Degrees of Glory and Tolerance

The Doctrine and Covenants is explicit that certain forms of conduct are not allowed in certain degrees of glory:

38 And unto every kingdom is given a law; and unto every law there are certain bounds also and conditions.
39 All beings who abide not in those conditions are not justified. (Doctrine and Covenants 88:38–39)

21 And they who are not sanctified through the law which I have given unto you, even the law of Christ, must inherit another kingdom, even that of a terrestrial kingdom, or that of a telestial kingdom.
22 For he who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory.
23 And he who cannot abide the law of a terrestrial kingdom cannot abide a terrestrial glory.
24 And he who cannot abide the law of a telestial kingdom cannot abide a telestial glory; therefore he is not meet for a kingdom of glory. Therefore he must abide a kingdom which is not a kingdom of glory. (Doctrine and Covenants 88:21–24)

In the degrees of glory, actions against the law of that kingdom are not tolerated. Those who commit them cannot remain in that kingdom. This means that in the three degrees of glory there is only limited tolerance. The more tolerance displayed, the lower the kingdom of glory. This argues that tolerance is not a celestial virtue but a telestial one.

For I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance; (Doctrine and Covenants 1:31; cf. Alma 45:16)

The more like God we are, the less we will tolerate sin. He does not tolerate sin and so if we are like him, we will not either.

It is in the telestial kingdom that all manner of sins are permitted and tolerated. One reason we may have to tolerate sins in a telestial world is to give others what the Book of Mormon calls "space for repentance" (Alma 42:5; cf 12:24). If others give up their sins, we do not have to tolerate them anymore. We cannot, however, keep our sins and expect them to be tolerated in a celestial realm.

We might think that God is being exclusionary in not tolerating our sins in the celestial kingdom, but that is not the correct way to view the situation. As Moroni explains:

3 Do ye suppose that ye shall dwell with him under a consciousness of your guilt? Do ye suppose that ye could be happy to dwell with that holy Being, when your souls are racked with a consciousness of guilt that ye have ever abused his laws?
4 Behold, I say unto you that ye would be more miserable to dwell with a holy and just God, under a consciousness of your filthiness before him, than ye would to dwell with the damned souls in hell.
5 For behold, when ye shall be brought to see your nakedness before God, and also the glory of God, and the holiness of Jesus Christ, it will kindle a flame of unquenchable fire upon you. (Mormon 9:3–5)

God's exclusion of sinners is not intolerance, it is mercy.

A.D. 328

A.D. 328 was the official consecratio of the new capital of Constantinople, the symbol of the new direction in which Constantine was taking the Roman empire. Constantine had planned it for some time, and construction had actually been proceeding for a couple of years. Now, it was official. Constantine rejected the old capital of Rome, and indeed, had always neglected it. Four years later, the bread distributions that had been a staple of Rome were transferred to Constantinople; the grain revenues that had supported Rome for so long now flowed in a different direction, just as the sources for that revenue began to dry up (quite literally, the canal system in the Fayyum was clogging up from neglect).

Indications of Constantine's new direction could be seen from a number of items.

In A.D. 311 Galerius issued an edict of toleration in the Eastern Roman Empire which stopped the active persecution of Christians. In A.D. 313 Constantine made Christianity legal. This is sometimes known as Constantine's edict of tolerance, but it turns out not to have been so tolerant. In 324, in the Egyptian city of Panopolis, Horion, son of Horion, applied for the familial post of prophet of the temple of Min. Constantine's government, however, rejected the application, and forced the whole family to relinquish their ancestral occupation (and the revenues) and find employment elsewhere. (The story is told in this book.) Christianity might be tolerated but the priesthood of Min would not be.

Actually, even Christianity would not be tolerated. Philosophical differences in the church of Alexandria caused a division in the Church. Constantine decided to settle the dispute, even though he was neither a philosopher nor a Christian, and did not really know anything about the subject. As a result of Constantine's meeting in A.D. 325, half of the Christians were condemned to persecution by their fellow Christians. The Christian world was also burdened with having to figure out and explain a poorly-thought-out and incoherent philosophical term.

Eusebius, a partisan of Constantine and his beneficiary, writes of Constantine in glowing terms, as though Constantine were the greatest thing to ever happen to Christianity, and had single-handedly ushered in the millennium. Alas, it did not prove to be such.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From The Promise of Discipleship (2001), 9:

In today's relativistic society, we see indulgence masquerading as tolerance. We see the primacy of the "politically correct" substituting for righteous indignation and for moral outrage. Instead of genuine and pervasive concern for the public good, we see intense devotion paid to niche causes. People are often viewed as advocates of causes rather than as neighbors, being stereotyped because of their interest groups. It is anemic enough to know neighbors and others only as functions but worse still to regard them so much more narrowly. Because all others are actually the spirit sons and daughters of God, the new math of the new morality is even more disturbing than it is fuzzy.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From this talk:

Personal righteousness, worship, prayer, and scripture study are so crucial in order to “[put] off the natural man” (Mosiah 3:19). Be wary, therefore, when some demand public tolerance for whatever their private indulgences are!

