Questions Regarding the Authority of Scripture

Here are a bunch of questions that stand out to me when I read discussions between Mormons and other Christians regarding the authority of scripture:

1. Does the authority of scripture always depend on facts not fully described in the text?

2. Does the authority of scripture depend on whether it was (1) received by revelation, (2) by its uniquely accurate representation of facts, (3) something else? (If (3) what?)

3. What is the basis of the special authority of scripture over other religious texts?

4. What determines the importance of any particular idea, thought, or account in scripture?

If you have a few, let me know what you think.

Vision vs. Explanation: LDS Godhead and the dogma of the Trinity

Andrew brought up a point that I often scratch my head about: Why does it matter whether you describe God as the Godhead or the Trinity?

I am not quite sure how my understanding of the Trinity influenced my new understanding of Christ. But given that a greater understanding of the Trinity may have played an important part, I don’t think the LDS should not reject the creeds simply because creedal Christians reject LDS doctrines.  I think it is reasonable to accept the LDS view of Godhead as a summation of literal interpretations of the visions of God found in the scriptures, but it is not reasonable to fail to affirm the Trinity as a extremely important explanation that fits in with a larger body of philosophy.

The LDS claim that all we know about God comes from direct experience with God (spiritual experience) and thus we can only really grasp God through spiritual practice, which includes asserting as doctrine the literal meaning of scripture.  Joseph Smith’s theology was not in the words themselves, but in the knowledge brought through the Spirit when pondering the words and applying them to life. Joseph Smith  describes this position at the tail end of his most important revelation about the three-tiered nature of heaven (D&C 76):

But great and marvelous are the works of the Lord, and the mysteries of his kingdom which he showed unto us, which surpass all understanding in glory, and in might, and in dominion; which he commanded us we should not write while we were yet in the Spirit, and are not lawful for man to utter; Neither is man capable to make them known, for they are only to be seen and understood by the power of the Holy Spirit, which God bestows on those who love him, and purify themselves before him; To whom he grants this privilege of seeing and knowing for themselves; . . .

 

Doctrines are words attached to mystery. Any LDS who thinks that the scriptures explain God should keep this in mind. God is inexplicable, all knowledge of God is going to be essentially beyond explanation to others.  Whatever explanations we do formulate are simply to orient our understanding of God within the other knowledge, perceptions, and beliefs.

The Godhead is a summation of the visions of God.  The Trinity does not do this, it is just a philosophical attempt at defining the mystery of why there is only one God that is three persons.

Joseph Smith taught that spiritual visions were more important and carried more authority than philosophical explanations. This may be true, but even so, it would not eliminate the utility of philosophical explanations and catechism for pointing to spiritual truth.  It is perfectly reasonable to accept a Trinitarian explanation of God in precisely the same way it is reasonable to accept rights-based interpretation of human government.  Likewise, it is fine to conceive of God as a divine Man – as Stephen did in the vision recorded in Acts – because that is how God shows up for some people.  What is not reasonable is to take a vision for a reasonable/philosophical/historical explanation, just as it is not reasonable to explain matter by simply re-telling what it looks like.

As I mentioned before, all theology and creeds are existentially the same as the whistling of beavers.  The difference between theologies is most simply, the attitude they produce in those who speak and hear them as truth.  In some ways, denying the value of the Trinity is similar to denying the value of Newtonian physics. Even if you have proven the validity of the theory of General Relativity, it does not make sense to reject Newton’s theory as vitally useful. Thus, it may be reasonable to posit dogma such as transubstantiation, the Trinity, the hypostatic union, etc. to consistently orient our understanding of scripture with the body of intellectual work that girds our philsophically-minded view of the world — even when these explanations conflict with the literal wording of certain visions.

Christ doesn’t let up

There is something about my state of being that has changed and something that seems beyond my control.  What is striking is that it does not feel like the Spirit, it feels like nothing inside me, it feels like the world itself has changed.  Whatever the fact of Christ is, it is unrelenting.

