I don’t know if the poem below adds much or not. Written by Orson F. Whitney, named an apostle just two years after this was published, this poem is dense, employing sophisticated language and imagery to portray what is in the scriptures. Does it give additional insight? You tell me.

While many Church members know of Orson F. Whitney as an Apostle who served during the first half of the 20th century, he should also be known as strong proponent of Mormon literature and the author of one of the most successful Mormon epic poems. Born in 1855, Whitney worked as a politician, journalist, poet, historian and academic. He was a journalist for the Deseret News in 1878, edited the Millennial Star while serving a mission in Europe in 1881 and taught English at Brigham Young College in Logan in 1896. In 1899 he was called as Assistant Church Historian, serving in that position until his call to the Quorum of the Twelve in 1906.

In 1888 Whitney, then serving as a Bishop, gave his “Home Literature” talk, widely credited with transforming Mormon literature¹ Whitney wrote several hymns currently in our hymnal, and the epic poem Elias, from which the following is excerpted.

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The Arcana of the Infinite

Canto Seven of Elias, An Epic of the Ages

By Orson F. Whitney

…

“Each woe, each bliss,

In after worlds, the yield of life in this;
Here garnered are the fruits from fields of yore,
And sown the harvest of the evermore.

“The called are not the chosen past mischance;
The sanctified to glorified advance,
And stewardship becomes inheritance.
Redemption free, for God hath paid the price;
All else man wins by toil and sacrifice.

“As sun, or moon, or varying star, appears
Each heir of glory in those endless spheres:
Sun-like the souls that live celestial laws,
And moon-like they who at terrestrial pause—
Who honor not the Saviour in the flesh,
But after, in the spirit realm, refresh
Their fainting, fettered lives at mercy’s fount,

And, far as merit buoys them, upward mount;
Saved, glorified, by faith and penitence,
Made valid, through vicarious ordinance,
For all who Him believe, who Him obey,
And own in other worlds His sovereign sway.
Nor lost forever souls unsaved today:
Telestial they who taste the pangs of hell,
And pay guilt’s debt ere they in glory dwell,
Twinkling as stars whose numbers none can tell.

“Souls that to high celestial realms have won,
Dwell with the gods, beholding Sire and Son;
While bounds are set that bar terrestrial heirs
(With whom the Gracious One his presence shares),
And dwellers in the far telestial spheres,
To whom the Holy Spirit ministers.
God’s servants these, but to His glorious home—
The loftiest heights of heaven—they cannot come.

“Justice and Mercy each shall have its own,
Nor one thrust other from the dual throne;
Each shoal and deep a final fullness see,
And like clasp like through all eternity.

…

Whitney, Elias, An Epic of the Ages.
(Revised ed., 1914), pp. 73-4. Lines 2179-2215

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I did find a lot to like in this excerpt. The idea that “stewardship becomes inheritance” is intriguing, and something I’ll have to think about—do we inherit in the next life those things that we are responsible for? If that is taught in Mormonism, I’ve missed it.

I’m also intrigued with Whitney’s views of progression after this life. He says that those in the terrestrial and telestial kingdoms are barred from reaching the celestial, but are visited by specific members of the godhead:

While bounds are set that bar terrestrial heirs
(With whom the Gracious One his presence shares),
And dwellers in the far telestial spheres,
To whom the Holy Spirit ministers.

But he also suggests that progression within kingdoms requires paying debts:

Telestial they who taste the pangs of hell,
And pay guilt’s debt ere they in glory dwell,

Regardless of how you interpret these lines, there is, I think, a lot of meat in Whitney’s views of these kingdoms of glory.

Previous installments here and here. You can read Chapter 2 of Approaching Zion here.

Another confession: I had a really hard time with this chapter. And it’s not just because I read it sitting in an airport waiting for a plane that was delayed for an hour and a half. Rather, it’s because of the way Nibley speaks of the wealthy. Certain of his descriptions feels to me, so laughably one-dimensional—so moustache-twirling, tying-the-heroine-to-the-tracks—that I find myself fighting both his prose and my instincts to not just dismiss his entire piece out of hand.[fn1]

For example:

There are exceptions, but they are dangerously rare, for wealth is a jealous mistress: she will not tolerate any competition; rulers of business are openly contemptuous of all other vocations; and all those “how-to-get-rich” books by rich men virtuously assure us that the first and foremost prerequisite for acquiring wealth is to think of nothing else—the aspirant who is guilty even of a momentary lapse in his loyalty, they tell us, does not deserve the wealth he seeks. (52)

The city I live in is filled with McCormicks and Pritzkers; if you go to a museum, if you go to the ballet or the symphony, you’ll see their names and the names of other wealthy philanthropists. These people use their wealth to be comfortable, it’s true;[fn2] they also use their wealth to support artists and public parks and other things that, at best, provide warm glow and reputational returns to them. Heck, a partner at the law firm I used to work for (not as wealthy as the McCormicks or the Pritzkers to be sure, but still wealthy) skipped several days of work every summer to attend each performance in the Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart series.

That is, wealth is clearly not inherently a jealous mistress, and the wealthy are not inherently contemptuous of all other vocations. By grossly exaggerating his stereotypes of things with which I have some familiarity, Nibley puts a real impediment in front of my buying his story.[fn3]

Which is a shame, because again he raises some material issues, eliding many of the details, but raising issues we need to grapple with.

The Cold War

The rhetoric in this chapter had a very Cold War feel to me: Babylon, he tells us, is “the exact opposite of Zion in all things” (30). In the same way that Zion is pure, Babylon is pure evil, and “Babylon and Zion cannot mix in any degree; a Zion that makes concessions is no longer Zion” (30).

