Examining claims of historical apostasy is a pertinent task for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For the last hundred years, the Great Apostasy narrative has shaped Latter-day Saint historical assumptions, contributed to the construction of Latter-day Saint social and theological identity, and impacted the ability of the Church to develop ecumenical relationships. The contributors want to raise awareness about the influence of this narrative as well as to reconsider some of the assumptions made by this narrative. We hope to cultivate scholarly discourse among the contributors as well as the Latter-day Saint community about the challenges and consequences of simultaneously acknowledging complexity, causality, and providence when interpreting history for theological purposes. We hope to develop a richer understanding of the definitions, connotations, social functions, and theological implications of Latter-day Saint conceptions of the apostasy.

So let’s take that invitation at face value and begin a discussion about “claims of historical apostasy” and “some of the historical assumptions made by this narrative.” The simplest form of the narrative is that there was an original church from which something essential (doctrine, scripture, authority, priesthood, the Spirit) was lost.

Looking for the Original Church

Until the 20th century, no Christian really questioned this assumption (of an original church), and few do now. Catholics claim an unbroken chain of authority and tradition from the original church. Protestants claim there was an original church, but that the excesses of the Roman Catholic church in later centuries necessitated Protestant reforms. The LDS Church claims there was an original church, but that reforms were not enough to restore lost authority: a restoration of divine authority and new provision of the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ through newly revealed scripture was needed.

Here’s the problem. Scholarship in the 20th century suggests that the original condition of Christianity in the decades following Christ’s death — the very beginning of the early church — was not any sort of essential unity but instead was radically diverse. In other words, there never was an early Christian Church, there were, at the very beginning, many different churches (and yes, I recognize that the term “church” is somewhat anachronistic in this early context, but that is sort of the point). Bart Ehrman makes the case for early Christian diversity in his book Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (OUP, 2003). He also summarizes that view in the last lecture in After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, a Teaching Company set of CDs (hey, I drive a lot). Here are his essential points from that lecture:

• Prior to the later 3rd century, there were many competing Christian groups with a wide range of beliefs and practices.
• The term “proto-orthodoxy” refers to those early Christians who held views that eventually (in the late 3rd century) pushed out competing Christian practices and doctrines.
• Older historians simply assumed that the orthodox view (held by the proto-orthodox) had always, even from the earliest period following the death of Jesus Christ, been the dominant one.
• They were wrong.

The standard account of orthodoxy and heresy derives from Eusebius, the Christian historian of the early 4th century. In his victor’s version of early Christian history, everything that wasn’t proto-orthodox was heresy. The newer account rejects the validity of those labels: “orthodox” as right-thinking was evident only in retrospect. It instead stresses the initial Christian diversity that only gradually, over the course of almost three centuries, developed into a more unified Christian Church, by way of an early, slow-acting version of correlation emanating from the influential church at Rome. Ehrman identifies Walter Bauer, a 20th-century German theologian, as the scholar who first articulated this newer view, although his original arguments have been updated by more recent scholars.

An example might help illustrate the degree to which the retrospective and biased view of history can actually obscure earlier events. This is from Henry Chadwick’s classic The Early Church (Penguin Books, 1967).

The Jewish Christians, excluded by their fellow-countrymen, continued to observe sabbaths, circumcision, and other Jewish feasts. As this distressed many Gentile Christians, they became lonely, unsupported groups. … From Irenaeus onwards Jewish Christianity is treated as a deviationist sect rather than as a form of Christianity with the best claims to continuity with the practice of the primitive church at Jerusalem. The Jewish Christians called themselves Ebionites, a name derives from the Hebrew word meaning “the poor” …. Since some of them had never accepted the tradition of the virgin birth of Christ, Irenaeus classified the Ebionites with other heresies that denied this; soon Tertullian was supposing that they originated with a person named Ebion, and later anti-heretical writers even felt able to quote from Ebion’s alleged writings.

And thus we see how a strong normative view of what was supposed to have happened in the past (like the orthodoxy and heresy view of the 4th century) can create its own facts, even its own documents.

An Emerging LDS View?

So here is a general question for the LDS view of the apostasy: How does the idea that the early church was, in fact, a variety of diverse churches with different beliefs and practices affect our view of the Great Apostasy? Rejecting the orthodoxy and heresy account and instead locating the emergence of a unified Christian Church in the later third century certainly raises new questions about what happened in the first and second centuries. Maybe the Great Apostasy wasn’t really so great.