When I abandoned atheism when I found it to be incoherent, the God that I acknowledged was not the personal God that I believed in as an Latter-Day Saint, it was simply the mystery that is the source of the world.  Formulated in this way, the fact of God was nearly impossible to dispute, I simply accepted that I came from something that I could not grasp or explain.

When I wrote this post, I was grappling with the question of whether the words of the Gospel were just straightforwardly true, that in Christ we are saved from the pain of guilt (hell); whether there was a source of “living water” that ends our thirst for joy. There was no prayer, and no answer. The question was simply one I seriously posed to myself: Is there any escape from guilt?

Zion and the Light of Christ

Along with the fact of salvation, there is another fact that is wound up in Christianity.  James pointed to this fact: i.e. faith without works is dead. Once a person accepts that salvation is possible, the question remains, what should I do?  The Mormon answer is actually very compelling for most people given the facts in front of them.

Joseph Smith grew up. like many Christians today, with the understanding that the Bible was the word of God. He had no sophisticated understanding of how to prioritize scriptural passages – nor did he care for sophisticated understandings – he saw the original text all as equally true. It all came from God didn’t it?  The bible talks a lot about Israel, Zion, the end of the world, the Second Coming, the Kingdom of God and a whole lot of other things that would happen on earth. To him, and to many reasonable people, if the Bible is reliable, it seems like the “true” Church should be wrapped up in that stuff in a big way.

Nearly every country preacher in Joseph Smith’s time was using reason and the Bible to try to figure out how the Bible should apply to life and society in light of the dire prophecies in the text.  They were incorporating “churches” based on all kinds of novel hermeneutics, visions, assimilation of science, and personal creativity.  Some of this, no doubt, was simply branding and gimmicks, and the young Joseph Smith was clearly deeply cynical about the established order of things – especially given the bald-faced selling of salvation and religious competition that was going on around him.  It may not be possible tell if Joseph was “saved” in the Protestant sense, but it may be also that he rejected the descriptions of salvation given by the country preachers around him, because they were too simple and self-serving. He might have thought that the way the preachers talked about salvation was corrupt as they were, or at least made way-too-simple in order to make their product more attractive.   Like Joseph, these country preachers had already completely rejected the authority of the Catholic Church, every state church, and every other denomination except their own.  It seemed clear to him that these men did not seek “the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol.”  (D&C 1: 16.)  He sought direction from heaven.

The simple fact is: God.

Having been thoroughly terrified after watching the Sunset Limited based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel,  I thought I should try to actually do a little philosophy in order to (at least?) believe in God again. I do it here in an attempt to keep myself honest in the company of those that do believe. If this doesn’t make much sense, please keep in mind my lingering view of philosophy, and consider this an apologia and a confession.

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Some thoughts to set the stage:

“I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view”. — Ludwig Wittgenstein, noted philosopher.

“But theology is the function of the Church. The church confesses God as it talks about God… But in so doing it recognizes and takes up as an active Church the further human task of criticizing and revising its speech about God” — Karl Barth, noted theologian, Church Dogmatics, 1.1, p. 3.

Rethinking the Great Apostasy: The victory of Christianity over Roman Paganism

What Happened: 

In 1776, Edward Gibbon described a fascinating sequence of events he calls the “ruin of Paganism” during the reign of Theodosius in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. (Gibbon’s patrician, Enlightenment, classically conservative,  modern, and rationalist biases are in full effect — but it’s a brilliant read.)

Gibbon wrote: “The ruin of the Pagan religion is described by the sophists as a dreadful and amazing prodigy, which covered the earth with darkness, and restored the ancient dominion of chaos and of night. . . a revolution, which raised those obscure victims of the laws of Rome to the rank of celestial and invisible protectors of the Roman empire.” He cites it as,”perhaps the only example of the total extirpation of any ancient and popular superstition; and may therefore deserve to be considered as a singular event in the history of the human mind.”

