Historicity and faith

Why is the issue of scriptural historicity important? One answer I have heard is that it's a matter of truth: that it's important to know whether they are historical or not so that we don't believe something false. And yet, as a matter of truth, historicity generally seems pretty unimportant. For example, it doesn't much matter to me whether the story of the good Samaritan was just a story Jesus made up to teach a principle or a historical event. The point is not the history, it is the message of the story. And it seems to me that most scripture fits into this category.

But are there matters in the scriptures where the point is the history? The one that I think has the strongest case is the historicity of the atonement of Jesus Christ, including his death and resurrection. Why is the historicity of these events important? It seems to me that one primary reason is that belief in their historical reality encourages hope, faith, and repentance.

What makes this particularly interesting, though, is that in the Book of Mormon, we have the story of people who lived prior to Jesus, who were able to exercise faith and hope in him. Historicity was not the driving factor of their faith; it was a forward-looking faith. Their faith was efficacious even though Jesus had not yet gone through his suffering and resurrection. How was this possible?

Unless we are willing to posit some strange backwards causation to the atonement (which may not be so far-fetched?), it seems that their faith, even in the absence of an already-wrought atonement, was sufficient to secure their salvation -- with the exception of a physical resurrection. If they were able to exercise redemptive faith without the historical events having occurred, would the same be possible for us?

More on issues of historicity coming soon...

Local hierarchy

A few years ago, I had a question of doctrine & practice that I took to my bishop. He informed me that it wasn't important, and that if it were, we'd hear about it from President Hinckley in General Conference. I was very unsatisfied with that answer -- it was (and is) important to me, even if nobody else considered it important.

A few months later, I had a temple recommend interview with a member of our stake presidency. I took advantage of it to ask him my questions on the same matter. He told me that he wasn't sure and suggested that we consult various references, including the Church handbook and Joseph Fielding Smith's Answers to Gospel Questions. The next day, he called me at home, having done some research into my question, and gave me a very positive answer, quite different from the discouragement I had received from my bishop.

The bishop, who has since moved away, never knew that I had “gone over his head,” so to speak, to get my question answered (but the stake presidency member knew that I had spoken with the bishop and was not satisfied with his response).

Is this a good approach to such an issue? How far can one take this approach? What if the stake presidency member had given me a similarly unfavorable response?

Commenting change

Blogger has recently added free commenting that doesn't have the same comment size limitations as Haloscan. The main disadvantage, as far as I'm concerned, is that it requires commenters to register in order to display their names, email, etc. The reason for this is to discourage spam comments. I'm going to switch over to Blogger's commenting system and allow anonymous commenting for now, so you don't have to register if you don't want to. But I encourage you to register as a Blogger commenter. You can then use the same profile on all the Blogger blogs you comment on, and your name and other information will show up with your comments here.

I'm going to see what I can do about migrating the old comments over into the new system. During the migration, you'll see links for both Haloscan and Blogger comments. Feel free to read the Haloscan comments, but please post using the Blogger comments. Thanks.

[Update: I've been playing with the Blogger comment system a bit now, and it has a few more drawbacks than I initially thought. While it doesn't have the same size limitations as Haloscan, it doesn't do paragraph separation (!!) and deleting a comment leaves a deletion notice in its place. It doesn't have an RSS feed like Haloscan does, and doesn't offer comment editing. Please leave a comment on this thread to let me know which commenting system you prefer.]

Mothers' Day talk

Mothers' Day can be very hard for some people. I had that in mind when I gave a talk in sacrament meeting for Mothers' Day last year; hopefully it's meaningful for those who struggle with Mothers' Day. It's too long to post here, so I'll provide a link instead.

Mothers' Day 2003

Peripheral revelation

One of the misunderstandings some people have of revelation is that it should consistently reflect “the mind and will of the Lord.” After all, isn't the point of revelation that God reveals his mind and will to us? Yes, but sometimes that can only go so far because of our own situation and preparation. I use the analogy of peripheral vision to illustrate why the Lord might reveal something to us that isn't exactly right.

