First in a 2 part guest post by David Clark
If I had to give one piece of advice to LDS members who are in the midst of discovering the uncorrelated aspects of Mormon history and doctrine it would be “Be Positive, Be Christian.”
By “Be Positive” I don’t mean try to achieve certainty, I mean seek after that which uplifts and edifies. The journey of discovering uncorrelated Mormonism is fairly standard. People tend to cite the same intellectual issues as being the most shocking: Book of Abraham, polygamy (usually they mean Nauvoo style polygamy), Book of Mormon issues (DNA, anachronisms, etc.), conflicting First Vision accounts etc. They also tend to cite the same social issues: blacks and the priesthood, women and the priesthood, the social aspects of polygamy, etc. Thirdly, they tend to experience the same set of emotions: shock, betrayal, anger, and so on. Finally, the conclusion to the process is almost always the same, the discoverer is left believing much less than they did previously. Whether this means a more liberal form of Mormonism, NOM-ism, or leaving the church, they all share something similar; they have lost a lot and gained very little in the process, at least in the way of belief. Many, perhaps most, will say they have gained something in the process, something very important to them, but I think it is undeniable that for whatever was gained, the price has been very high.
The common theme in the journey is that it is overwhelmingly negative. It’s a continuous process of finding out negative facts, feeling negative emotions, and experiencing loss. I think this is one of the biggest reasons that people turn from Mormonism to agnosticism or atheism. The process is one of seeing and experiencing religion and belief in an unbelievably negative way, thus it’s hardly surprising that people want nothing to do with something so negative.
By “Be Positive” I mean seek to inject something positive into the process. But I don’t mean trying to turn lemons into lemonade or to perform mental gymnastics seeking to turn the negative into the positive. I don’t think those strategies are helpful because they tend to breakdown and increase cynicism and negativity in the long run. If after doing a thorough investigation of an issue it still remains a sore spot, I think it is best to accept that and move on (and “moving on” is going to mean different things to different people in this situation).
I think that positive aspect which can be injected into the process is the second part of my advice, “Be Christian.” If you look at the litany of complaints people have in discovering uncorrelated Mormonism, the complaints almost always involve Mormon distinctives, rarely do they involve generic Christianity or more abstract theological and philosophical issues. Since by and large people don’t seem to complain about those things, I suggest looking there for the positive.
In my own experience, doing this was very helpful. I didn’t do this on purpose, it was all rather accidental. At the time I was teaching Old Testament to early morning seminary students. Mormon produced materials on the Old Testament are pretty scarce so I had to go out and read material that was produced for audiences other than Mormons. I found it fascinating and have continued to study this material, it is my main hobby. But in doing this, I also inadvertently discovered how other religious people have read the Bible and thought about God. The end result was that along with experiencing the losses one naturally encounters in discovering uncorrelated Mormonism, I also discovered many positive thinkers and ideas. Ultimately, I decided to convert to orthodox/mainstream Christianity.
I don’t pretend to think that this is the only outcome of this process. However, I still think it would be healthy for doubting Mormons to engage in similar study. For those who decide to stay it will give them more understanding of their Christian brothers and sisters, plus it may give them tools to understand and change their own church. I think it would even help those who eventually become atheists. There is a very strong strain of anti-religious sentiments among some ex-Mormon atheists, usually coupled with a lack of understanding of other religions. Learning more about how other religious people think and behave would go a long way to softening or eliminating this sentiment among secular/atheist ex-Mormons. Given the strong tends towards secularism in the US, the presence of secularists who understand and can see the position of religious persons can only be positive for both Mormons and Christians.
Read Part 2 here.
That’s the rub isn’t it? Certainly in the specific they often involve Mormon distinctives, the best anti-Mormon apologetics are compiled by evangelicals, but abstracted a bit they often apply more to generic Christianity than to Mormonism.
Lets take your list:
Book of Abraham Well obviously there is a problem that in some specific sense the book of Abraham is actually a funeral text about Egyptian gods and not about Old Testament characters. Which means that Joseph Smith was dead wrong in his “translation”. The problem is that similar sorts of attacks can be easily launched against the first half of the Old Testament where there are similar semi-historical events which are also dead wrong from a secular perspective. Starting with the problem that there was no, and could never have been an Abraham in a material sense. There is no evidence for anything like an Abrahamic faith having existed around 1900 BCE. All illusions to Abraham, including those in the Old Testament are similar reconstructions.
Nauvoo style polygamy I don’t understand why this is even a problem. Joseph Smith late in his career seemed to be moving towards some sort of doctrine of group marriage where men and women entered into multiple sealings creating a complex web of overlapping families. This sort of variant sexuality is common among many religions sects in their early days, and there is good evidence for believing it might very well have been common among early Christian sects.
Early Christian sects seem to divided between those that embraced sex magick and those that practiced total sexual rejection. Eventually Catholic doctrines emerged with were “normative” by Roman (but not Jewish) standards. What we see 0 evidence for is any sect at all from early Christianity that supports currently fashionable evangelical / Republican attitudes towards human sexuality.
Book of Mormon issues (DNA, anachronisms, etc.) Which again we see equally with the Old Testament. DNA evidence completely contradicts the idea of an entire race of Jews emerging from one family in the last 2000 years.
conflicting First Vision accounts Conflicting gospel accounts, need I say more?
blacks and the priesthood Considering that Protestants were the ones who organized, ran, staffed and funded the slave trade, and that America’s history of racism basically goes to evangelicals, I don’t see how evangelical Christianity is a help on this issue.
women and the priesthood I don’t know what the issue is on this one,
I certainly agree that the LDS church does a terrible job on these issues. They need to stop trying to be misleading about the problems. Mountain Meadows massacre would be a great one where they could talk about the fact that the Brigham Young was also the secular territorial governor of Utah and as such had to engage the James Buchanan President of the then neighboring United States in a low level armed conflict. I think people are understanding now, especially after Iraq of what it is like in the years before a civil war.
But what I don’t see is how Evangelical Christianity solves the problems is Mormonism in any deep and profound sense. And then it adds a whole host of new problems.
This sort of negativity is exactly the same sort of negativity I see from atheists ripping into Christians on message boards that have nothing to do with Mormonism whatsoever though.
Which suggests to me that this is a problem with the approach completely – not just a matter of “ditch Mormonism and discover positive Christianity.”
It speaks to an approach toward faith that is defective from the word “go.”
The deficiency is that people focus on all the negatives, completely ignore the positives (which, by the way, in Mormonism far outweighs the negatives) learn just enough to be armed with a wealth of negative anecdotes, unflattering data points, and isolated gotcha tidbits, become incredibly upset, and then adamantly refuse to discuss or consider the issue any further – because they’re upset.
That’s a deficiency in your life approach and intellectual approach that is certainly NOT going to be solved by simply becoming an Episcopalian.
Is this directed at me specifically, or at people in general?
I think people feel negatively about a lot of aspects of Joseph Smith’s life whether they are seeking them out or not. David’s post is not really about how people should be seeking out the negative in Mormonism. It’s about what to do if you’ve already found it.
I don’t even remember what denomination you are David.
People in general.
Yes Tim, and my post was that the negativity is not something you can solve ad hoc with a church-swap. It speaks to a defective intellectual approach from the start.
Basically learning just enough to be dangerous, then getting upset, then refusing to listen to or give credence to the counter-arguments because you’re upset, tired, and “don’t want to deal with it.”
I really liked this post, David.
I think a big problem is that the exposure most Mormons have to Christianity comes in the form of antagonistic, super-conservative counter-cult types. And yes, as CD said, once you break down Mormon literalism, conservative Christianity isn’t really a viable option, because the same types of critiques apply.
I think understanding that there are many ways to approach faith that are not so narrow could be very helpful to struggling Mormons. I hope we can continue to legitimize these approaches within our own tradition. Not only will this go a long way toward mitigating the problem in the first place (when you build the inevitability of human error into your worldview, it’s a lot easier to deal with), it will give people the tools they need to sort things through more positively when they are confronted with it.
For now, most of these types of resources are outside our tradition (we have some: Mormon Matters is one that I really enjoy). So in that regard, I agree that studying the way other, less literalistic/rigid Christians view the world can be a great help to a Mormon in faith crisis (it was a big help to *me*, anyway).
Seth, I get what you’re saying, and I agree that “black-and-white-ism” as an intellectual, spiritual, or emotional approach is completely untenable.
But to be fair: don’t you think LDS culture tends to breed it?
David,
Related to this post, how has your approach to tough Mormon issues differed from your approach to tough Protestant or historical Christian issues?
I hope that my approaches are the same. I don’t shy away from the problems in Christianity. I understand that my approach will make me persona non grata to more conservative Christians.
But at the same time, I don’t think that the issues are the same at all. One can draw superficial similarities between issues, as CD Host does above, but I think the similarities rapidly diverge once one starts looking at the data. I realize this opinion probably makes me very unpopular among both Mormons and ex-Mormons. Both groups generally assume that Christian historical and theological claims are no more plausible than are Mormon historical and theological claims.
Christian,
Here is Grant Palmer’s response to your question
http://mormonstories.org/podcast/MormonStories-326-GrantPalmer2Pt3.mp3
Not to belabor the point David, but could you give break down of how at least one of these parallel examples are not similar at all? (ie. conflicting gospel accounts, conflicting first vision accounts) I’m just very curious.
Also, I think the larger point is that with any trust you place in the supernatural, there are going to be gaps. So, if you’re a person of faith throwing stones, you’re very likely operating from a glass house. (not in every case, but in many)
Christian ~ I’m not David, but here’s how I see most of these issues:
Book of Abraham ~ The complaint about the BoA has never been “there are historical problems with the very person of Abraham and a 1900 BCE Abrahamic faith.” Rather, the complaint has been, “the BoA shows that Joseph Smith did not know how to translate ancient documents.” A Joseph Smith who does not know how to translate ancient documents is bad news for Mormonism. There is no parallel between this issue and the issues faced by historic Christianity. None. Whatsoever.
One can make the case that there are historical problems with parts of the Bible (the flood, the creation, the Exodus, etc.). But there is a huge difference between, “your main work of Scripture has some significant historical problems” and “your main work of Scripture is one massive, unsubstantiated historical problem.” For example, there is external historical evidence for at least forty of the people mentioned in the Old Testament (and that’s a conservative estimate). There is external historical evidence for none of the characters unique to the Book of Mormon, or their entire Mesoamerican civilizations.
