Against Fundamental Questions

78 comments for “Against Fundamental Questions”

1. Nice post and thoughts Nate.

2. This brings to mind the testimony of an Iranian women in my ward in Los Angeles. She had been a Latter-day Saint several years when I met her eight years ago. Conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ, she said, required overcoming Islamic biases that religion is to be understood through legalistic argument. She had instead to make the sacrifice of a broken heart and a contrite spirit to accept the reality of testimony through revelation.

   I understand the desire to appreciate Christ’s gospel for more than just the fact that it exists, but the Islamic model seems a sterile one. As the New Testament Gospels depict religious scholars who debated their God instead of worshipping him, I don’t believe the threshold issues are something that properly are ever behind us.

3. If I understand you correctly Nate, our curent obsession with the literal historicity of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith’s rich religious experiences, etc is a sort of inhibitor to further development of our religion. Does this mean that there is room in the Mormon tent for mostly metaphorists and that they might have a valuable contribution to make and that they might not be that threatening to literal faith?

   Why does nearly every testimony given over the pulpit contain the verb “know”? Why are verbs like “hope” and “think” and “assume” viewed as less adequate?

4. I couldn’t agree more. We need to move beyond endlessly proving to ourselves that God/the church/the Book of Mormon are true and start doing something with that knowledge itself.

5. Mike,

   The reason is because in a very real sense we are supposed to be a church filled with prophets, seers, and revelators. In my opinion, Givens was right in By the Hand of Mormon when he said reintroducing the concept of real dialogue with God is the primary doctrinal contribution of hte Book of Mormon. “Knowing” as a result of that dialogue is largely what sets us apart as a church in my opinion.

6. Mike: My point is not that we need to some how give up on the claim that Joseph Smith was a prophet or that the Book of Mormon is true. I subscribe quite fervently to both positions. Nor do I think that we need to adopt a “metaphorical” position. My point is that we need to spend more time talking about what our religion means rather than whether or not it is true. The turn to meaning is not some sort of capitulation on questions of truth, but rather a desire to get on with it rather than dwelling constantly on what are threshold questions.

7. A side benefit of what Nate proposes is thus: it avoids hostility towards truth claims. For many folks; they don’t care re: truth; they want results, meaning and action. Isn’t Nate just saying “by their fruits ye shall know them” and asking us why we don’t focus more on the fruit and less on the tree? We really _can’t_ do anything about the tree; but we _are_ the fruits…

8. I appreciate your skepticism regarding the quality and distinctiveness of current “mormon thought.” Likewise, I admire your hope for the development of broader and better “mormon thought.” Part of me hopes this does happen. However, I wonder “to what end?” Because we would like to known as clever? Intellectually respectible? Prolific? Comparable to religions with impressive intellectual traditions? What doctrinal basis is there for the idea that broader and better “mormon thought” should be a high priority? I am aware of scriptures that privilege learning and knowledge—and scriptures providing that the Lord’s people should be distinctive (you know, a city on the hill, peculiar in a good way, etc.). But there seem to be some intermediate steps between these scriptures and what you are arguing for.

   I also admire the rich intellectual traditions underlying Islamic (and Judaic and Catholic) law. An interesting question to me is how the institutional structure and practice of the church determines the likelihood that the kind of elaboration and interpretation that you would apparently like to see in “mormon thought” will ever occur. Due to the church’s centralization (think correlation), living prophet (who probably obviates the need for various schools working out competing interpretations), injunction to be unified in matters of doctrine (which undercuts the propriety of various schools working out competing interpretations), and well-founded emphasis on basic principles of Christ’s gospel, I don’t think what you are looking for will happen within official church chanels.

   Perhaps that is an obvious point—a given underlying your post. But it raises an interesting question: if “mormon thought” is the work of professional academics working outside official channels who happen to mormon (or atleast interested in mormonism), to what extent is it truly “mormon thought?” Is the real mormon thought only to be found in the general conference report every six months?

9. Shawn wrote: However, I wonder “to what end?” Because we would like to known as clever? Intellectually respectible? Prolific? Comparable to religions with impressive intellectual traditions? What doctrinal basis is there for the idea that broader and better “mormon thought” should be a high priority?

   One response I have to this is simply in our relation to the Book of Mormon and even scripture in general. Do we wring every iota of meaning and application we can from our books of scripture? I suppose really the scriptures can’t ever be fully understood and comprehended simply by an intellectual approach. And maybe instead of talking about “Mormon thought” I’m thinking of “Book of Mormon thought” … but my feeling is we can do a lot more with what we have … especially when I compare what we have done to the traditions of other religious such as Judaism and Islam (what they have done with their scriptures). And again, we need to be somewhat understanding due to the amount of time that Mormonism or the Book of Mormon have been available to us.

10. I am sympathetic to your argument, Dan. But humor me a little further: is there a point at which the returns from “wring[ing] every iota of meaning and application” out of scripture markedly diminish? I am approaching the question self-critically. My natural inclination is to spend my time puzzling over legal/ literary/ historical/ philosophical issues. Judging by the great sermons alone (on the mount, King Benjamin, etc.), there is at point at which my preferred pass-time distracts from other apparently much more important aspects of following Christ. In short, it may be simply self-indulgent and extremely hazardous to my soul.

11. Nate:

    What would you classify as fundamental? I assume that you would consider a proof for the existence of God as a fundamental question. But would you consider a treatise on the nature and character of God to be fundamental? To me they are two sides of the same coin.

12. Thanks, Nate, for putting this question into a compelling post! more compelling, evidently, than my attempt to bring it up yesterday : )

    Trying to understand what our scriptures and prophets say (thus getting beyond the question of whether they are inspired or not) is not some bizarre expedition into self-congratulatory intellectualism. Trying to understand them, and understand them very well, is only the most obvious, sensible response to the belief that they are inspired. Why did Mormon and Moroni, for example, take the time to scratch hundreds of pages of records onto metal, and then carefully encase them in a camouflaged stone box, with the hope they would be found centuries later, all the while trying to avoid being killed by the Lamanites, if it doesn’t matter that we understand what the words mean? The D&C contains multiple statements to the effect that the church is under condemnation for neglecting the message of the Book of Mormon, and President Benson renewed the point not so many years ago. We need to dig deeper, and pay more attention to what we find. It is possible to waste time on marginal issues, yes, but this should not scare us away from feasting on the important ones.

13. Ben H:

    re: Pres. Benson’s condemnation.

    Is it still in effect? It was never revoked by a latter prophet, was it? Or does the silence on the subject mean it doesn’t matter anymore?

14. Among Nate’s laundry list of items “issues in philosophy, ethics, law, historical interpretation, economics, political theory, comparative religion or theology,” I, like Dan, and frustrated by the lack of theological development we’ve had as a people, particularly in relation to our own scripture.

    As Nate pointed out in his original post, “The literature on the historicity of the Book of Mormon is voluminous, sophisticated, and shows no sign of abating its growth.” But how many books are there that actually speak to or analyze in any meaningful way the content of the Book of Mormon? There really aren’t. A few guys have written books, but they’re typically “what did this general authority have to say about this particular verse?” books.

    One of my logic professors at BYU was fond of saying that we’ve only engaged in a superficial reading–at best–of the Book of Mormon and haven’t yet really tried to understand it’s message. I don’t think he was suggesting that we engage in the wrung out process Shawn seems to be wary of. To me his statements echoed ETB’s comments on how we as a people haven’t yet received the Book of Mormon.

    I took up a challenge he issued and decided to write a paper on repentance in the Book of Mormon. Suffice to say this first attempt, on my part, to seriously study a theme in the Book of Mormon, researching it and writing about it the same way I researched and wrote other philosophy or English papers my senior year, ended up fundamentally changing my view of how we’ve treated this text. I’m personally convinced that we as a people know next to nothing about it, primarily because we’ve been SO caught up in convincing ourselves and the world that it’s an authentic piece of scripture, at the tremendous of expense of actually discovering what the book has to say.

