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We are pleased to have this guest entry by Mrs. Silence Dogood, a friend of the blog.

Have y’all heard about the latest squabble amongst apologists and academics?

Anyways, the main lesson that has seemed to come out from the most recent spat is the vast and increasing divide between the two fields. Though someone can certainly use scholarly tools in making apologetic arguments, and someone can certainly become too apologetic in their scholarship, the works of the current generation of Mormon scholarship and Mormon apologetics are leading in drastically different directions; the former is focused on integration within broader fields, collaborations with competing ideas, and relevancy to areas outside of Mormonism proper, the latter is trenchant in resuscitating old debates, responding to dated critiques, and fighting tired battles. Perhaps the major source of division is the outlook toward outside critics and collaboration with those who don’t share the Mormon worldview. As Richard Bushman put it in a 2007 Journal of Mormon History article, “The apologists want to war with the critics; the historians ask them out to lunch.”

Continue reading “Masculinity and Mormon Apologetics”

Section 7 of the Doctrine and Coventants shares much of its language and content with John 21, a few other New Testament texts like Hebrews 1 and Matthew 16, as well as 3 Nephi 28. This commonality is no secret. Most all the cross-references are listed right there in the footnotes to the standard edition.

What to make of the commonality is of course debatable, but it can be argued that D&C 7 adds new material to John 21 by drawing from Hebrews 1 and Matthew 16. The Book of Mormon then builds on D&C 7 in 3 Nephi 28, drawing further from Paul.

It can also be argued that much as John 21 itself, neither D&C 7 nor 3 Nephi 28 would have been written had the return of Jesus not been delayed. If Jesus had returned in the first or second century, there would have been no need for the development of a doctrine of ‘translated beings’ such as John the beloved disciple and the three Nephites—beings that tarry on or around the earth for hundreds, even thousands of years.

In John 21, an anonymous third-person narrator faces a problem. Some of his fellow early Christians believed that the beloved disciple would not die. According to the third-person narrator, Jesus never said that; he only said that the beloved disciple would tarry until his return.

Fast forward a couple millennia, and Jesus has still not returned. So the question for Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery is “whether John, the beloved disciple, tarried in the flesh or had died.” As a (p)rewriting of the biblical text, D&C 7 tries to get behind the third-person narrative of John 21 to the voice and authority of the beloved disciple himself in order to give a definitive answer. It also adds new material to John 21, John 21 itself being an ancient addition to John 20.

The new material added to John 21 in D&C 7 is drawn in part from Hebrews 1 as an explanation of how the beloved disciple had tarried so long and could still be alive in April, 1829: he had become an angel. John himself recounts Jesus’ statement of his angelification, while the actual experience of becoming an angel was soon to be described in 3 Nephi 28 as the three Nephites desire the same thing that John desired.

The new material added to John 21 in D&C 7 also draws from Matthew 16, where Jesus tells Peter that he will give him the keys, and that “there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.”

Despite Peter’s desire to come speedily unto Jesus in his kingdom, in D&C 7 it is not clear that Peter in fact did so. He and James and John take part in what looks like the same ministry, all three having been given the same power and keys. This re-interpretive allusion to the giving of keys in Matthew 16 is striking because here in D&C 7 the keys are not given to Peter alone; they are given to him, James, and John: “and unto you three will I give this power and the keys of this ministry until I come.”

If the power and keys of ministering and tarrying until the return of Jesus are among those given to Peter, James, and John in D&C 7, this would go some way towards resolving the issue of Jesus’ saying in Matthew 16 that “There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” The more and more time passed before Jesus’ return, the longer and longer some of the disciples would have to live in order for this saying to be true in any literal sense. And it could not be just one disciple, e.g. John. It had to be some.

Jesus’ saying in Matthew 16 is similar enough to what he says of the beloved disciple in John 21. In Matthew 16 Jesus says that “some … shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom;” in John 21 Jesus of the beloved disciple that he will “tarry till I come.” But by combining Matthew 16 and John 21 in the way it does in order to work out problems caused by the delay of Jesus’ return, D&C 7 also introduces certain tensions of its own within John 21 and the New Testament as a whole. Peter and James could not be among Matthew’s ‘some that shall not taste of death’ because the future death of Peter is mentioned in John 21, and the death of James is related in Acts 12.

Even a (p)rewriting of the biblical text as creative as D&C 7 could not avoid these tensions due to the constraints of the canon. Only in the extra-biblical text of 3 Nephi 28 were the tensions resolved in the figures of the three Nephites, each like John in their desire, and none of them tasting of death, just as Jesus said about the ‘some’ in Matthew 16.

3 Nephi 28 was written apparently no more than a month or so after D&C 7, and it seems that the inquiry started by Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery was still going. In April 1829, they wanted to know “whether John … tarried in the flesh or had died.” Provisionally it was sufficient for them that John had become an angel. But by May, as editor/narrator of the gold plates, Mormon wants to know details about the process of angelification and whether the three Nephites who had become angels like John were immortal or not.

