Knowing person-truth through covenant

The distinction between idea-truth and person-truth can help us understand the holy temple. To the modern mind, trained in the tradition of idea-truth, the concept of ‘sacred’ or ‘secret’ knowledge can feel strange, even ‘cultish.’ If truth is a set of public, verifiable facts about the world, why would it ever be hidden? Why wouldn’t we share it openly? The distinction between idea-truth and person-truth provides the answer. Idea-truth is like a public lecture; person-truth is like an intimate conversation. And just as in our human relationships, the deepest levels of intimacy are reserved for the highest levels of commitment.¶

Think of our most cherished human relationships. With a casual acquaintance, we share public information. With a trusted friend, we share our hopes and fears. With a spouse, we share a level of trust, vulnerability, and knowledge of each other that is exclusive to that covenant relationship. The deepest knowledge of another person is earned through commitment and faithfulness over time; it is not available on demand to the general public.¶

We can apply this same principle to our relationship with God. The temple is a place where, having made the highest commitments, we are invited into a deeper level of communion. The ordinances are a formal entry into this more intimate relationship, where God can reveal Himself to us more fully. In fact, we must pledge ourselves to God before we can know Him. Within that context, God can reveal Himself to us most fully. This is the logic of the holy temple, including the endowment ceremony. The rituals and ordinances performed in the temple are deeply rooted in Israelite tradition and custom.¶

The temple symbolizes our search for truth

When traveling through the wilderness, the Israelites constructed a tabernacle where they could perform the rituals of the Law of Moses. This tabernacle had an exterior courtyard that surrounded a tent in the middle. In the courtyard was the altar on which priests offered animal sacrifices. The tent in the middle was divided into two rooms by a veil. The first division was called the “Holy Place,” and contained an altar on which
the priests burnt sweet-smelling incense. On the other side of the dividing veil, in the “Holy of Holies” or “the Holiest Place,” the Ark of the Covenant was placed, which represented the throne of God.¹¶

Our modern temples have a similar architecture and follow the same symbolic pattern. When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, they walked and talked with God. When they transgressed God’s commandment, they left God’s presence. After we witness (and ritually reenact) the Creation and the Fall, we find ourselves on a symbolic journey back to God’s presence, through stages: we leave the telestial world, enter into the terrestrial world, and then pass through the veil and into the celestial room of the temple. These three stages (telestial, terrestrial, and celestial) roughly correspond to the courtyard, Holy Place, and Holy of Holies in the ancient tabernacle.¶

This symbolic journey represents our reconciliation with God. We move from a life of sin to a life of righteous living (cleansed and redeemed by Christ). From there we enter into God’s presence, where can converse with Him, learn from Him, and be with Him in the most personal and direct way possible. We are taught through symbols how to penetrate the veil as we approach His presence. The temple also teaches us about Christ, the plan of salvation, and the nature and possibilities of our relationship with God. While each of these teachings can be found in the scriptures, the temple adds further clarity.¶

However, all of this knowledge is guarded by sacred oaths and covenants. The layout and furnishings of the modern temple (and the Israelite tabernacle) reinforce this. The celestial room (or the Holy of Holies) represents full God’s presence. To get there, we must pass altars (or places of promise-making). We cannot make that sacred approach without first pledging ourselves (and everything that we have) to God. Not only are these teachings protected by sacred covenants, we can only understand them through a lifetime of covenant keeping and of reenacting that symbolic approach to God’s throne. The temple is therefore a school—we are being taught, step by step, the language, laws, and character of the celestial world so that we will feel at home when we finally arrive in God’s presence.¶

Sacred truth in scripture

In the scriptures, prophets occasionally experienced what we ritualize in the temple. Peter, James, John, Nephi, the brother of Jared, Moses, and others climbed mountains and spoke with God (or His messengers) face to face. They learned directly from the Truth Himself, so to speak. The temple is often referred to as the “mountain of the Lord,” symbolizing these mountains of ancient times. These prophets then returned from the mountain with new understanding, a divine commission, and more knowledge than they could rightfully share with others. At least some of the knowledge they received from God in those encounters was not for public scrutiny. Alma the Younger, for example, taught the people of Ammonihah:¶