The third to wear the purple robes after Constantine declared himself a Christian was Constantine’s nephew, the last pagan emperor, Julian.  Orphaned as a child, he raised as a Christian with his half-brother, consul of the east, Gallus.  When he reached twenty, Julian rejected Christianity in a secret initiation into the Greek mysteries of Eleusis. He adopted neoplatonic philosophy, and worshiped the Greek pantheon. He hid his pagan devotion and feigned Christian worship for ten years, until he finally declared his paganism while waging a civil war against the Christian prince Constantinius. His victory revitalized paganism as well as religious toleration across the empire.

Mormons as Bison

Over the past several years I think I have finally gotten a pretty good handle on the Evangelical view of salvation. As a Mormon I had thought about it, and I believe I understood it, but I only from the skeptical angle.  I didn’t take the theology seriously. As I endeavored to do that over the years, I can see it’s beauty.  I think more Mormons would do well to take it more seriously.  I don’t think there is anything to fear in doing so.

What interests me is why they won’t. The main reason is that Evangelicals are often as close-minded, clueless, and defensive as Mormons, and quite often, openly aggressive.   There is smugness on both sides, which generally produces contempt in both sides as well.  They both revel in the strengths of their religions without understanding what their smug adversaries with the bizarre beliefs have to offer.

Scared of Hell: Evangelicals don’t really know if they are saved?

Byline: Does the difficulty in feeling assured of salvation dissolve the practical differences in “works”-focused vs. belief-focused religion?

I used to think that the problem of assurance of salvation was a big practical difference between Mormons and Evangelicals.  I am not so sure now.The theological differences seem stark. According to the rough academic analogy, Mormons believe that everybody is born with a passing grade, and you have to decide to fail.  So long as your intentions are in the right direction, and you are living up to your potential , you are going to the Celestial Kingdom. If you fall short you are going to get a great consolation prize– eternally living in heaven with Jesus forever.   If you criminally screw up and reject Jesus,  you are going to suffer for your  sins but eventually you will be in a heavenly place with the eternal joy that the Holy Spirit can bring you.  Mormons believe (or used to) that some striving souls could get a “second endowment.”  An ordinance performed in the temple that seals a person with their spouse to the Celestial Kingdom.  They have their “calling and election made sure.” Anymore, this concept and practice has practically disappeared from the Church.  Mormons are left completely sure they are going to heaven, but always unsure of which heaven they will go to. I believed that whatever I–or nearly anybody else–was in for in the afterlife, it was going to be a whole lot better than this world.

Contrasting my experience with the children of Evangelicalism. I can see how the “faith alone” doctrine would have scared the hell out of me.  Evangelicals believe you are born with a failing grade– the default is hell.  People qualify for salvation by correct belief and reliance on the work of Jesus alone.  It seems to me that if you are an Evangelical facing the never-ending torment of hell, you’d better make darn sure you are saved.  And the problem is, because non-saving faith can masquerade as true belief and faith, there is a lot of room for consternation. Just as Mormons obsess about doing enough to be “good enough” , it seems that doubt-prone Evangelicals can easily fall into a cycle of severe anxiety trying to assure their faith is “true” enough.  And the stakes– and possibly the potential anxiety seem considerably higher.  It seems that many Evangelicals indeed have this problem of assurance gauging from this article in Relevant Magazine, by J.D. Greear, Evangelical author of Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart.    . 

Mormons are Directioners, Evangelicals are Beliebers

Being around teenage girl culture I have seen up-close a phenomena that took me completely by surprise– Directionerism – the blind devotion to the boy-band One Direction.   I have seen more than one girl stricken with this frenzy.  A close corollary to this strange new sub-religion is  Belieberism- the blind devotion to Justin Bieber.    The devotion inspired by these two forces is truly staggering to me. I saw several girls close to me swept up in the frenzy of these two fandoms.  It was very much like a disease, and also very much like religion.

