Little Children and Accountability

Three sections say the same thing about children in three different registers — a decree, an argument about circumcision, and a line in a vision — and all three land where the record had already landed.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. D&C 29 and D&C 74 speak in a first-person divine voice; D&C 137 is a first-person vision narration whose narrator is not named in the verse text and is not named here. Sections’ occasions, dates, and places are outside this wiki’s source text.

Standing disclosure — KJV-overlap material. This page reports verbal correspondence with the King James text as textual fact, including where the correspondence follows the KJV’s English translation. What that correspondence implies about the origin of the Doctrine and Covenants text — in any direction — is an external question outside this wiki’s scope.

Account

The decree, and its stated mechanism

D&C 29 states the conclusion and then the reason for it in consecutive verses: “little children are redeemed from the foundation of the world through mine Only Begotten” (D&C 29:46); “Wherefore, they cannot sin, for power is not given unto Satan to tempt little children, until they begin to become accountable before me” (D&C 29:47). The mechanism named is a restriction placed on the tempter rather than an innocence attributed to the child, and the restriction is stated as temporary — “until they begin to become accountable” (D&C 29:47).

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 29:46: “But behold, I say unto you, that little children are redeemed from the foundation of the world through mine Only Begotten” - Moroni 8:12: “But little children are alive in Christ, even from the foundation of the world; if not so, God is a partial God, and also a changeable God, and a respecter to persons”

Both open on the same four words and both reach back to the same point in time. The predicate differs — “redeemed” against “alive in Christ” — and the argumentative posture differs sharply: the epistle argues from consequence (if it were otherwise, God would be partial and changeable), where the revelation simply decrees. Per the wiki’s attribution convention the epistle’s words at Moroni 8:12 are Mormon’s; the chapter is his letter to his son.

[Textual] — paraphrase. () - D&C 29:47: “Wherefore, they cannot sin, for power is not given unto Satan to tempt little children, until they begin to become accountable before me” - Moroni 8:8: “wherefore, little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin”

The same incapacity, reached by different routes: the letter grounds it in the children’s wholeness, the revelation in a limit on the tempter’s power. Neither route is the other’s, and this page does not merge them.

The argument about circumcision

D&C 74 is seven verses long and is built as an exposition of a single sentence, quoted first and explained afterwards.

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () - D&C 74:1: “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; else were your children unclean, but now are they holy.” - 1 Corinthians 7:14: “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy.”

Every word of the verse is identical; the two divergences are marks of punctuation — a semicolon where the letter has a colon, and a comma where the letter has a semicolon. The section does not name the letter, its writer, or its address, and refers to the writer only by office: “the apostle wrote unto the church” (D&C 74:5). Because no source text or author is named, this record is asserted_by: wiki.

The exposition then makes a claim about the sentence’s status that is unusual in the frozen corpus: it says the commandment attached to it was the apostle’s own. “Wherefore, for this cause the apostle wrote unto the church, giving unto them a commandment, not of the Lord, but of himself, that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever” (D&C 74:5). The stated purpose of that commandment is the children’s standing: “That their children might remain without circumcision; and that the tradition might be done away, which saith that little children are unholy” (D&C 74:6). The section closes by stating both the conclusion and its claim to be an interpretation: “But little children are holy, being sanctified through the atonement of Jesus Christ; and this is what the scriptures mean” (D&C 74:7).

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 74:3: “And it came to pass that there arose a great contention among the people concerning the law of circumcision, for the unbelieving husband was desirous that his children should be circumcised and become subject to the law of Moses, which law was fulfilled.” - Moroni 8:8: “wherefore the curse of Adam is taken from them in me, that it hath no power over them; and the law of circumcision is done away in me.”

“the law of circumcision” stands at exactly three frozen verses in the corpus: D&C 74:2, D&C 74:3, and Moroni 8:8. The record’s letter and the revelation reach the same disposition of the practice by different arguments — the letter by declaration in a first-person divine voice quoted by Mormon (“is done away in me” — Moroni 8:8), the revelation by history, describing a contention and the commandment written to settle it (D&C 74:3–5).

The line in the vision

The vision report states the same conclusion in a single verse, and states it about a class defined by death rather than by capacity: “And I also beheld that all children who die before they arrive at the years of accountability are saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven” (D&C 137:10).

“years of accountability” stands at exactly three frozen verses in the corpus, all in the Doctrine and Covenants: D&C 18:42, D&C 20:71, and D&C 137:10. The first two attach the phrase to who may be baptised; only the third attaches it to who is saved.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 137:10: “And I also beheld that all children who die before they arrive at the years of accountability are saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven.” - Moroni 8:22: “For behold that all little children are alive in Christ, and also all they that are without the law.”

Both make an unrestricted claim about the whole class, and both place a second class alongside it — “all they that are without the law” (Moroni 8:22) against the vision’s own preceding verses about those who died without a knowledge of the gospel (D&C 137:7–8). What differs is the terminus: the letter says the children are alive in Christ, the vision names a kingdom.