Besides, Mormons believe in the Bible—usually to the tune of a fairly literal take on its history. Every time you point out a historical problem with the Bible, you create a new historical problem for Mormonism on top of the already existing problems with the Pearl of Great Price, the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants. There is just no reasonable way to say that mainstream Christianity is as poorly off on this issue as Mormonism is.
Finally, I think that mainstream Christianity could theoretically survive almost any historical challenge to any topic in the Bible other than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Can Mormonism survive historical challenges to the Book of Mormon and the restoration of the priesthood? I’m not sure that it could.
Nauvoo Polygamy ~ Joseph Smith married other men’s wives, which is just objectionable in general, but also runs contrary to his own revelation on the subject (D&C 132:61-63). He formed new marriages in secret without telling Emma; again, objectionable in general, and contrary to his own revelation on the matter (D&C 132:61). His methods of acquiring new brides were coercive and he applied them to women as young as 14. He lied to his own wife about his marriages, he lied to most of the members of his church about his marriages, and he lied to the world, claiming to the public that he was a monogamist until his death.
Nauvoo polygamy as practiced by Joseph Smith did not resemble group marriage, nor did it resemble Old Testament polygamy. If it resembled anything, it was adultery.
I see no parallel for mainstream Christians here.
Conflicting First Vision Accounts v. Conflicting Gospel Accounts ~ I’ve never been someone to complain much about the conflicting accounts of the First Vision. However, I think there’s a significant difference between conflicts in accounts from multiple sources over a wide span of years and conflicts in accounts from the same source over a very short span of years. Discrepancies between multiple sources are ordinary and to be expected, especially as time goes on. With Joseph Smith, he contradicted and revised his own account as time went on. This suggests that his account was embellished at best and fabricated at worst.
I don’t regard it as particularly significant that stories of the First Vision as related by others had so many conflicting details. That is more of a parallel to what happened with the Gospel accounts.
(I suppose that the conflicting Gospel accounts could be a more serious problem for someone who holds to a dictation view of biblical inspiration, and maybe even those with a verbal view. But that’s neither David nor me.)
Blacks and the Priesthood ~ How Mormon racism and treatment of slavery compares to Protestant racism and treatment of slavery:
- Protestants were active both in perpetuating and abolishing the slave trade. Mormons were largely ambivalent on the matter. They generally did not encourage slavery, but they tolerated it and did little to oppose it.
- Mormons did away with their racist policies in 1978, after most other denominations had already done as much.
- Mormons have never apologized for their former treatment of blacks. The church claims that it has always opposed racism. Amongst evangelicals, even very conservative fundamentalist organizations like Bob Jones University have apologized for their past racism.
I’ve addressed evangelical Protestant involvement in slavery v. Mormon involvement in slavery in more detail, here.
Women and the Priesthood ~ I’ll keep this short. Some Protestant churches ordain women and allow women to serve as pastors. No LDS wards ordain women or allow women to serve as bishops. If the goal is to treat women as equals and encourage them in higher education and employment, Protestants are ahead.
I give Mormons credit for founding the second territory in the nation to give women the right to vote and for (in the 19th century) encouraging women to seek education and work outside the home. I also give them credit for supporting women’s suffrage in the 20th century. I think LDS theology holds untapped potential for liberating women. Other than that though? It’s pretty much a hard complementarian denomination with some soft complementarian tendencies at the local level. (Seriously, a lot of the material on “women’s roles” available at LDS.org is just embarrassingly outdated.) And it’s not showing any signs of improvement in the near future.
Conclusion: for most of these issues, the ways in which one can ascribe the same or similar problems to Protestantism or mainstream Christianity in general are incredibly limited. It takes significant contortion and torturing of history to say that the problems are the same or worse for other Christians. There are other places where I believe that Mormonism holds advantages over the rest of the Christian world, but these are not it.
Jack, most of the problems with Joseph Smith are just as vague and capable of being argued either way as the problems with the Bible.
For instance – even if you poke a hole in one aspect of Joseph’s BoA translation, you still have to account for all the other myriad of connection points in the work where Joseph Smith absolutely nails it with an almost uncanny degree of accuracy and foresight.
All the critics of the Book of Abraham have ever been able to arguably establish is that Joseph Smith wasn’t innerrant in his writings. But they’ve never even come close to establishing more than that.
In regards to the multiple accounts of the First Vision I think there are two instances in the New Testament that compare. The first is the conflicting accounts of Paul’s conversion in Acts and the second are the (apparent) contradictions in the death of Judas (for the purposes of argument let’s concede that they are contradictions).
If you look at why these contradictions exist, the time in between the writings of the contradictions and the theological impact of the various accounts; they don’t in any way really compare to the multiple First Vision accounts. Some significant and foundational theology is derived from the canonized version of the First Vision. In doctrinal impact it’s on par with the Resurrection.
Tim, that assumes there was serious theological discontinuity in the Joseph Smith accounts.
I say there wasn’t.
Sure, let’s use the example of 4 different Gospels vs 4 different first vision accounts. In my opinion, the 1832, 1835, 1838, and 1842 accounts are the best ones we have because they appear to be the most autobiographical in nature, so I’ll limit my observations to those four accounts. In both cases you have four accounts which differ amongst themselves on historical details. So far, they appear to have similar problems. However, I think a statement of the issues involved is the best entrance point to why I see the issues as different.
The first vision accounts are autobiographical. Assuming the actual event happened in 1820 (which the accounts vary on), they are removed from the event by 12-22 years. They are accounts of a single event happening on a single day. The accounts do not appear to be have literary dependence, or at least the first three do not. The LDS church has chosen to canonize one version of the events and ignore the others. I take these are relatively solid pieces of data and not controversial.
The gospel accounts are biographical and derived from an oral tradition. Assuming Jesus died around 30 A.D. (which the accounts don’t state), they are removed from the last event by anywhere from 35-60 years. They are accounts of multiple events happening across many months or years, depending on the gospel. The accounts have a complex literary dependence (the three synoptics) and a complex literary redaction history (John). The Christian church chose to canonize all of them. I take these as relatively sold pieces of data which scholars of all stripes tend to agree on. The one exception is that some conservative scholars would date the authorship earlier, but tend to be reticent about giving actual dates.
In the case of the first vision you need to account for why a single person changed his story when it was close to the events he was relating and why the story changed a lot in a short period of time. You also need to explian why the LDS church continues to ignore the 1832 account when relating the first vision story. By all the canons of historical research, it is the account that is to be preferred. Since this is autobiographical and it is describing a single event on a single day, you also need to account for why there are so many variances in motivation, what was seen, and what was heard. I’m NOT claiming that the accounts need to be exactly alike, but I do think that some consistency on the basics is to be expected, but is not observed in this case.
Now take the gospel accounts. Differing details and ordering of events is to be expected in an ancient oral culture. Jesus was dead and there was no way to verify the exact details if these stories were told orally prior to being recorded. The expectations of biography in the ancient world simply did not, and could not, expect an exact account which accords with the modern standards of historiography. One of the biggest problems in Synoptic research is not that the gospels vary too much, but that they are too similar. There is a complex sequence of literary borrowing which sheds light on the intentions of the authors and their sources.
Whatever you think of my conclusions on the matter, my main point is that these are different problems, requiring different strategies to resolve the issues. The similarities are on the surface, but disappear once you start looking deeper.
Seth ~ Jack, most of the problems with Joseph Smith are just as vague and capable of being argued either way as the problems with the Bible.
I disagree.
For instance – even if you poke a hole in one aspect of Joseph’s BoA translation, you still have to account for all the other myriad of connection points in the work where Joseph Smith absolutely nails it with an almost uncanny degree of accuracy and foresight.
All the critics of the Book of Abraham have ever been able to arguably establish is that Joseph Smith wasn’t innerrant in his writings. But they’ve never even come close to establishing more than that.
I don’t know what to tell you other than that I’m shaking my head in disbelief. If this is really what you think, then I don’t think you are familiar with the critical material on the Book of Abraham. At all.
In doctrinal impact it’s on par with the Resurrection.
OK then lets look at the contradictions there in the gospels / Acts regarding Jesus’ death and resurrection:
a) Who found the empty tomb?
b) Who did they find at the tomb?
c) Who did the women tell about the empty tomb?
d) Where did the ascension happen?
e) How long after the crucifixion did the ascension happen?
f) Who put the robe on Jesus?
g) What had Barabbas done?
h) Was Jesus questioned by Herod?
i) When did the priests and scribes gather together to question Jesus?
j) Where was Jesus taken immediately after his arrest?
Then of course we have historical contradictions:
a) Matthews wonders like zombies walking the streets that no one else noticed.
b) That no jew would have been anywhere near the foot of a cross.
c) Robbery was not a crime punishable by crucifixion
d) Pilate’s “custom” of releasing a prisoner at Passover.
And I could keep going on the gospels. But the rest of bible has some even worse problems regarding the resurrection, in Greek. Like 1Cor 2:6-10 where Paul uses language consistent with Jesus having been crucified in the lower heavens by daemons (archonite of this aion) (see S. G. F. Brandon (History, Time and Deity, p.167). You wouldn’t use aion to refer to the lifespan of mortals or even the length of time of the Roman empire.
And that is just from the canonical materials. In contrasting various versions of the first vision you are introducing non-canonical materials which would put into question all sorts of issues like whether Jesus was ever crucified and who died on the cross.
The most import example being the Qu’ran 4:156-9: ‘We killed Christ Jesus The son of Mary, The Messenger of Allah.’ But they killed him not, Nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not. Nay, Allah raised him up Unto Himself; and Allah Is Exalted in Power, Wise. And there is none of the people of the book (Jews and Christians) But must believe in him (Jesus) Before his death; And on the Day of Judgment He (Jesus) will be a witness Against them.”
So how exactly are you on firmer ground again?
Jack, I don’t find the Book of Abraham criticisms ultimately convincing.
Learning that what the pictures mean in Egyptian thought was pretty-much irrelevant was a pretty big blow against the criticisms for me.
Seth ~ It’s good to hear that we both agree that Joseph Smith was completely unable to translate Egyptian documents.
I guess you’re right. The death and resurrection didn’t happen. I guess Mormonism isn’t true after all.
I apologize, that was snarky and didn’t really move the conversation forward. All of CD’s “contradictions” have been thoroughly discussed. David gave a short answer as to why they differ in significance if not credibility. If someone is content to believe that the First Vision is worse off or better off than the Resurrection accounts they have the prerogative to believe so.
Jack, I know a particular annoyance of yours is the Mormon who claims, “Christian’s are guilty of that too!” But that’s not what I’m suggesting to David. I’m also not keeping score. I’m well aware that the short history of Mormonism is far more vulnerable to scrutiny than what we call today mainstream Christianity.
