I’m certainly not in the least interested in critiquing someone’s testimony. That to me seems fundamentally wrong. I’m more just interested in this post with how we speak about it. That is my focus is more on the semantics. Although the aspect of remembering as it is tied to a testimony seems undeniably interesting.

In day to day life we say we know things we aren’t certain of. It seems erroneous to expect religious knowledge to be different.

Rob, you realize when you make that statement you’re only speaking of yourself, which makes your knowing assertion about what others know more of a falsehood than the truth-knowers you’re writing about.

Case in point, before I had a profound experience* I will not share in public or private, I would have exactly agreed with your statement and suggestion that when others say “know” they really mean believe. But now I see that was a reflection of myself in their shoes (“surely they don’t know,” we say, “they just strongly believe our hope it, like me”).

*I won’t share the experience, but the events leading up to the experience occurred exactly how the prophets testify: living faithfully, temple, tithing, significant sacrifice for others (financially and time), scriptures, prayer in heart always, magnifying your callings, turning away from unrighteous distractions in “free time” with uplifting hymns or conference, looking to the Lord’s servants as every word from God, feasting on their words (I used to hate that phrase) to the point of voraciously reading and listening to not only their words but the words of those that the apostles themselves look to in becoming who they are (scriptures, older authorities), not disputing their words while asking and pondering hard questions from a faithful perspective over a decade and continually praying and seeking and pondering earnestly over them while in the temple. The short way of describing that might be to “live a consecrated life”.

After having “done” all that (it’s not a checklist to be completed, but just an attempted description of a lifestyle) I had an experience in the midst of a direct question-focused prayer too sacred to share.

So, I came to the conclusion from my own experience that I can’t so easily discount what others say they “know”, especially if they appear to be living and acting in a way the prophets continually exhort us to. How can I discount others so easily when I myself claim to be the recipient of knowledge in exactly the way church authorities and scripture says we’ll get it?

At the same time, I can see that those who are advocating a more modern progressive approach to the gospel are simply and tragically ‘doing it wrong’ (this doesn’t mean they’re wrong on service, immigration, placing others first etc) but just that when they even gently attempt to line up in soft opposition to the leading authorities of the church (recent baptism, marriage, morality, proper role of government, etc) they are divorcing themselves from the apostle taught method that brought me to my own revelation. Yes we can say we just follow different paths and that’s OK, but when my experience just happened to be (to the best of my ability) mirroring what the apostles talk about all the time, I can’t dismiss the fact that many faithful members are nevertheless “doing it wrong”.

I would say that the Church isn’t just the sum of leaders beliefs and actions. But that’s really getting far afield now. If that’s what you meant earlier my apologies for misunderstanding.

When people say something is true in our culture typically (although not always) they are simply reflecting common usage in this modern era of true. So I certainly agree there. We can debate what is or isn’t official doctrine of course. I think it ends up being a little fuzzy when one looks closely. Even with dogmatic examples like McConkie.

“The Church, an inert object, doesn’t really “do” anything.”

The church is a social organization with stated aims and beliefs. It is not an inert object. The tent peg analogy just doesn’t work.

“when the Church comes up short, it isn’t the organization’s fault. It’s generally the fault of some leader…”

The church is the sum of its leaders’ beliefs, actions, and positions. To say that the LDS church came up short is to say that the LDS leaders came up short. It is one thing if only one or a couple of leaders said misleading information. But for a sizable percentage of the highest ranking LDS leaders to repeatedly say misleading information is the fault of the organization.

“It’s just that I think you are relating them in ways I’m not sure are correct by neglecting the difference between a claim and inferences from that claim or the difference between articulating or presenting a claim as contrasted with why we believe a claim.”

You really lost me with this sentence. To reiterate, I’m not making a case for the origins of LDS doctrine, I’m trying to say what the best representation is of how LDS leaders see and explain the origins of LDS doctrine/truth.

1) When LDS leaders say something is true, they mostly mean true in the sense that it really exists or reflects reality. Joseph is prophet because he really communicated with god, the church is true because god really gave John the Baptist the Aaronic priesthood and Peter, James, and John the Melchizedek Priesthood who actually appeared to Joseph Smith to give him those priesthoods (these claims of apparition are not meant metaphorically in the least). When the leaders say the church is true, they also mean that contains correct teachings about the nature of god and what is needed to be saved.

2) LDS leaders claim that all doctrinal truths taught in the LDS church have come from divine revelation to Joseph Smith and subsequent prophets. They do not claim that the doctrinal truths are coming from another religious tradition. They claim that Joseph Smith restored by revelation true information about god and salvation that had been lost. While they may occasionally reference quotes and ideas of other non-LDS thinkers, they do not point to them as sources of truth/doctrine that the LDS church does not already contain.

Brad (various) Rereading my comments, I think those distinctions are what I’m after. I think we have historically found truth in many places including religious truths. How those get grounded and accepted though really differs. The reason I think you dismissed the use of Lewis is that I think individual brethren have gotten ideas from Lewis. It’s just that they don’t say they believe they are true because Lewis wrote them. So I think that epistemological issue of what grounds of justification apply to a belief are unrelated with how we discover or even initially believe a truth. I’d add a second point of what counts as a religious belief. So for instance I think among Mormon intellectuals (including GAs) most believe the Book of Mormon took place in mesoAmerica. Is that a religious belief? If so, it certainly it came from non-revelatory sources. However for it to be justified (barring some discovery of unambiguous Nephite evidence) requires something else.

