In the meantime I wanted to mention a great seminar with not a lot of notice. SMPT isn’t having a conference this year from what I can tell. However they are having a seminar this month at Utah Valley University on B. H. Robert’s Seventy’s Course in Theology. That’s just a couple of blocks from where I work. I can’t justify taking the whole day off but I’m going to try and make it to some of the sessions. The link at the SMPT site lists the topics and even gives readings so you can come prepared for discussion. 

I’m not a huge fan of B. H. Roberts theology although there are some things I like. More importantly he’s a useful place to think through the common Mormon conception of an eternity of a personal and robust personality. This is actually a pretty radical idea and one not found in many other religions. If any other at all — I’m not aware of others with the notion although you have some somewhat similar notions is some veins of medieval Jewish thought. The common parallel brought up of Platonic conceptions of a pre-existence of the soul tend to be problematic in that what is eternal is pretty unlike what Mormons conceive of. That is having a kind of existence somewhat like our personal existence now.

A lot of either unique Mormon ideas or ideas common within early American Christiandom (such as the question of agency) can really be explored via Roberts thought. In many ways Roberts set the general tone for Mormon conceptions for most of the 20th century.

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The study itself is pretty compelling. The researchers came up with ways to prime whether you were primarily thinking in an analytic way or a more intuitive way. They then tested self-reported religious belief. This though leads to some obvious limitations on the study.

First this is testing is tied to intuitive vs analytic cognition. In practice, of course, we are both analytic and intuitive. While religion gets credited as more muddleheaded intuitive thinking in practice much of religious development is highly analytic. (Think theology for example) And of course scientific hypothesis formation demands a high level of intuitive thinking. I’ve long thought that more autistic spectrum personalities are interesting because while some are highly atheistic others appear to be driving a lot of religious development. (One can see religious fundamentalism and literalism as driven by that style of analytic thinking)  

The other problem is that this just notes marginal changes in the short term as one switches cognitive modes. That is the study tells us nothing about longer termed developments nor does it tell us anything about long term differences for those who engage one style of thinking more than an other. Yet that’s exactly how the study has primarily been reported in the popular press. Now there are other studies that are suggestive there. So I’m not sure it’s wrong to say that intuitive oriented people are more prone to be religious. I just don’t think this study offers much there simply because the longer term emergent phenomena can’t be easily extrapolated from short term phenomena. 

An other difference someone else noted to me was the study measures quantitative increases in self-reported religious belief but not changes in more qualitative aspects. (i.e. do you believe but not how or what you believe) This is, I think, pretty important — especially if, as some cognitive scientists have suggested, religious belief is caught up with low level cognitive agent detection. An example of this might be walking down a dark path. You hear a noise and think you see something. The parts of your brain you might label intuitive leap to agency detection, causing a fear and flight response. The parts of your brain that are more analytic note that there’s actually no good data and the sound was almost certainly the wind through the tops of the trees. I suspect that this study is measuring something like that.

What I think the study does is show how priming our brain affects how the brain integrates these various systems. Let me return to my agent detection analogy. If you were listening to scary ghost stories or if you had been watching reports of joggers attacked by cougars then I bet you are more apt to detect agents as a source as you walk down the dark trail. If you had been doing physics homework with lots of calculus I bet you would be less apt to do so. Effectively I think that all they are showing is that when we engage the analytic aspects of cognition we reject parts of what intuitions give us. Which most of us should recognize as common sense based on our observations of our own behavior and thinking.

Now that’s not a perfect analogy for obvious reasons. But I think they do indicate the limits of the study and how to think about it. (For the record I’ve not read the original study which is behind a pay-wall)  And of course we should keep in mind that the shifts the study does point out are very marginal. Science gave an important caveat.

The effects of the analytical-thinking manipulations were modest. “We’re not turning people into atheists,” says Gervais. Rather, when the questionnaire responses of all subjects in an experiment are taken together, they indicate a small shift away from religious belief.

However as we know from economics these sorts of changes on the margins can end up being important drivers in aggregate. It’s just that in this case we don’t yet know how they are driving things.

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The first, and historically the most popular in Mormon writing, is the positive theology. This takes an easy to state claim about something religious and defends it. Often this defense comes about by first portraying alternative views and where they fall short. Then typically one marshals arguments for why one should believe the author’s claim.

The second seems quite a bit rarer among Mormon writings. It is less about answers and positive claims than it is about thinking through theology. It is more about reading and less about a theoretical conclusion. I think Adam’s book fits into this latter category and is arguable one of the best examples of this type in Mormonism right now. You can get a taste for Adam’s approach by reading some of his posts over at the blog Times and Seasons.

Now I should admit up front that I’ve long liked Adam’s writings. How much of that is the power of Adam’s writings and how much of that is that he seems to be the person who comes closest to my own views I can’t say. I’d like to think I read critically enough so as to say it is Adam’s ability at writing. Certainly I wish I could write half so well. And this particular book shows off many completely different styles of writing. Some are critical readings of scripture and are extremely easy to follow. Others are a bit more self-reflexive in that post-modern style that a few might find off putting.