My question to David was basically, if MMM is troubling to you, then why not the Crusades? I’m not playing gotcha – sincerely asking. I’m also not claiming they’re the same thing, but similar enough (violence) to give an illustration of how he handles Mormon/HC “issues”.
First off I think we need to separate off first half of the Old Testament (events prior to the Babylonian exile) from those after. And absolutely there is historical evidence for some of the events and some of the people in the Old Testament. The problem is the historical evidence fundamentally contradicts the narrative present in the Old Testament. So you end up with an Old Testament which is historically consistent with a collection of myths and archeology being worked into a fictional narrative about events that could not have taken place.
So for example the bible does a good job of describing Egyptian midwife practice. That still doesn’t overcome the problem that there never was a Hebrew civilization in Egypt. Balaam a seer and a magician who lived in Canaan probably existed, but he probably existed around 800 BCE which puts at least 500 years later than the events described in Numbers. The historical evidence doesn’t support the Old Testament it contradicts it. What it does support is the fact that that the materials in the Old Testament are reworkings of the cultural legends of a Canaanite like people around 600 BCE…. Just as the Book of Mormon is a reworking of the cultural legends of New York people around 1820. Both books describe events from hundreds of years before their authorship that never occurred. The situation is equally problematic.
I think in the late 1830s and early 1840s Joseph Smith was tying Mormonism into an earlier strain of religious thought which is ahistorical. I think you see that in Brigham Young to some extent as well. Many of the ideas of Mormonism exist in religions like Hinduism with no basis in historical events. The LDS church can easily do a 180 on the historicity of The Book of Mormon and the rest of the bible. It is in King Follet not the Book of Mormon where Joseph Smith’s prophetic gifts are fully developed. The revelations in Pearl of Great Price can easily by ahistorical.
As for Christianity (at least the branches that became Catholic Christianity) has always asserted that historicity was critical to the faith “Jesus was really and truly crucified under Pontius Pilate” was how Christianity argued it was not just a Jewish flavored mystery religion. There were alternative branches that pretty much argued that Christianity should just be a Jewish flavored mystery religion. We touched on this a bit in that earlier thread regarding Melchizedek the Dead Sea Scrolls and the ahistorical savior.
I think Joseph Smith had he had another decade or two would have divorced his sect from being a religion based in history. There is no reason the current leadership of the LDS couldn’t continue down the path they were on the 1850s before they turned back.
Christian,
When it comes to the Crusades, there really isn’t much troubling about any of the Crusades except the first and the fourth. Every other crusade was a long succession of crusader knights getting their butts kicked in by the enemy.
The crusaders on the fourth crusade should never have sacked Constantinople. Innocent III should have never accepted the results of the fourth crusade. This was wrong and Christians have paid dearly for this ever since. This event weakened Eastern Christianity and allowed the Turks to take over Byzantine territory. Had this never happened my guess is that there would be several million more Christians in the world today because Turkey and more of the Balkans would still be Orthodox.
The crusaders on the first crusade should never have sacked Jerusalem. They acted horribly and I condemn their actions. I don’t know of any Christians who wouldn’t also condemn their actions.
Having said that, what ramifications do these events have on my beliefs or on the authority of Christians to proclaim the good news? Zilch. Christians are going to behave badly. My job is not to cover it up or defend the bad behavior, but to call on bad behaving Christians to repent. The problem with MMM was that it was covered up, defended, and no one was called to repentance. They just scape-goated John Lee and moved on.
Hi CJ,
Thanks for understanding where I’m coming from. I hope I didn’t sound too annoyed in my response. I certainly wasn’t annoyed with you.
You might be interested in a post I did at MDB, here. I was deep into polemics with another poster who likes to pick on believing Mormons, women and evangelical Christians—pretty much in that order—but I hope it captures the gist of why historical issues tend not to trouble Protestants in the same way they trouble Mormons.
No reason to apologize. I am saying something pretty radical. I think many of the early Christians were middle Platonists and didn’t have a view of history similar to the one you have. Paul being a terrific example. Paul does not slightly disagree with you on the nature of the universe he completely disagrees. You have to brutalize Paul when translating to English to remove the Hellenism that pervades almost every paragraph of his thought.
I don’t however think this middle platonism contradicts Mormonism, at least early Mormonism. I think as Joseph Smith started to feel confident in his role, and had assistance from Luman Walter, his ties to Freemasonry, American Rosicrucians, John C. Bennett and from him the Tree of Sefiroth (Jewish Kabbalistic work which was translated and popular with esoteric religious figures near the end of his life), he started to break free from the KJV tradition of understanding the bible. His tools: Divining Rods, Seer Stones, Ritual Magic, Astrology, Talismans (Jupiter talisman); Magic Parchments and Occult Mentors, magic dagger (Mars dagger)…. pulled him away from
Protestantism year after year.
You see this in his later surviving sermons where he is reading the Old Testament in Hebrew and starting to grasp what it really means. You see this in the symbolism of the temple at Nauvoo temple and even at the Salt Lake city temple. Joseph Smith and to some extent Brigham Young were doing what they claimed to be doing, restoring ancient Christianity, overthrowing the historical accretions of later generations. And the Christianity of the gospels (particularly Matthew and Luke) is later than and contradicts the Hellenistic Judaism / Christianity that Joseph Smith was restoring.
Yes a historical resurrection is one of the things that Joseph Smith had he lived would have gotten rid of. There is a reason died in Romans 6:8 is in the aorist and not simple past tense.
My job is not to cover it up or defend the bad behavior, but to call on bad behaving Christians to repent.
You’re calling dead Crusaders to repent? Do Methodists believe in proxy work?
The problem with MMM was that it was covered up, defended, and no one was called to repentance.
We can hardly credit any of the Crusader Popes for their transparent war mongering, since they had no one to hold them accountable.
Of course, I’m not going tit for tat with you on this. The larger question is how you deal with difficulties in the Protestant narrative. Sounds like you see none.
Well Jack, considering they weren’t exactly “Egyptian documents” in the first place….
But David, what you’re doing with the Crusades is precisely what should have been done with upsetting bits of Mormon history in the first place.
It should have been contextualized, put in the broader historical picture, considered from all the angles, allowed counterpoints, and then conclusions drawn. You’re doing it great with the Crusades, but the same approach needs to be evenly applied to Mormon history.
Well Jack, considering they weren’t exactly “Egyptian documents” in the first place….
/facepalm
It should have been contextualized, put in the broader historical picture, considered from all the angles, allowed counterpoints, and then conclusions drawn. You’re doing it great with the Crusades, but the same approach needs to be evenly applied to Mormon history.
The conclusions that are often drawn when looking at questionable events in Christian history are, “The Christians [and their leaders] were in the wrong.” Mormons have theological reasons for wanting to deny that their leaders are in the wrong, theological reasons that aren’t shared by mainstream Christians (at least, not as far as Christian history is concerned). As things currently stand, the same approach is never going to be evenly applied to Mormon history for that reason.
Actually Jack, you’re selling the historical defense of Christianity short.
The approach is not only to say “the leaders were wrong.”
The approach is also to recognize all the ways in which those who carried out the Crusades were actually RIGHT. How the action actually made a lot of inevitable sense to those who were there. That’s the real challenge of studying history. And, not pointing fingers at anyone here, its something our modern generation is utterly lousy at doing.
Yes, Seth. Thank you for correcting me on how to study Christian history.
Remind me to offer you some pointers on how to file a bankruptcy case.
Did you think the point was invalid?
Jack, your link to the MDB post did not work for some reason. I would be interested in reading it – particularly if you can answer how Protestants can claim a part in “Historic Christianity”, while at the same time disavowing themselves from huge swaths of it. In other words, “We’re part of historical Christianity – except for the bad parts.”
(BTW- I’m not asking this in relation to Mormon history)
My point was not that they were right. My point was that Christians behaved badly on the first and fourth crusade. On the others they either struck deals, disbanded, or were unceremoniously slaughtered. Actually, the worst behavior was in my opinion back in Europe. The crusades indirectly lead to pogroms against Jews and the Albigensian “Crusade” against the Cathars in France.
My main point went unstated. Most people are fairly ignorant of the crusades, and I don’t think it is helpful to talk about them as one monolithic entity. So when CJ asked me to compare the MMM with the Crusades I tried to isolate which parts of the Crusades were the most objectionable to me. It wasn’t to defend their actions, but to try and get history correct.
I deal with difficulties in the Protestant narrative by acknowledging them, trying to avoid them, and working to change them. For example, Protestants have been disunited and schismatic over non-essentials. There is no reason to have the thousands of denominations that exist in the world today. My response was to join a nearby church which mostly reflected my own beliefs, but I do not insist on 100% agreement. I try to curb schism by not being schismatic myself.
Problem #2: Sola Scriptura in combination with modernity leads to phenomena like fundamentalism. This isn’t universal, it seems to be mostly isolated to places where the magisterial Reformation (Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism) never took root, like America. While fundamentalists had good reasons to travel the road they did at first, I think hindsight shows that on the whole it wasn’t the wisest of moves. It leads to isolationism and insularism which impeded the ability to proclaim the gospel both to outsiders and to the rising generation.
Problem #3: Personality cults. With no central authority Protestants are vulnerable to a charismatic pastor building up a church or organization which is more about the pastor than about the gospel. We’ve all heard the stories, I can name names if you want. So, I steer clear of personality cults.
I’m becoming increasingly aware of how no one is attempting to defend or even discuss polyandry from a faith promoting standpoint any longer.
I think Mormons are just as guilty of this as Protestants (perhaps more so). How many people identify with McConkie’s “Mormon Doctrine”? How disregarded are Brigham Young’s conference talks and temple teachings? I see huge swaths of Mormonism disavowed all the time. The big difference is that Protestants don’t claim to have a comprehensive unified message. We don’t believe in one physical true church.
In any way that we believe in one true church, it’s spiritual. The things that unify us to historic Christianity are the core essentials.
That’s because I’ve already made my arguments in favor of it on this website Tim. Do you want me to make the pro-polyandry arguments again?
Seth ~ Did you think the point was invalid?
More like beside the point. And unnecessarily pedantic.
CJ ~ I’ve fixed the link. I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “[Protestants] disavowing themselves from huge swaths of [Christian History].” My feelings are that we are a part of the bad as well as the good.
