Reading Club: Ostler 2 - My Views

Posted on October 3, 2008
Filed Under Ostler, Philosophy, Religion |

Someone asked about my view of the Godhead so as to better understand the Ostler Reading club and my comments. Of course we all have biases and the most pernicious ones are the ones we may not be consciously aware of. So let me answer this a bit. First sorry for the delay on the second part on chapter 1 of Ostler’s book. I’m just trying to get this huge order out to Sweden, deal with customs, etc. and when I finally have some free time in a block large enough to write thinking is sort of the last thing I want to do. (Yes, it’s watch “Last Avatar” time)

My own view towards theology in general is quite different from Blake’s. Blake tends to focus on what I’ll call a positive stance towards theology. That is argue for a particular view. My own emphasis is, for lack of a better term, a more negative stance. That is I want to focus on the range of possibilities compatible with LDS theology and see their strengths and weaknesses. Of course I’ll also make positive moves since I see some philosophical positions as more plausible than others. Yet I think there is that difference of emphasis that is pretty important. I see theology as essentially vague and the study of theology in part the recognizing of this vagueness. Positive theological postulates are ultimately about seeing what we don’t know rather than making our theology more determinate.

With regards to the Godhead I’m thus pretty open. I think there is a very robust unity within the Godhead but I don’t think we can really say what it is. I tend to be most sympathetic to the unity being quite strong and real. That is an unity that goes beyond mere agreement over values, beliefs and the like. (That position, common to Bruce R. McConkie and others can be said to be a nominalistic view since there is no real and thus mind-independent unity between the persons)

However while favoring a position of strong unity I’m very aware that there isn’t strong evidence to really make a determination. So I’m open to many other positions ranging from variants on Orson Pratt’s odd unity via a spiritual ‘fluid’ to the nominalistic views, to other more fanciful views.

The other issue in the debate about the Godhead within LDS theology is the nature of the plurality of gods. (The persons) Blake’s view is that there is one first absolute God who is always greatest. The traditional LDS view, which I tend to be most sympathetic to, is that there is an infinite regress of persons. Thus there never is an Aristotilean “first cause” nor a first God such as one finds in Blake’s view. Jesus had a Father in Heaven who is ultimate head of this creation. There will be a further creation in the future where Jesus takes that role and his Son will act as a savior to that new creation and so forth forever.

There are a few other views but I think the main debate is between a beginning verses an endless regress of beings. And that’s the main controversy in the first chapter.

Comments

14 Responses to “Reading Club: Ostler 2 - My Views”

Thanks Clark!

Do you mean “Watch Avatar: The Last Airbender”? I’m not aware of a “Last Avatar” show on TV.

;-)

Close enough, eh?

I don’t think that an infinite regress is the “traditional view.” Conservative voices such as Joseph Fielding Smith sure didn’t go there. I think because of ideas popularized surrounding the famous couplet that people frequently go there logically. It is harder to find it documented among Church leaders. Impossible to find in the pre-Utah era.

I think it’s the dominant reading of the KFD. Of course how one reads the KFD and Sermon in the Grove is different from the contemporary reading at the time. I think people go there less because of the famous couplet than because of the KFD and the way the harmonized version was edited.

J.- pointing to JFS ii as an appeal to the “traditional view” seems a bit off to me. To me he represents more of a conservative view than a traditional one. Wouldn’t you think?

Clark, while I admit to have some crazy manlove for Blake’s books and intelligence, I have to also admit that I agree that one of his work’s greatest weaknesses is sometimes it assumes a position as the only correct option when there is a myriad of interpretations in our religion. Often he only points out differing points of view to shoot them down. This isn’t always bad, it’s just sometimes we can’t shoot them all down.

I think the problem isn’t ultimately Blake’s fault. He’s arguing for a particular position. The problem is that there is no real systematic overview of the range of LDS theology. There ought be.

Regarding JFS I can’t even recall what his position on the subject was. I’ll have to look it up.

Matt you’ll note that I qualified JFS II as a conservative voice.

J Stapley, where does JFS even talk about the issue? I went through all the writings I have on hand and it seems to me he leaves unstated his views on the origin of God. I don’t have a copy of Man, His Origin and Destiny and can’t find an online version. But I believe he embraces the spirit birth theory in there if I recall.

I know you did a BCC post on the topic back in January. But my reading of those passages is more that JFS simply wanted to leave undetermined what we didn’t have clear revelation for.

My sense is that you’re reading more into JFS than is there. However I’ll fully admit that I’ve not really read JFS much the past decades. Really not since college, beyond having the typical tomes in my library everyone has. I refer to them occasionally but really haven’t read them. I certainly haven’t read any other writings or notes by him outside of his main writings.

Blake does give a survey of other Mormon views of the Nature of God in his first volume prior to proposing his own.

But only very briefly and not in a broad way.

Clark, I think, as you say, that JFS II left it pretty open, but in doing so, he did not embrace an infinite regress in his teachings.

Right, but I think my point was that it was pretty much the received and dominant view. Certainly there were and are voices urging caution on stating too much. But I don’t think that changes how folks tended to see the doctrine. More how much confidence they had on the doctrine being correct.

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