I wasn’t terribly old when the Berlin Wall fell, but I did spend some formative years living in the twilight of the Cold War. And, with its two superpowers and mutually-assured destruction, the Cold War provided stability to the world. There may have been skirmishes that didn’t involve the U.S. and the USSR, but those were sidelights, not really worthy of attention on the main stage. The U.S.-USSR conflict represented a real, existential threat. And, in that context, I understand thinking of Zion and Babylon is equal, opposite enemies, enemies that cannot mix.

Today, though, we no longer live in a bipolar world, defined by two superpowers that could, at the push of a button, absolutely destroy each other. We live in a unipolar (or maybe multipolar) world. I remember, years ago, reading an article that described our world as less stable. That said, we don’t face an existential threat. Sure, terrorists can hurt a lot of people. Maybe they can hurt a lot lot of people. But the U.S. doesn’t face imminent destruction.

And, based on our belief that the Church will fill the Earth, that the Millenium will come and Satan will be bound, I’d say Zion probably doesn’t face an existential threat; incursion of Babylon into Zion can, of course, do significant damage, hurting the residents of Zion, and possibly pulling some from its safe environs. But I’m not convinced that Babylon is the equal opposite of Zion.[fn4]

Oil and Water

Zion and Babylon cannot mix, Nibley assures us. The Zion “that makes concessions is no longer Zion” (30).

That said, those of us who live in the world can’t help but interact with Babylon (whatever that is). And, in fact, we have been encouraged to be inclusive, loving and interacting with all of our neighbors, Mormon or not, presumably of Zion or Babylon.

So, then, how to reconcile a Zion that cannot mix with Babylon with a Zion people who love our neighbors, whoever they are? If we truly practice Elder Ballard’s doctrine of inclusion, Zion cannot be a place that excludes others. Rather, it seems to me, the mixing has to be in our heads and our hearts; we cannot mix a desire for Zion with a desire for Babylon. And, maybe in this way, the Cold War vision works. It’s not that we have to separate ourselves; instead, we have to sanctify ourselves.

But there’s more: it can’t just be ourselves individually—Zion is not me, Zion is us, a city, a community.

And it’s here that I wish Nibley had moved beyond general ideas (because, though he believes in a real, tangible Zion, he sticks with generalities as he describes it) and mischaracterizations of the wealthy and the merchant class. Because here we have a real issue, one with which I’ve struggled and one with which I’ve seen others struggle. That is: what is our lodestar as we act in this world and attempt to make ourselves Zion people and people capable of building Zion?

I’ve been in lessons at Church where people—often successful, comfortable people—try to figure out how they can be charitable, Zion people, how they can live the law of consecration. Do we give to the beggar on the street? What constitutes materialism?[fn5] The discussions are generally deeply unsatisfying, often ending with an injunction to pay an honest tithe and a generous fast offering. That’s clearly not enough, but it’s an understandable conclusion to come to. The scriptures and prophets are clear about 10% + generous other contributions. But beyond that, we have no limited explicit guidance.

Our inability to definitively answer these questions may be a feature, not a bug, of the world we live it. That is, finding the answer may be less important than wrestling with the question. Still, the discussions I’ve participated in are even unsatisfying in terms of the wrestling; they often seem shapeless and pro forma. Nibley condemns consumerism and conspicuous consumption but, at least thus far, he hasn’t provided a framework with which to evaluate these questions.[fn6] The best guidance I’ve seen on this point, frankly, comes from C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity:

I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words,  if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc. is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charities expenditure excludes them.

Even this doesn’t actually get to a solid framework, but it suggests criteria against which we can measure how we’re doing, charity-wise. And having a framework, without a definitive answer, probably is the best possible world, because then we can struggle with the question of how to be a Zion person/community in a structured (and, hopefully, fruitful) manner.

Becoming sufficiently charitable isn’t the end, of course. The selflessness and altruism that come with being truly charitable aren’t a sufficient condition to arrive at Zion, it seems to me, but they are, nonetheless, a necessary condition.

Miscellany

• The chapter is full of quotations from Brigham Young. But Brigham Young was immensely quotable and often self-contradictory; I would like to have had the quotations contextualized.
• Nibley vacillates between Zion being a place that people build and a place that God delivers and removes, but that cannot be made by human hands. In the end, he seems to conclude that we have to work to build it in order that God send it.
• The idea of rhetoric, as opposed, I assume, to Truth, plays a big role in this chapter. Nibley sees words and labels as distorting our vision of Zion, and as distorting our priorities.
• Nibley displays his priors as he privileges artists over the businessperson; he says, “Granted that those who acquire wealth are sometimes people of superior talent (though for every real artist, or poet, or composer in America, there are at least ten thousand millionaires) . . . .” But I don’t see any reason that the artist is inherently morally superior, at least for purposes of Zion. Both can be focused on Babylon, and both must give up that focus to come to Zion.

—

[fn1] One of my law professors put it roughly this way: I believe every word I read in the New Yorker, except when they write about something I know about. (Note that it may have been the New York Times; it’s been a while since I was in law school.)

[fn2] Or, at least, I assume it’s true; they don’t often ever invite me to their parties.

[fn3] I wonder if that’s part of the reason Approaching Zion is so arresting to young, left-leaning, thinky types: without the additional life experience that comes as we leave home, leave college, enter the workforce, and increase our social circles, they can skip over the inconsistencies and mischaracterizations of the world as it exists and instead focus on the world as Nibley believes it should be.

[fn4] Of course, Nibley’s still not entirely clear about what Zion is, so saying that Babylon is its opposite doesn’t provide a full definition of what constitutes Babylon, either.

[fn5] (I ask as I sit at a nice computer, with my nice tablet computer by me and my nice smartphone charging behind me.)

[fn6] Maybe I’m just being dense, and his framework is to give up anything beyond necessities, but I don’t think that’s it.

***

Note: Because of my work schedule, I’m unlikely to get an AZP post up next week. I hope to get back to them, with Chapter 3, the following week.

