Mormon naturalism

I think one of the great strengths of Mormonism is its naturalism, FARMS criticism of “naturalistic” approaches to the Book of Mormon notwithstanding. The problem is one of equivocation. Dictionary.com gives (among others) these definitions of “naturalism:”

Philosophy. The system of thought holding that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws.

Theology. The doctrine that all religious truths are derived from nature and natural causes and not from revelation.

The assumption in the latter definition seems to be that God is “supernatural.” While this may be definitionally true (one of the definitions of “supernatural” is anything having to do with deity), there is a lot of baggage here. In Western religious and philosophical tradition, God has been understood to be outside or beyond the universe. But this is not the case in Mormon theology, in great part because of our denial of creation ex nihilo and our interpretation of scriptural creation accounts as pertaining to this earth only, and not to the entire universe.

This is both an advantage and a disadvantage in seeking to reconcile Mormonism with scientific thought. The advantage is that our conception of God allows him to be involved in whatever natural processes exist; in fact, we often assert that God always works by natural means. For example, Brigham Young taught:

Yet I will say with regard to miracles, there is no such thing save to the ignorant—that is, there never was a result wrought out by God or by any of His creatures without there being a cause for it. There may be results, the causes of which we do not see or understand, and what we call miracles are no more than this—they are the results or effects of causes hidden from our understandings. (JD 13:140)

Brother Carrington was telling us about the way in which money turned up to clear the ship after sending off more Saints than he had means to pay for. Was this a miracle any more than many other things in our lives and in the work of God? No, the providences of God are all a miracle to the human family until they understand them. There are no miracles only to those who are ignorant. A miracle is supposed to be a result without a cause, but there is no such thing. There is a cause for every result we see; and if we see a result without understanding the cause we call it a miracle. This is what we have been taught; but there is no miracle to those who understand. (JD 14:79)

George Q. Cannon was more explicit:

It was no suspension of law on the part of our Savior, that caused Him to gather from the elements the bread and the fishes necessary to feed the multitude. It was no suspension of law that caused Him to open the eyes of the blind, or to cause the sick to be healed. It was no suspension of law that caused Him to ascend in the sight of His disciples after His resurrection when He visited them. I know that miracles are said to be suspension of law; but instead of their being a suspension of law, they are due to a knowledge of a higher law, to a comprehension of greater laws, by the knowledge of which, what are called miracles are wrought. To a person who never saw the effect of electricity, if he were in this Tabernacle and were to see these lights kindled instantaneously by the touch of electricity—a person who did not understand the laws of electricity, would say, “Why this is miraculous.” Or to an ignorant person, a person who knew nothing of the law of electricity, it would seem marvelous that one standing at the end of a wire, stretched under the ocean could, by touching that wire, communicate a distance of nearly 3,000 miles, and could talk to a person at the other end of the wire. Had this been mentioned in the days of our forefathers, they would have declared it was an impossibility. Such a power would have been miraculous in their eyes, and they would have said that such a thing was contrary to all known laws concerning the transmission of sound and thought; but to us who understand this law—or if we do not understand it, who see the operations of electricity; who know that we can go to the telegraph office and send a message to Europe from this city, and get a reply within a few hours; in fact, receive it here at a time of the day earlier than it was transmitted from there, which is frequently done. We, who witness this, no longer look upon it as a miracle, or as a suspension of law, or a violation of the laws which govern the transmission of sound or thought. We accept it because we have become familiar with it. And so, if we understood the law by which Jesus operated when He fed the multitude, it would be as simple to us as the law of electricity is today. If we understood the law by which the sick were healed, and sight restored to the blind, or by which He counteracted the laws of gravitation, and ascended in the sight of His disciples into heaven—if we understood these laws, they would be simple to us, as all laws are when they are understood. (JD 25:149-150)

But there are disadvantages to this approach, too. When we claim that everything follows from natural law, then we should expect “miraculous” events to be subject to criticisms in a naturalistic vein. There is a disadvantage also in claiming that an effect flows from natural law without being able to provide a naturalistic account for it. We may rightly profess ignorance of these laws, but we cannot be content with ignorance, particularly when we claim to be able to receive all the knowledge God has. And the more we fall back on ignorance, the more our naturalism begins to look like supernaturalism, which I think has significant theological as well as philosophical drawbacks.