Imagine that God wants me to move in a particular direction, but I am currently facing 180º away from where he wants me to go. God tries to get my attention focused in the direction that he wants me to go, but because I am so focused in my own direction, suggestions of the Spirit to that effect seem strange to me, to the point that I do not recognize them as being of divine origin. They are out of the range of my vision. So, instead, God inspires me to turn to something that is in my “peripheral vision”: something I am willing and able to consider. As I turn in the right direction, other things come into my peripheral vision. This process can continue until I have turned around to where God wanted me to be going in the first place.

I have had this kind of experience in my life, where I have felt led in one direction (toward schooling or a career path, for example), only to discover later that it was just a step in the right direction, eventually leading to a situation that I felt was where God wanted me to be.

It seems to me that this idea has significant implications for how we view revelation not only in our personal lives, but also to the Church. Things that we consider relatively stable may really just be a step in the right direction, eventually leading us to where God wants us to go. Perhaps if we think about things in this way, we may be able to get some inspired hints as to where these things may be leading...

Demographic homogeneity

Eugene England, in his book, Why the Church is as True as the Gospel, points out that the geographic organization of the Church puts us in contact with people we might not otherwise choose to serve or choose to serve with, and that this stretches and develops us. This practical aspect of the Church can transform us as much as the doctrinal beliefs can.

However, as the country has seen formal segregation change to informal segregation, with minorities concentrated in dense urban areas and the more affluent occuping the suburbs, it seems the Church feels the effects of this, and it lessens the potential England discusses. I lived just outside Baltimore, Maryland, for a couple of years, and the demographics of our suburban ward were very different from the demographics of the downtown Baltimore wards -- and the problems we had to solve were also very different. The impact of this kind of separation on the Church is likely strongest where there is a high concentration of Church members (and each ward is therefore geographically smaller). For example, my parents live in Lindon, Utah (about 20 minutes north of BYU). The few neighborhoods that comprise their ward are very homogenous, with a few minor exceptions as children inherit from their parents.

England's point still holds true to some extent. Unlike other churches, we generally don't choose the congregation we prefer to go to. (I say “generally,” but when we moved to Minnesota, the ward was a factor in our decision of which area of the city to move to.) This ensures that there will at least be some diversity in our approaches to the gospel. But we may miss out on other productive tensions as our wards reflect the relative homegeneity of the geographical area in which we live.

Should the Church try to find ways to mitigate this? Is the Church trying to do so? If so, how? What might be some good suggestions? Do we have an additional individual responsibility to step out of our comfort zone to serve those who are different from us?

Covenanting

When I was on my mission, the idea of “covenanting” became popular for a while. The idea was that a companionship would set some goals and say, essentially, “Okay, Lord, this is what we're going to do, and in return we expect such-and-such results (usually a certain number of baptisms).” A member of the Area Presidency did a mission tour and forcefully put a stop to the practice. I have often heard it taught that, in a covenant, God sets the terms and our options are to accept or to reject them. We do not have the right to set the terms of the covenant.

The story of Jacob seems to put a little twist on this idea, though. In Genesis 28:20-22, we read:

And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, So that I come again to my father's house in peace; then shall the LORD be my God: And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.

This sure sounds like Jacob is setting the terms of a “deal” with God: “You do all these things for me and I'll worship you, build a house for you, and even pay tithing. How can you refuse?” There are other scriptural passages that run similarly, and we hear the same kind of language in war stories told by general authorities (“Lord, if I get out of this alive, I'll serve you for the rest of my life”).

Is this offensive to God? Does he get upset when his children try to make a deal with him? And if King Benjamin is right that “if [we] should serve him with all [our] whole souls yet [we] would be unprofitable servants,” then why would God honor such a request? Yet he appears to do so in the case of Jacob. Would he not do similarly today?