The LDS view in the 20th century seems to be that the original church had God’s favor while the apostles were alive, but lost God’s favor when the apostles died without establishing proper successors. An alternative LDS view, sketched in 1 Nephi 13, is that the Bible (or sacred writings that preceded the Bible) once “contained the fulness of the gospel” (v. 24), but that parts of that fulness, “many parts which are plain and most precious” (v. 25, 28), were later removed.

A discussion that suggests updated LDS views is found in Early Christians in Disarray: Contemporary LDS Perspectives on the Christian Apostasy (FARMS and BYU Press, 2005). In the opening chapter, “What Went Wrong with the Early Christians,” Noel B. Reynolds notes how Hugh Nibley’s work on early Christian writings refocused LDS scholars away from the Protestant critique of the excesses of the medieval Catholic Church and towards the first centuries and even the first decades following the death of Jesus Christ. Likewise, he notes that Richard L. Bushman, in a book review published in the mid-sixties, urged LDS historians to move away from Protestant models and take a fresh view of the apostasy. Reynolds highlights the early change from covenant-making ordinances to sacraments (dispensing God’s grace) as a key development in apostasy. He lists three myths about the apostasy that are critiqued by later contributors to the volume:

• Myth 1: The apostasy happened because of outside persecution.
• Myth 2: The apostasy was caused by the hellenization of Christianity or the incorporation of Greek philosophy and culture into the teachings of the early church. [This happened a century too late to be a causal explanation.]
• Myth 3: The Roman Catholic Church specifically is the great and abominable church spoken of in Nephi’s vision. [It is not.]

Reynolds notes that “as our knowledge of these times [the first Christian centuries] grows, the apostasy is again pushed back further, even into the first century.” So here is a second and more particular question for the LDS view: How early can the apostasy be pushed back? The harder we look, the earlier it seems to get. At some point you get early enough that the evidence no longer argues for an apostasy, it argues for the failure of an original church (from which the Christianity of later decades or centuries apostatized from) to ever be established or organized. You end up, I think, with the sort of early radical diversity posited by the Bauer hypothesis and updated by Ehrman.

So that’s a discussion I would enjoy hearing at the BYU conference next month. Can the LDS view of the apostasy be reconceptualized in light of this newer view of early Christian diversity? Maybe we view the original church not as a plane that crashed after takeoff but as one that never really got off the ground. Perhaps we can view the apostasy in two complementary stages, with the original church not enjoying God’s favor because it wasn’t really a church yet (a “proto-apostasy”) and the eventual unified church of the late 3rd century not enjoying God’s favor because it had, by then, lost or changed key doctrines or practices (the fulness of the apostasy).

Any other ideas about the apostasy you’d like to hear about from LDS scholars?

The Long Shadow of Mormon Doctrine

Everyone knows that the leading entry in the one-volume doctrinal reference field for the last two generations has been McConkie’s Mormon Doctrine (“MD”). I don’t know whether the title LDS Beliefs was intended to mirror the earlier title, but Deseret Book no doubt hopes the new volume will sell as many copies as the prior one. I certainly think we will all be well served if the general membership of the Church starts going to LDS Beliefs rather than MD for a helpful summary of Mormon doctrine on particular topics. Why?

There’s a big difference between today and the two decades following 1958, when MD was first published, then revised, and when it had its greatest influence. The difference is not so much in the substance of LDS doctrine as in its tone. LDS leaders of that era, including Elder McConkie, took positions on topics (and seemingly committed the Church to positions on topics) from which the 21st-century Church has gently backed away. For example, MD’s Evolution entry covered several pages, endorsing a 6000-year-old Earth and the view that there was no death before the Fall of Adam, then declaring: “There is no harmony between the truths of revealed religion and the theories of organic evolution.” [In fairness, the article also stated, "Obviously there never will be a conflict between truths revealed in the realm of religion and those discovered by scientific research."]

In contrast, there is no Evolution entry in LDS Beliefs. There is no entry on Science. This seems in line with the most recent counsel given by LDS leaders on the faith/science issue: “Leave geology, biology, archaeology, and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind, to scientific research, while we magnify our calling in the realm of the Church.” [From the Evolution entry in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism; see extended comments on that entry in the comments to this earlier post.]

Millet has been arguing for this narrower approach to LDS doctrine for years now, apparently as a result of his extensive interfaith work in a variety of settings. About the hundredth time you have to deal with a sincere question that starts out, “Why do Mormons believe …,” followed by an excerpt from the Journal of Discourses or an accurately quoted but speculative statement from a single LDS leader, you are ready to reassess the regularly repeated folk doctrine that every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of an LDS leader is LDS doctrine. Millet’s narrower formulation, which I have seen expounded at length in several of his books but which is expressed concisely in the LDS Beliefs entry “Doctrine,” is as follows:

Is it found within the four standard works or within official declarations or proclamations? Is it taught or discussed in general conference or other official gatherings by general Church leaders today? Is it found in the general handbooks or approved curriculum of the Church today? If it meets at least one of these criteria, we can feel secure in teaching it.