Sometimes, one person’s vision of God becomes codified, set in stone as the truth for all people. It may be a beautiful, profound view of God, one that answers the yearning of the time. But God is greater than even the most perceptive one’s capacity to behold, much less fully communicate. Man’s best description of God is still a description of man, not of God.

And so I am glad that we haven’t been told as much about our Heavenly Mother as our Heavenly Father. (Honestly, I expect we know much less about Him than we assume we know, and that assumption, sadly, may hinder some from deeper seeking.) We are not limited in seeking Her, the feminine divine, by constraints set out by the visions of men. She is the dark side of the moon, the substantial half of God as yet hidden from the searchlight of institutional revelation and the strictures of correlated curriculum.

Don’t tell me who my Mother in Heaven is. Let me seek Her for myself. And one day, I’ll tell you what I have discovered about Her, and you will share with me what has been revealed to you, and neither of us will know Her completely, but we will both know ourselves better for the way in which we know Her. We will love each other better for loving Her. And with our Father and our Mother we will rejoice when we are reunited with our one complete God.

On a practical level, these obligations are quite different from the expectations experienced by the Saints in Nauvoo and understood by them before the Nauvoo Temple was built, as can be seen by the following poem.

William Wines Phelps, the author of this poem was also one of the first and most prolific of Mormon poets, although unlike his contemporaries Parley P. Pratt, Eliza R. Snow and John Lyon, Phelps never published a volume of his own poetry. He is also unique because he is likely the author of the only poem, outside of scripture, attributed to Joseph Smith (The Vision, a paraphrase of D&C 76). If I recall correctly, he is still the Mormon author with the most hymns in the current hymnal.

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The Temple of God at Nauvoo

By W. W. Phelps

Ye servants that so many prophets foretold,

Should labor for Zion and not for the gold,

Go into the field ere the sun dries the dew,

And reap for the kingdom of God at Nauvoo.

 

Go carry glad tidings, that all may attend,

While God is unfolding “the time of the end;”

And say to all nations, whatever you do,

Come, build up the Temple of God at Nauvoo.

 

Go say to the Islands that wait for his law,

Prepare for that glory the prophets once saw,

And bring on your gold and your precious things, too,

As tithes for the Temple of God at Nauvoo.

 

Go say to the great men, who boast of a name;

To kings and their nobles, all born unto fame,

Come, bring on your treasures, antiquities, too,

And honor the Temple of God at Nauvoo.

 

Proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,

For now we have prophets to bring forth his word,

And reveal to the church what the world never knew,

By faith in the Temple of God at Nauvoo.

 

To spirits in prison the gospel is sent,

For on such a mission the Savior once went;

And we are baptiz’d for the dead—surely, too,

In the font at the Temple of God at Nauvoo.

 

Up; watch! for the strange work of God has begun,

And new things are opening, now, under the sun:

And knowledge on knowledge will burst to our view,

From Seers in the Temple of God at Nauvoo.

Times and Seasons, 15 June 1842

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What is quite unusual about this, in my view, is Phelps emphasis on missionary work. The temple is a missionary message in this poem, a reason for labor and paying tithing. And, typical of the time, Phelps sees a millenarian urgency in spreading this message and constructing the temple.

Perhaps more interesting is Phelps’ focus on tithing and criticism of wealth. He says his readers “should labor for Zion and not for the gold” and suggests that the missionary message should  also urge listeners to “bring on your gold and your precious things, too, / As tithes for the Temple of God at Nauvoo.” Further, he adds that even the famous, the kings and nobles should “bring on your treasures, antiquities, too, / And honor the Temple of God at Nauvoo.”

But it is not like Phelps to ignore the benefits of the temple entirely He understood that the then-new doctrine of baptism for the dead would happen in the temples:

To spirits in prison the gospel is sent,

For on such a mission the Savior once went;

And we are baptiz’d for the dead—surely, too,

In the font at the Temple of God at Nauvoo.

and also saw that the temple would provide an environment for receiving revelation:

Up; watch! for the strange work of God has begun,

And new things are opening, now, under the sun:

And knowledge on knowledge will burst to our view,

From Seers in the Temple of God at Nauvoo.

Still, the conception of what a Temple is and what benefits it provides were not as well developed or widely understood in 1842 as they were for Lorenzo Snow towards the end of the century.

Joseph L Townsend

How thin is the veil? Might we remember bits of our experience there? Could a melody we heard there be familiar to us here? (assuming we even heard melodies there).

The idea of the pre-existence and of the other elements of the plan of salvation, discussed in D&C Gospel Doctrine lesson 19, are a source of endless wonder and speculation. We just don’t know much about what our existence before and after this life was and will be like.

But, perhaps nothing says more about our belief in the plan of salvation than our fascination with speculating about what the life before this one was like, and what the life after this one will be like.

The author of this poem, Joseph Townsend, was one of the most widely published poets of late 19th century Mormonism. Today Townsend is best known as the author of 10 of the hymns in our hymnal, including “Choose the Right,” “The Iron Rod,” “Let Us Oft Speak Kind Words To Each Other,” and “Hope of Israel.” Born in Pennsylvania in 1872, Townsend came to Salt Lake City, Utah to improve is health and discovered Mormonism there as well. He served an LDS mission to the Southern States, owned and ran a drugstore in Payson, Utah for 15 years and then taught at Brigham Young Academy (the high-school predecessor of BYU) for a couple of years before teaching at Salt Lake City High School. And he wrote poetry which was frequently published in LDS publications like The Contributor.

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Spirit Memories

By J. L. Townsend

There’s a song of songs in my heart to-day,

A song the angels are singing;

While my thoughts in holiest faith essay

To gather the music ringing.

‘Tis a song whose words in a sweet refrain,

And melody sweetly falling,

Are like dreams, that, vanishing, yet remain

In memories faint recalling.

And the song that lingers in memory,

Recalls a heavenly glory;

In the scenes of elysian homes I see

That faintly are shown before me.

