{"id":41343,"date":"2021-01-21T20:05:20","date_gmt":"2021-01-22T01:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=41343"},"modified":"2021-01-21T20:05:20","modified_gmt":"2021-01-22T01:05:20","slug":"louis-midgley-on-hugh-nibley-the-maori-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2021\/01\/louis-midgley-on-hugh-nibley-the-maori-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Louis Midgley on Hugh Nibley, the Maori, and More"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an interview ranging from discussing Hugh Nibley to missionary work in New Zealand to systematic theologies to the dedication of the Swiss Temple, Kurt Manwaring recently sat down with Latter-day Saint apologist (and retired professor of political science) Louis C. Midgley.\u00a0 What follows here is a co-post to one at Kurt Manwaring\u2019s site, where I\u2019ll focus in on a couple points of particular interest, but for those interested in reading more, hop on over to the full interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Louis Midgley was a friend and colleague of Hugh Nibley and has worked hard to defend Nibley\u2019s career and to share his writings with the world.\u00a0 At a few points throughout the interview, he shared stories about Hugh Nibley.\u00a0 One humorous one from Nibley\u2019s mission was that:<\/p>\n

When Hugh Nibley was a missionary in Germany before WW II, a local branch took up a collection for someone who really needed a suit. Hugh chipped in with some money. He did not realize that he was the one for whom they were raising money\u2014it was his suit that was in rags.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A more poignant story was about Nibley at the end of his lifetime:<\/p>\n

Phyllis called me and urged me to visit her husband. I did. And we talked. Hugh was in a hospital bed. He could hardly speak. He\u2019d mumble and we\u2019d talk back and forth. We talked a bit about New Zealand and the Maori. Since he had heard that I had been to Normandy, he wanted to know if I had visited what is called Exit Five, on Utah Beach, and what I thought of the whole miserable mess.<\/p>\n

Then he finally said, \u201cYou people treat me like I\u2019m dead. I haven\u2019t seen the latest issue of the\u00a0FARMS Review<\/em>.\u201d And at that moment there was a knock at the door\u2014it was the postman with the most recent copy.<\/p>\n

Hugh said:\u00a0 \u201cDamn, I\u2019ve made an ass out of myself again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon, two Relief Society sisters knocked on the door. They had brought him dinner. They rushed over and hugged him and kissed him. And he just wept. When they left, Phyllis asked me, \u201cDid you notice that?\u201d<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cYes, I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you ever seen my husband show emotion?\u201d<\/p>\n

I answered, \u201cNo, never.\u201d<\/p>\n

Phyllis said that \u201che couldn\u2019t\u201d show emotion. But when he was reduced to lying there, hardly able to talk, he would say to me, \u201cPhyllis, I have been kept after school by the Lord so I could learn a lesson that I needed to learn before I pass away.\u201d<\/p>\n

I found this very interesting. I saw my dear friend in a different light. What seemed like self-depreciation was his sense of inadequacy, despite\u2014or because of the fact\u2014that he was extraordinarily bright, learned a dozen languages, and so forth. But he couldn\u2019t learn how to use a computer. I realize that things that are very easy when one is young are much more difficult as we near the end.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At another point in the interview, Midgley also discussed some of his efforts to collect and publish Nibley\u2019s works:<\/p>\n

The moment I knew there was a Hugh Nibley, I was delighted with his academic work. I immediately began collecting the documents that made\u00a0The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley<\/a><\/em>\u00a0possible. Hugh was willing to give me the only copy of some of his best lectures and essays. Then he would want to give them to someone else who was interested.<\/p>\n

I never once gave something back to him. Instead, I always made a copy but retained the original.<\/p>\n

This explains why [the] first volume of the massive two volume collection of 46 essays honoring Hugh Nibley begins with a more than seventy page carefully annotated bibliography of his essays and books that I fashioned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Together, these show some interesting insights to an influential apologist and scholar of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n

Midgley\u2019s life was also deeply influenced by his association with the Maori people of New Zealand and his time doing missionary work among them.\u00a0 He noted that: \u201cMy first missionary endeavors in New Zealand changed my life for the better,\u201d recalling that he was told by Elder Matthew Cowley (an apostle who also spent a significant amount of time among the Maori) that \u201cif I payed close attention to the faithful Maori Saints, they would teach me many things about the gospel\u2014including by their example how we all ought to behave now in order to get to a future where we all need to end up.\u201d\u00a0 One of those things was his approach to studying scripture: \u201cIt was the older Maori Saints who gently but firmly teased me out\u201d of reading the Book of Mormon in a way he described as \u201cclumsy proof-texting.\u201d\u00a0 Instead, \u201cthey saw the Book of Mormon as a very complex, subtle, and carefully written text full of stories\u2014and full of life and light.\u201d\u00a0 Later, Louis Midgley and his wife \u201cserved a glorious mission in 1999-2000\u201d in New Zealand, where they directed \u201cthe Lorne Street Institute which is close to Auckland University and next to the Auckland University of Technology.\u201d\u00a0 In addition, he stated that \u201cI have published nine essays setting out and defending what I call the Maori Latter-day Saint historical narrative.\u201d \u00a0New Zealand and its peoples have been an important part of Midgley\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

