Of Intellects and Apologetics. A bit on church politics and contention

Many know of the recent shift and turn-around the Maxwell Institute just took. There are many in the Mormon intellectual and apologetic community who are outraged. If you are unsure of what happened, here is a brief rundown: Daniel C. Peterson, BYU Professor and highly regarded expert in Islamic studies, was recently let go from his position in the Mormon Studies Review (formerly FARMS Review). The decision was rumored out before it was made and Brother Peterson unfortunately stumbled across some leaked emails before he was properly informed. The emails had made it to an anti-Mormon website. So the decision was no surprise to Brother Peterson who, understandably, was quite insulted and hurt by the whole thing.

I am not in the business of saying who is right and who is wrong and what decision the Maxwell Institute should go. I certainly think that Mormon Scholarship is evolving into something really important and the Maxwell Institute needs to keep up with it.

Here are a few of my concerns with it:

CONCERN NO. 1: How did an anti-Mormon website get it so quick? It is one thing that the emails leaked, but the fact that the antagonists have gotten so quickly makes me wonder who leaked it and to whom did they leak the information? I do not mind having "skeptics" or non-believers working on LDS Academia; however, it is a bit concerning if they are out-and-out antagonists to the religion.

CONCERN NO. 2: Why are some people using this to discredit the work of Brother Peterson and others who have gone before him? There are websites out there attempting to discredit Hugh Nibley's work and paint Daniel C. Peterson as a bad person. What makes it more alarming is that these websites are from people who are members of the Church! I do not agree with it.

What I fear is that many who have the capacity and capability to think critically and help bolster the image of the Church are attempting to come into "intellectual" league with our anti-Mormon counter-community. Many in the anti-Mormon community seem to be more "enlightened" and intellectual than the Daniel Petersons and Hugh Nibleys so people try to follow suit with them.

I mention that is a fear because one cannot fight fire with fire in the sphere of gospel topics. I will give one prime example: There was an A.P. on my mission who was amazing at countering anti-Mormon doctrine. We were in the heart of the anti-Mormon community. More literature opposing the Church came from our mission than any other one area in the world. He was good. No one could defeat him. Except himself. As good as he was, it was not good enough to encounter it all the time without being negatively affected. He now is one of those who works tirelessly to oppose the Church. No amount of Bible-bash defeats was worth losing him.

CONCERN NO. 3: On the flip side of concern no. 2, why are members so concerned and caught up with how the scholarship is approached? This may be why the Maxwell Institute is taking a new approach. Too often members have sought this information and shifted their testimony based on prayer, fasting,etc... and relied on this.

If a testimony is not nourished, it will fail. And in the world of testimony-nourishment, scientific proof is akin to empty calories: it tastes good, but yields no real growth. We have to stop trying to bear our testimonies with the concluding words: "There is no way Joseph Smith could have known that!" As odd as it seems, spiritual witness is much more concrete than physical. Many religions can boast about tangible witnesses, miracles, and archeological evidence; however, it is a rare thing to have a church confidently tell it's investigators, "You can pray and know for yourself..."

CONCERN NO. 4: My final and most alarming concern is the overwhelming divisiveness this is yielding. Furthermore, with as many pseudonyms as are floating around (and remember, Elder Quentin L. Cook warned us of these hidden identities) there is a chance that these bickering siblings in the gospel worship side-by-side in the Temple. There is an overwhelming feeling of contention. There should be a consensus and unity amongst those who are professing and discussing their faith. It seems that the antagonists to our faith are more unified at times than we are. Furthermore, many scholars seem to disagree about many things within the Church but can still act civilly to one another.

So why does this concern me?

Because as a Church we need to be unified ourselves. We cannot stand together on speculative ground. We cannot stand together on Church ground and have such diatribe towards one another. It is the Devil's doctrine. We can, however, continue to offer insights and promote gospel study civilly. Truth will not come about as result of endless fighting and finger-pointing.

I mention these concerns so that we can simply be unified in the faith. Do not retard the growth of Zion because you cannot be of one heart and one mind.

Reconciling Mosiah and Moroni

Someone lately brought up a fantastic point in Sunday School recently. It was brought up the fact that we are all born with what we as Latter-day Saints call, The Light of Christ and therefore we are naturally good people that become corrupted. This seems to be constantly misrepresented. Although this saintly sister had a fantastic testimony of what Moroni taught, "the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil" (Moroni 7:16), she missed some other important principles. She, in essence, is correct, but only halfway there in completing her understanding of the doctrine. 

