289-293: Terryl Givens — An Approach to Thoughtful, Honest and Faithful Mormonism

September 28, 2011
By John Dehlin

Terryl Givens did graduate work at Cornell University in Intellectual History and UNC Chapel Hill where he received his PhD in Comparative Literature. He holds the James A. Bostwick chair of English, and is Professor of Literature and Religion at the University of Richmond, where he teaches courses in 19th century studies, and the Bible’s influence on western literature. As a commentator on Mormon religion and culture, he has appeared on PBS, NPR, and CNN. Author of ten books, his writing has been praised by the New York Times as “provocative reading,” and includes, most recently, When Souls had Wings, a history of the idea of premortal life in western thought, and a two volume history of Mormon theology underway for Oxford University Press.

The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy
By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion
People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture
When Souls Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought
Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism.

(Note: As always, disrespectful comments will be deleted.)

Episode Transcript

Full text · 18,000 words · 18 chaptersHost: John Dehlin · Guest: Terryl Givens

This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.

Introduction and Welcome

Part 1 of 5 · Ep. 289

John Dehlin [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

Terryl Givens [00:01:27] That's right, Ithaca, New York.

John Dehlin [00:01:28] Ithaca, New York in intellectual history and at UNC Chapel Hill, where he received his PhD in comparative literature. He holds the James A. Bostwick Chair of English and is professor of Literature and Religion at the University of Richmond where he teaches Courses in 19th century studies and and the Bible's influence on Western culture. And this is where some of you will remember him, even if you don't remember him. But as a commentator on Mormon religion and culture, he has appeared on pbs, NPR and cnn. The PBS part is I think you probably had the most footage of anyone in Helen Whitney's PBS documentary the Mormons. Is that your recollection?

Terryl Givens [00:02:18] That may be probably the most of any Latter Day Saint commentator.

John Dehlin [00:02:22] Yeah, I remember at a sunstone when she came to present, she told me that you were like one of her favorites by far. She loved you. So anyway, if any of you saw that documentary, and I recommend it highly, Terryl Givens was on that. He's also the author of 10, count them, 10 books. And they're not lightweight books, they're substantive books, but they're also very readable. That's just my editorializing. Sorry about that. His writing has been praised by the New York Times as provocative reading and includes most recently When Souls Had Wings, a history of the idea of premortal life in Western thought, and a two volume history of Mormon theology underway for Oxford University Press.

Terryl Givens [00:03:05] Now.

John Dehlin [00:03:05] Is Richard Bushman involved in that project, too.

Terryl Givens [00:03:08] No, he's not. That's a solo project.

John Dehlin [00:03:11] Okay. And you're. But you are doing something with Richard. I think I read.

Terryl Givens [00:03:14] Well, we've been teaching a summer seminar together, collaborating on any writing project.

John Dehlin [00:03:19] Okay. But. But the books that I knew Terrell Givens from were a book called by the Hand of Mormon, which is a book about the Book of Mormon, again published by Oxford University Press, and another book called People of Paradox, which came out, I believe, a few years back, and it's an excellent book. He also has. His first book that I heard of is called the Viper on the Hearth. Was that your first book?

Terryl Givens [00:03:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:03:51] Yeah. And this is just totally anecdotal, but Dan Witherspoon told me to mention that when Eugene England read that book, he loved it. And sort of, I don't know, I got the impression that it was almost like some type of. Wow. The baton. Eugene Ngan almost felt like he had someone to hand a baton onto. I don't know. Did he contact you pretty early on?

Terryl Givens [00:04:18] Yeah, he did. He called me and was quite positive on the book and very graciously invited me out to uvu, where he was teaching then, and hosted me there. That's where that was actually the first time that I became personally acquainted with Gene.

John Dehlin [00:04:33] How was that?

Terryl Givens [00:04:34] Oh, it was wonderful. Unfortunately, it happened, as you probably know, shortly before he became ill and soon thereafter passed away before I felt like I really had a chance for our friendship to develop.

John Dehlin [00:04:48] Well, I guess that's bittersweet. But I bet you're also glad you got to meet him, huh?

Terryl Givens [00:04:52] I sure am. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:53] Yeah, I. I don't want to forget. I don't want to forget to mention that you have a brand new book coming out which you didn't even mention in the bio you sent me. It's called Parley P. Pratt, the Apostle Paul of Mormonism by Terrell Givens and Matthew Grow. And that's only five of your books, right?

Terryl Givens [00:05:16] Yeah, I guess that's about five. I also did a very short introduction to the Book of Mormon, and I did a kind of comprehensive overview of the church for Greenwood Press a few years ago called the Latter Day Saint Experience in America. The Pratt biography is actually out. That came out just a few weeks ago.

John Dehlin [00:05:36] Oh, excellent. Excellent.

Terryl Givens [00:05:37] And then Reid Nielsen and I did a Columbia source book on Mormonism, which I think is in production.

John Dehlin [00:05:45] Excellent. Well, you are prolific.

Terryl Givens [00:05:48] Well, I'm add. So I have to keep writing to keep my sanity.

John Dehlin [00:05:55] Well, going to do something a little bit different today, typically on Mormon stories What we do is we dive into the details, and then we end by me grilling my guests about kind of their faith and their testimony. And I kind of want to do it in reverse. What I want to do is I want to frame our subsequent discussions about your books from the standpoint of your faith and testimony, because I think that that's an important framing to understand the perspective of why you wrote the book and where you were coming from before we actually talk about the book. Does that make sense?

Terryl Givens [00:06:38] Yeah, it does. I don't feel that I segment my life between the professional and the personal and the spiritual. So that sounds like a good way to proceed.

Terryl Givens: Childhood and Conversion to Mormonism

John Dehlin [00:06:48] All right, so I guess let's begin by talking about your childhood a bit. And as I understand it, you're actually a convert to the church.

Terryl Givens [00:06:59] Well, I think I am. I'm in an ambiguous position. I never know when the audience has asked how many are converts and how many were lifelong members, which category I fit into, since I was actually 8 years old when my parents joined the church.

John Dehlin [00:07:15] Okay.

Terryl Givens [00:07:16] And that was in Southern Arizona back in 1965. And of course, Southern Arizona. Tucson is. It's not Utah, but it's close. Right?

John Dehlin [00:07:29] Right.

Terryl Givens [00:07:30] Extremely large Mormon population, huge wards. And we were one of those families that joined the church, but after a few years, just drifted into inactivity. And so by the time I was a teenager, we had very little contact with the church.

John Dehlin [00:07:46] So no pioneer ancestry?

Terryl Givens [00:07:47] No. Well, yes, we do.

John Dehlin [00:07:50] You didn't know that.

Terryl Givens [00:07:50] We didn't know that at the time.

John Dehlin [00:07:52] Okay.

Terryl Givens [00:07:53] And so When I was 16 years old, my father had a kind of Lehigh experience. I guess he became convinced that we needed to pull up roots and move 2,500 miles across the country and settle in a little community called Lynchburg, Virginia. And he had no job, no connections. We had no family, relatives, or friends. So it was rather peculiar and in many ways, wrenching experience for a teenager to be uprooted along with his family and suddenly find himself literally living in a tent. We pulled up at a campground in Virginia. I remember the man at the gate asked how many nights we'd be staying, and my father said, until I find a job. So that was literally our home. Well, he looked to make a new home for our family there in Lynchburg. And so it was, I guess, natural that he would fall back upon our membership in the church and look up a local branch of the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] Did he literally have a dream? Was it a spiritual thing, or was

Terryl Givens [00:08:58] it just, you know, he's never really spoken much about it. I don't know that he actually had a dream or a vision, but it was certainly a strong compulsion. And, you know, he had seven kids at the time and no resources to fall back upon. So it was, in retrospect, either foolhardy or very inspired. But we looked up the church, and as you can imagine, central Virginia Back in the 1970s, a family of nine Mormons shows up. They were thrilled. We practically doubled their attendance. So it was at that time, when I was 16 years old, that our family became rerouted, so to speak, in the gospel. And so I would date my conversion, really, to that period. That was when I first began to look into the church on my own, read the Book of Mormon for the first time, and went through a process of personal conversion at that time.

John Dehlin [00:09:53] Yeah, that's got to be. I'm sure that was a really important moment from your family. And if your experience is anything like mine, was, I guess falling into a welcoming LDS community when you're a stranger in a strange land can be very reassuring and comforting and gratifying and, you know, a warm, pleasant experience. Is that what it was for you guys?

Terryl Givens [00:10:22] Absolutely. And, you know, you have to remember that in the 1970s, Lynchburg was kind of the fiefdom of Jerry Falwell. And so there was a kind of almost a siege mentality among the few Mormons that were there in Lynchburg, because Mormons were really vilified from the pulpit and in the local media. And so there was an unusual degree of cohesion and unity among the Latter Day Saints there. And it was. Yeah, it was family.

John Dehlin [00:10:52] This is pre God makers, right?

Terryl Givens [00:10:54] Barely. Yeah, just barely. Pre God makers.

John Dehlin [00:10:57] Okay. And so you were there. If Lynchburg was anything like Katy, Texas, where I grew up, the local Baptist church would be holding a weekend conference entitled Mormons and Other Cults. And your friends at school would be attending that and then coming to school and asking you questions. Is that right?

Terryl Givens [00:11:16] Absolutely, all the time. In fact, Jerry Falwell gave a sermon in those days in which he talked about the three isms that should be wasms, and they were communism. I think the second was atheism, and the third was Mormonism. So, yeah, they were singled out pretty. Pretty directly by him.

John Dehlin [00:11:37] Dang. Dang. And so you. You read the Book of Mormon as a 16 year old?

Terryl Givens [00:11:43] That's right, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:44] Tell me about that experience. I did the same thing.

Terryl Givens [00:11:47] Well, you know, at first it was just kind of the dutiful seminary student assignment, but I remember there were just a number of occasions when I was reading through the Book of Mormon, especially as I came toward the end, that I can't point any one particular moment, but there just gradually settled upon me a sense that the events that I was reading had really happened and that there was a true spirit of inspiration and truth and power and beauty behind the words that I was reading. And I became devoted, a devoted disciple, really, of the Book of Mormon from that time forward.

John Dehlin [00:12:34] Really. And committed to the church then.

Terryl Givens [00:12:38] Yeah, very much so. I had had my first real spiritual experience just before we left Tucson, heading east to Virginia. Those young years in Arizona were really the happiest of my life. I was just. I loved my school. I active in my wrestling team. I had a future that was all planned out. I was going to go to the Ivy League on a. On a wrestling scholarship. This was my dream, at least. Friends just happy as could be. And then suddenly to be told for no apparent reason, you're going to abandon all of this and head off into this wilderness back east was, you know, it was absolutely devastating. You can imagine that's a tough time in any person's life. Those adolescent years and feeling that it was a crisis. I didn't know. In fact, I even. I ran away from home briefly for a number of days.

John Dehlin [00:13:37] Wow.

Terryl Givens [00:13:37] Was found and brought back, not very happily. And I eventually I finally was. Was drawn to my knees when I felt I had no other recourse. And I experienced at that time an experience of the absolute reality of a divine father who was aware of my predicament and who conveyed a peace and an understanding to my mind that at that time was a great comfort that held forth an understanding of the fitness of what was taking place that I felt was later verified and confirmed in every particular. So that really laid the bedrock for my spiritual life.

John Dehlin [00:14:37] That sounds like a profound spiritual experience, really.

Terryl Givens [00:14:42] Well, it was. And it wasn't related to any particular doctrine or any particular tenet of Mormonism. It was just a generalized recognition that. That prayer can be a vehicle for communion with a higher reality, a personal higher reality, you know.

John Dehlin [00:15:07] You know, your book People of Paradox talks about paradoxes. I interviewed Michael Quinn a few weeks back, and everybody expects the guy to be a non believer. They expect him to angry at the church. They expect him to, you know, kind of be bitter and to not believe. Because who knows more about church history and who's, you know, been treated as roughly as Michael Quinn? The guy would not retreat 1 inch, 1 centimeter from his firm conviction that God lives and that the restoration happened. And. And here you are kind of saying the same thing. And most of the people that I interact with, they kind of go through this crisis of faith and then they're like, oh, well, I know too much now. I just, I know too much history, I know too much of the baggage and I've seen too much, you know, unpleasant things going on. And so they even, you know, they even look back on spiritual experiences they had and just kind of dismiss them and say, well, that must have been just, you know, confirmation bias or indigestion or whatever it was. But here you are, someone who, after reading your books, I can't imagine there's a historical tidbit about the church that I know that you don't. And you're standing here resolute with your spiritual convictions and your testimony.

Terryl Givens [00:16:39] Well, yes, I resolute perhaps, but you know, I feel sometimes like Dostoevsky. He once said, it's not as a child that I believe in Christ and confess him. My hosanna has passed through a great crucible of doubt. And I don't. Well, I've had my crises of faith. I've had some large and some small. But I think doubt is something that I at least have learned to live with side by side with my faith.

John Dehlin [00:17:08] So it's a conviction that was challenged from that time as a 16 or 17 year old boy. And it's been through a maturing and a stealing, as you might say. Is that what you say?

Terryl Givens [00:17:23] Absolutely. I mean, for some years my life in the church followed, I think, a fairly conventional trajectory. Moving back east at 16, immersion in the church, I became just insatiably curious about church history and church doctrine. I read everything I could get my hands on. Suddenly all plans for college collapsed into the one dream to go to byu. And I think that's typical of a lot of people that come to the church at that age where I wanted to be surrounded by like minded, like feeling individuals. And so I went to BYU for a year and then onto my mission in Brazil.

John Dehlin [00:18:02] In Brazil?

Terryl Givens [00:18:03] Yeah, Brazil.

John Dehlin [00:18:04] Any good experiences there?

Terryl Givens [00:18:06] Two years of terrific experiences. Powerful, powerful spiritual manifestations that I experienced personally. Healings, conversions, miracles in the lives of people that we taught, that we interacted with. It was a wonderful, rich two years and then I came back, finished up at, at BYU and was married.

John Dehlin [00:18:31] And so what years Were you at BYU?

Terryl Givens [00:18:34] I was in BYU. I went there in 1975 and after the mission it would have been, I guess, until I graduated, I think in 1980.

John Dehlin [00:18:43] Okay, so, so that's when, that's when, you know, Dialogue had been going for, I don't know, 7, 8, 9, 10 years by that point. And Sunstone was just getting off the ground when you were at byu?

Terryl Givens [00:18:56] That's right. I wasn't exposed to that aspect of Mormon culture, intellectual life, really, in those years. I was very focused on other things. I mean, I was very strong and solid in the church, but professionally I aspired to be an English professor or a historian and hadn't any interest really in integrating Mormon studies, Mormon history into that project.

John Dehlin [00:19:24] Oh, really? So did you, did you even know who Leonard Arrington was at the time?

Terryl Givens [00:19:28] I think I probably had heard of him, but had. I don't think I'd probably read an article in Mormon studies in that throughout that whole period.

John Dehlin [00:19:36] Oh, wow. And so what are you studying at byu?

Terryl Givens [00:19:40] Comparative literature.

John Dehlin [00:19:41] Okay.

Terryl Givens [00:19:42] And so mostly I was just studying languages, Greek and German and Portuguese and Spanish and literary theory and preparing for career in graduate school.

Academic Formation and Intellectual Influences

John Dehlin [00:19:54] Did you have any favorite authors that really inspired you?

Terryl Givens [00:19:57] It was always the Romantics. It was then and it continues to be to this day. And you know, they, they shaped me not just intellectually, but really spiritually as well. I would say, tell us what a

John Dehlin [00:20:08] Romantic is and who some of them are.

Terryl Givens [00:20:11] Well, in Romanticism was a pan European phenomenon, but most of the people that I read were British Romantics like Lord Byron and Shelley and Keats and William Blake and Bobby Burns, most important German ones, Schiller and Goethe. And these are all the people that

John Dehlin [00:20:33] inspired the movie Dead Poet Society. Is that right?

Terryl Givens [00:20:37] Yeah, Dead Poet Society. And there have been a lot of wonderful movies made about Bright Stars, a recent one that I guess was about John Keats. But Romanticism struck me then and it strikes me now as a kind of literary or more broadly an ideological version of Mormon theology. In so many ways, really. If there was one guiding concept or principle behind Romanticism, then I would say it's the notion of agon or struggle, contestation, this sense that we inhabit a dynamic universe, that there is an infinite potential to the human soul, that there's an agonizing conflict between the sense of infinitude and of endless possibilities that our spirit represents challenged by this, the limitations and the frailty and the weakness of the human tabernacle that we find ourselves imprisoned in. But it's a. It's a remarkably optimistic and far reaching and exuberant kind of ideology that centers on human freedom and endless possibility.

John Dehlin [00:21:50] That sounds like Joseph Smith.

Terryl Givens [00:21:52] Sounds it. It sounds very much like Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [00:21:54] Now, when were these books written? You know, just generally the Era late.

Terryl Givens [00:21:59] Very late 1700s, until about 1830. 32.

John Dehlin [00:22:03] Okay, so that's.

Terryl Givens [00:22:04] That's potentially a bit contemporaneous.

John Dehlin [00:22:07] Is that a bit of a milieu that Joseph could have been swimming in then, a little bit?

Terryl Givens [00:22:10] Well, I think he was. I don't know that he himself ever read, you know, any of the British Romantics. But, you know, there's an American version of it which usually comes along a little bit later. 30s, 40s, American transcendentalism, Emerson and Thoreau and that group. But I think he's absolutely participating in the generalized kind of intellectual that is post French Revolution, which has begun to reject this kind of psychopathological God of Calvinism that is trying to find a way to reconcile belief in God with a more enlightened view of humanity and humanitarianism and the positive possibilities of. Of human nature and human society. And so I think Joseph's project religiously was parallel to what these poets were trying to carry out ideologically.

John Dehlin [00:23:08] So you were a Romantic in college?

Terryl Givens [00:23:11] Absolutely. Through and through, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:14] That makes your wife. Fiance at the time. A happy woman then?

Terryl Givens [00:23:18] Well, yeah, my wife was British educated and. And highly cultured and literate in car. In. In art and literature and culture. So that was part of what made us so happily compatible at the time and since.

John Dehlin [00:23:33] Was Ernest Wilkinson at BYU there?

Terryl Givens [00:23:36] No, I. I think he had left just before I got there. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:39] Was Dallin Oaks the president?

Terryl Givens [00:23:41] Dallin Oaks was the president, yeah. What a wonderful time that was to be a student when he was president.

John Dehlin [00:23:46] Yeah. Yeah. Was it. Was Danny Inch playing basketball back then?

Terryl Givens [00:23:50] He was, yeah, he was playing just as I was leaving.

John Dehlin [00:23:53] Okay. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:23:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:55] Good years. Good years.

Terryl Givens [00:23:56] Yeah. Terrific.

John Dehlin [00:23:57] All right, so you. So you get your undergraduate degree in what?

Terryl Givens [00:24:02] English literature, Comparative literature.

John Dehlin [00:24:04] And you didn't know Eugene England? He was there, right?

Terryl Givens [00:24:07] Yeah, he was there, but I'd never. Never met. I'd read some of his essays, but hadn't met him or gone to any of his classes.

John Dehlin [00:24:15] Okay.

Terryl Givens [00:24:15] So my wife and I were married and immediately started our family. So many people in the. We call them the McConkie Kimball generation did under the sense that that was our. That was our duty and.

John Dehlin [00:24:31] Yes.

Terryl Givens [00:24:32] And. And so that. It immediately engendered tremendous financial hardship and complications for us. Immediately. One of our children encountered severe health problems. We went bankrupt. Needed to. We had to drop out of school. I went into business with my father, who by that time was running a successful bookstore in Virginia.

John Dehlin [00:24:58] Oh, yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:25:00] And we bided our time there while we applied to graduate schools and made our Decision to go to chapel? No, initially to Cornell.

John Dehlin [00:25:12] Let me just jump in for just one second. I'll never forget when I was at byu, Elder Holland was president of byu, and I took a religion class from him because I went out with his daughter a little bit. I got to know him just a tiny bit. He spoke really fondly of the decision to get married early, have kids early, and go to graduate school and just to go for it. And he didn't do that without acknowledging the difficulties, but he really bore testimony to something about how that strengthens you and builds you in a way you would have never guessed, versus being more conservative about spacing and waiting and all that stuff. Did you. I mean, it sounds like you had some rough times. Do you feel like that kind of, you know, forged your temperament or, you know, your strength or your character in some important way?

Terryl Givens [00:26:08] Absolutely. I mean, they were unspeakably wrenching, difficult things, times. I mean, I could regale you with horror stories of the things that we went through to try to make ends meet and the predicaments we ended up in, taking care of crazy women for, you know, a pittance and living allowances and. And. But it. There's no question that those were invaluable experiences in terms of forging a bond between my wife and me. She had come from a very privileged background, you know, servants, and her father was colonialist. They lived around the world.

John Dehlin [00:26:48] Wow.

Terryl Givens [00:26:48] And. And suddenly she's taking care of an invalid, trying to nurse a newborn, trying to work nights and help put me through school, and I'm working sometimes three jobs at a time. It's. It was the kind of life that I would be appalled and horrified to see my children going through. But, you know, we weathered it well, and it. I don't. I don't regret those choices that we made. And miracle upon miracle followed, enabling us to. To make our way through.

John Dehlin [00:27:22] Yeah, I don't know if that's something I'd wish on my children either, but that's something about Mormonism that I love. Just this. Do it. And it's going to be hard, but you'll be. You'll benefit, and then you do, you know.

Terryl Givens [00:27:34] Yeah. Yeah, we did.

John Dehlin [00:27:36] Okay. So you went to Cornell first.

Terryl Givens [00:27:38] So I went to Cornell, where I was studying in the intellectual history program.

John Dehlin [00:27:43] That's kind of fancy. Cornell's, you know, Ivy League, right?

Terryl Givens [00:27:45] Yeah, it was Ivy League. And I had been made offers at Yale and at Cornell.

John Dehlin [00:27:52] Whoa, you turned down Yale?

Terryl Givens [00:27:54] Well, I turned down Yale because Cornell offered better terms, better money, and I was just very flattered because I was written in a personal invitation from Dominique La Capra, who at that time was the premier intellectual historian in America. And he said, come, come study with me. So I was there.

John Dehlin [00:28:13] Dang, that's cool.

Terryl Givens [00:28:16] And so I did all the coursework in intellectual history. But that was the early 80s, and may recall that was a time of higher education's absolute infatuation with post structuralism and deconstruction and all things French. And I'd gone there to study history, the history of ideas, but all anybody wanted to talk about was post structuralist literary theory.

John Dehlin [00:28:40] Just tell us, you know, for those of us who aren't very literate, just give us a sense for what those ideas were trying to do.

Terryl Givens [00:28:48] Well, Derrida was fond of saying that if you think you can explain post structuralism, then you don't really know what

John Dehlin [00:28:54] you're talking about, which makes it worse.

Terryl Givens [00:28:57] So I'd be loathed. But it's all about the ways in which language works against itself. The way that our assumptions about language and meaning and how they operate are. Are not what we think, that meaning is always destabilized, that there isn't. That we have this sense that there is a truth that we could get to if we could just find the right language to capture it. But that absolute, stable meaning is always elusive and perpetually deferred. And it operates at a level of abstraction. And it takes what some people have called the hermeneutics of suspicion to such, in my mind, absurd and unworkable lengths that I just found it utterly, well, verging on nihilism. And so I became very dispirited with it and decided that.

Post-Structuralism and Mormon Intellectual Discourse

John Dehlin [00:29:47] Let me talk about that, because I think that's really important. I think that is important to what we've seen happen in the Mormon discourse, at least in the circles that I run with, because I almost agree with everything you said, in the sense that language is tricky. What does anything mean? Everything can and in some ways should be deconstructed, because things aren't simple and things are complex, and we do come out of a context, and that context affects us. And so much of our values and our perspective is shaped from our environment and is. Is kind of subjective and even relative, depending on where you come from. So I'm just going to try and reflect it, and then I want you to comment on it. So I kind of resonate with some of that. But what I hear you saying is that maybe it's not useful. Maybe it takes things so far that everything unravels and you're left with no meaning and no value, and you're just kind of left exhausted, lying back, thinking, what's the point of anything? But that's just my crude way to restate it. How would you affirm or explore.

Terryl Givens [00:31:04] No, I think you've captured very well, at least my response to it. And of course, its proponents would say that's an unfair, simplistic characterization, but I'm not saying that it didn't have its own validity. In fact, George Steiner once came to Chapel Hill and gave a lecture on poststructuralism in which he said, look, it's impossible to intellectually refute Derrida. There's a kind of logical rigor to his argument. And he says, but at the level of spirit and intuition, we know that there's something wrong with where he's trying to take us. One of the points he made was that, you know, Derrida might be able to argue that there isn't any real essential, inherent difference between Dante's Divine Comedy in anything we might want to say about that Divine Comedy, but we know there's a difference. So there is such a thing as value and meaning. And so I retreated in the face of, as I said, what I thought was just a kind of pernicious, spiritual kind of vacuity to all that.

John Dehlin [00:32:09] Real quick, real quick. Is post structuralism similar to postmodernism? I mean, are they same school or totally different things?

Terryl Givens [00:32:16] Well, there's. There's overlap. Post structuralism is more concerned with modes of reading texts, whereas postmodernism is a broader ideological framework that does the same thing.

John Dehlin [00:32:28] Does it?

Terryl Givens [00:32:29] Well, both of them work to decenter kind of hegemonic ways of thinking about language or discourse or history. Both of them emphasize fragmentation, pluralistic perspectives. But I think post modernism doesn't necessarily lead to the kinds of impasses that I think structuralism.

John Dehlin [00:32:52] And you do have sympathies with what post structuralism is trying to do, right? I mean, speaking of colonialism with your wife, I mean, there are. We do come out of this sort of monolithic, Western, white male culture that maybe has had too much of a. Of an impact on how people think and see the world. So, you see, I'm sure that's kind of what post structuralism was reacting to, right?

Terryl Givens [00:33:17] Oh, absolutely. And they also are reacting to the kind of narratives we tell about history in which there is, you know, one essential process that is unfolding into which we have to fit all historical phenomena. I think postmodernism has done a lot as well, to alert us to the ways in which meaning is always shaped and conditioned by language and by the limitedness of the human condition. And I'm willing to buy and acknowledge the validity and the value of those kinds of insights.

John Dehlin [00:33:50] But you want it to be an herb or a scent, not a primary thrust, is that right?

Terryl Givens [00:33:57] Right.

John Dehlin [00:33:58] A flavoring? Yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:34:01] I mean, like Heidegger says, we inhabit the world linguistically. I mean, it's true that we construct a reality out of language. We only have access to thinking through words. But I don't think it necessarily follows as a result that there isn't such a thing as truth. I think that it's only subjectively accessible to us. But I think that just because you believe something doesn't make it so, you know, that we all construct our own realities may be true, but those are realities with a small R, I think.

John Dehlin [00:34:33] Yeah. So even so, in this. In this reaction to post structuralism, there's this kernel of faith and spirit and intuition that doesn't want to die.

Terryl Givens [00:34:46] Right. At least I don't want to see it die anyhow.

John Dehlin [00:34:51] So is there a name to what you fled to, a type of reaction to post structuralism? Like, was there some type of movement or response to that?

Terryl Givens [00:35:03] Well, no. Eventually, I think it died out just because people grew weary of paying more attention to the framework than the substance. So I retreated to what at that time was one of the oldest and most well established and respected but very traditional programs in the country in comparative literature. I went to Chapel Hill, and there are. Yeah, and they're. The emphasis in the program was, let's study the texts, let's. Let's get back to the tradition, let's establish the foundation, and then we'll overlay it with expertise in critical theory, literary criticism, the history of criticism, and so forth. So that was my retreat, at least.

John Dehlin [00:35:46] Okay. Okay. Now, was that time at Cornell challenging? Like, you talked about having to kind of deal with a deepening and a strengthening and sometimes a destabilizing of your testimony of Mormonism? Did any of that happen at Cornell?

Terryl Givens [00:36:07] No, that was still a few years away.

John Dehlin [00:36:09] Okay, keep us. Let's go. So, Unc Chapel Hill, did you have a thesis or dissertation at Cornell?

Terryl Givens [00:36:17] No, I hadn't begun work on the dissertation. I just finished the coursework.

John Dehlin [00:36:21] So tell us about Chapel Hill. What did you do there?

Terryl Givens [00:36:23] So, Chapel Hill, a wonderful four years there. Terrific area of the country. Wonderful, diverse church group and continue to have children and raise our family, and. Finished my degree in comparative Literature. Oddly, my focus ended up being Iberian medievalism and modernism.

John Dehlin [00:36:47] That's Spain, right?

Terryl Givens [00:36:48] Spain and Portugal through the Middle Ages and then. And then 20th century. And so when it came time to apply for jobs, I applied for positions in Portuguese, in Spanish, in Comparative Literature, in English, and ended up finding just a really plum position at the University of Richmond to teach romanticism and literary theory. So we went there in 1988.

John Dehlin [00:37:14] So you're a Virginia boy?

Terryl Givens [00:37:16] Yep. Went back to Virginia. Been here ever since.