That sounds a lot like what a properly directed Correlation function should use as a guide to what should or shouldn’t be stated in official Church publications. If Correlation actually uses this sort of approach, then good for Correlation. If Correlation still defers to the traditional CES preference for statements (from whatever source) by Elder McConkie or Joseph Fielding Smith, then please, please get rid of current Correlation management [LDS bureaucrats, not senior leadership] and put Millet et al in their place.

True to the Doctrine

The booklet True to the Faith, an official publication of the Church, was originally directed to the youth. As I recall, when the booklet was first published a copy was distributed to each of the youth age 12 through 18 in their Sunday classes. However, the utility of an officially published doctrinal summary was quickly apparent, and the booklet became a primary resource for LDS doctrinal reference by adults as well as youth and by non-LDS as well as members of the Church.

LDS Beliefs offers more and considerably longer entries, of course, with authorship of each entry disclosed at the end of each article. It’s nice when actual authors are identified — this reinforces the claim that it is an individual speaking, not the Church, and provides a person to whom a reader may direct questions if they so desire. The standard disclaimer is given at the end of the Introduction to LDS Beliefs: “While we have sought earnestly to be in harmony with scripture and with the teachings of our leaders, this work is not an official publication of either The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Brigham Young University.”

When, as with Mormon Doctrine, the identified person speaking is a General Authority, the question of whether they are speaking as an individual or on behalf of the Church can be unclear. I think this confusion has generated much of the controversy over the status of the book Mormon Doctrine. The better practice, I think, is for general doctrinal summaries to have disclosed authors who are not General Authorities (as with LDS Beliefs) and for official Church publications (like True to the Faith) to have no authors listed. Yes, it sure would be nice if some sort of disclosure were provided of the process by which manuals and other official publications of the Church are prepared, but at the end of the day it is good to have a clear distinction between opinions or statements of individuals (however well informed) and statements of the Church as an entity (which should stand independent of who authored the statement).

Five Volumes is Four Too Many

The last comparison is to the five-volume work The Encyclopedia of Mormonism (“EOM”), originally published by Macmillan in 1991. This was a monumental publication that, unfortunately, did not get much attention in the Church as a whole. It’s the sort of publication that gets purchased by libraries but not by individuals (I don’t know any individual who actually purchased the five-volume set). And it is not just the price: the Joseph Smith Papers Project volumes aren’t cheap, but many individuals are purchasing copies. Single volume selections from EOM were published by FARMS around 2000 (I own To All the World, the single volume selection of EOM entries relating to the Book of Mormon) and the entire publication is now available and very accessible (for free) online. Still, my impression is that EOM did not live up to its potential.

Like EOM, LDS Beliefs lists authors and sources after each entry. It is fair to think of LDS Beliefs as a scaled-down version of EOM with (following the Millet doctrinal approach) a narrower view of doctrinal topics. Hopefully LDS Beliefs will succeed in a way that EOM did not. It is perhaps unfair to compare EOM, which was intended as a scholarly reference work, directly with LDS Beliefs, which is intended to be a popular reference work. A rewarding exercise for anyone consulting LDS Beliefs is to go look up the corresponding entry in EOM. But the bottom line is that there is a distinct need for a reliable and understandable one-volume doctrinal summary for the average Latter-day Saint. EOM did not fill that need; LDS Beliefs does.

A Few General Comments

J. Stapley posted a review of LDS Beliefs about a month ago at BCC which provides more details as to the particulars of the book itself. I’ll just add a few quick observations that I didn’t cover above. First, I was surprised that Lectures on Faith was given such lengthy discussion (a six-page entry) and was so frequently cited as a source. That’s a bit unusual. Second, despite the contrast I drew above between LDS Beliefs and MD, the book cites Elder McConkie and Joseph Fielding Smith rather frequently. Lesson for the senior LDS leader: write lots of general doctrinal commentaries and you will be cited by three or four generations of LDS scholars. I don’t recall seeing any citations to David O. McKay or Hugh B. Brown.

I am hoping to see some comments on this thread pop up on December 26 by those who unwrap this book Christmas morning and look through it. (I hope you have something better to do on the afternoon of the 25th than to post comments at T&S!)