There’s a home where brothers and sisters dear,

And mother, a queen of heaven,

As a childhood’s dream of another sphere,

Appears through a vail light riven;

And the glimpse I see of this home of love,

My heart oft thrills with the longing

To regain this beautiful home above,

With spiritual kindred thronging;

And the song of songs in my heart must be

A song I have joined in singing

With my kindred there, ere eternity

Rolled on, my probation bringing.

And this song of songs I may hope to hear,

The vail be completely riven,

When my spirit meets with the angels near,

Returning in joy to heaven.

The Contributor 3 (1881-1882) p. 249

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Even if the idea that we might remember something like music from the pre-existence is problematic, I like Townsend’s use of music as a connecting element in the poem, leading the reader from a song heard today to memories of pre-mortal life, to a hope for the life to come. While he clearly romanticizes the pre-mortal life in this poem (e.g. ‘elysian homes’), I must admit that it is hard to imagine anything different. If the pre- and post-mortal worlds aren’t anything different or better than what we know now, doesn’t that change our understanding of the plan of salvation?

Another interesting element in the poem is the veil. While normally the veil is portrayed as impenetrable to humans, here it is “riven” both in dream (“…another sphere, / Appears through a vail light riven…”) and in future expectations (“…I may hope to hear, / The vail be completely riven…”). Yet it remains in place in the dream, partly obscuring the past and keeping us from seeing until it is finally “riven” in the future.

The veil is, of course, the key issue here. It requires our belief in the life before this as well as the life after this. It is, in this sense, a key part of the plan of salvation.

Virginity by definition is something that once lost is never regained. Historically, it has also been associated with a whole bunch of disturbing male attitudes towards women. In some contexts female virginity is literally a piece of property that can be sold to men titillated by the prospect of deflowering a virgin. There has never been a comparable treatment of male virginity. For example, historically a lot of legal systems have allowed parties to a marriage contract to back out of the deal if the bride was not a virgin. I know of no legal system that created a similar escape clause for men. Not surprisingly, feminists have long pointed out that reducing sexual morality to the idea of female virginity has a host of troubling implications, from a sexual double standard for men and women, to the commodification of female bodies, to the treatment of rape victims as irredeemably fallen.

The feminist criticisms on this front all strike me as correct. The argument is often taken farther, however, to reject the entire idea of chastity as a moral ideal. In effect, chastity is equated with a fetish for female virginity. This, I think, is a mistake. To be sure, the idea of chastity often gets entangled with the idea of virginity, and historically the two have often been indistinguishable from one another. Conceptually, however, they are distinct. Chastity is the idea that sexuality is a God-given power and gift, one subject to limits that are not exhausted by affection and consent. It does not rest on the idea that sex is dirty or fallen. It simply insists that sexuality be nested within a context of restraint, commitment, and family formation. It is also symmetrical by gender. I have never, for example, ever heard it taught in a church context that girls must remain pure but that boys will be boys and can be expected to sow their wild oats. The only place where Mormons compromise on this message is in some of the bizarre ways we have of teaching modesty to young women. (Another complaint of mine, but one for another time.)

At a deeper level, chastity as a moral ideal marks a rejection of the liberal ideal of self-ownership. Rather, we are not our own; we were bought with a price and belong to God. Chastity makes no sense within an ethic of self-ownership other than as a choice, a deliberate action in response to a taste or a preference. Mormons, however, do not experience the demands of chastity as a preference or a choice, but rather as an order given by God, one that points beyond themselves and their moral power as an agent to generate obligations for themselves. We may choose to follow God’s law, but we do not choose to author it and its authority is not contingent on our consent.

Seen in this light, focusing on virginity creates problems for an ethic of chastity. First and most disturbingly, it disconnects chastity from notions of moral accountability in the case of rape. It runs counter to the idea that people will be punished for their own sins and not the transgressions of another. Second, it disconnects chastity from the idea of repentance. Faith in Christ’s atonement requires the belief that one’s garments can be washed completely clean in the blood of the lamb, that one can constantly be made anew worthy to be co-heir with Christ of all that God has. Virginity, however, once lost is not recoverable. To equate virginity with chastity thus implies that infractions of the law of chastity are, in some sense, unforgivable sins. No sins – except perhaps the sin against the Holy Ghost – are supposed to be beyond the reach of Christ.

Finally, for youth who are trying to make sense of the sexual world opened up by puberty, a focus on virginity undermines a proper understanding of chastity. Rather than cultivating an ethical response to sexuality that sees it as a gift from God to be treasured and used in a way that draws one closer to him, young Mormons are encouraged to think of chastity as a way of avoiding the loss of virginity. Rather than learning to think about what it means to live as though sex were a gift from God, they tend to think in terms of how far can I go before I have really violated the law of chastity. “How far can I go?” however is ultimately a question about virginity not a question about chastity. Virginity is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for chastity.

I think that we should simply stop linking chastity with virginity. The purpose of the law of chastity is not to make sure that everyone is a virgin before they are married. Generally, if people keep the law of chastity their entire lives, they will naturally be virgins on their wedding nights. That, however, is not the point of chastity any more than the avoidance of coffee stains on your desk is the point of the Word of Wisdom. Rather, chastity is one of the many ways in which we cultivate a view of ourselves, our relationship to God, and our relationship to others that marks the acknowledgment that we are never purely our own.

For those who want to skip the movie and just read the book, I thought I’d post here a (believe it or not) condensed version of that talk, focusing on the main points, without all the low-tech effects. Of course, the post won’t be nearly as exciting, but some of the clips used at the live talk didn’t make it to the youtube version anyway because of copyright issues (you’ll still see some phenomenal pictures of phenomenal 1970s bellbottoms, however, which certainly I thought would never change; the talk is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-o23SurnGA. I start talking at about 9 minutes.)