I cited this in my post at MDB, but it’s a quote from my advisor’s short book on Evangelical history:
I believe that is exactly how Protestants ought to deal with the difficult parts of our history. We name and own the bad along with the good. We don’t shy away from naming prominent leaders and theologians by name. We call the bad what it is—sin—and then we try to learn from it.
I’m sorry that the post at MDB does talk about how this compares to Mormonism, but I’ll try to answer your questions here without reference to how Mormons do things.
I can see how polyandry would be spiritually good, especially for those supporting the Bible. Polyandry is a valid disruption on the hyper-romantic idea of marriage that permeates western society. Marriage becomes more about God and the kingdom than about a particular romantic connection- in keeping with Paul’s discouragement of marriage. It can be a less self-centered view of marriage for both the husband and the wife. (In principle, if not in practice.)
I embrace the romantic ideal, but frankly, I think this has has eroded my faith in the biblical ideal of marriage.
I think it would be fun and constructive to go through the 13 LDS Articles of Faith one by one. What do you think, Tim?
I actually have a friend who is in a long term polyandrous relationship, no one involved is Mormon, and none of them are even slightly religious but on a personal level it works well for them. What it does is enable them to live a lifestyle that would be impossible in monogamy.
In terms of faith promoting, behavior changes belief. Living an unconventional life draws communities closer together. Mild outside persecution enhances commitment. What is to defend? You can either have one of two views:
a) Joseph Smith had a lot of mistresses.
b) Joseph Smith was instituted an alternative type of family structure.
If we were aiming for a fair dialogue (b) would be assumed, especially since that is how the LDS interpreted his actions.
But even if we assume (a) that puts him on par with people like King David. Jack above is complaining about Joseph Smith’s secret marriage, well Thomas Cranmer was married to Margarete and no one accuses the Anglicans of being an illegitimate church because their founder practiced secret marriage. Unless you want to consider Henry VIII the founder in which case he did practice secret marriage he just had scores of mistress and killed two of his wives.
Mormons are polite enough to bring up Thomas Cranmer’s secret marriage every time there is one of these conversations. They certainly don’t bring up Henry VIII’s far greater crimes. Yet at the end of the day, without Henry VIII there is a very good chance the Protestantism would have died out as just another sectarian conflict that got violent for a few decades before sputtering out. And when Gundek and I were talking I we discussed Calvin trying to have his sister in law murdered, because after all we should look at Protestant founder’s family values. And lets not even begin to talk about the Popes and Cardinals down the centuries and their sexual behaviors.
What is to defend. Joseph Smith preached a doctrine you disagree with and attempted to implement it.
Virtually ever Mormon I’ve met identify Mormon Doctrine the closest thing the LDS has to a systematic theology and respect the book. They may not believe that the doctrines in there are binding but they do believe it is an accurate (though a bit dated) representation of the faith. I don’t see much difference to how Mormons treat Mormon Doctrine and how Protestant treat books like Institutes or Bondage.
http://mormonexpression.com/2011/10/18/164-articles-of-faith-for-dummies-part-1/
http://mormonexpression.com/2011/10/20/165-articles-of-faith-for-dummies-part-2/
http://mormonexpression.com/2011/10/24/166-articles-of-faith-for-dummies-part-3/
http://mormonexpression.com/2011/10/27/167-articles-of-faith-for-dummies-part-4/
And this is just not true. Within about a 100 years of the English reformation you had:
Adamites, Anabaptists, Barrowists, Behmenists, Brownists, Diggers, Enthusiasts, Familists, Fifth Monarchists, Grindletonians, Muggletonians, Puritans, Philadelphians, Ranters, Sabbatarians, Seekers, Socinians
It is true that a long standing tradition of a state church helps. But for example in Switzerland the major Protestant denominations form a 26 church confederation who seek state support (without about 4 major theologies) another dozen or so that aren’t admitted to the federation but in the US would be Protestant. And that is only after 150 years of freedom of religion. Before that there was active state persecution.
So no the problem is not fundamentalism. It is no state persecution.
What is to defend?
The problem, CD, is that contemporary Mormonism has a strong “worthiness” narrative, where it is believed that only people who are free from sin — and, let me be frank, by “sin” they mean sexual misconduct (which basically boils down to “unauthorized orgasms,” if I may speak so plainly) — can receive inspiration or revelation.
Joseph Smith’s polyandry is well outside that narrative, which is why it’s mostly kept a secret. We have NO framework for dealing with something that messy and ambiguous right now.
Now, I agree with you. I think religious leaders from the beginning of time, both in the Bible and throughout Christian history, have done some squirrely things — because they’re human beings, and human beings are squirrely. But there is little to no room for that in mainstream Mormonism as it stands.
This will need to change, because it’s an unhealthy and untenable position that denies the fundamental reality of the human experience. But for now, Mormon critics can make a lot of headway bringing these sorts of issues up, because most Mormons expect extreme purity from leaders. So this isn’t so much about what *Protestants* expect from their leaders or history, because to a certain extent they’ve learned to expect human error from just about everyone, but what *Mormons* expect from their leaders.
The charge isn’t that Joseph Smith engaged in some sort of sexual sin that no Christian in history has ever committed. The charge is that Joseph Smith engaged in sexual sin and then used his status as prophet to declare it normative and redemptive. He turned his sin into the most doctrinally defining institution in the church.
CD-Host ~ Jack above is complaining about Joseph Smith’s secret marriage, well Thomas Cranmer was married to Margarete and no one accuses the Anglicans of being an illegitimate church because their founder practiced secret marriage.
Thomas Cranmer married Margarete whilst he was still married to Joan and lied to Joan about his marriage to Margarete? News to me. I thought Joan was dead long before he married Margarete.
Also, what Tim said. (But to be clear, I don’t believe Cranmer sinned in marrying Margarete. It was far more noble than what a lot of priests were doing at the time, i. e. keeping mistresses. Whether he sinned in covering it up from the general public is more debatable.)
But even if we assume (a) that puts him on par with people like King David.
Refresh my memory: which mistresses did King David have other than Bathsheba, which the Bible treats as a sordid and sinful tale?
And how many of these “mistresses” (other than Bathsheba) were the wives of other men? I suppose one could say that Michal was, in some sense, married to two men, but that was more of a political snafu between David, Saul, Michal and Paltiel.
If by “mistresses” you really meant “wives and concubines,” well, the Bible tells us those were a bad idea as well. (De. 17:14-17)
But if Mormons would like to start preaching that Joseph Smith’s plural marriages were sinful and wrong and a poor idea from the start, but that Joseph was a prophet in spite of this, they’re welcome to. It would be a vast improvement over, “It was God who wanted him to coerce all of those women and marry other men’s wives and lie to Emma about it.”
Joseph Smith was instituted an alternative type of family structure.
For a man to lie to his wife about whom he’s sharing a bed with is not an “alternative” type of family structure. It’s one of the oldest in civilization.
The LDS church purports to worship the God Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob- Whether there were condemnations of multiple wives and concubines elsewhere in the text, God didn’t seem to care that they each had more than one wife. They were still His guys. You could say the same thing for Joseph. And the spiritual validity of polygamy doesn’t depend on whether Joseph practiced it in a spiritually responsible way.
And for crying out loud. . . . we all know that JESUS WAS A POLYGAMIST, which makes me wonder why Evangelicals even worry about Mormon polygamy.
If it is OK with Tim, please speak as plainly as you want. I don’t think it helps to have conversations about sexual doctrine using euphemisms so thick that it can’t be understood. And if Tim isn’t OK with it you can get as R rated as you want on Church discipline.
I see, good point. So the idea is that sexual purity is a prerequisite for revelation. In which case Joseph Smith’s either:
a) Joseph Smith era relations were pure, which means essentially group marriage
b) Joseph Smith later revelations must be false.
And Mormons being conservative aren’t going to be as comfortable with group marriage. I’ve run into that doctrine of prophecy with aesthetic sects that reject all sexuality and on the other extremes with hermetic sects that practice sex rites. But generally you don’t see that in the middle.
That does seem like an odd belief for a church whose founder was as libertine as Joseph Smith. How do Mormons deal with the fact that when they were receiving their most important and most key revelations they were also engaging in experimenting sexually? I assume that Mormons know about polygamy and polyandry. They might know (I’m not sure) about what the sexual life was like in New York of the 1820s: free-love, easy divorce and repugnance to child bearing were common attacks (I assume I’d find this in the JoD if I looked). The huge problems of venereal diseases in revival communities are pretty well known.
How does this work in practice? Forget even Joseph Smith what about the entire leadership clique that formed the Mormon church, lots of them have spotty sexual histories.
Anyway great point!
Tim –
That is precisely what Thomas Cranmar did. He married secretly in 1532, in total violation of Church law. He became Arch Bishop in 1533 knowing he was married. As arch-Bishop he pushed for clerical marriage without making his conduct public. He was successful and this became doctrine in 1547 / 1549. Clerical marriage is one of the key distinctives between the Anglican and Catholic church.
So the analogy holds. And remember he isn’t any Arch Bishop he is arguably the founder of the Anglican church. So again is the Anglican church a legitimate church or does Thomas Cranmar disqualify it?
I’ll apologize for not being familiar with the history. Did Cranmar claim an angel from God threatened to kill him and then threaten his wife’s family with eternal damnation if she didn’t marry him? Was Cranmar violating something he proposed to be scripture as he carried out his secret marriage?
I’ll be happy to confess that Cranmar was in sin by lying about his marriage.
Jack –
The issue with Cranmar is not Joan it is clerical marriage. When Cranmar married Joan he dropped out of the priesthood.
Except that it was perfectly OK then for a priest to have a mistress or even a concubine. What was not OK was for a priest to have a legitimate heir. Priests could be entrusted with substantial property, it was believed, because they had no one to leave it to. So for example the Synod of Pavia in 1018 declared that any clerical wife and all her children if discovered were to be slaves for life, with no possibility of freedom asserting unquestionably that being in the priesthood was an unbreakable canonical impediment to marriage.
In theory Bishops on up had stricter rules. It was really at Trent in response to Luther’s criticism that the Catholic church moved towards a doctrine of no marriage meaning no sex, so no relations of concubinage. This was happening during Cranmar’s life but hadn’t happened at the time of his marriage. There is no question that under Catholic law had Cranmar taken Margarete as a concubine that would have been a comparatively minor act while taking her as a wife was a serious crime against the church.
So no, by the standards of the day it was far less noble.
I addressed this the last thread it came up on. Joseph Smith’s teachings on this issue predate his affairs. Even his critics admit the idea of plural marriage was floating around his inner circle early.