In language also found in 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus tells the three Nephites that when he returns they “shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye from mortality to immortality.” This would be a stunning reuse of Paul, who believed that “we shall not all sleep,” i.e. not all die, because Jesus would return within Paul’s own lifetime or at least within the lifetime of a few of his peers. In keeping with the delay of Jesus’ return, however, in 3 Nephi 28 now the change is to happen centuries later. Mormon, writing circa 400 CE, claims to have seen the three Nephites, whom he refers to as angels, and who so “remain until the judgment day of Christ” hundreds of years in the future.

The actual experience of their angelification is described in 3 Nephi 28 in Pauline terms as well. In preparation for their change in the twinkling of an eye at Jesus’ return, according to the Nephite record, the three were then “caught up into heaven, and saw and heard unspeakable things … And whether they were in the body or out of the body, they could not tell,” once more akin to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12.

But unlike Paul who eventually died after his in-and/or-out-of-body experience, theirs had lasting effects. As Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery inquired about John, Mormon states that he too “inquired of the Lord” regarding the three Nephites and whether they were mortal or immortal. After what he wrote previously, he learns that in fact there was “a change wrought upon their bodies, or else it needs be that they taste of death;” a change but “not equal to that which shall take place at the last day.”

Thus the problems caused by the delay of Jesus’ return are worked out, and the tensions introduced by D&C 7 are resolved in 3 Nephi 28.

Finally, if there is a correspondence between Peter, James, and John in D&C 7 and the three Nephites, then the autobiography also runs in the other direction when Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery are subsequently visited by Jesus’ three Old World disciples sometime in 1829/30, as Mormon had seen the three Nephites.

I cannot speak more highly of Grant Hardy’s phenomenal The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition.  This text will transform your experience reading this sacred text.  Hardy’s version organizes the text into readable paragraphs, formats poetry into verse, minimizes distracting footnotes by focusing on essential, clarifying materials, and includes a top notch appendix full of useful information.  Right now, I just want to bring your attention to the fact that the e-edition of this book is on sale on Amazon for only $2.99.  Check it out!

I have a weird problem with personal stories.  It is not that I don’t like them (I do quite a bit!).  Rather, I do not trust them because I do not think that there is a “personal” that is not the product of some cultural force.  I feel the problem acutely as a Mormon because I find that I am nearly incapable of telling a personal story, which is the dominant way that one’s life of faith is expressed.  I marvel at how my fellow Latter-day Saints can so easily see symbolic importance in the events in their lives, wherein truths are revealed in compelling objects lessons.  I am moved and persuaded by the moral lessons and personal stories of loss and redemption, challenge and vindication, or tragedy and reinterpretation.  However, when I teach or speak, I find only meaning in the abstract, the theoretical, and the textual.  When I try to find meaning in the events of my life, even to tell the story of how I have arrived where I am, I see only contingency and circumstance, rather than agency and meaning.  I sometimes feel that I lack a narrative that holds my life together at all, and as a result I can feel disconnected from my brothers and sisters who dwell in such richly meaningful lives.

Continue reading “Truth, Lies, and Personal Narratives of Faith”

On the chance that you missed it, at least two university professors invoked Martin Luther King Jr in the last few days in order to criticize the president. Given the national holiday, the King-Obama association that had already been established, and the president’s use of King’s Bible for his second inauguration, this is not altogether surprising.

What is perhaps surprising is that both professors did so from quite different points of view, which of course are hardly the only points of view. I happen to be a member of the same faith tradition as one of the professors, and it is his point of view that I want to focus on, that is, his point of view, not him or what he may represent for certain groups of church members and former members.

I want to focus on it in order to arrive at a theological question that I think is important for all Mormons to consider, whatever our different political leanings may be. I am not seeking to perpetuate intra-Mormon dispute as an end in and of itself, much less do I aim at arguing a point so as to appear to win. I feel strongly enough to have written something, but I have tried not to allow emotion to over-influence my writing. I have also tried to use a number of qualifiers, in the hopes of avoiding the possibility of misrepresentation.

For Cornel West, it was upsetting that the president used Martin Luther King’s Bible, as the president is, in West’s recent words, a “Republican in blackface,” out of step with King’s speeches, which the president has referenced in his own.

For Daniel Peterson, the president’s “vaunted oratorical skills pale into insignificance alongside Dr. King’s.” If ‘pale’ was not intentionally loaded with double meaning here, and it easily may not be, Peterson goes on to state: “I’m pleased (it’s the only substantial thing about his presidency that pleases me) that America has broken the color barrier in electing a black president. (Well, 50% black, anyway.)”

