Adventures in Mormonism

OK, so my progress on the Trek (1305 miles) hasn’t gone as well in May as it did in April. I should be at around 440 miles by now, and I’m just under 300 miles. If I had a broader readership here, the public humiliation might have been sufficient to get me out on the road more, but so far that hasn’t worked.

So I shaved my beard off.

You have to understand that I’ve had a beard for most of my adult (post-college) life. I started growing my first beard during my last week at BYU (easy to do, since I was sleeping on my desk in my TA office while trying to finish my operating systems implementation project). The beard came and went a bit in my earlier years and, of course, disappeared altogether during my two years of teaching back at BYU (1985-87).  But it has been a pretty constant fixture since then, which is to say for the last 20 years, including through two stints as a counselor in a bishopric and several stints as a stake missionary/ward mission leader.

I’ve kept the beard because (a) shaving is a pain, (b) Sandra (my sweet wife) really likes it, and (c) most people agree that I look better with one. Heck, the last time I shaved it off — several years back, while we were living in Washington DC — the Washington DC North Mission president even commented on it, not to praise me, but to say that I “just didn’t look quite the same” without it.  Oh, and our dog Deacon barked at me for a minute or so when he first saw me without it, until I convinced him it was still me.

So the beard is gone until I complete the 1305 miles (plus a few other long-procrastinated goals), and I’m now reminded each morning why I liked it in the first place. Of course, the same day I shaved it off, I also stubbed my ‘ring’ toe on my left foot badly, almost certainly breaking it — there’s still discoloration five days later — so it’s not like I’ve leapt back into the walking circuit.  But soon, I promise. ..bruce..

…I’ve just been busy for the past week. I actually have at least one post in incomplete draft form; I may tackle something else first. The challenge with discussing LDS cosmology and related doctrine is that it’s hard to pull one particular topic out of context and discuss it in isolation. I’ll try to get something up by tomorrow (i.e., later today, Wednesday). I did, however, write a lengthy response to a comment on my post about education and intellect.

In the meantime, let me recommend one of the books I’m currently reading: Muhammad, Prophet of God by Daniel C. Peterson (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI, 2007). I’m impressed with both the style and content of the book — accessible and yet very informative. Peterson heads up the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative (METI) at Brigham Young University, a joint effort with the University of Chicago Press to provide clear, modern, scholarly translations of classic medieval Islamic, Eastern Christian, and Jewish texts.

I can also recommend Black and Mormon, edited by Newell G. Bringhurst and Darron T. Smith (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL, 2006), which I just finished a few days ago. This is an outstanding, if occasionally uneven, set of essays discussing historical aspects of the LDS Church’s denial of priesthood ordination to African blacks from the late 1840s to 1978, as well as both analytical and anecdotal analysis of challenges (and blessings) faced by blacks who joined the LDS Church both before and after the change of policy in 1978. I bought it on the strength of the positive review in the current edition of BYU Studies (Vol. 45, No. 4, pp. 165 ff.); the reviewer, Emmanuel A. Kissi, is an LDS convert (and medical doctor) from Ghana who –besides his own work — serves as an Area Authority Seventy in Africa. ..bruce..

I thought I’d start with beginnings, since they affect so much else.

Mormons reject the classic (and largely post-Nicene) Christian concept of creatio ex nihilo, that is, creation out of nothing, in at least two important senses: the existence of individuals and the ultimate framework for our current space-time continuum. Let’s focus on the first for now.

We believe that some essential nature of our personal being is eternal, indeed co-eternal with God. The arc of individual existence, in current Mormon terminology, goes like this:

intelligence: nowadays, this term is used to describe our core eternal being, the part of us that has always existed. This is generally considered to be individualistic — that is, you and I have always existed as separate entities — though a few within the Church have argued for more of a ‘raw bulk material’ concept (with possible recycling). Joseph Smith’s statement (in the King Follett discourse) was that “…God never did have power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself: intelligence exists upon a self existent principle…”.

pre-mortal) spirit: at some point prior to this life, God encased our intelligences in ’spirit bodies’ (and thus became “the Father of spirits“). We know nothing about the process and we frankly know very little about the conditions there, though this doesn’t stop Mormons from rampant speculation and presumption, plus generating a fair amount of folk doctrine. It also should be noted that early LDS scripture and discourses on this subject did not make as clear a distinction between the terms ‘intelligence’ and ’spirit as is currently made in the LDS Church today (cf. the King Follett discourse above, as well as this passage from the Book of Abraham).

mortal being: we are born into this life with an impermanent bond between our spirit body and our physical body — in other words, we’re mortal and will die (breaking that bond).

(post-mortal) spirit: after death, we exist again as spirits for a period until we are resurrected.

resurrected being: resurrection permanently fuses our spirits with an immortal physical body.

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As a response to both on-going silly postings on the net and the PBS broadcast “The Mormons”, I’ve wanted to write about several subjects, including:

• LDS cosmology (the nature of the universe)
• LDS ontology (the nature of reality, including God and humanity)
• LDS epistemology (the nature of truth and ways of knowing it)
• the organization and functioning of the LDS Church

The challenge is that they are all interrelated, which is why you get so many goofy and misinformed postings about the LDS Church and its doctrine (as a parallel example, try to write intelligently on the Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary without reference to original sin, St. Augustine, or the Fall). I’m not quite sure yet how I’m going to tackle all this — except that I may just pick an arbitrary starting point and go from there.  ..bruce..

This article in the Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah) about a poll taken by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research tries, I think, to draw a bigger distinction between the public vs. college faculty results than I think the results justify:

Results of a two-year study released this week show one-third of university faculty nationwide have an unfavorable impression of Latter-day Saints, while an equal proportion of the general population holds a favorable view.

I guess I’m just not sure that statement has a lot of real information in it. If you sum up the results, you get the following:

• General public: 33% “warm”, 43% neutral,  18% “cold”, 6% don’t know/refuse to answer
• University faculty: 40% “warm”, 20% neutral, 33% “cold”, 8% don’t know/refuse to answer

The only real conclusion is that the faculty members surveyed are less neutral, that is, more have an actual opinion, and that that the non-neutral faculty members divide a bit more evenly on the “warm”/”cold” rating than the public at large — not surprising given the general secular/liberal nature of university faculty. In fact, I’m a bit surprised that “warm” respondents outnumber “cold” ones at all.  ..bruce..