A link to an interview that may interest both LDS and non-LDS friends. Bob Price was a part of the Book of Mormon Round Table Discussion held at BYU. The interview discusses his perspective of the Book of Mormon as pseudepigrapha. His approach to the Book of Mormon may be a way for some LDS people that no longer accept the historicity of the Book of Mormon and its origins to accept it as a normative text within the genre of scripture.
The link below takes you to the Mormon Expression website where you can listen to a variety of podcasts of varying topics. If this is your first time to Mormon Expression, enjoy. I find many of the podcasts interesting, but may not interest some. The interview with Bob Price is Episode 183: Bible Geek Bob Price. It's roughly thirty minutes long. I invite you to listen to the podcast and then let me know what you think.
Important Word to Know Before Listening: Pseudepigrapha
Link to Bob Price Interview Podcast: http://mormonexpression.com/
My thoughts on the interview (Best read after you get a chance to listen to it for yourself):
1) Bob is an extremely jovial guy, it seems. I look forward to exploring his works more thoroughly.
2) What a journey this man has taken. His comment about apologetics - having to explore other arguments against your own for it to be relevant outside the faith - is a very eye opening experience for anyone. While I don't think one has to follow Price towards agnosticism, it is an extremely challenging exploration when you know people who disagree with you will read your argument. It also sharpens your argument.
3) "I had unexamined assumptions." I appreciate this remark because assumptions go unrecognized until someone outside of ourselves brings us evidence that challenges us to our core. It's like you know you have unchallenged assumptions but you don't know what they are.
4) "So much of all scripture is pseudepigraphical." So can Mormons embrace this perspective of the Book of Mormon? That the BoM is authored by JS and functions much like the biblical texts, as a pseudepigraphical text?
5) Price respects JS as a creative theologian and writer, combining elements of the Gospels in 3 Nephi. It's not a hoax, it functions as scripture just like other sacred texts. Basically, Jesus didn't come to the Americas, but the artistic and ingenious combination of the Gospels that formed 3 Nephi 11 is worth appreciating.
6) "This isn't historical. This is a chance to update the Torah." Can we understand the BoM this way? It isn't historical, it's an update of the Gospels?
7) If you are going to throw out the BoM, than to remain consistent , won't you have to throw out the Bible? Well, it just depends what texts you want to have as normative for yourself and your community, I think. I think he means that if you are going to throw out the BoM as a normative text because of historical issues, than to be consistent, you should throw out the Bible on the same grounds.
8) It doesn't matter if the stories are true. The question is, are we true to our stories. Love it. Of course, it is important that we can acknowledge to ourselves and others the truthfulness of our text, and define what we mean when we say it is true.
9) BYU Reception of the Round Table?: Last meeting in a library downtown because BYU would no longer host it. Fired Mark Thomas. Is it okay to fire people because they have challenging round tables about our scriptures? That is disturbing to me.
10) Our theology spawns more from the other writings of JS than it does from the BoM. The BoM is a part of it, but it is interesting that the book that contains the fullness of the gospel mentions nothing of contemporary LDS temple worship.
11) A plead for consistency. I don't know if humans are actually capable of this. I guess that's our objective, but it's harder than we admit.
Well, I look forward to your thoughts.
Search Ponder Pray Repeat
I can't accept this at all. And I think it's futile to try. C.S. Lewis famously blasted the same approach to Jesus. "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."
ReplyDeleteAs far as the historicity of the BoM, Elder Dallin H. Oaks laid out a very clear way to think of it: "the opponents of historicity must prove that the Book of Mormon has no historical validity for any peoples who lived in the Americas in a particular time frame, a notoriously difficult exercise. You do not prevail on that proposition by proving that a particular eskimo culture represents migrations from Asia. The opponents of the historicity of the Book of Mormon must prove that the people whose religious life it records did not live anywhere in the Americas." On the other hand... "Another way of explaining the strength of the positive position on the historicity of the Book of Mormon is to point out that we who are its proponents are content with a standoff on this question. Honest investigators will conclude that there are so many evidences that the Book of Mormon is an ancient text that they cannot confidently resolve the question against its authenticity, despite some unanswered questions that seem to support the negative determination. In that circumstance, the proponents of the Book of Mormon can settle for a draw or a hung jury on the question of historicity and take a continuance until the controversy can be retried in another forum."
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=30
That being said, there are some, not overwhelming, but strong historical evidences for the BoM. This discovery of Nahom (Ishmael's buril place) in Yemen in the 1990's is a pretty impressive one.
