This Is My Doctrine: The Development of Mormon Theology

[Jeff Lebowski]

I don't like the Sunday block. At all. I'm an HP now and it was just dawning on me yesterday that I have another probably another thirty or forty years' worth of incredibly inane--if not downright irritating--HP lessons looming ahead of me in the future. A depressing thought. The trouble is not really with the HP group per se. There are some very smart and highly educated members there. Certainly much smarter than I am. The problem is an insipid curriculum that is spiritually vacuous and social codes that inhibit us from speaking openly and honestly (although HP tends to be better than EQ, since some of the old dogs let it all hang out, as it were).

But I go because, well, in part because of all of the reasons you mentioned above. But, I also go because (1) it's my tribe and I'm loyal to it; (2) at its finest, it is a theologically vibrant religion, even if we do our best to look like all the other conservative Protestants around us; and (3) because I'm a lazy, misanthropic sod that would happily retreat into my own bubble if I could get away with it. But I have home teaching families that really need me and, by god, there are chairs that need to be stacked and sidewalks that need to be shoveled. I wish the three-hour block itself were more spiritually edifying. But then again, that is why God revealed to Steve Jobs the design of the iPad, worlds without end.

Great post.

I have had the same depressing thoughts. We have four instructors that rotate and most of them spend the entire 40 minutes giving a sermon rather than leading a discussion. One guy pimps a book he wrote almost every time he teaches. Another guy gives primary-level lessons (I kid you not - he breathlessly read the "footprints in the sand" poem one week as if he was sharing a great new treasure with us). Another guy is a BRM-JFS style, ultra-orthodox hardliner that is unbearable. Our current HPG leader is a friend of mine so I griped to him about the lessons long enough that he called arguably our most liberal member to be an instructor to balance things out a bit. This guy teaches great lessons and gets everyone involved and asks thoughtful but sensitive questions. So for one week per month, it is great. The other three weeks I get to catch up on my reading.

[Joe Public]

Another guy gives primary-level lessons (I kid you not - he breathlessly read the "footprints in the sand" poem one week as if he was sharing a great new treasure with us).

lol. We had a guy do the same thing with the Max Lucado "You Are Special" book. The whole book.

[BigPiney]

lol. We had a guy do the same thing with the Max Lucado "You Are Special" book. The whole book.

The ripoff of Pinocchio? I hate that book.

[clackamascoug]

We got the big jim taking a whooping for the scrawney kid without a shirt story a couple of weeks ago. The instructor cried. Sometimes the distance between members boggles my mind. What's funny is that I'm a conservative mormon compared to the rest of you on this board, but I'm a flaming liberal compared to the brethern in our HPG.

[Pelado]

We got the big jim taking a whooping for the scrawney kid without a shirt story a couple of weeks ago. The instructor cried. Sometimes the distance between members boggles my mind. What's funny is that I'm a conservative mormon compared to the rest of you on this board, but I'm a flaming liberal compared to the brethern in our HPG.

I'll love Big Jim for the rest of my life for taking my whoopin' for me.

[Harry Tic]

I'll love Big Jim for the rest of my life for taking my whoopin' for me.

What they never mention was how much Big Jim enjoyed it. Big Jim had lots of issues.

And now you know ... the rest of the story. G'day!

[Harry Tic]

Great post.

I have had the same depressing thoughts. We have four instructors that rotate and most of them spend the entire 40 minutes giving a sermon rather than leading a discussion. One guy pimps a book he wrote almost every time he teaches. Another guy gives primary-level lessons (I kid you not - he breathlessly read the "footprints in the sand" poem one week as if he was sharing a great new treasure with us). Another guy is a BRM-JFS style, ultra-orthodox hardliner that is unbearable. Our current HPG leader is a friend of mine so I griped to him about the lessons long enough that he called arguably our most liberal member to be an instructor to balance things out a bit. This guy teaches great lessons and gets everyone involved and asks thoughtful but sensitive questions. So for one week per month, it is great. The other three weeks I get to catch up on my reading.