    I’ve taken a very amateur-ish stab at trying to write about the Book of Mormon’s contents. If you’re interested in a poor example of the type of study I’m trying to advocate, click here:

    http://bookofmormonthemes.blogspot.com/

15. I think one way to make progress in understanding the BoM in new and satisfying ways is to approach it from a perspective of canonical criticism. Mark Thomas has done some of this, but the field is white, ready to harvest. The basic idea is simply to approach the text as it exists and to bracket the historicity debate. (I borrow the term canonical criticism from studies of the Torah as it exists in its final form, without being unduly concerned about the fragmentary origins of the text in different sources.)

    We learn a lot about the BoM through the literature dealing with historicity, but we could make even more progress if we weren’t always so defensive about it and were willing to explore it more simply as scripture, and not forcing it to constantly bear the weight of the sign of the truthfulness of the restoration..

16. Kevin:

    I’m very much in agreement. Where can I find some of Mark Thomas’ work?

17. Ricahrd T: Thanks for the comment. I suspect I had the same logic professor at BYU (name escapes me currently). In that class, we had to create syllogisms and other logical forms using scripture in the BoM. Very heady stuff.

18. Dennis Packard

19. Nate,

    Interesting topic. This was the subject of a discussion in a course I took at BYU from Elder Holland. The subject was a criticism of some of Benajmin Franklin’s thought, from some of his Poor Richard’s Almanac thoughts. The first one we discussed was one of the more famous “Honesty is the best policy.” Is that all honesty is, a policy? There is so much more to honesty that being a mere policy. Of course, that is also the basis for the tedious CLE requirement all attorneys have for ethics training. Being ethical is a good policy.

    The other quote we discussed was the statement that the existence of God may be true, but not really very relevant. I guess that part of your post is to go beyond the questions of whether the Book of Mormon is true or whether Joseph was a prophet and to ask whether those answers are relevant. There are a lot of things that may be true, but the real question is whether that truth means anything. What, if anything, do those answers mean to my law practice, to my relationship with my wife, to how I spend my free time?

    Some of the “So what?” answers are almost obvious: Joseph prayed and got an answer, so I can get an answer to my prayers, too. He got the idea from James, we get it from Moroni. Other answers aren’t quite so obvious, and we don’t see them until we ask the question. It seems that we, generally, need to be more confident of our answer to the Truth questions before we can be comfortable asking the So What questions.

20. Islamic law is interesting precisely because it is not endlessly obsessed with fundamentals. Rather than focusing its efforts on an apologetic for the truth of the Qu’ran or the genuineness of Mohammed as a prophet, it has focused its efforts on the elaboration of meaning. The result – given a dozen centuries or so – has been an incredibly rich body of thinking about religion, interpretation, authority, the good society, right conduct, adjudication, and a host of other topics.

    The Koran condemns the idea of Christ as God and Redeemer. According to our scripture, being wrong about this fundamental prevents entry into the celestial kingdom. In this light, the dozen centuries effort can be viewed as an “interesting” but ultimately irrelevant “rich body of thinking,” simply because a wrong turn was taken at the very beginning.

    Certainly there is a point when efforts produce diminishing returns, when evidence and new ways to understand and interpret it have dried up; but as long as this is not the case, the fundamentals warrant intense effort with every faculty at our disposal. The fact that two 700+ page biographies of Joseph Smith can be published in 2004 and 2005 by Dan Vogel and Richard Bushman respectively is one indication that the issues have not yet been exhausted.

    For better or worse, when it comes to cosmic questions and spiritual propositions, God seems to have intended there to be intense struggle over the so-called beginner’s questions, for it would be exceedingly easy for him to settle them with demonstrations of power. He seems perfectly content to allow the laundry list of secular subjects to press ahead without input from special Mormon views. These subjects are very probably not missing much. At the risk of exposing my vast ignorance and prejudice, I would ask, are we really missing much by ignoring the “sophisticated literature” of Islamic law?

    So it may in fact be that Mormon thought will be valuable and interesting [if it turns out to be valuable and interesting at all, only] because of what it tells us about the threshold issues.

21. I take recent GA comments about how we need to teach more substantial material and less fluff as a contemporary way of correcting the shallowness of our engagement as a people with the Book of Mormon (and other texts, but the Book of Mormon is the best place to start).

22. Richard T., here is one example:

    Thomas, Mark D. Digging in Cumorah: Reclaiming Book of Mormon Narratives. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1999.

23. Christian, you’re right that a wrong turn on a fundamental question can eviscerate the value of lots of “sophisticated literature”. From a Mormon standpoint, this problem infects the sophisticated literature of traditional Christians like Augustine, Aquinas, the Reformers, etc. Some of their ideas are great (and we find lots to value in C.S. Lewis), but we must regard much of it as fundamentally mistaken, or at least in need of systematic revision. So yes, the danger you mention is real. But still, so far Mormon thinking has not done enough going beyond the threshold issues.

24. Ben, thanks for making my point my concisely than I could.

    Let me try another concise formulation: until the practitioners of the subjects Nate considers interesting are broadly convinced that the fundamentals of Mormonism are true, in their view seeing their subject through the lens of Mormonism will be judged about as valuable as trying to learn astrophysics from Star Wars.

25. Christian, this is reasonable logic. However, my leaning is the opposite. Too often people think Joseph couldn’t possibly be a prophet partly because the doctrine and texts he offers are inane. When people think it is inane, this is partly due to their ignorance and shallow reading of his work, but also partly due to the mediocrity of we Mormons’ own appropriation and understanding of his work–partly due to Mormons’ own ignorance. We need to show how huge the difference is between Mormon scripture and Star Wars.

    If we show the “So what?” well–if we show how appealing and illuminating our scriptures’ distinctive teachings are–then people will be more willing to revisit the question of whether Joseph was a prophet etc., because they will see reasons to hope that he was!

26. Christian: I am not so certain that the sorts of projects that I am pointing toward are such a waste of time. First, it is unclear to me that God doesn’t want us to do these sorts of things. You may simply be mistaking our collective intellectual sloth for the divine will. Second, I don’t know whether or not Mormonism is irrelevent for political philosophy or legal theory until someone with some sophistication and training in these fields has tried to think about Mormonism and its implications in rigorous ways. This kind of discussion is almost entirely missing as near as I can tell.

    The issue of audience is admittedly tricky, but here are two points. First, the audience may be Mormon practioners of particular fields who are simply interested in what their religion has to say about a particular subject. For example, I think that most questions about science and Mormonism are not all that interesting. In particular, I think that the entire debate about the place of Darwin and evolution is essentially an irrelevent side show. Who cares? On the other hand, I am not a scientist or a biologist, so my disinterest may not count for much. Afterall, there are people who have entire blogs devoted to the subject of Mormonism and evolution (as difficult as that may be to believe).

    thought the way that say neoclassical economics or anglophone political philosophy are, but they are legitimate — if minSecond, I don’t think that ultimate rejection of Mormon beliefs precludes the insights of those beliefs being interesting and useful. My favorite example here is an article by a law professor named Robert Cover entitled “Nomos and Narrative.” Cover essentially used Talmudic jurisprudence to offer a novel and interesting claim about the relationship between law, myth, and adjudication. Islamic law has not penetrated American legal thought to the extent that Jewish thinking has for essentially demographic reasons. However, this is shifting. Increasingly, schools are interested in having someone who does Islamic law both because it is potentially important given international politics, trade, and the fact that there are more than a billion Muslims. It is not as though Shar’ia or Halakah are dominant influence on American legal or — voices at the table. Mormonism’s ability to occupy a similar position is contingent on the value of what we produce, but first we must produce it.

    Finally, on the issue of fundamentals it is not as though we are ever going to truly escape them. I think that Ben’s point with regard to the apologetic value of showing that one’s doctrine is not banal or vacuous is well taken. Furthermore, as I suggested in my initial post any attempt at interpretation will inevitably implicate foundational questions to one extent or another. (Mark Thomas’s _Digging in the Cumorah_ is a nice example here. Thomas purports to fully bracket the question of historicity, but it keeps popping up through out his analysis.) However, it may be that an oblique discussion of fundamentals will prove more fruitful than a direct focus. It is certainly worth trying.

27. Ben, that would be great if it could happen. I hate to rain on the parade, but I guess I just don’t expect it, if the past is any guide to the future.

