{"id":37330,"date":"2017-11-06T23:36:14","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T04:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=37330"},"modified":"2017-11-06T23:37:27","modified_gmt":"2017-11-07T04:37:27","slug":"future-mormon-5-the-god-who-weeps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2017\/11\/future-mormon-5-the-god-who-weeps\/","title":{"rendered":"Future Mormon 5: The God Who Weeps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the fifth chapter of the originally weekly reading club for Adam Miller’s\u00a0Future Mormon<\/a><\/em>. For general links related to the book along with links for all the chapter discussions please go to our\u00a0overview page<\/a>. Please don’t hesitate to give your thoughts on the chapter. We’re hoping for a good thoroughgoing critical engagement with the text. Such criticisms aren’t treating the text as bad or flawed so much as trying to engage with the ideas Adam brings up. Hopefully people will push back on such criticism if they disagree or even just see flaws in the logic. That’s when we tend to all learn the most.<\/p>\n

My apologies for the delay on this chapter.<\/p>\n

Future Mormon Chapter 5: The God Who Weeps<\/h4>\n

Weeps is invigorating precisely because it does not mime the voice of authority. It speaks and thinks in its own name.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This is an odd chapter to deal with. I\u2019m loath to confess but I just haven\u2019t read the Givens book The God Who Weeps<\/em>. So I\u2019m trying to react to a reaction to something obscure and hidden. Perhaps though that\u2019s the ideal state to be in to try to react to Adam overall since that\u2019s what his theology is ultimately trying to do. Yet I\u2019m aware of the limits that puts on me. Rather than do this chapter the way I\u2019ve done the others I\u2019ve decide to pick out a few \u201creactions\u201d to react to. So there won\u2019t be the normal summation and critique I\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n

First off Adam makes a distinction between doctrine\/dogma and thinking. He puts it as thinking without<\/em>\u00a0copying or mimicking authority. I think that\u2019s very insightful since so much of how we read scripture is trying to unearth the authoritative voice. Thinking is self-consciously not authoritative. It\u2019s tentative. I like to think of it as preparing a place where authority can manifest itself.<\/p>\n

Where I differ from Adam is over whether we should call this faith. It seems to me that for faith to be faith presupposes an authority. For me to trust someone requires I know they are trustworthy. The element of faith Adam focuses on is the gap<\/em> from total knowledge. To identify this gap from perfect knowledge requires first knowing what isn\u2019t the gap. Put an other way, to see the valley you first have to see the hills. To have faith in God requires some knowledge of God. Where faith acts is faith is taking this knowledge as a stepping stone where one steps out off of knowledge into the lesser known.<\/p>\n

Is knowledge freely chosen? I don\u2019t think so. Knowledge is a type of belief. We might characterize it by how unshakable our belief is or by some more \u201cobjective\u201d 3rd person account of facts. Yet fundamentally the belief part of knowledge seems something that happens to us. Adam characterizes faith as how we respond, yet that too seems somewhat instinctual. What we can do though is change where we put our focus. I can\u2019t speak for the Givens, but if they do believe self-revelation occurs when we choose what we believe I just disagree. Rather to me, the self-revelation is the discovery that occurs when we see what we chose as evidence of our belief. That is the choice follows the belief to such an extent that they are two sides of a single coin. (Faith without works just isn\u2019t faith – works are faith) What we mean by belief is the ways we\u2019d act if we believe.<\/p>\n

Do we postulate something to fulfill our desires? Is God merely the filling of an existential emptiness? While this is a traditional platonic move, I don\u2019t buy it. Unsurprisingly I oppose Augustine here. I don\u2019t postulate God to fill a gap. I notice God there in order to see the gap. My sense is that here, at least, Adam and I disagree with the Givens. (Although as I said here the Givens really are a gap for me: unread) I don\u2019t feel a need to be whole. Rather I see the part and seek to understand it. In understanding it I find more revealed.<\/p>\n

Identity is the favorite topic of philosophers. Yet in a certain sense it\u2019s what\u2019s closest to us. The problem is that when we try to theorize or systematize identity (\u201cwho is this \u2018I\u2019 that thinks and longs\u201d) it seems like identity slips out of reach. It always reminds me of trying to think exactly how I walk and pay attention to each step of the process. Inevitably I find myself falling, unable to walk, forgetting what I\u2019d already known. (If you\u2019ve never tried this experiment please do – it is very humbling) But if these things that seem so present to us \u2014 identity, self, walking \u2014 withdraw when we try to focus too closely on them what does that mean?<\/p>\n

