{"id":20075,"date":"2012-04-11T10:26:12","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T15:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=20075"},"modified":"2012-04-11T10:26:12","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T15:26:12","slug":"exploring-mormon-thought-god-as-limit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2012\/04\/exploring-mormon-thought-god-as-limit\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring Mormon Thought: God As Limit?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> It seems hard to deny that some<\/i> kind of structure, however fragile or unstable, organizes human experience. And it seems hard to deny that a major<\/i> aspect—if not the<\/i> determining characteristic—of the structure of experience is time.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s grant all that for the purposes of this week\u2019s discussion.<\/p>\n

If we take as paradigmatic the structure of a formal system, it turns out that there are two possibilities when it comes to a structure, as the early twentieth century\u2019s greatest mathematical minds taught us: if a structure is consistent, it is incomplete; if a structure is complete, it is inconsistent. More strictly, every structure robust enough to be worthy of the name as it were produces an undecidable element—an element that cannot determinately be said either to belong or not to belong to the structure in question; if it is decided, in the name of achieving systemic completeness, that this element belongs to the structure, inconsistency results; but if it is decided, in the name of maintaining systemic consistency, that this element doesn\u2019t belong to the structure, incompleteness results. Thus, completeness and consistency are mutually exclusive when it comes to structures. (Note that this result is easiest to demonstrate when it comes to formal systems, but it equally holds for non-formal systems, as so much work in the so-called soft sciences has shown in the past century.) <\/p>\n

Coming up against an undecidable, we have a decision to make. (Note that, paradoxical as it might sound, every decision is a decision on the undecidable. If one isn\u2019t deciding on an undecidable, then one isn\u2019t actually deciding, because the decision is made for one.) As I\u2019ve laid it out so far, the decision can be said to be a decision about whether structural consistency is to be preferred over structural completeness—let\u2019s call this the mathematical option—or, vice versa, structural completeness is to be preferred over structural consistency—let\u2019s call this the poetic option. A third option—let\u2019s call it the Kantian option—is available as well: one can decide against deciding the undecidable, taking the undecidable to be the limit or threshold or vanishing point of the structure.<\/p>\n

How are we to think about the undecidable element of the largely (entirely?) temporal structure of human experience?<\/p>\n

The classical theological gesture here is the one Ostler recounts—and heavily critiques—in chapter 11 of The Attributes of God<\/i>. Assuming the temporal consistency of human experience and not at all afraid of asserting the incompleteness of human experience, theologians classically decide that the undecidable of human experience—God<\/i>, classically defined—doesn\u2019t belong. In a word, theologians classically decide that God is outside of time. Of course, this decision is difficult to square with scriptural, pre-theological understandings of God. But as the tradition has shown with remarkable consistency for thousands of years, scripture isn\u2019t much of a roadblock for a theologian armed with reason.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no mystery about the fact that Mormonism, at least as Joseph Smith conceived of it by the end of his life, contests this classical theological decision. To claim that God has a body \u201cas tangible as man\u2019s,\u201d that in seeing God one would see him \u201cin all the person, image, and very form of man,\u201d that God sits in council with the ancient patriarchs in order to push forward with his plan for humankind—all of that puts the axe to the root of the classical theological tree.<\/p>\n

What, however, does Mormonism plant in the ground thus cleared? That is a much more difficult matter.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already set up a kind of symmetry between the mathematical and the poetic options—between opting for consistency and opting for completeness. The classical theological gesture is, in the terms I\u2019m employing here, a mathematical one. Does Mormonism then make the symmetrical gesture, a poetic one? Does Mormonism, in other words, simply decide that the undecidable of the temporal structure of human experience actually belongs to it? It might seem that way at first glance. After all, Mormons give a picture of God as being human-like, corporeal, even, on most accounts, temporal. Doesn\u2019t that straightforwardly imply that the Mormon picture is simply the simple negative of the mathematical picture of classical theology?<\/p>\n

Things are much, much more complex.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, Ostler\u2019s bet is on the Kantian option. I\u2019ll come to that in a minute. First, I want to lay out the non-Ostlerian ways of making sense of Joseph Smith\u2019s gesture, just to make clear how much more difficult this theological situation is than it seems at first.<\/p>\n

First, can Joseph Smith\u2019s basic theological gesture be understood to be another<\/i> form of the mathematical option? I think it can.<\/p>\n