Universalism and exclusivity

We seem to have an interesting tension in Mormonism (and traditional Christianity, too) between universalism and exclusivism. On the one hand, we have a very inclusivist soteriology, in which all except a very few sons of perdition will be saved in a kingdom of glory. On the other hand, there are exclusive ordinances that must be performed by an exclusive priesthood authority in order to receive the highest salvation.

This tendency manifests itself in a variety of ways, scripturally and in the practice and teachings of the Church. A brief list might include:

Inclusive	Exclusive
The First Presidency declaration that God inspires all peoples The Book of Mormon teaching that God gives scripture to all nations The Book of Mormon teaching that everything that leads to good is inspired of God The Book of Mormon teaching that all are alike unto God The inclusive vision of degrees of glory	Proselytization and baptisms for the dead The claim of exclusive priesthood authority The claim of being “the only true and living church” Temple ordinances by recommend only The view of Zion vs. Babylon (also known as “in the world, but not of it”)

The story of the City of Enoch seems to epitomize this tension: The scriptures tell us that “there were no poor among them” (emphasis mine). Does this mean there were no poor on the whole face of the earth? I don't think so. It seems that there was some exclusion going on, but that this did not prevent the city from being taken up to God. But we tend to view exclusion as a bad thing today. Are we justified in believing that?

This tension is also manifest in the seeming contradiction of Christ's words in the gospels: on the one hand, he is recorded as saying, “he that is not against us is on our part,” but on the other, he is recorded as saying, “He that is not with me is against me.”

What are we to make of this tension? How far should our desire to be inclusive go? When is exclusion desirable, necessary, ethical?

Evolution: The Real Issue Revisited

Traditional Christian arguments against human evolution are unnecessary. As far as I can tell, human evolution poses no threat to traditional Christianity (except for literalistic and inerrantist scriptural interpretations, but there are plenty of other things that are at least as threatening to them as is evolution). The classic traditional Christian theological argument against human evolution, made popular in the Church by Joseph Fielding Smith, is “No Adam, no Fall; no Fall, no Atonement.” In other words, if there was no literal Adam as described by the Biblical account, who brought death into the world for the first time with the Fall, there is no need for Christ's atonement.

But I think this is a weak argument. All of us are mortal and all of us are sinners, regardless of whether this fact came about by a historical Fall or not. I need an atonement even if there was no historical Adam and Eve. This and other Christian arguments against human evolution have been thoroughly addressed and can be reconciled fairly easily, in my view. These are the kinds of questions that have been discussed in Mormon venues for the past few decades.

But what has not been addressed well at all, to my knowledge, is how human evolution seems to challenge uniquely Mormon doctrines. At Times & Seasons, Nate Oman correctly pointed out that the pinnacle of Mormon salvation is divine fecundity. Exaltation is fecundity: the “continuation of the seeds”. And this is where the really Mormon questions about human evolution arise.

Mormonism believes in an exalted human God, consisting of man and woman united in eternal marriage. As Erastus Snow put it:

There can be no God except he is composed of the man and woman united, and there is not in all the eternities that exist, nor ever will be, a God in any other way. I have another description: There never was a God, and there never will be in all eternities, except they are made of these two component parts; a man and a woman; the male and the female.

(Journal of Discourses, 19:270-271.)

If this is the case, and if these exalted beings are capable of procreation, then the uniquely Mormon question regarding human evolution seems to be: Why would a God capable of procreating to create bodies in his own likeness and image for his spirit children resort to the long, involved, and messy process of evolution to provide bodies? Why not give birth to their bodies?

I think it is no coincidence that Brigham Young, Joseph F. Smith, and others taught that Adam was literally the son of God. This fits perfectly with Mormon teachings about exaltation, but it seems difficult to reconcile with human evolution. Is there a good reconciliation of this question? I've never really even seen it addressed.

Final judgment?

