As I have been told the story, Madsen began his graduate training at California but abandoned his program because of anti-Mormon bias in the philosophy department.\u00a0 He completed his Ph.D. at Harvard, where I believe he studied under Paul Tillich.\u00a0 (His dissertation, which I actually pulled from the Harvard stacks for fun while I was in law school, was on Tillich’s theology.)\u00a0 Prior to graduate school he received a blessing from Elder Hugh B. Brown of the First Presidency, who promised him that his testimony would remain strong through his studies and that he would be a means of blessing the Saints and Kingdom.\u00a0 It was a prophetic blessing that was fulfilled.<\/p>\n
“I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.” (2 Tim. 4:7-8)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Truman Madsen died earlier today.\u00a0 For those who don’t know, Madsen was a long-time professor of philosophy at BYU.\u00a0 His intellectual influence, I think, came in two forms.\u00a0 First, he produced a series of popular lectures on Joseph Smith and other gospel topics.\u00a0 These were not academically rigorous productions, but I think that they opened a window into a much broader and intellectually exciting vision of Mormon history and theology for many members.\u00a0 Madsen’s lectures were also a wonderful link back to an earlier, more oral Mormonism, one that placed a real premium on powerful preaching.\u00a0 He was a powerful preacher.\u00a0 Second, and perhaps more importantly, he provide two or three generations of BYU students with a role model of a man who remained absolutely committed to the Restored Gospel while at the same time willing to grapple with the hard questions of philosophy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":8518,"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-8517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/trumangmadsen_bio160x205.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8517","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8522,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8517\/revisions\/8522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Truman Madsen died earlier today.\u00a0 For those who don’t know, Madsen was a long-time professor of philosophy at BYU.\u00a0 His intellectual influence, I think, came in two forms.\u00a0 First, he produced a series of popular lectures on Joseph Smith and other gospel topics.\u00a0 These were not academically rigorous productions, but I think that they opened a window into a much broader and intellectually exciting vision of Mormon history and theology for many members.\u00a0 Madsen’s lectures were also a wonderful link back to an earlier, more oral Mormonism, one that placed a real premium on powerful preaching.\u00a0 He was a powerful preacher.\u00a0 Second, and perhaps more importantly, he provide two or three generations of BYU students with a role model of a man who remained absolutely committed to the Restored Gospel while at the same time willing to grapple with the hard questions of philosophy.\u00a0<\/p>\n