John Dehlin [00:37:19] Okay, go ahead.

Terryl Givens [00:37:23] Well, so I began my career here, you know, published my first articles in literary theory and Greek aesthetics and theories of imitation and Portuguese and Brazilian novelists and poets. And then it was a fluke that really changed my trajectory radically. My father at this time was a collector of a number of things, but one of his hobbies was anti Mormon books. And he himself was a devout, faithful member. But he was just. He was intrigued by this kind of Proliferation in the 19th century of anti Mormon novels and stories. So he kept feeding them to me and saying, you're a professor of literature. Do something like this.

John Dehlin [00:38:08] You're smart, you're smart. You can figure this stuff out.

Terryl Givens [00:38:10] Yeah, he said, there seems like there's a story here to be told. And so I remember he gave me three copies of Harper's Magazine from the 1860s, I think, and there was a story, Two Mormons from Muddlety. And as I read this caricature of Mormon mission work, it struck me that there were just some very strange things happening in terms of the literary forms and patterns that were appearing through those stories and other novels that I was taking a look at. And so I turned my attention to writing a book on the uses of the Mormon image in the 19th century. And it struck me that there were two really interesting questions, interesting to me at least, that I wanted to investigate. And one of them was, you know, we all learn from the time we're children that America was founded for religious freedom. When my wife took her naturalization test, that was one of the questions, why did the Pilgrims come to America? And the correct answer was for religious freedom. And we know that that wasn't true in most cases, but certainly that was a way that Americans conceived of themselves. Right. We're religiously diverse and pluralistic. And. And so my question was, how do you. How do you reconcile that self conception with the fact that Americans are burning Irish Catholic shanty towns, burning Catholic convents, killing and mobbing Mormons, all beginning in the 1830s, the same years that Gustave de Beaumont and de Tocqueville are touring America and writing about this paradise of religious tolerance.

John Dehlin [00:39:58] What's up with that? It reminds me of Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence and fathering children with his slaves.

Terryl Givens [00:40:05] Yeah, yeah. So it's a contradiction. And you could just say, well, it's a contradiction. But I got the sense, reading the anti Mormon literature of this period, that the writers were engaging in strategies of representation that allowed them to reconcile that contradiction. And it turns out that the principal strategy that was being employed was to reconstruct the Mormon religion into a Mormon ethnicity, because it's perfectly acceptable, right, to kill Indians or burn, you know, lynch blacks or, you know, mob Irish immigrants. Nativism gives you the justification to try to expunge threatening ethnic groups so they're not susceptible of the same kinds of. They're not deemed worthy of the same kinds of protections and respects which a religious group might be. And the success with which this effort was carried off is evident in the fact that if you go to the most recent edition of the Harvard Encyclopedia of Ethnic Groups, Mormonism is listed as an ethnic group.

John Dehlin [00:41:16] Really?

Terryl Givens [00:41:16] And in fact, in the entry it says Mormonism is the only example in American history of an indigenously derived ethnic community. In other words, of an ethnic community that is just created ex nihilo. And you put those two things together and it just, it made sense to me, and this is what I argue in my first book, Viper on the Hearth, that because it was also in many ways advantageous to the Mormons themselves to be seen as a distinct an ethnic community, that this process was effectively carried out largely through popular culture in the 19th century and it persists to some extent today.

John Dehlin [00:41:59] Are you saying that they helped us become kind of an ethnic group?

Terryl Givens [00:42:02] Yeah, absolutely. And you know, Mormons had their own self interest in the execution of that process insofar as it helped to convince Mormons that, yeah, they really were distinct, that they were a chosen people, people with a special destiny and identity. And so it worked to the ideological purposes of both groups, even though they were engaged in the process for very opposed reasons.

Mormonism, Culture, and Anti-Mormon Sentiment

John Dehlin [00:42:31] You know, this is interesting to me because when I was struggling with, and I'm still struggling with it, with. The predominant culture within mormonism in the 21st century, which after reading People of Paradox, I'm reminded that 21st century Mormon culture is very different from early Mormon 20th century Mormon culture, which is maybe even closer to, which makes sense, Joseph's, you know, what Joseph Smith would have wanted for us than what we seem to have from my point of view. But when I was struggling with 21st century Mormon culture. What I discovered, Kaim Potok, who wrote about Judaism's, you know, attempts to deal with modernity and science.

Terryl Givens [00:43:26] Right.

John Dehlin [00:43:27] And, you know, I discovered the Reform Judaism movement and the other branches of Judaism and how rich and diverse Jewish culture is, where, yes, they're the Hasidic or ultra Orthodox strains, but they're also progressive strains and liberal strains and moderate strains. And you could kind of find a home for you as a Jew and still be able to call yourself a Jew. And so I started talking openly about how, you know, we need something like Reform Mormonism. We need, we need a place for progressives or open minded people. And the response I got from the kind of, let's just say post Mormon crowd was always, we're not like the Jews. We're not an ethnicity. We're not, you know, we're not like them. We're just, you know, a bunch of white, you know, Western European people who make green jello. You know, it was just not at all, it was not at all showing respect to us as a potential ethnicity. You know what I'm saying? Do you have thoughts about that?

Terryl Givens [00:44:36] Well, I don't know how far you want to push the analogy with Jews. I'm not claiming that Mormons constitute an ethnic group. Most sociologists would retreat from that kind of designation, but they do use terms like subculture or global tribe or people. So there's a clear recognition on the part of anybody who has studied Mormonism or anybody who has observed Mormonism that their identity transcends mere denominational status. And that seems to me to be the important point here that, you know, you wouldn't start a headline by saying a Presbyterian teacher was arrested last night for robbery, but if he was a Mormon, the headline might very well say a Mormon teacher was arrested. Right. So it functions as a label in ways that don't really correspond to normal denominational designations. So something is happening there and I'll leave it to the sociologist to decide exactly what that is.

John Dehlin [00:45:32] Okay. Okay. Okay, cool. So that's what Viper on the Hearth is all about. How?

Terryl Givens [00:45:41] Well, that's.

John Dehlin [00:45:42] Go ahead.

Terryl Givens [00:45:43] Yeah, that's one half of it then. The other question that I'm trying to answer at the same time is what common thread is there, if any, that connects the anti mormonism of the 1830s with the anti Mormonism of the 21st century?

John Dehlin [00:46:01] What'd you find?

Terryl Givens [00:46:03] Well, I'm not asserting that you can reduce it all to one causal factor, but I think there is one common feature to the discomfort that is a constant in representations of Mormonism from the earliest days to the present. And I think that's what I call the collapse of sacred distance. And this became most apparent to me one day when I was conversing with a colleague. He's a very devout member of another faith and he was just viscerally, viscerally anti Mormon. And we had a good kind of collegial relationship, but he, he would just get visibly shaken by, by the topic of Mormonism. Finally, after a few years, I confronted him one day and I said, I said, why don't you tell me exactly what it is that you so, so dislike about Mormonism? And he paused a moment and then he said, okay. He said, do you really believe that a million years from now you're going to be creating worlds of your own and peopling them with your posterity? And I waited just a moment and then I said, I'll answer that question if you tell me what you will be doing 1 million years. And he said, he said, you know, without a pause, growing in the grace of Christ. And I said, no, no, no, no, no. I said, I mean, on September 23rd, at 10 o' clock in the morning, 1 million years from today, if I knock on your door in heaven, what will you be doing? And he paused for a very long moment and then all the wind went out of his sails and he said, I see your point. Anything I could say would sound absurd. And for me that was like an epiphany that it isn't the particulars of Mormon theology as much as the particularity of Mormon theology. It's not what Mormons believe as much as that they believe with a degree of specificity that they presume to know what God looks like and where we were before we were born and what's going to happen in the celestial worlds after this life. And you know, the, you can describe angels and the clothing that they wear, and there's a materiality and a physicality and a reality and a definition to Mormon history and theology that transcends anything that you, you find in, in the Christian, the larger Christian tradition. And when you do find other prophets or mystics who pretend to have the same kind of detailed, right, experiential descriptions of heavenly things like, like Emanuel Swedenborg in the 18th century and just say, well, you know, we have to read this symbolically, or it was just kind of visionary or it's allegorical, but Joseph Smith absolutely prevents you from reducing the Mormon story to allegory or myth. Why? Well, because he brings 11 witnesses into the picture. So you can't say that the plates were a figment of Joseph's imagination. And he says that real resurrected beings put their hands on his head and he felt them. So it wasn't something that just happens in his mind time and time and time again. He insists on the literal veracity of what is happening. You can't just say the Book of Mormon is a, is a spiritual kind of outpouring of his religious self, because what you actually have is a, is a connection via Moroni as translator, as editor, but also as the last character in that narrative which ties him to a specific place and time in the American hemisphere. So in all of these ways, Mormonism just collapses that distance. And once you recognize that and you go back to the earliest anti Mormon literature of the 1830s and you compare it with what's being written in the 21st century, this thread exists throughout. Mormonism is mocked because of the specificity of their claims and the concreteness of their representations of spiritual things. So that, to me, was represented a tremendous step forward in understanding one of the major sources of discomfort and tension between Mormonism and the larger Christian world, which historians hadn't zeroed in on, but literature revealed.

John Dehlin [00:50:43] Yeah, but. Well, I will say this. I will say yes. I mean, so many people just love Joseph Smith's theology and the boldness of it. It's just so bold. And yes, the witnesses and the plates and the claims about ancient America, I mean, they're so bold. Right. And I was just thumbing. And they're beautiful. They're bold and they're beautiful, they're expansive. I mean, they take. It's true. Like, what are we gonna do? We playing harps in heaven? I mean, at least Joseph Smith gives us something to do. And it involves sex. No, I'm sorry, that was inappropriate of me. But I mean, I use that as a joke. But I mean it like at least takes it one step further and gives us something not just a little bit better, but potentially beautiful and fantastic and rich to be doing at least a million years. Now, I could turn that back to you and say, in a billion years, what are you going to be doing in heaven, Terrell Givens? And you could see that you might have the same look on your face as that guy did. How far does that go? Right? Yeah, yeah, but maybe that's what our, you know, the next Joseph Smith, in or out of our tradition will tell us. Is that what you're thinking?

Terryl Givens [00:52:04] Yeah, perhaps.

John Dehlin [00:52:05] At least he moves to football.

Terryl Givens [00:52:06] Is that what you're saying, yeah, I don't know. We. We. I think for a number of reasons, we've lost that appreciation for what Richard Bushman calls the culture of boundlessness out of which Mormonism arose. And this is one of the things that I love about Parley Pratt is what fired his zeal in Mormonism was this sense of limitlessness, right. That God doesn't want to keep us in darkness, that prophecy and revelation are not restricted, as they are in the Bible, to prophet figures, but there is a universal accessibility to the mysteries of heaven, that. That the universe doesn't operate according to some zero sum game in which our progress can only occur if it diminishes God. And so there has to be this infinite qualitative difference between deity and the human. So there are no strictures. So, yeah, there absolutely is this kind of reveling, this exuberance that comes so much out of that romantic background where once you throw off the shackles of this kind of Calvinistic view of a depraved human nature, then, you know, the sky is the limit. That's a very exciting thing. But it also seems potentially blasphemous and prideful and arrogant. And, you know, it's no coincidence that one of the oldest motifs in world culture is the motif of the person who flies too close to the sun, who tries to build the tower to get to heaven, who aspires to become like God. You know, whether you call it hubris in classical culture or pride in the Christian. Christian culture, there has always been. Right. A universal cultural stigma associated with this kind of vaunting ambition.

John Dehlin [00:54:00] Was that Icarus? Who is that?

Terryl Givens [00:54:01] Yeah, Icarus who flies too close to the sun and, you know, the Tower of Babel from the biblical tradition.

John Dehlin [00:54:07] Oh, right, right.

Terryl Givens [00:54:09] And Greek mythology is full of morality stories about humans who aspire to become too. Too much like the divine and are, you know, punished as a result.

John Dehlin [00:54:22] And Joseph pushed those boundaries, didn't he?

Terryl Givens [00:54:26] He pushed them without any sense of limitation whatsoever. And I think he would have pushed them even further if his audience had been more receptive. But you get a sense that he continually was forced to retreat because of how scandalized his audience felt by the doctrines he was teaching.

John Dehlin [00:54:42] Yeah. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out@sabre-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

John Dehlin [00:55:03] Come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear but with joy wend your way though heart to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to the San Jo Hearts will swell oh, all is well all is well. Why should we mourn? I think our lot is hard Tis not so all is right why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight Gird up your loads Fresh courage Take our God we will never us for sake soon we'll have let's tell a tale oh, all is well all is well oh, all is well all is well. Sam. Sa. Journeys through happy days all is well we then are free from toil and sorrow too with the just we shall dwell. But if our lives are spared again to see the saints the rest obtain I will make this glorious well oh, all is well all is well all is well all is well well all

John Dehlin [00:58:59] is well

John Dehlin [00:59:03] oh, all is well. All in the well all in the way. Sam.

People of Paradox and the Mormon Experience

Part 2 of 5 · Ep. 290

John Dehlin [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

Terryl Givens [00:01:13] Kind of the Harold Bloom position.

John Dehlin [00:01:15] Yeah, I thought that was cool. But he. I think he meant it like he said it with a smile on his face, you know?

Terryl Givens [00:01:20] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:01:22] He didn't say he's one of the. He said he's not just one of the greatest religious leaders in America or greatest religious leaders, he's one of the greatest men who's ever lived. So I thought that was kind of interesting, if I'm remembering it correctly. Okay, so I have to jump back, and I don't know how to segue this or if this is a good point to segue this into the crisis of faith discussion that you may have had. I don't even know that story. But I was reading in People of Paradox something that you wrote, and it ties to what you just said, which is this is on page 222 of People of Paradox. It says, LDS doctrine as a whole is rooted inescapably in history. Its claims to divine authority and restored truth are entirely dependent on the narratives of LDS origins. Without an uncompromising belief in Joseph Smith's literal visitation by God and heavenly angels, verbally communicating and physically transmitting to him ancient records and priesthood keys, and without verifiable evidence of a continuing conduit linking Joseph's successors to God, a God who personally directs the continuing work of the restoration, and here's the part I put five stars by in my margins, Mormonism would utterly lose its claim to be the unique institutional form of the one true gospel. What. What this means in practice is that challenges to orthodox accounts of the church's past strike at the very heart of the faith. Now, why was I. Oh, and you go on in 223 to write. Since the historical reality of ancient Nephites and gold plates constitute the evidence of Joseph's prophetic calling and the actual visitations of resurrected beings are the foundation of his priesthood authority, history, not theological plausibility, spiritual appeal or even fruits of godliness is the foundation of Mormonism. And this strikes me as. This reminds me of Gordon B. Hinckley, who basically asserted the church is either everything it claims to be or it's the biggest fraud perpetrated upon mankind. And, you know, I have this perception that someone like you who is still an active, believing member of the church would like, not want to push that point. I would expect you to go, oh, it's kind of a James Fowler stage five. You know, it's not about the plates. It's about the message. And it's not about the, you know, the historical. You know, it's not about the historic historicity of the Book of Mormon. It's about what the message is. Because you're, like, facing down, you're like, standing up to the challenge of where Mormonism is most vulnerable, but you're not backing down from that. And I'm expecting you to head or to waffle or to kind of nuance or soft step, and you're just going right at it, both here in our conversation and in your book. And I don't get that.

Terryl Givens [00:04:28] Well, let me just. Let me try to clarify what I am and what I'm not saying because. Because I think this position that I've staked out and that I also repeat in much more detail and by the hand of Mormon is I think, one of the most misunderstood positions that I've tried to defend. For example, Massimo Introvigne, the great Catholic scholar of modern religions, reviewed my book by the end of Mormon and referred to that same argument that you've just rehearsed. And he said, terrell Givens is a very impolite writer because he takes this as being dogmatic and is trying to shut down, compromise and detente. Let me.

John Dehlin [00:05:09] I didn't take it that way at all. Just for the record. Go ahead.

Terryl Givens [00:05:12] What I mean is, you know, insofar as you're trying to force somebody into an either or, you know, there's something a little bit George Bush like about this. Right. Your force are against us.

John Dehlin [00:05:19] Right.

Terryl Givens [00:05:20] But I'm not. I'm not stating that as my position or my Interpretation. The point I'm trying to make is that the way Mormonism has constructed itself creates that dichotomy because Joseph himself made those historical events the foundation of his claims to authority. And the one thing that differentiated Mormonism from most other restorationist movements. Or was that question of authority. How do we know that Mormons really have the authority? Well, they only have an authority different from any other biblical based religion if real people actually conveyed that authority to them in the way Joseph Smith described. So he's the one that put all those eggs in that basket. I think that's, that's what I'm trying to say. And to try to dehistoricize Mormonism is like trying to dehistoricize Christianity. I mean, if you say, well, whether Christ literally resurrected from the dead or not is immaterial, there are very few Christians that would go that far. And yet whether or not he resurrected from the dead is not a matter of spiritual belief. It's a matter of historical fact. He did or he did not. And you can't escape. Right. The historical rootedness of that core fundamental belief. And in the same way, and I mean, if you even listen to how testimonies are born today, what testimonies consist of is ascent to intellectual propositions. Yeah, I mean, nobody stands up in sacrament meeting. And this I lament, I'm not praising this, but nobody stands up and says, I just want to bear my testimony that I've been born again. I want to bear my testimony that I've experienced the second birth. I want to bear my testimony of how I've experienced the atonement in my life. Very seldom would you hear those kinds of things. What you hear is I testify that right in, on a spring day in 1820, Joseph Smith experienced these things he described, or that, you know, the Book of Mormon came forth in this particular way according to these, you know, details. So Mormon faith has become intellectualized because it's tied to this history. But that's a function of itself, conceiving. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:07:36] Yeah, it totally makes sense. But a good mutual friend of ours once said that not all things that are true are useful. And I guess what I'm saying is that like, yeah, it's true that Mormonism's truthfulness, it's either true or false. But that's not always helpful to intellectuals, to people who are thinking, no, it is.

Terryl Givens [00:08:02] But I also, let me emphasize that that doesn't mean that everything that has been claimed for the historical record is equally important or essential. You know, exactly when Joseph got the priesthood or exactly, you know, the order or sequence in which things happened or the specific wording of revelations and as they unfolded or occurred. You know, I think there are, you know, we all know, anybody who's, who's spent any time at all in church history knows that there are, you know, thousands of distortions, evasions, conflations, misquotations that are part of the Mormon historical right narrative that we have been telling ourselves. But my point is that the essentials, right, can't, it seems to me that they can't be compromised without Mormonism imploding. And I think if you want to look for a historical parallel, you know, the president of the Community of Christ, he gave a talk in Kirtland in which he said theology constructed on history is perilous. And so he gave a talk explaining why they have self consciously deliberately moved away from those historical claims. And my response is, well, it hasn't worked very well.

John Dehlin [00:09:24] How's that working for you?

Terryl Givens [00:09:28] And it's because, you know, you can't make it work with Mormonism. You can make it work with other traditions that maybe don't have as well documented a period of origination or that don't set out to found their core principles on historical events.

John Dehlin [00:09:48] Yeah, yeah, it's true. It's true that the church can't. The church has to. I mean, the church is, the LDS Church is doing the right thing, but if its goal is maintaining its membership, maintaining a vibrancy, and I know it's sincere as well, but it's doing the right thing to stand up and boldly back its history. I think the brethren are much more smart and savvy than many intellectuals give them credit for, in addition to them being sincere. But retrenching, as Armand Moss would put it, is clearly the right move if the LDS Church wants to survive into the 21st century. But the problem that I'm this is the main thing I'm excited to talk to you about is that the vast majority of thinking, thoughtful, well read intellectual Mormons that I've met, and maybe it's a biased sub selection of when they do gather the data, when they do look at the historical record, when they do try to piece it all together, the Church's historical narrative ceases to be a credible one. And you are standing here as one of these anomalies, as one, along with Richard Bushman and I guess Daniel Peterson and others who, who knows more than most of us and yet still wants to view the LDS record as credible. And that's what I don't understand. And I want to hold you up as an example of someone who's found a way to do that. And I want you to tell us as much as you can about how. And that doesn't mean now you gotta go and tell me where your testimony is rooted. But, like, did you ever pass through that dark night of the soul where you're like polyandry and peep stones and, you know, horses? Like, was that in North Carolina? Or when was that? Or did you.

Personal Faith Challenges and Belief in God

Terryl Givens [00:11:55] Well, you know, I've had different kinds of challenges to my convictions. I had one experience in the early 1990s when I was on a trip in Africa and a colleague was swimming and out in the ocean and was drowning. And I attempted to. To go out and bring her back, and we both got caught in a current, carried out, and had a pretty traumatic near drowning experience. As close to a near death experience as I think one can have and not actually pass through death. It was. It was traumatic, it was harrowing. It was profoundly disturbing and unsettling in many ways because it didn't follow the narrative that we read about in the Ensign. You know, there weren't heavenly choirs there waiting to usher me across the veil. There wasn't a sense of peace or help or heavenly assistance. I felt like I confronted a darkness and a terror of annihilation. And, you know, only somebody who's gone through that experience can fully appreciate what that was. And it caused a very profound reassessment on my part when I actually was able to make it back to shore and after I was revived and brought around. And I spent a long time, days and weeks and even months after that time reflecting on what had happened and the meaning of that and reassessing what really do I know, what certainties can I really rest upon in my spiritual life? And I think what it caused in my life was a reorientation in many ways. From that point forward, I became less, I think, preoccupied in my own life with the particularities of doctrine and dogma and more concerned with the general question of, you know, what do we know? What can I say with unshakable conviction that I know to be true about this universe and my place in it. And there grew from that time forward in me, I think, a profounder appreciation for the capacity of the human spirit to recognize truth and beauty and goodness in the larger world. I became much fonder of the poem that Gerard Manny Hopkins wrote, which he talks about christ playing in 10,000 places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes. Not his. To the Father through the features of men's faces, the, to my mind, undeniable reality of our knowledge and recognition that things like kindness and love and goodness are of value and deserve to be affirmed. And things like hate and betrayal and cruelty are wrong not just because of some evolutionarily inherited sense that pertains to our species that values one thing over another, but a sense of the absolute, undeniable goodness and evil that exist in the universe. I think I became more appreciative of the way in which God and his love are manifest through things like, well, conversion narratives and stories and experiences of redemption and just all the good that exists in the world. This might all sound very vague and very touchy feely, but what I'm saying is that I think sometimes we throw out the baby with the bathwater when we confuse a loss of faith in one in particular with a loss of faith in the totality of, of all that is good and true. Now, that was one experience that I had that reoriented me. But as I pursued my work in Mormon studies, as you say, I had to confront virtually every anti Mormon narrative that's ever been written and every seamy and distasteful underside of the Mormon story that is there in the historical record to be found. And I think the central insight that I gained and that saw me through was the insight that God meant it, that he really meant it. In section 124 of the Doctrine and Covenants, when he said, joseph, I picked you to show what I can do with the weak things of the earth. And, you know, you sometimes hear this almost as a cliche, but I think it just hasn't sunk in, in.

John Dehlin [00:16:50] I see what you're saying. He really was seriously flawed.

Terryl Givens [00:16:54] He was seriously flawed and not just

John Dehlin [00:16:59] at the surface kind of deprecating exactly.

Terryl Givens [00:17:02] Not in some condescending way that we say, oh, I know Joseph wasn't perfect. Not only wasn't he perfect, he did some downright, you know, bad things and scandalous, scandalous. And you know, but then you look back through the Old Testament, right? You think, you know, Jonah fled his calling and he wanted to see God annihilate a whole city. And, you know, Moses took glory to himself and killed an Egyptian. And, you know, countless prophets flee their calling and went, you know, so why do we.

John Dehlin [00:17:36] And Peter. And Peter denied Christ.

Terryl Givens [00:17:37] Peter denied Christ. And so, you know, where did Joseph ever say in the historical record, I am a good man? On the contrary, he said, I'm not a good man.

John Dehlin [00:17:47] He did.

John Dehlin [00:17:47] He Did.

Terryl Givens [00:17:48] And I love the fact that he said, I love a man, swears a streak as long as my arm, but isn't one of your highest faced hypocrites. So in many ways again, he's like Lord Byron, right? Lord Byron was a lecher. He slept with his sister. He was scandalous in a very deliberate, self conscious way. But Lord Byron had to say about his age was this is the age, like Chesterfield said, that has the morals of a dancing master and the manners of a whore. But by golly, I'm a man of integrity and I will practice what I preach and stand behind what I say. So what I'm saying is, you know, everybody has a different morality and you know, I think to impose or to put on Joseph Smith the weight of serving as an exemplum of the gospel itself at its best is just utterly inappropriate and wrong headed.

John Dehlin [00:18:40] So he wasn't even asking us to do it.

Terryl Givens [00:18:42] He never asked us to do it. He warned us away from doing that.

John Dehlin [00:18:46] And his God never asked us to do it either. God was always, always condemning Joseph.

Terryl Givens [00:18:50] Right, exactly. And then the counterpoint, the counterpoint to section 124 to my mind is section 49, the, the revelation about, you know, about going to teach the Shakers where God says this very enigmatic thing to Joseph Smith. He says, I have reserved unto myself holy men that ye know not of. Now, what a delightfully provocative idea he's planted there in the mind of Joseph that there are holy people that you don't even know about. So they're probably not even in the church. So on the one hand we're told Joseph isn't meant to be a moral exemplum of anything. And on the other hand there are men who are moral exemplums who are neither identified as such nor even identified with the church. Now if you understand that point which the Lord seems to be at pains to make, then it seems to me that a tremendous amount of, tremendous number of the problems that intellectuals have with the church just evaporate. Maybe not all of them, but a lot of them do and a lot of them did for me.

John Dehlin [00:20:03] Yeah, yeah. And you know, there is the cliche that the church is perfect but the members aren't and that, you know, Joseph was a prophet but he wasn't perfect. And I think you've made a compelling case for that. And.

Terryl Givens [00:20:20] Well, I go further than that. You know, Gene England, you know, wrote that really wonderful essay about why the church is as true as the gospel. And I, you know, I think he was right. You know, one of my favorite quotations from Brigham Young is the one where he says, you know, this gospel causes men and women to reveal that which would have slept in their dispositions until they dropped into their graves. Every fault that a person has will be made manifest that it might be corrected by the Gospel. In other words, you know, I take that to mean that it's. It's not just this, the frail organization, the inept kind of right execution of the gospel plan that causes problems, but that God willingly and knowingly allowed a church to unfold and proceed and organize itself in such a way that it will test and try us. I mean, on the day the church was organized, the very day, April 6, 1830, the Lord says in another revelation, right, that you're going to have to stain the prophet. And then he invokes two words with patience and faith. Now, why would we need patience to support a prophet unless he's clearly going to do things from time to time that are stupid, that are misguided, that are incomprehensible to us? I just think what Brigham Young might have meant is you're going to bump up against so many rough edges and so many human flaws in this church that you're going to have every opportunity that you could possibly desire to exercise mercy and forgiveness.

John Dehlin [00:21:56] So you stand with Eugene England in saying that the church is a great way to forge our temperaments and character and soul by learning not only the virtues, but also to deal with the complexities and the frailties of the church.

Terryl Givens [00:22:10] Absolutely. And I think we don't fully appreciate, as Mormons. Do you realize that we are the only Christian church left that still organizes geographically? I mean, some. Some do. Ostensibly the Catholic Church, you're supposed to have your parishes, but, you know, everybody shops around. Why would that be? Why would this be the only church organized that way? Well, I think it's to replicate the experience of family. It's to give you relatives that you can't run away from. It forces us to deal with the most difficult personalities. Right. Sitting next to us in the pew week after week.

John Dehlin [00:22:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:46] And it makes it so you're challenged instead of just slinging together a buffet that may not be providing you with the best nutrients, you know?

Terryl Givens [00:22:55] Yeah. You know, my wife is really fond of remembering the. The analogy that the Savior made to the gospel as a net. And you have to think, you know, what does a net bring in with it? Well, yet brings in a couple of choice sea fish, but also brings in rusty license plates and rubber boots. And garbage and dead fish. And that's what, that's what the church gathers in. Right. We're a hospital for the spiritually sick. What do we expect to find around us, you know?

John Dehlin [00:23:24] Right.

Terryl Givens [00:23:25] Or in our past.

John Dehlin [00:23:27] Okay, well, I have to. So was there a time where you were. Where you were questioning if there were gold plates in your adulthood, where you were questioning the credibility of the three and the eight witnesses, where you were taken back by the polyandry and Joseph's denial, where you looked at the Book of Mormon and you read the things about horses and steel and geography and DNA and where you're like, oh my goodness, these are credible. Just like BH Roberts that you so unflinchingly mention in People of Paradox. BH Roberts clearly felt like the criticisms, the archaeological, anthropological, historical criticisms of the Book of Mormon were credible. Did you ever have to deal with all that?

Terryl Givens [00:24:24] Well, I don't think it ever came to a head any one particular point. I think BH Roberts was a wonderful role model for me and I would think he should be for many. Because if you look back at BH Roberts, he manifested absolute intellectual integrity.