Significance

The three sections agree and do not repeat one another, and the difference between them is worth stating because it is a difference of what kind of statement each makes. D&C 29:46–47 gives a mechanism — a limit on the tempter. D&C 74 gives an interpretation of an existing text, and marks it as one: “this is what the scriptures mean” (D&C 74:7). D&C 137:10 gives a thing seen. A reader who wants to test the agreement can do so on the plainest evidence available in this cluster — the shared phrase “the law of circumcision” (D&C 74:3), which stands at three verses in the whole frozen corpus and nowhere else, two of them in the revelation and the third in the letter it agrees with. That the two texts converge is a textual fact this page reports. Why they converge is not a question the wiki answers.

The commandment to the parents (D&C 68:25–28)

The three sections above state what is true of little children. A fourth passage states what is required of the adults around them, and it is the only place in the corpus where the transition out of childhood is given a number.

D&C 68:25: “And again, inasmuch as parents have children in Zion, or in any of her stakes which are organized, that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents.”

D&C 68:26: “For this shall be a law unto the inhabitants of Zion, or in any of her stakes which are organized.”

D&C 68:27: “And their children shall be baptized for the remission of their sins when eight years old, and receive the laying on of the hands.”

D&C 68:28: “And they shall also teach their children to pray, and to walk uprightly before the Lord.”

Read exactly, the passage does four things: it names a curriculum — repentance, faith, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands; it assigns the failure to teach it to the parents rather than to the child (“the sin be upon the heads of the parents”, D&C 68:25); it declares the whole of it a law rather than counsel (68:26); and it adds prayer and conduct to the curriculum (68:28). What it does not do is say what becomes of a child who is not taught. The sin is placed; the consequence to the child is not stated, and none is supplied here.

The number, and what carries it. The phrase “eight years old” stands at six distinct frozen verses in the corpus, and only these two — D&C 68:25 and 68:27 — attach it to baptism or to accountability. Three of the remaining four are regnal ages in the Old Testament, each in the same formula, “eight years old when he began to reign” (2 Kings 22:1, 2 Chronicles 34:1, 2 Chronicles 36:9). The sixth is not an instance of the number at all, and is disclosed rather than counted as one: 1 Samuel 4:15 reads “Now Eli was ninety and eight years old”, which the search returns as a substring. So the corpus states an age of accountability exactly twice, and both times here.

Where this sits beside the phrase this page has already counted. “Years of accountability” stands at three frozen verses, all in modern revelation (D&C 18:42, D&C 20:71, D&C 137:10), and none of the three names a number; section 68 names the number and does not use the phrase. Widening to the stem \baccountab\w* gives nine corpus verses — D&C 18:42, 20:71, 29:47, 42:32, 101:78, 104:13, 134:1, 137:10, and Moroni 8:10 — several of which carry the stem in a stewardship or civil sense rather than this one. Exactly one of the nine stands outside the Doctrine and Covenants, and it is the letter this page has been reading against throughout. The rite’s own procedural material is treated on Baptism, which cites 68:27 for the age and does not repeat the commandment.

[Textual] — paraphrase. The revelation and the letter give the same curriculum in the same two terms, and assign the teaching in opposite directions: - D&C 68:25: “…inasmuch as parents have children in Zion… that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents.” - Moroni 8:10: “Behold I say unto you that this thing shall ye teach—repentance and baptism unto those who are accountable and capable of committing sin; yea, teach parents that they must repent and be baptized, and humble themselves as their little children, and they shall all be saved with their little children.”

Both verses are commandments about teaching, both name the parents in the verse text, and both give repentance and baptism as the content. The inversion is the whole of the difference, and it is reported rather than smoothed: the letter commands that the parents be taught — “teach parents that they must repent and be baptized” — while the revelation commands that the parents teach, and places the sin on them if they do not. The letter attaches no age and defines the class by capacity (“accountable and capable of committing sin”); the revelation attaches an age and defines the class by it. Neither text cites the other.

Why this endpoint. The stem \baccountab\w* stands at nine distinct frozen verses in the corpus, and Moroni 8:10 is the only one outside the Doctrine and Covenants — so within the record it is the sole verse in the accountability vocabulary, and it is also the record’s only teaching-commandment that names parents. No tie arises. The letter’s other legs are registered above (, , , ); this is a fifth, on a different verse of it.

Key references

D&C 29:46–50 — children redeemed; the limit on the tempter; accountability
D&C 74:1–7 — the quoted sentence; the apostle’s own commandment; children holy
D&C 137:10 — all children who die before the years of accountability
Moroni 8:8, Moroni 8:12, Moroni 8:22 — the record’s treatment, in Mormon’s letter to his son
1 Corinthians 7:14 — the sentence D&C 74 opens by reproducing
D&C 18:42, D&C 20:71 — the other two carriers of “years of accountability”

Baptism · The Redemption of the Dead · Atonement · Opposition and Agency · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants sections 29, 68 (verses 25–28), 74, and 137 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Cross-references quoted from Moroni 8 and 1 Corinthians 7. D&C 18:42 and D&C 20:71 are cited inside a distribution disclosure rather than registered as connections of this page.

Every quote is verbatim from the frozen source text, cited to its exact reference and checked character-for-character; no quote crosses a verse boundary. Six connection records are registered here, all [textual] and all asserted_by: wiki — D&C 74 reproduces a verse of a letter but names neither the letter nor its writer, referring to him only by office, so the wiki does not mint an attributed-quotation record on that basis; the pairing was ruled at the 2026-08-10 editorial review: it stays asserted_by: wiki — the source names an office, not a person or a text. Distribution figures are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by search at the time of writing.