    Take Nate’s outstanding record of posts that somehow involve an intersection of law and Mormonism. I’d bet $4.99 (to stay below a specific figure President Hinckley mentioned, $5) that in every single one of them the vector of insight pointed from worldly legal expertise towards a better understanding of Mormonism—not the other way around. “Great Mormon Art” inspired by the Holy Ghost has also been hoped for, but seemingly has not been forthcoming. And when it has, it’s because of worldly training.

    As Salieri lamented in Amadeus, it seems that in worldly matters God has often given his best inspiration to men who are either unbelievers, or immoral by Mormon standards, or both—the Mozarts, Shakespeares, Einsteins, Feynmans. The pattern seems to be to let the excelling happen with our worldly hats on, and bring the good stuff home to Zion. Mormonism’s claim to fame would seem to be fundamentals, and that’s about it.

    Now, new things sometimes happen; the past isn’t always a guide to the future. Perhaps Nate can turn his lament into action, and start producing work that reverses the arrow of insight.

28. Nate: Righto. Let’s see experts in their fields illuminate how the Book of (Mormon)/Doctrine do/could provide insight.

    As a BYU undergrad, I tried to stir up interest in a book, with chapters, written by diff. profs., re: their specialities, and how the BoM and/or Mormon beliefs shed light upon their academic fields of study. Alas…while I had plenty of indiv. profs interested…a publisher was not to be found.

29. Nate, you make a good point about the specific interest of Mormon audiences. (http://mormonevolution.blogspot.com, to make your example more concrete.) But again, this is an example in which the driving force of insight is coming from the outside, with consequent exploration of the ramifications for Mormonism.

    On the reversed arrow… I agree that non-Mormons might find discussions of legal, political, or economic theory implied by 19th century Mormonism interesting, but probably only in the way of historical and cultural appreciation and curiosity. Study of Islamic tradition probably has present-day practical benefits in terms of present-day geopolitical relations.

    Perhaps there is something more there too, as in the example from the Talmud you cited; but I suspect that the potential value-added in this type of thing is inversely proportional to the amount of independent, distinctive history and sophistication a cultural tradition had the chance to develop. Because Mormonism only had a few decades before being assimilated, my initial guess would be that it doesn’t provide all that much raw material to contribute to these structures of cultural interest (law, philosophy, economics, etc.)

30. I’m sorry, I should have said “directly proportional,” not “inversely proportional.” I’m not very good with math.

31. Christian, you’re right that a lot of, for example, Nate Oman’s posts use “outside” insights to illuminate Mormonism. But Nate’s point, I gather, is precisely that we need to do more of the opposite. Of course, to do that well, we first need to just plain do more careful study of the Mormon texts on their own terms. My hunch, and Nate’s, is that there are treasures there waiting to be mined, that past experience is an indicator of our collective weakness (and in part sloth), and only a very incomplete indicator of the power of the texts. It’s not just a hunch, either; I have a lot of very specific things in mind that I’d like to see written out rigorously, and I will try to do my part.

32. Nate, I’m with Mike, I really wish believe wasn’t a dirty word. Hyperbole? a new word I learned here. I don’t think so. We almost are afraid to say believe.

    But I’m with #11, what do you mean?

    Again, I’m lost, but from what I can glean, I think this is a good topic.

33. Ben: we first need to just plain do more careful study of the Mormon texts on their own terms. My hunch, and Nate?s, is that there are treasures there waiting to be mined, that past experience is an indicator of our collective weakness (and in part sloth), not an indicator of the power of the texts.

    This is a hunch that I share with Ben and Nate, and my experience bears out the hunch. Obviously I cannot just say “The Book of Mormon teaches X” and expect to get a hearing, much less a publication, in philosophy. But I can look at the questions that are current, such as the nature of community or what “religious transcencence” can mean, and bring insights I’ve gained from the scriptures and from my Mormon heritage to bear on that question. When I do, Mormons are more likely to see them than others, but they are there. So, I think the vector has generally gone from what those outside Mormonism say to how I can use that to think about our religion, but it can also go the other direction and, for me, it is at least beginning to do so.

    The problem, however, is that it isn’t easy to do that. I worry about those who might go too quickly. It isn’t obvious how to move along either vector, and I think it is the second (from the Church to the outside) is even less obvious than the first.

34. For an aggressive proselyting religion that has made the ultimate conversion of the entire world population its primary goal, I don’t think we ever can move beyond these threshold issues.

35. I don’t think we should move beyond the threshold issues, like the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, but I think we can also do more than talk and write about those issues, and that we need to.

    I believe that the Book of Mormon is the historical record that it claims to be, that the prophets of this dispensation have really been prophets in the Old Testament sense, etc. But I’m personally more interested in exploring what those things mean and what implications they have than I am in writing about reconciling the accounts of the First Vision, showing the internal consistency of the Book of Mormon, etc.

    However, it doesn’t follow that I think no one should do those things. Indeed, I think people should continue to do them. That kind of research and writing serves an important function. That I don’t want to do them is a reflection of personal interest rather than of value. But, with Nate and Ben, I wish we felt that LDS scholars are ready to do more than that.

36. Jim makes a good point about the individuality of the importance of fundamental questions, which depends not only on personal interest and preparation (spiritual and professional), but also the widely divergent potential opportunities different fields might offer. The greatest opportunities would seem to lie, naturally, in fields that are (or at least are widely perceived to be) largely human constructions, or at least heavily reliant upon subjective human interpretation, rather than being overtly empirical. For it is these subjects in which one might have a prayer of arguing for the utility, or beauty, or some other subjective “value” of some view without having to rely on unique Mormon truth claims as a basis for the argument.

    For all I know, this is the case with the fields and subfields cited as examples so far. As I am ignorant in law, philosophy, and economics (where you guys seem to see opportunity), all I can do is wish you luck, and offer my attention. As the song says, reflecting the sloth of the collective Teen Spirit: Here we are now, entertain us.

37. Jim,

    Don’t with hold your talents from the rest of us! I would love to hear why such a gifted thinker as yourself believes the BoM to be the historical record it claims to be. I need someone to strengthen my feeble knees once in a while!

38. I’ve often enjoyed reading the posts on T&S. It seems to me that those who post here are engaged, in a small way at least, in the very project Nate is recommending. Certainly this isn’t the forum (or medium, probably) for a systematic elaboration of what Mormonism has to say about “philosophy, ethics, law, historical interpretation, economics, political theory, comparative religion or theology;” on the other hand, many posts and comments here do explore these issues in an interesting, if preliminary, way.

39. I think that Christian brings up an important issue regarding the vector of illumination if you will. In the very first thing (and truth be known one of the few things) that I ever published, I made a similar point arguing that Mormon thought could be concieved of as consisting of Mormon studies, ie use of academic disciplines to illuminate Mormonism, and Mormon perspectives, ie use of Mormonism to illuminate academic disciplines. I tried to argue that we ought to put more energy than we are into perspectives. I have also heard the point formulated somewhat more precisely as positing Mormonism as an independent rather than a dependent variable. The problem one runs into is that Mormonism is very, very young and most of the conversations that it can potentially be brought into are very, very old. The danger is that the new (Mormonism) simply becomes overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the old. Furthermore, as Christian rightly points out, in some ways our period of greatest social and intellectual daring and innovation was relatively short — say 1838 to 1890. Hence, it requires a great deal of new and creative work to even get an inkling of how Mormonism might go about thinking about certain questions.

    However, I do think that there is some danger of taking this question of vectors too seriously. On some issues there will be ways in which it is fairly easy to articulate some distinctively Mormon voice where the vector flows from Mormonism to our object of study. On many issues, however, the ground work simply hasn’t been done. In some cases the response to this will simply be to articulate some set of foundational concepts. However, I think that sometimes the best thing to do is simply to find Mormon angles, by which I mean bits and pieces of Mormon thought and experience that can be braught into a conversation even if such angles lack the ambition of either a grand illuminating theory or a primary object of study. My hope and faith is that new insights and ideas can emerge from the steady accumulation of such guerrilla intellectualizing if you will.