He shared a rather interesting tidbit of Latter-day Saint history among the Maori, involving seer stones.\u00a0 As he told Kurt Manwaring:<\/p>\n

When Latter-day Saint missionaries began contacting Maori in the late 1880s, they immediately found different groups who had been prepared for them and their message by nine different\u00a0Matakite<\/em>\u00a0(which means \u201cseer\u201d in the Maori language).<\/p>\n

(The Maori word\u00a0poropite<\/em>\u00a0is merely a lone word\u2013that is, the English word \u201cprophet\u201d spelled in the Maori alphabet.) And what do seers sometimes have? In the Book of Mormon they have two\u00a0seer stones\u00a0known as Interpreters, which made it possible for the seer to understand an unknown language. Maori seers also had two seer stones. And seer stones also played an important role in their esoteric teachings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These seer stones helped pave the way for Latter-day Saint missionary work in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Midgley also shared some deeply-felt feelings about various topics throughout the interview.\u00a0 He noted that \u201cMost every advance in technology is morally ambiguous. The Saints must learn how to control technology or it will control us.\u201d He went on to note that: \u201cThere are, of course, advantages to technology because we can go higher and faster, but we can also use them to fashion stronger chains with which to bind ourselves.\u201d\u00a0 He stated that \u201cthis seems to me why some young and old people leave the Church. They come to think of the Church of Jesus Christ not as a community of Saints, but as a building you go to on Sunday, often to be bored. They find that there is nothing new and exciting in the lessons. They don\u2019t long to renew their covenants.\u201d Technology can be both good and bad for us.<\/p>\n

Louis Midgley also talked a bit about studying Paul Tillich\u2019s liberal theology to see how and why it differed from his own Latter-day Saint faith and to find out \u201cif my own faith<\/em>\u00a0could stand up to his\u00a0theology.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 <\/em>The difference in wording of faith vs theology is intentional, since he isn\u2019t particularly fond of theology: \u201c<\/em>Along with Hugh Nibley, I detest it, since theology is a merely human concoction and hence not what God has revealed to humans.\u00a0 Instead, theology is what humans have to say about divine things, much of which is at least bunk.\u201d\u00a0 Ultimately, there are more important things than theology: \u201cThe Saints actually live by the stories found in our scriptures, which are then confirmed by their own encounters with the divine. No one has become a truly faithful disciple of Jesus Christ by reading creeds or confessions, or proofs, or schemes fashioned by theologians.\u201d\u00a0 There is some truth in the statement that how we live is more important than developing a systematic theology, though as someone with a deep interest in theology, I personally disagree with detesting the idea of trying to understand God through theology.<\/p>\n

Now, as I mentioned, the full interview covers a lot of ground, including Louis Midgley\u2019s time in WWII, his experience with being part of \u201cthe first couple sealed in Europe in this dispensation\u201d in Switzerland, his experiences in college and some more on the topics covered here.<\/em>\u00a0 You can hop on over and read the full interview by following the link here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For those who are up for a bit of discussion, what do you think about Louis Midgley\u2019s assessments of theology and technological advances? \u00a0Do you have any particular thoughts about or experiences with Hugh Nibley of your own to share?\u00a0 Have you spent time in a culture different from you own that has shaped the way you approach your faith, as the Maori did MIdgley?\u00a0 If so, how has the experience affected you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an interview ranging from discussing Hugh Nibley to missionary work in New Zealand to systematic theologies to the dedication of the Swiss Temple, Kurt Manwaring recently sat down with Latter-day Saint apologist (and retired professor of political science) Louis C. Midgley.\u00a0 What follows here is a co-post to one at Kurt Manwaring\u2019s site, where I\u2019ll focus in on a couple points of particular interest, but for those interested in reading more, hop on over to the full interview here. Louis Midgley was a friend and colleague of Hugh Nibley and has worked hard to defend Nibley\u2019s career and to share his writings with the world.\u00a0 At a few points throughout the interview, he shared stories about Hugh Nibley.\u00a0 One humorous one from Nibley\u2019s mission was that: When Hugh Nibley was a missionary in Germany before WW II, a local branch took up a collection for someone who really needed a suit. Hugh chipped in with some money. He did not realize that he was the one for whom they were raising money\u2014it was his suit that was in rags. A more poignant story was about Nibley at the end of his lifetime: Phyllis called me and urged me to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10397,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2890,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-desk","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41343","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\/10397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41343"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41345,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41343\/revisions\/41345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}