The Question of Canon

Introduction

What makes a teaching “doctrinal” within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? The question is deceptively simple. The Church possesses a formal canon — the Standard Works — and a living prophet whose declarations carry presumptive authority. Yet members and scholars alike recognize that the boundary between doctrine and mere opinion is frequently contested, and that many teachings held with great confidence in one generation are quietly revised or abandoned in the next.

This essay is a preliminary inquiry into that boundary. I argue that doctrinal status in the LDS tradition is best understood not as a property assigned by a single authoritative act, but as the outcome of an ongoing social process involving at least three distinct mechanisms: prophetic declaration, institutional ratification, and communal reception. None of these alone is sufficient; together, they constitute what I will call the canon-formation process.

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The Standard Works as Baseline

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Prophetic Teaching and Its Limits

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Communal Reception as a Doctrinal Criterion

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Conclusion

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The author thanks [advisors or friends] for feedback on earlier drafts of this essay.