Maybe the problem is that we\u2019re trying to understand a process as if it were a fully present thing. Processes inevitably end up being complex. Each part has deeper parts and relations with other parts. Trying to fully<\/em>\u00a0understand a process is somewhat like trying to understand the shoreline of Norway<\/a>. The closer you look you find new divots, nooks and crannies. Then just when you think you have those mapped out you find more. Soon you\u2019re at the level of sand with each grain having its own shape much like the coastline of a shoreline. In the same way any process seems doomed to failure if we seek to grasp it as a whole fully present to mind.<\/p>\n

If Adam presents the Givens correctly, they think the self is hidden to a kind of forgetfulness rather than a kind of fractal infinity. The doctrine of pre-existence can thus for the theologian become a curtain for a magician – hiding a certain slight of hand. However I suspect that there is no true self. There\u2019s just the self who acts who has a nature like that shoreline.<\/p>\n

Relative to their comments on Darwin, I\u2019m loath to say much about the Givens. Let me just stick with Adam since I\u2019m in no position to criticize a criticism of Darwin I\u2019ve not read. Instead let me talk about self-organization. Much like that shoreline of Norway a self-organizing entity seems essentially incomplete. Yet such self-organizing principles seem quite demonstrable. Let’s ignore natural selection and neo-Darwinianism for the moment. Just look at the innumerable examples of self-organization that computer science departments have been showing since I was young. I remember as a young teenager writing Conway\u2019s Game of Life<\/a> on an old Apple \/\/+. Rather than debating how much evolution is like fractals or chaos, let\u2019s instead simply note the beauty and transcendence of how the implementation of a few rules can develop something far beyond our initial understanding. That\u2019s the nature of contemporary computing in many ways. Machine learning no longer can be understood the way we understand the mathematical formula we encountered in high school.<\/p>\n

Relative to theology the question becomes whether God can make something that transcends himself the way these equations transcend our knowledge. Again ignoring evolution for the moment, can God have that moment of creating something even he can\u2019t fully grasp? Can God be surprised? Can he in an act of creation have creation be something new?<\/p>\n

Not knowing God well enough we don\u2019t know. My sense is that those who dislike the very idea of evolution are those who demand God control everything. It\u2019s like the old \u201ccan God create a rock heavier than he can lift?\u201d Can God be omniscient (know everything knowable) and still be surprised? The complaint with evolution is less a complaint with science than it is with a certain conception of God.<\/p>\n

In the same way Adam presents the Givens on agency in the same way. If we\u2019re only free if our choice isn\u2019t cause or created by something else, but if our \u201cself\u201d is like that shoreline unknowable in a certain sense, can we be free? Again much like the assumed<\/em>\u00a0nature of God determining what we accept or reject about science, it determines what we accept or reject about choice. What if though the very nature of the plan of salvation is due to there being something in us (let us not say a something that is us) that even God can\u2019t know or control? What if this probationary state is an attempt to provide freedom in the sense of a lack of constraints to let this grow in a way even God doesn\u2019t know? The problem is that a certain conception of free will wants a \u201csomething\u201d that is free yet fully determined and known. The quest seems inherently contradictory. To be free is to be tied essentially to that unknown.<\/p>\n

If perfection is completeness, then freedom is this element beyond completeness. To be complete though means to have this incompleteness as well. We need a self-transcending God. To be like God we too need that imperfection that lets us be perfect. It seems the sort of thing that one can\u2019t help but talk about via paradox. Freedom in this sense isn\u2019t seen as a ground of choice. Rather it is seen as what undermines choice. Perhaps this life is to nurture this essential imperfection so we can utilize it in a fruitful fashion. Not undermining perfection but completing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the fifth chapter of the originally weekly reading club for Adam Miller’s\u00a0Future Mormon. For general links related to the book along with links for all the chapter discussions please go to our\u00a0overview page. Please don’t hesitate to give your thoughts on the chapter. We’re hoping for a good thoroughgoing critical engagement with the text. Such criticisms aren’t treating the text as bad or flawed so much as trying to engage with the ideas Adam brings up. Hopefully people will push back on such criticism if they disagree or even just see flaws in the logic. That’s when we tend to all learn the most. My apologies for the delay on this chapter. Future Mormon Chapter 5: The God Who Weeps Weeps is invigorating precisely because it does not mime the voice of authority. It speaks and thinks in its own name.<\/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":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37330","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=37330"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37333,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37330\/revisions\/37333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}