John Dehlin [00:24:36] Right.

Terryl Givens [00:24:36] Here are the problems. I'm not going to run away from them.

John Dehlin [00:24:39] Yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:24:39] But with Hindsight now of 100 years, we can look and see that one of BH Roberts problems was that he operated throughout on the totally wrong headed assumption that the Book of Mormon claimed to be a history of the entire

John Dehlin [00:24:52] Western hemisphere because he came by it honestly. Because that's what every prophet, Syrian revelator from Joseph to, let's say Gordon B. Hinckley encouraged us to think. Right.

Terryl Givens [00:25:03] That's exactly right. And you know, that's an absolutely ridiculous notion. And as John Sorensen and others have pointed out, it's nowhere suggested or intimated that that's the case in the Book of Mormon itself. In fact, a careful reading in the Book of Mormon suggests quite the opposite, that the Book of Mormon peoples inhabited a very restricted portion of land. So most of BH Roberts problems like, you know, how could you have this plurality of Indian languages that developed Right. In just a millennia or two? Well, the Book of Mormon isn't claiming that all Indian languages come from Hebrew. So all you have to do is extrapolate from your own case and say, okay, what kind of assumptions, what kind of a paradigm am I operating within? That is also wrong headed and erroneous. So I think it actually instills a kind of intellectual humility that makes it easier to deal with cognitive dissonance and to recognize that there are going to be discrepancies and tensions between my faith and the sense I'm able to make at any given moment of the totality of this picture. But I would say that the sum total of the problems that I have seen and continue to see with the Book of Mormon don't outweigh what, to my mind are the very powerful and indisputable evidences, indications in its favor as an authentic historical record.

John Dehlin [00:26:28] Man. Man. Okay, well, I'm so first of all, I'm stunned that you haven't had this, this sort of dark night of the soul crisis of intellectual faith in sort of one big sweeping moment. But I believe you. So let's go back. This is going to seem a little bit. I don't know if I hope it doesn't seem overwhelming or too ambitious, but I would love to just, you know, and I'm doing this. You know, we talked about this before. You had an NPR reporter who just wouldn't let you alone about the translation process. Yeah, talk about that real quick, because that's not what I want to do here.

Terryl Givens [00:27:04] Well, yeah, it was supposed to be like, I don't know, 10 or 15 minute interview about Joseph Smith and Mormonism. And once this interviewer got on the subject of the Urim and Thummim just wouldn't let go. What did they look like? How did he use them? What did he see? And, you know, my answer was we don't know. We don't know. A few speculations, but we don't know. But obsessed with that question. We couldn't move beyond it.

John Dehlin [00:27:25] Yeah, and I'm not going to be doing that. And I'm not looking to do any gotcha stuff. I seriously am. You know, I share your view of the universe and of there being something there, the spark of meaning and truth and love. I share that. I have not lost that. And that's the extent to which I still consider, consider myself a believer. What I struggle with is anything that tries to establish shape or form beyond that. And so I would love to probe your beliefs as a way to model a possibility of informed, thoughtful belief in the 21st century. And I can't believe you're willing to take the questions, but can we jump in?

Terryl Givens [00:28:16] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:28:17] All right. So God for you, like the Mormon God, is this anthropomorphic? Well, it's God's first of all, it's at least a God the father and a God the mother. It's an anthropomorphic being that probably was like us, you know, human at one point. God is married to at least one, if not multiple spouses. And God is defying the theodicy. All powerful. Maybe or maybe not, depending on your views. All loving and good. And what's the third. What's the third leg on the stool of the theodicy? All powerful, all loving and what?

Terryl Givens [00:28:56] All present. Oh, theodicy. No, it would just be all powerful and all loving. And if he's all powerful and all loving, then how can he allow.

John Dehlin [00:29:02] Then how's there evil? That's the third peg.

Terryl Givens [00:29:04] Right.

John Dehlin [00:29:05] So. So how do you. What is your belief in God like? How do you. How do you shape it, given the. The theodicy alone?

Terryl Givens [00:29:14] Okay, I'm glad you asked this, because to my mind, this is Mormonism's strongest suit. And this is what I find both intellectually compelling and exciting. But I also find it profoundly spiritually appealing. You know, all you have to do is the most cursory review of the history of Christian theology, and you confront time and time again a God who is the absolute embodiment of evil. I mean, he arbitrarily consigns untold billions of people to hell. He operates by caprice and whim. Church fathers from Tertullian to Augustine to Aquinas all believe that part of the joy of heaven will be watching the suffering of the damned. If that is God, I reject him.

John Dehlin [00:30:06] Even the Old Testament God. It's just I've. Or even the Old Testament, I have no interest in that God. I do not see that God. You know, there's this argument that the people prior to Christ were just ignorant and stone age foolish, and so God had to treat them really harshly and wipe them out at a moment's notice without regret, babies and animals included. You know, the whole. Even the notion of a flood, where God just goes, oops, made a mistake, let's reboot and kill everybody. Animals. You know, like, I don't even want to sign up for that. Not even interested.

Preconditions for an Embraceable Theology

Terryl Givens [00:30:38] So what would be the absolute precondition for a theology or a religious system that you could embrace? Well, the first precondition would be God would have to be the embodiment of real compassion.

John Dehlin [00:30:54] Yeah, love.

Terryl Givens [00:30:55] And historians of theology have said in writing that in the 19th century, no theologian around espoused belief in a passable deity, a God capable of emotion.

John Dehlin [00:31:12] Yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:31:13] And yet, what is Joseph Smith revealing in the 1830s with the book of Moses and Enoch's confrontation with a God who weeps three times? In his interaction with God, he asks, how is it thou canst weep Weep. This is the most magnificent and beautiful and powerful contribution that Joseph Smith made to the world of theology. And he made it a century before the rest of the Christian world begins to catch on. With very few exceptions. Today, everybody's talking about the suffering God, but Joseph Smith is teaching not just a suffering God and a feeling God, but is, my wife Fiona continues to remind me, a vulnerable God, a God who was willing to risk and jeopardize his own peace and happiness by creating, as Francis Bacon said, hostages to fortune. Right. Making himself a hostage to fortune by in some ways tying his happiness to that of his children, his creation.

John Dehlin [00:32:22] So when you say suffering God, suffering at the pain that he sees in mankind.

Terryl Givens [00:32:27] Absolutely. And you see, you see traces of that even in. Right. Even in the Old Testament, in the Book of Judges, there's that wonderful reference where we're told that the Lord's soul was grieved for the misery of his people. But that doesn't come through very often. But that's the essence of Joseph Smith's God, a suffering, vulnerable God. If Joseph Smith had made no single other contribution, if he'd never produced the Book of Mormon, I would still follow as a disciple of the religion founded on that one idea.

John Dehlin [00:33:04] Yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:33:05] And so if we start with that now, what I find a little bit ironic and perhaps misguided in contemporary efforts at detente with other religious groups is this preoccupation that Mormonism has with the evangelicals.

John Dehlin [00:33:20] Right.

Terryl Givens [00:33:21] And yet, if you look at what's happening in the new Atheism, it seems to me that there's a fascinating opening there that hasn't been exploited. Even as hardcore an atheist, as Richard Dawkins has said in the public record, I could contemplate the possibility of a God who is just a super evolved human. Numerous philosophers, oddly enough, have affirmed their belief in the human soul. John McTaggartaggart would be one example. But deny the God of the creeds. And what do you get in King Follett? You get a theology which is entirely compatible with naturalism. Right. There's just this sense of a kind of evolutionary process that pervades the universe. There's this eternally existent intelligence, and eventually one of these intelligences progresses to the point. This is both in King Follett and then John Widtso really articulates it even more fully in 1915 when he says that God develops out of this pre existent intelligence, finds himself a being of absolute love and intelligence, and wants to impart to those intelligences surrounding him the possibility of that same glorified and joyful condition. I mean, what could be a more beautiful narrative of God, his nature, his origin, and his relationship to mankind? You know, one of the most poignant questions in the Old Testament is when Job asks, what is man, that thou should set thine heart upon him? What a beautiful question. And, you know, the answer in King Follett is he chooses to because we've always existed with him. Now, the church has never officially endorsed, right, the doctor, the theology of King Follett. It's gone back and forth and back and forth. It's in the manual, it's out of the manual. I don't know. I don't have a firm conviction that that's how we can understand the origin of God or his nature. But it makes more sense to me than the God of any Christian creed. And it comports full well both with my sense of the universe as I experience it and with my logical intuition as to how a God can emerge in the context of a universe that we understand in modern scientific terms.

John Dehlin [00:36:03] And what's your. So what's your answer to the question, if God is all powerful, then why can't he stop, you know, child rape and genocide?

Terryl Givens [00:36:15] You know, I don't think it's never struck me as a real problem. I mean, I believe, as C.S. lewis does, C.S. lewis said, hell is the greatest testament to human freedom. That's a rather perverse way to phrase it, maybe, but, you know, it's kind of.

John Dehlin [00:36:30] Because it's kind of dismissive or casual.

Terryl Givens [00:36:33] But all he means by that is that we inhabit a tragic universe. Mormons haven't come to terms with that. But Hegel got it right. We inhabit a tragic universe. A tragic universe is one that is inhabited by a multiplicity of absolutes, of values that are all worthy of affirmation, but that come into violent collision and contestation. And tragedy is what happens when you see the good coming into conflict with the good. And God's desire to save the entire human family comes into conflict with his desire to affirm the principle of human agency. And something has to lose out in that process. And God decides that he is going to affirm agency above anything else. And the consequence is hell exists if we choose it. But here's the other remarkable thing about Mormonism, that it's just. And it saddens me that Mormons haven't caught hold of the power and the beauty of this aspect of their theology. You know, Mormons are ironically, this is just perversely ironic. Mormons are criticized for being exclusionists Right. We shut down the temple to all except those who have recommends and we talk. You got to be a mor. No, Mormons are the most inclusivist theological system that exists in the Christian world. Separate and apart from Unitarian Universalists themselves. Right. In Joseph Smith's vision, everybody is going to be saved except that handful who absolutely refuse to accept the conditions of their salvation. And, and you know, it's, it's the, it just, it strikes me that, that this is the, you know, the greatest selling point, so to speak, of Mormonism is a God who says as we're told. Right. DNC88 the beautiful verse where we're told that everybody will receive that which they are willing to receive. So, you know, all the universalists in Joseph's day were writing about this. They were saying, yeah, it just doesn't make sense that God would condemn you if you're not baptized or you were born a pagan. But they didn't know how to reconcile the need for a Savior with that desire to universalize salvation. And Joseph comes along and reveals, well, this whole plan of vicarious salvation work for the dead teaching of the gospel in the spirit world. I mean, not God is not only the most compassionate, but he's the most generous and inclusive God of any creedal system. It's just marvelous to me.

John Dehlin [00:39:11] So I, I love that. And so let me just ask you a couple follow up questions. So is it fair to say that the Mormon God isn't all powerful in that there are certain laws that he, she has to operate under that if he were to violate them, he would cease to be God?

Terryl Givens [00:39:27] Yeah, absolutely. I don't think this is ever clarified in Mormon doctrine. There are two schools of opinion. But I believe that what Joseph Smith was saying, and it's in my mind the most coherent account of the universe is that God is God because he is in full harmony with those laws that exist in the universe. He's not the author of those laws, he's the one who perfectly abides them. And so of course he's not, he's not all powerful only in the sense that he can do all things that are possible within that framework of law.

John Dehlin [00:40:01] Right. And so, and so the, the, the eight year old girl that's raped and killed, what Mormonism says is that this is a long eternity and there will be opportunities for growth and development. And this life is just one sliver of an eternity of development. Is that.

Terryl Givens [00:40:23] Yeah. And the cost of that development is appalling. And there's no way to just dismiss it by saying oh, well, you know, she'll feel okay in the eternities. I mean, it's beyond my personal capacity to feel the empathy for that girl that she deserves. And I believe that one very possible reason why a third of the pre existent intelligences rebelled at Christ's plan is because they said I can't live in a world where I have to countenance the rape of eight year old girls.

John Dehlin [00:40:56] Wow, that's a beautiful way to empathize for the one third that got cast out, huh? But then what type of God casts out a third?

Terryl Givens [00:41:05] I don't think he cast them out. I think they're again, you know, that's being filtered through the language world's vision of the prophet speaking. I think those thirds simply rejected and repudiated their participation in that universe that God was presiding over. And so I don't think he casts anybody out ourselves.

John Dehlin [00:41:26] Okay, so I think, I think I get that. What about the inefficiency of a thousand years of temple work? Like, why not God just kind of wave a wand and if you accept Christ or whatever, you can come. You don't have to have all these people doing all this temple work for all these people that may or may not accept. You know what I mean? Like, yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:41:51] Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:52] That seems just grossly inefficient.

Terryl Givens [00:41:54] Yeah, it seems terribly inefficient to me. And you know, I. By no means have I made my peace with every aspect of Mormon doctrine.

John Dehlin [00:42:01] Okay.

Terryl Givens [00:42:02] I'm still struggling. You know, I feel like I've. There have been two questions that have preoccupied me in the last decade. One. One is the question of the mystery of faith. How can we be morally responsible for believing? And I think I worked my way through that and that was the talk I gave on Lightning out of Heaven. And the second question that's preoccupied me is why does Mother Teresa have to be baptized? I don't believe for a moment that if we cross the veil, we're going to find the jerk who is our neighbor in heaven because he did his home teaching. But Mother Teresa is in spirit prison because she hasn't been baptized yet. That's not how it's going to work. But I do believe that there is something real and efficacious and holy about temple ordinances. I believe that's the principal reason for which the church as an institution exists and why it deserves my loyalty.

John Dehlin [00:43:01] Do you find value in temple service?

Terryl Givens [00:43:03] I do.

John Dehlin [00:43:04] Even though it can be boring as heck?

Terryl Givens [00:43:07] Oh, it's more boring than heck. But when I have participated in sealing work in particular, I have felt that something real is transpiring, something that has eternal and transcendent value, that we're not just going through empty forms and rituals. I find much of the process inelegant and deadening and tedious, but that's how most of the gospel is. You know, I think for me. For me, a paradigm that I keep going back to is Isaiah, chapter nine. I mean, here's Isaiah, who's one of the most boring, right? I mean, that's right. The. The hell that you have to wade through to get past, right? The Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon. It's. You're right. Everybody knows that. And so here's Isaiah, and he's talking about, you know, the Midianites this, and in Egypt this, and, you know, grinding the faces. And then suddenly, if you're not paying attention, you miss it. And we get this anthem to the Christ, right? The wonderful counselor, the Prince of Peace. And if you blink, you missed it. That's how the gospel works. We're mired in banality, and there are these eruptions of the divine into our lives that occur from moment to moment.

John Dehlin [00:44:34] You know, that's how life works.

Terryl Givens [00:44:36] Yeah, that's life.

John Dehlin [00:44:38] That's life. And so it's the gospel.

Terryl Givens [00:44:41] Yeah.

Faith, the Abrahamic Test, and the Atonement

John Dehlin [00:44:42] Okay. You mentioned Lightning from Heaven. Is that. Is that something you had spoke about on this podcast, or is that just.

Terryl Givens [00:44:49] That's a talk I gave at BYU back in 2004. It was a forum I gave.

John Dehlin [00:44:54] And basically, what was the main point? I just didn't want to miss the point you were making.

Terryl Givens [00:44:58] Well, I was supposed to be talking about Joseph Smith, but I used it as an excuse to talk about faith. And the point that I tried to make is that we all understand what physical compulsion is. We all understand how incompatible that is with human freedom. But it's my belief that intellectual compulsion works in an analogous way. You are not free to believe or disbelieve the law of gravity. It's there, the evidence is so abundant that you are intellectually compelled to accept it. So as a result, there's no virtue that attaches to your belief in that law. Similarly, if I were to offer you a million dollars to believe in the Easter Bunny, you wouldn't be able to do it. So in both of these cases, belief seems to operate outside of the moral sphere. We don't have control, we don't have that. We can exercise to believe or to disbelieve. I see, but what I'm saying is that faith is what operates or unfolds in a middle ground between the compulsion to affirm and the compulsion to deny. And I believe that God has structured our lives here on this earth in such a way that when it comes to those issues of eternal import, we have to be free to affirm or to deny. And therefore there has to be a balance of evidence both for the veracity of the gospel and against it. It's essential to God's divine purposes and to the flowering of freedom itself. I believe that there have to be compelling reasons to reject the Book of Mormon, to reject Joseph as a prophet, to reject the existence of God himself, but they have to exist alongside compelling reasons to affirm those things. Only in those circumstances can we call upon our will to and choose to believe or not to believe. And I think in those moments, our choice reflects the most important things about us, ourselves, what we love, what is it that we choose to affirm. And so that's how I think faith operates.

John Dehlin [00:47:43] Like those two wolves, and you choose the wolf, you feed the wolf that, you know is lovely and virtuous. Right?

Terryl Givens [00:47:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:50] Well, okay, so I love that. Like, that's beautiful. That resonates with me and it invokes for me the, you know, Abrahamic sacrificial God. I just don't like Abrahamic tests. That's bringing us back to the God I'm not so much in favor of. Do you have a response? Do you know what I mean? That's like, I'm going to tell you to kill your son just to see if you'll believe me.

Terryl Givens [00:48:17] Yeah, you know?

John Dehlin [00:48:18] You know, it's like that's what Jim Jones did. He's like, drink this Kool Aid if you believe in me. And eventually it was poisonous, you know?

Terryl Givens [00:48:25] Yeah. You know, when we use the expression Abrahamic test a lot, but, you know, we can mean very different things by that. You know, Kierkegaard's analysis is, suggests that an Abrahamic test is one where we suspend the ethical, where we obey an authority at the cost to our own conscience.

John Dehlin [00:48:43] Yeah, I don't like that.

Terryl Givens [00:48:45] And yeah, I'm not sure that that's a virtuous decision. So I'm not sure. Just like I haven't made my peace with polygamy, I believe that in some sense that was an Abrahamic test. And to go back to your earlier reference to God, no, I don't believe God has more than one wife. I don't believe polygamy has any place in the eternal worlds.

John Dehlin [00:49:06] Oh, wow.

Terryl Givens [00:49:07] I believe it was a temporary provocation that unfolded in this dispensation and has no future. But what was God testing by commanding or allowing that principle to prevail? I'm not sure. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:49:28] Well, I do love the idea that belief exists outside the moral realm because I don't like my disbelieving brothers and sisters being disrespected or judged.

Terryl Givens [00:49:42] Right. Well, you know, what I described was an ideal circumstance. Right. A balance of evidence pro and contra.

John Dehlin [00:49:51] Yeah, yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:49:52] But Earth is an uneven playing field. And depending on heredity and environment and upbringing and intellectual proclivities and what we happen to be exposed to, the possibility of choosing faith in any one context might not really be plausible. And that's why, you know, I can't ever judge and I can't. You know, you can't conclude anything from a person's decision to believe or not believe. But. But I think that, that God is striving to create that balance so that at some point in your life, there will really be a choice that you are free to make.

John Dehlin [00:50:34] Gotcha. Well, this discussion of Abraham takes us to the second big set of questions, or at least area that gets people down. And that's just about Christ himself. It's really popular these days to kind of deconstruct the New Testament and the Old Testament. I know of many Jewish rabbis who don't even believe that Moses ever existed anymore because we can't find any credible evidence to support Moses narrative and the historicity of the Bible. Some find the Bible not the fact that Jerusalem or Bethlehem ever existed, but some question the historicity of the biblical texts even more than they do the Book of Mormon, which is kind of incomprehensible to those who struggle. But I'll start with this question just about Abraham again. Why does God need to pick the best person, the most righteous, virtuous person, and then inflict pain upon that person as the only means of sort of balancing out the universal calculus of pain and sin. You know, God creates us as sinful. I'm saying some assumptions that you can say are faulty assumptions, but I'll tell you my perception. God creates us as evil or as wicked or sinful, and then he holds it against us when we sin to the point where he has to punish someone to make all that right who doesn't deserve to be punished. And if we don't believe in that person, then we're all going to hell. That's not. That's not, again, the type of God that I want. It seems inefficient. And then this Whole idea that Jesus in one moment had to suffer for every sin, not only every sin that's ever been committed, but 2000 years before I was ever even contemplated mortally. He's suffering for my sins too, and everybody else's. Like, it becomes meaningless at some point. You know, he's doing so much there that it's like it goes into the realm of, like, superheroes. Like, I can't. And I don't mean to be disrespectful. I'm just saying that, like, it's hard to, like, wrap your brain around all that and make sense of it and not feel like it's either brutal or unfair or just too ambitious or complicated. Tell us how you view Christ His. Did he really exist? Is the New Testament even credible? And how you think about the atonement if it's not the way I described?

Terryl Givens [00:53:24] Okay, let me begin in five minutes.

John Dehlin [00:53:27] No, I'm just kidding. Yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:53:30] Let me begin with a caveat, which is not just pro forma, but I really mean this caveat very earnestly. One of my favorite Cambridge Platonists, John Smith, said that the only thing which can enable us to know and understand the things of God is a principle of holiness within us. So I don't believe that any of my intellectual efforts to make sense of the atonement are going to be sufficient. And, and I can't pretend to understand it, but I'll tell you what sense I make of it at this point in my life. I do believe in a historical Jesus who was born of a virgin and who was the Son of God and who died to atone for the sins of the world. And here's how I understand the need for that atonement and how it operated as pre existent intelligences. We had progressed to the point where we were ready to become embodied and to work our way through the next stage of our eternal development. And that required our being cut off from the presence of God. I like how Brigham Young put it. He said that the purpose of life is to learn to be, to become as independent in our sphere as God is in His. So to really develop virtue and those genuine attributes of godliness, right, we had to develop them independently. So we're cut off from God. But in that context, the only way that we are going to learn to love that which is good and virtuous is by experiencing the consequences of that which is evil and pernicious. So sin becomes a necessary part of the learning process. But because of the sanctity of the principle of agency, we have to Be willing to. In fact, we have to be guaranteed that we will receive the consequences of our actions. Freedom isn't real freedom if we choose but don't get what we chose. We understand as children, we call it unfair if we do our homework but we don't get the ice cream at the end that we were promised. But it's equally unfair if we don't do the homework and do get the ice cream right. Not because of justice. I think what the scriptures call justice, and this is to my mind really important point about that term. What the scriptures call justice is what we would call from a different perspective, the working out of agency, the guarantee of freedom. So God knows that we're going to choose wrongly, we're going to sin, we're going to violate law, we have to suffer the consequences. But given the our own immature spiritual status, given the uneven playing field that is this life, given the impossibility as untutored young spirits making the correct choice every time, sin is going to be inevitable and as I said, necessary to the process. And sin has a way of becoming self replicating and leading us on a downward spiral. The more we sin, the more cut off from spiritual things we are, the more ingrained that habit becomes, the more it becomes a part of our character. Once we enter into that path of sin, it becomes virtually impossible to elevate ourselves out of it. There are a couple of things that can help. Clement of Alexandria said that all repentance begins with a kind of faint recollection that we once lived a better life in a better place. So he thought intimations of the pre existence were the initial spur. Either that or just the recognition at some point that sin isn't getting us what we wanted leads us to want to repent. And repentance within this framework of agency and atonement simply means choosing again. But in order to choose again, the consequences of those wrong choices have to unfold. And that's the point at which Christ simply says, I am willing to vicariously experience the consequences of those choices that you made. Now that's my understanding of atonement. I would call it something like consequential substitution. It's not that he's appeasing the demands of justice, it's that he is affirming the reality and the continuity of human freedom by saying, I will stand in your stead. But let those consequences unfold so that freedom and agency are validated, so the principle of agency is intact. And then I will allow you to re choose. And we keep re Choosing until we get it right. We can only become sanctified not through the grace of Christ, because. Right, we're told specifically that. That it's only by being subject to law that sanctification can take place. It's only by being charitable that we can actually become charitable. It's only by acting in godlike ways that we can become godlike. What grace does. It's the free gift of crisis, of Christ's sacrifice that enables us to choose and choose and choose until we ourselves have perfected ourselves and have come to embody those qualities of godliness. The mechanism by which Christ experiences that pain, as I understand Doctrine and covenant, section 19, is that he, in our stead suffers the devastating alienation of the Spirit, which is the consequence of sin. And that's why on the cross he feels that total abandonment of God. That's the feeling of forsakeness, is that he experiences what otherwise we would have. To my mind, that makes sense. It's consistent with Scriptures. It's an illustration of an unimaginable offering of generosity and love. And behind it all emerges the importance and the priority of human freedom and choice in the great plan of salvation.

John Dehlin [01:00:02] So is he suffering for all the sins, like, in some mathematical way that have ever been committed? You know, I think some proportionally mathematical way.

Terryl Givens [01:00:14] Yeah. I don't. I don't know that I. I know that many, you know, Talmadge and others have, have referred to a. Which strikes me as a kind of calculus, as if you could add up all of the, you know, the. The elements of pain that are experienced and quantitatively sum them, and then he experiences that degree. I don't, I don't. I don't. I don't think there's anybody holding scales over the whole process and measuring. I think he experienced the fullest extent of alienation from God, which is utter spiritual darkness. And, you know, in some way that was an infinite price to pay. But I don't think it makes sense or enhances our worshipfulness to try to equate it with a mathematical model.

John Dehlin [01:01:07] Right. For me, it kind of spoils it, so that's nice to hear. A different point of view.

John Dehlin [01:01:15] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [01:01:20] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out@sabre-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

John Dehlin [01:01:35] Come, come, ye saints no toil nor labor fee but with joy when you're away Though hard to you this journey may appear grace shall be as your day Tis better far, far for us to strike Our useless cares from us to drive to the San Jo Hearts will swell oh, all is well all is well. Why should we mourn? I think our lot is hard Tis not so all is right why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight Gird up your lo Fresh courage take Our God will never us forsake soon we'll have tale to tell O Will all is well oh, all is well all is well. Sam. And should we die before our journey's through Happy day All is well we that are free from toil and sorrow too with the just we shall dwell but if our lives are spared again to see the same the rest obtain I will make this chorus well oh, all is well all is well all is well all is well all is well well oh, is well. All is well all is away. There.

The Bible, Restoration, and Mormon Literalism

Part 3 of 5 · Ep. 291

John Dehlin [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org. okay, so that's a version of the Atonement that I can intellectually kind of at least feel better about, or at least not feel any aversive thoughts or feelings about. How about all these recent attempts to kind of analyze the Bible, especially the New Testament, and specifically, I'm talking about, like, let's just say Bart Ehrman's work, you know, where you realize that it wasn't Matthew, James, and, you know, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that actually wrote Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that in many cases those stories were handed down through oral tradition, that we don't even know who wrote which of the books and in what order. The fact that if you really do take each of those books at face value, they tell, in some cases, dramatically different stories. And so it's just confusing and contradictory. And, you know, some people just say that the Bible just, especially the New Testament, just falls apart once you understand its historical origins. Have you read that stuff? And if so, in what way do you piece it back together?

Terryl Givens [00:01:44] Yeah, I've read Bart Ehrman, and I've read some of his, I guess, detractors and his opponents in some of these debates. Let me just start with a little bit of history to try to frame, I think, how we got to where we are in Mormonism and our attitudes toward the Scriptures, towards the Bible. The first real book of theology written in the church is Parley Pratt's voice of warning back in 1837. Now, Parley Pratt comes out of the restorationist tradition, and, you know, what does that mean?

John Dehlin [00:02:18] What does that mean?

Terryl Givens [00:02:19] Well, there were a bunch of groups, especially the Campbellites, who were all trying to steer Christianity back to its more primitive New Testament forms. And doing this largely by stripping away everything that had been added by the Roman and Protestant traditions, as well as

John Dehlin [00:02:36] by

Terryl Givens [00:02:39] returning to the gifts of the Spirit and the other kind of New Testament phenomena that we saw in the early church.

John Dehlin [00:02:45] Okay, so there's this argument that Fawn Brody and Grant Palmer make that Joseph Smith was just like this cultural sponge. And what I'm hearing you say is that even the notion of a restoration was part of the milieu that Joseph was swimming in. Is that right?

Terryl Givens [00:03:01] Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Joseph Smith I mean, if I were to define how he understood his own calling, the term I would use is inspired eclecticist. Yeah, he was. He was sponge, absolutely. But, you know, we. And that's a problem for a lot of Latter Day Saints who have read a very different version of history in which Mormonism erupted in an absolute vacuum. But it's not to denigrate the role or calling of a prophet or the scope of Joseph Smith's contribution to say that most of his ideas, or many of them probably most, already existed in the environment or among predecessors because his job, he felt, was to filter them, to reset. I mean, St. Augustine said the same thing. St. Augustine used the example of what he called spoiling the Egyptian right when the children of Israel take all of the gold from their Egyptian captors and then use it to found their own right new Israelite civilization. Similarly, Augustine said, we've got to steal the truths from the pagans and return them to the right context. I think the best example of how Joseph did that blatantly right out in the open, was to take the Masonic ritual and say, okay, they've got all of these signs and tokens and, you know, drama, but they don't understand what it's really eternal significance is. Now we put it in the temple. That's where it belongs. Mormons get scandalized, oh, he's stealing from the Masons. Well, of course he was stealing from the Masons, because he said they didn't. They didn't know what to do with it. And he did. So that's the first point that has to be made. So, yeah, restoration is. Is everywhere in the air in the 1820s and 30s.

