Blog Archives

We’ve come to the last chapter of Blake Ostler’s first volume of Exploring Mormon Thought. After five months of reading and writing about this first book, I’m even more convinced than when we began that Blake’s work is and will continue to be the indisputable starting point for our generation’s work in Mormon philosophical theology. 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

The trouble is time. When the Buddha first turned the wheel of the dharma with his inaugural discourse at Varanasi, he articulated the first pressing reality (i.e., the first “noble truth”) of life as the truth that “Life is suffering.” He could just have easily said, “Life is time.” Gotama claimed this “stainless insight” into the order of experience on the basis of an intensive, first-person phenomenological investigation of life as it is lived. 20th century phenomenology is in fundamental agreement: the transcendental horizon of experience is time. Time is troubling. This being troubled is the stuff of life and... Read more »

Is there a set of all sets? This is one way of asking that most basic of all metaphysical questions: is the world “one” or “many”? For traditional Christian thinking, the difference between the world being one or many was simply the difference between Christianity and paganism. Joseph Smith’s assertion that we are uncreated and coeternal with God hits the metaphysical reset button and forces us to look at this question again. 2 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Most of what is given is never received. Most of what is possible goes unrealized. And many feet never find a shoe. True, life presses on (except when it doesn’t). But when it moves, it moves in fits and false starts and, just like Darwin said, most of its spendthrift variations end up serving no end in particular. Call this surplus the bootless. 2 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

In House of Prayer No. 2, Mark Richard relates the hip surgery he had in the sixties as a boy. He didn’t understand much about what was happening. His parents checked him into the hospital and then he was pretty much on his own. 4 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

The children of Israel are stiff-necked and hard-hearted. God sends serpents to bite them. Then he says the only way to be healed is to look at a serpent held up on a pole. This is kind of like reading theology. 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

What’s my margin of error? Adam ± .33? Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

“Belief” is more like an armchair anthropologist’s naive explanation of what’s going on with religious people than a description of what actually happens when someone sits in a pew or kneels by a bed. The way the word gets used as shorthand for willful gullibility is all wrong. These days, talking about religious “belief” is often just a tolerant way for non-religious people to make sense of religious phenomena from across the room by, in effect, saying that the religious phenomena they don’t understand don’t really happen. Stuff doesn’t happen at church, people “believe” stuff happens at church!  Be... Read more »

 Do Mormons do theology? Sure. Do they do theology qua theologians? Not really. 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Joseph Spencer, in his encouraging response to Taylor Petrey’s Dialogue article, “Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon theology,” makes the following claim: 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Taylor Petrey is a mad scientist. He’s hard at work – goggles affixed, white coat misbuttoned, pocket-protector full – blowing up the lab. He’s a mythbuster. He’s Jamie Hyneman with a walrus mustache. (That cannonball in your living room is his.) 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Here’s my wild-eyed claim for the day: religion is about the world, not about religion. Which do you talk about at church? 1 person likes this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Say we agree that Mormonism is about progress and progression. A couple of questions might follow. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

The theologian is indispensible. She is the not-thoughtless. She takes no thought because she gives it. And the more she gives it away, the more it multiplies. 3 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

1. We admitted we were powerless over our theologies — that our thoughts had become unmanageable. 6 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

I know a lot of people swear by it, but I’ve never found “belief” to be a reliable way of describing what is (or isn’t) happening when I plant myself in a pew. 3 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Say that you want to pray. Say that you want to make prayer the center of your life rather than just an aid to it. Say that you want to take up prayer as an end in itself. Say that you understand prayer to be the formal practice of submitting your will to God’s. And say that you think prayer should be at least as much about listening as talking. How long should you pray? 4 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

Over at BCC, Kristine opined last week on the subject of Mormon “intellectuals.” After admitting that knowing stuff can, in fact, be helpful, she concluded the following: “But this is the suspicion that was nagging at me during our conversation, and has not left me: intellectual gifts, like most of what we bring to the altar, are not nearly as valuable as we think they are.” Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

What exactly is it that you are trying to practice when you practice prayer? In particular, what exactly is it that you are trying to practice when you practice prayer as an end in itself rather than as a means to some other end? I take two things as axiomatic with respect to the practice of prayer. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Prayer can be approached as a means or as an end. You’re tired of using God as a crutch to get wherever else you want to go and finally decide, throwing it all over, to just make God your explicit destination. Consecration it is. The kingdom of God or nothing. Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

You know the feeling: you’re hungry for God. Your soul, restless, can find no rest. Your pillow’s warm on both sides. 2 people like this post. Like Unlike Read more »

A religious life is a life of prayer. Don’t skimp on this or, no matter how white your sepulcher, your insides will always just be full of dry bones.  Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »

Some (Wednesday morning) articles of faith: 1. The gospel is terrifyingly simple: Give up! Be the first to like. Like Unlike Read more »