***

In the Church, we’re suspicious of debt. Sure, we get a pass on student loans, a modest house, a first car, but, as a general rule, our leaders discourage incurring consumer debt, and celebrate those who have escaped debt’s clutches. Having grown up a member of the Church, and having heard the various talks and lessons, I suspect most members would say that Alex made the better decision;Alex has the Fire and no debt. Pat, on the other hand, has both the Fire and the debt.

***

Assuming you agree with my intuition that, in general, Mormons would think that Alex made the better decision, I want to push that intuition a little:

(1) Let’s suppose, first, that Alex bought with cash because he has $200 just lying around. Pat, on the other hand, doesn’t, and the only way she can afford a Kindle is by borrowing. But assume Pat has a steady, if low-paying, job with amazing job security, while Alex, though making more money,has a 70% chance of losing his job in the next three months, with an uncertain outlook for getting another job in the foreseeable future. Does that change your (Mormon) intuition?

(2) Or what if Alex leaves all of his money in a checking account that doesn’t pay any interest, while Pat borrows at a low 3% rate, while she earns a 10% return on her money, which has all been wisely invested?[fn5]

(3) Or what if Pat isn’t just paying a low interest rate, but no (or a negative) interest rate?

***

What I’m trying to get at is the underlying why of our discomfort with debt. I understand for financial purposes why consumer debt is often a bad idea. Even in a (2) situation, most people don’t invest their unborrowed money; they just leave it in their checking accounts, so the fact that they could earn a higher return in theory doesn’t mean anything in practice.

And maybe our discomfort is purely a practical one, borne out of speculative investing in Kirtland and several generations of General Authorities who lived through the Depression.[fn6] But is there a religious explanation? Like we don’t like consumerism/worldliness? (But didn’t both Alex and Pat buy a Kindle Fire?) We’re theologically opposed to risk? Interest (at least its payment) is spiritually harmful?

***

Even if the avoidance of consumer debt is purely a practical consideration, we can see better today why it’s a good idea than we’ve seen in 80 years or so. But I’m interested in your take on whether it might be something more.

—

[fn1] Note that it’s exam season, so I’m kind of in exam  mode. Oh, and good luck to all of the T&S-reading students on your finals!

[fn2] Actually, they both want an iPad, but it’s priced way out of their league, and they figure a Kindle Fire is good enough.

[fn3] ;)

[fn4] Yes, I’m asking you to judge Alex and Pat, without knowing their hearts or their genders. If it makes you feel any better, they’re fictional, anyway: this is just a thought experiment.

[fn5] FWIW, Pres. Hinckley wouldn’t have changed his mind.

[fn6] It’s probably also worth noting that the Law prohibited charging interest. For those of you who know the Hebrew Bible better than I, was there any underlying reason that interest would be prohibited, or is it solely because God said?

I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion. Therefore I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any renewal of true religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger and the love of the world in all its branches. How then is it possible that Methodism, that is, a religion of the heart, though it flourishes now as a green bay tree, should continue in this state? For the Methodists in every place grow diligent and frugal; consequently they increase in goods. Hence they proportionately increase in pride, in anger, in the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life. So, although the form of religion remains, the spirit as swiftly vanishes away. Is there no way to prevent this — the continual decay of pure religion? We ought not to prevent people from being diligent and frugal; we must exhort all Christians to gain all they can, and save all they can: that is, in effect, to grow rich.

Wesley locates this process or progression — practicing “pure religion” leads to industry and frugality [which produces riches] which induces pride — in the life of individual believers, which is where I think it occurs, when and if it occurs. Pride is a characteristic of individuals, not of societies. The recent surge in LDS commentary discussing “the pride cycle” as some sort of social dynamic doesn’t seem to recognize that the concept, as applied to societies as a whole, is largely incoherent. Wesley’s quote seems like a nice way to enrich an LDS discussion of the topic. I wish we got material like this in LDS manuals instead of recycled quotes from the middle of the last century.

Note: I corrected the last paragraph to add riches to Wesley’s progression from religion to pride.

[For what its worth, this years' list of "Conference Books" will be available tomorrow morning here.]

What I noticed started with the new Relief Society book, Daughters in My Kingdom: The History and Work of Relief Society. In their addresses, all of the members of the General Relief Society Presidency mentioned the new book. This included Sister Barbara Thompson, who also mentioned it when she spoke during the Saturday Morning Session. [I was surprised, however, that no one else mentioned or cited the book. Why is that?]