POINT 1. When you study Really Old history in Really Distant Places, like I do, you have to explain a little more than usual what in the world your study is good for. Contrary to popular opinion among friends and family members, studying Really Old History is not just good for becoming a whiz at Jeopardy or other parlor games that make you the life of any party. It’s not even just good for coming up with a lot of solemn platitudes you can then utter about History (like never repeating mistakes of the past—not true, by the way).

No, what studying Really Old History is most good for is the insight it can offer into life right now. And maybe the most fundamental such insight is some perspective on how things change, especially in my favorite realms of study: religion and culture.

POINT 2. Anyone halfway paying attention in life is familiar with cultural change, of course, as we see it happen right before our eyes, from one generation to another, with older generations usually lamenting the decline of just about everything and younger generations usually rejoicing at all the progress they’ve brought to the world—not only in obvious ways like hairstyles and clothing and music but also in abstract things like morals.

Then the younger generation becomes the older generation and the lamenting starts all over again, with the new oldies insisting that the changes they made were necessary and obvious while the changes going on with the new youngies are REALLY bad, in fact are probably the worst changes in the history of the whole world and signal that the end is near.

(This is where you want to get on YouTube and watch the two forbidden clips that essentially bookend the talk: Mama Cass belting out “There’s a New World Coming,” and then Archie and Edith Bunker singing “Those Were the Days.” These are the twin theme-songs of every generation: the first when you’re young, the second when you’re old.)

POINT 3. What studying Really Old History does is to help us see beyond generational change and prejudice. Most of us make our judgments about the religious and cultural change we witness, and even about the entire history of the world, based on the really short and egocentric perspective of our own lifetime. But a closer look at change over the long haul lets us see that change and lamenting and rejoicing are pretty constant, and knowing this can save us a little fretting, or at least let us have better-informed debates over proposed changes in our own world.

For one thing, long-term study of change helps us see how hard it is to judge what constitutes progress and decline, or which generation is superior to another. You’d have to lay out all the deeds and values of every generation to do that. And even if you could lay them all out (highly doubtful), then which generation’s standard of right and wrong would you use to judge things? Every generation is pretty sure of its superiority, and yet every generation has, usually without knowing it, accepted as right things which previous generations thought were wrong, and vice versa.

To settle that argument, you could of course trying bringing in some objective judge of right and wrong, which in the West has meant especially the Christian Bible. But that can be tricky too, because interpretations of the Bible have changed dramatically over time. Scholars have tried explaining change with some dreary-sounding theories like “cohort replacement” and “informational cascades.” I’m in the early stages of developing my own ideas, but so far I’m thinking that it might be more helpful to understand change not as decline or progress but as a sort of reconfiguration, or as the Book of Acts puts it, a time of refreshing.

People start seeing old things differently, and seeing new things, because they ask new questions, often because of new conditions around them; then they work their new way of seeing into a new system of right and wrong.

POINT 4. There have been countless such reconfigurations over time, and I’ll start with a few simple ones in western Christian culture alone to illustrate.

Example: language. My mother sometimes washed our mouths out with soap when we used slang words she thought were bad, so imagine my surprise when I learned decades later that some of the slang words she used herself were originally obscene, which of course she didn’t know. Or how about the phrase Good Grief, so wholesome that even Charlie Brown says it? Turns out it’s just another minced swear word. There are hundreds of such words, and most of us say some of them regularly without thinking ourselves wrong for doing so, which I know because I and the rest of the historical police hear you.

Example: lefthandedness. For centuries this was seen not as just another hand but as the evil hand. The Latin word for left is sinister, the French word for left (gauche) is crude, and so on. Any child who preferred the left hand was unusually willful and deliberately perverse. Religious rituals favored the right hand, a toast of ill-will was a left-handed toast, a subtle insult was a left-handed compliment, ambidextrous didn’t mean using both hands equally, it meant having two right hands. Right wasn’t just directional, but moral, clear into the twentieth century, until people began to view lefthandedness as just another form of handedness. Lefthandedness itself didn’t change, but how it was seen changed.

Example: polyphonic music. What?! Yes, the church long preferred plainchant, everyone singing the same note and same word at the same time. Polyphony, or singing different notes and different words, was worldly. But around 900 some church composers started believing it was possible to incorporate polyphony into religious music. Many churchmen resisted, especially when third and sixth intervals were involved, which were seen as sensuous and “not conducive to holy thoughts.”

Yet eventually the single most famous piece of polyphony in the Christian West became also the single most famous piece of religious music too: Handel’s Messiah. Even though people are singing and playing all sorts of notes at the same time, even though all sorts of thirds and sixths are undoubtedly going on, even though Handel himself considered it a secular work and had it performed in concert halls instead of churches, most of us upon hearing it are not likely to run out and renounce religion but instead regard it as a supremely religious work—because our sense of right and wrong in religious music is different from that of the Middle Ages.

POINT 5. Beyond these changes were bigger ones that really did seem to turn the world upside down, and signal the end, and shake the foundations, and tear up the roots (root of course being the root meaning of the word radical), or whatever metaphor you want to use. These sorts of changes weren’t just in fashion or music or technology, but in what people had been sure had always been right and wrong.

Such changes were long unimaginable, yet they occurred anyway. Most won’t seem that radical to us; in fact they might make us chuckle or smirk because they seem so obviously right. But we can think that only because earlier generations made them part of a new configuration of values that eventually became part of our own configuration, without our even realizing it. At one time, these unimaginable changes were every bit as big as any unimaginable change in our own world, and were enough to make people start fainting, like during Khruschev’s secret speech of 1956, because this just couldn’t be happening.

Example: the famous dream of Peter in Acts. A voice that he takes to be God tells him to eat animals which Peter believes God has said not to eat. He was so astonished he had to be told three times to eat up. Peter took it all to mean that the Gentiles weren’t as unclean as he’d thought, in fact that “God had put no difference between us and them.” When other Jesus-following Jews heard the news about Gentiles, they were astonished too, including James the brother of Jesus.