Steve Evans asks a good set of questions about “second chances” over at By Common Consent. Underlying some of the comments there, and underlying much of our common understanding about receiving according to our works and desires in the next life is the assumption of a “final judgment.” This is a term we hear relatively frequently, but where did it come from? The scriptures never speak of the “final judgment.” The closest they get is referring to the judgment at “the great and last day.”

But in what sense is this judgment final? Are there really no more judgments after it? I doubt it. I think this is an interim judgment, just like the many interim judgments we have had prior to and during our earthly lives. And the “last day” referred to isn't really the last day -- there are other days that follow it; it's just “last” in a sense: in relation to a certain sphere. Similarly, I suspect that the “final judgment” is also only “final” with respect to a certain sphere, but that there are other spheres beyond.

What might these other spheres be? And isn't it just speculation that there even are other spheres beyond what we know about? I can't answer the former question, but it is not just speculation that there are spheres beyond those we know about -- it's scriptural. From Doctrine & Covenants 130:9-11 (emphasis added):

This earth, in its sanctified and immortal state, will be made like unto crystal and will be a Urim and Thummim to the inhabitants who dwell thereon, whereby all things pertaining to an inferior kingdom, or all kingdoms of a lower order, will be manifest to those who dwell on it; and this earth will be Christ’s. Then the white stone mentioned in Revelation 2:17, will become a Urim and Thummim to each individual who receives one, whereby things pertaining to a higher order of kingdoms will be made known; And a white stone is given to each of those who come into the celestial kingdom, whereon is a new name written, which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it. The new name is the key word.

Steve asks why it is that “this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God,” if there really are “second chances.” I think the reason is that given in D&C 130:19: “If a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come.” I think it is also reflected in the parable of the prodigal son. And really, we're all the prodigals. We should be glad that there are second chances, because we all need them, and probably will for a good long time to come.

Bottom-up or top-down?

This may seem trivial, but as one of the priests was preparing to say the sacrament prayer today, he pulled too hard on the little pull-out microphone and it made a kind of popping sound. He was obviously embarrassed at not having pulled it out quietly enough. My wandering mind started to wonder: how did it come about that we have these little pull-out microphones at the sacrament table as standard features in chapels? Was this an idea that started somewhere local and spread popularly, was recognized higher up in the hierarchy as a good idea, and then adopted as standard? Or was it the idea of someone at the top that was propagated down to the local level?

I rather suspect it was the former. But so what, you ask? Well, there have been some programs that have been started on a local level and, when successful, became a standard part of the official Church program. This seems to be quite accepted, despite the perception of the Church as a very “top-down” organization. Does this say anything about how we should perceive the workings of revelation and the Spirit in the Church? Are there doctrinal or “theological” examples of “bottom-up” influence? If not, does this point to a distinction between doctrine & practice contra some suggestions in the relatively recent Belief and Practice thread at Times & Seasons?

Is either “bottom-up” or “top-down” influence preferable? Can both fit the model of revelation in the Church?

Blessed business

Some years ago, my brother in law told me:

When I was younger, I thought that college students really knew what they were doing. When I became a college student, I thought that business people really knew what they were doing. When I became a business person, I realized that nobody knows what they're doing; we're all just making it up as we go along.

Recently, in the hall at church, I mentioned this to one of our high councilors, who does organizational development for a living. He told me that in his line of work, he's discovered how true it is. He mentioned that there are very high levels of incompetency in American business, and then said something interesting: he said that the economic success of the United States is not due to greater competency here than in other countries, but because the Lord has chosen to bless America.

A few questions that come to mind in thinking about this exchange: Does God alter the natural consequences of our actions when he blesses us? Should we view the economic success of America as evidence of divine favor? Is it true of spiritual matters as well as temporal that we're all just bumbling along?

There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated--And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated. (D&C 130:20-21)

If this high councilor is right, what might be the laws America is obeying to warrant God's blessings of economic prosperity? Does the United States fit the requirements outlined in the Book of Mormon?

Behold, do ye not remember the words which he spake unto Lehi, saying that: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land? And again it is said that: Inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. (Alma 9:13)