As an aside, Martin (16), I half-wonder if it’s that issue of spending too much of our time on education rather than other practices that Adam has in mind with the quip of “over-educated.” The person who spends all their time only reading the theoretical and never going out there and living life has misspent in my view. During my biannual frustrations with philosophy when I think I should throw it all away I am quite sympathetic. Looking at my shelves of books I sometimes wonder how much of that time could have been spent doing something better.

The problem with the ascetic move or the monastic move is precisely that is lacks balance. In the drive to focus on what is important – to be economical – the move is made the goes too far, is too unbalanced, and looses what it seeks to find. It’s akin to the joke of the old “find yourself” movement of the 60’s. In attempting to find themselves they took the route that was least likely to do so. It was by engaging in regular behaviors that we find ourselves. Interestingly the form of quietism I find most interesting is the Zen practice not of monasticism but of finding enlightenment in regular practices such as gardening, food, or even martial arts. It is precisely in doing that we find. I suspect there’s a strong element of that in theology too.

Perhaps a better way to think about at least one issue Adam is grappling is in terms of monastic asceticism (or fasting, as Adam mentioned). Suppose I take a vow to limit myself to 10 words a day. I suspsect there would be a non-trivial sense that I couldn’t say as much, but there’d probably be another very important sense that disciplining myself in this way would eventually allow me to say say more–more with each word, and ultimately perhaps more in 10 words than I could’ve otherwise said in 10,000 words. Why? Because I focus much more carefully on what I am saying.

If we apply this monastic principle to theologizing, then I think there’s a strong sense in which limiting our thoughts to some sort of bare minimmum allows us to explore those limited thoughts/ideas/doctrines in significantly more depth than if we didn’t limit ourselves in that way.

It’s a similar criticism to what was popular back in the hey-day of the Gen X. If we have ironic distance and never allow the distance to be closed, to care, what have we done? Put an other way if this move of minimalism is really a move of distancing then there really never is the theological play that Adam says he wants. To play with ideas means to bring them close and allow them to appear to me. When they are kept so far away so as to avoid the “danger” that my gaze might be caught by them then really what is being done is avoiding any kind of life. It’s the person saying they are living life by being open to experience when really what is going on is that they are cutting themselves off from experience.

No idea if this is what Adam is doing, which is why I’d like him to comment. But it seems this is a crucial problem in at least his presentation.

I have what some might say is a liberal-leaning view of scripture, but when it comes to 3 Nephi 11:28-40, I’m a strict inerrantist.

Clark #13, FWIW, my own reading of Adam’s larger project is that the minimalism he’s advocating here is similar to the speculative aspect of theology he’s advocating elsewhere. That is, the minimalism is a commitment not to take any particular theological idea too seriously–to be modest and humble in the search for more light and knowledge, and to be content with the answers that are given instead of demanding that certain (perhaps ill-formed) questions be answered.

(The first chapter of the Givenses Crucible of Doubt book makes a point along these lines, that oftentimes we ask the wrong questions, and we’d be better off in being more humble or modest in questioning the presuppositions that underlie the way we ask our questions–I take Adam to be calling this kind of intellectual modesty/humility as a kind of minimalism. My own experience is that, paradoxically, I gain the most light and knowledge when I humble myself in this way and quit focusing so much on attaining light and knowledge….)

It’s certainly the case that one can be a good Mormon “without having a good theology or much of a theology at all.” (Faulconer, 26) Likewise having a good theology effectively says nothing about how good a Mormon one is. However a lot of Buddhism has a focus on a lot of metaphysics being a “nobel lie” (think of the Lotus Sutra for instance) Mormonism not only rejects anything like this but sees a positive work for theology.

It’s perhaps apt to recall that Joseph said, “a man is saved no faster than he gains knowledge.” (HC 4:588) There are lots of sermons like this. So relative to making ones calling and election sure we have, “knowledge is power & the man who has the most knowledge has the greatest power.” (May 17, 1843) and “without knowledge we can not be saved” (April 10, 1842) Of course habits of behavior is a type of knowledge (i.e know-how for riding a bike).

I think all of these things suggest that knowledge isn’t just know-how regarding virtue but knowing the economy of God. But isn’t that theology?

I ask because the type of musement you advocate in your books seems completely at odds with minimalism. So it would seem that either you really don’t hold to minimalism or mean something by minimalism other than what you appear to mean.

Great piece. It brought to mind Donald Judd’s 1964 essay, Specific Objects. Here’s a passage:

“A work needs only to be interesting. Most works finally have one quality. In earlier art the
complexity was displayed and built the quality. In recent painting the complexity was in
the format and the few main shapes, which had been made according to various interests
and problems. A painting by Newman is finally no simpler than one by Cezanne. In the
three-dimensional work the whole thing is made according to complex purposes, and
these are not scattered but asserted by one form. It isn’t necessary for a work to have a
lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate. The thing as a
whole, its quality as a whole, is what is interesting. The main things are alone and are
more intense, clear and powerful. They are not diluted by an inherited format, variations
of a form, mild contrasts and connecting parts and areas.”

The whole thing is worth reading.