In the celestial room of the Provo Temple, heat coursed through my body. My skin throbbed, my intestines boiled, my bones sang a dissonant note. I had reached out to God in prayer, silently asking about a small decision, expecting to feel peace as I had so many times in the temple. Instead, it felt as though I’d touched a hot stove, my nerve endings vibrating. I stared into the painted eyes of the resurrected Jesus above me, confused that I could feel so bad in this holy place, and wondering what it meant. Was this a burning in the bosom, indicating I should move forward? Or a warning that I shouldn’t?
Discernment is an old problem, and one that’s plagued the Restoration since its infancy, from denials of Joseph Smith’s “First Vision” to contentions over Hiram Page’s seer stone.1 In the modern era, faith-affirming stories of spiritual promptings clash with accounts of people who feel spiritually guided to leave the Church and horrific, supposedly Spirit-guided murders.2 This problem is not unique to our faith tradition, but it remains confusing and painful. What is a believing person to do?
I’ve noticed three common responses to this epistemological problem: cataloging, acceptance, and loss of faith. Cataloging involves seeking to categorize the “type” of spiritual experience one is having, and then using that category to interpret it. A cataloger might have a mental list of different categories of spiritual experience—gleaned from scripture, her own experiences, or the experiences of others—that she can compare to current or future spiritual feelings. Acceptance of the problem entails accepting that a person cannot always be sure that spiritual feelings are from God. The ambiguity is seen as inescapable, and perhaps part of the point. In the response I have in mind, such an acceptor trusts that aligning her life with the teachings of the Church will mean that her thoughts and actions are spiritually inspired, even if she cannot say for certain that such actions came from God.3 Finally, someone could respond to this problem through a loss of faith, not in God or the Church, but in her own (or anyone’s) ability to discern spiritual promptings. In contrast to acceptance, which allows for uncertainty but continues to hold space for spiritual guidance, a loss of faith involves ceasing to believe that spiritual experience is discernible at all.
I think that all of these approaches could be useful, and they are not mutually exclusive. But I worry that they may have (at least) two potential pitfalls. On the one hand, cataloging spiritual experiences, especially based on dominant narratives in the Church, may not account for the potential diversity in human bodies, lives, and cultures that could lead to diverse types of spiritual experience. The anger and pain I felt in the temple was certainly a “burning” in my heart, but not in a way that felt right. On the other hand, both acceptance and loss of faith might cut short the possibility of developing a robust epistemology of spiritual discernment.
Perhaps, despite the problems and confusions, it is possible to discern the Spirit with your body. Perhaps each person’s body is their own personal Urim and Thummim, the means by which they discern the spiritual import of the world, translating sense data into transcendent meaning.
How might this metaphor of body as Urim and Thummim help us chart a path towards an epistemology of spiritual discernment? Perhaps it’s best to start with some definitions. In Hebrew, the phrase “Urim and Thummim” roughly translates to “lights and perfections” or perhaps “perfect lights.”4 Urim and Thummim refer to priestly artifacts mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible, worn on the breastplate of the temple’s high priest over “the heart” and used in “judgment” (Exodus 28:30). Unfortunately, as one biblical scholar notes, “although all readers of the Bible are familiar with the Urim and Thummim, no one really knows what they were.” Interestingly, this scholar also notes that despite the common use of physical divination in ancient Israel (e.g., via animal livers), “the only form of divination through physical means expressly sanctioned by various biblical authors was the Urim and Thummim.”5 In other words, the Urim and Thummim were the consecrated physical medium to translate divine communication into human understanding.
Restoration scripture adds to this information, calling the Urim and Thummim “interpreters” that can be used to translate ancient records (e.g. Mosiah 8:13). In his canonized history, Joseph Smith identifies two stones contained in the box with the gold plates as “the Urim and Thummim” and says they originated with an ancient prophet known as the Brother of Jared, dating back to the Tower of Babel (Ether 2:23-24). These Urim and Thummim, as well as additional seer stones, became central to Joseph’s work as a seer and revelator, including for translating the gold plates into the Book of Mormon.6
In an 1843 statement, Joseph invoked Urim and Thummim in additional ways, tying them even more tightly to bodies. In what is now canonized as Doctrine and Covenants section 130, Joseph said that “the place where God resides is a great Urim and Thummim” and that “this earth, in its sanctified and immortal state, will be made like unto crystal and will be a Urim and Thummim to the inhabitants who dwell thereon, whereby all things pertaining to an inferior kingdom, or all kingdoms of a lower order, will be manifest to those who dwell on it” (D&C 130:8-9). Setting aside the fascinating theological possibilities of this verse, it identifies a Urim and Thummim’s use not just for translating text, but for making truth visible, for making things “manifest.” The revelation goes on to say that not only will the earth be a collective Urim and Thummim, but “the white stone mentioned in Revelation 2:17, will become a Urim and Thummim to each individual who receives one, whereby things pertaining to a higher order of kingdoms will be made known.”7 In this revelation, Urim and Thummim are physical, personal instruments that can be used to make things visible, to learn about what is out there in the world (even if that world includes things like “a higher order of kingdoms” that we cannot now understand or see). In this way, they mirror our physical bodies, our personal instruments of learning in this life.
But I think there is an even stronger connection between seer stones and bodies than what D&C 130 implies, one fleshed out (pun intended) in Doctrine and Covenants section 9. This section records an 1829 revelation to Oliver Cowdery after he tried and failed to translate the gold plates using a seer stone. In the text, he is instructed on how to receive revelation, presumably in the context of translation,
…you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right. But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong. (D&C 9:8–9, emphasis added)
In other words, Oliver must first learn how to feel if something is right, to use his own body as a Urim and Thummim, before he can use another (external) Urim and Thummim. His body, then, is the site for spiritual discernment, the place where God will make truth manifest. These verses suggest that even if we each had a personal seer stone (as some day we might), it may be just as useless to us as it was to Oliver Cowdery in 1829 if we don’t understand how the Spirit works in our bodies.