What might be called the na\u00efve interpretation of Joseph\u2019s vision—what has become the na\u00efve interpretation thanks first to Brigham Young\u2019s stamping out the dragon seed of Prattian thought and second to the early twentieth century\u2019s flattening out of Brigham\u2019s subsequently established conception—doesn\u2019t assert that God as classically defined<\/i> belongs to the structure of human experience; instead, it asserts that God isn\u2019t<\/i> what he is classically defined to be precisely because he experiences the world from within the same structure as human beings. There\u2019s no decision in this everyday Mormon conception of things for inconsistency. Indeed, one could easily make the argument that most Latter-day Saints, like the classical theological tradition before them, don\u2019t question the consistency of human experience and have no problem with asserting the incompleteness of human experience. They just claim, if they\u2019re familiar with and relatively thoughtful about what Joseph Smith had to say about God, that God experiences the world in something like the way humans do. And frankly, few Latter-day Saints bother with reflection on all that, being happy just to claim that Joseph Smith finally gave us to see that God has a body.<\/p>\n

This everyday view naturally has problems. Really, it just displaces the problem of the undecidable. In itself, it is neither mathematical nor poetic—it doesn\u2019t decide the undecidable. But it isn\u2019t therefore Kantian, since it fails to decide not to decide. The result is that, generally, when Latter-day Saints begin to reflect in a theological vein on God, they focus on the question of whether God created all laws or whether God is subject to certain laws that are, in whatever sense, \u201chigher\u201d than him. This classically Mormon question is ultimately the question of whether the na\u00efve view of Joseph Smith\u2019s statements about God should be understood (1) to leave<\/i> God in the position outside the structure of human experience assigned to him by classical theology (though with the minimal clarification that he has a body), or (2) to revise<\/i> the definition of God so that something else can be identified as the undecidable of human experience while God is recognized to be human enough to be oriented to the same newly assigned undecidable.<\/p>\n

Now, none of this should be taken to suggest that there is no room in Mormon theology for the poetic option—as if the mathematical option were the only viable one. I haven\u2019t the space here to go into what the poetic option would look like in the first place (though I can gesture toward the work of Graham Priest as a place to start), let alone what it would look like in Mormonism, but I think it remains a real possibility, one worth exploring.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the Kantian option, and it\u2019s this that Ostler promotes—throughout the book to this point, but more explicitly and clearly here than previously. Ostler decides, it seems to me, against deciding between consistency and completeness, opting instead to keep the undecidable in its stark undecidability, hovering between inside and outside, marking the limit of the structure of human experience.<\/p>\n

Ostler shares with the classical theological gesture the essential equation of the undecidable of the temporal structure of human experience with God. Where the na\u00efve Mormon understanding of Joseph Smith outlined above breaks with the classical theological gesture principally in that it distinguishes God from the undecidable in reassigning God\u2019s place in the structural picture, Ostler draws no such distinction, but answers the question of the undecidable differently. God is the undecidable, but it\u2019s decided that God\/the undecidable is the limit—rather than lies outside—of the structure of experience. Hence, rather than making God atemporal<\/i>, as in the classical theological gesture, Ostler makes God omnitemporal<\/i>. (Note that I\u2019m constructively recasting, not summarizing. If you haven\u2019t read the chapter in question, repent and read, and then re-read what I\u2019ve said here.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m intrigued. Intrigued, but unconvinced as yet. For the moment, the na\u00efve Mormon conception, pushed toward sophistication and increased rigor, seems more appealing to me—perhaps simply because it\u2019s more familiar, and perhaps because it makes for a little more straightforward reading of Abraham 3 than Ostler offers (in passing). I guess I\u2019m intrigued, but I\u2019ve not yet seen the reason to move in the direction Ostler does. Why not work out the philosophical bugs of the na\u00efve conception? Can this approach be motivated a bit more?<\/p>\n

I suspect it can be motivated, and convincingly so. In the meanwhile, I\u2019ll reflect further on my own, perhaps too-wonted, naivete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems hard to deny that some kind of structure, however fragile or unstable, organizes human experience. And it seems hard to deny that a major aspect—if not the determining characteristic—of the structure of experience is time. Let\u2019s grant all that for the purposes of this week\u2019s discussion. If we take as paradigmatic the structure of a formal system, it turns out that there are two possibilities when it comes to a structure, as the early twentieth century\u2019s greatest mathematical minds taught us: if a structure is consistent, it is incomplete; if a structure is complete, it is inconsistent. More strictly, every structure robust enough to be worthy of the name as it were produces an undecidable element—an element that cannot determinately be said either to belong or not to belong to the structure in question; if it is decided, in the name of achieving systemic completeness, that this element belongs to the structure, inconsistency results; but if it is decided, in the name of maintaining systemic consistency, that this element doesn\u2019t belong to the structure, incompleteness results. Thus, completeness and consistency are mutually exclusive when it comes to structures. (Note that this result is easiest to demonstrate when it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20076,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20075\/revisions\/20076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}