John Dehlin [00:04:35] Okay, well, I didn't mean to take this away from Christ. I just.

Terryl Givens [00:04:38] Okay, so the main problem that Parley Pratt has with many of the Restorationists is that they are what he calls spiritualizers. This is especially in reference to how you interpret discussion about the millennium. And many religions then before and since have said, well, the millennium is a spiritual thing, right? Christ is going to spiritually come again and Parley Pratt thought that was one of the greatest evils confronting Christendom. So in the voice of warning, he lays down the law that Mormons are literalists. We take the Scriptures literally. And, you know, Joseph never really said much about that. Joseph seemed to go in an opposite direction when he indicated that, you know, we work with a broken and fragmented language, and God speaks according to, you know, the understanding of. Of who he's working with. And he himself continually worked at revising his revelations. To try to come closer to the essence of what he felt the Spirit was trying to convey. I think another misdirection is by misreading the article of faith that refers to the Bible being the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. Now, I don't know this for a fact, but it's pretty clear that Joseph has a very loose understanding of what translation means. Right. When he retranslates the Bible, he's not working with original manuscripts, he's retransmitting it. So I think it works a lot better if we understand the Mormon position to be we believe the Bible to be the word of God insofar as it is transmitted correctly. Well, that opens up a lot more leeway. And you know, where does this idea come from anyhow, that the Bible is narrated by God to prophets who dictate word for word what he says, that's a fundamentalist conception that really should have no place place in Mormonism. So I think we should all just be a lot more open and flexible in how we understand that process of scriptural transmission through the ages. Which is one reason why I think we have the Doctrine and Covenants and the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price, because these are more recent correctives to a scriptural canon that obviously was either incomplete or sufficiently full of error to not be a reliable guide to the faith. So that's on the one hand. On the other hand, I think the Bart Ehrman, and I'm not going to lock horns with him, he's obviously much more averse and competent in the field than I am, but I think he greatly overstates the case. I don't believe myself there's any real reason to doubt that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John just because their names don't appear on the earliest versions of the manuscripts. And I think the case is pretty strong that most of what we now have as the New Testament was written by those people it purports to be written by. Although in the case of Paul, many of those are ambiguous. And I believe that the Old Testament has a lot less to say to us than the New Testament or other scriptures.

John Dehlin [00:07:40] Right, okay. So if I had to restate, you're basically saying that the Scripture and this is the only way that it could possibly make sense. For me, just the whole Christianity and Mormonism is that prophets are maybe one shade less bumbling idiots than the rest of us. And what we get as scripture is just their best guess with a little bit of inspiration and guidance, but could be just as fallible as what, you know, someone says down the street. Is that kind of what you're saying?

Terryl Givens [00:08:19] Well, I don't think I'd go quite that far. I believe there's a prophetic vocation that does entitle you to revelation. But, I mean, like I say, going back to Isaiah, do we really. Is most of Isaiah really relevant or useful to us today? I mean, most of it is about the geopolitics of the world he's immersed in, or, you know, for heaven's sakes, read Ecclesiastes. Do we really believe that everything is vanity and there's nothing that awaits us except an eternity in the grave? Joseph Smith said the Song of Solomon wasn't an inspired document. And it's clear that a lot of the rest of the Old Testament.

John Dehlin [00:08:53] Well, it was inspired by something.

Terryl Givens [00:08:54] Yeah, that's right. But, you know, going back to the other hand, you know, I'm saying that when I read even the Old Testament, I find many of the psalms profoundly moving and beautiful and inspiring. And I find a lot of the passages of scripture throughout to be worthy of study and edifying. I just think we have to be very selective and just as with our prophet, not expect over much from that scriptural.

John Dehlin [00:09:26] Not expect too much. So I overstated the case, but can a prophet get it wrong in Scripture?

Terryl Givens [00:09:35] Well, yeah, certainly. I think Paul, you know, his position on women, he's.

John Dehlin [00:09:41] I was just about to ask you that. That was what I was gonna ask you.

Terryl Givens [00:09:43] Getting it wrong to the extent that what he's saying is, you know, largely shaped by cultural presuppositions that women.

John Dehlin [00:09:51] That women should stay silent in the church. You were saying?

Terryl Givens [00:09:53] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:54] That's funny that that's the one you would highlight. Why that one?

Terryl Givens [00:09:58] Well, because that's the only one that came to mind at the moment. There may be others as well.

John Dehlin [00:10:03] Interesting. Okay. All right. So for you, Christ lived, was resurrected, Some type of atonement happened in the New Testament is, by and large, what it purports to be.

The True Church Claim and an Evolutionary Gospel

Terryl Givens [00:10:20] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:10:21] Okay. All right. So why an apostasy? Like, again, this speaks to the inefficient God that, like, there's this whole world, there's Native Americans, you know, separate from the Nephites and Laymanites, There's Chinese, there's, you know, just massive humanity. And then there's this tiny tribe in, like, the Middle east, and they get God's word and everybody else is left off. And then they do Judaism but they get captive and scattered and then, you know, and then it kind of. There's enough there that when Christ comes out of that, he teaches his doctrine and a few people get it and like, it lasts for 30, 60 years or whatever, and. And then it falls into apostasy. And then we go another 2000 where everybody's just not guided by the one true prophet church. And then the restoration happens again in the LDS context. And now we're up to like 1512, 1500 million members on record, but maybe only 4 or 5 million actually go to church. And we have a world of 6 or 8 billion people. And it's just so narrow. God's truth is that the number of his children are privileged to actually benefit from, and Christianity is part of that narrow strain. How do you think about that?

Terryl Givens [00:11:46] Well, I think about it largely through the prism again of my wife Fiona, who was raised a Catholic and brought to her Mormonism a wonderful set of perspectives and understandings. She was one who first pointed out to me that if you look at the allegory of the woman in the wilderness in chapter 12 of Revelation, that Joseph glossed that in a particular way. He says, that's about the apostasy, right? And then the woman flees into the wilderness. Well, what I find absolutely remarkable is that when Joseph recorded the very, very first revelation that mentions the church that he's going to restore, at first he talks about the formation of a church in the Book of Commandments, but when he recasts that revelation in Doctrine and Covenant Section 5, he changes the wording and he refers to the coming forth out of the wilderness of the church. So he's obviously influenced by Revelation 12. He's inspired by that language and he's trying to draw a parallel. And what Revelation 12 says is that the truth was not taken from the earth, but that it retreated into the wilderness where it was nurtured of the Lord. Now think about the implications of that. The church is in the wilderness. It's being nurtured by the spirit of the Lord throughout this period of so called darkness and apostasy. This, to my mind, gives us a radically different paradigm for understanding the relationship of Mormonism to the rest of the church and understanding the place of Mormonism in dispensational history. It also gives us an answer to the question, when is Mormonism going to produce a Dante or a Shakespeare or a Beethoven? And the answer is, we don't need a Mormon Dante or Shakespeare or Beethoven. We have Dante and Shakespeare and Beethoven. We've got Handel's Messiah. Why do they have to be authored by Mormons? In other words, Joseph seemed to be suggesting that there is this reservoir of truth and beauty throughout the Christian world and even beyond. And his job was to try to select from these scattered fragments of Mormonism, reconstitute them into an institutional church. But the point is, God has made abundant provision for there to be sources of inspiration, truth and beauty throughout culture and throughout history. Mormons don't have the monopoly. And in my book When Souls Had Wings, I engaged in an experiment upon that principle where I investigated the history of one such idea, the pre existence, and found that indeed there were hundreds and hundreds of manifestations of that beautiful truth in history, philosophy, theology and art throughout the west, going all the way back the earliest recorded religious history. So that's the first point I would make, is that this so called narrowness of Mormonism isn't the problem that we might think it is, because nobody is claiming or nobody should be claiming a Mormon monopoly on the avenues to these truths and what they represent. Second of all, I think if I go back to my statement about the most important part of the institutional church being the ordinances of the temple, then you don't need a church of 2 billion people if your principal role is to serve as custodian of those rituals and make them available and also provide the means whereby their benefits can be extended to the entire human family, either vicariously now or throughout the millennium, or however you expect that's going to be fulfilled. And then finally, if you return to what I said earlier about Mormon universalism, then you understand that you don't have to be a member of the institutional church in order to secure your salvation. So I think the image is much more apt to think of Mormonism in the way that Christ referred to the leaven in the bread. All it takes is a little bit of leaven. And Mormonism is here to provide that as I understand it.

John Dehlin [00:16:22] Wow. Because that's so off putting to me. But okay, so your first point was beautiful, but that's not how we've culturally evolved. And I'll just say culturally evolved with the encouragement and seeming endorsement of our top leadership. Because I grew up in Texas and I felt like I felt sorry I grew up as a Mormon. My parents, they modeled for me, love and compassion for everybody. So I don't think I got this from my parents. I went to seminary and I was trained by a man who revered Bruce R. McConkie and Joseph Fielding Smith. And the Mormonism that I was raised with taught me to feel sorry for everyone around me who wasn't Mormon, to consider them to be less than to consider our church to be superior in every way. And I didn't even feel like I was raised with any type of encouragement to feel reverence or respect. Instead, it was like the Catholics have a cross and they engage in, you know, they believe in transubstantiation. How stupid is that that, you know, that the Eucharist actually turns into the blood and body of Christ? You know, almost a mocking of other religious traditions. If we mentioned any other religious tradition at all, it was to compare how wrong they were and how right we were. And I know that that's a natural, human thing, but I'm just telling you that if I have any PTSD as a recovering Quote Mormon, it's not from peach stones or polyandry. It's. It's from having acquired a worldview that I was better than everybody, and it's almost as bad as if I had been an accomplice to a rape or a murder. It's like how. And I think that leads to people's shattering of faith because they get raised in the Zion corridor, some people say, or the Mormon corridor or whatever they want to say. Then they go out in the world and they find these amazingly wonderful, thoughtful, spiritual Jews or Catholics or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or atheists, and they're like, oh, my gosh, this world is much more beautiful and big than this provincial, little Joseph Fielding Smith type Mormonism, you know, fed me. I've been deceived about humanity, not just about the historical texts of, you know, Mormonism. So we come by it honestly, right or not. Is that just. Was I just. Was I just in this corner of Mormonism that was out of touch with this broader, expansive view that you've just communicated?

Terryl Givens [00:19:23] No, I think what you're describing began in the Brigham Young years. If you look at the rhetoric of Brigham Young and everyone else speaking in the tabernacle in the 1850s and 60s, you see pretty virulent hostility and animosity toward the rest of Christendom. And you can see that that's the after effects of the martyrdom and the expulsion. And then what happens in the 20th century, of course, is the kind of diatribe against the Catholic Church which pervades our culture. I think that we, as a church are guilty of an institutional sin in the way that we have trumpeted Mormon triumphalism at the expense of the virtue and value of other religious traditions and individuals. And that's a Sin for which we need to collectively repent. But I would say that there's nothing conducive. Well, not nothing. There isn't, there isn't a lot that's conducive to such a view in Joseph Smith himself. Now, many people point rather unfairly, I think, to the language of the first vision experience where he talks about, right, the creeds were an abomination and they, you know, but, you know, give me a break. This is. He's, he's writing in a 19th century vernacular in which that kind of language is absolutely right. De rigueur.

John Dehlin [00:20:33] What do you mean? Wait, I translate because it is offensive to me. The DNC Section 1 is offensive to me. It just. But, but, but I know people who don't see it that way. So how can I not see it that way?

Terryl Givens [00:20:44] Because you can't find any religious language in the early 19th century that isn't exclusivist in that way, that isn't triumphalist. The Baptists hate the Catholic. Catholic. I mean, for heaven's sakes, right? Catholics are the great and abominable church of the devil to everybody. I mean, that's not unique to the Book of Mormon. They couldn't hold office in half the states before the Civil War. I mean, just read any of the pamphlet wars going on in the early 19th century and the rhetoric is just absolutely beyond the pale. So Joseph Smith is simply employing a vernacular, as I said, that is absolutely typical of religious culture in the early 19th century. Unfortunately, it ends up being canonized in scriptures that we still read and disseminate today. And that's part of the reason for this triumphalist rhetoric. That has been very damaging. But I think my sense is things began to change under President Hinckley, not just because he was much more media savvy and conscious, but because from the pulpit he actually said on occasion that language of us being the only true church can be misunderstood. It can be hurtful, it can be harmful. And so I think he tried to encourage a retreat from that kind of language and that kind of attitude. But I think it's, it's. We've been very slow to catch on to that.

John Dehlin [00:22:05] And so how do you view. So, okay, so. Oh, there's two things I want to say. The first is that I'm hearing you say that, that the LDS Church is not like the pinnacle or the best or the exclusive organization. That is what God intends. And clearly this is true. What God intends all his children to either become or suffer. It sounds like you're Saying God's got this big plan. It's kind of like Joseph B. Wirthlin's talk about the orchestra. God's got this big plan, and it's got tubas and bassoons and percussion. Mormonism is but one player in the symphony.

Terryl Givens [00:22:54] Well, they're one player. They're the player that he designated to whom he actually bestowed what I believe are very real keys of authority and responsibility. I believe also that fullest dispensation of truth was made available through Joseph Smith. There isn't a single other Christian denomination on the planet, for example, that espouses belief in the eternal identity of the human soul. That, to my mind, is a critical, really important component of the whole gospel picture that's available through the restored gospel that we call Mormonism. An understanding of human potential and the capacity that we have to become fully like our Father in every way that's unique to us. There's an array of gospel teachings that I think are. It's not that we have to know all of these things in order to become godlike people, but I think the more fullness of the gospel we are able to imbibe and have access to, then the greater will be our ability to make progress in, you know, across the whole array of areas where we need to progress toward a godlike nature. So, no, I think there is a qualitative distinction, but what I'm saying is the fact that we have a particular mandate and a particular responsibility as custodians of the priesthood and the temple ordinances doesn't mean that there aren't other important players in this cosmic drama as well. Well, and much. And much that we can learn.

John Dehlin [00:24:23] Okay. Okay. So I'm just really trying to make this work, so I'm just gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna say that. So. So, yes, the percussion, you know, provides the tempo and the beat and the rhythm that everyone else, you know, sort of integrates with and. And. And bases their, you know, their other performances upon. So it's unique and it's different and it's special and it's critical. And you couldn't have. Yeah, you know, anything. You know, even jazz has percussion. So. So, yes, unique and different and special and sanctioned and approved and critical. But the other pieces also are critical. And maybe even the other pieces have their own sanctioned authority in God's mind and planning and even crucial parts to the overall plan and destiny of humanity. Can you grant that, too?

Terryl Givens [00:25:37] I don't see why not.

John Dehlin [00:25:39] I have to. If I can't do that, then I, I can't do it. You know, I don't mean to be narcissistic, but that's just important for me.

Terryl Givens [00:25:47] I see, See, I think nobody's lesser

John Dehlin [00:25:50] than is what I'm saying.

Terryl Givens [00:25:51] Right, right. And I, I think you know the very designation Mormonism, I mean I, I understand to a great degree why the brethren don't like the use of that term. You know, I use it because it has a certain valence in cultural history that LDS doesn't. But the danger is to assume that Mormonism has an eternal status and it doesn't. Mormonism is the particular incarnation of the Church of Jesus Christ at this moment in time, everybody will eventually have to bow the knee and confess that Jesus is the Christ.

John Dehlin [00:26:23] Right, right. Okay, LDS Church, LDS Church then.

Terryl Givens [00:26:27] But everybody, everybody doesn't have to be a Mormon and everybody doesn't have to be lds.

John Dehlin [00:26:31] Right.

Terryl Givens [00:26:32] But right now that church offers a pretty effective vehicle to get to know Christ and comply with his ordinances.

John Dehlin [00:26:42] Right. And so substitute what I said about Mormonism to the LDS Church as an institution and all I'm trying to say is I have to find a way to piece together a theology if I'm going to keep believing that looks with respect and love to other beliefs and non beliefs that doesn't place us in any way higher than them, but instead says yes, you know, we stand up and say we have an important role to play in the plan of salvation, an essential role, but we also realize with humility that there are other essential roles and somehow it aggregates into something very universalistic and beautiful that is respecting of all traditions and even inclusive of them, not denigrating and relegating. Does that make sense?

Terryl Givens [00:27:34] Yeah. That's not just your opinion. That's what the Lord was saying in 1831 when he said to Joseph, there are other holy men that I recognize that are engaged in my work that you don't know anything about.

John Dehlin [00:27:46] And you're saying you can read, there's a reading of Doctrine and Covenants Section 1 and of Joseph's vision that can still hold that respect and reverence for others.

Terryl Givens [00:28:00] Absolutely. If you make allowance for the historical context and the cultural conditioning out of which that language arose. And that's why, you know, Joseph is so self conscious about the inadequacy of his verbal presentation of these re revelations. It's not like we have to have to be unfaithful to, to, to Joseph for the principle of revelation to interpret that more generously. Joseph gives you that grants you that allowance when he Says, right, I'm struggling. This is a broken, shattered language. I'm trying to do the best I can. But his lifelong project was to revise and revise and, and try to write more closely approximate what the Lord intended there.

John Dehlin [00:28:43] Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. And I just have to say that for whatever weaknesses you want to ascribe to Joseph Smith, you get this sense that he was expansive, inclusive, loving and respecting of other traditions and people. You know, the whole invite the minister of another religion to come preach in the tabernacle kind of thing.

Terryl Givens [00:29:05] Right, yeah, absolutely. He's asked in Washington in 1840 in a public address. He gives, you know, do you have to be Mormon to be saved? And he says, no.

John Dehlin [00:29:13] Yeah, so that's right.

Terryl Givens [00:29:15] Yeah, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:29:18] And the final, the final point that I'll make before, before maybe we have a natural break is that you seem to have an almost evolutionary gospel view. It starts with this intelligences. And I'm not saying you. This is your interpretation of Joseph's, you know, theology, but it's almost like you're taking the long view that, like, we've got millennia, we've got eternities, plural, to have this all work out. And, you know, God's still figuring it out, the Church is still figuring it out. Mankind is just one, you know, this mortal existence that we're currently evolved in is just you, you know, one twinkling of an eye in the eternities. And so, yeah, prophets are going to screw up. God's screwing up, the church is screwing up, we're screwing up. And the way that you make sense of it all is to take an eternal view and not ever expect these climactic moments of perfection or of wholeness. But instead, we're just grace by grace, inching along. And someday it's all going to make sense and piece together, but it's going to take a while, eternities, to make that happen. Is that what informs your theology?

Terryl Givens [00:30:41] Well, yeah, to some extent. I don't know that God's making mistakes along the way. I think he's already got the system down. But let me tell you what I think is a paradigm that works for me. And that also, I think, explains Joseph Smith's intellectual universe. In 1785, the greatest astronomer of the day is William Herschel, and he publishes a paper with the Royal Academy called the Construction of the Heavens. Now, Herschel has built the largest telescopes in history of unprecedented power, and suddenly he's seen things that no human being has ever seen before. Not only does he discover a new planet, but he discovers new processes underway, and he presents this paper, and it creates one of the most rad, radical reassessments of the nature of the heavens since the Copernican revolution. What he sees are star systems in collision. He sees vacuums in the midst of deep space. He sees all kinds of phenomena that describe flux and chaos and violent contestation and asymmetry. And he presents this paper, and suddenly the. This vision that we had previously had of a kind of stable, static, orderly, pristine system is just shattered. It's demolished. And what we get is a universe that is now in flux and continual process of change and evolution. And that sense pervades every area of human understanding, from science to culture to politics to economics to religion. And Joseph Smith is the one, I think, who most fully embraces that is the fundamental nature of this universe. So, yes, absolutely. It's all about dynamic change, evolution, progress into an unforeseeable future. And again, that's, I think, what gives Mormonism its dynamism and its excitement and its appeal to me is an intellectual system.

John Dehlin [00:32:50] And it seems like that's the only way to look at all the mistakes and the inaccuracies and the bad things and the problems in Mormonism and still have any desire to want to stick with it.

Terryl Givens [00:33:04] Yeah, that whole process is seen in microcosm in the history of the church. You know, we think, I think, too often in Mormon culture of the restoration as a fait accompli. And it's not. I remember President Kimball once said, look, we. We're not anywhere near the end. We don't have the keys of the resurrection yet. What other keys? What other truths? What other things are yet to be revealed? This is an ongoing process, and I think we. We just need to be more generous with each other's fallibilities and foibles. And, you know, that's. That's another thing that I love about Joseph Smith and that famous letter that he wrote. Who was it was it to? W.W. phelps that he wrote, I think, his letter of reconciliation, where, you know, he talks about, it's my nature to. To give and to forgive and to bear with long suffering, with the weakness and foibles of others. I mean, what a magnificent vision of generosity he himself embodied. Incapable of holding grudges, incapable of holding people to too high a standard. And yet that's what we do every day. You know, I served as a bishop for a time in a local congregation, and if there's one thing I came to learn immediately, it was, boy, if the prophets are as fallible as bishops like me. There's a very different picture than what I thought was out there. And I think an important lesson I learned was that God had effectively said, look, you're the bishop, I'm giving you keys and I'm delegating to you the responsibility to make decisions. And even if they're wrong, you're making them under the umbrella of this calling that I have given you. And you just do the best you can. And I think prophets function in the same way. We can't be assured that every single thing that comes from the mouth of a prophet is going to be inspired. Right. But they're charged with doing the best they can under the aegis of his authority. But he's delegated that to them.

John Dehlin [00:35:04] And yet when we err as struggling intellectual Mormons to hang on, I think it's because we've been set up to expect that the Gospel makes sense, that the history is consistent, that. Adam was baptizing people, that this is all like it's never changed, that, that the church, John changed. Go ahead.

Terryl Givens [00:35:31] We have, we have been set up. The manuals distributed throughout the CES and the, in the, in the Sunday school program are deplorable. They, they, you know, they are full of, of errors. They are full of misinformation. I don't think that there is a deliberate campaign of disinformation that is going on. I think that the, the best scholarship taking place in the church, in the church history department, hasn't filtered down to the level of the curriculum. And every day that it doesn't, the Church is going to lose more Mormons. And the problem is not information. The problem is betrayal. Nobody really leaves the church because there isn't enough information available to answer a question. And that's one thing that I think the Church hasn't gotten yet. People leave the Church because by the time the question arises, it's too late. If you're 45 years old and you learn for the very first time that Joseph translated the Book of Mormon looking at a peep stone, you have every right in the world to feel betrayed. Why wasn't I taught the truth in seminary or in Sunday school? And I haven't heard a good answer to that. And there really isn't any excuse for the Church not to be moving faster, to revise and update and make more truthful and full those manuals that convey our history to our children, our adults alike.

John Dehlin [00:37:03] Yeah. I mean, even today, like I interviewed Richard Bushman, like back in 2007, and he said that it's ridiculous that the way we portray the Book of Mormon translation process visually, it's just dishonest. And yet here we are in 2011, and there's no change. You know, you don't understand.

Terryl Givens [00:37:25] Yeah, that's right. And I think a lot of this just has to do with bureaucratic inefficiencies. You know, the history department isn't in charge of producing the church history manuals, and they should be. Right, and they should be unfettered and allowed to do that. But like I say, I don't think there's any ill intent. I don't think there are any scheming manipulators trying to conceal our history, as is often presented as the case by. That's not it. It's just. It's inefficient. And, you know, and most of the people, you know, running this church, they're not historians. That isn't a calling or vacation. I think that, you know, if you were to ask many leadership positions, they wouldn't have the foggiest idea of how the Book of Mormon was actually translated. When were the seer stones employed? And what about the hat? Those are historians. Those are questions that only historians have concerned themselves with.

John Dehlin [00:38:15] And yet it's the narrative upon which we build our faith. You know, it is what you do. You know, faith isn't just like you get some warm feeling, somebody tells you a story, and then you decide whether or not you want to believe in that story.

Terryl Givens [00:38:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:32] And so if you built your beliefs upon a story that's inaccurate, then of course your beliefs are going to evaporate, right?

Terryl Givens [00:38:39] Yeah, that's right. And I think another. Another influence, another factor in this whole problem is if you go back to the first period in Utah when church history is being created, you know, for the first hundred and fifty years, church history was only written by apologists or detractors. And if you think of the role of people like Joseph Smith, Joseph Fielding Smith, Joseph F. Smith in church history, I mean, Joseph F. Smith, right, had memories until the day he died of the bodies of his father and uncle laid out in Nauvoo. His son is president of the church all the way into the 1970s. I mean, suddenly history collapses into these two generations. And you can understand, given that history, given the personal involvement of Joseph Fielding Smith and his father, and given the siege mentality that prevailed in Utah, it's understandable that they would have been extremely guarded and selective in the history that they told and wrote. And unfortunately, the church has just been painfully slow to revise what in many cases were these kind of canonical historical productions coming out of that whole atmosphere.

John Dehlin [00:39:54] Yeah. I mean, we're about to launch into this, but it feels like, man, maybe that was necessary. But man, what a cost. The Joseph F. Smith, Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruce Armaconki, kind of Boyd Key Packer siege mentality. What a cost that has made in 21st century Mormonism. There's a heavy price that we're paying

Terryl Givens [00:40:20] and we'll continue to pay until. Until more changes are made.

John Dehlin [00:40:23] Yeah. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out at saber-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

John Dehlin [00:40:45] Come, come ye saints no toil nor labor fear but with joy when you're though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to the sun and joy your hearts will swell oh, all is well all is well. Why should we mourn? I think our lot is hard Tis not so all is right why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight? Gird up your lo fresh courage take Our God will never us for sake soon we'll have tell a tale oh, all is well all is well oh, all is well all is well. And should we die before our journey's through happy day all is well we that are free from toil and sorrow too with the just we shall dwell but if our lives are spared Again to see the saints the rest obtain I will make this chorus swell. Oh, all is well, all is well all is well well all is well all is well oh, is well. All is well

John Dehlin [00:45:02] the.

Difficult Mormon History and the First Vision

Part 4 of 5 · Ep. 292

John Dehlin [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org all right, Terrell. Well, we've covered a lot of ground, and in terms of the foundations of your testimony, we've covered God and Jesus or the Savior, and we've started talking about the restoration. But now I'd like to just ask you, you know, a lot of people trip up on the history, and as you say in again in your book, People of Paradox, in so many ways, the way the church has been set up, it does in many ways rise and fall on its own history. And so a lot of people find the history, you know, problematic. We've discussed that some, I would say a big portion of that problematic history can be put in the category of just being disappointed that the history, the version of the history you heard, is different from kind of what a more careful read would uncover. So there's that whole disenchantment factor. But even, even if you set that aside and you were just to kind of take a reasonable person and walk them through LDS Church history, I guess, like, with any religion, you're going to find things that are kind of troubling or hard to believe or something to that effect. So if it's okay, I'm just going to ask you how you work through some of the more difficult historical aspects that people struggle with. And if we reach a point where, you know, the answer is the same. In other words, you know, maybe it's, I don't know, or maybe it's, that's a tough one. Or maybe it's like, you know, know, profits are fallible, it's okay to just kind of restate that premise, you know, and not have to go into detail. But.

Terryl Givens [00:02:26] Okay, so if I plead this, the fifths two times, we move on.

John Dehlin [00:02:30] Okay, that's fine. Yeah. And you can say, I just, I'm not comfortable answering that, too. So. But I guess the first. I guess the very first problem, if we look historically that many people have, is with the first vision and, and the multiple accounts. And, you know, most of our listeners will know this, but the very first historical account of Joseph Smith's first vision is different than the second. Different from the third. Some say substantively different, and others say, like Richard Bushman, that it's just different Perspectives with age. How do you make sense of all that?

Terryl Givens [00:03:11] Well, I don't find any real substantive problems in the different accounts of the first vision. I think Joseph is writing these under very, very different historical conditions and circumstances. So I think one evolution that we see is a sense in the first vision, the first account that he hadn't fully, I think, captured the implications of his experience in terms of the. The global future and destiny of the church that grows out of these initial spiritual experiences. Whereas I think later there's more of a concern and an attention to what the implications were of what he learned for a dispensational history of apostasy and restoration. So part of it is the difference between a personal conversion narrative that he's recounting and the opening of a new dispensation. I do think it's significant that throughout his life, Joseph referred to the year 1827 as the beginning of his prophetic career. So he always seemed to see his receipt of the gold plates as what really marked him as a prophet. And I think this is one of the mistakes we make in telling our history is to refer to the young boy prophet. He's not a prophet in 1820. He's not called as a prophet. He doesn't see himself as a prophet. And he never did see himself as a prophet in the year 1820 when he had those first visionary experiences. The main contradiction that you probably have in mind is the sense that in the first vision, there's only one God, one being that he sees, where in subsequent descriptions there are two.

John Dehlin [00:05:03] In the first version of the first vision, right?

Terryl Givens [00:05:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:06] He says, I was visited by the Lord or something like that.