I’ll admit, I don’t think the framework of “body as Urim and Thummim” solves the epistemological problem of spiritual discernment. If anything, it heightens the issue, suggesting we cannot get away from the problems of embodied spirituality. But I think it helps to address the two issues we considered earlier: diversity in spiritual experience and uncertainty about its trustworthiness.
For diversity, thinking of the body as Urim and Thummim means that each person’s body can be their own Urim and Thummim. This allows for as many types of spiritual experiences as there are people, and acknowledges variation due to age, gender, culture, health, ability, environment, and other factors. As a highly anxious person, I tend to identify the Spirit with feelings of peace and calm, experiences that are naturally rare for me. A friend of mine finds that he feels the Spirit solely in his head, with a sense of light in his mind or clarity of thought, but such feelings do not extend to the rest of his body. Acknowledging such variations could also ease concerns when people don’t feel the Spirit in ways that are culturally sanctioned (e.g., crying, warm fuzzies) or when they don’t feel the Spirit in their bodies at all. This possibility challenges my metaphor, but might locate their difference not in spiritual worthiness but simply in bodily practicality, a feature of a fallen world rather than a fallen soul.
There could even be shifts in spiritual experience within a person, with changes in age, hormones, or illness. Another friend had a complete change in how she feels the Spirit after being intensely sick on her mission, finding that her experiences now feel quieter or muffled, as though someone has turned down the volume in her body. The variety of these experiences certainly raises questions (are they really all the Spirit?), but I think a robust spiritual epistemology must leave space for differences that are surely present and have been documented worldwide.
For uncertainty, there are many potential approaches, but personally I have found a pragmatic “fruits of the spirit” approach to be particularly helpful when seeking to identify spiritual feelings. These fruits of the Spirit include “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Gal. 5:22-23). After all, as William James, titan of American philosophy and psychology put it in his book Varieties of Religious Experience, “scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are….To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary.”8 In other words, if everything is filtered through the medium of our bodies, from scientific theories to religious experiences, we can’t just throw out religion for fear that it is only in our heads. Instead James suggests, with Jesus, “by your fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots.”9
If our bodies are like Urim and Thummim, then they are not simply ornaments for our spirits or obstacles to our righteousness, but necessary tools for becoming like God. They have inherent value, as diverse and imperfect as they might be. Our bodies—whatever their size, shape, or current health—are intermediaries with the divine. Yes, spirituality filtered through mortality can be fuzzy. But what if uncertainty is not a bug but a feature of the plan? What if it is a gift? As the 2024 movie Conclave so beautifully put it, “Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore, no need for faith.”10
Ultimately, as we continue to mull over potential approaches to spiritual epistemology, I find it useful to see spiritual experience in a broader context, what David Holland calls “triangulation.”11 Like the law of three witnesses in the Bible and Book of Mormon, Holland describes triangulation as putting spiritual experiences in conversation with repeated truths found in scripture and the discourses of modern prophets. For me, this process can also include the experiences of other people, both inside and outside my faith tradition. In triangulating spiritual experiences with other sources, I can learn how to use my body as a Urim and Thummim not in isolation, but with guides and signposts on every side.
I still don’t know what to make of the anger and pain I felt in the Provo Temple that day. At the time, I interpreted it as a warning against the decision I was considering, a sign to beware. Whether or not I was correct in that understanding, I now hold it as one of the two strongest spiritual experiences of my life. I talk about it with friends, hear their stories, and store up more spiritual knowledge, always growing, gathering, and interpreting through my body, my own Urim and Thummim.
Catie Nielson is a cognitive psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is also active in the Mormon studies community, where her primary interest is in Mormon materialism and its relationship to the broader philosophical tradition.
Art by Joel Church.
First Vision account: Joseph Smith—History 1:21–22. Hiram Page: Doctrine and Covenants 28:11–12; Jeffrey G. Cannon, “All Things Must Be Done in Order,” in Revelations in Context: The Stories Behind the Sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, ed. Matthew McBride and James Goldberg (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2016).
For example, the Lafferty murders and more recently the Vallow-Daybell murders: State of Utah, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Ronald Watson Lafferty, Defendant and Appellant, no. 20740 (1989); Meredith Deliso, “Murder Trial of Chad Daybell, Husband of ‘Doomsday’ Mom Lori Vallow, Set to Begin,” ABC News, April 1, 2024.
A common refrain of this sort for my generation comes from a 2009 MTC address from Elder David A. Bednar, available on YouTube: “Quit Worrying about It!,” uploaded January 26, 2023.
Cornelis Van Dam, The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel (Eisenbrauns, 1997).
Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, “True Light on the Urim and Thummim,” Jewish Quarterly Review 88, nos. 3–4 (January–April 1998): 263–64.
“Seer Stone,” Glossary, Joseph Smith Papers Project.
My favorite modern take on Joseph Smith’s interpretation of this verse is that if there was a “Deseret School of Witchcraft and Wizardry” (à la Harry Potter), the students would all have personal seer stones. “The Deseret School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,” Tumblr.
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human Nature (1902; repr. Dover Thrift Editions, 2018), 13–14.
James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 20.
Edward Berger, dir., Conclave (Universal Studios, 2024).
David Frank Holland, “The Triangle and the Sovereign: Logics, Histories, and an Open Canon,” in The Expanded Canon: Perspectives on Mormonism and Sacred Texts, ed. Blair G. Van Dyke, Brian D. Birch, and Boyd J. Petersen (Greg Kofford Books, 2018), 1–24.