Regarding Lewis, you acknowledge him for articulation but it seems like you want to have other people as a source for doctrine. So I think I read you correctly. The problem is that even if one finds truth in an other tradition one has to discern that it is truth. So you are (to my mind) conflating issues of discovery with issues of justification. Even if someone thinks they’ve discovered a truth in an other tradition whether correctly or incorrectly it has to be grounded in communication with God. Joseph Smith was a great example of that as he studied Hebrew and Greek and apparently in Nauvoo read reasonably widely.

My issues are not so much that your claims don’t sit well. As I said I think on a lot we agree. It’s just that I think you are relating them in ways I’m not sure are correct by neglecting the difference between a claim and inferences from that claim or the difference between articulating or presenting a claim as contrasted with why we believe a claim. I think there are solid important reasons to keep those distinct.

“I do not believe the LDS truth claim is that it holds all truth, or for that matter, all the truth any given individual might need in order to be saved.”

You are completely misrepresenting the LDS leaders’ teachings about truth. It specifically claims that it contains all of the truth that a person needs in order to be saved. I have acknowledged that it claims not to hold all truth, so that is beyond the point.

It appears that you generally agree with my points. I don’t find them particularly controversial. But you appear to keep pushing back and trying to nuance them, which suggests that they do not fully sit well with you.

On a more epistemological thought. The worst thing that can happen to a culture pursuing truth is an echo chamber. Sameness eventually reduces knowledge. This is why, imo, the LDS print industry has become a wasteland of thought. We write in circular patterns quoting Ensign articles and manuals endlessly. There is a sort of de facto attitude of knowledge and truth that has resulted; it has not reached into the highest heavens nor has it sojourned to the lowest hells, but rather it has circumambulated around itself. The end result of this is a “gospel-speak” that brings weariness for some and fundamentalism for others. In the end, without breaking out of this pattern, even the parables of Jesus become a faithful and zealous decay of an idea.

Truth is revitalized by otherness. Our understanding of ourselves, god, and the universe is enriched and enlivened by otherness. Yes, falsehood also comes that way, but falsehood comes from sameness as well. Living revelation is predicated on the idea that there is much more to know. How that revelation is received can often be dependent on a network of relations and knowledge utterly dependent on “outside sources.” For the truth seeker, and for the one yearning for salvation, every truth is on the table, and even every tradition claiming to have truth.

I don’t think either of us can convince the other, so I will respectfully just say we disagree and leave it at that. I personally believe in the LDS truth claim of priesthood and revelation, just as I personally know that any person or organization that declares they have all truth is absurd, and should not be trusted. For me, the LDS Church claims to have just enough truth to make it work (aka the priesthood keys and ordinances and knowledge of God). I do not believe the LDS truth claim is that it holds all truth, or for that matter, all the truth any given individual might need in order to be saved. Some people, in order to properly understand the truth claims of the LDS Church, have to travel a road where pieces of truth on the outside are required to comprehend the saving truths the LDS offers. The road is straight and narrow not because it has been correlated into a unified truth. The road is straight and narrow because it carries only two feet at a time, and the individual who seeks out God will find God, though the path may be far outside our own radars.

Well, god bless. You can respond and I will read, but I think I will end the debate here. Besides, its time for my daily Buddhist style meditations. “)

On the tent peg analogy, the point that the tent peg is an inert object and doesn’t “do” anything is a great point. And most often when a tent peg doesn’t “do” what it should, it’s not because the tent peg isn’t “true.” It’s because the tent user pounded the peg into weak soil or put it in the wrong place. There’s maybe a good lesson here for all of us. The Church, an inert object, doesn’t really “do” anything. We, as members and leaders, use the Church for various purposes, and when the Church comes up short, it isn’t the organization’s fault. It’s generally the fault of some leader, who, perhaps, declares a doctrine (such as that blacks can’t be ordained to priesthood offices) that causes the organization to not serve its purpose. Of course, this happens all the time, but we’re afraid to suggest that a leader (especially a general Church leader) could possibly make a mistake, and so we go through all sorts of contortions trying to explain away obvious errors made by humans in their use of the Church as a tool of salvation. We really need to get over this whole cultural program of de facto infallibility that we have put in place.

Brad (22) I don’t think you are keeping clear what members properly mean when they say the Church is true versus what they think are implications of that belief. This is leading you to conflate different issues. Unfortunately I’d agree that type of conflation isn’t uncommon in the church, so I think you have a bit of a point. But I think the error is really just a logical one of keeping inferences from a claim separate from the claim itself.

It seems true at least some members think most of what the brethren present is true. Heck, I think that. I don’t think that’s what people mean by the Church is True – as evidenced by most people actually not being thrown off when something isn’t true that they believed. Now of course some do. But really I think that’s quite a different issue. Further I think the people making that connection are simply wrong. But I suspect you and I differ greatly over how common that is.

My point of evidence is that few seemed to have cared when Bruce R. McConkie said to stop believing the things he’d said about blacks and the priesthood and that he was wrong. While I was rather young at the time, I just don’t see people particularly caring that somethings they’d held as true (largely on the basis of McConkie’s writings) weren’t. Although I think it was very wise in the early 90’s for the Church to start drawing better boundaries, being more conservative in what was presented, and doing what they could to drop the significance of McConkie’s writings as normative Church theology.

To grace, I don’t think winning God’s grace applies either. We can accept/use God’s grace but it’s always being given and is always already given before we take hold of it. This isn’t a small issue but is actually very important.

What you’re trying to say is that most people when they say “the Church is true” means “everything said by leaders in the church is true.” I just think that a false claim.