Terryl Givens [00:05:08] Well, what he says is, in the 1832 account, he says exactly this. He says, the Lord opened the heavens upon me, and I saw the Lord, and he spake unto me. So he says, I saw the Lord, and then the Lord spake unto me. Now, some church historians have suggested that he may have had in mind two different personages. Even in that retelling. I see the Lord God the Father, and then the Lord Jesus Christ speaks to me. I don't know if that's the case or not, but I think there's certainly enough ambiguity there that one can't claim there's an obvious de facto contradiction between those accounts. So that's. I mean, I think there are a lot of other more difficult hurdles in early church history than that particular example.

John Dehlin [00:05:58] Okay. And for someone who were to say, look, if you see God in Jesus, you're going to. You know, mention both of them kind of explicitly. You don't. You don't buy that?

Terryl Givens [00:06:11] I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:06:12] Do you sympathize with it?

Terryl Givens [00:06:14] Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, if it's possible by any stretch of the imagination to imagine that kind of a theophany, who knows? How could we possibly tell what we would find most memorable or most salient in our retelling of it? I mean, I find it time and again astounding that Joseph found remarkable things that I would have thought were rather secondary. When he comes back from having received the gold plates, presumably all he can think about is the Urim and Thummim. That's what he. That's the first two eyewitness accounts of his immediate response to that experience describe. He's all excited by the Urim and Thummim, not the gold plates. But then you think about it and, well, that makes a kind of sense. Why should he be excited about a bunch of gold plates written in a strange language that he can't make sense of? Whereas the Urim and Thummim is this instrument that is immediately accessible to him. Similarly, according to Lucy Mack's account. Right. He comes back and he says, I've learned for myself that Presbyterianism isn't true. Well, you'd think it was rather more significant that he'd learned that there's a real God. I don't know. The fact that what he does tell us in the first account is that God forgave his sins seems to me to have a kind of psychological realism. If the reason he went to the Grove was because of concern over his own sinful condition and he found personal remission at the hands of a Christ who appeared to him, the fact that there's a God, the Father, introducing him in the background might not have loomed large, I think,

John Dehlin [00:07:57] and in so many. Okay, so maybe this isn't a terrible place to introduce this idea. When I originally stumbled on Hugh Nibley's no, Ma', Am, that's Not History, that was the first time that I even heard of, I think, probably the term apologetics or apologists, you know, because I. I was just a believer until I, like, had a really significant question. And I was so disappointed with that book because it didn't seem to address the merits of Fawn Brody's book at all. And ever since then, ever since then, I've always thought of apologetics in terms in a negative way. Not because I want to, but because, like, it always felt like it always. Well, aside from the ad Hominem attacks that sometimes have been used in the past. And aside from like, really trying to stretch logic to sort of make a justification, like we've talked about in the past, that maybe when the Book of Mormon says horse, it really meant taper. It seems like so much of traditional Mormon apologetics is trying to just expose plausible deniability, you know, trying to uncover some plausible deniability, trying to. So that there's no smoking gun. It's not trying to build a credible case. It's just trying to say, well, it's possible, it's still possible that this happened, even though there's some data that might suggest to some that it's not. So we talked a little bit about apologetics before in a phone call, preparing for this talk. But tell me how you see the role of apologetics and where you see yourself in apologetics so that we can kind of frame some of this that we're doing.

Apologetics, Folk Magic, and Joseph Smith

Terryl Givens [00:09:47] Well, I don't see myself personally as involved in apologetics. Of course, there might be a difference of opinion among the audience reading my books, but first of all, I'm uncomfortable with the word apologetics almost in any context where it's used today because it has so much baggage attached to it. It reminds me of my Martin Marty when he was interviewed in the aftermath of the David Koresh fiasco in Waco. He was asked by an NPR interviewer, how do you define cult? And Martin Marty said, oh, that's easy. Cult means you belong to a church I don't like.

John Dehlin [00:10:25] Right.

Terryl Givens [00:10:27] And so apologist, in the way that it's used today usually means you're defending something that I don't think is defensible, or you're defending it in authentic ways. Insofar though, as I think apologetics does have a respectable history, an early church history, I think that the job of apologetics is to cut through the white noise, to try to sift out of the debate red herrings and bad information and create the conditions for a genuine conversation and to make the faith, at least not intellectually implausible. I think what Austin Ferrer says in this regard is accurate, that scholarship, for example, can't create faith, but it can create the conditions under which it's possible for faith to flourish. So that's the job, I think, of a good apologist, is not to convince or persuade, but to make belief intellectually legitimate and respectable, if that's what one chooses to do.

John Dehlin [00:11:36] Okay. And so the net issue that most people have, or the accusation that people have about the first vision story, it's not that you can't put them all together and kind of say that none necessarily contradict each other, that each separate account is primarily additive and providing detail or different perspective. It's just sort of, it sort of starts from this assumption that the story shouldn't change so much over time, that it just seems like with each account there's more detail. It's kind of like the fish that grows bigger and bigger each time someone tells about the fish they caught. You know, it just keeps growing. And that's kind of the accusation that, that, you know. And maybe one of the most relevant or difficult parts about it is that if you look at the Book of Mormon text, it seems to envision sort of a classic trinitarian view of God, that God. I think even in the Book of Mormon somewhere it says, you know, God and Christ are one or something to that effect. I may have it wrong. And there's a lot of argument that Joseph Smith did necessarily see God and Jesus as separate beings when he first, you know, when the church was first formed, that that was a doctrine that developed later, let's say, in Nauvoo. And so the argument is that, you know, the Book of Mormon seems to have a trinitary, a single God and Jesus is one kind of idea. And so of course, when he has the first vision in 1830 or recounts it in 1832, before he's developed that doctrine, he's going to also talk about God as a single thing. But as he needs to accommodate for his expanding theology, his first vision story then grows to become more expansive so that God and Jesus are separate and one's introducing the other. Otherwise how could we have, you know, his theory of, you know, theosis. Does that make sense?

Terryl Givens [00:13:42] Yeah, it does. And I, you know, I have some sympathy with those who want to read it that way. I think that that's kind of developmental paradigm has a certain plausibility. I don't buy into it. I think that there is a much stronger case that can be made for the seeds of most of Joseph's theological system being already present in the Book of Mormon in 1830, in many cases, in ways that I don't think even he seemed to be self consciously aware of. I think, for example, if you look at the vision of the brother of Jared, Christ appears to him as an embodied, right, a spiritually embodied deity before he's born and says that man will be made in the image of that same spirit body. And that seems to me fully consistent with everything that Joseph always taught about God, in his lectures on faith, right, given very early in the Kirtland period, he's already referring to God and Christ as separate beings, that God is a tabernacle of spirit, Christ is a tabernacle of flesh. It's only later that he comes to impute to God a glorified fleshly condition. And that does take a little bit time to develop. Sometimes you do find language in Joseph's discourse, sometimes in the Doctrine and Covenants, sometimes in the Book of Mormon, sometimes in his sermons. That smacks in what I think are very superficial ways of conventional theological categories and language. I think that we make a great mistake if we try to derive a kind of whole series of theological implications or background to Joseph's sometimes overly casual use of language. I'm thinking, for example, of expressions in the Book of Mormon that only taken out of context have Calvinist connotations. People many times cite King Benjamin's speech, for example, as an instance of reputed Calvinism in the Book of Mormon. The natural man is an enemy to God. Well, the essence of that whole speech of King Benjamin is that we have to become as little children. Now, nothing could possibly be more anathema to Calvinist thought than to say that a little child, unredeemed and unbaptized, is the essence of godliness. So you couldn't have a more emphatically anti Calvinist position, but because you take one word out of context, you know, you try to form an argument about Calvinism. And I think something similar is happening when you try to impute to Joseph Smith trinitarianism in the Book of Mormon. I think some of that kind of conventional language is without real theological weight in the way it's being used.

John Dehlin [00:16:31] Okay, okay. So you're saying you have sympathy to the argument that it could be a growing story, but for you the evidence isn't compelling.

Terryl Givens [00:16:43] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:16:43] Okay. All right, that's fair. Okay, so the next big one that people have a really hard time with is just his. You know, the, the idea is that he started out kind of goofing around with folk magic and, and treasure digging and, and with that, you know, a belief in the supernatural. And, and slowly somehow people started believing that he had real power, and he even started believing that he had real power. Even though I don't know that there's ever any evidence that any treasure was ever found, somehow people still believed he had the power to find treasure. But all this, you know, all this weird treasure digging stuff and, and thinking about buried Indian treasures sort of makes people Think that. That, you know, that what happened was he did a lot of that until people thought he kind of was. Was kind of powerful. Somehow those experiences led him to want to write a book on ancient America and Indians. But. But this whole prophet thing was like an afterthought that came. That sprung out of all this. This creepy folk magic kind of stuff. And so what do you think about how do you reconcile his participation in folk magic, you know, and not kind of dismiss his later stuff because it grew out of that.

Terryl Givens [00:18:18] Right? Yeah. I don't know that I have a complete handle on how exactly we're to understand his proficiency in folk magical practices. I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I wonder if he had an inflated sense of his own ability to be a scryer, because, as you say, there are abundant indications from the historical record that he was reputed to have this ability. But neither have I ever come across a source that indicates evidence of him ever actually having found something substantial. So either it was an inflated opinion that he had of his abilities, or, you know, I've wondered sometimes if there wasn't something of a practical jokester to the whole nature, especially when he describes some of the, you know, the sacrifices of lambs that he persuade or of sheep that he persuaded some of his neighbors to practice in order to appease the spirits that were guarding the treasure. You know, some of the early converts left the church after becoming acquainted with Joseph Smith because they felt his sense of humor was so inconsistent with the calling and dignity of a prophet. So I don't know. I think it's clear that he himself recognized that he had sinned and erred in not divorcing himself more expeditiously from the. Those practices and those associations. And there seemed to be a difficult process by which he morphed from, you know, the farm boy scryer into the. Into the prophet. But I also, I guess I personally don't share many of the modernist prejudices about folk magic, in part because that's part of my background. I mean, I grew up on a farm in New York where you can still see to this very day the remains of the holes dug by money diggers. Winchell. They were called Winchell holes. On the farm where I lived, Winchell was an associate of Oliver Cowdery. My father himself was renowned among friends and neighbor for his ability to water, douse for water, witch for water, and was apparently very proficient at it. So I think it's only a modern prejudice that sees those as either fraudulent on the one hand, or know, occult and forms of dark arts on the other, I think the lines were much more fluid that separated folk magic from religion.

John Dehlin [00:20:47] And just to. Just to kind of make sure everyone understands the term. When you use modernist, you mean us taking a modern sensibility and trying to force. Retrograde that back. Retrofit that back to someone who lived 200 years ago, right?

Terryl Givens [00:21:02] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:21:03] Taking our biases and assuming that they should have them too.

Terryl Givens [00:21:06] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:21:07] Okay. All right. Okay.

Terryl Givens [00:21:11] Presentist, I guess, is a better word for that.

John Dehlin [00:21:13] What did I say?

Terryl Givens [00:21:14] Modernist.

John Dehlin [00:21:15] Oh, presentist. Okay. All right. Okay. So that. That doesn't. That doesn't bug you? And the fact that the same seer stone that he used in some of the, as I understand it, the same seer stone that he used in some of that tomfoolery, you could say, you know, leads to it, is used in his, quote, translation of the Book of Mormon. Is that your understanding and does that bother you?

Terryl Givens [00:21:40] I don't know that it bothers me. I think it's interesting that Joseph himself is not embarrassed or ashamed of that folk magic past to the extent that he's right. He's very prompt and open about saying to his early associates, apparently, look, this Urim and Thummim just isn't working for me. It hurts my eyes. So at least according to a couple of accounts, he says, I'm not going to use it. I'm more comfortable and familiar with the Seer stone that I've been using over the years, and I'm going to stick that in the bottom of a hat to exclude the light. And that works better for me. So for him, you know, supernaturalism, whether the folk magic variety or the Hebraic prophetic variety, in both cases they have the same function. They grant us access to the transcendent and to the divine.

John Dehlin [00:22:28] But that's kind of weird. Like, why would God provide a Urim and Thummim if Joseph was just going to use a stone, you know?

Terryl Givens [00:22:35] Well, I don't know. Good question. It was buried with it. It was part of the, you know, it was part of the kind of the paraphernalia that filled the American Ark of the Covenant. Joseph didn't need it.

John Dehlin [00:22:50] I mean, I guess you could say he practiced with that and then was able to transfer whatever he learned to the stone. But anyway, okay, so, all right, so the Book of Mormon itself, Grant Palmer has this argument, I'm sure you're familiar with it, that a fifth of the Book of Mormon is like Straight copy from whatever version of the King James Bible that Joseph Smith used, including some of the errors that were in that version, you know what I'm saying? And, and then a fifth of it was like Joseph's own narrative. It's like his father's dream and Joseph's own family and that kind of stuff. And then you've got the whole sort of burned over district Protestant sermons that were going on that Joseph's incorporating into like King Benjamin's speech and other people's Mosiah's speeches. And then you've got a whole strain about anti Masonry and the whole stuff about, oh, I don't know, the anti, the, the secret combination stuff. You know, Palmer traces to the fascination with the Masonic Lodge and all the secret things that were going on. And I think, I think he has a fifth sort of source. Oh, oh. And then, I don't know, like, you know, the view of the Hebrews and that whole Solomon Spalding manuscript, just people's attempts to explain where the Native Americans came from and making that link back to the Holy Land. Like for Grant Palmer, those are clearly the sources of the Book of Mormon. And I think the view of the Hebrews is kind of, you know, I mean, it's kind of suspicious, right? And the Solomon Spalding, maybe it's not the Solomon Spaulding stuff. You know, even Von Brody didn't give it much credibility. But you know, it seems like it's reasonable to think that everyone was trying to answer this question. Joseph was fascinated with it. You yourself said he's kind of a cultural sponge or whatever word you used, that he just kind of brought it all together somehow into a book. Maybe Oliver Cowdery helped him write it secretly. Maybe Sidney Rigdon helped him write it secretly. But regardless, he didn't write it in the matter of a month or two. He secretly wrote it with two or three or four other people. People have linked Oliver Cowdery back to the author of the View of the Hebrews through whatever congregation he was originally a part of. So like it seems like, and I think they've linked Sidney Rigdon to Solomon Spalding. And so it seems possible that through some type of sort of conspiracy and that this book could have been written secretly by a group of people. What do you, what are your thoughts on that?

The Book of Mormon: Historicity and Translation

Terryl Givens [00:25:52] Well, I think it all depends on what are the presuppositions with which you begin your investigation of the Book of Mormon. If you're beginning with the assumption either that Joseph was a fraud or that there is no such thing as supernaturalism, then of course, you have to come up with some kind of an environmental explanation for how Joseph put this stuff together. And if you're proceeding on that set of assumptions, then these kinds of theories that you're talking about are the most plausible and reasonable ones that one can suggest, the best that we can come up with. But I'm not disadvantaged in that way. I don't have to prima facie exclude supernaturalism or the possibility of modern prophets, because those possibilities are just part of my worldview, part of my paradigm. And then I also come at it from a different perspective because my whole life has been devoted to the study of literature, to the reading of texts. And I remember when I first came across Blake Osler's hypothesis about the Book of Mormon as the expansion, I forget the title, expansion of an Ancient Source, which operates along similar lines, that Joseph found something, but it was very, very small, and then he expanded it on the basis of, you know, his own inspiration and culture and so forth. I just. I find those theories utterly incompatible with the perfect beauty and symmetry and organic unity of the Book of Mormon as a literary work.

John Dehlin [00:27:22] Really?

Terryl Givens [00:27:23] Yeah, absolutely. There's a coherence to it. In the very first, the opening chapters, where Lehi has a series of visions and experiences, there are a series of themes that are laid out. Revelation, Christ and Scripture and Zion in the wilderness. And those themes are carried and executed throughout the book with such perfect consistency from beginning to end, especially the theme of revelation. Right. The very first real theological claim that the Book of Mormon makes of what I think is real Importance is first, Nephi. 10 When Nephi is talking about the experience his father had with the vision of the Tree of Life, and he goes to the Lord and asks if he can have that same vision, the angel appears to him and says, what? Don't you believe the words of your father? Well, the entire Old Testament tradition is predicated on the notion that prophecy is given to prophets. Revelation is the province of leaders of nations or peoples. And at that moment, Joseph says, or excuse me, Nephi says, well, yea, thou knowest, I believe all the words of my father. And then the angel breaks into this hosanna shout and gives Nephi his own private, personal vision. So at that moment, early in the Book of Mormon, it's established that the major theological divergence of the Book of Mormon from the Christian scriptural canon is the principle of individualized, personal, personalized revelation. And that is carried out thematically throughout the book in such a pervasive way. Fathers get revelation for their sons. Generals get revelation as to where the Lamanites are going to attack. Hunters get revelation as to where to look for the deer. Inquirers get answers as to theological questions and doctrinal questions. And then the book ends with a return to that exact same theme, right where Moroni makes the extended process to a futurity. So in that way, and in terms of the Christology that is so pervasive, everything in the book chronologically and thematically is oriented around the centrality of Christ's incarnation. It doesn't make sense to me to try to explain that literary work as a kind of potpourri, a kind of pastiche of all kinds of odds and ends that just come together from a variety of sources. And then other more subtle indications, like the way the audience is so carefully constructed and shifts from Nephi's family and posterity to a Lamanite people who are going to displace the Nephites. And gradually, by the end of the Book of Mormon, it's to an unknown audience through whom this record will come by means unknown. This isn't, to my mind, compelling proof that the Book of Mormon is inspired or ancient, but it is compelling proof to my mind that we're working here with a literary work that is cohesive, coherent, and not to be explained, as I said, in terms of this kind of ad hoc constitution or mosaic. I think in this regard, Grant Hardy has done a magnificent job of showing that there is a complexity and a literary sophistication to this work that even Fawn, Brodie and others were far from fully appreciating.

John Dehlin [00:30:51] Does it bug you that the Nephites were able to learn and Rejoice of Christ 600 years before his birth, but no one on the other side got to do that?

Terryl Givens [00:31:05] Oh, well, you know, to my mind, plausible explanations for why that might have been the case. First of all, it's significant that every time something about Christ is said in the Book of Mormon, there is a self consciousness on the part of the speaker that this is unusual knowledge. And so it's always framed in terms of an angel brought this knowledge to me, or through revelation I learned this, or reading this ancient record, I found this. Or so it's not just a kind of commonplace knowledge that is thrown about in the Book of Mormon. Second of all, everything in the Book of Mormon passes through the hands of an editor in the 5th century AD, presumably, which means that it's possible, though I don't know, that this is the case, that there is added detail put in after the fact, once Moroni is able to see and recognize, oh, this is what those vague prophecies were alluding to. Why don't I just fill in some more of the details. So sure there are some inconsistencies between the level of specificity of the Christology in the Book of Mormon and that of other scriptural traditions and I find that unusual and striking, but I don't find it an insurmountable problem.

John Dehlin [00:32:21] If you think about could be viewed as a glaringly obvious thing that might have occurred to Joseph to, to not try and talk too much about Christ prior to his birth with a bunch of Jews. Right?

Terryl Givens [00:32:39] Well one would think so. That's the striking thing about Joseph is that again and again he chose the most difficult possible way to perpetrate a fraud. Right. Why not follow the path of Jacob Burma or Emanuel Swedenborg or a thousand other mystics who said, well, I fell into this dream trance and this book was revealed to me. Why pretend that you've got an actual physical artifact that you have to prove to people exists? Why develop a Christology that is completely out of sync with what would be more plausible in terms of an ancient American record? So there's a certain perverseness to his self destructiveness if he was a fraud.

John Dehlin [00:33:23] Yeah, because I guess this is credible to say he brought his family in if it were a fraud. Right, right. If it were conspiracy, he brought his wife into it, he brought his parents into it, he brought his siblings into it, he brought the, you know, Martin Harris into it, Oliver Cowdery, the Whitmers, all those people and nobody, nobody broke the agreement. Right.

Terryl Givens [00:33:51] Well that to my mind, it's one of the oldest defenses made of the Book of Mormon and it's always been think the most compelling. The fact that so many of those witnesses defected from the church that broke personally with Joseph Smith only enhances the value of their testimony with regard to the Book of Mormon because that would have only added additional weight to expose the fraud and yet not a single one ever did.

John Dehlin [00:34:18] Well, I guess my only argument to that would be they'd be impugning themselves. Right. So if, so if who was one of the three witnesses? David Whitmer. If David Whitmer goes off and says yeah, we just made up the book, then doesn't everyone hate him for the rest of his life?

Terryl Givens [00:34:37] Well, I don't know, that's possible, I guess. But in the history of frauds we've seen people pretty comfortable with exposing fraud after its utility in their lives had passed or once they became disaffected from their colleagues in crime. Certainly it seems to me that it would have spoken, at least in that contemporary context. They might have been seen as heroes for coming clean and breaking completely and lifting the lid off the Mormon conspiracy.

John Dehlin [00:35:09] Yeah, you'd think that at least one person would. Right? At least one of them. Yeah. And it wasn't like David Whitmer just said, you know, he basically supported a bunch of stuff, but also didn't agree with some other things. And so why would he be criticizing on the one hand, but then supporting other parts of the story?

Terryl Givens [00:35:29] Yeah, and it wasn't just the eight witnesses. I mean, the 11 witnesses, it was others. You know, William McClellan's another great example. Right. Times Joseph's secretary, very close confidant. Right. Absolutely. Devoted breaks with Joseph Smith completely. And enemies of the church correspond with him and ask him to help attack the Church in the Book of Mormon. And he writes back and he says, oh, don't touch the Book of Mormon. That's the apple of my eye. And Joseph might have been a scoundrel, but that Book of Mormon is true. And that's the case.

John Dehlin [00:35:56] Really?

Terryl Givens [00:35:57] Yeah. And I see this pattern again and again in early church history of defectors and apostates who break with the Church and yet can't break with their testimony of the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:36:09] And yet I think I remember you writing in People of Paradox that the Book of Mormon goes largely unread within the church for about 150 years. I mean, not totally, but kind of largely. Right?

Terryl Givens [00:36:22] Yeah. Parley Pratt's the only church figure I know of who really, really explored the Book of Mormon and tried to use it as a basis for his preaching, but even he failed to develop any of its theological richness and any of its theological innovations. I mean, I think the most radical thing about the Book of Mormon theologically is its denial of original sin. It's, you know, the fortunate fall idea. And yet nobody seems to have noticed that in the first hundred years of the Church, the Book of Mormon functioned almost exclusively as an artifactual evidence of the reality of Joseph Smith's prophetic calling.

John Dehlin [00:37:04] Not a scriptural text.

Terryl Givens [00:37:06] Not a scriptural text. In fact, what Brigham Young and many other first generation converts said was, well, the Book of Mormon was what I would have expected it to be, fully consistent with the Bible. Nothing new there. Why pay any more attention to its content?

John Dehlin [00:37:19] Interesting. Very interesting. Okay, so where does that take us? So in the translation of the Book of Mormon, I guess the biggest question I have there Is if Joseph's going to translate with a peep stone and a hat, which by all contemporary accounts, that's how the Book of, you know, the Book of Mormon that we have today, that's the primary means by which he translated the book. Why would God even need to give him the plates? Why not just have him channel it? And there are no need for plates if he's not even going to use the plates in the translation. So just to make it clear for, for those who haven't heard, the understanding is that Joseph took a hat, put a peep stone in it, stuck his face in it, dictated the words to the scribe, and the plates often weren't even in the room. Now, do I have it wrong?

Terryl Givens [00:38:12] Nope, that's right.

John Dehlin [00:38:13] Okay.

Terryl Givens [00:38:14] That's right. So what we see is a perfectly consistent transition from stage to stage. He begins, he's got the plates, he's examining them, he makes a transcript of a transcription of part of them. He seems to be struggling to translate. He's using the Urim and Thummim gradually. He's not even looking at the plates. He's got his head in a hat with a peep stone. And then. Right, the Book of Mormon, the plates themselves aren't even in the same room. And then, of course, by the time he gets to the Book of Abraham, which is another subject, but by the time he gets to that, he doesn't even pretend to be using any kind of instrument. So one could see that as a kind of progression Joseph makes from needing some kind of a physical medium through which God makes his will known to him, to an ability to have unmediated direct access to these revelations.

John Dehlin [00:39:16] So in some strange way, he needed something physical to boot to kickstart the process.

Terryl Givens [00:39:25] That seems to me a good hypothesis that would explain his transition through these different mediums.

John Dehlin [00:39:35] Yeah. Because again, why is he doing all this? If he's just making up a book, why doesn't he just produce the book? Why does he have to, like, go through this spectacle of translating.

Terryl Givens [00:39:45] Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:39:46] For everybody. I mean, I guess it's because he has to tie it actual plates, because he wants people to believe the story, Right?

Terryl Givens [00:39:53] Yeah, but like I said, you can. You can have the story without having the physical artifact it comes from.

John Dehlin [00:40:00] But. But the physical artifact makes it real. Like you say, it's. It's the difference between he made it up and. No, there were real artifacts, right?

Terryl Givens [00:40:08] Yeah, possibly so. I mean, one contemporary example of fraud is probably the most successful. One of that preceding generation was James macpherson who purported to have discovered some ancient Gaelic manuscripts which he translated into the Poems of Ossian. And he publishes these in the late 1700s in England to just fantastic reception and acclaim. And these poems are still published all the way into the early 20th century. And there were a few skeptic readers, like Samuel Johnson, who thought there just wasn't the ring of ancient authenticity to those translations. And so he asked him to produce the originals, which McPherson said he would do, and then he never did. And so gradually the consensus grew that that was indeed a fraud, but his poems were popular nonetheless.

Witnesses, Book of Abraham, and Masonic Ritual

John Dehlin [00:41:06] All right,

John Dehlin [00:41:08] so

John Dehlin [00:41:11] let's see.

John Dehlin [00:41:12] So

John Dehlin [00:41:14] he creates the Book of Mormon, and he starts the Church. What do you make of Grant Palmer's assertions about. In 1838, when the church was in crisis, the witnesses were interviewed and didn't confess to actually experiencing the angels or the plates with their physical hands or eyes, but with their spiritual eyes. Talk about the background and what you make of that if you can.

Terryl Givens [00:41:46] Yeah, again, that strikes me as just a red herring. And if I were attacking the Church, I'd find a lot more compelling arguments to make than that.

John Dehlin [00:41:58] Restate his argument, if you don't mind, because I clobbered it.

Terryl Givens [00:42:01] Well, if I'm understanding you correctly, and this is not just Grant Palmer, but any number of critics have pointed out that some of the witnesses later indicated that they had seen the plates with spiritual and not physical eyes, as if that undermines the veracity and potency of their testimonies. I don't think so. If you're just familiar with New Testament language, if you're familiar with Paul's own description of his visions. Right. When he talks about being caught up into the seventh Heaven, he says, whether in the body or out of the body, I. I couldn't say. Well, what does that tell us? That tells us that for people like Paul who are having some kind of a visionary experience in which they have access to a level of reality that is outside the normal phenomenal world, they aren't sure exactly how it is that they've experienced that or how to describe it. A dream or a vision seems inadequate. And yet it's not exactly the same as when I look and see you or this desk or chair in front of me. And so there's a kind of groping for language that is adequate to explain what it is they're experiencing and how they know that. And I think the language of the witnesses is fully consistent with that tradition of trying to find language for what is for, you know, an aspect of Experience that falls out outside the normal kind of power of language to express. If that fact that they were describing it as a spiritual rather than physical manifestation undermined the legitimacy of the experience, then they certainly would have taken the next step of questioning the legitimacy of that experience.

John Dehlin [00:43:44] That's a good point.

Terryl Givens [00:43:46] But none of them did. And so it's a non issue. It was a non issue for them and I think it should be a

John Dehlin [00:43:52] non issue because they never, they never went back and said, hey, maybe, maybe it was.

Terryl Givens [00:43:56] Exactly, exactly. And when Joseph describes his first vision, you know, he talks about when he came. When I came to myself. What does that mean? When I came to myself. That sounds like you're waking up. Well, there again, I think he probably was not sure himself. If he was in vision, in dream, did I enter their realm? Did God enter mine? How do we explain that? I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:44:19] Was it all in his mind? Was it, you know, who knows? Right?

Terryl Givens [00:44:22] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:25] Or in another realm. Okay, so you, I mean, I've heard even, I think Daniel Peterson say that the, the witnesses in his mind were very credible. And then there's, you know, the Mark Twain quote where he's joking about, well, if the Whitmers, if the Whitmers and the Smiths say that it's true, then we must believe them, you know. Do you find the first witnesses credible, the three witnesses and a witnesses credible?

Terryl Givens [00:44:54] Well, sure. Oliver Cowdery, I think, especially because he seems well, but also David Whitmer. They were the most, I think, stable, educated, respected, and also, I thought, manifested lives of great integrity throughout their careers, both inside and outside the church. So if every single witness had been a member of Joseph Smith's family, then that would be cause to be suspicious. But, you know, you've got several that were and you have others that weren't. And of course it's going to be inevitable that in the first few months of the church's existence, the first people you're going to talk to and convert are going to be your friends and neighbors, your friends, family and relatives. So that's rather, it seems to me, what one would expect.