Then I noticed that the speakers frequently cited the Teachings of the Presidents of the Church series of Priesthood and Relief Society manuals. While those manuals have been cited before, this time it occurred to me that the manuals are simply compilations of quotes from a variety of other sources; little in them is newly written. So, why didn’t the conference speakers cite the original works?

The answer is, I think, simple: availability. The reason for citing these works isn’t promotion of new instead of old. The reason is that these works are largely available to the vast majority of LDS Church members, regardless of language and location. The original sources might as well be located on the moon as far as many Church members today are concerned. They can’t get them and wouldn’t be able to get them without a large investment in learning English and a not insignificant expense (for many areas around the world) in purchasing and shipping copies of these books. So it is problematic to cite sources that so many members have no way to get if you can figure out a way to avoid it.

Understanding these issues, the manuals become a more efficient way of getting important portions of the original works into the hands of Church members. Instead of having to translate works like the History of the Church, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Gospel Doctrine, etc., the manuals simply contain the most used and useful excerpts from many of these vital works. In terms of translation, these manuals are much, much more efficient.

I know that this series has been criticized from time to time. For example, the first volume, on Brigham Young, was criticized for its failure to mention polygamy in its biographical pages. I don’t think my observation above suggests anything either way about these criticisms. Instead, this observation makes clear an important problem that we continue to face as the Church spreads into new countries and new languages: how to make the basic teachings available.

If nothing else, this observation makes the role of these manuals even more important—for many Church members they are the first, and perhaps even only, way to access documents that we, English-speakers, take for granted.

And, to my surprise, I learned that, although it looks suspiciously convenient, atonement does come from “at-one-ment.”

Fast-forward a decade or more. I continue to be skeptical of stories that seem a little too pat and convenient, including Elder Cook’s story of the missionaries who didn’t board the Titanic. It felt a little too much like the story of the missionaries who called off their meeting in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.[fn2] Thrown off, I didn’t catch the profundity of his remarks.

After Conference, I quickly Googled and discovered (a) there is credible evidence, predating Elder Cook’s remarks, that Elder Sonne, et al., did, in fact, cancel their fateful tickets, and (b) there is also credible evidence that Sister Corbett did, in fact, believe that Mormon missionaries would be on the Titanic with her.

As a result, the second time I listened, I actually listened. And I realized that I had entirely misheard Elder Cook’s talk. His was not a laundry-list of Mormon cliches—rather, he complicated our simplistic view that righteousness = happiness.[fn3] Elder Cook says that

[t]he scriptures are clear: those who are righteous, follow the Savior, and keep His commandments will prosper in the land.

But what does it mean to “prosper in the land”? Sometimes, apparently, it means our lives will be saved, whether through divine intervention or hapless lateness. Other times, though, it means we will suffer, even though we were “careful, thoughtful, prayerful, and valiant.”

Elder Cook does not suggest that the missionaries were spared because of their righteousness, or that Sister Corbett died because she lacked something. Instead, suffering is part of this life. Sometimes, Elder Cook says, challenges are the result of others’ agency; sometimes, they’re the result of our own. And sometimes they provide us with experience that we need.

Ultimately, Elder Cook does not try to solve the problem of evil. He acknowledges that there are things we don’t know.[fn4] But, he says, there are things we do know: we have a loving Heavenly Father, an atoning Savior, and are participating in a plan of happiness that doesn’t end with our death. And, unlike the Titanic, the Savior’s sacrifice provides lifeboats for all of us.

—

[fn1] Yes, I worked at the Writing Center, and yes, it was my favorite undergrad job (even better than teaching at the MTC).

[fn2] For the sake of anybody who doesn’t click on the link, let me make clear that there was no missionary meeting in the WTC to be called off. I don’t want to get rumors started again.

[fn3] “Happiness” may not be the word I want here, if you believe that happiness is the ultimate state of the righteous. But I mean happiness at a specific point in time; my righteousness clearly does not guarantee me that I will be happy every moment of every day, even if it does mean that ultimately, I’ll be happy, or that on a net basis, my happiness will exceed my not-happiness.

[fn4] That there are things we don’t know is not at all central to his talk, but is, nonetheless, profound: although we have access to all truth, that does not mean that we know everything. Sometimes when we struggle to understand, it is because we really and truly don’t have all of the information.

Let’s briefly consider two questions:

1. What is the LDS position on Creationism?
2. Regardless of that position, is Creationism nevertheless taught to LDS youth as the LDS position?

These are important questions. We need to teach our children well.

