“Theological speculation, contrary to what is often said about it among Latter-day Saints, is anything but so much spinning in the void, anything but asking pointless or unanswerable questions, anything but sensational attention to so-called mysteries. Theological speculation is, rather, an attempt, undertaken in the name of charity, to see what scriptural texts have to teach us and to see what scripture can do in addition to providing grist for the historical mill and confirming doctrine we all already know to be true. To speculate is to hold a mirror up to the scriptures, to allow them to reflect on themselves, to give them something to say to us about their meaning and significance.”

I think it adds to your comment about being very skeptical of the theology we do. We are allowed to be creative, and see the interpretive range in the scriptures, but also still be grounded.

“Smith believed himself to be an oracle of God, subject to moments of heavenly encounter and the pure flow of inspiration. But he also was insatiably eclectic in his borrowings and adaptations, with an adventuresome mind, prone to speculation and fully comfortable with the trial and error of intellectual effort.”

In many ways this mirrors the debates around popular democracy vs. limited (maybe elite biased) democracy.

While folk or laity biased approaches may be “inefficient” and have their own pitfalls, evolutionary thinking would suggest they are less “risky”. They work better than more organized approaches almost all the time except during the rare moments where the landscape is rich enough to sustain groups’ transitions to higher levels of organization. While our landscape is priming the world for more cosmopolitanism, broad based clawbacks suggest we just aren’t there yet (despite utopian wishes otherwise).

I’d also suggest that once societies are ready to stabilize around the next cosmopolitan plateau (a higher level of group selection) the need for religion will be much less. At that point, for most populations, I suspect religion will probably slip into the type of role it plays in secular Europe: basically a link to a cultural association or heritage. As an example, cultural heritage in Canada occupies the type of role I imagine. You celebrate your culture, keep your connections, and participate in various rituals or routines, and while it may bias your morality and political decisions, it really takes the back seat to secular feedback and “individual preferences” (which to my mind at least are often post facto rationalizations of group feedback…).

As for theology, my point ultimately is that we need to be doing theology but simultaneously we need to be very skeptical of the theology we do. If there was a single theology we work off of then I think that quickly turns into destructive dogma. Theology by its very nature is speculative and we ought recognize it as such.

I say this because every week at church I feel immersed in folk religion, personal views and truth claims expressed largely through individual, emotional experiences. These moments tell me more about the person teaching and less about what it means to be a Mormon. While I often value the former, I am desperate for the later.

I see all kinds of practical applications for an articulated theology as well. For example, wouldn’t good theology help bring better consistency to decisions local leaders make in disciplinary councils? Wouldn’t good theology lessen the phenomenon of local “leader roulette”? Wouldn’t a theology underpinned by a healthy dialectic among Mormon theologians help us better understand current issues like gay marriage? And while history has so much to offer when it comes to understanding the events of the first vision or the translation of the Book of Mormon, for example, wouldn’t a disciplined theology help us to better know why that history is important and what it means to Mormon faith?

It seems to me the need for a theology has never been greater. Defining the philosophical and faith inputs an ideal system of Mormon theology ought to possess should to be aggressively explored and promoted, in my opinion

So far the argument seems to be:
1. Direct effect of having more philosophical questions discussed is beneficial.
2. Direct effect of academics determining theology is, at best, questionably negative.
3. Indirect system effects are probably negative. Even a culture of “philosophical questioning” may not be systemically stable.
4. Indirect effects on group coherence and sustainability are uncertain, but probably more negative than an alternative approach of tight norms & loose doctrine.

I’m not sure how formal theology schools would go. It’s an intriguing idea.

My guess is that it would lead to some better philosophical questioning among a small group of people, but has a decent chance of ossifying and producing negative system wide effects (non-egalitarian dynamics, set targets for critics & reactionary god-of-the-gaps dynamics, decrease in net levels of inquiry despite localized increases, etc.)

But you can’t just hire a theologian off the shelf like you can an attorney or an accountant — you have to develop them in-house. You need some theological infrastructure to train and develop theologians, and right now the Church is doing nothing to lay that foundation. If there is $5 million extra tithing lying around, the leadership will buy another ranch in Florida or put another temple in Mexico before they’ll establish an “LDS School of Theology” somewhere. So we will continue to stumble along, doctrinally, until the leadership comes to understand there is a positive role for theology and that the Church suffers for not making any attempt to fill it.

The key seems to be getting the right amount of feedback without destroying group coherence or your own morale.

In today’s disintegrating society do you need more or less group coherence? Does your religious group need formalization or looseness? I wonder if church members may be getting set for either:
-an increase in politicalization (none of the three de-facto parties fully represent us), or,
-an increase in theological formalization.

I’ll have to look back over some of that old speculative work I did about Caste Formation in relation to moral looseness… Is systemic philosophy more about elite border control or commoner coherence? If I remember right, it really depended on the trajectory from which things were coming…

My point is just that we should have a healthy skepticism of what we arrive at. As I see it the only times we’ve had trouble with theology in our history is when we’re treat it as the divine word rather than something parasitic on and secondary to the divine word.

Terry, I think people dismiss readings too quickly because people aren’t faithful. I agree faith can significantly change how we read. But in general if you dismiss people’s conclusions while ignoring their arguments we’re doing it wrong. We should look carefully at arguments and understand them. Sometimes people are dismissing things because they don’t accept a basic reality of God. But often the arguments are much stronger. (I’m here thinking of arguments for the dating of deuteron-isaiah that depends upon use of Aramaic for example) Overall there are many secular theories people dismissed as “not faithful” which end up being compatible with faith and also can illuminate parts of the Book of Mormon that were long confusing. I’m here thinking of some of Kevin Christiansen’s work on the deuteronomist tradition at the time of Josiah and Jeremiah as it relates to the world of Nephi.

Chris, I fully agree that in practice theology is used for group maintenance in a way that the theology itself is kind of secondary. You certainly see that historically in say the Council of Nicea onward. Even in our own history the interesting battles between Brigham Young and Orson Pratt over theology or Talmage/Roberts versus Joseph Fielding Smith a few decades later give a good illustration of this. Further while people dismiss the type of systematic theology that JFS & BRM did, it’s worth looking at the issues from a group-identity basis in terms of what was going on socially in the 1930’s. While I don’t think much of their overall approach (although both did have some great insights) in terms of what they were in opposition to, I think their actions make much more sense. (Here thinking of a kind of de-mythologizing tendency that arose out of German Biblical research from 1890 onward) Today we might be more willing to embrace some of the arguments of higher criticism but that’s largely because the social conflict is gone. That is the social and group connection of such ideas is not present so that the theology and hermeneutics can be engaged with in a less political fashion.

Too much fixation is just as bad as too little.

So what about long-lived world religions?

Chances are they changed at this frequency too. Hadiths and systemic theologies pin things down, but when you add in multi-cultural expansion, was it true pinning, or more balancing? I suspect the latter, but that is just a hunch – I always favour homeostasis arguments in terms of human proclivities.

I suspect in todays rapidly changing world where real or perceived dissonances quickly and forcefully propagate, flexibility may be a more adaptive solution than fixation. My guess is that you might need a sense of stability and conservancy (say clear superficial in-group demarkers on some rather innocuous items like dietary and clothing restrictions) but generation-level ideological fluidity. Thus, you’re never too out-of-step with society, but you also don’t lose your adaptive group dynamics. Ideas can bounce around within the range accomodateable by group-agents. In group-markers provide a sense of rigor and trustworthiness.

Judaism and old Christianity seemed to play this right. Mormonism seems equally fit. I’m not sure about Eastern religions. I just don’t know that much about them.