    At the LDS law students conference at Columbia last February, I tried to make this argument with respect to the possiblity of Mormon legal thought. On some things — say legal history — we ought to treat Mormonism as an object of study that has simply not been seriously mined by legal intellectuals. On some things, we may have some distinctively Mormon approach or theory that we ought to clearly and rigorously articulate. And on many things, we ought to find little Mormon hooks into this or that discussion in the hope that out of the accumulation of such thinking something like Mormon legal thought will emerge.

40. Nate says: “My point is that we need to spend more time talking about what our religion means rather than whether or not it is true.”

    I wonder if people shy away from ‘what our religion means’ because deep down they know and are afraid of (or unwilling to follow) the libertarian notions contained there-in. “Give us a king, a prophet, a president to rule over us because we want order and goodness imposed on us, for we are weak and unable to love God and our neighbors by ourselves”.

    Our religion means that we try to do those things that allow us return to our Heavenly Father, helping others along the way, never by force, but only by love.

41. I know why I shy away from ‘what [my] religion means’. It’s because no matter what the vector of my approach to understanding it’s meaning, I’m always lead to it’s center. And at the center of my religion exists a most terrifying notion–the notion that it is revealed. For if it is revealed, then God lives, and there is nothing more terrifying than a living God.

42. As usual, an important question, compellingly posed. But there are some things which I’m confused about. Your point is clearly that “what Mormonism means” is more interesting, or currently of greater importance, than “whether Mormonism is true”. On the whole the observation seems good, but I sense an equivocation, one which has important implications for the comparison with Islamic law. Islamic law, or more precisely Islamic jurisprudence, is indeed a kind of Islamic thought, or thought about Islam, but it is also in a very important sense a part of Islam. Islamic legal thought is as essential to Islamic life as general authorities are to Mormon life. The same cannot be said about “Mormon thought”, depending on what we are talking about. If Mormon thought is “Mormonism illuminating academic disciplines” or vice versa, then this is almost certainly true.

    Of course this does not mean that it is improper for a good Mormon to engage in this kind of Mormon thought, or that doing so might not be an interesting way to live out the life of a disciple. But it does mean that it is quite easy to be a Mormon without doing this. This seems to be important because it gives us the hint that the historical emphases of Mormon thought and Islamic thought are probably connected to the character of the two religions rather than mere historical accident. I think it’s no accident that Mormon thought is consumed with apologetics. For one thing, though we are not as creedal as traditional Christianity, belief and right opinion are important for us; affirming the correct ‘fundamentals’, ‘roots’ or articles of faith is normative for us in a way which it isn’t for Muslims or Jews. But perhaps more significantly, apologetics are probably the kind of Mormon reflection which comes closest to being a part of everyday Mormon life. Doing missionary work, or standing as a witness of the Restoration, is not the same thing as apologetics, but anyone who has done missionary work can understand why apologetics are immediately interesting and useful. Missionary work eventually raises the essential questions which come with interreligious dialogue. Thus the ‘threshold issues’ recur in the course of Mormon life.

    One might wonder then why there have been so few serious attempts at e. g. ‘what the Book of Mormon means’ (or even, e. g., what 2 Nephi 9 means). After all, there are millions of Mormons reading their scriptures every day and thousands of gospel doctrine teachers preparing lessons every week. Indeed it might seem to be a great mystery that of all the books written by Mormons, so few of them try to give original interpretations of scripture, let alone engage questions of the methods and aims of scriptural interpretation. But the fact is that Mormon life proceeds pretty smoothly without any of this ever being done. I have some hunches about why this is the case, but what is clear is that Mormons are not a people of a book in the same way that Muslims are a people of a book. We are able to avoid the questions of meaning with which Islamic jurisprudence grapples and still be Mormons. This helps explain why we are the way we are (with respect to “Mormon thought”), but it also helps explain, I think, what kind of a religion Mormonism is.

    side note: Nate, I’m shocked to read that you think that question of Darwinism and the Creation is a ‘So what?’ kind of question. We must have already reached a high level of understanding about what it means that God created the earth and everything on it if we can declare that the enormous success of evolutionary theory has little or no bearing on this question.

43. If more Islamic-style legalism is the goal, the place to start would be Physical Facilities, where some would claim that is already the operative mode. We can move from there to great questions like that puzzler of fifteen years ago: How can the costs of missionary service be arranged to the maximum tax advantage of the wealthy? If we keep it up, we’ll be able to arrive at rationales that allow us, without actually doing anything, to fulfill obligations to our parents, the poor, and those without the gospel. From there the possibilities are bottomless. Does anyone really lament that the restoration hasn’t yet been encrusted by a millenium of liberation from fundamentals?

44. What an excellent set of observations, Jeremiah. You open up all sorts of important issues.

    “Islamic law, or more precisely Islamic jurisprudence, is indeed a kind of Islamic thought, or thought about Islam, but it is also in a very important sense a part of Islam. Islamic legal thought is as essential to Islamic life as general authorities are to Mormon life. The same cannot be said about ‘Mormon thought’…Of course this does not mean that it is improper for a good Mormon to engage in this kind of Mormon thought, or that doing so might not be an interesting way to live out the life of a disciple. But it does mean that it is quite easy to be a Mormon without doing this. This seems to be important because it gives us the hint that the historical emphases of Mormon thought and Islamic thought are probably connected to the character of the two religions rather than mere historical accident.”

    This is a crucial point, and one that needs to be considered in depth. It would, in fact, be quite easy to argue that the different roles which “Islamic thought” and “Mormon thought” have played in the lives of those who adhere to these two religious traditions are a consequence of “mere historical accident”: specifically, the fact that Islam was manifest as not just a personal faith but also a civic reality–with a politics, a legal system, etc.–for centuries, whereas Mormonism, at best, only had a few decades to experiment with coming up with a wholly “Mormon” form of society. Islam thus got to be part of the “thought” of millions of adherents for hundreds of years; Mormonism, on the other hand, only had to attend to thinking “Mormonly” about the problems of social life for a short while. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it can’t continue to be done; Nate’s constant considerations of economics, civic religion, civil rights, and so forth from a Mormon point of view demonstrates that. But he (and the people who agree with him on the importance of doing, like I suppose you and I, even if we may all come to very different conclusions about what “Mormon thought” ought to involve) is working from a fairly thin historical tradition. Moreover, as long as people in the church (including both the leadership and everyone else) continue to see “Mormonism” as, rather than an explicitly culturally transformative enterprise, a highly personal message of salvation that needs to be shaped so as to be able to penetrate and flourish in any cultural context around the world, that tradition will remain thin.

    Now, of course, you may be right, and that’s something I’m very intrigued by: the possibility (one kind of reflected in Givens’s work on the nature of the “dialogic revelation” which the reception of the Book of Mormon has brought to pass in the church) that all this isn’t due to historical circumstances, but is in fact a function of our whole understanding of conversion, testimony, moral agency, etc. Maybe the Mormon faith is, in an important sense, itself “epistemologically thin,” thereby turning all our faith-talk into a constant (if mundane) personal apologia to ourselves (why are testimonies so often “faith-travelogues,” anyway?). That’s not to say it’s weak, only that it’s narrow; it doesn’t involve the self as embedded in a particular cultural context (thus demanding that conversion involve a broad thinking about that cultural, artistic, and political context), but only the self as someone, whoever and wherever they may be, who can pick up a book and read it. But again, at this point such political-theological speculation is unwarranted, and there is plenty of reason to suppose that, as the church continues to grow larger and stronger, that the real civic/legal/cultural “thoughts” which heretofore have laid mostly hidden in the midst of Mormon belief will come to be more firmly exercised.

    “But perhaps more significantly, apologetics are probably the kind of Mormon reflection which comes closest to being a part of everyday Mormon life. Doing missionary work, or standing as a witness of the Restoration, is not the same thing as apologetics, but anyone who has done missionary work can understand why apologetics are immediately interesting and useful.”

