I'll hopefully get back to Blake Ostler's book starting tomorrow. But I've been intrigued rereading McMurrin and have been spending a fair bit of time with it. McMurrin is somewhat different in approach than Blake in that McMurrin tends to try to compare Mormon views with the Greek views of late antiquity and the modern versions of those ideas. Blake, in contrast, takes the basic "foundational" commitments of Mormonism and works from those to larger philosophical issues. As an introduction to LDS theology I definitely think Blake's approach is superior. But I'm coming to appreciate some of McMurrin's approach better now than I have in past reads. Of course it helps with McMurrin to already be fairly familiar with philosophy. Something that I suspect most of his readers aren't. However I'll say this. The section of God and Absolute philosophy is one of the better sections in the book, although he gets off slightly into a tangent on American pragmatism to the end. It's probably a useful tangent, but still more than a little unfocused. (And focus is something I'm coming to appreciate more and more in Blake's book)
The reason I really appreciated this section is that McMurrin really develops the them from a basic definition and shows how traditional Christianity has to walk a tightrope that Mormonism doesn't. The definition of the absolute is the unconditioned or the unrelated. The problem mainstream Christians have is that the classic Greek conceptions of this really are impossible to reconcile with the Biblical text of a personal God. So we have a problem in which Greek concepts and the Bible have to be reconciled. All things considered the theologians did a pretty good job of this. One can even argue that the development of creation ex nihilo by Philo was necessary to reconcile the Hebrew God with Greek Absolutism. The problem is, however, that such a resultant God simply isn't Absolute in the same was that the classic Greek ultimate God is. (Whether the material universe as a living whole, as found in Stoicism, or the more abstract notion of the One as found in Platonism and neoPlatonism)
Why is this all relevant? Well McMurrin doesn't bring this up, but a classic theological argument by mainstream Christians against Mormons is that our God simply isn't great enough. It is in a certain way, a persuasive argument. After all why should we consider a being living within a universe of co-eternal matter as great as a being who creates everything and is the sole necessary being. While Anselm's famous ontological argument doesn't really explain why a "greater than which can not be conceived" must exist in reality and not just possibility, it does orient the topic of God towards the greatest being.
Let me take a slight detour here since I know I'm throwing out terms a lot of you may not be that familiar with. Traditional philosophy often discusses necessary beings and contingent beings. Necessary beings are those beings that must exist in every possible world. Contingent beings don't and their existence is usually contingent on some other being. For instance the existence of these words is contingent on my writing them. It is very possible that I didn't need to write them and may well never have. In traditional Christianity God is the only necessary being. All else in contingent. That has powerful implications I'll not get into. I'll just point out that the Mormon theology of all of us as in some sense co-eternal with God requires that we (or at least some part of us) are also necessary beings. Multiple necessary beings strongly limits logically the power of those necessary beings. By implication our God isn't logically as powerful as the God of traditional Christianity. That's not a big shock, since most Mormon theologies emphasize God as a more limited being. And it is philosophically useful since it provides a nice easy way to avoid some of the logical problems that traditional Christianity runs into. But it opens us up to the charge that our God isn't the greatest conceivable being.
Of course Mormons need only respond that God might not be the greatest logically consistent being or conceivable being, merely the greatest actual being. But, for various reasons, that's not good enough for many people.
Why do I bring all of this up? Well, for reasons McMurrin outlines quite well, the God of traditional Christian theology also isn't the greatest conceivable being. The Greek God is. After all the traditional Christian God is only relatively absolute due to creation ex nihilo. That's because of the problem of relations. All existence other than God relates to God, although the way most theologies put it this relationship is one way. (i.e. we relate to God but God is unchanged by this relationship).
Contrast this with the main ways of thinking of God by the Greeks. They have God as the All. There is nothing else but God. Everything is in God. There is nothing external to God. This ends up being various versions of pantheism. (God is the universe or at least includes the universe)
The point is that Mormons can answer the charge by non-Mormon Christians that the Mormon conception of God isn't "good enough" with the rejoinder that neither are theirs - the Greek one is. The point being that the whole "greatest being" approach to God is rather misplaced. (Unless I suppose you are a mystic neoPlatonist) Once you allow some limits, one has to ask why you reject the others.
Historically Christian theology always has this tension with pantheism. The mystics in particular frequently end up rejecting many aspects of the traditional theology and adopting Greek views. (NeoPlatonism in particular) I'll not go through all this and will merely say it is an oft repeated heresy. Why does this happen? Well I'd say it is because there is a certain paradox in the Christian descriptions of God that goes back to the conflict between the Hebrew and Greek notions of God. And the main one is in terms of the absolute. God is absolute in Hebrew thought in a political sense. Yet, after the exposure to Greek ideas, this notion of absolute was given a more ontological thrust. Mormons, in my opinion, revert back to the more Hebrew notions and basically reject the Greek ideas as really being about God.
I should note that I don't think we necessarily reject Greek ideas. I just don't think we'd call them God. McMurrin brings this up, noting the affinity of the demiurge of Greek philosophy with Mormon conceptions of God. I think that can be misleading - especially since McMurrin merely mentions it and doesn't go into depth on it. Of course many of these things he unwisely introduces he goes into more depth on later. Personally I think the only real parallel is that both of them are artisans of pre-existent materials. But that's me. I'll probably discuss it in more depth later. (See, I'm as bad as McMurrin, although I can get away with it since these posts assume you've read McMurrin)
In certain ways Mormon thought is actually more open to Greek ideas than mainstream Christians are. (There's even one anti-site on the web that makes this argument) I think the fundamental error of the apostasy was the confusing or attempted reconciliation of what the Greeks considered the God of philosophy with the Hebrew God. Had the early Fathers like Augustine avoided that I think Mormons would have had a lot less to complain about.
Clark, I'm out of town for a week, so I won't have a chance to comment on the McMurrin stuff for a few days. But if I'm lucky I might run across a copy of the Ostler book while transiting Utah . . .
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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