Discourses in Mormon Theology: Philosophical and Theological Possibilities

Posted on March 21, 2008
Filed Under Philosophy |

Discourses in Mormon TheologyKent asked about that recent SMPT publication and its table of contents. I guess Kofford didn’t put any page samples up at Amazon. Here’s the table of contents for Discourses in Mormon Theology: Philosophical and Theological Possibilities. I’ll briefly annotate them as well and give my thoughts on each article.

“A ‘Communities of Discourse’ Approach to Early LDS Thought.” Grant Underwood.

Not one of my favorites, although I admit that the whole “pluralism” debate just isn’t one I get into. Basically more of a historian’s take on approaching early LDS thought and emphasizing that there were intellectual differences.

“The Modernism Controversy: William Henry Chamberlin, His Teachers Howison and Royce, and the Conception of God Debate.” James M. McLachlan.

One of my favorites and I’m going to see if I can’t track down some of Chamberlin’s writings nows. Probably of particular interest to those who follow process thought. But relevant to us pragmatists as well.

“Prayer and Divine Attributes.” Richard Sherlock

I really like his ripping on McMurrin and others’ “stipulative theology.” His basic question is to turn to practice rather than dogma so as to understand theology. Very short and perhaps nothing any of us wouldn’t already agree with. But still good for those not already discussing LDS theology.

“Theological Method and the Question of Truth: A Postliberal Approach to Mormon Doctrine and Practice.” Brian Birch.

I had a hard time with this one. It’s an other in the “not propositional theology” move that many LDS thinkers have made. I liked it far less than Sherlock’s or similar papers by Faulconer or others over the years. I frequently wasn’t quite sure what the point was. I probably need to reread this one. Anyone who liked this one want to clarify it for me? My sense is that I disagree with the claims but I’m not sure enough of what is being asserted to disagree.

“The Relation of Moral Obligation and God in LDS Thought.” Blake Ostler.

Pretty similar to what he argues about the Euthyphro dilemma in his second volume albeit not as detailed.

“Theology in the One Room Schoolhouse.” Ben Huff.

A treatise against systematic theology. The most interesting one is the metaphor found in the title. The idea that we’re like a one room school house from the 1920’s where folks of differing educations are all learning. That is systematic theology is bad as a pedagogy.

“Liberation Theology in the Book of Mormon.” Dennis Potter.

An other of my favorites. I really liked the papers on liberation theology in Mormonism in Dialogue with Contemporary Christian Theologies as well. I hope more work is done on this to produce a more unique Mormon view of liberation theology.

“Is There a Place for Heavenly Mother in Mormon Theology?” Margaret Toscano.

You can probably already guess I didn’t like this one. Basically a structuralist critique of LDS narrative arguing that there’s no place for a Heavenly Mother in our thought. I disagree profoundly on a ton of levels. I plan on doing some rejoinders to this one here sometime.

“Walter Benjamin and the Book of Mormon.” Adam Miller.

This one didn’t catch my interest. More about messianic thinking in light of Benjamin’s taxonomies. I’m surprised I didn’t like it since I loved Underwood’s The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism. It also seems oriented around justifying apparent anachrony. (Dates and times being out of joint) To Miller the Messianic reconfigures history. I didn’t buy it. But I’m probably missing the context.

“On Scripture or Idolatry vs. the True Religion.” Jim Faulconer.

I always like Jim’s stuff although that’s probably because we approach things in a very similar fashion. Much of it is a kind of Levinasian riff on how to read scripture. However I do think there is a potent philosophical problem that Jim glosses over that has long bothered me. If scripture makes a call that philosophy doesn’t, why is this? What is going on textually. The problem in Deconstruction or worse yet Eco’s riff on Hermetic reading makes any reading revelatory. So what makes one text more compelling than an other? Mormons believe scripture offers more of a call but it isn’t clear philosophically why.

“What Do We Really Believe? Identifying Doctrinal Parameters within Mormonism.” Robert Millet.

Kind of an apologetic for Millet’s particular approach towards theology of staying on key theology. His criteria is scripture plus what is regularly taught by leaders. As many know Millet is among the controversial figures some see distancing LDS theology too much from Nauvoo and early Utah teachings.

BTW - can I say that it would be nice to read some papers from folks promoting a Systemic theology? Blake’s work is arguably pretty close to that and the classics of LDS theology (Pratt, Roberts, McConkie, etc.) all do systematic theology. Yet there is a constant distrust of such things among most LDS philosophers.

Comments

4 Responses to “Discourses in Mormon Theology: Philosophical and Theological Possibilities”

thanks clark!

Thank you so much Clark! I’ll see you at the conference.

Hey Clark, my piece speaks in favor of systematic theology! Also my contribution to the Paulsen & Musser volume that came out a few months ago.

Really? I didn’t take it as really normal systematic theology. You talk about “how it should be used.” (166) However then you advocate a kind of hermeneutics where one spirals in. (The metaphor of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics as I recall) Thus it’s not really normal systematic theology but rather an unending approach to a systematic theology.

Put an other way it is an advocation for approaching theology in a systematic fashion while simultaneously denying that one ever achieves a systematic theology. (In other terms, a focus on saying rather than the said)

The key passage that made me think you advocating systematic methodology rather than a systematic theology was this one:

The scriptures are messy, or to use a more positive word, they are polyphonic. Certainly the messiness of the scriptures is part of the divine pedagogy, and we should not try to replace them with a tidy system. There are many reasons I can think of why this should be so, and probably many that God only knows. For one thing, we are all at different levels of understanding, and for another, some of us need to learn things in a different order from others. Even if the scriptures ultimately lead to one tidy system of knowledge we are not able to leap there all at once. (169-70)

So to me you deny systematic thinking as pedagogy, as a received system but allow it as a methadological approach in hermeneutics so long as one recognizes that one never achieves a system.

While that might be seen as a defense of systematic theology it is at best a defense of a narrow form of it with plenty of caveats. Contrast this to the kind of systematic thinking that say all those guys who used to quote McConkie at BYU back in the 90’s. They adopted both a methaodological systematic thinking but also thought the results were a system. Just a system with missing parts that would slowly fill in.

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