I remember a couple of years ago when we learned that the HP manual for the next go-around was going to be Gospel Principles. Now, as church manuals go, it's not that bad. But for High Priests? You can't use the argument that the same manual would be used by new converts in Zimbabwe. Even if the manual would be used somewhere where the church is less developed, if they are HPs, they should pretty much be ready for some meat. By definition. That's the exact moment when I despaired of ever actually learning anything in HPG again. There's always a chance that it could happen, but if it does, it would be by accident, not design.

It's hard to not look back at the old manuals they used to use (Seventy's Course in Theology, anyone?) and not feel like the Brethren have little confidence in the body of the church. In my experience, if you teach at a high level, your students will meet you there. It's difficult to avoid the feeling at times that, for the Brethren, we are managerial problems to be solved, not resources to be treasured or mobilized.

[myboynoah]

We generally have pretty good HP lessons. Except when some joker wants us to sit in a semi-circle. I hate that.

[Indy Coug]

We generally have pretty good HP lessons. Except when some joker wants us to sit in a semi-circle. I hate that.

I attended an industry conference last week. A guy had us split into groups to look at different case studies and then we had to report what our decisions were. It felt very EQ-ish.

[wuapinmon]

It's hard to not look back at the old manuals they used to use (Seventy's Course in Theology, anyone?) and not feel like the Brethren have little confidence in the body of the church. In my experience, if you teach at a high level, your students will meet you there. It's difficult to avoid the feeling at times that, for the Brethren, we are managerial problems to be solved, not resources to be treasured or mobilized.

It's like Harrison Bergeron went and got himself baptized.

[Northwestcoug]

We all have similar questions that can't be answered by the standard interpretation of doctrine without creating intellectual noise or outright contradiction. But the more accurate answer to these questions really shouldn't be "X happens" or "Y is true." The fact of the matter is that there is a whole lot that's never been revealed, a whole lot where revelations on their face are contradictory (especially things that JS and BY said), and the accurate answer is "We simply don't know."

We know that making and keeping covenants are the most direct mode for us to use to make progress and become more like God in this life. This includes following the basic Christian commandments, sacrificing things in this life for the promise of something more in the hereafter as well as increased spiritual enlightenment now (includes tithing, service in the church and missionary service for Melch. Priesthood holders, and to a certain extent the Word of Wisdom), a specific call to be chaste, and the granddaddy of them all - the all encompassing promise that we will give everything we have to the Church - property, serve, our lives if necessary - if called upon to do so. The Law of Consecration is going to be the real "sheep or goats" commandment.

After those, the Hows? Whens? and Whys? of the Revealed Gospel get hazy around the edges. The best answer in the hazy areas is to remember that we know the most direct path to becoming more like our Creator, and if we choose not to follow that path, we "have no promise."

I tend to look at this the other way around. I've been asked to sacrifice all; time, money, and rational thought. Yet I can't even get straight answers to simple Hows, Whens, and Whys. I would understand if there were only a few hazy areas to the gospel. But when even fundamental questions can't be answered satisfactorily, I will roll the dice with consecrating myself. I will beg for mercy if I'm wrong.

[SeattleUte]

We all have similar questions that can't be answered by the standard interpretation of doctrine without creating intellectual noise or outright contradiction. But the more accurate answer to these questions really shouldn't be "X happens" or "Y is true." The fact of the matter is that there is a whole lot that's never been revealed, a whole lot where revelations on their face are contradictory (especially things that JS and BY said), and the accurate answer is "We simply don't know."

We know that making and keeping covenants are the most direct mode for us to use to make progress and become more like God in this life. This includes following the basic Christian commandments, sacrificing things in this life for the promise of something more in the hereafter as well as increased spiritual enlightenment now (includes tithing, service in the church and missionary service for Melch. Priesthood holders, and to a certain extent the Word of Wisdom), a specific call to be chaste, and the granddaddy of them all - the all encompassing promise that we will give everything we have to the Church - property, serve, our lives if necessary - if called upon to do so. The Law of Consecration is going to be the real "sheep or goats" commandment.