Following the definitions given above, Mormonism is philosophically naturalistic, but theologically revelatory, and we consider the latter definition (“derived from nature and natural causes and not from revelation”) to be a false dichotomy.

Coming soon: Combining naturalism and materialism...

Pray always

This weekend we had stake conference. Elder Parmley of the Seventy presided. He spoke of the need to pray always in our hearts, and spoke of his own efforts to do so while practicing medicine. It's not clear to me that the kind of “prayer” we can have in our hearts continually is the same kind of prayer we utter vocally (or even silently, but formally). The latter seems to require a focus and mindfulness (discussed somewhat in my post on Vain Repetitions) that we cannot have while doing other things that require our attention.

Is the “prayer in our hearts” similar to driving a car: something that occupies a portion of our attention, but at a level that allows us to focus on other things until we need to focus back on what we are doing “automatically?” If so, is it really prayer? If I carry on a conversation without paying full attention to the other person (something I am, unfortunately, wont to do), it is impolite and perhaps unethical. Is this not the case with “auto-pilot” prayer?

Or is this kind of prayer more a “way-of-being-in-the-world:” an attitude and a tendency to think of God before other things? If so, how is it connected to formal prayer in which we are focused on a conversation with God?

Temporal rewards

And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual (Mosiah 2:41, emphasis added).

What are we to make of this scripture? There are many scriptures that teach that God will bless the obedient, but this is one that goes further: it claims that those blessings will be temporal as well as spiritual. So how do we think of those that are not temporally blessed? Are there people who keep the commandments but are not temporally blessed? I suspect so, but that doesn't fit with this verse.

Some attempts at resolving this might be:

Their blessings will come at some later point, possibly in the next life. There are a couple of problems with this: first, if the blessings don't come until the next life, then the term “temporal” means something different than what we typically think it means; and second, the verse loses its rhetorical impact if we can no longer “consider ... the blessed and happy state” now.

They are blessed, since everything we have comes from God. Or, a similar attempt: They are blessed, because their lives would have been much worse if they had not been obedient. The problem with both of these is that there is no reason to consider the obedient any more blessed than the disobedient. In response to the first, we point out that God “sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” In response to the second, we point out that the lives of the disobedient could have been much worse. Why could we not equally say, “Consider the blessed and happy state of those that keep not the commandments of God...?”

Is there a good resolution of this verse that preserves its rhetorical value?

Unpredictable God

That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be and often is, right under another. God said thou shalt not kill,–at another time he said thou shalt utterly destroy. This is the principle on which the government of heaven is conducted–by revelation adapted to the circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed. Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire.

(The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, compiled and edited by Dean C. Jessee, 507-509.)

The above quotation suggests to me that we cannot predict, neither based on our previous experience nor based on our own reasoning, what God will require of us. We may appeal to scriptures regarding God's “unchanging nature,” but it seems that we cannot rule out much, if anything, based on such an assertion. How can we claim that any act of God would be inconsistent with his revealed nature, if we do not “see the reason thereof till long after?”

How, then, are we to distinguish between something that is inspired of God and something that is not?

It seems that our faith and trust in God cannot merely be based in our ideas about him. It cannot simply be based in the idea that he is omniscient or omnipotent or wise or loving, because these things alone are not adequate predictors of what he may inspire -- in fact, there may not be any such predictors. In other words, we cannot say, when confronted with an “inspiration:” “God would never require such a thing!”

How can we trust such an unpredictable God? I think we can only do so when we have a real, meaningful relationship with him: when we feel his love and learn to recognize it in the same way that a child recognizes his mother's voice: “I would that ye should remember to retain the name written always in your hearts, that ye are not found on the left hand of God, but that ye hear and know the voice by which ye shall be called” (Mosiah 5:12). It is God's love and our relationship wih him that is the foundation of our trust, not our intellectual understanding of his character and attributes.

Convert zeal

A story on NPR's All Things Considered this afternoon focused on concerns about radical Islamist terrorism in the Phillippines. One of the concerns is that many of these extremists are recent converts from Christianity to Islam. The commentator noted that it is common, not just to Islam, but across all religions, that converts are more zealous than those born in the faith.