First, a couple of caveats. The topic of interest is Creation and the age of the earth, not evolution. Second, I am not really concerned with what Joseph Fielding Smith or Bruce R. McConkie taught a generation or two ago — that is about as relevant to LDS high school students in 2011 as sermons by Orson Pratt or Brigham Young in the Journal of Discourses. I am more interested in what the CES manual for seminary teachers says, what contemporary LDS publications say, and what LDS seminary teachers (both CES full-timers and the selfless volunteers who run early-morning classes) are actually presenting to students.

As to the first question, the CES Old Testament Teacher Resource Manual lesson that covers Genesis 1 contains the following statement, highlighted in bold font and with italicized terms:

The purpose of the scriptural accounts of the Creation is not to answer such questions as how the earth was created, how long ago the Creation occurred, or how long the process of creation took. Their purpose is to answer the more important questions of why the earth was created and who created it.

You can follow the link and peruse the lesson yourself, but at least on the topic of teaching Creation without teaching Creationism, I think the lesson does a pretty good job.

The chapter on Creation in the CES Old Testament Student Manual (for university students, often provided to seminary teachers as a supplementary resource) actually discusses three theories of Creation: (1) Earth was created in seven days; (2) Earth was created over seven thousand years; and (3) Earth was created over seven “eras,” each of which could be “millions or even hundreds of millions of our years” in duration. The CES manual concludes that “officially the Church has not taken a stand on the age of the earth.” That is a surprising and welcome admission. [However, honesty requires me to disclose the manual's favorable discussion of the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky in the Creation chapter — does *anyone* edit these manuals for content? Isn't this the kind of stupid discussion that Correlation is supposed to remove from LDS manuals?]

Another LDS resource is the True to the Faith handbook, published by the Church. The Creation entry notes that “the Lord organized elements that had already existed. He did not create the world ‘out of nothing,’ as some people believe.” (Citations omitted.) This clearly sets the LDS view of Creation apart from the standard Christian view, shared by Creationists, of ex nihilo Creation. It’s worth noting that ex nihilo Creation is not the biblical view from Genesis 1, which describes God fashioning Earth and the universe from pre-existing matter (“without form”) or at least from pre-existing something. The idea of ex nihilo Creation was imported into Christianity from Hellenistic philosophy. The LDS view of Creation from pre-existing material is the biblical view.

I think these three sources are enough to establish an adequate response to my first question: Creationism (as that term is understood in contemporary discourse) should not be taught as LDS doctrine in LDS seminary or institute classes or in any other LDS setting. Any seminary teacher who has unwittingly taught this position as LDS doctrine should probably announce a correction to the class.

Here are a few quick links for readers who want a broader discussion of the topic:

• “Creationism” at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, noting both the broad and narrow meaning of the term. The narrower meaning is the relevant one for this discussion, generally affirming a seven-day or seven-millennium period of Creation and a global flood. “Young Earth Creationism” is the term often used to describe that set of beliefs.
• “Age of the Earth” at the FAIR wiki, disputing an alleged statement in the LDS Bible Dictionary that the Earth is 7000 years old and concluding that there is no LDS position on that point.
• “Age of the Earth” at Jeff Lindsay’s Science and Mormonism page.
• “Mormonism and the New Creationism,” an essay by LDS mathematician David H. Bailey, with helpful background about how some LDS leaders came to champion Young Earth Creationism.
• “Cafeteria Correlation,” my earlier T&S post that discusses the regrettable persistence of Young Earth Creationism in LDS discourse.
• “Evolution vs. Creationism in Seminary” at Wheat & Tares, hawkgrrrl’s recent discussion of very similar issues, although I tried to avoid bringing evolution into the discussion.

The second question is harder to clarify: is Creationism, regardless of what the manual or other LDS references state, nevertheless taught to LDS seminary students? Perhaps readers can provide some reports of their own observations and experience. After reviewing the three LDS sources discussed above, I am more hopeful about what happens in LDS classrooms than I was before doing this curriculum research.

Now Available

Charles Harrel,“This Is My Doctrine”: The Development of Mormon Theology (Kofford Books) “In this first-of-its-kind comprehensive treatment of the development of Mormon theology, Charles Harrell traces the history of Latter-day Saint doctrines from the times of the Old Testament to the present.” I have my doubts that someone who does not equally control original Biblical sources and LDS history, as well as the vast amounts of secondary literature on historiography, exegesis, etc. can give LDS doctrine a truly comprehensive diachronic treatment, and compress it into 597 pages. Nevertheless, I’m grateful to Harrel, an engineering professor, for making the attempt and I look forward to reading it. Too many LDS labor under the assumption that the status quo sprang fully formed from Joseph Smith. I don’t recall which of my friends said, but it’s in my Evernote file, “If there’s one thing Mormons excel at, it’s enshrining the status quo and assuming that if we do anything, there must be a good reason for it, and if there’s a good reason, it must have been revealed as the only way to do it, and if so, then it must have always been that way in all dispensations. And a lot of people’s faith can be shaken when it turns out not to always have been that way, which unravels that chain of reasoning back from that point until you doubt the premise, i.e., that any of it was revealed at all.”