After those, the Hows? Whens? and Whys? of the Revealed Gospel get hazy around the edges. The best answer in the hazy areas is to remember that we know the most direct path to becoming more like our Creator, and if we choose not to follow that path, we "have no promise."

“Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

[myboynoah]

“Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

"They had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them. And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it."

[Applejack]

Thanks JL; this has been a great thread. Not as good as the Bigfoot thread, but close.

[Harry Tic]

I haven't quite finished the book and I probably won't. It's not really the kind of thing you read from cover to cover.

A couple of quick impressions. First, there are things about it that are very useful. I particularly enjoyed his generally helpful summaries of early nineteenth-century views on a given topic, followed by early Mormon views (sometimes broken down by period), followed by more contemporary positions. I'm not a historian and I'm really not in a position to assess his work but it seemed to me that this way of organizing the book was helpful and should prove useful for future consultation. I didn't find the Old Testament and New Testament assessments nearly as helpful and Harrell often seems quite out of his depth. He comes across as an avid but utterly untrained reader of the critical literature. Of course I'm neither avid nor trained (nor am I even a reader of the scholarly literature) when it comes to that, so take it for what it's worth.

The second impression is maybe more substantial. Harrell characterizes himself in the introduction as an "active" member of the church, but it's worth noting that he does not self-identify as a believing one. Maybe he takes "active" to imply "believing," but my suspicion is that the word choice is deliberate. And it's easy to see why. If you had spent most of your life taking every one of the claims of the restoration at face value and dutifully limited your reading to official church publications--and then you suddenly realized that the story was far more complicated than you had ever believed--it's easy to see how you could come away from Harrell's book with your testimony in tatters. It purports to provide a fairly evenhanded comparison of LDS views (early and late) with New Testament and Old Testament perspectives and, almost inevitably, LDS views turn out to look utterly alien and, at any rate, not a "restoration" of anything. If you have only ever considered correlated history or utter apostasy to be the only viable options, it's hard to see how you could go on, if Harrell's picture is mostly accurate.

I guess I'm not as upset about that kind of thing as I should be since I came to the conclusion a long time ago that, while many people find it helpful to think of LDS theology in a "restorationist" mode, one may also find it useful to see JS as employing the restoration trope as a way of communicating his own insights--revelations, that is--in the only idiom that was available to him in Bible-obsessed Jacksonian America. All religious authority at the time was ultimately derived from ancient scripture and to even get in the game--to even attempt to bring new religious light into the world--meant that you had to do so in the idiom of ancient scripture. We know that God is obliged to speak to us according to the manner of our understanding but we rarely think about the ramifications of this idea. It's unsurprising that JS, showing up on the scene when he did, would consequently see himself first and foremost as a translator of ancient records (why, for instance, couldn't God have simply had Moroni dictate to JS the essence of the BoM? Why did he need an ancient record?). Harrell, if we were to read between the lines of his ostensibly dispassionate book, nevertheless seems to be troubled by this, as many orthodox believers might be. He seems utterly unaware of the significance of the fact that JS might be regarded as recapitulating certain elements of a long-standing tradition of pseudepigraphically generating scripture (which is an ancient tradition indeed). Is the question of Mormon scriptures' ancient origins even relevant? Maybe, maybe not. But I'm at the point where I don't find it a terribly interesting question to ask. We have the fruits of JS's revelations (or, if you prefer, go ahead and put "revelations" in scare quotes--it doesn't matter to me) available for our inspection: we can assess them on their own merits. As for the inconsistencies between OT, NT, and LDS views on a given topic, it seems to me that Harrell would have been well served to read a little bit of Harold Bloom and familiarize himself with the notion of misprision. He seems to be utterly unaware that later writers getting earlier writers "wrong" is entirely the point.