Mormon Doctrine

Sons of perdition

The only category in the book from which there is no return — and the entry is careful about how hard it is to get into.

Sons of Perdition is one of the shortest of the book's serious entries and one of the most looked up. It answers a question with a strict definition: not the wicked, not apostates in general, but a specific and very small class of people who knew and then fought.

The definition

The entry starts with Lucifer, because the name is his before it is anyone's.

Lucifer is Perdition. He became such by open rebellion against the truth, a rebellion in the face of light and knowledge.

Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, “Sons of Perdition”, 1966 second edition, p. 520

The third of the hosts of heaven who followed him “were denied bodies, were cast out onto the earth” — those are the sons of perdition who never reached mortality at all. The mortal category is defined by the same test, and the test is knowledge.

Those in this life who gain a perfect knowledge of the divinity of the gospel cause, a knowledge that comes only by revelation from the Holy Ghost, and who then link themselves with Lucifer and come out in open rebellion, also become sons of perdition.

Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, “Sons of Perdition”, 1966 second edition, p. 520

That is a high bar, and the entry sets it deliberately. The sin is not disbelief and not leaving the church; it requires a perfect knowledge first. The book's Unpardonable Sin entry spells the qualification out — to commit it “a man must receive the gospel, gain from the Holy Ghost by revelation the absolute knowledge of the divinity of Christ,” and only then come out in open rebellion. The closing quotation is Joseph Smith: “All sins shall be forgiven, except the sin against the Holy Ghost; for Jesus will save all except the sons of perdition.”

Cain

The book's one named example is Cain, and the Cain entry works through the qualification point by point: he “understood the gospel and the plan of salvation, was baptized, received the priesthood, had a perfect knowledge of the position and perfection of God, and talked personally with Deity” — and then rebelled. He is called “the first mortal to be cursed as a son of perdition.”

The same entry carries the book's teaching about Cain's lineage and skin, which the church has since disavowed. What that entry said in each edition.

Where it stands

The doctrine itself is unchanged and is scriptural — Doctrine and Covenants 76 is the source and the entry cites it. Where current teaching differs from the entry is in emphasis: church leaders since have consistently stressed how few can qualify and warned against applying the label to anybody, living or dead. The entry supplies the definition; it is the definition, not the accusation, that has lasted.