Brant Gardner, The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon (Kofford Books) Many questions about the Book of Mormon end up centering on the nature of the translation, and many papers make tacit assumptions about it. Brant’s is the deepest treatment addressing those assumptions.His FAIR Conference presentation this year appears to have been based on his book. Gift and Power has already been reviewed elsewhere, so I’ll pass by without further commentary except to say that Brant’s previous volumes on the Book of Mormon have been fresh and thoughtful, and I expect no less from this.

Harold Bloom, The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible (Yale University Press) This is one of a string of books to appear about the KJV this year, but Bloom and the literary approach mark this one apart. Preview available. I’m particularly interested because the literary argument comes up repeatedly in LDS contexts. Of historical note, though, is that the KJV was not meant to be literary, and no one thought it was so until at least a century had passed. Chapter 1, “Language within language: the King James Steamroller” of Hamlin, The King James Bible After Four Hundred Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences (Cambridge) appears to address this. (I only had a few minutes to browse it.) Another recent volumes of note is The King James Bible: A Short History from Tyndale to Today by David Norton, the author of the authoritative, technical and expensive Textual History of the King James Bible.

Coming in September

John Walton’s Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Eisenbrauns) This is the expanded version of Walton’s arguments found in The Lost World of Genesis 1 (Eerdmans), but Lost World was for a lay audience and Ancient Cosmology a more academic audience. Walton places Genesis 1 in its ancient Near Eastern context and argues convincingly that Israelites read it as a description of functional, not material creation, and furthermore, Genesis 1 is a temple text. You can get the gist of his thesis from the audio here. Jared at LDS Science Review has addressed Walton several times (here and here), and the comments include an enthusiastic endorsement by SteveP, BYU biologist and BCC blogger.

Coming in October

N.T. Wright, The Kingdom New Testament: A Contemporary Translation (Harper One) N.T. Wright is a prolific paradigm-shattering New Testament scholar, who is nevertheless very accessible to laypeople. Among others, he’s authored commentaries on Romans and a New Testament commentary series “For Everyone” as well as books on Paul, and Heaven. He’s criticized various Bible translations in the past, so I’m glad to hear he’ll have his own. Ben Witherington interviews him about it here.

Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford Press) I’m familiar with both of the editors, Marc Brettler from his How to Read the Bible (not to be confused with books of the same title from James Kugel or Steven McKenzie) and Amy-Jill Levine from her lectures with the Teaching Company. Oxford’s Jewish Study Bible has an excellent set of notes, essays and other aids. The Jewish Annotated New Testament aims to do the same thing for the New Testament, from a Jewish Perspective. “For non-Jewish readers interested in the Jewish roots of Christianity and for Jewish readers who want a New Testament that neither proselytizes for Christianity nor denigrates Judaism, The Jewish Annotated New Testament is an essential volume that places these writings in a context that will enlighten students, professionals, and general readers.” Among other notable features, the JANT, is the “first New Testament annotated by Jewish scholars (barring those who have converted to Christianity), brings out Jewish background of early Christianity, New Testament writers, explains Jewish concepts (e.g., food laws, rabbinic argumentation) for non-Jews & Christian concepts (e.g., Eucharist) for Jews, and will be helpful for non-Jewish readers interested in the Jewish roots of Christianity.”

Coming in January

Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins (Brazos Press)

Enns says, “The book is divided into two parts. Part one focuses on Genesis, and my general point is that the creation stories are part of Israel’s literature of national and religious self-definition. In other words, they are not prepared to give the type of (historical and scientific) information we ask for today when speaking of “human origins.” To seek such information is to misread Genesis, and so attempts to align science and Genesis get us off on the foot altogether by not taking the biblical text on its own terms.Part two focuses on Paul’s use of the Adam story in Romans 5. Paul’s reading of the Adam story, despite superficial appearances, is hardly straightforward, and appreciating the theological subtly and depth of Paul’s words requires much more of us than simply opening an English Bible, reading a few verses, and drawing conclusions. I go on and on about this for a lot of pages, because this is a far more pressing problem for most Christian readers than Genesis.

