Comments on: The Conflict of Theological Innovation

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 15:35:45 +0000

I should add since I don’t think I made it clear, just how much influence Priestly had. Priestly argued against an immaterial soul such as was found in the then dominate position of Cartesian dualism. Most of Pratt’s approach to materialism really arises out of Priestly. The big difference is Pratt’s atoms are more or less Leibniz’ monads only windowed in some sense. Priestly doesn’t get into anything like that. He thinks it’s via vibrations that matter can act mind-like and thinks that’s how the brain works. However that tends to verge to the type of materialism now dominate where there really isn’t a substantial soul. Since Priestly doesn’t really have a separate soul he sees it as staying with the body until the resurrection. It was these views of the soul that caused quite a bit of controversy combined with his denunciation of the Trinity and denying the Holy Spirit as a being.

So Pratt does modify Priestly a great deal primarily due to his theological commitments to a pre-mortal soul and a real holy ghost. Not to mention the huge divides between the more deist Unitarian view and the hyper-theistic Mormon approach to scripture.

By: sjames

sjames — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 02:28:18 +0000

Much appreciated.

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Sat, 08 Oct 2016 21:09:19 +0000

S James (6) Conflict in the Quorum goes through some of it although it has some problems in breadth and doesn't really focus on the ideas in their context. It's much more focused on the conflict. Reading the various original sources is the best way to grapple with the ideas although there is some secondary literature as well. Orson's biography very briefly touches upon his philosophical influences during his mission but largely I was looking at parallels. Way back when I started my first philosophy blog around 2002 it was focused on a close reading of Orson Pratt and situating his ideas philosophically. I found as I grappled with him that there was far less there than portrayed. (In particular I find "The Absurdities of Immaterialism" to be embarrassingly bad) I ended up thinking through a lot of his ideas since they end up paralleling a lot of ideas in Stoicism and Leibniz which I happened to be studying at the time. Brigham Young is more interesting. First he has such a negative view of philosophy he's kind of interesting in how much he doesn't want to grapple with such ideas. (He ends up doing so anyways but in a less than rigorous fashion) Ultimately much to my surprise while I disagree strongly with Brigham on some issues his main philosophical stance was very much in keeping with my own views. As I mentioned he ends up with a very pragmatic conception of a lived life as the prism through which to understand theology rather than the traditional approach of metaphysics. Even though I'll confess I do like metaphysics at time. Back at my old blog I primarily read through Orson and Brigham via figures like Peirce and Heidegger. I think they can be grappled with well in that way. Chad (3) I was surprised how great Givens recent books were. They are for broad overview the standard right now. I see them as must reads to at least get ones bearings. Vastly superior to what was available before. However he doesn't really do sustained investigations. Too much gets mentioned but dealt with only in passing. In terms of pushing theology there's more out there - especially thanks to the SMPT although I wish more was in print. Blake Ostler, even though I disagree with how much he pulls back from Utah theology, is probably the gold standard there. Adam Miller and Joe Spencer are doing a lot of new work but how they approach things is quite different from normal theology.

By: chadlawrencenielsen

chadlawrencenielsen — Sat, 08 Oct 2016 18:14:05 +0000

Breck England’s The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt is one place that I know discusses it. I’d imagine Gary Bergera’s Conflict in the Quorum also delves into the subject.

By: sjames

sjames — Sat, 08 Oct 2016 14:56:30 +0000

Clark, are you able to provide sources re theological differences between Brigham and Orson, or are your thoughts considerations distilled from the publicly provided Journal of Discourses and OP Works.

By: GSO

GSO — Sat, 08 Oct 2016 13:59:46 +0000

God can’t sin. Now if God could transgress the law, what would happen? (Ahem… Fall)

When we are exalted do we lose our agency? Don’t we always have a choice? What do you call it when an immortal being transgresses if not a Fall?

Imagine you’re exalted and confronted with a commandment that can’t be fulfilled unless you trangress. Imagine you’ve suddenly realized you’ve heard this story and seen this scenario played out a hundred times in the temple.

You trangress and precipitate the fall. Is it robbery for Eve to be equal with her Heavenly Mother?

I think there’s a lot of unexplored potential in some of BY’s ‘”revelations” on the nature of God.

By: jader3rd

jader3rd — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 23:08:35 +0000

I would prefer it if all theological innovation came through revelation and “Thus sayeth the Lord” pronouncements. I do like how we can study different church leaders words, and ponder over if they were that persons personal opinion, or really are the truth.
Having read The Truth, The Way, The Life, I can say that B.H. Roberts did have some strange ideas. But at least I can see how he was trying to reconcile gospel teachings with scientific understanding. It’s an approach which will much more likely keep me in the church vs. JFS’s absolute rejection of anything which didn’t line up with his reading of the Standard works. I don’t think that I could have been an active adult member of the church when he was President.
Pratt ideas likely out lived Brigham’s because it was more scripturally based, and so it would be easier to tie them into Sunday School lessons, when preparing a lesson.

By: chadlawrencenielsen

chadlawrencenielsen — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 22:44:54 +0000

The only person I’ve seen make progress in recent years has really been Terryl Givens. His essays presented on his site tend to work on examining LDS theology and reevaluating ideas as they are generally viewed in Mormon culture (the war in heaven, the apostasy/restoration narrative). His work in the books The God Who Weeps, Wrestling the Angel, and The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism have started to both systematize the data and put it in a larger context. Granted, so far he has operated as a 3rd party, but the fact that The God Who Weeps was published by Deseret Book, the research behind Wrestling the Angel was sponsored by BYU, and that he is in the group who are working on producing the next official church history books that will be published by the Church seem to indicate to me that he is moving closer to some institutional support than, say, Blake Ostler or Eugene England have every enjoyed.

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 19:23:16 +0000

I nearly added it to the post, but one thing characteristic of Pres. Hinkley’s time running the church is a move away from more speculative/innovative theology (meaning having less strong explicit support in revelations). It’s not that the ideas aren’t held, but they’re held with a certain degree of what we’d call the hermeneutics of suspicion. You see that not only with the church strongly backing off Elder McConkie’s theology in the 1990’s but even Pres. Hinkley treating the King Follet Discourse in a more tentative fashion than you’d seen through most of the 20th century.

That’s largely persisted in the post-Hinkley era only with the Church embracing academic historians far more. What we’re not seeing is any institutional attempt to systematize this data. You start having the more systematic attempts at theology coming more from apologetics or 3rd party theological writing without institutional support. (Blake Ost;er being the prominent example)

By: christiankimball

christiankimball — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 17:20:21 +0000

Very interesting and worth a “save for reference” note.
I’m curious about the process of validating and questioning theological concepts. In LDS experience it seems to be not (or not only) a matter of argument and debate, nor a matter of authority (which one might have expected), but something else, perhaps an evolutionary or survival process, a question of who gets quoted and who gets dismissed by later writers and speakers?