I remember having a similar discussion because I thought completely opposite. I had read Mosiah 3:19 enough times to know that we are not inherently good. So, we may ask, how do we reconcile these two scriptures?

Easy. We look at the principles they are teaching. 

First, Moroni never claims that man is inherently good. He claims that Father in Heaven has offered us a gift so that we may make the appropriate choices even when we have not been taught directly right from wrong. Never does he claim that we are compelled to make that choice by instinct: he simply states that we have an endowment of light, even from a young age, of the most basic differences between good and evil insofar as to keep us from spiritual death.

When Mosiah teaches the doctrine of the natural man, he is teaching us about that voice that invites us to do contrary of what the Light of Christ is inviting us to do. That voice is what he calls "the natural man"or the carnal nature of our fallen bodies. 

One of the best illustrations of this is the classic cinematic effect where an angel, who is in the image of the character, is on one side while a little devil, also in the image of the character, sits on the other side attempting to pursued the person to do it there way. 

One of the best illustrations of this comes from the October 2009 General Conference. Elder Renlund gave a talk titled, Preserving the Heart's Mighty Change. In it he said:


"In 1980 we moved as a family across the street from the hospital where I trained and worked. I worked every day, including Sundays. If I finished my Sunday work by 2:00 p.m., I could join my wife and daughter and drive to church for meetings that began at 2:30.


"One Sunday late in my first year of training, I know that I would likely finish by 2:00. I realized, however, that if I stayed in the hospital just a little longer, my wife and daughter would depart without me. I could then walk home and take a needed nap. I regret to say that I did just that. I waited until 2:15, walked home slowly, and lay down on the couch, hoping to nap. But I could not fall asleep. I was disturbed and concerned. I had always loved going to church. I wondered why on this day the fire of testimony and the zeal that I had previously felt were missing. 


"I did not have to think long. Because of my schedule, I had become casual with my prayers and scripture study. I would get one morning, say my prayers, and go to work. Often day blended into night and into day again before I would fall asleep before saying a prayer or reading the scriptures. The next morning the process began again. The problem was that I was not doing the basic things I needed to do to keep my mightily changed heart from turning to stone. 


"I got off the couch, got on my knees, and pleaded with God for forgiveness."


The illustration is perfect because we have all felt that: my body tells me to sleep while my Spirit is telling me to go to Church. So what do I do? Well, that will depend on what bod is better nourished for the war. 

That brings me to the second point of doctrine: Mosiah and Moroni are trying to teach a similar doctrine: that we must nourish one while suffocating the other. In fact, it is impossible to fully satiate both appetites at the same time. Your spiritual nourishment is what is going to arm you for battle. 

Brigham Young taught plainly concerning this, "As I have told you, your spirit is continually warring with the flesh; your spirit dictates one way, your flesh suggests another, and this brings on the combat." (Journal of Discourses, 3:212).

Brigham Young further taught, "When we receive the Gospel, a warfare commences immediately; Paul says, 'for I delight in the law of God, after the inward man, but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.' We have to fight continually, as it were, sword in hand to make the spirit master of the tabernacle, or the flesh subject to the law of the spirit. If this warfare is not diligently prosecuted, then the law of sin prevails, and in consequence of this some apostatize from the truth when crossing the plains, learn to swear instead of to pray, become high-minded and high tempered instead of learning to be patient and humble, and when they arrive in these vallies (sic) they feel so self-sufficient that they consider themselves the only ones that are really right; they are filled with darkness, the authority of the Spirit is not listened to, and the law of sin and death is the ruling power in their tabernacles. (Journal of Discourses, 9:287-288).

At one point I was asked "why can't my dirty thoughts stay outside of the Temple?" but I had to remind that person that it is not Satan that keeps it in our mind--he does not have that kind of power: only we do. 

I think that this doctrine is a reminder that we are never above sin. We are never going to be non-susceptible to those. But what a blessing that is: it causes us to be forever reliant on the Savior. There is not a person on this world that will ever be able to feel as if they have "overcome" completely. We may gain the faith to have the constant companionship of the 2nd Comforter, which is Jesus Christ, however, we will always need divine help. 