This made me think about how Evangelicals compare to Mormons, and about how religion works nowadays, and maybe where it will go. My resulting almost-fully-tongue-in-cheek thesis: Evangelicals are Beliebers, and Mormons are Directioners.

An Evangelical Review: The Biblical Roots of Mormonism

“The Biblical Roots of Mormonism” is a defense of Mormon doctrines using only the Bible. The authors concede that some of the unique doctrines of the LDS church are better defended in LDS scriptures but nonetheless have origins and support in the Bible. Before reading the book I assumed it should be titled “Prooftexting the King James Bible on Behalf of Mormonism.” But I wanted to give it a fair shake so I sat down with the book, my Bible and an open mind.

The book overviews basic Christian and uniquely Mormon doctrines. Each chapter is broken up into two sections; “Biblical Teaching” and “Mormon Understanding”. The “Biblical Teaching” included an overview of a few Biblical passages and an explanation as well as the passages reproduced from the King James Bible. The “Mormon Understanding” expanded on the ideas from the first section and typically took the concept further into the uniquely Mormon perspective. Rarely if ever was the Bible referenced in the second section.

I was generally disappointed with the authors approach to scriptures. Most of the passages were straight forward and on point. It’s hard to disagree that the Bible teaches that there is a God who offers salvation through Jesus Christ. But when the attention of the book was turned on unique Mormon teachings the authors used some odd justifications for some of their scriptural support.

There is a basic approach to reading the Bible that I think everyone should adopt. “Never Read a Bible Verse.” A reader should always read a verse in context to see what the entire passage is talking about. I think if the authors had used this principle and used a modern English translation of the Bible they would immediately have had a deeper understanding of the passages they cited. I won’t list every incident where a Biblical passage was misused but I will focus on one to illustrate my point.

Your theology is dumb . . . and blind.

Here are some thoughts that have been rolling around my head for a while. . . finally put them into a halfway coherent post:

Should theology be the focus of inter-faith discussion?

I don’t think you will hear or see the heart of most people through investigating the theology of their religious affiliation.  This sort of theology is dumb because it doesn’t speak for the believer who does not fully understand and participate in a theology, and it is blind because we can’t really understand other beliefs by looking at how they compare to the the approved theology, that we don’t really fully understand.  Plus, its clear that people who get a lot of things wrong about God still have powerful experiences with Him.

You are not going to really understand Mormons even if you understand all of the clever answers to tough theological questions apologists or theologians gin up.  Just as I won’t understand Evangelicals by understanding their theologians’ clever answers to tough theological questions. So Evangelicals and Mormons may be looking in the wrong place if they are out to understand and not just criticize. Even the criticisms are going to miss the mark, you may have biting criticisms of a particular theology that will not apply to those who don’t fully endorse or internalize it.

Looking at theology to criticize examine a group of  religious believers  is like trying to understand American citizens by reading their constitutional law cases.

If you are an educated Evangelical defending/explaining your faith on the internet,  my guess is that you are coming from a Protestant academic perspective where lots of clever people have come up with really clever answers to their tough theological questions for the last thousand years.    I personally think Mormons will catch up, but equally, I don’t think these clever answers will really help “bridge the divide” in understanding (or theology).

From my experience, the non-theologically focused, yet devout evangelicals that I meet interact with God in ways very similar to Mormons, which causes me to look past the some of the nonsensical things found in the standard theological answer clever answers believe about God and try to understand what the heart of their religion.  Which is how they practice it, and what it does to them.  I never really got interested in who they worship God until I decided to forget about the theological problems.   I go over it to the point that most ‘sophisticated’ theological discussion bores me to tears.  Yet individual and group experiences with God are positively fascinating.

Do the religious need to put theology aside to create an environment where we can be interested enough in the non-theological things to begin to really understand each other?   I tend to think so.

