Theology has an odd place in LDS thought. Early on there was a rather positive view of theology. Lectures on Faith, then part of the Doctrine and Covenants, praised the idea of theology calling it:<\/p>\n
\n\u2026that revealed<\/em>\u00a0science which treats of the being and attributes of God,\u00a0his relations to us, the dispensations of his providence, his will with respect to our actions and his purposes with respect to our end. (Question 1 of Lectures on Faith<\/a>)\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Now this was just quoting from a well known theological dictionary of the time. It most likely reflected Sidney Rigdon\u2019s view of theology which would have been shaped by the more systematic theology of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin along with various others.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Certainly Joseph Smith saw great value in learning and studying from theology and biblical studies. He studied multiple languages so he could read the scriptures in the original languages. By the time of Nauvoo many new theological ideas were introduced in part due to these studies along with his inspired translation of the Bible and the translation of the Book of Abraham. While scholars can debate how original Joseph\u2019s ideas were given the background of more speculative quasi-religious traditions from the Renaissance onward, in terms of mainline Protestantism they were extremely innovative.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Even during Joseph\u2019s lifetime there was pushback against innovative theology. Often apostasy was tied to new theological innovations whether in the early church with the rise of a real priesthood up through Nauvoo with changing views of God and marriage. While we can debate how mainstream Book of Mormon theology actually was, in terms of how it was read it really wasn\u2019t seen as out of the mainstream of early American theological debates. However it\u2019s really in Utah that we start to see the pushback against too much theological innovation. It\u2019s there that we see the rise of the \u00a0infamous theological tensions between Orson Pratt and Brigham Young.<\/p>\n
While Orson Pratt\u2019s strengths as a philosopher are vastly overstated by some, he was at least somewhat exposed to classic philosophers – especially the Scottish Realists. More particularly he embraced many of the theological and scientific views of Joseph Priestly<\/a>. Priestley was the discoverer of oxygen and developed many of the features of atomic theory. While today it\u2019s his scientific ideas that we\u2019re most familiar with, he actually was a major theological innovator as well. He was one of the main founders of Unitarianism which had become a major religious movement by the time of Joseph Smith. (Emerson<\/a> was one example of a famous Unitarian) Pratt appropriates many of these ideas to try and explain theologically Joseph\u2019s innovation that spirits are material.[1] Pratt\u2019s main innovations was to split intelligences from spirits (possibly due to Nauvoo teachings of Joseph) and treat intelligences as free atoms. The idea of atoms he picks up from Priestly. However he rejects Priestly\u2019s determinism in favor of the idea of free will that was popular both in Mormon thought but also many of the types of Protestantism influential on Mormonism. (Alexander Campbell being the clearest example with the conversion of Sidney Rigdon and many of his congregation) Combined with these more Arminian views,[2] Orson Pratt tries to salvage a version of the Trinity\u2019s notion of the ousia <\/em>as the fundamental substance of the unity of the Godhead. Here he creates an extremely innovative idea suggesting the then scientific notion of the aether as an interpenetrating substance made up of atoms that is the Spirit of the Godhead. God the Father, Jesus and other divine beings are human like made up of atoms with their ultimate soul being an intelligent head atom but their divinity arises due to their unity with this spiritual fluid. It ends up being the Trinity by way of a Stoic like conception of the universal soul and Leibniz monads.<\/p>\n
Brigham Young strongly <\/em>opposed Orson Pratt\u2019s very speculative ideas. To Brigham theology wasn\u2019t to be considered in terms of fundamental cosmology or metaphysics. Rather he saw the main innovation of Joseph to be conceive of God primarily through the conception of a divine man like Jesus. Christology becomes the lens to understand all theology. Theology thus becomes transformed into a kind of cosmological anthropology. While he still makes what we\u2019d call metaphysical speculations at times (such as the destruction of individual spirits into component parts) his primary concerns are much more pragmatic. His focus is on the lived life and lived history of human like beings. This doesn\u2019t mean he doesn\u2019t make his own theological speculations. He does with the idea that God the Father was Michael the archangel and Adam in the garden and after the fall. There are hints of this in Nauvoo of course. William Law\u2019s attacks on Mormonism with the Nauvoo Expositor<\/a> mentions the idea of the possibility of God falling with creation. Whether this means something like Brigham\u2019s controversial views or something more like God being free and thus able to choose evil but refusing remains unclear.[3]\u00a0<\/p>\n