Further, I think the evidence is overwhelming Emma knew. I agree Emma was not onboard. Emma did however go on to break with Brigham and found a non LDS church. So I’m not sure how her not agreeing with the doctrine is relevant. She rejected lots of Joseph Smith’s teachings. Again I can find lots of people close to reformers who rejected their reforms. So is that the disqualifying factor, if family members think your doctrines are wrong.
I’d also be happy to say that the LDS church (minus its heresy) is a legitimate church. I can’t recognize Joseph Smith as a legitimate prophet. Without knowing more about Cranmar, I don’t see why I can’t claim the same about him (though he didn’t claim to be a prophet).
Nope. Andreas Osiander (the uncle of Cranmer’s wife) was thrilled to get Henry’s ambassador to be a married clergy. Oslander however did believe he was in direct contact with God. So even here the analogy holds up, though with the roles reversed.
I don’t follow the question. But Cranmer was instrumental in the fact that clerical marriage is normative in Protestantism.
That’s not the issue. The argument is the LDS is invalid in some sense because of Joseph Smith’s sexual conduct. The question is whether the Anglican church is a valid institution. Is the Anglican church a fake church because of Cranmar’s marriage? And this goes deeper even than the Anglican church, Cranmer wrote the wrote Book of Common Prayer. My guess is your and Jack’s hymnal is substantially based on that work. Does his secret marriage invalidate your hymnal?
I’m just trying to make sure we are using the same standards.
You mean minus the contributions of Joseph Smith? Because that is the source of the “heresy”. And that is my point, the relevance of Joseph Smith’s zipper other than to attack doctrines of the Mormon faith? If exaltation is not to be trusted because Joseph Smith liked having sex with young women then I see no reason you should feel free to reject (to use Cranmer’s words), “beads, pardons, pilgrimages, and such other like popery”.
A Catholic could say the same thing that the Anglican church is legitimate except for its heresies. What does that mean, it means rejecting Cramer, and the birth of English Protestantism as a mainstream faith.
Henry VIII put Joseph Smith to shame sexually. Thomas Cranmer did analogous things to Joseph Smith sexually. Either religions’ founder’s zippers are of great importance and invalidate their doctrine, in which case we need to purge Protestantism of all these doctrines which came from the sexually immoral, which is essentially all the doctrines of Protestantism; or we should stop bringing polygamy into every conversation about Mormonism.
The argument isn’t that the LDS church should cease to exist because its founder sinned and influenced the church. The argument is that the LDS church should disavow Smith’s sins. The Anglican church can quite easily disavow Cranmer’s lie and continue to exist. The Community of Christ can disavow Smith’s adultery, polygamy and polyandry and can continue to exist.
The question before the LDS church is if it will continue to exist in integrity concerning the practices of its founder. The founder of my church committed adultery as well. As an institution we’re in the same boat as the LDS church. We’ve publicly owned and disavowed his sin. I’d like to see the LDS church do the same. Instead the LDS church has chosen to continue to side with Smith and call his sin “an everlasting covenant.”
I’m sketchy on the exact revelation, but it was part of D&C until the 1870s and it specifically forbid polygamy. Not to mention that Smith’s practice of polyandry was in violation of D&C 132.
I can live with Mormons using the Book of Mormon as a source of devotional inspiration.
How many conversations have you seen about polygamy here? Has it been in every conversation? I think polygamy came up because it’s a source of dissonance for a great many disaffected Mormons. It’s a relevant point to the original post.
Further, you can’t really understand Mormonism without discussing polygamy. If you really want to get into brass tacks of true Mormon distinctives you have to understand Mormon polygamy. If Mormonism wishes to drop those distinctives I’m sure the conversation on polygamy will quickly become a historical point of interest. You can investigate the history of the Seventh Day Adventist for an example.
How do Mormons deal with the fact that when they were receiving their most important and most key revelations they were also engaging in experimenting sexually?
By and large, we deal with it by not dealing with it.
We turn polygamy into a sanctified mystery that we can’t discuss, or pretend that it was about “taking care of widows” and had no sexual component whatsoever — and then continue not to talk about it.
Coming to terms with this would require some pretty dramatic changes in the way we see ourselves as a people. Which could only be a good thing, in my opinion, because it’s real. But we’re not ready for that yet.
“Further, you can’t really understand Mormonism without discussing polygamy.”
You can’t understand the history of where I was born and have lived for almost all my life without discussing polygamy.
Additionally, many Mormons have no idea that Joseph Smith was polygamous, let alone polyandrous. It comes has a HUGE shock to many when they find out.
I agree, BTW, that you can’t understand Mormonism — or, at least, Mormons — without discussing polygamy. It has had MASSIVE repercussions on the development of our culture. I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface in terms of its impact.
In fact (and now I’m on a roll), I think the LDS worthiness culture that we’ve been discussing is, in large part, a reaction against polygamy’s stigma.
I think CD’s question for for Protestants boils down to: Can’t a Christian also be a polygamist?
If not, Why is a belief in polygamy different than a belief in having the Sabbath on Saturday, or a belief in the Amish lifestyle, or in clerical marriage. Isn’t the case for polygamy as strong as the case for a single catholic church?
If so, it doesn’t seem that the polygamy issue should be huge problem for Evangelicals. If the LDS church accepted the Trinity but didn’t disavow polygamy as a sin, could they join the club?
My point above was that polygamy is more an offense against western notions of romantic marriage than biblical requirements for marriage.
CD-Host ~ I’m beyond aware of the history on Roman Catholic clergy keeping mistresses. My point was that your example—like most of your “et tu, Christianity” arguments on this thread—barely has any kind of resemblance to what Joseph Smith did.
So no, by the standards of the day it was far less noble.
I was referring to the standards of the Bible, not the corrupt standards of the day.
Further, I think the evidence is overwhelming Emma knew.
Did she know about Emily and Eliza Partridge?
When Mormons (and their bizarre, quasi-Mormon admirers) stop turning every thread into an argument about how the rest of Christianity sucks just as much as Mormonism, I’ll gladly stop bringing up early LDS polygamy. “But your religion sucks, too” is one of the worst arguments anyone can make in defense of a religion and seeing it here again and again is reminding me of why I stopped blogging and participating on LDS-themed blogs in the first place.
Jared ~ For the record, I have never argued that Mormons were in the wrong for practicing polygamy. I don’t even think that the Bible prohibits polygamy.
It is the way that it was practiced which I protest.
The Bible doesn’t prohibit all polygamy. It does prohibit polyandry and adultery.
There have been Christian polygamist.
The practice of polygamy could be seen as peripheral. Applying salvific merit to the practice of polygamy attacks the heart of the gospel.
I actually think the argument is generally that the LDS church should cease to exist. There are lots of Americans that were involved in alternate sexual relationship during the early 19th century whose churches aren’t wildly successful and I don’t see much focus on their sex lives. The apologetic, just as Katie mentioned above is pretty clear cut, Joseph Smith boffed young girls so therefore all his revelations are false.
Mormons have disavowed Smith’s sins (though again I don’t think he was actually sinning) in the most forceful way possible they have totally reversed his teachings on group marriage. What they actually should do, is take great pride in that their religion was founded by America’s greatest prophet. They should come to terms with the fact that Joseph Smith rejected the cult of domesticity that was forming around him and instead embraced Christian socialism and a sexual ethic more compatible with that sort of property arrangement. What they need to come to terms with is that their current leadership has rejected this message entirely and embraced the cult of domesticity. The political / social ethics that their culture is based on come far more from Cleon Skousen than Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. If there is sin there it is much later than 1830s and 40s.
Well first off there is a bit of rewrite going on in Mormon theory. There seems to me to have been 3 different polygamous systems which formed in quick succession:
1) Joseph Smith system which was about a small cadre of leadership experimenting with group marriage as a technique to build unity.
2) Brigham Young system which was probably dealing with a large number of female converts and poverty (argument here).
3) 1870s+ system which was classic polygyny, wealthy powerful men getting to have sex with young girls. Which led to social isolation and was quickly abandoned.
The fact that we don’t really know much about what Joseph Smith intentions were is evidence of how much they have not sided with Smith. Kirtland was 100 miles away from the largest free-love (20th century sense) communion in the United States. Was he attempting to model their system? Was he trying to create a halfway system? Had they sided with Smith we would have a long continuous history of doctrine on this matter. Instead we have fragments from which we can at best poorly reconstruct his intent.
I’m not sure. I suspect that Smith was gradually introducing his community to the practices. Most likely his own thinking had changed on the topic. There are 5 years between Fanny Alger and Lucinda Harris. Why? And it is not till 1841 that Smith has multiple already married wives. You have to remember that Smith died as this practice was picking up. So it is unclear, why on the surface was Smith’s church preaching polygyny only but practicing group marriage. I suspect that there would have been later public revelations.
We do have hints. For example, Jonathan Holmes stood in as proxy for Joseph Smith in 1846 (after his death) when Elvira Holmes was permanently sealed to Joseph. He seemed to view himself as a caretaker of Joseph’s wife and children. This is a very different structure than how 132 is interpreted. But also for that matter a very different structure than what Joseph Smith is accused of. It is something else entirely and wasn’t part of later Mormonism.
First off I don’t think the SDA are a great example. Ellen White is constantly mocked and lied about to this day. And she was a leader who brought adventism far closer to mainstream Christianity. Uriah Smith who is far further doesn’t get attacked.
Mainly I think it is an evangelical technique to go after these leaders for apologetic purposes because they don’t understand how vulnerable their historical leaders are to similar attacks, and frankly far worse attacks.
Yes, I’m aware of the history of the Seventh Day Adventists. Remember I’m the one who has comments that Gordon Hinckley tried to put Mormons on the same road the SDA went down and that this distance is far greater and so while the SDA has been semi-successful in merging with normative Christianity, I think it is impossible for the LDS church to do the same. And I think the cost to the SDA has been devastating in even covering the smaller amount of distance they did.
Lets say about 100x as many as discussions of Calvin’s secret police force, his use of foreign armies against his own population or his expulsion of the Perrinists. About 100x as often as discussions of Luther’s many currently unpopular views like his attacks on the Catholic church for their failures to handle the growing problem of witches. And most relevant about 100x as often as we discuss the development of Protestant sexual theology.
So lets say about 1/3rd of all the threads end up discussing polygamy, which is a dead issue for Mormons. They don’t practice polygamy. If we are going to discuss polygamy it should be in an appropriate context. Jared is 100% correct here. The cult of domesticity is not biblical it is anti-biblical. It came out of the anglo culture, particularly anglo capitalism not the bible. It took hold on our culture from 1825-1848. Christian culture prior to that had different norms, and it frankly isn’t all that shocking that a religion formed during the period when Americans were re-evaluating their sexual / marital ethics would have participated in re-evaluating sexual / marital ethics.
