McMurrin's next section is on time and I've two minds about it. On the one hand one must admit that Mormon theology has traditionally taken a naive view of time. It basically adopts the container view of time and leaves it at that. The only real issues relative to time are whether propositions about the future are true in the past. (i.e. determinism) However while that has implications to the ontology of time, it really isn't about time. Given the fact most Mormon theology at the time McMurrin wrote overlooked the philosophy of time, I can certainly understand his limited treatment. And yet, it seems that time is really a huge issue.
The reason I say that is because the very meaning of eternal is bound up with ones ontology of time. McMurrin, while discussing the traditional view of eternity, tends to do a brief superficial job. Most importantly relative to the Mormon perspective he ignores the extremely important scripture D&C 19:10-12. There we are told that the terms endless and eternal don't mean of no end to duration but refer to God's name. Exactly how one ought to take this isn't clear. However the implication seems to be that eternal and endless refer to a particular way of being. Thus "eternal" becomes an adverb saying that the action is done after the manner of the divine.
This is a huge difference. While McMurrin is right that Mormons assume a time flow that it endless towards the past and the future, the meaning of eternal within Mormonism actually does seem closer to the Greek view than McMurrin discusses.
Getting back to the issue of time, the real issue of eternity to the Greeks is less an temporal issue than it is a transcendence issue. Yet this very important issue of transcendence is not here discussed except to suggest that to transcend time is to be akin to a universal. (i.e. what does it mean to ask whether "red" is subject to time?) The only two considerations McMurrin offers tend to be the stereotypical views of eternal as meaning endless duration or eternal as meaning an atemporal universal. That is an unfortunately far too narrow conception of transcendence.
Of course one must be fair to McMurrin in that the philosophical significance of transcendence was fairly dead at the time McMurrin wrote. It has really been the last 15 years that transcendence has been rediscovered as a significant issue. As transcendence as been reconcidered, especially in light of Heidegger and Derrida, so too has there been a rediscovery of the old Greek conceptions of transcendence. I think that figures like Derrida, Marion, Caputo and even the LDS philosopher Jim Faulconer have all provided considerations of transcendence that make us reconsider both Greek thought and Mormon thought. Given the development of philosophy the past decade or two, McMurrin's considerations here of both Greek and Mormon thought seem somewhat naive.
I don't want to here launch into a discussion of transcendence. It is a very complex issue. I've touched on it before and think it a very important issue. But it really is beyond the scope of a brief commentary on McMurrin.
I do want to mention one other facet of time that McMurrin overlooks. He mentions the notion of cycles of time within Greek thought. Yet he gets the Hebrew notion of time quite wrong. It too is primarily cyclic in nature. This cyclic view is fairly significant to Mormon scripture as well. Most seminary students are familiar with the way the Book of Mormon presents cyclic processes as the way to understand sacred history. It has famously been written on as a common facet of the near east by Mircea Eliade in such masterworks as The Myth of the Eternal Return. Admittedly such books were not as well known in the 1960's as they are now.
I think that Jim Faulconer has done an excellent job briefly explaining both Hebrew time and how it relates to LDS theology in "Time". Nathan Oman has also discussed this relative to Abinadi in the Book of Mormon in "Speaking of Things to Come as Though They had Already Come..." There are others and I'm sure I could belabor this point if needed. The point is that McMurrin's discussion of time is quite dated at best and perhaps unduly brief and misleading.
McMurrin is, I think, on more solid ground when he suggests that the modern conception of time arises out of the Hebrew and Greek thought being mixed in Christianity. The notion of progression as well as a direction that breaks cycles is an important contribution of Christian thought. Before Christianity the main way to conceive of time was as a circle. After it time became thought of as a line pointing forward. This is, in part though due to the adoption of creation ex nihilo. While pragmatically useful one can still question the ontological basis for this approach to time.
Mormonism too adopts the line metaphor, but only because we are looking at a single creation with a beginning and end. But by that way of looking at creation Mormonism actually adopts a position very similar to the Stoics that McMurrin mentions. The Stoics believed in a beginning out of fire and then an end to the universe in fire. At which time the cycle starts all over again. The is called eternal recurrence. Where Mormons differ from the Stoics is that we'd reject that everything is destroyed, as the Stoics thought. Further we'd say that the cycle repeats with the repetition of the similar and not the same. One can see this conception of cycles all through Mormon theology. I'm surprised McMurrin, with his emphasis on the parallels between LDS thought and Greek thought, would have brought this up.
Responses to other chapters in McMurrin's The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion can be found on our Reading Club page.
Clark,
I tried to find Jim's comments on "Time" at Times and Seasons but couldn't find it. Could you give a more specific reference?
Kevin Winters
It looks like the file was lost during the software switch there. I put up what I believe is the same text here.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
and Theology
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