If you are the sort off put by the philosophical I hope you still pickup this book. There’s plenty here to learn from. However you should be aware that probably about half the essays are the sort that are much easier to read if you have at least a superficial reading of Continental thought. I worry that those for whom that demands too much might never continue reading to the later essays that are more approachable. Nonetheless it is in those earlier essays that I think Adam is at his strongest. There we find not merely adopting philosophy to look at Mormon thought but using Mormon thought to unlock traditional ways of thinking of problems.

The range of topics Adam undertakes is broad. Some essays are only two or three pages. It’s correspondingly somewhat hard to do an adequate review of the book as a whole. Allow me then to instead just look at a few moments from the book rather than attempt to describe the book as a single whole narrative. I think that might well be in keeping with the spirit of Adam’s book as well.

What, then, is non-sequential theology? A non-sequential theology would be occupied with the givenness of what is presently given, rather than with the place of the given in the arc of a larger temporal sequence. In this sense, it would differ from a sequential theology precisely in that it would be non-mythological. Rather than reading key theological ideas in terms of an overarching, cosmic narrative headed toward some particular end, a non-sequential theology would read them in light of the key features of our present lived experience of the world. (6)

I love that short passage. It is from one of the more difficult essays but it sets forth Adam’s project clearly and succinctly. Adam is interested in moments of theology rather than an overarching theory or system. Adam’s theological attention then is less to the theoretical than to seeing these small elements as we encounter them. This is a very different sort of project. And perhaps an ultimately impossible one since we constantly bring other elements to bear. But the way we bring in other elements of theology is itself non-linear. A bit here and a bit there in an unsystematic way. In a way Adam is saying don’t look to my arguments but look where I point and look.

This way of looking at theology can indeed be difficult. I rather suspect that because of this it will be less popular than say Blake Ostler’s books on theology (also published by Kofford). Yet the effort is worth it. There are many things we see and experience each day but overlook. Those elements are arguably just as important religiously as systems are — and perhaps even more important since the way we experience any theory or system is built out of these moments. By not attending carefully to these small elements and disruptions we build on uneven ground.

…when read theologically, the historical, doctrinal, and exegetical dimensions of scripture are essential but not decisive. In addition to these, theological readings involve an explicitly creative engagement with the text that depends on both the details of the text’s latent patterns and the hypothetical questions that, as with chemicals and an undeveloped negative, create a reaction that can bring novel patterns into developed focus. Theological readings aim to develop a text’s latent images of Christ.

However, because it is hypothetical, theology is always tentative and nonbinding. Theology, though sensitive to what is normative, never decides doctrine. Though this is a kind of weakness, this weakness is also theology’s unique strength. Because it is hypothetical, theology is free to map whatever charitable patterns the details of the text may prompt it to peruse. (61)

What is characteristic of Adam’s writing is a deep humility. Often theological writers will acknowledge that everything is only a theory yet within the writings themselves there’s very much an arguing for a position. The style undercuts that message of humility. Adam’s approach though is very much one of the hermeneutics of suspicion. At every step there is a tentativeness that is demanded by the method. However as Adam says in the above, this is not a weakness but a strength. In a sense we are to interrogate the text itself and ask difficult questions all the while paying close attention to the fact that the very nature of our questions may be distorting.

My absolute favorite essay in the book is towards the end. There Adam draws out as a key to our theology the mundane. Contrast this with so much theology which is about the strange and novel. However Adam, noting that it is precisely the mundane aspects of our lives that Mormonism celebrates as celestial. Heaven is not obtainable by so many precisely because what would be a heaven is a hell. (The old joke on South Park about a heaven filled with chipper Mormons doing home teaching and playing silly family home evening games is perhaps apt)

But can you bear it? Can you root out your hope for the banality to end? Can you cut the cord to this secret wish of yours, this secret wish that animates your basest fantasies, your most ordinary chores, and your most authentic spiritual longings? How many disguises does this wish – this wish for the paper cuts to end – have? How many faces does it wear?

If you think I’m being bitter, you’ve misunderstood. I’m being compassionate. And I’m trying to be Mormon. In general the complaint about Mormonism is that is is all too mundane. God, for Mormons is not supra-mundane. God has a body? Fingers and toes? He’s married? He must, everyday, tie the sash on his white robe? His immortal lungs perpetually expand and contract? Heaven, too, for Mormons, is not supra-mundane. Heaven? Where people are still married, still work, still have children, still change diapers, still share casseroles? Heaven, for Mormonis, is what seals our union with the mundane rather than terminates it. Leave it to Mormonism to see the nihilistic claim that there is nothing but the aching specificity of this repetition and raise it to the power of infinity. Leave it to Mormonism to claim that even in heaven we’ll have to button and unbutton our shirts, show all our work, suffer paper cuts, and – of course, forever and ever again – breath. (123)

It’s a fantastic passage and illustrative of Adam’s seeing what is neglected, what are key moments each of us experience, and through a kind of projective speculation allow us to see that moment more clearly. If most of Christianity is focused on a kind of transcendence towards the absolutely novel Mormonism is a Christianity focused on the immanent. A theology of pure immanency is what Adam’s given us and I can only hope that Mormon theology will never be the same again.

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By mid next week I should have a clean build of the latest Linux and will just restore my mail and web stuff from backups.

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