The audience for the commentary is seminarians, pastors, and scholars. For The Evolution of Adam, the intended audience is similar to that of Inspiration and Incarnation: lay readers looking for different approaches to old problems. In fact, The Evolution of Adam applies the approach of Inspiration and Incarnation to a specific and pressing issue: in view of evolution, what does it mean to read the Bible well? So think of EOA as I&I part two.” I was a big fan of I&I, as well as the lectures of his I’ve heard online and in person. (Some posts of mine about Enns’ ideas here and here)

Happy reading.

Another way to look at the issue is to first recognize that, in the LDS Church, doctrine follows practice, not the other way around. The 1978 revelation makes this very clear. The 1978 revelation did not make doctrinal pronouncements, it just changed church practice: “all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color.” Over time, previously accepted folk doctrines (about those not-so-valiant spirits in the Preexistence, etc.) were quietly dropped from official discourse. Doctrinal change followed changes in practice, not the other way around.

If this is the model for change within the Church, what should we expect to happen on the gender issue? I think changes in practice will precede changes in doctrine. We should expect to see women in the Church continuing to assume more leadership roles at both the local and general levels. Then, over time, the LDS view of divine design will expand and, eventually, the “men preside, women defer, as it was in the Preexistence” line of thinking will be quietly dropped. So the Proclamation should not be construed as a barrier to continued progress within the Church. [As discussed in a prior post, it is hard to know exactly how we are supposed to construe the Proclamation.]

Supporting this view of how things work in the Church is the recent demotion of the Priesthood Executive Committee or PEC (with no women) in favor of the Ward Council (with at least three women included) at the local level. An alternative way to bring women into local leadership would have been to just give them the priesthood, then bring them into the PEC, but that would have ruffled a few feathers. Instead, it has been decreed that the Ward Council has now displaced the PEC as the primary body for running the ward. But the effect is essentially the same: women preside. Women now sit in the local council that helps run the ward. It is a practical rather than a doctrinal approach to change, but change it is.

What other emerging practices show that, despite official folk doctrine, the Church is moving forward on this issue?

There’s a lot to say – both about this phenomenon and about the Word of Wisdom itself – which I’m not going to say here. Instead, I’m going to quote Mark Bittman, give a hearty “hurrah!” for the revelatory insights of the Word of Wisdom (something Church pulpits and PR ought to be doing as well), and then ask questions for ya’ll to debate.

Here’s what Bittman wrote today:

90 percent of the animal products we’re offered . . . [are] produced badly, they cause immeasurable damage to both our bodies and the earth, and — compared with the real thing — they don’t taste that good. In limited quantities, [ahem…sparingly?] meat is just fine, especially sustainably raised meat (and wild game), locally and ethically produced dairy and eggs, the remaining wild or decently cultivated fish. No matter where we live, if we focused on those — none of which are in abundant supply, which is exactly the point — and used them to augment the kind of diet we’re made to eat, one based on plants as a staple, with these other things as treats, we’d all be better off.

Taking a serious look at “conspiring hearts” in international agribusiness, in the dysfunctional but politically untouchable farm bill, in unhealthy food subsidies everywhere, in the supplanting of family farms with factory farms, and given the overall impact (on our health and the environment) of the developed world’s meat consumption, one can only cry “Hallelujah!” when one reads Section 89. Here is the voice of a prophet, declaring the wise path to the world long before that path became conspicuous common sense. I’m grateful for these words that can indeed only be called wisdom.

Why then, is there such a jarring discrepancy between our revelations and our practices on this issue? What is it that makes Mormons known for funeral potatoes and jello rather than for fruits, vegetables, and whole grains? As a people, why don’t we live up to the lines of our scriptures and hymns and “eat but a very little meat!” (put another way, why is it that Brazilian BB-Q made it’s US premiere and continues to thrive in Utah)? Why don’t we lead the way in terms of healthy and sustainable dietary practices? Why aren’t we known – even amongst ourselves – for our prescriptions rather than merely our proscriptions?

Or, to ask more generally, why are we religious folk so eager to give evidence to those dismissive of religion, that our religion in actual fact makes very little difference to our lives and values? For example, why isn’t the default Christian position pacifism? Why are devoted religionists and fundamentalists known for filling the ranks of the military but not the diplomatic core? (Feel free to discuss your own favorite example.)

And finally, given how large and not-going-anywhere the issue of meat gluttony is in our society, do you suspect we’ll see a cultural shift in Mormonism on this issue? Do you foresee our taking Section 89 more seriously?