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Spirits: patterns eternally in tension between multiplicity and unity. Algorithmic art by Samuel Monnier

Spirits are eternal

It is commonly taught among Latter-day Saints today that our spirits were ‘born’ in some sense to a divine father and mother in an unembodied premortal existence. So we tend to emphasize that divine inheritance in our teaching: we ARE children of heavenly parents. I AM a child of God.

While this is one means of imbuing all of humanity with a sense of divine worth, this teaching may actually make it harder for us to understand where we stand in relation to God. Let’s look at some scriptures and some statements from Joseph Smith, and see if a different view emerges.

18 ..if there be two spirits, and one shall be more intelligent than the other, yet these two spirits, notwithstanding one is more intelligent than the other, have no beginning; they existed before, they shall have no end, they shall exist after, for they are gnolaum, or eternal.

Here Joseph Smith teaches, via his translation of the Book of Abraham, that all spirits are eternal. Not “spirit”, and not “intelligence” as some component part of a spirit, but the spirit beings themselves.

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