What is Considered LDS Doctrine

What is Considered LDS Doctrine

by Wer62 (Ed)

Often times when confronted with those who oppose the LDS faith system people will quote the Journal of Discourses in order to prove a point not understanding what the Journal of Discourses represents or who published it.

So what constitutes genuine Mormon Doctrine? What is the LDS equiveaient of "nihil obstat" and "imprimatur"? What do Latter Day Saints Believe? Can something be said to be "Mormon Doctrine" if any Latter-day Saint anywhere believes it? If your LDS neighbor believes that frogs cause warts, or the Earth is flat does that make those ideas LDS doctrine? If an LDS missionary believes the Earth is hallow and the lost ten tribes are hiding in it does his or her belief make it LDS doctrine? Of course not!

Virtually every religion has procedures for distinguishing the individual beliefs of its members from the official doctrines of the church, and so do the LDS. In fact among the Mormons the procedure is remarkably similar to that of many Protestant denominations. An example of the procedure can be taken from the records of the Fiftieth Semiannual General Conference of the LDS Church on October 10th 1880. President George Q cannon addressed the conference:

I hold in my hand the book of Doctrine and Covenants and also the book The Pearl of Great Price, which books contain revelations of God. In Kirkland, the Doctrine and Covenants in its original form, as first printed was submitted to the officers of the Church and the members of the Church to vote upon. As there have been additions made to it by the publishing of revelations which were not contained in the original edition, it has been deemed wise to submit these books with their contents to the conference, to see whether the conference will vote to accept the books and their contents as from God and binding upon us as a people

Subsequent Changes of content in the Standard Works of the Church have been presented similary to the membership in general. Conference to receive a sustaining vote. It is that sustaining vote, by the individual members or by their representatives, that makes the changes officially binding upon the membership as the doctrine of the Church.

When Wilford Woodruff , as President of the Church, committed the Latter-day Saints to discontinue the practice of plural marriage, his official declaration was submitted to the Sixtieth Semiannual General Conference of the Church on October 6th 1890, which was accepted unaimmously as authoritative and binding. It was that vote that made the document "official". Now this document has been added to the Doctrine and Covenants.

B.H. Roberts, a General Authority of the LDS Church summarizes the issue perhaps as well as anyone has:

The Church has confined the sources of doctrine by which it is willing to be bound before the world to the things that God has revealed, and which the Church has officially accepted, and those alone. These world include the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price; these have been repeatedly accepted and endorsed by the Church in general conference assembled, and that are the only sources of absolute apparel for our doctrine.

Anyone claiming that the LDS Church teaches doctrine or promotes doctrine outside of these sources no matter who spoke it is inaccurate.

Wer62 (Ed)