Over at Times and Seasons Russell Fox asks what people mean by "liberal" and "conservative" in a Mormon context. Now I think the way it got discussed was unfortunate since it was hopelessly muddled with the political meanings of the terms. (And the political terms are themselves rather muddled due to the differences between economic conservatives, social conservatives, and the fact most modern conservatives are fairly close to classic liberals of the Enlightenment) It is a good question though.
On a related theme Juliann Reynolds wrote about the hijacking of the term liberal by "Liberal Mormons." (i.e. those who are vocal critics of various Church positions) It's an interesting paper and is perhaps closely related to similar comments by Massimo Introvigne that I discussed the other day. Both Reynolds and Introvigne note that many critics (Liberal Mormons) critique Mormonism from the perspective of classic Enlightenment views on history and the ability to know history fully. Reynolds responds to critics with the comment that, "it is simply not possible for anyone to prove 'truth' through careful studies of historical documents no matter how appealing the prospect sounds."
It is here that I tend to get nervous. While clearly some things simply can't be proved, other things can. We may agree, for example, that it is impossible from extant data to establish much about the life of Jesus in Palestine. Yet it seems quite obvious that many truths about history can be established. Things like that there was a war between the Gauls and the Romans or the period when the Civil War was progressing. Even some of these truths have "blurry" edges or elements of vagueness, that doesn't make them unestablished.
Now some might say that it is only religious truths that can't be established. Yet this too seems somewhat problematic. For one, what counts as a religious truth? If the historicity of the Book of Mormon is a religious truth, then surely as an actual set of historic events it has the possibility of being proved or refuted. Perhaps we can't do so now, with the limited data we have. But that doesn't mean that its truth can't be proved in the future. It seems that even more "spiritual" truths (if we dare make such a distinction in Mormon theology between spiritual truths and temporal truths) are also open to potential publich demonstration.
To adopt what Reynolds terms the Liberal position (meaning the Liberal position in academics and not the more political sense when we refer to Liberal Mormons) seems to me to be inherently problematic. It first off assumes as unknowable things that most Mormons believe are knowable. Now certainly Reynolds adds the important caveat that we can know by the Holy Ghost. While I agree with her regarding the Holy Ghost, I don't think I can agree with her regarding public proofs. If we believe that miracles and the like are actual events, that there were actual gold plates, and so forth, then we have religious events within the realm of regular events. We can't adopt the Liberal position.
As Reynolods points out, "For a liberal academic, scripture is 'a collection of materials written by fallible men who reflected the culture out of which they came and for which they were writing.'" Liberal academic writing cares less about the establishment of facts than a discussion of "perspectives." Yet with our claims to both objective truth and historic immanence of an acting God, it seems that we believe there are facts about the matter. Perhaps facts do include perspectives, but they are perspectives reflected in all concerned investigators. Put an other way, for Mormon scholarship to adopt the positions of Mormon theology, our scholarship must aim not at mere social perspectives but the investigation of the facticity of history. While limited resources and data may make this impossible to achieve with respect to many questions, the difficulty is not a philosophical one but a practical one.
Put simply, while I certainly don't think Mormons fall into the Enlightenment characature, we certainly do believe that truth is knowable through more ways than the Spirit. According to Reynold's criteria, I believe that this makes most Mormons far less liberal than she suggests.
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