    A great way of putting it, and it suggests another possibility, one that is bound up in institutions and practices. We are an evangelical, proselytizing church; while the mission of the church is three-fold, it is the “preaching the gospel” mission which plays the biggest role in most members’ actual lives and social interactions. Most of us never have to address being temple-goers in a social sense; temple worship is private and kept secret. Conversely, perfecting ourselves as Mormons no longer involves much by way of practices that requires an original set of social justifications: sure, refusing alcohol and not letting our kids date until they’re 16 can run up against a lot of conventions, and drag issues of prophetic authority and being “not of the world” into cultural contexts, but in my experience Mormons do not have to any especially different work in this regard than do sincere, conservative Baptists or Catholics, and far less than orthodox Jews or Anabaptists have to. That leaves missionary work as the one practice which really marks us, socially; knocking on doors and trying to convert people is a very obvious and self-concious endeavor, and so predictably involves an awful lot of “thought.” And for generations, returned missionaries in the church leadership, at BYU and in CES, have continued that thinking. However, as you note, thinking-in-response-to-witnessing is very close to outright apologetics–and so, predictably, apologetic thinking has overwhelmed other kinds of “thought” in our organizations and curricula. So maybe, all of us who would like to see more Mormons thinking about something other than “fundamental questions” need to encourage a change in Mormon fundamentals–specifically, maybe we should be less interested in converting/witnessing to the world, and more interested tending to that which we already have. Of course, that runs against Christ’s final command to the apostles, so that may be a non-starter…

    “I have some hunches about why this is the case, but what is clear is that Mormons are not a people of a book in the same way that Muslims are a people of a book.”

    A great line; I’m going to have to steal it if I ever get around to rewriting yet again my Givens’s piece.

45. Jeremiah: Thanks for your thoughts. There is a lot of stuff to chew on in there. I’ve only got the time to make two quick points.

    First — and least importantly — what I find to be a peripheral side show with regard to evolution is not the study of the natural world or understanding the process of creation, but rather the traditional spiritual problematic set up by Darwin, namely does evolution “disprove” the existence of God? Do I need to reject evolution to affirm the truth of the scriptures? etc. etc. I am just not interested.

    Second — I think that you are absolutely correct with regard to the central place of jurisprudence in Islamic (and orthodox Jewish one might add) spirituality. This is no doubt why I find these religions facinating. It is also why, of late, I am much more interested in Romans than in Greeks. One of the central issues has to do — I think — with authority. In Islam, authority is entirely centered in the text. Interpretation, however, has anarchic possiblities, so in order to maintain the cohesion of the community, interpretation has been professionalized. In Mormonsim authority ultimately lies in continuing revelation from God. This also has anarchic possiblities. To maintain the cohesion of the cummunity authority is centralized in the prophets. Hence, interpretive sophistication in Islam serves many of the same social purposes as do living prophets. It may be that the fact that we deal with epistemic anarchy institutionaly and charismatically will always leave Mormon thought in some sense stunted (if I can use this term without it having a pajoritive feeling). However, to be honest I suspect that it is really too early to tell.

46. A side note: One of the interesting things to consider about Islamic legal thought is that it also works at least in theory from a very, very thin historical basis. The ur texts consist of the Qu’ran and the Sunna, all of which come in theory from a single generation, and to a much lesser extent from the example of those like Abu Bakr who led the Islamic community in the generation immediately after the Prophet. In other words, the whole superstructure of Islamic thought is in many ways reared on the interpretation and reinterpretation of a very narrow slice of time in light of new historical and intellectual contexts. Hence, the mere fact that attempts at a comprehensively Mormon society were confined to a comparatively short period does not mean per se that an attempt at the kind of conversation that I would like to see is predestined to failure.

47. Nate: In Islam, authority is entirely centered in the text. Interpretation, however, has anarchic possiblities, so in order to maintain the cohesion of the community, interpretation has been professionalized.

    Is this any different than evangelical christians?

48. “[T]he whole superstructure of Islamic thought is in many ways reared on the interpretation and reinterpretation of a very narrow slice of time in light of new historical and intellectual contexts. Hence, the mere fact that attempts at a comprehensively Mormon society were confined to a comparatively short period does not mean per se that an attempt at the kind of conversation that I would like to see is predestined to failure.”

    Interesting point, Nate. However, that “narrow slice of time” was nonetheless put to use extensively over a very long period of time. That is, the Islamic world for centuries kept returning to that particular well in order to sustain the Islamic society which existed around them. We have not had a comparable opportunity to make use of the Book of Mormon and the prophets. That doesn’t refute your point, but I think it has to be part of any consideration of the problem.

    “In Islam, authority is entirely centered in the text. Interpretation, however, has anarchic possiblities, so in order to maintain the cohesion of the community, interpretation has been professionalized. In Mormonsim authority ultimately lies in continuing revelation from God. This also has anarchic possiblities. To maintain the cohesion of the community authority is centralized in the prophets. Hence, interpretive sophistication in Islam serves many of the same social purposes as do living prophets. It may be that the fact that we deal with epistemic anarchy institutionaly and charismatically will always leave Mormon thought in some sense stunted (if I can use this term without it having a pajoritive feeling). However, to be honest I suspect that it is really too early to tell.”

    I think you’re right. But Givens’s arguments add an additional consideration to the Mormon construal of community and authority. Is revelation really “centralized in the prophets” in the Mormon tradition? Obviously it is if, by revelation, you mean broad engagements with the world: what we believe, how we dress, how the church functions, etc. Yet it is relatively rare for the prophetic leadership to actually claim that their specific engagements with the world are a product of revelation; I suppose the Proclamation on the Family is considered such, though I’m not sure President Hinckley or anyone else has ever actually claimed the Proclamation was, in fact, a “revealed” document. In any case, the idea of “dialogic revelation” suggests that, in actual everyday practice, revelation has become a fairly ordinary, internalized presence in the life of Mormons. Which would imply that the “control” on epistemic anarchy in Mormon life isn’t institutional, but is actually a function of how we accept revelation as operating (i.e., on a very humble scale).

49. John Mansfield’s note bespeaks an insider’s knowledge of the rationale behind the “socialization” of missionary expenses that I suspect he does not have. It is true that the change did make it possible for taxpayers outside the 10th Circuit to deduct their missionary fund contributions from taxable income, which of course is of greater benefit to those with higher incomes. There were, however, other reasons which I suspect were more compelling.

    During the late 1980’s, stake presidents would get a quarterly listing of all missions in the church and the expected monthly cost of supporting missionaries there. The range from Guadalajara, Mexico (under $70/month) to Anchorage Alaska or Bristol England (over $600) was substantial. Thus the burden on a family or a ward supporting a missionary varied greatly depending on the mission.

    I think it’s likely that the decision to socialize missionary funding was driven by these great inequalities in cost rather than by the tax consequences. Unlinking the cost of a mission from the place a person served frees the missionary department from inserting the financial ability factor into the assignment question.

    Another benefit from the change in missionary funding was to reduce the costs of collection and transmission of funds, and to do away with uncertainty. I remember one elder in the first branch I served in who was forever having difficulties because checks from his family were delayed. Neither the mission president nor the missionary department is in as good a position as the bishop of the home ward to deal with this kind of problem–the current system pushes that problem directly onto the home ward bishop. And, the automatic debit of local unit missionary fund accounts is a pretty low cost way of collecting the funds.

    If you feel that you’re not making a sufficient contribution to defray the actual costs of your missionary son or daughter, you’re free to make additional contributions to your ward missionary fund or the general missionary fund. Don’t let the $400/month cost limit your generosity.

50. “If more Islamic-style legalism is the goal, the place to start would be Physical Facilities”

    Two points in response to this and related criticisms:

    1. First, it is rather unfair to Islamic thought. Legalism in this sense is used as a term of derision denoting a stale and pedantic formalism without real spiritual content. In Islamic thought there is a name for this kind of formalism — taqlid. Set over against this barren traditionalism is the concept of ijtihad, which denotes a whole hearted struggle with God’s word in order to understand His will. There is much to admire in ijtihad and it is unfair to a great and venerable tradition to ignorantly assume that it can be reduced to what it acknowledges to be its own worst elements.

    2. I am not advocating Mormon legalism in the pajoritive sense. I am advocating greater care and attention to what our religion means and what it teaches us about the world, as opposed to purely defensive attempts to prove its truth. I already believe that Mormonism is true. I want to know that that means!

