I finally got my internet up and thought I'd quickly put up a few comments on McMurrin before bed. More will follow the next few days. In this section McMurrin does a fairly good job of briefly overviewing the position of creation ex nihilo. We've discussed that a lot here and I'm convinced it is one of the main differences between Mormonism and mainstream forms of Christianity. Specifically in mainstream Christianity God is the only necessary being. All else is contingent. In Mormonism, as McMurrin notes, matter, space and time as well as "intelligences" are necessary beings. Unfortunately McMurrin doesn't really get into the implications of this too much - especially as it relates to philosophy. He mentions a few philosophers and does a brief overview of the development of ex nihilo views from Philo's reading of Plato.
This is unfortunate as I think he really could have delved in a lot more here. He is most interesting when touching in passing on two parallels to Mormon thought. The first is that of an Idealist who I confess I'm unfamiliar with: John Boodin who McMurrin says adopts a basically Platonic view in which God creates beauty but that formless matter is independent of this. In other words matter as matter doesn't receive its existence from God but matter endowed with form (structure) does. He also brings up Whitehead who've we've mentioned here many times. For Whitehead creation is a process that is always going on. Process theology and movements influenced by it such as open theology, deny creation ex nihilo.
McMurrin appears to argue that the Mormon position is somewhat like Parmenides who argues that Being can't arise from non-Being (with to-be equated with to-be thinkable). It isn't clear if he is really arguing for a Parmenides connection or if he is merely pointing out that the basic LDS notion of pre-existent matter goes back a long ways. Hopefully the latter as I simply don't see much of a parallel in actual perspective. He mentions the Mormon view, often found in apologetics, that "beginnings" and "endings" are merely the beginnings and endings of certain events, periods or processes and not absolute starts or endings. However I think the connection to Parmenides is forced and perhaps a tad misleading.
He also brings up the dual creation accounts of Philo and the similar view in the reworking of Genesis 1 and 2 in Moses. However clearly Philo is highly influenced by Plato and further adopts ex nihilo. He unfortunately doesn't delve much into the significant textual differences. While Philo has the first creation as a creation of "intelligence" or structure, this is clearly meant ontologically. Most Mormon readings of a dual creation in Moses have it as a planning more akin to the way an architect designs before the construction begins. It is pragmatic thinking by regular thinking entities and not the absolute ontology that we find in Philo or in later Gnosticism or Hermeticism.
Still, the Platonic connections are extremely interesting. Quinn touched upon some of them in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. Of course that was written after McMurrin's book. But I think that some analysis of the Platonism or more precisely middle Platonism and neoPlatonism would be quite interesting and helpful - especially since McMurrin has already played up the nominalism. Some attempt at providing a coherent picture would be nice in McMurrin. Unfortunately we instead get a smorgasbord in which radically different philosophies are compared with bits and pieces of apparently incompatible philosophical positions. This is unfortunate as it tends to distort both the Mormon view as well as being misleading in terms of the parallels with the philosophers he brings up as parallels. Some parallels as a heuristic for teaching is useful. By not really moving beyond them I think he often ends up distorting things.
Responses to other chapters in McMurrin's The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion can be found on our Reading Club page.
I thought McMurrin did a nice job reviewing ex nihilo creation and its implications for the creation of spirits. I'm no fan of Creationism, but it is interesting that in the big picture, modern cosmology describes a creation, that is a point in time before which the universe as we know it (with time, space, and matter) did not exist. I'm not saying that to suggest modern cosmology supports Christian Creationist thinking, but rather to point out that it appears that the Big Bang is inconsistent with the Mormon view of an uncreated universe of time, space, and matter.
It was also interesting to see his review of the differences the ex nihilo account poses for Christians describing the special creation of spirits. Are they all created at once, well before they are needed, and "warehoused" until needed at birth, or uniquely created in a sort of just-in-time fashion at conception or birth?
The big bang definitely does pose problems for Mormons. The two solutions are to say that the big bang is wrong or to adopt Linde's theory of bubble universes. While I personally have trouble with the former position, the fact is that a lot of scientist think the big bang is dogma more than good science. There was actually an open letter by various cosmologists on this point published in New Scientist. Personally I think that a variation of Linde's view of cosmology, which has been growing in popularity, is the easiest to reconcile with LDS theology. Even if one gets rid of the big bang, the finite universe poses problems for Mormons.
[Note I modified the link to Linde to his Scientific American article on the subject as it seems more approachable for non-physicists. A more technical article on the same subject is "Can the Universe Create Itself?" from Physics Review by Richard Gott and Li-Xin Li]
Wow, very interesting statement at the New Scientist. I always had a soft spot in my heart for the steady-state model advanced by Fred Hoyle, more on philosophical grounds than anything else. Maybe it will reappear in a new and updated form.
Dave: For an argument that incorporates Linde's bubble universe theory in response to the argument that LDS cosmology is not plausible in light of Big Bang theory, see my response to Copan and Craig here http://www.fairlds.org/apol/TNMC/TNMC05.html
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