Without going into the nuances of all of Brigham\u2019s and Orson\u2019s theological speculations it\u2019s enough to note that these major theological views were strongly<\/em>\u00a0hated by the other. Brigham felt that Orson was teaching that we worship God\u2019s attributes rather than God himself. This to Brigham seemed like a return to what we\u2019d today call a caricature of the fairly platonic conception of God that had developed with Augustine and other thinkers.[4] To Orson, Brigham\u2019s speculations (to which he sometimes attributed inspiration) were completely contradictory to revealed scripture. There were quite heated arguments over the issue reaching a head with Brigham reordering the seniority of the Apostles to place Orson lower down due to his having left the church for a period.[5]\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of the ironies of history is that while Brigham is triumphant politically, his theology in many ways quickly falls out of favor. Orson\u2019s view of people being made up of independent intelligences organized into spirits dominates 20th century views. Brigham\u2019s views of Adam quickly become rejected and actually become grounds for thinking people as apostate.[6] What comes to be known as the tripartite theology of the soul teaches that humans are made up of an intelligence that is our \u2018thinking and ruling part\u2019, a spirit which is some material form that gives us a quasi-human like nature and then our mortal bodies. However by the late 20th century as historians start to examine Nauvoo theology more closely, many of the theological assumptions of the 20th century themselves come into question.[7]<\/p>\n
The aim of this post isn\u2019t really to push any particular theological view. Rather it is to note the history of theological innovation. While most people tend to privilege Joseph Smith\u2019s theological views, the innovations of those who came after him tend to get questioned far more. Even with Joseph Smith many views are questioned, such as his ideas about the resurrection of small children in the King Follet Discourse<\/a>. (Often excluded when the sermon is reprinted in lesson manuals using the form found in the History of the Church)<\/p>\n
This is not to say theological innovation doesn\u2019t persist. You see it again in the next major conflict between the more \u2018literalistic\u2019 reading of Genesis as history by Joseph Fielding Smith versus the more scientific takes by B. H. Robert, James Talmage, and John Widstoe. While in most ways Smith\u2019s views dominate the 20th century, especially as propagated by his son in law Bruce McConkie, in certain ways that tension and distrust from earlier in the Utah period persists.\u00a0As the era of formal apologetics arises with Hugh Nibley and then FARMS those theological stances by McConkie and Smith tend to get downplayed.<\/p>\n
[1] The idea of material spirits is not as unique as some suggest. In folk tradition spirits often had a quasi-materialistic nature. Think the traditional idea of ghosts as vaporous like objects and you already have the materialistic conception of spirits against the idea of immaterial souls and angels of Aquinas. During the Renaissance the idea of material spirits was raised by philosophers like Telesio or Bacon. While the ideas never became popular they did persist in various ways.<\/p>\n
[2] Arminianism<\/a> is based upon the theological ideas of the dutch reformer Jacobus Arminius at the end of the 16th century. Arguably the most important of his ideas relevant for Mormonism was his emphasis of free will enabled by grace against the ideas of Calvin. One should keep in mind that there are significant breaks with Arminianism in even early Mormon thought. Arminius\u2019 ideas reached Mormonism primarily via Methodism and particularly the teachings of John Wesley<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[3] The idea of God potentially being able to sin is important in some contemporary theological views such as Blake Ostler\u2019s<\/a>. The idea seems to be intrinsic to \u00a0traditional Mormon conceptions of free will as opposed to traditional theological conception of God as a necessary being. If God is free surely that means free to do anything he could. If God could sin then that would explain the idea of God falling if only as a never realized potential. Blake actually argues that a god who could sin but chooses not to is greater than a god who intrinsically can not sin. While this is an interesting argument (with hints of Anselm\u2019s ontological argument) the idea hasn\u2019t been established clearly theologically. This is despite some passages in the Book of Mormon like Alma 7:11<\/a> where Jesus is tempted with sin. (The idea being that to be tempted requires the potential to succumb to temptation) There\u2019s also Alma 42<\/a> where some read the potential of God to cease to be God as a robust reality rather than just an argument making a reductio\u00a0ad absurdum<\/em>.<\/p>\n