51. Nate,

    We’ve had this discussion before, and again I think the problem is our epistemological foundation on revelation. The scriptures provide some central truths that orient us in the universe, but constellations (connecting the stars) are always socially constructed. Imagine that one primitive culture looked at a group of stars and saw a bull, while another culture saw a warrior in the same stars. The discrepancy isn’t their lack of sophistication — it’s the nature of the endeavor. Times & Seasons has proven that Mormons are incredibly adept at applying Mormon principles to political theory, economics, morals, law and philosophy, answering your very wish. You might wish the T&S crowd’s application of Mormon principles was more sophisticated and systematic, but I think it is misguided to believe that anyone’s picture, no matter how complex, rightly explains the positions of the stars.

    I believe my political views are derived from Mormonism, especially from the Book of Mormon, but I’ve learned on T&S that a minority of Mormons dispute my view of Mormonism and the conclusions I draw from it. If there’s a *Mormon* view of political theory, how would we even pretend to find it? To give some specific examples:

    _How_ would we learn if Mormonism requires the equal political rights of the sexes?

    _How_ would we learn if Mormonism tolerates making elective abortion legal?

52. I neither claim nor possess any insider information regarding missionary tax schemes. I wasn’t referring to the 1991 change in mission funding; I was referring to the series of memos in the years preceeding the change instructing members on how to finesse the money missionaries use to sustain themselves into a charitable contribution. I could go on about why I have problems with that, but this doesn’t seem like the place to do so.

    I notice that since one of the Book of Mormon’s core purposes is “the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ,” it would seem to be stuck on a threshold question.

53. “And on many things, we ought to find little Mormon hooks into this or that discussion in the hope that out of the accumulation of such thinking something like Mormon legal thought will emerge.”

    I love this ‘third way’ approach to Mormon thought. Maybe because I”m lazy or maybe because I lack the intellectual chops to do something more systematic.

    Or maybe because, like Nate Oman, I’m a lawyer in a common law country. I’m comfortable with the idea that you answer a lot of little questions first—if I make an arrow from the shoot of a wild tree, can my neighbor take it hunting without my permission? Only if he’s really hungry? Can he take it with my permission? What if I shoot it, and can’t find it? Can my neighbor then use it if found? If so, does he have to return it if I ask him? What if the arrow was damaged and he made repairs? What if I made the arrow from the shoot of a tree someone planted and nurtured?—and then from there to some general theories about property rights, instead of the other way around.

54. Lots of long comments here.

    The argument for Nate’s project seems indisputable to me. IF the Restored Gospel is a revelation of the truth that mankind most needs in our time, then it should speak to every important issue of our time. I won’t take time for citations, but I think that it is a given that latter-day revelation does not distinguish between temporal and spiritual, and that it claims to speak to economic, political, social, etc. subjects as well as those traditionally categorized as “religious.” We should be able to draw insights into many fields from the Restored Gospel. An underlying assumption of such projects would be that Mormonism was either true, or at least that its insights were valid or valuable. Moving to such a level of scholarship represents a maturing of Mormon thought with a view to the benefit the larger world. (Coincidentally such efforts could rebound to the benefit of the apologetic effort as a fruit by which the value, if not the veracity, of Mormonism could be shown, but that would not be the main thrust.) However, there are certain issues with such projects:

    (1) Their arguments always have to be conditional as subject to new prophetic pronouncement. Arguments would also have to kept non-absolutist to maintain the fraternity of the Saints. These two factors would mandate that the style of the argument be less adamant than is generally customary among scholars.

    (2) We should do it even if the audience is only Mormons. This may limit its utility for professional academics who need professional publication for career advancement, but the fact that the secular world doesn’t yet acknowledge its value is not an argument for not pursuing it. Indeed many schools of thought that have impacted the outside world started as conversations among believers ignored by the larger world. As example would be the neocons in political thought.

    (3) This is part of understanding the scriptures. For example, I simply can not believe that the sole purpose of the complex social and political discussions in the BoM is to convince us of the Book’s historical vaildity, end of story. Surely there is more insight to be gleaned from all of that text devoted to the “non-religious” subjects the Book addresses.

    (4) I suspect that the “non-religious” insights to be gleaned from the Restored Gospel are going to tend to be more practical than theoretical. For example, when Warner Woodworth and I wrote “Working toward Zion,” it was very easy to show how the economic teachings of the Restored Gospel dovetailed with successful practical economic applications such as microcredit or the Mondragon worker-owned industrial cooperatives in Spain. It was much less fruitful on the level of abstract modern theoretical economics (although admittedly neither of us were trained to address abstract academic economic theory.)

    Such projects in no way detract from the project of demonstrating the threshold questions. As I noted, they probably only enhance it. Beyond that, if we really have The Truth, do we not have a Christian obligation to use it in every possible way to benefit mankind, including in scholarly and ‘non-religious’ subject areas?

55. John, et al:

    Granted, the BoM was designed to “convince,” i.e. make a truth claim. However, polling/statistical studies seem to suggest that at least in the U.S., most people are more interested in _meaning_ and _application_ of belief and doctrine than truth claims. Hence, maybe the “convinc[ing]” the BoM is talking can be broadly construed as including work that shows people how the scriptures can have _meaning_ and _application_ in their lives; and this will then lead them to believe in the truth claim aspect.

56. JWL: more eloquently than I…bingo! :)

57. The interpretation of the scriptures is the prerogative of the prophets. If Muslim intellectuals did this for 12 centuries it just shows how they are an apostate religion relying on the arm of flesh. When Jesus Christ comes to rule and reign in the Millenium he will tell his prophets how to run society. Only then the prophets will call upon intellectuals if they need to. But I don’t know that Joseph and Brigham did so I doubt it. Until called upon Mormon intellectuals can cool their heels and serve in the place they’re called to.

58. Aaron: Have you been endowed by those with proper authority to instruct others in the Church as to the scope of their callings and/or their duties vis-a-vis the prophets?

    I didn’t think so.

    Since you are speaking as one without authority, why should I pay any attention to what you say at all? Answer: You will have to offer some sort of an argument in support of your position. If it is a good argument, I might be persuaded, but despite the ethereal eloquence of your five lines of prose, that hasn’t happened. In the mean time I will let my bishop instruct me as to my proper calling.

59. Aaron, while interpretation of the scriptures in a definitive way for the entire church is the prerogative of the prophets, scriptures are for the most part left to personal interpretation on a regular basis — are you saying you don’t engage in that behavior?

    Further, I think your comment ignores the interplay between brethren and church intellectuals. Do you really think the Brethren ignored all of Hugh Nibley’s writings, for example? Do you believe that all inspiration is given to church leaders in some sort of intellectual vacuum? That strikes me as naive.

60. Whoa. I’m not saying your going to get zapped like the guy who steadied the ark. I’m just saying its probably a waste of time when the Lord will reveal such things when the time comes. Because anything we dream up will be superceeded their are probably more productive uses of time and effort to build the kingdom.

    Steve. Peter says no scripture is of private interpretation. God is a perfect being and hence a perfect communicator. His meaning is perfectly plain to those who are in tune.

    I do think the Brethren mostly ignored Nibley’s writings. If they needed something from him I’m sure they gave him an assignment or asked to speak with him. Obviously their time is too valuable to wade through his mountains of speculation.

61. “I do think the Brethren mostly ignored Nibley’s writings.”

    Not knowing the minds of the Brethren, obviously the only evidence that can be adduced in regards to this matter is probably circumstantial. That being said…I think the evidence we do have would suggest that Aaron is, unfortunately, correct.

62. Nibley was only an example. There are plenty of intellectuals who have the ear of the Brethren. Now, whether or not they actually influence policy/doctrine is an entirely separate and unclear issue…

63. Aaron: Who says “Peter says”? You? Doesn’t that prevent _your_ point as being just yet another _private interpretation_?

64. Lyle. The New Testament says Peter says. 2 Pet. 1: 20

65. “Peter says no scripture is of private interpretation. God is a perfect being and hence a perfect communicator. His meaning is perfectly plain to those who are in tune”

    This statement was manufactured by a troll I trow.