Jared –
Great comment! If I can make a recommendation Free Love: Marriage and Middle-Class Radicalism in America, 1825-1860 which talks about how this norm formed and what it replaced. I briefly summarize a lot of the history defense part 6. The post itself is aimed at showing how the various norms developed once the dowry system was eliminated to essentially the modern norm. Though this was aimed at a different debate: refuting the notion in Christian patriarchy that this had been the norm prior to feminism, it works pretty well in this context refuting the notion that 1850s anglo marital norms are in some absolutely sense biblically based or a necessary part of Christianity.
That being said, I don’t think Mormons ever get to join the evangelical club and frankly shouldn’t try. Where Mormonism fits within the Christian spectrum, at least theologically, is Hermetic Christianity while Protestantism is and is evolving more towards a form of neo-Gnosticism. Mormonism is pulling in the opposite direction, in most areas in which Catholics disagree with Protestants Mormonism goes further than even the Catholics. Gundek said something similar though I think what he really means is, “attacks the heart of the gospel as understood by my sect”.
Katie –
Really? How? The top association people have with the LDS church is polygamy. How do they not know?
Hmmm… Interesting. Why? What is the basis of the tie that Mormons see between sexual behavior and revelation? Most Mormons seem to be comfortable with the idea of personal revelations. Is this worthiness culture used as a way to discredit members not in line with the hierarchy or is there some theological basis?
Here is where I’m going. Brigham Young talked frequently about false vs. genuine revelations, because of the influx of Spiritualists and Spiritualist influence on the church. I’m wondering if maybe “worthiness” originally had to do with position in the hierarchy, per Brigham. and later got turned into virtue as the church moved towards evangelical norms. That is that early on you had genuine vision by grant from the leadership (essentially magical) but as the church moved towards Protestant norms that deny the theological importance of hierarchy the leadership had to argue they had genuine vision because of their righteousness not because of their position.
What do you think?
I think both of them were eventually sealed to Joseph in Emma’s presence.
I am guessing that I am somewhat odd in that I actually converted away from (conservative) Christianity before losing my (conservative) Mormonism. As an undergraduate, I was very interested in early Christianity (which I approached from a Mormon apologetic stance). But the more I learned, the more modern and alien conservative Christianity (including modern LDS Mormonism) looked (for reasons that CD Host has already illustrated pretty well), until eventually I reached the point where Joseph Smith was my only connection to any kind of literalist belief in Christ (or any personal God at all, for that matter). It was at this point that I took my deepest plunge into early Mormon history (which I had only dabbled in before), and came up short in the way that David Clark outlines. I agree with CD Host that (conservative) Christianity is vulnerable to the same arguments that (conservative) Mormonism is. Claiming a personal God who acts unequivocably in history is just fundamentally problematic (from my perspective). Today, I have much more in common with someone like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin than with anyone who takes seriously any version of the Platonic demiurge. I do not abjure religion per se (or hate it), but I find it flawed in predictable (and increasingly problematic) ways — especially as it is practiced by people who have not learned the difference between myth and history. In many ways, I feel like a man without a country, since I share many socially conservative values (as practiced in the USA) but am wholly disgusted by others (like the growing fascist streak exemplified by people like Rick Santorum and even Mitt Romney).
The OP seems to argue that giving up Mormonism due to negative feelings about history is fine, just don’t develop negative feelings about traditional Christianity, because its far better. Seth argued that you should apply the rationalizations/understanding of weird behavior evenly. (I.e. Be Positive, remain Mormon). Traditional Christians argue that they are significantly more believable because of history. Its natural for Mormons and non-Mormons to point out the discrepancies in that position. I don’t think the argument helps Mormonism much in the end, but it is certainly on point in this context.
No, the main point of my post could be summarized as follows:
1) The journey of learning about uncorrelated Mormonism is largely a negative process. This negativity causes problems for the person experiencing it.
2) To counteract the negativity I suggest looking for something that is both religious and positive.
3) Since most people investigating uncorrelated Mormonism never look aspects of generic Christianity (which they presumably believe in since they hold the Bible to be the word of God), I suggest looking there for positive religious experiences. The underlying assumption is that since it doesn’t seem to bother them, why not give that a try.
As an orthodox Christian I of course think that I made the right decision (I’m not in the habit of purposefully making wrong decisions). But, I’d be happy if people just looked into it, because I think it would be a positive experience for them.
Jared – I think both of them were eventually sealed to Joseph in Emma’s presence.
Yes. After Joseph Smith had already married them without Emma’s knowledge or consent. The whole incident is actually indicative of Emma’s general lack of knowledge of Smith’s marriages. If she knew that Smith was married to over a dozen women at the time she was coerced into accepting polygamy via the endowment, why did she feel that she had to add even more wives in order to practice polygamy? Later, when she rejected polygamy again, why did she think that sending Emily and Eliza away would be sufficient to keep Joseph from “being polluted in this manner”? Why didn’t any of the other 18 (or so) wives get similar dismissals at that time?
Again and again, the narrative that emerges from the wives of Joseph Smith is:
- Acknowledgment that Emma had no knowledge of their relationship with Joseph. For example, one said that Joseph married her while Emma was out of town in St. Louis.
- Problems with Emma when Emma discovered the relationship.
- Fear that Emma would become aware of the relationship. One woman expressed fear that Emma might poison her if she found out.
Emma had a general awareness of Joseph’s desire to practice polygamy. But I’ve seen very little evidence that she was ever informed of pending marriages prior to them taking place. Secrecy from Emma was the rule, not the exception.
And I think that’s part of the reason she spent the rest of her life denying that Joseph had practiced polygamy. She thought she was denying a handful of short-lived affairs. She had no idea how deep the rabbit hole went.
Yeah, Joseph-Emma always struck me as something like Bill-Hillary.
Not to mention, one of the few handwriting samples we have from Joseph Smith is a letter to a teenage bride telling her not to show up if she caught wind that Emma was on her way to Joseph’s hide out.
Yeah, it’s understandable why you would feel that way, but the number of people who go straight to agnosticism or atheism from Mormonism would seem to indicate that most people have difficultly appreciating the same differences in degree or detail that you do. Nothing wrong with canonizing fake scriptures, you just can’t think you translated them. Nauvoo polygamy? No way. Old testament polygamy? No problem! Surely you can see why many disillusioned Mormons end up seeing traditional Christianity as the thinnest kid at fat camp.
I don’t mean to pick on you specifically Tim, as this is just the most recent example on the thread, but usually I have to go to an anti- or ex-mo site to get such an unfair, antagonistic, and presentist view of Mormon historical problems. One stop shopping!
Todd said, “You can’t really understand Mormonism without discussing polygamy. . . . You can’t understand the history of where I was born and have lived for almost all my life without discussing polygamy.”
True, but once a person surrenders to the Lord, the blood of Christ will cover any sin—for the purpose of qualifying him or her for eternal bliss in the next life—except a trampling of the Son of God under foot in complete rebellion (Heb. 10:26-31).
Of course, if God did authorize polygamy, and Emma didn’t have the faith to accept it, secrecy seems to be a very understandable course of action on Joseph’s part. Just like secrecy was an understandable course of action when polygamy was outlawed. Although Joseph didn’t do right by Emma as far as informing her, that doesn’t seem to be a Biblically mandated marital requirement. Men could do most anything without their wives permission back in the day.
If polygamy was a revealed course of action, Joseph’s activities seem reckless and excessive, but not damnable by biblical standards.
That said, because of the secrecy, Emma got an atrociously raw deal by the ethic of romantic marriage.
I think the Bible has always been consistently against deception.
Sure, but then Joseph’s sin was not having the guts to be public with his righteous practice, not the practice itself. Not having the guts to tell the truth or do the right thing is the most common of human foibles. In Joseph’s case, from his perspective, he wasn’t lying to sin, he was lying to cover up righteous behavior, to protect his wife’s feelings and his relationship with her.
From his perspective it was parallel to a Mormon married to a devout Catholic who publically disavows Mormonism, but secretly attends church, and takes the sacrament and lies about it to his/her spouse. Not particularly noble, but not particularly worthy of condemnation.
I doubt it. She knew perfectly well about Joseph polygamy since he was using the relief society she was running as a recruiting ground. When he died, she was 40 and pregnant and too old to start over. Her property was tied up with the Nauvoo church and Joseph Smith’s papers would only be worth something if he was still seen as a prophet. Since she didn’t intend to live under Brigham she helped keep Joseph memory alive among those people who objected to Brigham and cultivated the cult of personality around Joseph Smith III until he was old enough to take control in 1860.
So she marries a secular guy who had been a Joseph Smith supporter and waits until her son is old enough. As an aside this guy had his own love child in 1864, he was married to Emma 1847-74.
Sarah Pratt was publishing her full expose on Mormon polygamy including Joseph’s attempted seduction prior to Emma’s death. In other words she knew perfectly well about Joseph’s activities and lied when she founded the RLDS. And we know from Sarah Pratt that Joseph Smith III knew about Joseph Smith abortionist, who was cleaning up any messes from (otherwise) single women, who also knew Emma. So by the late 1860s there was no question on the matter.
I see no reason to believe Emma’s later statements rather than the overwhelming evidence that this was doctrine.
Christian,
Here is Grant Palmer’s response to your question.
I know you were not nec. endorsing Palmers answer Tim, but I thought his response was interesting enough to comment on here.
As was my suspicion, he apparently hasn’t applied the fine-toothed comb to the Bible – as he did the BoM and Mormon History. Of course, we all operate with bias in our beliefs and actions, but I wanted to hear him admit it. John didn’t press him on it though. His reason for this? He’s had some “experiences” that compel him to give the Bible a degree of allowance when it comes to historical/textual issues. Well, I’ve had some “experiences” with the Bible and the BoM – what am I to do with that Grant?
Also, I found it very interesting that you referred to the interview, b/c of a few of his personal beliefs:
1. That the Jesus in the NT was not concerned about theology – just correct behavior.
2. That the LDS Church is a Christian tradition, but they need to be more honest about their history and make Jesus more of a focal point.
3. That the big difference btwn the NT Jesus and the Mormon Jesus is an emphasis on pious living and a personal interaction with God.
Sound familiar? I finished the interview thinking that his Jesus is more “Mormon” than he realizes.