Is this true of Mormonism? If so, why is it the case? Is it something that we should consider good or bad?

Enoch Train

If you like folk music with a real international flavor, you may want to check out Enoch Train (their new website isn't so hot, but their music is great). This group focuses on arrangements of LDS hymn tunes, but not like you've heard them before. From harmonica to Native American drums to Vietnamese dan tranh to accordion to mandolin -- well, you get the picture: it's not something you're likely to hear in sacrament meeting.

Often, two or more hymn tunes are blended together, along with other tunes, as in the track Mary Had a Shepherd, which melds “Mary Had a Little Lamb” with “Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd” and snatches of “He Shall Feed His Flock.” Styles range from New Orleans jazz to samba and a gorgeous four-recorder arrangement of “O Savior Thou Who Wearest a Crown.” Several original compositions, not based on hymn tunes, are also included.

Enoch Train has won numerous Pearl awards (LDS music awards) and there isn't another group like them that I'm aware of. Give them a listen -- it may change the way you think of our hymns.

Disclosure: Daron Bradford, who plays all of the woodwinds (yes, all of them) for Enoch Train, is my uncle. But I'm not biased, really I'm not!

God of the Old Testament

The Church teaches that Jesus is Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. But I have a hard time understanding what this means. It seems to me, for example, that Old Testament peoples worshipped the God of the Old Testament. Seems pretty obvious, except for what Jacob has to say about it:

For, for this intent have we written these things, that they may know that we knew of Christ, and we had a hope of his glory many hundred years before his coming; and not only we ourselves had a hope of his glory, but also all the holy prophets which were before us. Behold, they believed in Christ and worshiped the Father in his name, and also we worship the Father in his name. (Jacob 4:4-5)

It seems to me also that Old Testament peoples prayed to the God of the Old Testament -- again, seems like a fairly obvious claim, except for what Nephi says about it: “Ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ” (2 Nephi 32:9). (Leaving aside for the moment the fact that there are plenty of Old Testament prayers addressed to Jehovah.)

It seems to me also that if God is “the same yesterday, today, and forever”, then the God of the Old Testament would also be the God of the New Testament and the God of the Doctrine & Covenants. It seems to me that this would be the God we worship and pray to, except that we have also been taught to pray to the Father, rather than to Christ.

Call me confused, but it seems a little odd to me to say that someone we are not supposed to pray to or worship is God, or that someone the Old Testament peoples didn't worship or pray to was their God.

The only resolution I can come to is the idea that there are multiple Gods who have different roles. Margaret Barker's Old Testament studies suggest that pre-exilic Hebrews had such an understanding, closer to what Nephi teaches about the Father and the Son. But if this is correct, and the Hebrews recognized more than one God (and we do, too), then I'm not sure what we mean by our claim that Jesus is the God of the Old Testament.

Loosed in heaven?

During today's commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the restoration of the priesthood, this well-known scripture was cited repeatedly:

And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 16:19)

The part about sealing/binding I think I understand pretty well: it essentially means that ordinances, properly done and recorded, are considered valid and create ties that can continue beyond this life. But I don't have a good understanding of the part about loosing. When we seal something, we do so with an ordinance. Are there ordinances that serve a loosing function? When a sealing is cancelled, is there an ordinance of cancellation of sealing, or is the cancellation simply recorded? How is the priesthood involved in loosing?

Vain repetitions

The scriptures counsel us to avoid “vain repetitions” when we pray. I understand the word “vain” in a manner consistent with its usage in the commandment not to take the name of the Lord in vain. I think this means something like what God condemned as generally true in Christianity: having the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.

As a practical matter, we typically say this means not to use the same phrases in our prayers in a thoughtless manner. Repetition per se is not condemned, only vain repetition. It seems to me that we should have the same concern regarding our actions as regarding our prayers. It is easy to “go through the motions” of taking the sacrament, for example, without making it meaningful.

But one problem that arises for me, at least, and I suspect for some other people, is that repetition itself can tend to make the repeated activity routine. I suppose this can be a good thing; good habits are better than bad habits, and probably better than no habits at all. But when something is a habit, how do we avoid making it a “vain repetition?” How can we make sure that our (good) habits of scripture study, prayer, Family Home Evening, partaking of the sacrament, temple attendance, and so forth are really meaningful each time, and not vain repetitions?