Beliefs Before Practice

A common characterization of the difference between Mormonism and Evangelicalism is the idea that Evangelicals emphasize orthodoxy (right belief) and Mormons emphasize orthopraxy (right action).  If you ask an Evangelical and a Mormon “what is more important a correct understanding of God or the proper mode for baptism?”  you will most likely get different answers from each.

As much as I appreciate how pragmatic Mormons are, I think it’s impossible to truly put orthopraxy over orthodoxy.  Even Mormons place a higher importance on right belief over right action, they just may not realize that they are doing it.  The “cart” of practice is impossible to put ahead of the “horse” of ideas.  The idea that “the proper mode of baptism is of highest importance” is first an idea before it is a practice.  The belief that “the appropriate priesthood is required” is first a belief before it is a practice. “How you behave matters” is a doctrinal position.  “Right practice” being shaped by “right ideas” is inescapable. Correct ideas matter to Mormons, they simply must or there is no right practice to emphasize.

The Mormon restoration narrative supports this.  If practice is more important than belief, then why did God not simply restore the priesthood to the apostate Christian church?  Why was a correction of Biblical translation and interpretation necessary?  I don’t want to dive too deeply into Catholic apologetics, but they can demonstrate an uninterrupted priesthood lineage.  So unless “abominable creeds” are not an issue I don’t see how the proper priesthood authority was not alive and well in the 19th Century.  Something more than the lack of priesthood must have been driving the restoration.

A further support for this is the Mormon institution’s approach to correlation.  Mormons who have been excommunicated for false teaching have been told that it is fine to believe anything a person wants, the problem arises when you start teaching other people those false ideas.  I’m confident that this April, if a General Conference speaker left their script and encouraged exclusively praying to Heavenly Mother or posited the idea that temple work is no longer necessary, that person would soon find themselves in a disciplinary counsel.  There would not be Ensign articles the following May praising that Elder’s proper use of the laying on of hands despite his heterodox teachings. If orthodoxy were not important there would be no correlated teaching manuals.  Local leaders would be encouraged to teach whatever the Spirit directed them to teach and no one would mind if the church was widely diverse.

Mormons may object that their real issue with “orthodoxy” is how an emphasis on it may exclude people from enjoying God’s presence based on speculative theories and interpretations.  I think this is both hypocritical and a straw man of Evangelical thought.

First off, there is plenty of speculative interpretation involving Mormon orthopraxy.  Do a search of “Mormon ‘hot drinks‘” and you’ll see what I mean.  As long as the “Word of Wisdom” is used in Temple recommend interviews it is a speculative obstacle to freely enjoy God’s presence via temple ordinances.

Second, the Temple recommend interview requires people to express a belief in basic Mormon truth claims.  Failing to acknowledge the LDS church as the real and true restoration of God’s one true church will keep a person from a temple recommend.  If it was merely about the correct priesthood authority and the proper methods for performing ordinances, the LDS church would open its temple doors wide to believers and unbelievers alike.  This would ensure as many people as possible had these important rituals performed in this lifetime.  Scoffing and ridicule during the ceremonies wouldn’t matter as long as the proper priesthood was there and every gesture was performed correctly and every prayer was recited precisely.

This idea that orthodoxy is used as a barrier to God’s presence totally distorts Evangelical thought.  I can not name a single Evangelical who thinks there is a theology exam given out at the pearly gates. No one believes that the ability to precisely describe the doctrine of the Trinity is a requirement for an indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  God always (and exclusively) reveals himself to people with false ideas.  Evangelicals do not believe we hold the keys to who does and does not have God actively living in their lives.   We do not believe that only the doctrinally pure will receive the Kingdom.

We certainly have a strong emphasis on orthodoxy.  As the LDS church does, we recognize it as a way to determine good fruit.  Because beliefs form practice, we evaluate teachers and preachers based on it.  It is useful in evaluating teachings, but it is never used as a barrier to God’s presence.  In Evangelical theology there is no place, behavior or thought that can keep God out of someone’s life. He is an untamed lion that speaks to and moves through anyone he desires.