{"id":48064,"date":"2024-10-13T06:22:50","date_gmt":"2024-10-13T12:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=48064"},"modified":"2024-10-13T08:12:47","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T14:12:47","slug":"believing-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/10\/believing-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Believing History"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this next post in something of a series<\/a> (I’m holding off numbering these or giving them all the same title, since the concept is a bit amorphous) I wanted to lay out my approach to belief in topics that are historical.<\/p>\n

This title is something of a play on words, as I don\u2019t mean so much as believing a believer\u2019s narrative about historical things pertaining to Mormonism. Instead, what I mean is that I \u201cbelieve\u201d what the historical documentation and scholarly evidence indicates. I \u201cbelieve\u201d history.<\/p>\n

Yes, I\u2019m well aware that there\u2019s a lot of debate about a lot of issues, but in my personal beliefs about God and theology, I\u2019m on board with what scholars are able to demonstrate as the historical evidence. That is, I\u2019m good with saying what the scholarly evidence demonstrates, as opposed to holding to scriptural claims of historical events without evidence.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As I said previously, I don\u2019t believe in a Moses exodus<\/a> as the evidence demonstrates otherwise, and similarly I don\u2019t believe the Book of Mormon is historica<\/a>l. As I said previously, I don\u2019t believe that God demands that we believe historical scriptural claims that the historical evidence refutes.<\/p>\n

That said, this isn\u2019t an argument for atheism, but for a kind of theistic freedom of historical inquiry to follow the evidence and not be bound to needing to claim historicity for texts when the evidence indicates otherwise. I’m for trying to figure out \u201cwhat actually happened\u201d to quote Ranke<\/a>, based on the historical evidence. I’ve been okay to make adjustments<\/a> to my beliefs as I’ve learned new things.<\/p>\n

Again, I\u2019m not arguing for atheism, and like I\u2019ve said, I don\u2019t tie my theism to Old Testament or Book of Mormon historicity. I see a lot of theology and historical invention as human attempts to understand God, which is a good thing to try. I like the line from Plato’s Timaeus<\/em><\/a>: \u201c<\/em>Now to find the maker and father of the universe is hard enough, and even if I succeeded, to declare him to everyone is impossible.” God is hard to understand and we humans propose lots of theories. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I do see many such theories as a lot of conjecture. But continuing to try to understand God is a good quest regardless.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not an expert in ancient history, the Bible, classics, etc, but I am interested in those topics and have the theist belief that understanding history better does give us some insights into God.<\/p>\n

So I want to share a few things I\u2019ve come across in some upcoming posts and one theme will be the importance in Greek thought and JS tapping into it (among other things).<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this next post in something of a series (I’m holding off numbering these or giving them all the same title, since the concept is a bit amorphous) I wanted to lay out my approach to belief in topics that are historical. This title is something of a play on words, as I don\u2019t mean so much as believing a believer\u2019s narrative about historical things pertaining to Mormonism. Instead, what I mean is that I \u201cbelieve\u201d what the historical documentation and scholarly evidence indicates. I \u201cbelieve\u201d history. Yes, I\u2019m well aware that there\u2019s a lot of debate about a lot of issues, but in my personal beliefs about God and theology, I\u2019m on board with what scholars are able to demonstrate as the historical evidence. That is, I\u2019m good with saying what the scholarly evidence demonstrates, as opposed to holding to scriptural claims of historical events without evidence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","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\/48064","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\/10406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48064"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48069,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48064\/revisions\/48069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}