A Dissonant Faith: The Reconciliation of Observable Ethics and Spiritual Intuition in Latter-day Saint Theology
“There is no such thing as immaterial matter . All spirit is matter , but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it, but when our bodies are purified, we shall see that it is all matter” (Doctrine and Covenants 131:7-8). The above quote implies something about the nature of reality that has been discussed by physicists and philosophers alike. What Joseph Smith claimed in this brief statement - which will act as a catalyst for my thoughts as opposed to an authoritative justification of them - is that the physical and metaphysical worlds are inseparably connected. Furthermore, we can assume that spiritual matter works in tandem with and builds upon physical matter. When discerned by “purer” eyes, there exists no opposition or separation between them as “all spirit is matter.” One LDS scholar, Stephen E. Robinson, explained it this way: Latter-day Saints reject the Platonic spirit-matter dichotomy, which holds that spirit and matter are ...