LDS Infobases

Ryan Henrie has a great resource for LDS infobases. Folio Views Infobases are a full-text indexed data format for unstructured documents (like books). It's what all the LDS CD-ROM collections used before Deseret Book bought up the major players. Many CD-ROM collections use Folio Views, from Signature Books' New Mormon Studies CD-ROM to the Church's $3 LDS Church Magazines 1971-1999 CD. If you own a copy of such a CD, you can open the files offered for free download from LDSInfobase.Net.

Included in the LDS resources section are the 1830 Book of Mormon, General Conference addresses from 1897-1970, with a very handy index that allows you to search by speaker, the 26-volume Journal of Discourses, also with the ability to search by speaker, and the LDS Quad with Strong's Concordance of Biblical Greek and Hebrew. This last is what I use as my electronic scriptures.

In addition to other LDS infobases, there are numerous non-LDS infobases that are very useful, including the Apocrypha, writings of the Early Church Fathers, the complete works of Josephus, and other philosophical and religious resources. And all of this is offered free of charge. Enjoy!

How to prepare a talk

One of the things I love about the participatory nature of the Church is that we are given the opportunity at a young age to learn public speaking by giving talks in Primary. (Oh, you thought this was going to be about sacrament meeting talks? Nope.) I think learning to give a talk in Primary can be one of the most beneficial aspects of the Primary program. Some kids are uninhibited: they'll march right up to the podium, yank the microphone halfway down their throat, and belt out a talk. Others will freeze unless prompted by their parents -- and in some cases, the parents end up giving the talk for them.

We have five young boys; two of them have given talks in Primary. One of them was very shy about speaking in front of people, but we used a great method to prepare him to give his talk and he got right up and got through it on his own. My mother came up with this method when I was in Primary, and I think it will work for most young children. Here's how it works:

Fold a piece of unlined paper in half so that the short edges of the paper meet. Fold in half again in the same direction. Now fold in half the other way. When you unfold the paper, you will have eight squares (okay, they're really rectangles, but close enough) defined by the folds. (For older children, you can fold it so you end up with 12 or 16 squares.) Sitting with the child, talk about what she wants to say and draw a picture in each square to represent that part of the talk. It shouldn't be anything fancy, just one or two iconic images that can help the child remember that part of the talk. Make them big enough to fill up most of the square. (For older children who are beginning to read, you might add a word or three.)

Now go through the talk with the child several times, pointing at the pictures as you go along. Have the child repeat what you say. Then have her do it on her own, with help from you as she needs it. It's amazing how quickly children pick up on this, and how much they will remember. It is not essential that she memorize it word for word (though this works better for some children); the key is that she knows the concepts associated with each picture and can express them. Then have her practice several times in front of the family. Set up a music stand or a stool or something as a stand-in for the podium, and have the family sit and listen (Family Home Evening is a great time to do this).

On the day of the talk, go over it a few times right before leaving for church (and if Primary is after sacrament meeting, maybe right before the end of sacrament meeting). Go to the Primary sharing time where she will be giving the talk and stand in the back of the room, where she can see you. You can silently prompt from there if she gets stuck, and she will be reassured by your presence and praise, but will be on her own in front of the group.

I think most children will succeed with this approach, and they will learn some great skills: memorization, public speaking, outlining; and they will develop greater self-confidence. Hey, it worked for me: I love to give talks!

Contradictory revelations

A couple of years ago, President Faust and his wife separately made the same point during a Regional Conference in our area. They spoke of the fact that sometimes it is appropriate to turn down inspired callings. Sister Faust gave an example from her experience where she was inspired to call a sister to a position; this sister turned down the calling and was right to do so.

This seems to me to be yet another caution in how we interpret personal and institutional revelation (a theme that seems to pop up frequently in my posts), particularly with regard to their comprehensiveness and finality. In a case such as this, we have examples of apparently contradictory revelation to two different people, but both being inspired by God.

Are we willing and able to live with this kind of “messiness?” I must admit that it is difficult for me; I like to have things neatly resolved and reconciled. But maybe this “messiness” is inescapable, even in eternity, and that's part of what God is trying to teach me here...