Example: Paul. He also had revelations about the Gentiles, that he also took to be from God, but his went further than Peter’s, and further than what James the brother of Jesus envisioned too: to the latter, it was fine for Gentiles to convert, but they would have to follow Jewish law too. But to Paul, going to the Gentiles meant adapting to them, in regard to divorce, and diet, and circumcision, for instance. Many Jewish followers of Jesus were horrified, and debates broke out, as they always do when change threatens. Conferences were held, agreements were struck, Paul continued on, and his version of things gradually became the most popular.

But the story wasn’t over. Elaine Pagels’ new book on Revelation shows that followers of Jesus were still arguing with each other for generations, and that one of the loudest critics of Paul’s disciples was none other than their fellow Christian, John of Patmos, the Revelator. John had a vision too, a famous one of the end of the world. But that end wasn’t in some distant time: it was in John’s own Roman world. It was falling apart and God was about to take out his wrath on it, and why? Not just because of the wickedness of pagan Rome, but also because some alleged followers of Jesus (such as Paul’s disciples) had compromised with worldly Rome and corrupted true religion. Even though the book of Revelation and Paul’s epistles ended up happily under the same New Testament cover, Pagels argues that they reflect two competing visions of what Jesus’s message meant: to John, Paul’s sort of change, which most of us have inherited, was unthinkable.

Example: Sunday. Gentile converts could of course play the moral-superiority and moral-decline card too. They just had different ideas than John about what it was. One thing they insisted on, for instance, was not using the word “Sunday” to refer to the first day of the week. Modern English-speaking Christians have no problem saying “Sunday,” or calling Sunday the Sabbath. But many ancient Gentile Christians would’ve been horrified that we use either term. Sunday, the day of the Sun, was a pagan day, and to say it was to compromise with Rome. Real Christians should call it the Lord’s Day (still used in most Romance Languages for Sunday). And certainly the Lord’s Day was not the Sabbath, which was for Jews only, and which fell on the Roman Saturday (also reflected in most Romance languages).

Views started changing after 600, as Christianity moved into Germanic northern Europe. Speakers of Germanic languages, including English, just kept using the term Sunday, because to them it didn’t have an un-Christian connotation. Also, Christians had decided that one way to show their superiority to Jews was to observe their own special Lord’s Day even more rigorously than Jews observed their Sabbath; some even began calling the Lord’s Day a sort of Christian Sabbath. By the sixteenth century, English Puritans insisted that the Sabbath had actually been transferred to Sunday by divine decree. And so for English-speakers Sabbath and Sunday came to be synonymous, and religious, and good. But ancient Christians might regard us as complete heretics for saying either one.

Example: Usury. Even more stunning to ancient and medieval Christians would have been the Christian acceptance after 1500 of lending money at interest, and that churches would someday be filled with bankers. Usury was prohibited in the Christian west on the basis of various Old Testament texts, and violating that was not just another sin but one of the hugest sins. Then as more and more cities emerged after 1000, so did more and more merchants, and so did the need for more credit—causing some to rethink apparently unchangeable views of usury, and to develop a new set of values around it.

One of the leading reinterpreters of the relevant biblical texts was John Calvin, who used a historical argument: conditions in sixteenth-century Europe were different from those in ancient Israel. The implication was huge: something that had been assumed to be a lasting ideal might simply have been a temporary one. If that was true of usury, was it true of other biblical precepts too? In any case, by 1650 all Protestants agreed, and by 1750 Catholics did too. Future generations would be mostly unaware usury had even been a controversial issue in the past. But Christians before 1500 would have been stunned by the change, or by the later idea that fair interest rates and prices should be determined by some invisible hand rather than Christian morals.

Example: the Earth-Centered Universe (yes, a moral problem). For almost 2000 years, the Christian west accepted that the earth was at the center of all things, and that heavenly bodies were perfectly smooth crystalline spheres. This was based on Ptolemy and Aristotle, and on six or seven texts of the Bible. But in 1540 Nicolas Copernicus said that putting the sun at the center of the universe explained heavenly motion better than leaving the earth at the center did. Galileo agreed, and popularized the idea; he also had the novel idea to turn the newly invented microscope (in modified form) to the heavens. Most weren’t interested in doing so, because it was assumed that the heavens were already understood.

Galileo saw that the sun had spots, and the moon’s surface was irregular, and Jupiter had moons, all of which were impossible. He couldn’t simply reject what the Bible said about such things, but he did reinterpret. Though the Bible could never err, he said, its meaning was not always obvious. Also, the Bible must be interpreted in light of new knowledge that emerges: “I declare that we do have in our age new events and observations such that if Aristotle were now alive, I have no doubt he would change his opinion.” Maybe the writers of the Bible would too.

Some churchmen were interested in Galileo’s ideas, but insisted he present them as merely a theory, rather than reality. Most, however, insisted that putting the sun at the center of the universe was “without any doubt against scripture,” and anyone who said otherwise were proud “men of the world.” This wasn’t just a scientific matter, in other words. Another cardinal famously refused to look through Galileo’s telescope, fearing it was a trick: it simply COULD not be true. The church condemned Galileo in 1633, and placed his writings on the Index of Prohibited Books. But the new universe won over most educated people by 1700, and others by 1900. In 1992 Pope John Paul II declared that Galileo had been right, and commended him for “adjusting scriptural interpretation in light of new knowledge,” unlike the theologians of his day.

Example: Slavery. Maybe the best reason not to argue that an idea or practice should continue just because it’s been around a long time is slavery. Slavery had been around forever when some western Christians began to oppose it in the eighteenth century, setting off a debate in the US that lasted into the Civil War. The most striking thing about the debate to us might be that those in favor of slavery had the best biblical arguments on their side. Both Old and New Testaments assumed the existence of slavery, and never condemn it. They condemn only masters who treat slaves badly. “The Bible teaches clearly and conclusively that the holding of slaves is right,” said advocates of slavery, who could cite numerous passages specifically saying so.

