Interim Content
Intelligence
Summary
Light or truth from God; also, an eternal, uncreated being capable of growth and progression. An 1833 revelation declared, “Man was also in the beginning with God[;] intelligence or the Light of truth was not created or made,” and it acts independently. The Book of Abraham, published by JS in 1842, explained that individual intelligences existed in the presence of God, the most intelligent of all, before the creation of the world. In 1844, JS taught that “intelligence exists upon a self-existent principle”—it has “no beginning or end” and there is “no creation about it”—and that the mind, or intelligence, can progress until it becomes like God.