John Dehlin [00:45:41] Right, so talk quickly about, you know, the book of Abraham. Basically, we didn't know the source, but then, you know, the scrolls that Joseph had purchased, I guess in Kirtland show up in the museum in the 1960s. And Egyptologists kind of identify quickly what they are. And according Egyptologists, they bear no resemblance to any and no part of, no part of whatever scrolls remain bear any resemblance to what we have in the Book of Abraham. It's instead just some funeral texts that are buried with every, you know, pharaoh that gets buried in Egypt.

Terryl Givens [00:46:22] Right.

John Dehlin [00:46:23] How do you. I mean, that, that, that one issue alone is a death blow to many a testimony. Is it credible? How do you work through that?

Terryl Givens [00:46:33] Well, I don't, you know, I don't purport to have any expertise, certainly in the field of Egyptology, and I haven't. Let me just put it this way. Harold Bloom believes that the most or he's written to the extent that the most compelling and inexplicable prophetic manifestations in Joseph Smith's career were his production of the Abrahamic material. Now, I don't know how. I don't know the process involved by which he produced the Book of Abraham. I think it's entirely possible that prophecy isn't something that prophets produce. Prophecy is something that happens to us. Revelation is something that erupts in a person's life or mind. I think Joseph himself may have been mistaken as to the process by which he was receiving whatever it is he. He was receiving. And here I think Hugh Nibley was right. I think it's, you know, the case is the same with the Book of Mormon or with the Abrahamic material. Read the material and then judge it on the basis of what you've read, not on the basis of the purported process by which we got it. I don't know how Joseph received it. I don't know what the relationship is between the manuscripts that he bought, the finished product. In my mind, the most plausible explanation is that whatever he was looking at and working with was a catalyst and a prompt, just as the Urim and Thummim had been, or the physical presence of the plates had been. But the finished product, I mean, if you read the Book of Abraham, it strikes me as something that is so authentically within the tradition of Abrahamic writings as we now know them through a whole pseudepigraphal tradition, that I just don't concern myself too much with the process by which he got them.

John Dehlin [00:48:34] So for you, he could have thought that he was translating from the papyru, but in reality, channeling something God wanted us all to read and there was really no direct connection. You're okay with that scenario?

Terryl Givens [00:48:50] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:48:51] In fact, do you think that's the likely scenario?

Terryl Givens [00:48:54] Well, it's one likely scenario. My understanding, and I could be wrong, but my understanding is that, you know, one account of those original papyri scrolls has them being 50 to 60ft in length. They unrolled and they went from one end of the mansion house to the other. And yet all that we've recuperated from the Metropolitan Museum, it would all fit on a small tabletop. So, you know, we don't. I don't know that we're absolutely certain as to exactly what scrolls was he working with and what connections might there be to other material that we haven't recovered? But my best guess is that the scrolls were just a prompt to a revelatory experience he had.

John Dehlin [00:49:36] And in your mind, he might have not even understood what they were, what he was doing.

Terryl Givens [00:49:41] That's right. That's right.

John Dehlin [00:49:42] Isn't that kind of crazy, though?

Terryl Givens [00:49:44] It is crazy. It is. The whole what about Mormonism isn't once we go down the rabbit hole, we've gone down the rabbit hole. And in Mormonism, you've got to go down the rabbit hole. But as Harold Bloom says, all revealed religion takes you down the rabbit hole. Right. I mean, and, you know, it's like, you know, you didn't mention the Book of Moses, which there, again, what text is he working from to get the Book of Moses? But anybody that can read the Enoch material and not be profoundly moved by it. And again, you read the other Enoch materials that have come forth since the mid and late 19th century, and the consistency of his version with these others, not to mention just the transcendent beauty of the Weeping God story. I don't care where it came from, I don't care what was the process by which it was transmitted to him. I'm just glad we have it.

John Dehlin [00:50:47] So you find a lot of value in the pearly. Great price for Mormonism.

Terryl Givens [00:50:50] Absolutely. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:52] You know, it's funny because this is. We're going back a little bit, but. But you're right, you're down the rabbit hole as soon as you. As soon as you start that Joseph communicated with God, so. So using a Urim and Thummim with a breastplate to translate the golden plates is no less crazy than having a peep stone in a hat. Right?

Terryl Givens [00:51:18] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:51:18] But who. I want to know this. Who in the Church's history decided that the peep stone in the hat story was more embarrassing and somehow less credible and decided that we needed to. To misrepresent what happened?

Terryl Givens [00:51:35] I don't know enough about the history of the editing of the history of the Church, but it strikes me that it might have been B.H. roberts, might have come later with Joseph Fielding Smith, I don't know. But I've always felt that.

John Dehlin [00:51:47] Where does that Come from?

Terryl Givens [00:51:49] Well, I mean if you read in the history of the church, you know, the kind of official church history, I don't believe you find reference to the peep stone in the hat there.

John Dehlin [00:51:56] So did BH Roberts potentially misrepresent or just not know did that?

Terryl Givens [00:52:01] I don't know. Like I said, I think he edited the first version of the history of the church, but I haven't looked into that. I don't know when that story, when it drops out.

John Dehlin [00:52:11] Wouldn't that be a cool thing to study, to figure out?

Terryl Givens [00:52:13] Yeah, of course, I don't know that you can really say that it dropped out. It was never a part of Joseph's history. I mean we get those descriptions from contemporary eyewitnesses that Roberts and others might not have even had access to. But I've thought many times since that, you know, if you were to teach a primary class of 10 year old kids and say, you know, this is how Joseph translated the Book of Mormon and you've got a picture of him looking at a peepstone in a hat, 10 year old kids would go oh, that's cool.

John Dehlin [00:52:40] Right? Exactly.

Terryl Givens [00:52:41] But you tell somebody who's 50 years old and they go, well that's undignified and inconsistent with what I learned. Who's been lying to me.

John Dehlin [00:52:47] Exactly.

Terryl Givens [00:52:49] We ought to get the story out correctly the first time really early, right? Yep.

John Dehlin [00:52:57] Yeah, man. Can, can somebody go talk to someone to fix that, please?

Terryl Givens [00:53:02] I volunteered, but I don't think anybody heard.

John Dehlin [00:53:07] Okay, so Kinderhook plates, I'm going to assume you're going to chalk that down to prophetic fallibility.

Terryl Givens [00:53:13] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:15] And hubris and whatever. Yeah, but how do we trust Abraham? Book of Abraham, but not, you know, why would God let Joseph think he was doing a translation? I mean, why didn't God stop him? Right. I guess he can't get in the mind of God. But you see what I'm saying, right?

Terryl Givens [00:53:33] Well, I don't really because I mean what we have with the book of Abraham and with the book of Moses, both are really important documents that I think we're clearly meant to have and that strengthen and edify and enlarge our understanding of the gospel and of its eternal dispensations and it's, you know, that it was taught to Adam and the true nature of God. I mean these are some of the most important things that we have in the Mormon, in the Mormon faith. And I just don't know that we, I just don't know how relevant the actual mechanics by which those came to us are. I mean, you know, the Christians don't know anything about how the, you know, the older New Testament canons, well, they know a lot, but they don't know everything about how those canons came together. We don't know anything about the methods by which Old Testament prophets received their revelations or by which Paul wrote his letters. That doesn't seem to be a concern to anybody.

John Dehlin [00:54:30] But the fact that Joseph would kind of like go, oh, let me translate these and think that he's really doing a translation, well, I find that admirable.

Terryl Givens [00:54:38] I mean, what is he doing? He's studying. You look at his journal during those Nauvoo years, and he's studying German so he can read Luther's Bible and he's studying Hebrew, he's taking Hebrew classes so he can read the Old Testament in the original and he gets these manuscripts and he's studying and trying to construct some kind of an Egyptian Alphabet and grammar. He's trying to make sense out of it. I mean, that's one of the things I love about Joseph Smith. He'd already proven that he could just receive revelations virtually at will, and yet he's trying to do the hard intellectual work of being a scholar and learn how to translate ancient documents. I mean, how admirable is that?

John Dehlin [00:55:19] So how do you feel about those who try and characterize Joseph as this uneducated yokel farm boy?

Terryl Givens [00:55:29] Well, I think we know that he was relatively uneducated. We know that he was very self conscious about that. If you read his letters in the original, it becomes abundantly clear just how poor his schooling was. Was. But at the same time, you know, we. I think it was his mother Lucy that said he didn't read widely, but he read deeply. And I think he had this capacity for immense concentration and focus. And he also had this absolute intellectual courage that enabled him to think, you know, the unthinkable. I mean, in the history of Western thought, the occasions on which we find human beings capable of stepping outside their paradigm and thinking the hitherto unthinkable are so rare. You know, when you do, you're an Einsteiner, you're a Copernicus. Well, in the theological world, I think you're a Joseph Smith. To consider the possibilities of what hitherto had been absolutely unthinkable as propositions. You know, his statement about by proving contrarieties, truth is made manifest. I think one way to read that is to push ideas as far to their logical absurdity as you can and see where that takes you and what Works and what doesn't. When did the boundaries of truth and logic push back against you in your explorations of these ideas? I mean, what an adventuresome mind he had.

John Dehlin [00:56:54] Yeah. So a great mind, right?

Terryl Givens [00:56:56] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:56:57] I mean, a gifted mind, probably.

Terryl Givens [00:57:00] Yeah. And I think this is probably what Michael Coe was referring to. I think this is certainly what Harold Bloom was referring to. When he talks about Joseph Smith's religion making imagination, he doesn't mean his capacity to weave a fanciful tale. He means his ability to think on a mythopoeic scale, a capacity to rewrite the entire narrative of cosmological history, past, present and future. You know, and in that sense, I mean, he was, he was the equal of a, you know, any of the greatest poets of this day or any other.

John Dehlin [00:57:35] And you studied a little bit about poetry, right?

Terryl Givens [00:57:38] Yeah, a little bit. But I mean, that's, you know, that's ultimately what one of the things I just, I love about Mormonism is the story that it tells that begins in these distant eons of the past with these, you know, strange swirling entities, these intelligences that then are gathered together under the nurturing arm of Elohim and are given the opportunity to advance through the eternities and into this future that is fleshed out in exquisite if bold and daunting detail. If you look up how theology is defined in 19th century handbooks, it's defined as man's attempt to understand the plan of salvation from the fall of Adam till the end of the world. And Joseph Smith said, oh, but that's such a small chapter in cosmic history. And he races back both before and long after that brief interval in order to give us the scope of the whole. And, you know, it's a daunting vision that he presents us with. It's audacious and it's fantastic.

John Dehlin [00:58:48] Well, good. Well, what do you think about the. We talked about this a bit, but the incorporation of the Masonic Lodge stuff into the temple ceremony, like a lot of people just say he's just ripping stuff off and throwing it together and you know, it's just kind of plagiarism.

Terryl Givens [00:59:10] Well, sure, it's plagiarism. All great poetry is plagiarism and all great religion is plagiarism, especially in the Mormon conception of things, because it's not possible to create anything new. Right. It was all known to Adam. There's this Ur gospel that we're all trying to reach back and grope toward and reconstitute in its entirety and fullness. So if that's the paradigm that you begin with, then there's no such thing as novelty or innovation in religious thought. We're just trying to recuperate. There are other people, like Michael Smith is one, who were doing really interesting work on the influence of Masonry and early Mormonism. I certainly don't know the full story, but, you know, I'm reminded of a priest that I used to work with who came back from a mass he had just celebrated where he used beer for the wine and potato chips for the wafer. And I remember at the time, I thought that was a little bit over the top and blasphemous. And, you know, to some extent, maybe it was. But the point he was trying to make to his congregation was it doesn't matter what symbols we use. It doesn't matter. And we could rewrite the Temple ritual tomorrow and use Boy Scout signs and handshakes and it wouldn't matter. It's so immaterial. What are the actual, right, physical aspects of the ritual that we go through in the Temple? Joseph foundation, the Masonic ritual. Adaptable in ways that suited his purposes. He seemed to think that the Masonic ritual was an actual, if corrupted, inheritance from an ancient endowment. Now, the best scholarship today believes that Masonry is a fairly late invention out of whole cloth in the 17th century. Right. I don't know where Masonry comes from. I don't know what its relationship is to an original Adamic endowment. And I don't care, because I don't go to the Temple because I believe that the actual ritual I'm engaged in has any inherent value. What has value are the covenants that we make, the promises that we receive, and the relationships that are eternalized. And so I just say, well, bravo to Joseph Smith for finding a system that was quick and readily adaptable to his purposes.

John Dehlin [01:01:32] So the Masonic stuff, you know, the ritual is sort of like the delivery vehicle for the Doctrine and the Covenants. Is that what you're saying?

Terryl Givens [01:01:42] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:01:43] Of the Temple?

Terryl Givens [01:01:44] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:01:45] Okay. Okay, yeah, That's a good expression.

Terryl Givens [01:01:49] It's the delivery system, and the delivery system is immaterial. I don't care what kind of a hypodermic you use, as long as you've got the right antidote in it.

John Dehlin [01:01:56] Right, right. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out@sabre-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

John Dehlin [01:02:17] Come, come, ye saints no toil nor labor fear but with joy when you're away Though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to the San Jo your hearts will swell oh, all is well all is well. Why should we mourn? I think I God is high Tis not so all is right why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight Gird up your belongs Fresh courage take Our God will never us for sake soon we'll have let's tell it Tell oh, all is well all is well oh, him all is well. Sam. And should we die before our journey is through Happy day All is well we that are free from toil and sorrow too with the just we shall dwell but if our lives are spared again to see the saints their rest obtain A house will make this ch. Oh, all is well all is well all is well all is well all is well oh, all is well Ra.

Polygamy and Difficult Scriptural Passages

Part 5 of 5 · Ep. 293

John Dehlin [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3. Mormon Stories podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org so let's tackle polygamy.

Terryl Givens [00:00:32] I'll let you tackle polygamy and I'll listen.

John Dehlin [00:00:35] No, no, no. I mean, so, okay, the biggest. The pro. The most pro. Like, okay, the fact that God may have told Joseph to practice, you know, that he could have multiple wives. You know, I guess a believing Christian would have to square that with. With the Old Testament with the fact that it was allowed. Right, Right. So, I mean, you know, you could kind of take that step and go, well, that's a little bit weird, but okay, you know, God. God's done some weird things before, but the fact that Joseph lied about it, that he didn't tell Emma about it, the fact that he didn't start with a revelation in 1830, that he told everyone and then lived it openly and. And, you know, honestly, the fact that, again, he was hiding it, the fact that. And this is just bizarre, the fact that Oliver Cowdery apparently finds out about Fanny Alger in, I don't know, 1838 or whenever it was, calls it an affair, and that Joseph doesn't even bother to say, hey, what? I got a revelation.

Terryl Givens [00:01:42] Well, we don't know what he said. I mean, those conversations were presumably private. All we know is that he explained what had happened to Oliver Cowdery's satisfaction.

John Dehlin [00:01:50] He did?

Terryl Givens [00:01:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:01:52] I thought he excommunicated Oliver Cowdery.

Terryl Givens [00:01:54] You know, I should probably pause the record button and redo my research. I don't recall how that episode unfolded, but it was my understanding, and you may be right, that may have been the time that. That may have been when the rupture

John Dehlin [00:02:08] occurred, I think he called it. But Oliver Cowdery called it a dirty little affair. Nasty affair. Yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:02:13] Yeah. But at least temporarily, there was a kind of. Of resolution to that discord between them.

John Dehlin [00:02:18] And we don't know what that might have been. And it could be that Oliver just changed his mind and didn't buy it anymore. But. Yeah, okay, but. But still, like, why the. And okay, and then the final thing is, like, all the polyandry, the marrying, you know, there's this idea that he used coercion and power to tell parents of these young teenage girls. If you don't you know, let your daughter be with me. People, heads are gonna roll and God's gonna be mad. But if you do, you'll be sealed to me and you'll be on my right hand. And like so much coercion, even in DC138, there's so much coercion, you know, in his threats to Emma. And then, so there's the sending off the husbands to marry their wives while the husbands are away. There's the coercion that he used, you know, and that's weird, sending people on missions so he could marry their wives and not tell the people. And then finally that he denied it all. And then when someone came out and tried to be honest about it, he denounced them and destroyed the printing press like this. This is really hard to defend, right?

Terryl Givens [00:03:31] Yeah, it is. And I don't pretend to understand much of it. I think what you say about force and spiritual coercion, true. I think Joseph had stated clearly by way of revelation in 121 that right, no power or authority can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood. And then it appears that he used his authority in the priesthood to spiritually coerce people into this practice by threats of damnation and so forth. And I. If polygamy itself was sanctioned by God as a practice or commanded, I don't believe that he sanctioned the way in which Joseph implemented it on occasion. On the other hand, what I find very striking about early narratives of polygamy written by the women who engaged in it in that first generation is the astonishing pattern that emerges time and again with these young women who say they were appalled and horrified and aghast. And then on some occasions Joseph would say, well, that's fine. Then you pray about it and come back to me. And these women have dreams, they have visions, they have visitations, they have revelations that give them a perfect peace and willingness to accept polygamy. I. I'm not saying this was universal, but I'm saying that the pattern is common enough in the historical record for anybody to read to stop and take a second thought as to exactly what all this might mean. I don't know why Joseph instituted it. I believe wholeheartedly that he certainly believed he was commanded to do so. How extensive that practice was meant to be is not clear to me, both in the Book of Mormon and in section 132. The indication is that it's only permitted under the rarest and most limited of circumstances. And of course, it's not until after Joseph's death that it becomes a church wide practice. I think it's also interesting that as early as 1912, I think it is 1912 or 13, that a letter is written to the president of the church asking if plural marriage is a principle, going to be a principle in the eternities. Joseph F. Smith writes back and says, we don't know. So within just a few.

John Dehlin [00:06:07] What, wait, what is this?

Terryl Givens [00:06:08] Oh yeah, it's in, I've got the reference written down somewhere. It's in the. I think it's in the contributor magazine where letter is written and published. And he says very clearly, Joseph Smith. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:19] Who was a polygamist said, yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:06:22] And he says, we don't know if this is going to be a required practice in the eternities.

John Dehlin [00:06:26] Man, I want to see that reference,

Terryl Givens [00:06:28] so I'll happily send it to you.

John Dehlin [00:06:30] Okay.

Terryl Givens [00:06:31] And that's astonishing. A hundred years ago already the church leadership was backing away from this as an eternal doctrine and saying, you know, it may have just been a temporary thing. We don't know if this is really long term required. Brigham Young himself equivocated. He was back and forth all over the map on this question. It's an eternal principle. If you don't practice it, you're going to be damned. And the next minute, well, no, you can be saved with one wife as well as with 10. It seems to be a doctrine that never achieved the status of actual clarity on the part of anybody. And it seems to be one of those instances where Joseph felt that in order to recuperate fully the Old Testament Gospel in synthesis with the New Testament the, that he had to reinstitute the practice of polygamy. The specifics as to how he was going to do that obviously were not clear to him. And he seemed to bumble his way through from one attempt to implement it to another. As far as the subterfuge and the line, I think he clearly believed, and rightly so, that if he had publicly proclaimed the practice, the church would have been annihilated. And I think he probably looked to Old Testament precedents like Abraham lying about his seraiah being his sister in order to justify his deception. So that's some of the sense I make of it. I think that whether it was intended by God, whether he actually commanded Joseph to practice it or not, I think that the Lord certainly chose to bless those people who practiced the principle out of the belief that they were faithfully executing a responsibility to do so. But there's no doubt in my mind, at least that that is not going to Be a part of the eternal order of things after this life.

Guest [00:08:25] Hmm.

John Dehlin [00:08:28] So what things are possible in your mind? Is it possible that D&C132 is just a mistake and shouldn't be there at all? Is that something that you would be okay with if that turned out to be the case?

Terryl Givens [00:08:42] Yeah, I'd be okay with that. Except I think that 132 is, you know, we're talking about a very large, complex revelation. And if you were to break it down, you know, it's been read so differently by Mormons and even Mormon leaders through time. And there have been a number of readings of section 132 that think virtually the entirety of it is about the eternal marriage covenant. And only the first few verses and a few at the end have anything to do with plural marriage per se. And that's how I read it.

John Dehlin [00:09:13] But they're pretty clear at the end.

Terryl Givens [00:09:16] Yeah, I'd have to have it here in front of me to remember exactly what claims it talks about if a

John Dehlin [00:09:21] man take unto him a virgin, and you know, it's not a sin if you take on an extra virgin, you know. You know, under my covenant, stuff like that.

Terryl Givens [00:09:29] Right, well, right. And to that extent, I'm perfectly happy to believe that people who practiced polygamy were not practicing adultery because they were doing it under the authorized authority to do so. This comes back to what I said earlier. Whether God himself intended this practice or not, I think that he was willing, in essence, to stand behind his prophet and say, well, if this is the principle that you have, right. Taught and outlined and decreed, then yeah, I will bless people for following it. I think that a prophet is never going to be allowed to impose a doctrine which is going to be so pernicious that it destroys our souls. But it seems to me clear in the history of the Church that the crucible of plural marriage certainly was a kind of fiery furnace that galvanized faith and testimony and led to a numerous posterity of very faithful, committed Latter Day Saints. So there seems to have been something good that came out of it, although I'm glad that I wasn't one that was called upon to be put to that test.

John Dehlin [00:10:40] And in your mind, the way that Joseph carried it out could have been offensive in the sight of God. You hold open that possibility?

Terryl Givens [00:10:47] Yeah, I do, certainly, insofar as there certainly seem to have been occasions when. When spiritual coercion or deception were involved. But I also would say that, you know, this is one of those issues that cut so close and is so Controversial because of the sexual dimension that is right. Seems to be implicit in the practice. And, you know, here I defer to Kathleen Flake. I think her observation was very astute when she said, if you were merely trying to satisfy his libido, there's certainly much easier ways to do it than to elaborate an entire theological structure to justify it. Just sleep with a few people for heaven. And so I think that that's just really simple minded to try to attribute this to Joseph's lust. Not to mention the fact that he clearly was fertile. He clearly didn't have any problem as a progenitor of children. And yet the landscape wasn't littered with plural marriage offspring of Joseph Smith. In fact, it's my understanding that in spite of a number of DNA tests, not a single example has been found. So if he was engaging in sexual congress with these plural wives, he certainly wasn't doing it on a wide scale,

John Dehlin [00:12:02] or there'd be children, or there'd be children everywhere. So the idea that he was just a high libido, you know, and some even say pedophile, you just don't. You don't go there.

Terryl Givens [00:12:14] No, that's just silly. I think Richard Bushman has given us one of the better explanations of what appears to have been his motivation. And he's doing this, of course, within the framework of how he understands the gospel to work. But he thinks that this has to do with the extension of the family units, the family dynasty, in all directions and across generations, but also across family lines. It's a way of creating alliances and bindings to other families and lines. And so it's clear that it wasn't at all about, you know, the relationship itself of the man and the woman or the sex involved. That was.

John Dehlin [00:12:51] It was bigger than that. I mean, most people still don't know about the law of adoption, that men were being sealed to other men in the temple all the way until 1890. Right, that's right.

Terryl Givens [00:13:03] That's right. I don't know if it was as late as 1890, but I know that at least through the early Utah period, that Brigham Young. I just read a discourse yesterday, Brigham Young, where he's saying, y', all, anybody that wants to be adopted, me, that's fine, as long as they're willing to follow my rules.

John Dehlin [00:13:17] Yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:13:18] It was all about creating this endless chain of relationships up and down and across. And it's in that context that you have to understand Joseph's theological understanding of polygamy

John Dehlin [00:13:32] and what do we make of. And you touched on this A bit. But I think prophets, seers, and revelators said that polygamy would be a requirement to attain the highest level of celestial kingdom. I'm pretty sure John Taylor said that, right?

Terryl Givens [00:13:48] Well, he may have said that. And as I said, Brigham Young said that at times. But then at other times, he contradicted that.

John Dehlin [00:13:54] Did he? What did he say to contradict it?

Terryl Givens [00:13:55] Yeah, I don't have all these ready to handle it.

John Dehlin [00:13:57] Okay, no, I understand. I understand.

Terryl Givens [00:13:58] There's a whole list of quotations I have of Brigham Young that are just all over the map on it. But, you know, here again, the important thing is that every church, every religious system has to have in place some system by which you establish the parameters of dogma. And, you know, Mormonism has that. We have a process by which we canonize or give, you know, according to the law of common consent, we ascent unto Church teachings as legitimate and binding. And there's never been a proposition that the church has had to agree to that makes polygamy necessary or requirement to salvation.

John Dehlin [00:14:40] Yet your book, People of Paradox, laments the fact that sort of. I don't know, is it that doctrine has been ceded to the historians. Like, there is a sense of uncertainty about what really is Mormon doctrine anymore, Right? Well, there is a clear process, but there's also a lot of confusion.

Terryl Givens [00:14:59] There is a lot of confusion, and I think it's highly significant that when Elder McConkie wrote his Mormon doctrine, you know, I think it's fairly well known now that the presidency commissioned a committee to study it, and they ascertained that there were over 1000 errors in Mormon doctrine, and yet they continued to allow its publication all the way up until, what, a year ago?

John Dehlin [00:15:22] No, that's not true. He was told to not publish it for many years, and then when David O. McKay was on his. Well, it was not necessarily fully coherent. Then Bruce Armor Conkie brought it back after, as I understand, promising that he wouldn't. But that's my recollection.

Terryl Givens [00:15:38] No, no, no, you're right. There was a hiatus. But what I'm saying is true, which is that in spite of the 1000 errors and in spite of the fact that he never corrected many or most of those, that the Church subsequently continued to countenance its publication right through its official organ, Deseret Book. And so what that tells you is that the Church just doesn't seem to be overly concerned with the specifics of correct doctrine.

John Dehlin [00:16:07] Yeah, I'll say.

Terryl Givens [00:16:09] And. And, you know, I. But. But, you know, let me say something on this subject, I. You know, I. One of my best friends here is a Catholic colleague, and we have long and many conversations about religion, and he's very well versed in his own tradition, and he's given me abundant reading materials that I've pored over. And I have to say that if you read Cardinal Ratzinger before he was a pope, or you read John Paul II on the theology of suffering, these people propound some of the most exquisite, eloquent, intellectually satisfying theological position. And we have a leadership, you know, that. That writes books or gives sermons on, you know, be happy, be kind, or be this. Yeah. And that's, you know, and so on the one hand, there's a kind of embarrassment there, but then here's the other. Here's the other side to that.

John Dehlin [00:17:06] Yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:17:07] When John Paul II died, a Catholic political commentator wrote this. He said, John Paul II was the most beloved and the most ignored Pope in our history. It's statistically demonstrable that the Catholic Pope has no measurable influence at all. Zero. On many of the Catholic Church's core teachings. Catholics practice abortion at the same rate as the national average. They practice birth control at the same rate as the national average. We could go on and on. Right. So in spite of the beauty and the eloquence and divorce. And divorce. And divorce, there's no impact. And so you've got somebody like President Kimball or President Hinckley, and he's not a sophisticated theologian, but he writes these books. And what do you find? You find that there is this immense level of support and sustaining for what he teaches. And so you know what, to my mind, at first was a kind of an embarrassing comparison, turns out, upon subsequent reflection, to be something that I'm actually rather prouder to own. And that is the fact that Mormonism, like Judaism and the final analysis, is really more about practical ethics than it is about theology.

John Dehlin [00:18:26] Yeah. You know, this is irrelevant because it's just my feelings, and I try and keep those out, but I'm going to breach with my protocol and just say that I actually totally agree with you. I don't want my prophet to. To have written tomes of complicated theological speculation. And even though I've grown to have deep love for people who don't live Mormon values of, you know, word of wisdom and law of chastity and all that stuff, something that I find, something that I find unceasingly beautiful about Mormonism is the simple lifestyle and truths and ethics that it so consistently in stalwartly advances about. Be kind Be clean, be loving, serve, stay out of debt. Like, yeah, Dr. Phil or Oprah could tell us to do those things. But man, we've been beating that drum for a long time. And there is something beautiful about the quality of person that, that so often produces to me.

Terryl Givens [00:19:29] That's right. And the famous study done at North Carolina Chapel Hill just a few years ago and published by Oxford University Press about spirituality Americans youths demonstrated quite conclusively that there is not a single religious group in America whose youth are more faithful to their church's teachings than Latter Day Saint youth. So, you know, the church is doing something right in terms of making religion practical and livable.

John Dehlin [00:19:59] Yeah. And kind of uplifting and, and ennobling to those who follow it.

Terryl Givens [00:20:05] Yeah. So I love Mormon theology. Right. I mean, you know, you mentioned I'm writing a two volume history of Mormon theology.

John Dehlin [00:20:11] Right.

Terryl Givens [00:20:12] But I don't think that what I'm doing is anywhere near as important as being able, you know, as being in a position to teach, you know, pure and simple rules for how to live a Christ like life. And that's, that's for profit. The brethren are doing.

John Dehlin [00:20:29] Gotcha. Yeah. Okay. Well, the last, I think the last big area to explore is kind of the Book of Mormon. It's the stuff that I talked to Dr. Michael Koh about. You didn't happen to listen to that, did you?