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=10&num=2&id=255
Again, there are several isolated evidences for and against the BoM as real history. But as Elder Oaks says, it is much easier to see the positive evidence and say, "How could Joseph Smith have simply guessed this?" than to disprove the entire book with one apparent anachronism.
Adam-
DeleteIn your C. S. Lewis quote, he creates a pretty big false dichotomy. "Either you're with us or you're against us; there is no room for nuance." In fact, I don't recall ever reading a more forceful or hyperbolic assertion of dichotomy: "Either he's god or he's the devil." Why is Lewis so sure he has the authority to define the debate so forcefully? Why is he able to so confidently rule out the possibility that Jesus was simply a fallible man, and that claims of divinity were either foolish mistakes or they were added by later authors? We all make foolish mistakes. Thomas Jefferson was by far the greatest proponent of liberty to ever occupy the US presidency, but the man _owned slaves_. This doesn't mean that we must discount everything else the man said and did. One (or even several) mistake does not give us license to dismiss every argument or moral point made by a man.
This tendency is one of my greatest contentions with organized religion. When there is an authoritarian perspective on every theological question, large or small, nearly anyone who thinks for themselves can be designated a heretic for some position or another. Unless you submit all of your reason without question to "authority", you are vulnerable to excommunication. Historically, this has come in very handy whenever the need arises to justify a war or appropriate some property.
False dichotomy and the aggression it is used to justify are the greatest "sins" of organized religion.
Thanks for chiming in, Brent. I think your voice on religion represents a perspective gone unrepresented up to this point on the blog.
DeleteI have been thinking as of late that theological homogeneity is not only really boring but untruthful. It seems probable that there is a lot more theological diversity amongst the LDS people than is voiced in our Sunday meetings. I know of LDS people that are actually afraid of voicing their opinions openly out of fear of church discipline and what that would do to their family. That's pretty awful in my opinion. No one should be afraid of disagreement with any institution bearing the name of Christ.
Brent, technically, Lewis presents a trichotomy: Jesus is 1) Son of God, 2) Lunatic (delusional or fallible, as you say), or 3) Devil. And yes, there are false dichotomies, but not all -chotomies are false. Whether it is false or true is in the eye of the beholder. I would submit that religion as a whole, while certainly not objectively verifiable in any concrete or scientific sense, does need to have some logical consistency.
DeleteI'll liken it to when you hear some nerds (like me) arguing about whether or not the introduction of the concept of midichlorians introduced in Star Wars Episode I was consistent with other descriptions of the Force in Episodes IV, V, & VI. Personally, I feel that George Lucas contradicted himself and made a serious error and therefore much of the integrity of his epic was lost. But we all know, since Lucas is our contemporary, that this is just a story and (hopefully) no one is trusting their eternal souls to faith in the force... well, on second thought, there might be a few ;-)
But religion is, by definition, a much more serious matter. And I agree with Lewis when he says that Jesus "has not left that open to us." In other words, Jesus's recorded words constrict the available interpretations of his life and his teachings. Now, as you say, perhaps those statements about being divine are fabrications inserted by later writers. I have seen some pretty convincing evidence that certain verses in the bible were added later, as various manuscripts show. But if his claims of divinity were simply inserted later that creates a huge hole in the narrative: It was a conviction of blasphemy based on those assertions that led to his trial and death. If there were no claims of divinity, then was there even a trial? If so, what was the charge? Was he even put to death? Did he even exist at all?
But I digress. Ultimately, I'll concede that there are perhaps four ways to think of Jesus if you include the possibility that much of what we know of him was simply made up over the years. But I personally can't see much that's unique to believe in and study about if he wasn't divine. Maybe others can, and that's fine. But for myself, I can learn platitudes from Aesop's fables, Confucious, Gandhi, Socrates, etc. But it is markedly different to read about Jesus with a conviction of his divinity. In that sense, Lewis is not trying to dogmatically quash free thought, but he is making a strong argument to us not to hurt ourselves by bottling Jesus up in a shape of our own liking.
In closing, there is one false dichotomy that I did see in your post: That in organized religion 1)"you submit all of your reason without question to 'authority'" or 2)"anyone who thinks for themselves can be designated a heretic." I find this patently offensive. Did it ever occur to you that some who think for themselves choose to conform to a religious dogma? Were you aware that Mormonism is unique in the fact that increased education POSITIVELY correlates with increased religiosity (as measured by church activity and personal affirmation)? All other religions studied in the US show a negative correlation (see http://www.jstor.org/pss/3511041).