66. Aaron: Almost, but not quite, touche. However, you err because he doesn’t say “scripture,” the verse says “prophecy.” So, the NT doesn’t have your back on that one. Further, your application can never be anything but private interpretation; unless you have a legit solution to the post-modern problem that you are hoarding. ;)

67. I have always like Richard Cracroft’s use of the “no private interpretation” phrase: “Since no scripture is of private intereprtation, I am going to interpret it publicly.”

    Sounds like a good motto for a blog….

68. I’ve spent the past couple years working on a manuscript for one chapter of a parenting book (not yet published) that attempts to do this–apply the scriptures (& GA statements) to my specific discipline (childbirth education). As LDS parents and professionals have reviewed my various drafts, I have been surprised at how this type of specific application riles many. How dare I extrapolate and apply scripture to this “mundane” endeavor!

    I get the same response when I “bear testimony” in a very specific and application/insight-based way, rather than by using the traditional formula and verbage. (An attempt to place content over form.) I understand the need for shared vocabulary, but when it is seldom explained, it starts to lose its meaning. I so wish that even in the realm of the threshold issues that people would move beyond mere paroting and into meaning and application.

    For some reason, response has been much more positive to this same approach when teaching Gospel Doctrine. Perhaps there is more time to explore a specific application-based question in greater depth there (if that is how the instructor chooses to spend the time)? Perhaps the “authority” of a calling to present and explore applications?

    Though I’m talking about the practical rather than intellectual realm (church discussions rather than scholarly exchanges or publications), I think everyone who participates at the ward and stake level has an impact on the discourse at this level.

69. I believe that the difference between the Muslim experience and the LDS approach can be explained by the difference ib approaches to missionary work. As a general rule, Muslims don’t argue for the rational superiority of their view or attempt to prove through rational argumentation. Rather, they have either relied on cultural affinities (e.g., blacks in the United States) or historically have imposed their religion through coercion and force of war. It isn’t really relevant whether one’s religion is rational or what it means if it is imposed through fear and coercion. On the other hand, the LDS experience immediately placed it in an environment where it has been tested in the fire of persecution and challenge. We are light years behind in thinking about the meaning of the Restoration. It is all that we can do to get missionaries into foreign countries or to Boise for that matter. It is time to start the discussion. However, the most important factor is that all of our leaders or essentially business leaders with no call to think about the gospel or what it means but merely to live it and slog through the best they can. We are really poor at theology and thinking through the revelations of the Restoration in my view.

70. Adam: “I’m a lawyer in a common law country. I’m comfortable with the idea that you answer a lot of little questions first—if I make an arrow from the shoot of a wild tree, can my neighbor take it hunting without my permission?…[etc.]—and then from there to some general theories about property rights, instead of the other way around.”

    The continuing analogy to legal thought seems to put the focus upon what we are actually talking about when we talk about “little Mormon hooks”. Are we talking about the basic doctrines of the gospel? Scriptural narratives? Examples from Mormon history? Current practices and policies of the church? Uniquely Mormon Christology? We might readily say “Yes!” to this list of alternatives, but I still think that we would then need to acknowledge that these different kind of things ‘hook into’ philosophy, political theory, law, literary criticism, etc. in different ways. Take the field I’m most familiar with, political theory. Mormon scriptural narratives, doctrinal teachings, and Christology may lead us in the direction of certain alteratives in political theory rather than others. But much more immediately and concretely, the actual kingdom of God on earth happens to exist within actual political communities. We seem to have real duties as members of each, in addition to a different kind of (religious) duty to make the coexistence between the two good and effective, or pleasing in the sight of God (e.g. it seems we should neither refrain from telling the world that its ways are bad, nor bring down the wrath of the temporal authority upon the church needlessly). This second kind of (“existential”) hook is more than mere doctrinal material lying around wating to be applied to certain academic questions–it’s a starting point for political theology at which Mormons seem to find themselves almost automatically. These natural starting points seem to me to be where we could most rigorously begin to answer “little questions first”, and the place where Mormon thought would find the energy to sustain big projects.

    Incidentally, in Islamic thought Abu Nasr tried to develop a kind of philosophical theology out of the Islamic practice of kalam (dialectical theology or apologetics). The idea was that since Muslims already found themselves trying to defend the “opinions of the lawgiver” to non-believers, kalam should found itself on rational, universal principles which would be acceptable to non-believers. While I’m not recommending something exactly like this, the strategy seems sound. My idea is that if Mormon thought is going to be authetically Mormon, it will do more than take seriously Mormon doctrines and practices; it will gravitate toward those questions and problems which are most pressing for us as a people and church.

71. Nate, Islam was not concerned arguing for Mohammad, because early Islam converted with the sword. If you’d gladly welcome the return of brutal, pre-mediaeval religious warfare, then you can comfortably put away the arguments about Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the truth of the church that you find distasteful. Otherwise, you’ll just have to bravely endure.

    Aaron B. Cox, you creep me out when you go on like that about revelation and authority.

72. I haven’t read all 71 of the above responses but the conversations seems to have gone in new directions (which is not a bad thing). However I would like to go back to resonses #6 and #7, if possible.

    1. It seems to me that the church meetings are filled with many members celebrating literal faith as expressed by Nate and Lyle. Maybe even 95% or greater.
    2. It seems to me that the ranks of the less active are filled with doubters in the literal historicity of every degree. And a surprizing number still active, on the back row and even those rarely in more responsible positions are closet doubters and metaphorists.
    3. It seems to me that both of these groups have a tendency to demonize each other.
    4. I believe that the metaphorists have much of value to give. They are not inherently evil. Of course the true believers are the back bone of the church.

    So although I am not asking anyone to give up literal belief or knowledge, I wonder if we could have more tolerance and even respect for those who try to believe but not as sucessfully and try to contribute even if they do not have the same burning testimonies.

    I know from experience that in my ward the Bishop calls only the most zealous believer to any position of responsibility and with much less if any regard of their ability otherwise. Extremely talented and capable leaders and teachers are marginated if they have the slightest free-thinking tendencies. What are they afraid of?

    Who exactly is stuck on constantly emphasizing history over results?

73. Blake and Miranda: It is a common misconception that Islam spread conversions by threatening death to those that did not convert. This is not really true. In the 7th and 8th centuries, Islamic warriors burst out of Arabia and ended up conquering much of the territory from Spain to India. However, once they conquered the territory they did not require conquered people to convert. Indeed, there was a very serious question of whether or not a non-Arab could even be allowed to convert to Islam. (I am no expert here, but my understanding is that it had to do with the fact that God’s word was incarnated in the Koran, which was in Arabic, and hence — so the argument went — was beyond the understanding of non-Arabs.) To be sure, non-Muslim’s were placed under certain civil disabilities but by contemporary standards these were very mild and tolerant, and were balanced by the fact that non-Muslim’s were exempt from military service. The process of Islamicization of the conquered territories was much more gradual than the conquest itself. For example, Egypt, which was essentially a Christian country when it was occupied by the Arabs, gradually converted and it was several generations before Islam became the dominant religion among the population, and even today the pre-Islamic Christianity of Egypt survives in the Copts. I don’t want to sugar-coat the history of Islam, but the vision of fanatical Arab warriors telling people to convert or suffer extermination is basically a western myth. Indeed, in some cases conversions flowed in the opposite direction with Muslims gradually converting their non-Muslim conquerers, as in the case of the Monguls and the Turks.

    My understanding is that the key to Muslim apologetics is the Qua’ran itself. The claim is that the Qua’ran is such a fabulously beautiful and miraculous book that it becomes, in effect, self-warranting. Since the scripture braught forth through Mohommed is self-evidently divine, he was God’s prophet and the rest of Islam follows a fortiori.

74. Mike: How do I celebrate ‘literal’ faith? I thought my comments were suggesting that actions; and not necessarily belief/truth-based arguments, would be more effective in missionary and retention/perfecting the saints work?

75. Nate,
    From what I know about Islamic history (regrettably little),
    your characterization of the spread of Islam is accurate. After
    invasion, Muslims occupied the top governmental positions but left the
    rest of the conquered peoples’ infrastructure, including schools,
    churches, and most of the government, intact. What’s more, the Koran
    specifically enjoins “No compulsion in matters of religion.”
    Religious tolerance was especially good in Spain (the area I do know a
    little about), where the common “People of the Book” (Christians and
    Jews) were treated better under their Muslim overseers than under
    their erstwhile Goth oppressors.