Terryl Givens [00:20:47] I didn't. I didn't catch it.

John Dehlin [00:20:48] Okay, well, you wrote a whole book on it by the. By the Hand of Mormon. It was recommended me. I still haven't read it. I want to read it. I have it now. No, I had it before. It's one of the ones I already had, but I hadn't, I skimmed it. And I just, to be honest, I told you this before I dismissed it. I just said Givens has got to be like the other apologists and he's going to make crazy justifications and he's going to just focus on plausible deniability. And you know, there's no way to have a credible defense of the Book of Mormon. But now you've got me totally interested to want to read it. And I even talked to a guy who's resigned from the church, really angry at the church last week. And he said last week to me that by the Head of Mormon was an excellent book. And that surprised me. So I'm just gonna, if it's okay, I'm gonna just go through the biggest attacks on the Book of Mormon and just hear how you work through it. And I'm assuming that this Is all. All in your book by the Hand of Mormon, Is that okay?

Terryl Givens [00:21:55] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:21:56] Okay. So. The one place where people always quickly go is, I don't know, what I've heard referred to as the anachronisms. So the animals in the Book of Mormon, you know, horses, cattle, oxen, donkeys, goats, sheep, swine and elephants. Right. Like, these are animals that, according to Dr. Ko, either existed thousands of years before and died off before the Native Americans, Ancient Americans would have been tooling around, or they were brought over by the Spanish afterwards. And he also brought up an interesting point. He brought up an interesting point that all the animals that should have been in the Book of Mormon, like jaguars and turkeys and dogs, they don't appear in the Book of Mormon as well. And then you could also talk about steel, how Book of Mormon mentions steel, yet, you know, that level of metal had not yet been developed. It talks about all these weapons, the swords and the shields and the helmets, of which we've never found any, ever. Not one that's really credible. And then you've got, you know, the wheel or chariots in the Book of Mormon that, you know, again, no one's ever uncovered. And so you've just got all this stuff in there that Joseph would have been swimming in that critics would say he clearly infused in without a knowledge about that they shouldn't be there. All these metals, coins, you know, and I know the coins come in the title of the chapter headings, not the actual text.

Terryl Givens [00:23:42] Right.

John Dehlin [00:23:42] But. But talk about the anachronisms, because they're really fatal to a lot of people.

Terryl Givens [00:23:48] Yeah, I think there are some anachronisms, and you may be disappointed, but in by the Hand of Mormon, what I say about some of them, like horses, is, well, these are a problem. Oh, and horses. Horses isn't really a problem because horses, clearly what they were seeing were llamas, and that's why they were called llama knights.

John Dehlin [00:24:06] He's joking, everyone. He's joking.

Terryl Givens [00:24:11] So, you know, I don't know. I mean, I can, you know, I can come up with, you know, I can grasp at straws and I can find mildly plausible kind of possibilities and explanations. You know, I know that I haven't done a lot of translation work, but I've done some, and many times it's very hard to come up with equivalents from one language system to another. So what do you, you know, what do you call a metal that's kind of like steel or what do you call a sword that's kind of like a scimitar or what do you call an animal that is kind of like a. So, you know, that's a possible explanation in some of these cases. I think some people at farms have argued historically that, you know, if you're doing excavations in the Saudi desert, that's one thing, because climactic conditions allow for the preservation of a lot of material culture. That's not the case in Mesoamerica.

John Dehlin [00:24:59] So, like Nibley said, things disappear.

Terryl Givens [00:25:01] Things disappear. So we shouldn't expect to find many remnants of a material culture consistent with that. And I think, you know, Nibley realized these problems 50 years ago, 70 years ago, and that's why he said, look, we got to stop looking for evidence in the new World and start focusing more on the textual kinds of continuities that we find with the Old World. And I think that that's been a more fruitful path for Mormon apologetics to follow.

John Dehlin [00:25:28] Right. Seeing the ancient world in the Book of Mormon instead of trying to find the Book of Mormon in the New world.

Terryl Givens [00:25:36] Right. And I, you know, I don't. I don't believe in the expansion hypothesis of Blake Osler, but that doesn't mean that neither do I believe in the kind of tight, ironclad, constrained translation that, you know, Royal Skousen makes a case for.

John Dehlin [00:25:51] Well, talk about Blake Ostler's expansion theory.

Terryl Givens [00:25:53] Well, I mentioned that a little bit earlier when he has argued that Joseph Smith probably found something, but it was more like a pamphlet than a book, and that he expanded it, that there was the nucleus of some kind of a record, but that most of what we have in the Book of Mormon was his inspired additions. And that's why there is so much contemporary culture and environmental influence that is reflected in that finished product. So it's an attempt to create a kind of coherent middle ground, a compromise between the environmentalist explanations on the one hand, and those who believe in the divine transfer of records to Joseph on the other. And I think logically and pragmatically, it's a beautiful compromise, but it doesn't work for me for the reasons I cited earlier that have to do with the fact that I don't see in the Book of Mormon evidence of a kind of ad hoc pasting together of disparate parts and sources.

John Dehlin [00:26:46] Because for you, it's more unified and seamless.

Terryl Givens [00:26:49] It's more unified and seamless at the same time. Nothing in my faith precludes the possibility that Joseph Smith could have been influenced from time to time in the translation process by contemporary language and ideas and vocabulary. I Just, I don't see that as a problem. If he made assumptions based on his own cultural vocabulary, sees a bunch of words there that should have been more carefully, scrupulously translated, and they come out, you know, elephants and horses. Okay, well, you know, he bungled that part. I just don't see those as really deep rooted problems. You know, it seems to me that we're swatting away the mosquitoes here instead of looking at the substantive mass at the center of this controversy.

John Dehlin [00:27:31] Which is what.

Terryl Givens [00:27:32] Which is the Book of Mormon in its totality and its coherence. And, you know, it's the kinds of anachronisms seem to me, as I said, just rather incidental to a translation process that we already don't know very much about. So they don't cut to the core of what he is claiming it represents.

John Dehlin [00:27:54] Okay, well, I'm going to come back and have you just riff on what is beautiful and new, what the Book of Mormon brings us. But so don't let me forget that. Okay?

Terryl Givens [00:28:04] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:28:04] Because I've had friends tell me they're just. I'm not that impressed with the Book of Mormon. Like, it's just not that, you know, people say, how could a one person ever have created it? And they're like, look at what J.R. tolkien created. Like, that's way better than the Book of Mormon. Like, so, I mean, I'm not trying to mock that. Like, I. It's a beautiful book to a lot of people. So I want to come back to that. So. What about the fact that you just don't see any indication in what we do find in Mesoamerica that there were people speaking Hebrew or people talking about Jesus or all the things that you would expect if. If the Book of Mormon happened, the descendants would have kept relics of the language, of the culture, of the theology, of the doctrine. And one of the things that Ko talks about, which I really loved, is, you know, the narrative that I was taught growing up was that Lamanites devolved that. It was like these Native Americans were ignorant, barbaric, evil savages. And so they were just so decadent and sinister that their languages devolved, their art devolved, their spirituality and religion devolved, and they went from being more advanced and civilized into this despicable, grotesque kind of, you know, civilization. And then Ko goes on to talk about all the wonderful advancements that afford us because of, you know, ancient American civilization, you know, corn and tomatoes and all this rich food and culture. You know, he says that that's like a. Does violent damage to these people's heritage, the richness of what they brought us, their tradition, to just kind of write them off as these evil savages. Right.

Book of Mormon Geography, DNA, and Race Issues

Terryl Givens [00:30:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:06] So tell me what you would say about those two parts of that question.

Terryl Givens [00:30:10] Okay, well, two considerations to your last point. First of all, I think we're returning here to the BH Roberts problem, and that is the assumption that there should be all kinds of traces left in Mesoamerican culture of the Book of Mormon. Presence presupposes a kind of dominant cultural presence to begin with on the part of the Nephites and Lamanites. How many people arrived in the new world according to the Book of Mormon? What are they? I don't know, 25 or 30 in the original group. And at no time do they inhabit an area more than a couple of hundred square miles. They're a small group. They're probably. They intermarry with indigenous populations.

John Dehlin [00:30:55] Does the Book of Mormon mention existing civilizations that didn't come over on the boat?

Terryl Givens [00:31:01] It doesn't mention them. But I think it was John Sorensen who wrote a good essay called Were Other Peoples Present when the Book when Lehi arrived? Or something like that. And he goes through and shows all kinds of subtle hints in the course of the Book of Mormon narrative that there were other peoples here and there are hints that there were other people, and there's never any indication that there weren't in fact. Right. We're told in the Book of Mormon that from time to time the Lord has led many people by the Spirit into promised lands. So that's the most plausible and that's the one that's most consistent with the historical records. We understand it. Right. Diffusionist hypothesis is that there are many migrations across here, the barren straits, probably different kinds of transatlantic trans Pacific migrations. Who knows how many. The Book of Mormon doesn't ever claim there weren't. So again, so many of these problems just evaporate because the expectations were wrong to begin with. The Book of Mormon civilization was never the dominant presence on the continent. So I think, you know, that resolves a lot of these problems.

John Dehlin [00:32:07] What about the hundreds of thousands in battle? Like, is that it's like in the

Terryl Givens [00:32:12] Bible and probably not. But in the Bible I think we see a similar inflation of numbers figures. So I take those to be, you know, simple instances of hyperbole. And I think it's also important to remember that this is a record that's being written by the victors. I think that they have a strong theological and nationalistic motivation for emphasizing the degradation of their enemies, not just by way of self vindication, but also because they want to see the degradation of the Lamanites as a kind of indication of God's disfavor and what happens when we disobey his laws and covenants. So it isn't surprising to me that you would find a kind of radical disregard, disrespect for the cultural value and status of the Lamanites as a people. That's kind of what you'd expect to find in this kind of a historical chronicle.

John Dehlin [00:33:13] So for you, you wouldn't expect to see Hebrew showing up, you wouldn't expect to see DNA showing up because it's just a small sub population.

Terryl Givens [00:33:27] Yeah, the DNA is another one of these red herrings, I don't think. From what I understand, and I've tried to read up on the literature pro and contra, and from what I understand, many if not most of the reputable scientists who have bothered to be engaged in this controversy say, look, DNA is just an inappropriate scientific methodology to evaluate the historical claims of the Book of Mormon. But even if you're not looking at it as a scientist, the whole thing is a red herring because we're told so early on in the Book of Mormon that in fact, in first Nephi 13, we're already told that whoever survives the apocalypse is going to be a mixture of the Nephite and Lamanite seed. We're also told that from the time of Christ onward, Lamanite is a designation that refers to beliefs and not to ethnicity. So by the time that the Book of Mormon concludes, there isn't any claim at all that is being made by the record about the ethnicity of those peoples called Lamanites. So what do we think we're testing for when we test modern day Indians? It's just kind of silly to my mind.

John Dehlin [00:34:38] Are you comfortable with the idea that that God would turn people's skin dark as a result of wickedness or evil?

Terryl Givens [00:34:46] No, I don't think so.

John Dehlin [00:34:47] You're not comfortable with that?

Terryl Givens [00:34:49] No.

John Dehlin [00:34:49] But doesn't the Book of Mormon clearly say that?

Terryl Givens [00:34:52] Well, I think it does. And I think that the people who were writing the record probably felt that they did see evidence of that and that may have been their own prejudicial perception of the difference between themselves and their enemies. I mean, you know, if you want to find what I think is a pretty good contemporary parallel, look at the Life magazines that were published in the 1940s that featured articles on how to distinguish a Japanese from a Chinese. They purported to be able to detect in the physiognomy of the Japanese all kinds of racial degeneracy. And, you know, it's a fascinating example of where you think you can see things in an actual racial physiognomy that are based on racist motives. And so why not a kindred kind of thing transpiring in the Book of Mormon?

John Dehlin [00:35:43] Yeah, because that's something that you would have a hard time selling me on. But you're not trying to.

Terryl Givens [00:35:48] No.

John Dehlin [00:35:49] Yeah, because that's not squaring with the God I want to worship. I don't mean to be arrogant. I really don't mean to. I'm just sensitive to that kind of stuff.

Terryl Givens [00:35:59] Yeah.

Guest [00:36:01] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:36:02] Okay, so two Cumorahs, then. Like, did Moroni run the plates up to New York from Mesoamerica? Have you even tried to contemplate what geography maps and how this all squares with our real geography?

Terryl Givens [00:36:23] Yeah, I think, you know, again, John Sorensen wrote a book, an Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. And it's a really impressive piece of scholarship that correlates an exquisitely close textual reading of the Book of Mormon with everything that is known about Mesoamerican geography and topography. And he makes a pretty convincing case that there is an uncanny congruence between the Book of Mormon geography as described and. And Mesoamerica. So I certainly think, along with both most Book of Mormon scholars working today, that that is the strongest candidate for the setting for the Book of Mormon. As to whether how you reconcile that with the Hill Cumorah in New York. Well, I don't think there is any relationship between the Hill Cumorah in New York and the Hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon. You know, Joseph didn't initially call the one in New York Hill Cumorah. Oliver Cowdery, I think, was the first to call it that, and I think that they believed it was because that was the easiest thing to assume. And there are a couple of possible explanations for that, and I'm not trying to argue either one, but I'm just saying, in my own mind, either explanation is perfectly plausible. One is that Moroni wandered for. I forget, what, 25, 30 years after the final battle? Well, that's certainly plenty of time to wander a couple of thousand years. Right. Vasco da Gama, I think it was the Spanish explorer who we know made his way all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to Florida in less than 2. So that kind of migration by foot is not, by any stretch of the imagination, unthinkable.

John Dehlin [00:38:05] Yeah, Ko agreed with that.

Terryl Givens [00:38:07] And at the same time, Joseph Wright recorded an incident in which he saw a man walking along the side of the road with a knapsack, and he said, that was Moroni with the gold plates. Well, if he's transporting them, then as an angel, he could have transported them at any time in the intervening thousand years and more. So I don't think that's an issue. I think it's interesting that Farms, the Maxwell Institute actually published an article a year or so ago by a non Mormon archaeologist who said, if you stick a shovel in anywhere in upstate New York, you'll come up with points, arrowheads, spear points. Except the area around Palmyra. There's never been anything found in the vicinity of Hill Cumorah. So I think that would be. We'd be on a fool's errand if we tried to make a case for that as a historical setting.

John Dehlin [00:38:55] So not New York.

Terryl Givens [00:38:58] Not New York.

John Dehlin [00:39:01] Okay. Are there any major criticisms of the Book of Mormon that I'm forgetting? Because you probably know them better than me. Did we cover the big ones?

Terryl Givens [00:39:10] Yeah, I think you've covered the big ones.

John Dehlin [00:39:12] All right, so I don't know if this is the place for you to tell us why the Book of Mormon is more than chloroform in print, but should we. I almost want to say we should save that for another episode. I don't know if you're going to have more time, so let's just put it this way. If you think you'll have more time with me than today, let's save that. If you think that today is going to be my only shot, then give us a quick case for why the Book of Mormon deserves our attention. No.

Terryl Givens [00:39:44] I'll talk to you again.

John Dehlin [00:39:45] Oh, you will? Okay. All right.

Terryl Givens [00:39:46] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:39:47] All right. Okay. So, readers, so we're going to come back to the awesomeness of the Book of Mormon later, because I'm serious about that. Like, I listened to Grant Hardy's. We did an interview with Grant Hardy, man. He and his wife. Was it Heather?

Terryl Givens [00:40:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:04] They just can't. I mean, they're not dumb people. These are, like, very smart people. And, I mean, this guy's jumping from the rooftop about the Book of Mormon like, he. He eats Book of Mormons for breakfast.

Terryl Givens [00:40:15] Like, yeah, yeah, he does.

John Dehlin [00:40:18] And I'm like, really? Like, smart, thoughtful people love the Book of Mormon. Really. And I. I don't mean to sound arrogant. It's just. It's just I want someone to tell me how to fall in Love with the book again? I guess so. I'll leave that to talk about later. Well, I think we have covered dang a lot of territory on things about the Church. Okay, so let's see. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. So blacks in the priesthood. Quick thoughts about that. I think I could guess what you'd say, but.

Terryl Givens [00:40:57] Well, you know, President Kimball offered a prayer at one time in which he asked for forgiveness if we had sinned in our policy with blacks in the priesthood, which is the closest that anybody, any official of the Church, has come to suggesting that that was an out and out mistake. And I think it would be a good thing if, you know, the Church settled in their own minds at the leadership levels if that was a mistake and if it was, then to publicly acknowledge that and, you know, make public apology, and if it's not, then there should be forthcoming, you know, a better kind of doctrinal explanation of what that was all about. But we've been left rather in the dark. It is significant, of course, that the prohibition against blacks and the priesthood was never made by Brigham Young functioning the capacity of prophet, but rather functioning in the profit, the capacity of territorial governor. It's clear that the rhetoric and the justification that he used was borrowed from the religious culture of the day.

John Dehlin [00:42:02] Definitely. Yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:42:04] And so there isn't any indication that I'm aware of that there was a revealed basis for that practice. I think in some ways it's akin to polygamy in that it was implemented in a way that. That was vague, not clearly understood, certainly didn't seem to be consistent with other eternal principles as we understand them. And it's distressing to me, and it's distressing to, I think, millions of others that this episode is something for which we don't have an adequate explanation.

John Dehlin [00:42:43] But this falls under the framework you set out about free agency and God allowing man to make mistakes. And this is just an unfortunate byproduct of that principle.

Terryl Givens [00:42:55] Yeah, yeah. You know, BH Roberts said something once that was really quite alarming in some ways, but quite reassuring in others. And he said this in his capacity as a 70 of the church. He said it was his belief that personal revelation to leaders in the church happened infrequently and only under the most extreme circumstances, that it was God's intention to call men to those offices and then to delegate them the authority to perform in those offices according to the best of their light and understanding. And that, again, requires a kind of readjustment of the paradigm that most of us have imbibed through the church educational system and years of seminary and Sunday school. But I think it's more consistent with what we see in church history. And I think it's. It's more realistic, it's more consistent with our theology. And it sure goes a long way towards explaining things like blacks in the priesthood.

John Dehlin [00:43:54] Yeah. Brigham Young didn't even like himself to be called as prophet, isn't that right? Like, weren't most of the people we call prophets now, didn't they call themselves presidents of the church through, like, David O. McKay?

Terryl Givens [00:44:09] You know, that's a good question. I don't know much about the history of that title and how it's been employed, except in the earliest period when in the aftermath of Joseph's martyrdom. And there's the meeting in August in Nauvoo. And the question there is raised, is anybody, you know, fit to assume the mantle of prophet? And everybody on the spot says, no, there was only one prophet. The prophet was Joseph.

John Dehlin [00:44:30] Yeah, the prophet.

Terryl Givens [00:44:31] Right, the prophet. And even to this day, if I were to approach a Mormon just out of the blue and say, what do you think about the prophet? His answer would probably be, do you mean Joseph Smith?

John Dehlin [00:44:45] Yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:44:47] So he has this special status. And I think, you know, that's one reason why Brigham Young waited so long before he actually reconstituted the presidency and assumed that title. But that would explain his reluctance to actually be called prophet because nobody wanted to pretend to inherit those shoes.

John Dehlin [00:45:02] And nobody's really tried. You'd think that one of them would just kind of.

Terryl Givens [00:45:06] Well, Brigham Young kind of, kind of did. Right. I mean, he, he, he tried his hand at, at revelatory innovation. Right. He tried the atom, God, and that didn't work very well. And then he tried blood atonement, and that didn't work very well. And then he just seemed to content himself with being a colonizer and administering the, the kingdom as best he could.

John Dehlin [00:45:28] Yeah, that's fascinating, isn't it? And since then, we haven't had a lot of innovations either.

Terryl Givens [00:45:33] No, we talk about an open canon, and yet it's really an open canon more in theory than in practice. I mean, the community of Christ has an open canon. They add revelations every year or two, but ours haven't changed much. So we believe in an open canon, but it's an ultra conservative institution.

John Dehlin [00:45:53] So where is the continuing revelation?

Terryl Givens [00:45:56] Well, you know, the brethren testify every conference that the church is administered by the principle of revelation. I think what they mean, and the way I understand it, is that revelation is a principle insofar as there is a kind of inspiration that guides the day to day running of the church in a way that makes it most effective. I think that there is inspiration that is evident in more subtle, less dramatic ways than we tend to associate with revelation. I think of a description I heard, for example, one of the apostles make in describing his experience with the missionary committee and the calling of missionaries, referring to that as spiritually the most arduous experience that he had ever known, that every single missionary is called to a specific field by revelation. So I believe that that is true. I felt that was true in my own case. So I think revelation is real, but not in the sense of grand epiphanies,

John Dehlin [00:46:55] doctrinal and theological stuff.

Terryl Givens [00:46:58] Right.

John Dehlin [00:46:58] Not so much. So I guess there's one last area that I thought about talking about in this segment, and that's just science. You know, Joseph Fielding Smith, you know, seemed to talk about 6,000 year Earth. No death before the fall. No.

Terryl Givens [00:47:13] Who did? Joseph.

John Dehlin [00:47:14] Joseph Fielding Smith. Doctrines of salvation. Those books, I stumbled on them on my mission and that set me up for a big fall. Right. Evolution's evil, you know, literal Adam, Adam and Eve. No death before the fall. Dinosaurs were flown in from another universe. You know what I mean? The bones are not from this earth. I even read in your book people paradox, that B.H. roberts, when he was trying to do his grand synthesis, which we'll talk about later. I don't want to talk about that now. But he was trying to explain dinosaur bones away by having been brought from other worlds and other matter.

Terryl Givens [00:47:55] That was an old idea. It goes all the way back to Cuvier and catastrophism in the 19th century. Yeah, even Lord Byron wrote a play called Cain in which he explicitly said that he talks about this world being created out of the detritus of past worlds with. With extinct creatures.

John Dehlin [00:48:11] Who's this Lord Byron guy? Like? I don't. I've heard him. Lord Byron.

Terryl Givens [00:48:15] You got to read Lord Byron. He was one of the greatest agnostic theologians of his day.

John Dehlin [00:48:20] Wait, an agnostic theologian?

Guest [00:48:23] Yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:48:24] He wrote two of the works that have most powerfully impacted my own life and thinking. Cain. He wrote a tragedy based on the perspective of Cain in the garden, you know, after expulsion from the garden, and Adam and Eve start their family. And he has this wonderful, wonderful narrative in which he explores religion through the eyes of Cain, trying to make sense of the God of the Old Testament. And it's very, very powerful and poignant and just wrenching.

John Dehlin [00:48:53] Even now.

Terryl Givens [00:48:54] Even now, because he identified with Cain. He himself was an agnostic. He wanted to believe, but couldn't find a basis for belief in the context of Cain, 19th century religion. And then he wrote another great drama called Manfred, which is. It's a real meditation on the possibility of Christ's atonement. And there he tries to present a case for the indefensibility on moral grounds of an atonement. And so they're wonderful provocations to think more deeply about these religious kind of core beliefs.

John Dehlin [00:49:31] I certainly could use that. I'm learning that my thought has been somewhat shallow up to now. So, science, what do you make of Noah and the flood and the age of the earth and evolution and all that stuff?

Mormonism, Science, Evolution, and Closing Thoughts

Terryl Givens [00:49:50] Well, you know, one thing that I think the church got right, and that was that the church never made an official statement rejecting evolution. And in fact, you have widtso a century ago saying, Joseph Smith, right, taught evolution 50 years before Darwin. You had a great struggle going on in the church in, you know, the ninth. Well, starting really in the 1930s and 40s to really determine the direction of Mormon intellectual culture. And that battle was largely won by the arch conservatives like Joseph Fielding Smith. But even while Joseph Smith is writing his book on man, his origin and destiny, and attacking evolution.

John Dehlin [00:50:39] Joseph Fielding Smith, Right.

Terryl Givens [00:50:40] Joseph Fielding Smith. Henry Eyring is giving talks throughout those exact same years saying, no, we don't know that evolution is wrong and evolution can be fully reconciled with the gospel. Brigham Young didn't seem to have a lot of respect for Darwin, but even he shied away from condemning it as outright falsehood. So Mormonism, fortunately, never landed itself in the same predicament of fundamentalism, of having to try to develop a creationism science to make sense out of the world. And so Mormonism in general has a fairly good record of being open to science in the time of Parley Pratt. Parley and Orson Pratt loved the idea of science. They used it everywhere. There was a science of prayer and a science of revelation and a science of theology. And the church went out of its way to promote science by asking its leading scientists to write church manuals in the 1930s and 40s.

John Dehlin [00:51:43] Yeah, we're going to talk about that for sure.

Terryl Givens [00:51:46] So, you know, it's a real shame, I think, that evolution is one of the greatest gifts that the Church has, and here's why. Mormonism is again unique in the Christian field for denying from its inception original sin.

John Dehlin [00:52:06] Right.

Terryl Givens [00:52:07] At the same time, people have noted that original sin is the only church doctrine that is empirically verifiable. In other words, you look around the world, we seem to be a bunch of depraved, fallen people. So how do we reconcile this benevolent view of human nature with the realities of the Holocaust and Rwanda and everything else? Well, evolution provides one explanation. We are not spiritually fallen or punished as a result of Adam's sin, but we do inherit an evolutionary past that encumbers us right. We are thwarted and burdened by selfishness and avarice and lust and all of these qualities that inhere in the biological part of ourselves. And I think evolution goes a long way towards explaining a different kind of secular version of the Fall, which Mormons should be quite willing to embrace because it spares us the difficulties of the theology of fallenness while giving us an actual account of why we are like we are.

John Dehlin [00:53:20] So you're not an anti science guy?

Terryl Givens [00:53:23] Not. Not at all. Not by any stretch.

John Dehlin [00:53:25] Isn't it. Okay, so we're going to end on this today. This isn't just. We're going to end on a couple last things. Like, isn't it tragic, like egregiously, terribly, horribly sad that someone in Mormonism had to introduce some ideas and promote them that pits the church against science, for example, or that represents our history in an inaccurate or a whitewashed way so that so many people, tens of thousands of really bright, sensitive, caring people will find themselves abandoning their church in the 21st century, which is what's happening. Or the last thing is. Oh, I don't know. That. I don't know. The last idea was coming to me and it left.

Terryl Givens [00:54:27] Well, let me just respond to that. I think one of the most sobering truths about Mormonism is the fact that just as we have this incredible capacity to be saviors on mountains Zion, we also have an almost limitless capacity to be Satan's on Mount Zion.

John Dehlin [00:54:48] I've never heard that.

Terryl Givens [00:54:50] And you know, CS Lewis. CS Lewis is like a top 40 song, you know, no matter how magnificent it really is. It's been overplayed so much, we tend to. Tend to be tired of it. But I actually think he was one of the more morally insightful minds of this century. And in his book Perelandra, he's. It's much pure. Lander is a meditation on the reality and the implications of a universe that is predicated on genuine freedom of the will. And he asks the question, is it really conceivable that if an elephant had just stepped on the serpent's head moments earlier, Eve wouldn't have ever eaten the fruit of the Tree.

John Dehlin [00:55:33] Right.

Terryl Givens [00:55:33] And then. And then he concludes this. He says, if freedom of the will is real, everything or nothing must depend on it. And if everything, who can count the ramifications?

John Dehlin [00:55:50] Yeah.

Terryl Givens [00:55:51] And what that means is one bumbling individual does have the capacity to mislead and injure the testimony of thousands or

John Dehlin [00:56:02] hundreds of thousands or.

Terryl Givens [00:56:04] And it's not fair, but it's the way it is. And that's the cost of this agency. You know, Neal Maxwell used to say, we've got to recognize the fact that we are all in a lifeboat, and it's a leaking lifeboat. And, you know, we gotta work together. We're all gonna drown elsewhere. He said, we're clinical material practicing on each other. I mean, the stakes are just, you know, horrifically high. But they are

John Dehlin [00:56:37] apparently. Apparently. And that resonates with me on the one hand. On the other hand, it's just so. It's so sad to see hosts of a generation just falling by the wayside in terms of their commitment to the church. I mean, I don't mean to show a bias here. I don't even know if I count myself in this group. But I really do believe that the late 20th and early 21st century will be written about 100 years from now as an era wherein some of the best and the brightest Mormon minds and spirits and souls abandoned their tradition. And this is just a preview for what I want to talk to you about from people of paradox. But what we see in late mid to late 20th century Mormonism is so many people rising up who had the chance to save these souls from defecting, to bridge the gap that you're bridging for me now. We're talking BH Roberts. We're talking Lowell Bennion. We're talking Eugene England. We're talking Juanita Brooks. We're talking, you know, Leonard Arrington. It's like the Church has systematically stepped on the heads of those who have risen up to try and stave off this mass defection. And it's killing me. Like, it's killing me. Right. Does it kill you?