(disclaimer, I don’t begrudge Grant Palmer for his work on exploring Mormon history and I think its terrible the way he appears to have been treated by some of his church leaders. I just prefer to see consistency)
He also claims to have had personal experiences with the BoM that compel him to give it a degree of allowance.
Um, how do you know this? It seems that the only evidence you have for this is that he doesn’t share your conclusions on the matter.
Mephibosheth ~ but the number of people who go straight to agnosticism or atheism from Mormonism would seem to indicate that most people have difficultly appreciating the same differences in degree or detail that you do.
I agree with what David Clark has said on this elsewhere, that this is only because most of the people who go from Mormonism to atheism or agnosticism don’t give Christianity anywhere near the examination that they gave to Mormonism on their way out. As one ex-Mormon over at MDB put it, “By the time I was ready to look at the historical Joseph Smith [note: judging from context, I think he meant Jesus Christ] my BS meter was on full alert and it didn’t take me more than a chapter or two of Bart Ehrman to see that it fit with everything else.” Wow. Rejecting the whole of Christianity after a chapter or two of Ehrman? Really? I can’t even imagine rejecting an entire worldwide religious tradition after reading only a chapter or two of the work of any scholar, no matter how responsible or even-handed (and Ehrman’s popular stuff isn’t exactly even-handed).
I think the problem is that a lot of ex-Mormons never stop thinking like Mormons. Take your Nauvoo polygamy / Old Testament polygamy equivalence. Mormons are taught while they’re believers that their practice of polygamy was a restoration of Old Testament polygamy. In reality the two were so vastly different, both in the way they were practiced and the reasons why they were practiced, that you’d have to be ignorant of one or the other to equate the two. But rather than examining the issues and challenging this, a lot of ex-Mormons simply go along with the equivalency and do, indeed, think Christians are silly for rejecting one whilst accepting the other.
When I meet more atheist/agnostic ex-Mormons who can discuss issues critical to Christianity’s foundation the way they can discuss issues critical to Mormonism’s foundation, and still maintain that the two suffer from similar problems, I’ll be more concerned.
David, I said “apparently” because he fails to mention any of it in any of his books (specifically the one all about Jesus) and in any of his public statements or papers. When pressed on it in the most recent interview, he made it very plain that “experiences” define his faith in the God of the Bible. I don’t know his heart, I’m simply drawing conclusions based on the man’s own words.
Jack, I agree that Ex-Mos tend to come with some baggage as they approach historic Christianity. I can hardly blame em though. Martin Luther said what about women and Jews? What do you mean the gospel writers were anonymous? What do you mean the creation narrative is not unique in the ancient world? These and other problems may have very good explanations and may not even be very critical to Christian faith anyway – but I can understand why people would be quick to proclaim: “Yet another case of whitewashed history and narrative”. The issues are not exactly parallel – but they still can fall in the same broad category that leads people to mistrust religion.
Of course religion is not even close to being alone in this.
I think that the problem is that ex-Mormons think they already know all about (non-Mormon) Christianity, when in actuality their perceptions of it are horrifically distorted by a lifetime (or however long) of looking through the lenses of Mormon narrative and popular culture.
Kullervo, that seems to be the common consensus here – and it makes some sense. I think its an educated guess though – nothing more. My own interaction with ex-Mos (online and otherwise) tells me that its more a general exhaustion with sorting through thorny religious history and narrative. And Christianity has it – in spades. I agree that the problems are quite different than Mormonism, but no less daunting. Maybe even more so – when you consider the hundreds of years of history one would have to sort through.
I still think that they are addressing Christina issues from a thoroughly Mormon perspective, laden with Mormon assumptions and expectations about what “The True Church” should look like.
The biggest difference in Christianity and Mormonism isn’t so much one of credibility, it is simply a function of time. Christianity has evolved in many different ways and contains a much larger menu for those wishing to take the cafeteria approach. Also over time the rough edges have been worn off and it can be pursued in a more relaxed way.
I think that is in fact also an issue of credibility.
I still don’t think I have ever seen an argument that actually tries to make the case that the issues in Mormonism are similar to the ones in Christianity. I’ve seen lots of wishful thinking by people who haven’t looked at the issues. I’ve also seen vague arguments that large amounts of time somehow makes Christianity look better, usually with an equally vague implicit assertion that if Mormonism were older, it would look better. Finally, I’ve seen lots of what I’ll call supernatural equivalence arguments, where people like to trot out the idea that since both Mormons and Christians both believe in supernatural things, they both are equally believable or unbelievable.
I still don’t think I have ever seen an argument that actually tries to make the case that the issues in Christianity are similar to the ones in Christianity.
Easy, counter arguments:
Mormonism supposedly twists Christianity and New Testament revelations to create imaginary continuity with Christianity.
Catholicism twists Judaism and Old Testament revelations to create imaginary continuity with Judaism.
Protestantism twists Catholicism and the fathers to create an imaginary continuity with the Christianity that preceded it.
Mormonism supposedly requires that one believe that questionable people had direct supernatural revelations.
Christianity requires that one believe that questionable people had direct supernatural revelations.
There never were Nephites, Lamanites, Jaredites and Mulekites. Most of the Book of Mormon could not have happened.
There never was any Jewish tribe in Egypt, any mass settlement / invasion of Canaan. Anything resembling a Jewish presence doesn’t date much beyond 600 BCE. Most of the Old Testament could not have happened.
The revelations of Mormon’s founders self contradict.
The gospels and the epistles self contradict.
The early church fathers self contradict.
etc…
I think the issue is that both Mormonism and other forms of Christianity require adherence to an exclusive worldview, without sufficient evidence to prove that such adherence is necessary. If you are intellectual, you have to be willing to do gymnastics on some level to maintain the necessary belief to remain orthodox. Mormonism may require double backflips and Evangecalism merely cartwheels, but you still have to be limber. This may be the bitter pill that many who leave Mormonism or Christianity do not want to choke down.
Plus, the nexus between a person’s spirituality and a belief system that they learned to be unsupportable may cause all spirituality to be dragged down with the weight of unsupported or contradictory historical claims. By losing faith in the organized religion, people may lose touch with spiritual life altogether.
This sums it up nicely Jared.
A lot of people here have emphasized that there are ways of looking at Christianity that are different from how literalists look at it, that don’t have the problems that literalists have. How would I find out what these different ways are of looking at Christianity?
I don’t want to give anybody false impressions; I am a devout Latter-day Saint. But I have never felt the need to stifle my curiosity just because it involves something not LDS.
Kevin Sim
Kevin –
Liberal theology.
A good collection of books on the bible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_Bible_Series#Anchor_Bible_Reference_Library
A good collection of authors that collectively hit just about every Christian topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Christianity#Liberal_Christian_theologians_and_authors
Also, lots of writers and thinkers in the Emerging/Emergent Church movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_church
CD-Host and Kullervo, thanks for responding to my request for information on liberal theology and the Emerging Church movement. I feel kind of like a guy who asked for a drink of water and got the proverbial firehose! There are an enormous number of links on those pages! I did read the blurb about Scotty McLennan.
Let me see if I can make things a little simpler for me. The thing I want to do more than anything else in this life is live the will of the good God who controls the universe. CD-Host and/or Kullervo, is there a way that you are aware of that someone like me can find out whether God wants me to consider being a part of the liberal and/or Emergent Christian movements?
Kevin –
Ultimately the question is sort of circular. Let me play out a dialogue. Fill in the answers.
Q1: How do you know what God wants?
A1: _____ (Well by reading the bible, listening to the church, private inspiration…)
Q2: But the bible is a collection of stories, essays and poems written over many centuries. How do you decide on the central theme? (change this question if you picked something other than the bible)
A2: _______
Q: OK now did you pick that method?
A3: ________
A1, A2 and A3 all differ between liberal and conservative Protestantism. And they differ between either and the LDS.
If you want to talk about liberal biblical hermeneutics vs. conservative I’m happy to jump in. If you want to talk about what the creator of the universe wants from you…. Well my personal opinion is that the difference between you and a force or being capable of creating the universe is so large that it would be like asking you what behaviors you desire from the bacteria digesting food by living in your stomach. You don’t care about an individual bacteria’s opinions or even in a non collective sense its actions. The bacteria is part of a single system in your body which consists of thousands of systems.
Lets assume there are about 9×10^30 stars with about 1/1000 having even one species of intelligent life. That means there are roughly 10^28 intellegent species living on planets like ours. And assuming that star destruction is an outer limit for species destruction that means that every second that God is destroying 650b intelligent species like humans (not individuals, whole intelligent species) and creating another 500b or so to replace them. He doesn’t care if who you have sex with, what you believe or if you drink coffee.
Just my $.02 on the matter.
You don’t care about an individual bacteria’s opinions or even in a non collective sense its actions.
I don’t love the bacteria in my stomach. . . . which is probably why I allow them to have coffee.
. . . but if God loves us, or if he is Love, then he might care, even as supernovae devour entire races.
To some extent I’m a product of the LDS Church I was raised in. After going to Primary and Sunday School for the last 48 years, I don’t believe that using the Moroni 10 method to find truth works, by itself, without using any other reasoning, to find out the truthfulness of everything I want to know. But it seems pretty clear to me that the only way one can be certain of the truthfulness of the foundation of one’s personal theology, is to ask God a question, ready to base the whole rest of one’s life on whatever answer God provides, and then wait for that answer.
But that comes from my LDS background. I initiated this conversation in order to find out what liberal Christians think about how one goes about discovering what the will of God is in their lives.
You told me that my question is circular, and asked me how I know what God wants. You gave me some suggestions, like reading the Bible, listening “to the church,” and private inspiration. But it does no good to read the Bible if we don’t know somehow that reading the Bible will lead to discovering the will of God. It makes no sense to use the Bible for that purpose until one knows that God wants us to use the Bible for that purpose. Similarly for listening to what the Church teaches.
I read Qs 1-3 and As 1-3. Q3 reads, “OK now did you pick that method?” Did you mean to say, “OK how did you pick that method?”
You seem to be implying that you don’t know how to discover what God wants. Is that really what you’re saying? If you don’t know how to discover what God wants, if there really isn’t any other way we can be sure what it is that God wants, then why wouldn’t the method I described up above work? If there really is no other way to find out God’s will, wouldn’t God be aware that if S/He didn’t answer such a question that there would be no way any human could ever find out the truth about Her/Him, and therefore be motivated to give the asker an answer to the asker’s question?