Please comment. I think that this is a topic that many people misunderstand or do not recognize the complementary doctrine that both of those scriptures serve as

The Latter-Day Ladder

I have received several questions as to what Mormons believe. Surprisingly most of these questions have come from members of the Church confused about little things they read here and there on the internet. I of course cannot declare doctrine: my comments may not necessarily reflect the official position of the Church, but I feel that I can offer some helpful insights. Questions that have arisen include "What is adoption? What if we are literal offspring from Abraham?" or "Why do we keep D&C 132 canonized when we shun polygamy [should really be called "plural marriage"]?"


Most questions revolve around the Temple. This becomes problematic because so often people attempt to answer these questions defensively or, even worse, they answer it with a limited understanding of Temple doctrine. Or worst of all: they answer it with an antagonistic mission. As I have explored the online "blogernacle choir", I have realized that the trend, when it comes to Temple, is to talk about either the wrong things or speculative doctrine. 


Too often, in my opinion, Church members grow confused as to the reason we teach and discuss certain doctrines. For example, I hear over and over again in Sunday School teachings concerning the scattering of Israel. Most of the facts are correct; however, the point is almost always lost. There is no honest evaluation in the class as to why the Lord scattered Israel and what it means to us today. This becomes problematic when we look at the whole picture because the scattering of Israel is, at least in large part, the reason we have the Restored Gospel. The scattering is thus seen as "an event" those many years ago that we have to clean-up in these the Latter-days. This is not right; or at least, it is not the way that we should be viewing it. It was "an event" that proved later to be a tender mercy of the Lord but we fail to see what purpose the scattering serves in the Plan of Salvation and thus we lose the doctrine altogether. The scattering is an integral part of the Plan of Salvation and we would not have the missionary effort today preaching to all the world if we did not first have the scattering of Israel.


What I think is most important is that we as members of the Church focus our attention on the Plan of Salvation. Everything revolves around it. The Temple doctrine, Scattering of Israel, Orders of the Priesthood, the doctrine of intelligence and light, the doctrines of becoming like the Father, the Kolob doctrine, ... would all be much more clear if you and I had a firm foundational understanding on the Plan of Salvation. I hope to keep people focused on that Plan. When we discuss doctrines and do not put it in the context of The Plan of Salvation, then we always run the risk of losing sight as to what the Lord wants for us to learn.


Jacob has an experience in which he learns about the great Plan of the Father and is Endowed. After fleeing from his brother Esau, he stops in a place he would later name Bethel (literally "House of God"). While there he has a dream in which he sees a ladder with the Lord at the top offering Jacob sacred promises and he is promised the great blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant. It was the place that he learned of his royal heritage (Genesis 28:10-16; 32: 24-30). The ladder dream was therefore a learning experience.


To Jacob the Lord promises him the land, as he did Abraham years earlier. To Jacob this is his first Temple experience and is also the point when the promises made to his father and grandfather was bestowed upon him. This sacred covenant becomes an integral part of the Plan of Salvation for us. In fact, exaltation in the highest sense depends upon this: we too must have this covenant offered to us. 


Jacob's experience is compelling to say the least because it is a very non-traditional Temple experience. But, as Elder Holland taught,  "You can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experiences with the Lord in any situation you are in. Indeed, you can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experiences with the Lord in the most miserable experiences of your life--in the worst settings, while enduring the most painful injustices, when facing the most insurmountable odds and opposition you have ever faced." 


Because Jacob's experience is a learning experience, and I hope to provide learning experiences, I have decided to call the website (as of March 15th) Latter-dayLadder. 


Finally, Above all I hope to be a missionary through this website. I loved my mission. I thoroughly enjoy being able to teach others about the purposes of our Father in Heaven. As I do this I am reminded of my zeal as a missionary. In the Wentworth Letter Joseph Smith wrote, "Our missionaries are going forth to different nations . . . the Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.” While serving a mission in southern Colorado and western Kansas, we would quote this at every district meeting and discuss it often in companionship study. I pondered it often and gained a firm testimony that I, as a member and as a missionary (at the time) was serving these purposes and was part of something much bigger than anyone could really recognize. And so it is, with or without me, the purposes of God will move forward. My hope is to keep adding what small momentum I can to those purposes.


I encourage and welcome everyone to comment on it. Please let me know your own insights as I realize that my understanding on these topics can be very limited and I feel that other people's insights are equally valuable. It makes the blogernacle worth it.