[4] Brigham doesn\u2019t put it in those terms of course. But it seems clear from the nature of his criticisms not to mention criticisms of traditional Anglican theological catechism in the temple ceremony that he opposes anything smacking of traditional platonic Christian theology. While in his own way Orson too is reacting against platonism effectively he\u2019s keeping much of the old theology and just rescuing it with a materialist rethinking of the theology. Augustine\u2019s conceptions arose out of his neoPlatonism. NeoPlatonism was a syncretic version of platonism combined with Aristotle and the cosmology of the materialist Stoics. Effectively Orson is taking Augustine\u2019s neoplatonism and stripping out the platonism with Aristotle\u2019s and the Stoic\u2019s materialism being left over.<\/p>\n
[5] While it\u2019s easy to see this reordering as tied primarily to Orson\u2019s opposition to Brigham\u2019s theological innovations the situation is actually a bit more complicated. Orson had left the Church for a period over issues tied to polygamy and polyandry. It was a very messy situation that didn\u2019t necessarily reflect well on Joseph. It was all wrapped up with John Bennett using the then secret teachings on polygamy to justify sleeping around with many women. However at the same time Joseph was marring women and according to Orson\u2019s wife Sarah<\/a> had attempted a polyandrous marriage with her. (In later interviews such as to Joseph Smith III then head of the RLDS church she denied this but in other interviews she continues her charges against Joseph) Orson took her side and ended up excommunicated over the situation. However Orson soon returned to the Church and again becomes an apostle. Regardless of ones views of the matter of controversy, Orson had been excommunicated so arguably what Brigham did was justified despite the proximate tensions leading to his actions.<\/p>\n
[6] Part of the complexity with Brigham\u2019s views is that break off sects emphasized these doctrines of Brigham along with polygamy. They viewed the Church as having rejected revealed theology. They typically saw Heber J. Grant and even sometimes Wilford Woodruff as apostates. However Mormons of course viewed those break off groups as apostate. These theological points thus became signifiers for the deeper divides and political conflicts. Each group tended to emphasize the differences and became strongly against those differences. While people pushing what became known as Adam\/God were viewed with suspicion, from what I can see the Church only really rejected the idea that the historic fallen Adam was the same as God the Father, the spiritual and literal father of Jesus Christ. Mormon apologists soon point out that if father, God, and Adam are titles rather that single persons that most of the problems disappear. In their view Brigham is just slightly confused over the role of Adam as a title. This theory becomes known as the two Adam theory<\/a>. There\u2019s some support for this in scriptures like Abr 1:3<\/a>\u00a0or 1 Cor 15:45<\/a> as well as resolving many contradictions with scripture and Joseph\u2019s teachings. We should also note that Brigham wasn\u2019t completely consistent in his teachings. For a more contemporary apologetic take on Brigham’s views Matthew Brown has written<\/a> a fair bit.<\/p>\n
[7] One obvious example is the assumption of a distinction between intelligence and spirit that is so characteristic of early Utah theology with both Brigham and Orson. In this view there may not even be a spirit birth at all – something both Orson and Brigham take for granted. Instead spirits as a whole are pre-existent and are adopted by God. There are many other places where theology gets called into question by close reading of the original texts now more widely available with all their flaws.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Theology has an odd place in LDS thought. Early on there was a rather positive view of theology. Lectures on Faith, then part of the Doctrine and Covenants, praised the idea of theology calling it: \u2026that revealed\u00a0science which treats of the being and attributes of God,\u00a0his relations to us, the dispensations of his providence, his will with respect to our actions and his purposes with respect to our end. (Question 1 of Lectures on Faith)\u00a0 Now this was just quoting from a well known theological dictionary of the time. It most likely reflected Sidney Rigdon\u2019s view of theology which would have been shaped by the more systematic theology of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin along with various others.\u00a0 Certainly Joseph Smith saw great value in learning and studying from theology and biblical studies. He studied multiple languages so he could read the scriptures in the original languages. By the time of Nauvoo many new theological ideas were introduced in part due to these studies along with his inspired translation of the Bible and the translation of the Book of Abraham. While scholars can debate how original Joseph\u2019s ideas were given the background of more speculative quasi-religious traditions from the Renaissance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy-and-theology"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35842","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\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35842"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35849,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35842\/revisions\/35849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}