For example, Peter, James, and John were led by Christ into a mountaintop, where they were visited in vision by Moses and Elias. Towards the end of the vision, the voice of God announced that Jesus was His Divine Son. We read, “And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead” (John 17:9). Similarly, Nephi was led to the top of a very high mountain, where He saw a vision of the Christ’s life, birth, death, and resurrection, as well as the events of the last days. Nephi wrote, “And behold, I, Nephi, am forbidden that I should write the remainder of the things which I saw and heard; wherefore the things which I have written sufficeth me; and I have written but a small part of the things which I saw” (1 Nephi 14:28).¶

In the book of Ether, we read that the brother of Jared climbed up the mount Shelem to ask God for help finding light for the barges he had built for his people. Christ showed Himself to the brother of Jared and talked with him face to face. Christ said: “Behold, thou shalt not suffer these things which ye have seen and heard to go forth unto the world, until the time cometh that I shall glorify my name in the flesh; wherefore, ye shall treasure up the things which ye have seen and heard, and show it to no man” (Ether 3:21). The brother of Jared saw many other great things but was commanded to “seal them up” (Ether 4:5) because “they shall not go forth unto the Gentiles until the day that they shall repent of their iniquity, and become clean before the Lord” (Ether 4:6).¶

Arriving at the destination

Each search for truth has a culminating finale, a destination. This differs depending on whether truth is a set of ideas or a person. Consider a well-known folk story about a Greek mathematician named Archimedes.² Archimedes discovered how to determine the volume of a complex object by immersing it in water and measuring displacement. As the story goes, he was sitting in the bath tub at the time of his discovery. He immediately jumped out and ran naked down the street, shouting ecstatically to all who could hear, “Eureka! Eureka!” which means, “I’ve found it! I’ve found it!” Archimedes was elated because he could grasp with his mind an abstract, mathematical law. His discovery was considered the product of his observation and ingenuity. He immediately shared his discovery with the world.¶

In the person view of truth, our pilgrimage back to God’s presence takes place not just in our mind but rather in every aspect of our lives. We become remade as people through this journey. The culmination of this journey is ritualized in the endowment ceremony in our passage through the veil and into the celestial room. This ceremony foreshadows the most intimate and sacred communion with truth possible: the kind of personal encounter experienced by Moses as he spoke face-to-face with God on Mount Sinai, or the similar experiences of Abraham, Enoch, Moroni, and others. The culminating moment is not an ecstatic, Archimedean “Eureka!”—a cry of intellectual discovery. Instead, it is a quiet, awe-filled “Hineni” (the Hebrew for “Here am I”), a response of personal presence and readiness, as we commune with our Father and are someday invited to dwell in His presence.¶

This experience is not a discovery but rather a revelation. It is not a product of our own ingenuity but a gift made possible through the grace of Christ. The peace and joy of such an experience transforms the whole person, and is not intended for public scrutiny (except, at times, at the behest of God). It is certainly not the sort of experience one runs naked down the street shouting about, as Archimedes did. This intimate way of knowing God can be as personal and private as our interactions with our spouse in the bedroom—protected and guarded by similar sacred obligations and duties, ritually undertaken by covenant. In a world that increasingly values loud, public debate and data-driven knowledge, the temple stands as a quiet sanctuary dedicated to a different way of knowing—a personal, relational, and revealed knowledge of God.¶

Reframing Our Questions: Chapter 6

The first question assumes that all truth should be verified in light of public scrutiny, whereas the second question assumes that our relationship with God can involve levels of familiarity and intimacy that are guarded by covenants. This kind of relational intimacy with God is not the sort of thing that one can have with abstract ideas. For this reason, the idea of “sacred truth,” guarded by covenants, does not make as much sense from a conventional point of view, but makes perfect sense if we understand truth as a Person with whom we form a relationship.¶

Footnotes

1. See, for example, Edward J. Brandt, “The Tabernacle of Ancient Israel,” Ensign, November, 1973, 36-38, or Sidney B. Sperry, “Ancient Temples and Their Functions,” Ensign, January, 1972, 67-72. ↩

2. Alan Hirshfeld, Eureka Man: The Life and Legacy of Archimedes (New York, NY: Walker & Company, 2009). ↩