Those against slavery weren’t simply going to ignore the Bible, of course, no more than Galileo or Calvin would have. But they didn’t have any passages on their side to specifically condemn slavery. Their strategy instead was to emphasize passages about human relationships in general, such as the Golden Rule. They also might use the historical approach: biblical passages in favor of slavery reflected the understanding of past societies rather than of some enduring practice. Or they relied on “the general tenor of scripture” being against slavery.

Example: Racial Mixing. After slavery ended, former slaves and their descendants were still treated as inferior people, even by many northerners opposed to slavery, based on various biblical passages taken to mean that races should not mix in any intimate way—housing, schooling, eating, or especially marriage. The last was said to be contrary to nature and to God’s will. Such views lasted long: even when the Supreme Court finally struck down laws against interracial marriage in 1967, 81% of Americans still opposed such marriage. In a couple of generations momentum had turned: by 2011, 86% of Americans approved of interracial marriage, and within another generation or two many people will likely forget how unacceptable it used to be, or imagine that only bad people opposed it.

POINT 6. All the changes mentioned so far would, again, not impress modern Christians as tremendously earth-shattering. Most now regard them as obviously good and necessary. But if it’s hard to imagine how big these changes once were, and how much debate they provoked, we can at least grasp this: by accepting these changes ourselves, we, like those who made the changes, accept some things in the Bible as written, and reject other things, even though we may not think about it.

This is also true of big changes contemplated and debated in more recent decades. I won’t spend as much time on these, precisely because there is not consensus about them in the Christian west. But in short, some Christians have found ways to reconcile changes in these areas into their beliefs, while others contend it’s not possible.

Example: Evolution. Many Christians in the late nineteenth century thought that evolution was completely incompatible with the Bible, but other Christians said it depended on how you read the Bible. The Creation account may have simply reflected understanding of the time. Or it wasn’t even meant to be scientific, but was a morality tale to show that God was above nature, not within in. But many American Christians despised this sort of fancy Bible-reading; in fact evolution seems to have been the last straw, because biblical literalism arose at the same time. 46% of Americans, most of them Christians, still don’t believe in human evolution, though 32% of Americans, most of them Christian too, believe that evolution was God’s way of doing things.

Example: Just About Anything to Do With Women. Women shouldn’t study too much, for example, said educators and moralists from the middle ages on, because, said one seventeenth-century Frenchman, their brains might explode, plus it didn’t suit their nature, which was for bearing and raising children, plus if women cared too much about learning, they would neglect home and family and society would crumble. Women shouldn’t lead or preach in churches either, said others, because the priest represented God, and God was a man (even though the orthodox God had no body, parts, or passions). Women couldn’t run the 10,000 meters either, much less the marathon, or pole vault, or usually play full-court basketball, because their bodies weren’t made for it.

On some women’s issues there’s still lots of fuss, of course, but on those I’ve mentioned we wonder what the fuss was about, and have even forgotten there was one. I’m surprised, for instance, by how many of my female students feel the need to declare that they are not feminists, making me wonder what they mean by the term, since these students regard such feminist ideals as equal opportunity at school and work and in sports as good things.

Final Examples. Vaccination was so controversial when it emerged in the 18^th century that it could provoke shootings and bombings. Those against insisted that deliberately giving someone a disease had to be ungodly, while Christians in favor insisted it was a gift from God.

The argument over birth control that began in the 19^th century went much the same way: it seemed to be against life, and to be playing God, said opponents, while a lot of Christian women showed at least by their actions that they considered it to be a gift from God.

This of course was related to changes in sexual mores generally and changes in understanding of homosexual relations as well, the latter of which went from 40% approval in 2001 to 54% in 2012, with perhaps predictably a huge gap between the younger and older generations.

And there is arguing over the proper Christian approach to the environment. And more.

For all of these subjects the Bible is used by both or all sides, with those having specific passages on their side insisting they be read at face value, and those without such passages emphasizing texts about human relationships and dignity or the “general tenor” of scripture.

POINT 7. These are a lot of subjects, but there are many more, and there will doubtless be many more in the future. My purpose isn’t to suggest that every change or potential change is necessarily good, or that every single thing will necessarily change, or to say what’s the right way to think about this proposed change or that, but to offer some perspective on current debates over change.

We don’t have to feel like we are being uniquely and cosmically picked on because of current changes in our own time that might make us feel threatened.

We don’t have to conclude that the changes we see in our lifetime are the worst ever in history, but can actually go study a little history and see pretty fast that worst ever has a lot of company, at just about any time.

And we can get out of the centuries-old habit of insisting that the old days were always better; even in the Old Testament, people were saying that, prompting the author of Ecclesiastes (7:10) to comment, “Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.” Just like Carly Simon said, these are the good old days. President Hinckley said it too: when asked whether the Fifties were better than today, he said, “I think the fifties were a good time and I think this is a great time. I don’t think we’ve retrograded.” The point isn’t that there aren’t awful things around us, but that we’re not unusual that way: they are always there. So are good things. The point is to make the best of our particular situation.

Speaking as a historian, change in our understanding seems to be one constant we can count on. And speaking as a believer, maybe that’s the way it should be. How dull it would be, and how little we would learn, if the point of life was only to jump through hoops already set up for us, rather than for us to help create life.

There’s nothing wrong with having a system of right and wrong, obviously; and old systems shouldn’t be casually discarded just because they’re old. There’s nothing even wrong in liking our particular system, or in disagreeing with others over what changes should occur.

But seeing a big picture of change over time should make us more inclined to disagree with each other humbly, with an attitude that we might be wrong and others right, because all that past big change should make us reflect that maybe all the things we’re so certain about might also end up someday floating away like white puffs of dandelion on a summer breeze. In fact it’s a good bet that future generations will shake their heads not only at what we were doing with our hair, and pants, but with what we were thinking about this or that.

