Temple Enrichment Part 1
Is The Plan of Salvation Endowment Interpretation Enough?
The temple is a Liahona or a compass that directs our path if we seek to understand its meaning and live by the teachings we receive.
What is Temple Enrichment?
This lesson is meant to enrich the understanding of the temple for those who have already been through the endowment. This is not a preparatory teaching before you enter the endowment. If you have not yet been endowed in the temple, I encourage you to progress towards that goal and come back after you have gone through the experience.
Symbolic Language and Meaning
The Temple teaches in symbolic language which requires effort to understand the meaning behind those symbols. Many possible interpretations exist and there are likely more than one true interpretation for each of the symbols of the endowment.
Which raises the question: How do we know what interpretations there are, and how do we know which interpretations are true? That is the purpose of this lesson - to work through that problem together. Let’s start with what we are generally taught in the church and by church leaders:
The church teaches that the temple is an instruction about the plan of salvation, but I will come right out and say that I don’t think that’s true, or at least it’s not very helpful. The plan of salvation as a model for the endowment can be helpful at first to get a sense of the material, and it is an easy way to start to frame your perspective, but as we’ll discuss later on - this interpretation is not the end-all interpretation of the endowment experience. When you decide you want to understand it more deeply, and are looking carefully, many issues with the plan of salvation interpretation become immediately evident.
What is the Plan of Salvation Interpretation?
To be clear, the plan of salvation interpretation would imply that the garden of Eden is our pre-mortal life (or our first 8 years before the age of accountability if you prefer). Then Earth life is presented in the endowment with commandments (called covenants) and priesthood. If we just keep these commandments that are called covenants (for some reason - don’t think about this too deeply for a moment), then we are good. Then in the instruction of the endowment we are given the knowledge we need to pass through the veil (I assume this would then be the temple inside of the temple - especially because Satan breaks the fourth wall and all but says as much), then we arrive at the veil and enter into the celestial kingdom passing by the “angels that stand as sentinels” as Brigham Young put it. If this is the purpose of the temple just to give us these sacred words and teachings, then perhaps it accomplishes that well enough. I hope you’ll find much more light and knowledge to be had from this ceremony, though!
If you don’t look too close, this makes sense and validates what we know of the doctrine of the plan of Salvation. It can even be helpful if your understanding of the Plan of Salvation is not yet very rich. I’m not even saying it’s bad to see the temple through this lens, it’s a great place to start, but if that’s where you are in your temple journey, I want to stretch your perspective and challenge some assumptions - hopefully all in the effort to gain even greater light and knowledge from your experience in the temple.
There are also some who fall into the problem of liking this interpretation because it’s validating for them personally. We like knowing we have truth, but we have to be careful of getting to comfortable with our conclusions. We don’t want the temple to become a way for us to inflate our pride or ego that we already have the answers. We don’t want to get out of our temple only a sense that we are getting a taste of our eventual greatness in the Celestial Kingdom and we are already able to leave this life knowing we have secured the blessings we need to receive our reward in Heaven! We don’t want to exclaim when we leave the temple: Yay! Good for us! We did it! All is well in Zion!
Problems with this Interpretation:
When you start to look closer into the interpretation that the temple endowment only reflects the Plan of Salvation, lots of confusing things seem to break the pattern. For example, some questions to ponder:
What is being “clothed with priesthood power” and why does it apply to both men and women (if it symbolizes the church / terrestrial world)?
Why are we taught the same principles and commandments as covenants that we already received as commandments and lived before entering the temple? These are all essentially temple recommend questions we already are keeping (perhaps except consecration), right?
What are the philosophies of men mingled with scripture, and who is teaching them? Most people assume this is other churches, and I suppose this might make sense if we were all converts, but lifetime members of the church receive the same instruction to avoid the philosophies of men mingled with scripture and seek messengers, so who is teaching these philosophies of men to lifetime members of the church?
How are the covenants different than commandments?
Why are the Covenants called Laws?
How do we “offer sacrifice” as Adam did upon leaving the garden?
Why is Adam then taught the philosophies of men mingled with scripture?
Why have the temple at all if we already received all this doctrine already in the normal course of our attendance in the church?
Why doesn’t the endowment seem to mention death, spirit paradise, spirit prison, or final judgement before the three Kingdoms of Glory?
President Nelson’s openly discussing the meaning of the veil and the garments as representations of Christ makes it extra confusing: Why is Christ the veil, but He Himself teaches that Christ stands at the veil and appoints no servant there? So then is Christ the servant at the veil and the figure behind the veil and also the veil and also the garments we wear? What is the point of symbols if they are all just Christ - that doesn’t seem to provide any meaning at all.
As you can see I struggle with this interpretation because in my view it doesn’t seem to pass even the slightest scrutiny. If this is the only true interpretation, then the endowment creates a lot more confusion than we should expect from a divinely revealed ordinance of higher instruction.
Questions to Ponder
What interpretation then, not only passes scrutiny, but reveals hidden light and truth to the seeker, unfolds the scriptures to our view, and illuminates our path forward? How do we discover what that interpretation might be? Are there any hints in the ordinance itself that might provide a key to know how to proceed forward into and eventually through the mists of darkness?
There are several mentions that the endowment only ordains us to become kings and queens, priests and priestesses, and that ‘through our faithfulness’ we can become such. I believe this is the first key that unlocks the ordinance.
Being only ordained to “become such” is a crucial idea. How EXACTLY do we actually “become such” if our ordination and anointing and endowment don’t actually provide that privilege or power? When and how do we receive it? What faithfulness do we need to perform? Where do we even start?
If we can start pondering in this direction, then we will start asking the right questions and the endowment will begin giving actual guidance for us to “become such.”
In part 2 we will discuss another interpretation I call “the Plan of Ascension” as taught by the endowment for those with eyes to see.