Today's Maxwell Quote

From this talk:

Today, in place of some traditionally shared values is a demanding conformity pushed, ironically, by those who eventually will not tolerate those who once tolerated them. While incremental iniquity may not cause a huge decline all at once, the same somber direction is nevertheless continued, subtly and carefully, with no arousing jolts or jars (see 2 Ne. 28:21).

Today's Maxwell Quote

From Lord, Increase Our Faith (1994), 23-24:

It is our giving heed to temptations by dallying over them and by anticipating, savoring, and recycling them that get us into trouble. Jesus' character is such that He was consistently decisive and dismissive as to temptation and sin. There is no equivocation in Him regarding evil. He and His Father can make no allowance for sin (see D&C 1:31)—because of the terrible toll sin exacts from the happiness of all those they love.

We mortals, on the other hand, tend to tolerate our own little clusters of sin. We rationalize that we can dismiss these whenever we really want to. The trouble is that these "squatters" come to have "rights," too. By means of their persistent presence, they take over more than we ever intended; whereas to give no heed means to give no foothold, however small. To delay their eviction is, in effect, to "heed" and accommodate the temptation.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From That Ye May Believe (1992), 74-75:

In Sodom they probably had absolute free speech, but nothing worth saying! On the other hand, an otherwise permissive society, which tolerates almost everything, usually will not tolerate speech that challenges its iniquity. Evil is always intolerantly preoccupied with its own perpetuation.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From Wherefore, Ye Must Press Forward (1977), 9:

Among the hard realities about societies is the reality that liberty, if it is abused too much, will destroy itself. A society that continually permits anything will lose everything. To be sure, drawing lines is admittedly difficult, but once society shrinks from drawing any behavioral lines simply because to do so is difficult, it has surrendered. To confuse tolerance with permissiveness can be fatal, since it is like not knowing the difference between a mushroom and a poisonous toadstool.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From Things as They Really Are (1978), 20:

In a moral malaise, society comes to tolerate certain things that would have been intolerable years before, whether these be violence or shoddiness in education. Why do so many lack the capacity to be aroused, to be stirred over such declining standards? Part of the explanation, of course, is ignorance. Part of it is indifference. But there is a new dimension to this failure of many to be aroused: intimidation growing out of the very momentum that evil has achieved. There are many mortals who fear, genuinely fear, to speak up and to lead out! It is as if a flagship were sending signals to other ships of war in a convoy, warning them, "Beware of pirates who may try to board," only to have such signals read by the sneering faces of pirates already in command on the bridges of those ships.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From Of One Heart (1975), 56-57:

The ways of the adversary are such, as men's hearts grow increasingly hard, that any who seem to have any tolerance whatsoever for the people of God will be viewed with anger by those who would destroy us.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From A Time to Choose, 25:

A disciple of Christ will be tolerant, but he will also be constant and consistent. A few years ago, student peer groups practiced a kind of fashionable tolerance that was really one-sided. Some students simply were not tolerating the returned missionary as much as the swinger, and some were much less understanding of the believer than of the agnostic.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From For the Power Is in Them, 16:

The only safety lies in the beautiful blend of concepts found in the gospel of Jesus Christ, for in these we see: a concern for the poor and a stress on the corrosiveness of envy and the duty and dignity of work; both a certitude about the need for authority and extensive warnings against exercising "unrighteous dominion." We see both persuasive teachings on the need for tolerance, love, and forgiveness and the need to assert the truth articulately, to stand by it rather than compromise the truth merely to make others feel good or comfortable (for Jesus had only to "put on" Pilate in order to go free, had only to "modify" his message to be accepted by Jerusalem's power structure).

A Book Recommendation

D. A. Carson has a great book out called The Intolerance of Tolerance (also available in paperback). Carson explains how the current mantra of tolerance is simply an excuse to be not just intolerant but tyrannical. I noticed in graduate school, both at Berkeley, and even more so at Yale, that an immense amount of bigotry was promoted in the name of intolerance. Carson provides many examples of the intellectual vacuousness and hypocrisy promoted in the name of tolerance. He also distinguishes between two different philosophical positions promoted under the name of tolerance and argues that one should be supported and the other thwarted.

I highly recommend the book. It should be required reading, especially at Ivy League schools.