    So it appears that the thrust of earlier posts crediting the sword,
    not suasion, for the astonishing spread of Islam, is perhaps narrow.
    But clearing up these details does not refute the posters’ ulterior
    premise: Islam’s threshold questions [ (1) Allah’s existence, and (2)
    Muhammad as his messenger] were not central to its rapid spread. This
    is so because the suasion by which the masses were converted wasn’t
    the meek ‘let me bear you my testimony’ kind of suasion. Consider the
    following enticements that awaited sensible converts to Islam in the
    7th and 8th centuries:
    1) for non-Muslim bureaucrats, an increase in power and security under
    their Muslim superiors,
    2) for businessmen, advantages in trade as the privileges in terms and
    concessions enjoyed by Muslims within their global trade network were
    extended to converts,
    3) for intellectuals, legitimacy for their ideas, and, of course,
    5) for those willing to take up the sword, the promise of a
    comfortable living through plunder.

    (As you already mentioned, the burden of the poll tax was offset by
    the fact that non-Muslims were not required to fight in the Islamic
    army, so let’s leave that one out.) Could the above incentives have
    led those unpersuaded of Muhammad’s divine calling to recite the
    one-line profession of faith, the shahada, and thereby gain admittance
    into the Islamic brotherhood? Sure. So Islam, during its first few
    hundred years, could be relatively unconcerned with truth-claims about
    its origins? Yup. Has this been a critical factor in Islam’s rich
    literary corpus, and one reason they got off first base and treated
    subjects beyond the threshold? I think so.

    Mormons, on the other hand, offer a 10% reduction in income and
    extended working hours–hardly great temporal incentives to join. To
    be fair, there are benefits in networking and friendship that
    an unconvinced convert might secure, but the promised and effective
    benefits of church membership are largely spiritual; and to cash in on
    these, you’ve got to believe those pesky threshold claims.

    So when will we get off first base and engage the deeper meaning of
    our scriptures and unique doctrine, leaving aside questions of
    historicity and legitimacy? It’s a question of the company we’re
    keeping. Among the gentiles and new converts, we should know nothing
    “save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:2) In our spare
    time, when we’re not proclaiming the gospel or fulfilling our church
    callings or taking care of our families or earning our bread, we can
    indulge in conversation with firm believers that transcends the milk
    and gets to the meat. My prediction: it will have to wait for the
    Millennium.

76. Thank you all !

    As a seeker, I have throughly enjyed the open and thought provoking give and take here among (apparently) a group of staunch Mormons. My first exposure to the LDS faith was very negative – I’ll go no further than to be fair and say that my experiences of living as a Catholic in the Salt Lake Valley were probably no different than any “non-believer” living in the hot bed of any major religion. One of my guiding truths is “Ye shall know them by their deeds.” and that, coming from working for a truely beautuful person who (happens?) to be Mormon, is what has led me recently to start attending the Sacrament meetings at a local stake. Several times each Sunday I hear “And I bear my testamony that …”. I always want to scream out: “Can’t you sound more convincing? DON’T tell me what you believe, TELL ME WHY! And use your own words!” If everybody expects me to be a parrot, I am afraid I will never be admitted to the LDS faith even though I see many wonderful aspects of living the Mormon life and as I read through the Book of Mormon, the D&C, and Ensign magazine, I often find myself saying, “Yeah, they nailed that one right on the head.” So, you see, you intellectuals have reinforced the fundamentals for a seeker.

    Off to chase some more links …

    God Bless ya’ll,
    Ed

77. I have split this thread. Is that like splitting hairs? Appologies to the Islam discussion…

    Lyle: How does one celebrate literal faith? That is a good question. I think it is a deeper question than I realize the more I think about it. I don’t think I did a very good job of it when I was young and overzealous and trying to do many good works. The fireballs among my friends at church are not either. I am like Ed and consider myself more and more a seeker than a having found it finder.

    Maybe I am the only person who has gone through this cycle. Here it is for me.
    1. Ignorance
    2. Comprehension of concepts
    3. Simple Faith
    4. Increasing assurance from spiritual experiences or life experiences, or logic
    5. More comprehension, but of paradox and inconsistances and dissonance
    6. Personal tragedies that don’t make sense
    7. Faith/Doubt -Two sides of the same coin
    8. Senility, (just setting in) which brings apathy and peace

    What I seem to find at church is many people stuck in the first 3-4 stages, who are often loud and demanding of others, who are into lots of rules and easily impressed by church positions, who see the world in black and white without many colors and who can not distingush the maturation of religious experiences into directions they are not aware of.

    As far as missionary work goes, it goes both ways. You can drive people out. When I study the ward roster, I find many many more people who have quit coming, than the expected total number of new baptisms for the next decade. We have 20 people who get up to the pulpit the first Sunday and declare many things are literally true, with perhaps a 100 in the audience who seem to mostly agree, (who knows what they really think) and close to 1000 who are not there. Sour grapes are fruits also.

    With our current retention problem one would think we might stop and consider if there is anything out of order with the way we are doing things instead of blaming collectively all those who left. Just a thought.

    What seems like a paradox is that we are told to study and gain knowledge and wisdom. But then we are told to have the faith of a child. I haven’t figured this one out yet. I think it was Voltaire who said that the end result of reason was chaos. It seems that those who don’t study much have fewer issues come up and it is easier to just follow the leaders along blindly. They soon find themselves cursed with leading.

    I have found that when most Mormon people move beyond literal faith they leave. I would like to figure out how to keep the Mormon faith alive for them even if they have really serious doubts of a literal nature. I do not see the church as a country club for those in the fast lane to their celestial glory. I see it as a hospital, and faith problems are parallel to heart problems in the medical world. Central. Those with literal faith may not have these kind of “heart” problems, but they have others. Where is the CCU (coronary care unit) in this church?

    I can only come back to genuine empathy. If you care enough about some one to leave them alone and not inflict your opinion on them, when they really don’t want to hear about it. And this makes most provocative and stimulating questions hypocritical, including this one. Appologies now to the non-Islam portion of this thread.

    Peace brothers and sisters, peace. (John 20:19)

78. Mike: As I mentioned earlier, I am not LDS, but I beg you – please, please have faith in your religion. I’m just a simple guy with a HS education, big ears, wide open eyes, and enough years to tell you that you have the best I’ve come across yet. You touched on the secret to a lot of your answers with your paradox re. learning vs. having the faith of a child. Now I’m not real strong on scripture (a Catholic, after all ;-] ),but I always thought that one was: “Be ye as little children.”

    I might get a few folks riled up here by not toeing the line, but that’s ok. I’ve been called a nonchalant Catholic – except by the Episcopol ministers who call me sacrilegious. I strive to live without too much concern for society’s expectations and will always question authority until I am certain that it IS authority over me and my life. If I may, I’ll borrow your format and make a little list:
    God the Father
    Jesus, Son of God
    Created in His likeness
    Be ye as little children
    Ask, and ye shall recieve

    “So, Abba Daddy, I’m your confused little boy. Can you please have Brother Jesus clarify a few things for me so that I may grow up to be like you?”
    I truly believe, Mike, that our Heavenly Father wants us to know Him on a very personal level and love and respect him just as we would the very best of earthly fathers – and go crying to Him when we fall of the bike and skin our knee. And also to approach Him with extreme love, gratitude, and much pride when we can show Him: “Look, Daddy, I did like you wanted and studied real hard and sure enough, here’s my Diploma!” “Please can we sit under the mango tree and discuss what I should do next because I now know enough to know I don’t know enough. Please help me.” So, He wants us to study hard and learn. But He won’t do the lessons for us – He’ll always be there for us when we need help understanding the big words, and He’ll correct our homework for us, but He won’t take the test for us. He already had Brother Jesus do that once to show us how and now we have to strive to always follow His lead and at every fork in the road, stop and ask “What would Jesus do here?” Just as not studying and just follow the leaders is not the best way, I think the intellectual has a tendency to pull everything apart until he has a handful of atoms to study. Seek balance.

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