Despite whatever superficial and rhetorical similarities there are between them, however, the criticisms function entirely separately. For West, it is the president’s policies that are too ‘white;’ West calls him “my dear brother,” at the same time suggesting that the president is not one of Martin Luther King’s ‘people:’

I got upset [about the president’s use of King’s Bible] because you don’t play with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and you don’t play with his people. By ‘his people’ I mean people of good conscience, fundamentally committed to peace, and truth, and justice; and especially the Black tradition that produced it.

There is some ambiguity in West’s definition of King’s ‘people,’ i.e., “and especially the Black tradition that produced it,” the antecedent of ‘it’ being unclear, but it is clear enough that he does not limit King’s ‘people’ to race.

Whereas for Peterson, it seems that racially the president is only “50% black,” at least potentially implying that “the color barrier” has only been half broken.

If it were not for other things that Peterson has to say about Civil Rights, this potential implication might not be eye-catching. In his blog post meant to honor King on Monday, in the comments there, and in the follow-up post and comments, he seems to be saying that discrimination should not (have) be(en) regulated against but that hopefully it would (have) be(en) corrected through market forces.

Even if, for the sake of ‘logical argument,’ discrimination could be isolated from the violence that historically accompanies it, I’m afraid that this economic view may also be tied to what I consider to be problematic theology–the existence or non-existence of Mormon theologians being what it may.

When I first read his post on the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr Day this week, I thought of an earlier post he had written about a year ago, as one of his colleagues was in some trouble for statements regarding why there was a priesthood ban. Peterson himself has not connected the posts as far as I know, but I have brought them together. In this earlier post, entitled “An Unfortunate Attempt to Explain the Pre-1978 Priesthood Ban,” Peterson argued from scripture that “God has always discriminated with regard to priesthood … But we don’t know why.”

God discriminates then, according to Peterson, at least when it comes to priesthood and race as well as gender. Though I want to be careful not to conflate Peterson’s earlier blog post on the priesthood ban with his post on Monday so entirely as to result in distortion, it would seem that he does not read the same scriptures as found in Martin Luther King’s Bible, the one that Cornel West is upset about the president using.

If they are not the same, the reason for the different scriptures of a Martin Luther King or a Cornel West and a Daniel Peterson may not amount to our LDS extra-biblical canon. How was King able to look at the Bible and see equality, likewise West, albeit his own version, while Peterson apparently looks at it and sees a God who discriminates?

I would contend that both equality and discrimination are there in scripture. But the issue of God’s discrimination per se has to do with the passages we ourselves select; it has to do with whether we ourselves choose to read them as entirely divine or also at least partly human texts; and it has to do with when we ourselves may or may not make that choice to read them as at least partly human texts.

In other words, I don’t think the best answer is: we don’t know why God discriminates.

The question is: what will we choose, a God who discriminates or not? And if we choose one who does, how will we know when God’s discrimination in scripture is or isn’t a product of the human beings, like us, who recorded and wrote it?

Author’s Note: I have updated this post to include quotes from Margaret Young of BYU and I have corrected the identification of the keynote speaker (1/23/13 4:50 Mountain Time).

The Brigham Young University campus honored Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday in a variety of campus activities.

With classes cancelled for the national holiday, students participated in service activities during the day in and around the Wilkinson Students Center. The activities ranged from making quilts and toys to donating blood.

The day was wrapped up with a march…always a fitting way to honor Martin Luther King Jr. The candle-light walk started at the Carillon Bell Tower. The march ended at the Wilkinson Student Center.

The symbolism of the march ended at the Wilkinson Center is deep since the late-BYU President Ernest Wilkinson was an ardent critic of the Civil Rights Movement.

“In 1965, BYU featured the film _Civil Riots_ in the Varsity Theater,” noted BYU English Instructor Margaret Young in an interview with FPR. “It depicted the civil rights movement as a Communist plot.”

Yet, the events like those held on campus Monday are a sign of positive change on the campus of BYU, said Young who along with Darius Gray brought us the documentary Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormon.

“Though we work with a grossly inadequate budget as we honor Dr. King in 2013, the fact that we do it at all–and that many of us teach Dr. King’s works–is a sign of enormous growth and even repentance,” said Young.

The keynote speaker at the Monday night’s vigil was the amazing Cathy Stokes.

The events were sponsored by BYU’s Multicultural Student Services and BYU’s Center for Service and Learning as part of a larger Community Outreach Day in conjunction with Utah Valley University and the United Way of Utah County.

Out-going Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has lifted the ban on women serving in combat roles within the armed forces.

 

This is a sweeping and striking move towards gender equality. The significant impact of such a decision will have ramification far beyond the Department of Defense.

 

Within the military, access to combat roles will allow for more women to move up to the highest ranks. There have been female generals and admirals already. That is true. However, leadership roles in combat units is often a key towards advancement…particularly to the highest levels of the Pentagon.

 

Not everyone is a fan of this type of equality. I am and I am not sure if I can explain why. However, times are changing.

 

No worries, though. They will not be praying in General Conference. That would be crazy.