mormon temples mserv mozart cc iup edu mail server writes one thing i don t understand is why being sacred should make the temple rituals secret the so sacred it s secret explanation is a bit misleading while there is a profound reverence for the temple endowment there is no injunction against discussing the ceremony itself in public but since public discussion is often irreverent most mormons would rather keep silent than have a cherished practice maligned but there are certain elements of the ceremony which participants explicitly covenant not to reveal except in conjunction with the ceremony itself granted the gnostic christians had their secret rituals but these seem to have been taken entirely from pagan pre christian mystery religions there are other interpretations to christian history in this matter one must recall that most of what we know about the gnostics was written by their enemies eusebius claims that jesus imparted secret information to peter james and john after his resurrection and that those apostles transmitted that information to the rest of the twelve eusebius historia ecclesiastica ii irenaeus claims this information was passed on to the priests and bishops against heresies iv but eusebius disagrees he claims the secret ceremonies of the christian church perished with the apostles interestingly enough eusebius refers to the groups which we today call gnostics as promulgators of a false gnosis eusebius op cit iii his gripe was not that thay professed a gnosis but that they had the wrong one writings dealing with jesus post resurrection teachings emphasize secrecy not so much a concealment as a policy of not teaching certain things indiscriminately in one story simon magus opens a dialog with peter on the nature of god peter s response is you seem to me not to know what a father and a god is but i could tell you both whence souls are and when and how they were made but it is not permitted to me now to disclose these things to you clementine recognitions ii if any one theme underlies the recognitions it is the idea that certain doctrines are not to be idly taught but can be had after a certain level of spiritual maturity is reached now one can approach this and other such evidence in many ways i don t intend that everyone interpret christian history as i do but i believe that evidence exists favorably interpreted of course of early christian rites analogous to those practiced by mormons today neither new testament christianity nor biblical judaism made a secret of their practices but if judaism and christianity had such ceremonies would you expect to read about them in public documents one can search the book of mormon and other mormon scripture and find almost no information on temple worship yes you could establish that mormons worship in temples but you would probably be hard pressed to characterize that worship on that basis can we conclude that the bible explains all practices which might have taken place and that absence of such descriptions proves they did not exist mormon scholar dr hugh nibley offers us a list of scriptures from which i have taken a few it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven but to them it is not given matt all men cannot receive this saying save they to whom it is given matt i have yet many things to say unto you but ye cannot bear them now john the time cometh when i shall no more speak unto you in proverbs but i shall shew you plainly of the father john unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter cor many things i would not write with paper and ink but i come unto you and speak face to face jn nibley since cumorah pp again these can also be interpreted many different ways i believe they serve to show that not all doctrines which could have been taught were actually taught openly i have heard that joseph smith took the entire practice i e both the ritual and the secrecy surrounding the ritual from the freemasons anybody in the know have any authoritative information on whether or not this claim is true historically joseph smith had been adiministering the temple endowment ceremony for nearly a year before joining the freemasons there is diary evidence which supports a claim that the rite did not change after smith became a mason it can be argued that smith had ample exposure to masonic proceedings through the burlesque of his time and through his brother hyrum a mason though no specific connection has yet been established my conversations with masons with respect to temple rite transcriptions which have appeared on the net have led me to believe that the connection from masonry to mormonism is fairly tenuous as our moderator notes most of what was similar was removed in the recent revisions to the temple ceremony i believe that critics who charge that mormon rites were lifted from freemasonry do not have adequate knowledge of the rites in question jay windley university of utah salt lake city jwindley asylum cs utah edu