You spent a little bit of time saying God is to us as we are to bacteria, and asserting that therefore God wouldn’t care what happened to us. Clearly you don’t believe in the central theme of Horton Hears a Who, that a person’s a person no matter how small. I think if scientists found reasons to believe that bacteria were intelligent beings with a potentially decipherable language, they would go to great lengths to find a means of interpreting that language and engage in all sorts of experiments that would involve communicating with the individual sentient beings that those bacteria constitute.
Your assertion that one out of a thousand stars might have a planet that harbors intelligent life is controversial and way higher than most scholars put it. Did you also imply that most of that intelligent life might survive until their stars die? If so, why hasn’t SETI picked up traces of some of their existence? It’s a very real possibility that humans may be the only intelligent life in our universe, let alone our galaxy, and I say that not because I believe humans play a special role for God, but for the simple reason that there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of any other intelligent life out there.
Perhaps the biggest issue for me is that if we go on the assumption you made, that the creator of the universe probably wouldn’t care for any of us individual mortals, then what good would be accomplished by believing in God at all? What’s the essential difference between a universe created by a God that doesn’t care for individual mortals, and a universe that came into existence without any divine cause at all?
Hi Kevin –
Let me break this up a bit.
I initiated this conversation in order to find out what liberal Christians think about how one goes about discovering what the will of God is in their lives.
OK that narrows it down. If one assumes liberal Christianity then you end up with the idea that
Jesus is a great moral philosopher. What God desires of you is to follow the core ideas of Jesus moral philosophy. Think about the Sermon on the Mount:
a) Embrace doing good works. Helping others should feel good. The world may not reward you but doing good will be its own internal reward.
b) Stand up for the meek, feed the hungry, preach to the poor of spirit.
c) You can be light of the world and make the world a better place.
etc…
This isn’t going to feel unusual to someone in the LDS. The main difference is that the focus shifts a bit towards care/helping being absolutely central while purity issues are secondary unlike conservative moralities where they tend to be seen as equally important.
The core idea from a liberal Christian perspective is you would choose a church that helps you do good. So for example if the LDS church’s ward system leads you towards good then that’s right kind of church. If on the other hand the purity issues are making you resentful and unable to be part of a church community go somewhere else. Liberals consider theology to be much less important than works in how you live your life.
But it does no good to read the Bible if we don’t know somehow that reading the Bible will lead to discovering the will of God. It makes no sense to use the Bible for that purpose until one knows that God wants us to use the Bible for that purpose. Similarly for listening to what the Church teaches.
Exactly you understand why it is circular.
I read Qs 1-3 and As 1-3. Q3 reads, “OK now did you pick that method?” Did you mean to say, “OK how did you pick that method?”
Yes sorry for the typo.
You spent a little bit of time saying God is to us as we are to bacteria, and asserting that therefore God wouldn’t care what happened to us. Clearly you don’t believe in the central theme of Horton Hears a Who, that a person’s a person no matter how small. I think if scientists found reasons to believe that bacteria were intelligent beings with a potentially decipherable language, they would go to great lengths to find a means of interpreting that language and engage in all sorts of experiments that would involve communicating with the individual sentient beings that those bacteria constitute.
I’m not a Liberal Christian. So I was giving you my own opinion on those issues not the opinions of Liberal Christianity. Now again this is my opinion on the nature of God, Liberal Christianity posits a God that is interested in you individually. I would say the “bacteria are intelligent” is the issue. Your theoretical bacteria are basically small sentient beings not lesser beings. My position is we aren’t “smaller” than God, we are truly lesser. We have nothing of value to communicate to a being capable of creating a universe. Zero, from his perspective we are not intelligent beings. It is exactly like you communicating with the bacteria. You are not a person in the sense a divine creator is a person.
that the creator of the universe probably wouldn’t care for any of us individual mortals, then what good would be accomplished by believing in God at all? What’s the essential difference between a universe created by a God that doesn’t care for individual mortals, and a universe that came into existence without any divine cause at all?
None. Because of the difference in kind, we can’t recognize “cause” in any meaningful sense. You are a product of God not a peer. To even be accessible you would need some sort of intermediary and perhaps layers upon layers of intermediaries. You see this idea in the Gospel of John where the Logos (the Spirit of Jesus) is a manifestation, a shadow of the Theos (God the Father). The incarnation is a manifestation, an image of the Logos.
Another variant is from an LDS perspective the layers:
Holy Grandfather is as much above Holy Father as Holy Father is above us.
Holy Great-Grandfather is as much above Holy Father as Holy Grandfather is above us.
In the LDS church Holy Grandfather is incomprensible, a god which we have nothing to do with. And they have the same idea of if you start 10 generations up and work down to the angels.
Islam also has this idea… that there are no positive statement you can make about Allah/God at all. We can’t understand anything about him, anything we try and say about God is making a mental idol. The only thing we can even partially comprehend about God is his will.
Again this is my opinion not Liberal Christianity’s opinion. Liberal Christianity posits a personal not an impersonal God. But the point of the last post was the circle. There is no easy way to get off the ground when it comes to theology. You have to make some base assumptions to derive a theology. Those base assumptions include certain religions and exclude others.
And that’s where I would start. Start with thing you know or at least would want to posit about God / Theology rather than starting from a place of nothing if you want to derive a positive theology.
CD-Host posted:
=OK that narrows it down. If one assumes liberal
=Christianity then you end up with the idea that Jesus is a
=great moral philosopher. What God desires of you is to
=follow the core ideas of Jesus moral philosophy.
So does God want us “to follow the core ideas of” all great moral philosophers? If not, why should we follow the core ideas of Jesus’ philosophy and not the core ideas of the philosophies of other great moral philosophers? Or are you saying that Jesus was a greater moral philosopher than any of the other moral philosophers who have existed in the world?
I guess I just don’t see how you go from the assertion that Jesus was a great moral philosopher to the conclusion that God wants us to follow Jesus’ core ideas.
Mind you I’m not criticizing Jesus here. As I stated before, I’m a devout member of a faith that believes Jesus is in fact fully divine Himself. All I’m saying is that if for some unforeseen reason I were to decide to leave the LDS Church, I’d like to know what reasons there might be why I could conclude that there is something special about Jesus that would imply that God wants me to follow the core ideas of Jesus’ philosophy.
=Exactly you understand why it is circular.
Appealing to the Bible to find out the will of God is circular, and appealing to a church to find out the will of God is circular. In the first case one would need to know that the Bible is actually guaranteed to give God’s truth before one used it, and in the second case, similarly, one would need to know that that church was guaranteed to teach God’s truth before one used it. But I don’t see problems with circularity with the third option you gave, that I believe was personal inspiration.
Granted, one has to make assumptions before it makes sense to use personal inspiration as a source of information about God. One has to assume that God loves each of us individually, wants each of us individually to know God’s will, and is capable of answering prayer.
But I think those three things have to be assumed in order for anyone to find out anything about God in any way. My point that I tried to make in my last post was that in a universe where God exists but doesn’t want any of us individually to know God’s will, or where God is incapable of answering each individual’s prayer, I really don’t see any significant difference between that universe and a universe that doesn’t have a deity in control of it at all. Do you? Do you see a significant difference?
So if one serious in trying to figure out the will of God (as I am), it seems like one has to assume those three points, that God loves each of us individually, that God wants each of us individually to know Her/His will, and that God has the power to answer an individual’s prayer.
In general Liberal Christians agree with Conservative Christians and Paul’s point that there is really only one morality. They are trinitarian Jesus is the Logos, following any great moral philosopher is following Jesus. You have access to the gospel and thus access to the original source.
But in a broader sense I think you are asking for some sort of ex-nihilo evidentiary apologetic for liberal Christianity. Liberal Christianity doesn’t offer one of those. Liberal Christianity, like Catholicism takes it as a given that since the dark ages Western Culture is Christian. Virtually any religion that is going to function in America is going to end up being essentially Protestant. Our legal structure is setup for Protestant religions religions don’t have the power of compulsion or tax. Our social structure is setup for Protestant religions, we have a static and fluid society with weak ties so any religion can’t be tied to a particular geography and be effective for a large population, etc… American Judaism is culturally Protestant. American Catholicism is culturally Protestant. The LDS while rejecting almost the entire Protestant theological culture embraced Protestant forms. You are tied to Western culture, you can try and follow Buddha but because you are deeply American all you will do is create a Buddhists flavored form of Protestantism. And yes they would say this was reversed for a Chinese Christian who will end up unavoidably creating a Christian flavored form of Buddhism.
What the Liberal Christian would say to you is that by virtue of your culture background the time and place of your life you have an affinity for Jesus of the gospels as your core moral philosopher that you are unlikely to find elsewhere. Catholics easily make statements like “Catholicism is the soul of Europe” liberal Christians make that more inclusive by including Protestantism, evangelical Christians can’t really even make sense of the statement.
If you want to go down the why of this road it goes back to Existentialism.
To use personal inspiration you have to assume a God that is going to focus on giving you personal inspirations. Christianity asserts that God’s primary means of communication is collective not personal. He gives revelations to prophets who have recorded them. While Liberal Christianity is willing to embrace mysticism (personal commune with God) as a secondary means of inspiration it does hold to sola scriptura or prima scriptura it would reject religion by spiritual feeling.
If you assert personal inspiration as God’s primary means of communication with you, you essentially reject the entire Western religious tradition. Why ask my opinion at all, if you believe you can get effective communication directly from God?
Sure to take a counter example consider the LDS theology for a moment. God communicates with everyone but some more than others. He’s provided revelation in scripture and it is through scripture not direct revelation that one comes to know God. Not everyone gets direct visitations like Joseph Smith and thus we if we aim to follow God’s will must follow the revelations handed down.
President Obama has never talked to me individually but that doesn’t stop me from understand completely and fully his will and desires for spectrum allocation. Rather I get information from Julius Genachowski (FCC chairmen) and then from the minister’s appointed by Julius Genachowski to deal with specifics. There is a huge difference between 2009-2011 when we had a president and FCC chairmen focused on spectrum issues and the administration before that where there really was no focus.
Getting back to Liberal Christianity, most Liberal Christians would hold that the kind of dialogue you are asking for is fundamentally idolatrous. It requires in some sense, a traditionalist image of God as a larger version of yourself with mysterious powers and a nasty temper. Liberal Christianity rejects that. At the same time they reject the 17th century idea that religion is a theory a system of propositions once must believe. This is why by the way I can’t whip out liberal Christian apologetics directed at non belief.
Liberal Christians hold that religion is a practice, a practice which you inevitably participate in to some extent. An analogy might be music. Tonal theory can be derived from music, but you are not going to arrive at tonal theory by just listening to music on your own. At the same time you are inevitably and unavoidably going to interact with music.