POINT LAST. Mormons are of course familiar with change too. We’ve argued over every one of the topics I’ve mentioned starting with slavery, and have seen change in every one as well. Charles Harrell of the BYU faculty just published a book that shows changes in Mormon doctrine from beginning to present, and just weeks ago dozens of changes were made in LDS scriptures to make historical context more clear. But this doesn’t have to disturb us: Mormons don’t officially believe in inerrancy, and change doesn’t necessarily mean errancy; in fact the belief in continuing revelation could make Mormons in theory more radical believers in change than most others.

But even to us change can feel threatening, as was evident in probably our two most radical changes, ending polygamy and the priesthood ban. Growing up, I knew little about polygamy, just vague impressions that ending it hadn’t been a big deal and was obviously necessary and not very many people had been involved anyway, which turned out to be all wrong. But I remember the change to the priesthood ban well and that it was indeed a big deal, and experienced change within myself. So did many other people of my then-young generation, so I wasn’t particularly heroic or virtuous for doing so. But older Mormons like Spencer W. Kimball were.

The process he went through is described in an article in BYU Studies from 2008, by his son Edward. President Kimball had thought about the ban since 1961, and had been against lifting it. But after he became prophet in 1974, he started reconsidering. He knew by now that Joseph Smith had ordained black people; he knew about the complications the policy was causing in Brazil, where the church was growing fast; but most of all he began questioning his own assumptions. During the first months of 1978, he went almost daily to the temple to pray about those, and was in great torment.

“Day after day…I went there when I could be alone. I was very humble…I was searching…I had a great deal to fight…myself, largely, because I had grown up with this thought that Negroes should not have the priesthood and I was prepared to go all the rest of my life until my death and fight for it and defend it as it was.”

Defend. Fight. The usual language and posture we associate with the religious hero standing up for truth. Yet President Kimball was the hero in this whole matter not because he stood up for his old beliefs, which he like Peter assumed had come from God, but because even at his age he was willing to reconsider them. Unlike the cardinal who wouldn’t look through Galileo’s telescope because he might not like what he would see, President Kimball looked.

He later wrote about the incident, “Revelations will probably never come unless they are desired….” Or as President Hinckley later put it, “He was not the first to worry about the priesthood question, but he had the compassion to pursue it and a boldness that allowed him to get the revelation.” And also just like Peter, he was astonished when it came.

Most everyone I knew was thrilled about the change, and pretty predictably within a generation or so young people didn’t understand what a big deal it had been. In a few more generations, I wouldn’t be surprised if they forget altogether. Today when younger people hear older Mormon people occasionally express some of the old attitudes, they are stunned, because they can’t imagine that anyone holding those attitudes could possibly have ever been a good Mormon. But when you start thinking that changes in the past which agree with your own inherited views were obvious and necessary ones, you’re on the road to thinking that you’ve figured everything out—and to not being willing to reconsider your own perhaps shortsighted views. As a historian and a believer, I find President Kimball’s more humble attitude a much better one, as we debate possible changes in our world.

That’s what History, including Really Old History, is especially good for.

Last year I struggled through Thomas Nagel’s The Possibility of Altruism.

It’s been long enough since I read it that the impressions I have of it now are the lasting impressions, not the superficial regurgitation of a recently read book that falsely gives others the idea that you actually followed the entire argument. It is at this point that I realize I have abandoned my negative reaction to the text, based mostly of a visceral dislike of Kant and Kantian style arguments, and can see what of the book is useful to me and my evolving personal philosophy, regardless of authorial intent.

So here is a summary of what I took from Nagel:

Just as there is a rational case to made for prudence, there is an analogous rational case to be made for altruism.

Prudence requires that we recognize the reality of times other than the present. Although the demands and distractions of the present moment are compelling, we remember the past and anticipate a future and make plans accordingly. Through prudence, we are able to delay immediate gratification in an attempt to secure some future benefit.

Altruism requires that we recognize the reality of people other than ourselves. Just as prudence allows us to imagine time other than the present, altruism allows us to imagine selves not our own. Altruism allows us to do things unselfishly and for the good of others.

I like to take these twin ideas of prudence and altruism and add to them the gospel notion of stewardship. Prudence and altruism combined allow us to delay personal gratification or even make sacrifices for the benefit of future people who have not yet been born. The hearts of the fathers must turn to their children, but in this case, we are the fathers. Instead of focusing all of our efforts on genealogy, and looking to the past, we must also plan for the future. After all, the sins of the fathers are visited on future generations, not out of God’s malice, but because of natural consequence. The good, prudent decisions of parents give advantage to their children. The wasteful, short-sighted choices very often rob them of opportunity.

So let us consider ourselves stewards, called to act with temperance and altruism. Let us make decisions so that the things we enjoy now, our gardens and wild spaces, our neighborhoods and congregations, our very family ties themselves, will extend to those we have not yet met, those we have not yet learned to love. For we are but laborers in the vineyard, and we will be held to account for all that we do. And if we have not acted with prudence and altruism, I cannot think that it will be well with us.

This principle of stewardship must apply to our inequitable use of resources, which has been made so thoughtless and easy in our American consumerist society. For this reason, I am excited about Sam’s Approaching Zion project (see also today’s post). Nibley did not cut us any slack in this regard, and his voice is just the kind of sharp reprimand that we need so that we may see how we have strayed from the path we intended to be on, and perhaps even thought we still were traveling. Too much, we are forgetting what it is to be prude

Even after making the case for altruism, Nagel is very pessimistic. He ends his book thus:

To say that altruism and morality are possible in virtue of something basic to human nature is not to say that men are basically good. Men are basically complicated; how good they are depends on whether certain conceptions and ways of thinking have achieved dominance, a dominance which is precarious in any case. The manner in which human beings have conducted themselves so far does not encourage optimism about the moral future of the species.

I hope the principle of stewardship can become dominant so that Nagel’s pessimism will not be justified. What are your thoughts?