Joseph Smith Jr.
A restoration in upstate New York — pre-mortal souls, eternal matter, exalted human destiny
Smith's "First Vision" of 1820 (in which, by his account, God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him in a grove near Palmyra, New York) and the translation of "The Book of Mormon" (published 1830) inaugurated what became the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The substantive theology developed across the next fourteen years through revelations later collected as "Doctrine and Covenants" (1835 onward) and "The Pearl of Great Price" (1851, posthumous compilation): the pre-mortal existence of human spirits, the eternity and literal corporeality of matter, the embodied nature of God the Father, the plurality of worlds, eternal marriage and family relationships, and the LDS doctrine of theosis (humans may progress to become like God). Smith was killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, in 1844; the church reorganised under Brigham Young and migrated to the Utah Territory in 1847.
Key works
- ★ The Book of Mormon (1830)
- Doctrine and Covenants (1835 onward, revelations and instructions)
- The Pearl of Great Price (1851, posthumous compilation)
- King Follett Discourse (April 1844, the late doctrinal sermon)
- Journals and letters collected in the Joseph Smith Papers Project (2008 onward)
Declared Influences
LDS / Latter-day Saint Theology 75%
Lutheranism 10%
Hermeticism 10%
Realism 5%
The school is his. The distinctive Latter-day Saint doctrines — pre-mortal existence, eternal matter, the corporeal Heavenly Parents, continuing revelation, eternal marriage, the three degrees of glory, and theosis — all originate or stabilise in his teaching.
"As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be." (King Follett Discourse, attributed via Lorenzo Snow as the couplet summary)
The framework groups confessional Protestant Christianity here. Smith's religious formation was the revivalist Protestantism of upstate New York ("the Burned-Over District"), and the substantive moral inheritance — Scripture, the gospel of Christ, the resurrection — is recognisably Protestant even where the metaphysical superstructure breaks decisively with classical theism.
"If a man does not believe in the resurrection of the dead, he is not a Christian." (Discourse, 1839)
Recent scholarship (Brooke, Bushman, Quinn) has traced significant hermetic, magical, and Masonic influences in early Mormonism — the embodied God who is and was a man, the temple ritual, the cosmology of plural worlds and eternal progression. The framework includes this as a measure of structural rather than confessional kinship.
"This earth will be rolled back into the presence of God, and crowned with celestial glory." (Doctrine and Covenants 88:25)
A working realism about the materiality of spirit, the bodily nature of God, and the literal historicity of the Book of Mormon's narrative — positions that distinguish LDS theology from the apophatic and allegorical tendencies of mainstream Christian theology.
"All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes." (Doctrine and Covenants 131:7)
Internal Tensions
Joseph Smith's practice of plural marriage (the public 1843 revelation, but earlier private practice), the violence at Nauvoo and Carthage, and the ongoing scholarly debate over the historicity and translation processes of the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham are the long-running historical-theological tensions of his legacy. The institutional Church has revised practice (plural marriage discontinued 1890, priesthood opened to all worthy men 1978) while maintaining the substantive theological structure Smith established.
I. Time
Infinite — pre-mortal existence of spirits and eternal progression after mortality together extend time without bound at both ends of the embodied life.
Attributes
II. Space
Infinite — plurality of worlds. "Worlds without number have I created." (Moses 1:33, Pearl of Great Price)
Attributes
III. Matter
Infinite, substantival, conserved, three-dimensional, local. The distinctive LDS claim: matter is eternal and uncreated, not made ex nihilo. Spirit is itself a refined kind of matter.
Attributes
IV. Observer
A single embodied person with multiple time-instances (pre-mortal, mortal, post-mortal). Active in eternal moral progression. Personal metaphysical agency: Heavenly Father (and, in LDS theology, Heavenly Mother), both embodied beings to whom the saints may relate as children to parents.
Attributes
V. Energy
Infinite, substantival, conserved.
Attributes
VI. Information
Conserved at both scales. The Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants are durable revealed records; personal identity persists from pre-mortal through mortal through eternal life.
Attributes
Classified works
Works in the atlas that Joseph Smith Jr. authored or that draw on this persona's writings, with full attribute fingerprints of their own.
Computed school proximity
The persona's attribute fingerprint scored against all 202 schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated influences above.
Philosophical neighbors
Other personas whose attribute fingerprint sits closest to Joseph Smith Jr.'s — intellectual neighbors across traditions and eras.
How Joseph Smith Jr. resolves each dilemma
54 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 12 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 3 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
6 mainstream positions
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.
29 mainstream positions
Information · 4 dilemmas, all mainstream
Films Referencing This Persona (1)
Either directly referenced in the film, or reading the film through one of this persona's top schools.
Experiments Engaging This Persona's Schools
Surface via influence-schools that respond to the experiment. Each entry shows the school through which the connection runs.