeremy began what he described as “a year of intense research and an absolute rabid obsession with Joseph Smith.” The result was an April 2013 letter to a director in the Church Educational System (CES), an associate of Jeremy's grandfather, who they both hoped could answer his questions.


Jeremy's letter described a dozen major concerns including the first vision. He listed facts and interpretations by historians, none of which were new but all of which were new to him. “I did not know there are multiple first vision accounts,” Jeremy wrote. “I did not know of their contradictions or that the Church members did not know about a first vision until 12-22 years after it supposedly happened. I was unaware of these omissions in the mission field.”


Before sending his letter to the CES director, Jeremy shared it online, where it began to circulate widely. This is the (in)famous CES letter.


Jeremy's story breaks my heart. I wish he could have studied the first vision with Professor Backman, as I got to do, since he literally wrote the book on the first vision accounts. Since then I have written books and articles on Joseph's first vision. One of them was published by Oxford University Press, indicating that it achieved the highest standards of academic scholarship. I say that hoping you'll be impressed but much more for you to have context in which to consider these questions: 



What's the difference between Jeremy's story and mine? Does he know the facts of the first vision better than I do? Am I too biased in favor of the vision to see things as they really are? Jeremy said he spent a year doing intense research on Joseph Smith. I've spent three decades doing intense research on Joseph Smith. 


Jeremy and I encountered first vision complexity at about the same time in our lives—the stage many of you are at now. Why did Jeremy get stuck in complexity? Why didn't I? How did I get through complexity to the simplicity on the other side of it?  


I'm sure I don't have all the answers to these questions, but I know that my successful trip through complexity owes much to the way Professor Backman shepherded me. Indeed, I was mentored by the finest first vision scholars that have ever lived. They are either far along in years now or have passed away. I consider it a sacred trust to share with you what they shared with me.  


Jeremy explains that “no response ever came” from that CES Director. Consider this, the CES Letters, a long awaited response. Throughout these first few letters and podcasts, we will attempt to guide you through the questions and concerns surrounding the first vision. In subsequent responses we will cover each of his additional concerns.


There are four (currently known) primary accounts of Joseph's first vision—written



by Joseph and/or a scribe during his lifetime. There is so much at stake in them. If what they say happened actually happened, the implications for you and I are immense. If nothing like what they say happened ever happened, the implications for you and I are immense. We must investigate, interrogate, and internalize the accounts of Joseph's first vision. And we must receive revelation to tell us whether what they say happened actually happened. I encourage you to get on and stay on that quest until you know for yourself. Get on that quest and stay on it until you can answer what do you know about Joseph Smith's first vision? with thorough, accurate understanding of all available sources of knowledge. Get on that quest and stay on it until you can answer how do you know it? with a conviction grounded as deeply in historical sources as it is in personal revelation from God directly to you. 


Try to identify and suspend any assumptions you have about how well you already know the first vision. Start fresh. Pray in faith for the power to hear what Joseph meant to say, and to know whether he told the truth. 


The place to begin is the earliest historical source, or what is now called Joseph's History, circa Summer 1832, meaning that it was composed, as best we can tell, sometime in the summer or fall of 1832. Turn next to the November 8, 1835 journal entry in Joseph Smith's journal. Now read the source with which you are likely the most familiar, Joseph's Manuscript History Book A-1, excerpted as Joseph Smith-History in the Pearl of Great Price. Now discover Joseph's 1842 letter to newspaper editor John Wentworth.


There are also 5 (known) secondary accounts of Joseph's vision that were recorded by others during his lifetime, including:


Orson Pratt, A[n] Interesting Account, pp. 3–5. This is the earliest published account of Joseph Smith’s first vision of Deity. It was written by Orson Pratt of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and published as a pamphlet in Scotland in 1840.


Orson Hyde, Ein Ruf aus der Wüste [A cry out of the wilderness], pp. 14–16 (original German) (modern English translation). Another member of the Quorum of the Twelve, Orson Hyde, published this account of Joseph Smith’s earliest visions in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1842. He wrote the text in English, relying heavily on Pratt’s A[n] Interesting Account, and translated it into German for publication.


Levi Richards, Journal, 11 June 1843. Following an 11 June 1843 public church meeting at which Joseph Smith spoke of his earliest vision, Levi Richards included an account of it in his diary.


In August 1843, David Nye White, editor of the Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette, interviewed Joseph Smith in his home as part of a two-day stop in Nauvoo, Illinois. His news article included an account of Joseph Smith’s first vision: “The Prairies, Joe Smith, the Temple, the Mormons, &c.,” Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette, 15 Sept. 1843, [3]. 


Alexander Neibaur, Journal, 24 May 1844. On 24 May 1844, German immigrant and church member Alexander Neibaur visited Joseph Smith in his home and heard him relate the circumstances of his earliest visionary experience.


Those are the primary and secondary sources of knowledge about Joseph Smith's first vision. On one hand they document Joseph's vision well. On the other hand they reveal little about the vision, which Joseph said defied description. 


You can (and seekers should) come to know everything every one of those accounts says and still not know whether Joseph saw a vision in the woods of western New York. Knowing Joseph Smith's testimony comes from historical research. Knowing that his testimony is true requires revelation. So I encourage you to ask of God in faith (James 1:5-6). 


You and I can only come to know for sure whether Joseph testified truly by following his successful way of seeking. It doesn't work if we are either spiritually or intellectually lazy or motivated by anything other than a sincere desire to know the truth. The restored way of seeking is not, "just pray about it." It is reading, remembering, pondering, and repenting, all with a sincere heart, faith in Jesus Christ, and real intent. Those who do that work come to know by the power of the Holy Ghost. They know what they know. They know how they know. And like Joseph they say, "I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it" (Joseph Smith-History 1:25). 


Sincerely,

Steven C. Harper



Resources:

Links Cited:


Additional Articles and Resources:


Supplementary Podcast for this Letter can be found here.



Biography:

Dr. Steven C. Harper is a professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University and the editor-in-chief of BYU Studies Quarterly. He holds a PhD in early American history from Lehigh University, where he was a Lawrence Henry Gipson Fellow. Dr. Harper's academic journey includes teaching at BYU campuses in Hawaii and Utah, and serving as a volume editor for The Joseph Smith Papers and managing historian and a general editor of Saints: The Story of The Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter-days. He has authored several significant works including Promised Land (2006), a study of colonial Pennsylvania’s dispossession of the Lenape, and First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins (2019), which received the Smith-Petit Best Book Award. He has published dozens of articles and is currently working on a study of The Doctrine and Covenants to be published in the Guides to Sacred Texts series by Oxford University Press.


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