That's not to say that Mormons are the only ones to have great minds and great faithful members. Robert P. George is one of the most brilliant men I've ever met and he is a devout Catholic. Lord Acton is another great Catholic. Don't fool yourself, the choice to conform to an organized religion can be as equally well-reasoned and equally as logical as the choice to reject one.
Disagreement is a constant in any organization. The quorum of the twelve has disagreements. Even some general authorities disagree on peripheral doctrines. If people are afraid, I would ask them what specifically in their experience makes them so?
DeleteIf a member is genuinely fearful, then I do feel for them. But I think that a quick look at the facts could ease those fears and show that they were unfounded.
I'll quote here from an interview with Elder Holland by PBS in 2006:
"Every institution has to define itself somehow. ... As much as I admire it, this is not the Rotary Club. This is not an overly large scout troop, boy or girl. We are a church, and we have beliefs that define us, and that has to be for anything that would be a religion in the sense you and I talk about it.
You don't have to be in this church. You can be in any church you want. ... Now, for those that want the blessing of the church, ... there's a little bit of a price for that. Maybe it's a big price in terms of sacrifice and loyalty. Maybe it's a big price. But there's some price that's paid for the blessing, the participation, the identity and laying claim on the covenantal promises.
We don't discipline people in this church for very much... I think this church has a history of being very, very generous. There are some lines -- I'd probably say "lines," plural. The chief among these is the issue of advocating against the church. Personal beliefs within the give-and-take of life and associations and whatever you choose -- there are lots of people who carve out their life in the church all the way out to the edge and beyond. I guess that's always the way it's been, and that's always the way it will be. But I think where the church will act is when there is an act so decisive or so glaring, and particularly in this case, so much cast in the spirit of advocacy, that the institution itself cannot retain its identity and still allow that.
What about people who question the history of the Book of Mormon?
There are plenty of people who question the historicity of the Book of Mormon, and they are firmly in this church -- firmly, in their mind, in this church -- and the church isn't going to take action against that. [The church] probably will be genuinely disappointed, but there isn't going to be action against that, not until it starts to be advocacy: "Not only do I disbelieve in the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, I want you to disbelieve." At that point, we're going to have a conversation. A little of that is more tolerated than I think a lot of people think it should be. But I think we want to be tolerant any way we can. ... "Patient" maybe is a better word than "tolerant." We want to be patient and charitable to the extent that we can, but there is a degree beyond which we can't go. ..."
http://www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/holland.html
So let's say you are a member who has been excommunicated for trying to convince other members that the Book of Mormon is demonstrably false... Have you been harmed? Is it harmful to be removed from an organization that you actively state is based fundamentally on a fabrication? Would you attend a synagogue and stand up and proclaim that the Messiah has come and he was Jesus, and then be surprised if they asked you to leave? Churches and religions do not harm anyone merely by asking their members to conform to the beliefs that define them.
That being said, If one has convinced oneself that the BoM is historically false, then it is best to simply assume that it is all false. It is an exercise in frustration to try to dissect the "truth" from "falsehood." And yes, if you throw out the BoM gaps in the historical record, you must also throw out the Bible. If you try to keep the "texts you want to have as normative for yourself and your community," then you will inevitably be challenged by that community (and your kids and grandkids) on the truthfulness of the "canon" that you have chosen.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand you saying, Adam. It's either all true or not true at all. That doesn't leave much wiggle room. Can someone be a member of the LDS church and disagree with your position? Would you allow that person to participate in the Temple worship or disallow their participation because they believe in a different way.
ReplyDeleteI feel this is an important question as we strive to help others who may question their faith. It really affects the care we afford others. And so if someone agrees with Oaks and says that the verdict on the historicity of the BoM is out and undetermined until some later point, then do we disallow them to participate in the community because they take a neutral position? They weigh the evidence for both arguments and decide to remain neutral. Can they still be a full participating Mormon?
Thanks for the comments.
Sure, members of the church can have varying degrees of opinion on a number of these historical issues. But it is one thing to say that the verdict is out (neutral position as you say), and another to hold a conviction that the Book of Mormon is complete fiction. If that is the case, then they would most likely withhold themselves from Temple worship, unless they were willing to lie during a Temple Recommend interview. But, to answer your question, no, I wouldn't keep them from the Temple.
ReplyDelete