Terryl Givens [00:58:14] Yeah, it kills me. I get emails by the dozens over time of people telling me the stories of their tragic decisions to leave the church. And in most every case, it has to do with the feeling of betrayal engendered by learning too late in life some truth about the Mormon past that they felt was denied them through the institution of the church itself. I've heard one of the leaders refer to this current period as unprecedented since Kirtland in terms of the number of defections that we're experiencing as a church. It's tragic because it's so preventable and it would take so little to remedy this problem. You don't have to change this mammoth institutional culture gradually or one step at a time. One of the virtues and the merits of the church as an institution is that the primary vehicle for the instruction of its youth. The CES is an organization that falls in lockstep with the direction from Salt Lake. And when J. Reuben Clark gave his landmark address to the CES people on the charted course of church education, he instantaneously transformed church educational culture and set it on a path that it has pursued to the present day. And it would be similarly possible for somebody to make a comparable kind of address to the church educational people and say, we need to radically reform this culture. We need to tell our history openly, fully and honestly. It reminds me of a course that I teach on the Bible and literature where I present to the class a fairly radical reading of Genesis. Reading it separate and apart from any kind of religious framework we impose on it, in which Satan seems to be telling the truth and God seems to be the one who's less trustworthy. And I always have religiously devout students interrupt me and, and try to defend the honor and integrity of God. I've had to say on more than one occasion, look, God can take care of himself. He doesn't need you to defend him. And the same is true of the church. If the church is a true and inspired and divinely sanctioned institution, then there's no need to conceal any element of its past. That's how I approach my writing on the Book of Mormon. Many people seem to have been confused as to whether I was a member or whether I was a member in good standing, because I tried to be honest and frank in addressing the problems and the obstacles to the historicity of the Book of Mormon. And my operating premise was, if the Book of Mormon is true, then it will remain standing after you throw the worst that can be said about it at it. And I think the same has to be true of church history. And I think this generation is eager and ready and willing to accept the whole truth. They just want to be treated as adults, and that's not happening.

John Dehlin [01:01:40] And this is the exact argument that Michael Quinn made just a few weeks ago. So, I mean, it's, wow, it's just like persisting across generations. And if I were the, like, there have been, you know, you look at, like, the sunstone crowd of the late 80s, early 90s. It wasn't necessarily a responsible lot in the sense that a lot of those September 6th kind of people, like you don't get the sense that they had always had the church's best interests in mind towards the end in terms of the rhetoric that they were using. You know, I'll just use Paul Toscano as an example. You don't listen to Paul Toscano's 1992. 1993 speeches and think that if the church paid attention to him and did what he said, anyone's best interest would be served. Right, right.

Terryl Givens [01:02:32] Right.

John Dehlin [01:02:32] But, like, I'm thinking of a Lowell Bennion or Eugene England or Terrell Givens or whatever, Richard Bushman. And it's like, these, of all people, are the people to elevate. Like, you know, you don't want to create Priestcrafts. But, like, come on, promote this. Like, at least don't step on its neck. At least don't hide it. At least let it have comparable visibility in our culture. Right. And you had told me yourself, and it's only because you told me I could mention this, that it's okay. Your books are not available at Deseret Book.

Terryl Givens [01:03:12] Well, I guess they've got one or two of them to carry as of the last few weeks. I think by the Hand of Mormon, they now carry.

John Dehlin [01:03:18] Oh, sweet.

Terryl Givens [01:03:19] And I assume they're going to carry Parley P. Pratt. But, yeah, they've refused to carry any of the past books that I've written. And I think that's. It represents a larger loss. It's not just my personal loss, but what it suggests is that there is an unwillingness to expose a Mormon readership to a presentation of the faith that is intellectually substantial and academically rigorous, because Deseret has the function of serving as a kind of imprimatur of the Church on any book that it sells. And, you know, the stories are legion that I have heard of people saying, well, if it doesn't come from Deseret, I'm suspicious of it. I even had a Deseret employee tell me that when I asked if they carried a certain book that wasn't published by, which is, well, if it's not published by Deseret, I think there's good reason to be suspicious. And I think Deseret could perform such a wonderful service in fostering a genuine intellectual culture in the church by carrying books, fostering the publication of books that challenge us to stretch. It's just a shame that we're so intellectually blighted as a culture, in large part because of the diet that we're fed. But I will say there are some positive signs.

John Dehlin [01:04:46] Yes, let's end on the positive note.

Terryl Givens [01:04:48] Well, I think the Joseph Smith Papers project is a phenomenal project insofar as it represents an attempt to pull the lid off of Joseph Smith completely and say, here he is. Not only are we going to show you the process of editing and revision and change in every one of his first vision accounts and in every one of his revelations, but anything that's a part of the record, we're going to make publicly available, and we're going to do it without censorship. And you know, what a wonderful sign of progress, I think the fact that the church archives are largely open and accessible. I've never personally asked for anything. That I was denied access to the Mountain Meadows Massacre book seems to me a sign of the good faith of the church in trying to face up to and honestly address its past and make a kind of atonement for, you know, one of the most, you know, egregious, you know, crimes in the Mormon past. There are, you know, there are church history initiatives underway that are, I think, are going to make an attempt to tell our story more comprehensively and fully and honestly. I think Elder Marlon Jensen is one of the most inspired and benevolent and progressive men that the church has known in this dispensation. He's an absolute godsend to the church and to the world. Under his leadership, our church history department is moving in precisely the direction in which it needs to move. So these are all encouraging signs of change.

John Dehlin [01:06:28] I hear he's reaching emeritus status in October because he's 75. Have you heard that? Or 70.

Terryl Givens [01:06:36] Yeah, I have heard that. And we need to all pray as a church that the sun will stand still for a couple of years. He can stay where he is.

John Dehlin [01:06:47] Oh, let us not have another retrenchment, you know.

Terryl Givens [01:06:51] Yeah, I don't see any signs of that. I think part of what's happened is the church has come very late to a recognition that the Internet has changed the rules of the game and the church can no longer control access to information about his past. And so the wisest course of action is to say, well, if our history is going to be told more fully, we better get on the ball and tell it ourselves. And the other really remarkably heartening development is that you have a press like Oxford that is now willing to let Mormon historians and scholars tell the story themselves. In the past, there seemed to be either inhibition on the part of Mormon scholars or prejudice on the part of secular presses. But you found that it was very, very rare that somebody like Leonard Arrington was able to break in to write mainstream press like he did with his biography of Brigham Young and tell our story from. I don't want to say from our perspective, but I want to say from a non cynical or skeptical perspective. And now there's a perfect willingness to do that. The presses are, they're virtually flooding us with, with this wonderful outpouring of really terrific Mormon scholarship all around.

John Dehlin [01:08:10] So for you, the day dawn is breaking it is.

Terryl Givens [01:08:14] It's an exciting time. I can't imagine any better time in history to have been engaged in the pursuit of Mormon studies. And the Romney campaign and the Huntsman campaign only served to further heighten public interest in Mormonism. And I think presses are responding to that demand as well.

John Dehlin [01:08:35] Yeah, yeah. It really is kind of an. It's kind of like a Mormon moment. I mean, that cliche has been lobbed around the past couple years, but it feels like we're really at one.

Terryl Givens [01:08:46] Yeah, we are.

John Dehlin [01:08:48] Huh. Well, I've got more questions to ask you, but we've gone, I think, four hours.

Terryl Givens [01:08:54] Yeah. And then some, I think.

John Dehlin [01:08:55] Yeah. So I just want to say, wow, brilliant. Totally brilliant. Where have you been, Terrell Gibbons is my question, but I've been waiting for

Terryl Givens [01:09:04] your call all these years.

John Dehlin [01:09:07] Well, I think thousands of people are going to have their minds blown because I think tens of thousands of people have their minds made up and thought that Mormonism now didn't even deserve second thought. And I think you're going to give some of them pause.

Terryl Givens [01:09:25] Well, I hope so.

John Dehlin [01:09:26] All right, well, we'll sync back up together again about when to carry on this conversation, but Terrell Givens, author of by the Hand of the Viper on the Hearth, Parley P. Pratt, When Souls Had Wings People of Paradox, thank you, Terrell Gibbons, for sharing your your thoughts and perspectives with us today.

Terryl Givens [01:09:51] Great being with you, John. Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [01:09:53] All right, talk to you soon. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out@sabre-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

Guest [01:10:12] Come, come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear but with joy wend your way though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your dead. Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to the San Joa Hearts will swell. Oh, all is well, all is well. Well, why should we mourn? I think our lot is hard T. Not so. All is right? Why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight? Gird up your lo? Fresh courage Take our God will ever us forsake? Soon we'll have tale and tale? Oh. Oh, all is well? All is well? Oh, all is well? All is well? Sam. And should we die before our journey is through? Happy day. All is well? We that are free from toil and sorrow too with the just we shall dwell? But if our lives are spared again There to see the saints the rest obtain? I will make this ch? Swell. Oh, all is well? All is well? All is well? All is well, well? All is well? Oh, all is well, All

John Dehlin [01:14:25] is well?

Guest [01:14:27] All is away Sa.

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280 Responses

Jon says:

September 28, 2011 at 5:45 pm

There’s a part 5? The link is to part 1.

Reply
eliza says:

September 29, 2011 at 5:23 am

Oh my gosh. I’ve just listened to the first segment and I didn’t think I could love Terryl Givens more than I already do. I’m so glad I have another Mormon to have a crush on besides Richard Bushman and my husband. As a Mormon mom, I just wanted to also recommend Given’s childrens book entitled “Dragon Scales and Willow Leaves.” It’s about twin kids who see the world from different perspectives. Love it. https://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Scales-Willow-Leaves-Givens/dp/0399226192/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1317273283&sr=8-12 Thank you Dr./Brother Givens for being willing to talk about your faith. I’ve read your testimony more than once on Mormon Scholars Testify. I don’t know if intellectual Mormons realize how helpful their professions of nuanced faith are to an average believer who is trying to see the world through a new lense. Thanks so much.

Reply
1. Manuel says:
  
  October 2, 2011 at 1:21 pm
  
  Terryl Givens talked about some articles he read on Harpers Magazine from the 1860’s. Since I have a Harpers subscription, I looked them up, and there were tons of them, from book reviews, to news clips, to full articles. I made a blog with all the articles that seemed more interesting to share with you guys.https://harpersandmormons.wordpress.com/
  
  Reply
  1. Anonymous says:
    
    October 2, 2011 at 4:01 pm
    
    How cool! Thanks, Manuel!
    
    Reply
Ringger says:

September 29, 2011 at 5:40 am

Listened to part 1 so far. Great work, John & Terryl. Thank you. I’ve got a good Derrida story for you — ask me sometime.

Reply
Matt says:

September 29, 2011 at 7:50 am

I liked a lot of the podcast. I still don’t really understand how people can somehow support the claim that the book of mormon is, by any stretch of the academic meter, a historically valid text. Book of Abraham papyri and many, many other things seem to point to the fact that most of Joseph’s translations were clearly historically false. Even if these were true, what about other ridiculous stories: Noah’s Ark, the tower of Babel, and so on?

I think mormonism and mormon theology is incredible interesting and amazing way to structure one’s life around. But as far as calling it historically accurate? Saying “well there were clearly other people in the Americas” doesn’t really cut it for me. This is a list I found online:

”

I am trying to put together a quick list, summary
of my issues on the church. Not something that goes into depth on any
of them, but one that in a sentence or two describes some of my issues.
Actually, I have two lists….one just for issues related to the BOM
and the other for the rest.

This thread is just for the one on the BOM. I remember that one of the
things that got to me was not any single issue, but the large number of
serious challenges.

I’m posting the list to get your help in either adding things I might
have missed or rewording things differently…etc….any suggestions
welcome.

You will note that some of them certainly need a little more.

1)No DIRECT evidence has been discovered yet for the Book of Mormon…not a
single city, or name mentioned in the BOM has been found in a
archeological dig, or even mentioned in art or writing that has been so
far discovered.

2) ALL animals mentioned in the Book of Mormon (except for the snake)
did not exist in the Americas during the time period covered in the Book
of Mormon. LDS defenders and non-biased scientific organizations
(National Geographic, Smithonian Institute) agree on this point.

3) ALL plants/food mentioned in the Book of Mormon did not exist in the
Americas during the time period covered in the Book of Mormon. LDS
defenders and non-biased scientific organizations (National Geographic,
Smithonian Institute) agree on this point.

4) Not a single indigenous animal to the Americas is mentioned in the
Book of Mormon including significant ones that are either deified in the
religions of the civilizations known to exist at the same time or known
as necessary for known civilizations at the time to survive.

5) Not a single indigenous plant/food to the Americas is mentioned in
the Book of Mormon including significant ones that are deified in the
religions of the civilizations known to exist at the same time as the
Book of Mormon people or known as necessary for known civilizations at
the time to survive.

6) Cureloms and Cumoms: A frequent argument is made by those who are
aware of the lack of evidence of animals mentioned in the BOM, is that
those animals really represented a different animal. Like the horse
imentioned in the BOM is really a deer or tapir. They say that Joseph
used names he was familiar with to describe them. Yet, he was given the
name cureloms and cumoms which are to this day entirely unknown by
anyone.

7) Indigenous peoples are not mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Not
once do the people of the Book of Mormon actually run into another
people that is currently known to anthropologists/archaeologists. It is
stated that the Lord might lead others to the land, but there is zero
interaction mentioned with other peoples

Chariots are mentioned in the Book of Mormon, but not only has there be
no scientific evidence of chariots in the Americas, no pictorial or
written reference to chariots has been found either.

9) The extensive use of chariots in the BOM means that the Book of
Mormon people were familiar with the use of the wheel. Yet the wheel
was not known during book of mormon times….not only are there no
chariots, there are no carts, no wagons, nothing of any kind that
suggests the use of the wheel, nor any evidence of the impact of the
wheel on civilization. There are no pictures of anything else using
the wheel, nor is the use of the wheel mentioned in any writings found.

10) Coinage in the Book of Mormon. Not a single coin has been found in the Americas that dates to Book of Mormon times.

11) Armor in the Book of Mormon. No armor has been found in the Americas
that dates to Book of Mormon times despite being mentioned as used in
numerous wars and by hundreds of thousands in the BOM.

12) Swords in the Book of Mormon (including cimeters) No swords in the
BOM have been found that date to Book of Mormon times despite being in
numberous wars by hundreds of thousands.

13) Metallurgy in the Book of Mormon. No evidence of metallurgy, no ability to make alloys either (steel)

14) Demographics of the Book of Mormon. Population growth numbers found in the Book of Mormon are not realistic.

15) DNA and the Book of Mormon. DNA studies show that none of the known
civilizations have descended from Hebrew, middle eastern origins

a. Resulting impact on doctrine of the church re: lamanites

b. Change in the introduction of the BOM

c. Change to Limited Geography Theory

16) Location of Hill Cumorah. Joseph Smith said Hill Cumoroah was in
New York, Limited Geography Theory says that it cannot be. No
archaeological evidence for New York Hill Cumorah. Is Joseph wrong? Or
is Limited Theory Wrong?

17) Internal Conflicts in the Book of Mormon. There are at least three instances of internal conflicts in the Book of Mormon.

1
There are several changes that were made in the Book of Mormon since it
was originally published that actually affected doctrine

a. Changes related to the trinity. Originally Book of Mormon was completely

b. Changes related to black skin, white skin, pure

19) King James version and the Book of Mormon. There is a significant portion of the Book of Mormon that copies the KJV

20) Italicized words in KJV and the Book of Mormon. Words that are
italicized in the KJV are words that were inserted by 17th century
translators and yet they are found in the BOM.

21) Differences between the KJV (as quoted in the BOM), the BOM, and JST

22) Translation of Book of Mormon in 60 days. I used to think that this
was a difficult and almost impossible task. But take into account
material copied from the KJV, stories from his father, American history,
there isn’t much left to come up with on your own. 60 days is totally
plausible

23) Quetzelcoatl and the Book of Mormon. Some mormon scholars have
advocated that Quetzelcoatl was really Jesus Christ. Yet, that belief
came from 16th century Spanish Missionaries.

24) Verse in the New Testament that was added in later centuries,
included in Book of Mormon (last twelve verses of Mark)….Mormon 9:24
quotes some of the forged verses)

25) Problems with Moroni’s Visit. He was not alone, no one heard him, no one else woke up.

26) Is Moroni actually Nephi? In the early writings of the church, in
numerous places the angel that appears to Joseph is named as Nephi and
not Moroni.

Observations:

1) If not a member of the church, and you were aware of all these issues
there is no way that you could believe that the Book of Mormon is
actual history. Not a single reputable scientific organization outside
of church sponsored ones gives any credence to the BOM as actual
history.

2) Atheists, Arhceaologists, Historians all acknowledge some piece of
historicity of things mentioned in the Bible…like Jerusalem did exist,
Pilate did exist, there were camels in the middle easy, and there are
cedars in Lebanon. No one except faithful latter day saints believe
that the Book of Mormon is history. More credence is given to Atlantis
and El Dorado than Book of Mormon civilizations.

3) So unless you already have a testimony of the Book of Mormon,
believing that the Book of Mormon is actual history is really tough
unless you only read the Book of Mormon and ignore all scientific
evidence to the contrary or come up with some explanation for all of the
above.” “Currently, all arguments defending the BOM by LDs scholars on
the above points are speculative.

Reply
1. Matt says:
  
  September 29, 2011 at 5:35 pm
  
  Thanks for editing! I didn’t realize how long the list was until I actually posted it. I wanted to go back and delete/edit my post myself, but wasn’t sure how.
  
  Reply
Jonah Swan says:

September 29, 2011 at 8:31 am

Terryl has nothing new, nothing interesting to say. Is this really the best we have? This is completely unacceptable to me. This interview shows us that academic professionals can become partial people. They love curiosities more than the truth. They derive self worth and professional value from exploring curiosities and finding niche positions, but the truth is an altogether different proposition. Discovering the truth is not merely an intellectual movement; it is also an emotional movement. The truth demands a whole person–mind and heart. I now know why guys like Michael Quinn, Terryl Givens, and Daniel Peterson cannot accept the truth that now so obviously stares them in the face–they’re too old! You can change the ingredients in the mixing bowl, but you cannot change the ingredients after the cake has been put into the oven. It’s baked. These guys are all baked. There’s no way to free their minds at this point. All I hear from them are intellectual curiosities and nuances of rhetoric and thought that help them reconfigure their beliefs without actually facing and accepting the truth.

These old guys are more dangerous than the ignorant saints because they are aware of the problems without facing them; they see the entrance of the path to truth, but never set foot on it. They pretend to be friends of truth, but they love the truth like a fan loves a photo of a celebrity. They have no relationship with the truth; they cannot love it. All they know is the paper, the photograph, the image and the likeness of the truth, but never the actual truth.

At one point, Terryl uses BH Roberts as a cautionary tale that demonstrates BH Roberts’ shortsightedness–a cautionary tale that warns us so to evaluate “what kind of paradigm am I operating within that is wrongheaded and erroneous,” and “instills a kind of intellectual humility that makes it easier to deal with cognitive dissonance.” That’s the point where Terryl lost me because the case against the Book of Mormon has become more damning and incriminating since BH Roberts made his analysis. The accumulation of negative evidence stacked up against the Book of Mormon validates BH Roberts’ tremendous intuition and insight and shows Terryl givens to be the shortsighted scholar. Terryl musters the audacity to claim that defying this accumulation of evidence stacked up against the Book of Mormon actually shows “a kind of humility” when in fact it shows great hubris, great theological pride.

Terryl fails to see which way his humility leans; that his humility bows to religious authority and tradition, but stands arrogantly and defiantly against the larger accumulation of knowledge that now proves the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham to be fabrications.

This is a common problem among us as a people. This tendency to bend our perception of reality to preconceived doctrinal beliefs evidences a theological pride whose eyes are inverted, seeing only that which is inwardly personal and accessible by “the spirit” or the emotions, ultimately dismissing “the philosophies of men” and other secular methodologies of knowing. This theological pride rejects the material and sensible world, which ultimately constitutes a rejection of the human senses. Consequently, theological pride seeks to better understand the world, not by directly experiencing it, but by searching inward for religious experience and revelation. Ultimately, this inwardness, this closedness, this repression, creates a breach from the material world. Isolated and disconnected, theological pride cloisters itself in the private recesses of its own religious experience and therefore cannot adjust its beliefs to the better evidence of the external world. If new evidence forces it to renounce or adjust its beliefs, then that evidence must be squelched, dismissed, or explained away, whether by honest or dishonest means, but never can the evidence persuade pride to admit its error. Thus, theological pride becomes a furnace with one setting that burns night and day, summer and winter; it burns for error as well as truth. Consequently, oceans of conclusive evidence cannot extinguish its burning bosom. As Nietzsche said, “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”

We can do better than these old worn out scholars, these partial men whose hearts belong to the system, but not to the truth.

Reply
1. Anonymous says:
  
  October 5, 2011 at 8:37 pm
  
  I believe that Michael Quinn, Terryl Givens, and Richard Bushman cannot admit to the truth because it would not be profitable. Mormons are the only people willing to buy their books. If they say they don’t believe then they would lose a lot of customers. Why did BH Roberts not openly admit to the problems he had with the Book of Mormon and keep his true beliefs private? Because he had too much to lose – money, power, prestige. He was paid to believe! Grant Palmer was also paid to believe while he worked for the church – at least he told the truth after he retired. Ultimately truth usually falls at the wayside when money, power and prestige are at stake.
  
  Reply
  1. Jonah Swan says:
    
    October 5, 2011 at 11:00 pm
    
    I don’t know whether we can impute those motives to Terryl Givens or not, but what you said shows insight into the Mormon culture. Speaking broadly about the Mormon culture in general, it is not likely that one would deconstruct the ladder on which one is ascending, whether for spiritual, materialistic, or purely ego related reasons. In Mormonism, I have often heard the term “high and holy callings” and I can only imagine that this cultural construct implies that a priesthood holder’s ascension in the priesthood ranks parallels (in their minds) a spiritual ascension as well. Members view their leaders with awe and impute holiness to them. It is no wonder why this construct is so sticky for capable priesthood holders who serve as bishops, stake presidents, and so forth.
    
    Reply
    1. Jonah Swan says:
      
      October 5, 2011 at 11:03 pm
      
      for those reasons, it’s easy for members to believe in the “mantle of authority” inasmuch as the “mantle” is a halo each member longs to wear.
      
      Reply
  2. Richard of Norway says:
    
    October 10, 2011 at 9:59 am
    
    I think it is much deeper than that, but it is possible that money may be a small factor. If it were all about money, however, than I am confident many of these men would make more if they were to leave and publish a book about their loss of faith. (As Grant Palmer has done.) Like you said: Their current audience consists only of Mormons, while their potential audience, should they leave, would be much bigger.
    
    Reply
    1. Anonymous says:
      
      October 10, 2011 at 10:31 am
      
      Probably true.
      
      Reply
    2. Anonymous says:
      
      October 10, 2011 at 6:43 pm
      
      I agree that it is deeper and much more complicated than just a “For Profit” motivation. That is why I also included power and prestige as contributing factors. I also admit that there are other reasons why people choose to believe or say they believe after they have discovered the truth: the promotion of social harmony – fear of being shunned by family/community – loss of
      potential business relationships – a profitable return on their investment of time, money and research regarding the church – loss of social standing, adoration, respect, high church callings, etc…
      
      I still think that believing Mormons are a far larger audience then non believing Mormons. And non Mormons really don’t count as an audience as they really don’t care about anything Mormon. Think about it, believing Mormons buy their books hoping to find a good defense to anti Mormon claims and also find comfort knowing that the authors still believe despite all the controversial facts. Non believing Mormons also buy their books to prove that the church is finally indirectly admitting to anti Mormon claims. I believe a loss of faith book would exclude true believing Mormons and many questioning Mormons who are afraid to learn more. I guess one would have to examine Grant Palmer’s book sales vs. Bushman’s to know for sure.
      
      I still think that believing Mormons are a far larger audience
      then non believing Mormons. And non Mormons really don’t count as an audience
      as they really don’t care about anything Mormon. Think about it, believing Mormons
      buy their books hoping to find a good defense to anti Mormon claims and also
      find comfort knowing that the authors still believe despite all the controversial
      facts. Non believing Mormons also buy
      their books to prove that the church is finally indirectly admitting to anti Mormon
      claims. I believe a loss of faith book would exclude true believing Mormons and
      many questioning Mormons who are afraid to learn more. I guess one would have
      to examine Grant Palmer’s book sales vs. Bushman’s to know for sure.
      
      Reply
      1. Jonah Swan says:
        
        October 10, 2011 at 7:12 pm
        
        Do you think it’s possible that positive reasons exist? Some that I see (putting doctrine aside for a moment):
        
        1. Personal Spiritual flourishing
        2. A deep and abiding sense of love in a connected community
        3. A connectedness to something that is bigger than our own selfish interests
        4. Opportunities to serve others
        5. Programs for helping parents raise children in righteousness
        6. The education of our hearts and desires, not just our minds
        7. Jello
        
        I don’t believe these are good enough reasons for avoiding or denying the awful truth, but these positive elements exist nonetheless. In fact, for the above reasons, the church is far too important to dismiss and reject.
      2. Anonymous says:
        
        October 10, 2011 at 8:09 pm
        
        Sure, I think positive elements exist on the surface. Members do find comfort and safety being connected to a like minded community. I think all is well for those who conform and not ask too many questions.
        
        I guess my issue is with the aggressive missionary and reactivation program of the church. The church fosters a polarized us-versus-them mentality which often causes family conflict. Members are commanded to seek out non or less active members to convert or reactivate into the church. The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be. I have personally experienced vicious personal attacks from my own family when I went through my crises of faith. I guess I’m calling for more understanding and tolerance for those who choose not to believe after they discover the truth.
      3. Jonah Swan says:
        
        October 10, 2011 at 8:20 pm
        
        MRT01,
        I’m sorry to hear that. I really am. You seem to have kept a great perspective on it, calling for greater understanding and tolerance.
        
        Do you believe that your family members would have treated you with greater kindness had they been more humble about the foundations of their religion? If they knew that a lot of Mormons (including well-known Mormon scholars) recognize that the Book of Mormon is fiction, would that fact alone have caused your family to be more open minded and accepting of your crisis of faith?
      4. Anonymous says:
        
        October 10, 2011 at 9:01 pm
        
        Not necessarily. I tried giving my true believing parents Richard Bushman’s talk where he asks members to be more understanding and tolerant towards doubting members and they threw it in the garbage. They called Bushman a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
        
        I honestly don’t know if the church would survive if it abandons its hard line literal approach to the Book of Mormon and Mormon history. Church membership and/or tithing is already hemorrhaging from the damage done by the internet. Grant Palmer had some good ideas for the church during John Dehlin’s podcast interview, but they would need to act fast.
      5. Jonah Swan says:
        
        October 10, 2011 at 9:59 pm
        
        The church won’t abandon its literalist approach, but the literalist approach will abandon the church. The truth prevails.
        
        MRT01, I hope that you are able to reestablish your relationship with your parents. My heart aches for you. I hope you have a good support infrastructure with good friends in your life. What advice do you have for others who are experiencing similar unkindness and ostracism from family and friends?
        
        It’s amazing how many people I know who are experiencing similar trials–family, friends, new acquaintances who came to me by confidential referrals from friends. Any advice you can offer them would be very helpful. I’ll pass your words along.
      6. Anonymous says:
        
        October 11, 2011 at 5:55 pm
        
        Thanks Jonah, I appreciate the kind words of support. It has been a difficult journey and one not taken lightly. It has taken many years of deep study to finally come to the conclusion the church is not what it claims to be despite the concerted efforts of apologists and believing Mormon historians. I’m still disturbed at their continued efforts to twist and contort facts in order to create positive interpretations. I now prefer simple straight forward common sense truths based on rational objective facts and not in factless irrational subjective concepts supported only by emotions and personal feelings. I still have room for spirituality but I now reinterpret spiritual experiences as a general knowledge of a loving God and not as affirmations for specific doctrines.
        
        As far as family support is concerned I was fortunate to have a loving and supportive wife and twin brother who both have taken this journey with me. Unfortunately I also had unsupportive combative parents, in-laws, friends and church leaders who have zero interest in facts or history. In their reactivation efforts they all went so far as to threaten me that my children will all go to hell or have ruined lives unless I come back to the church. After many discussions with them and after presenting them with true facts and documents most of them have since backed off.
        
        My only advice to others who are experiencing similar problems with family, friends and church leaders is to be honest about your concerns and be persistent in educating them. I believe education is the key to peace. The more people suspend judgment after they have all the facts the more peaceful and understanding they will become.
      7. Jonah Swan says:
        
        October 11, 2011 at 10:57 pm
        
        Based on what I just read, you seem like a great guy. Not many people can hold all their relationships together as you’ve done. I respect you for being so patient. Most of all, I feel so glad to see an example of love winning out in the end. It takes real love.
        
        God bless,
        Jonah
  3. Cen9 says:
    
    October 10, 2011 at 9:18 pm
    
    Beyond being unfair, this does not make any sense. All of these men were/are in academia, and it usually does not further your career to write about Mormon topics, pro or con. In fact, it is the opposite. If professional advancement or prestige were their primary goal they would not have written on such topics to begin with. The only one of these guys whose livelihood is dependent on writing books on Mormon subjects is Michael Quinn, and he can hardly be accused of self censoring what he regards as the truth for the sake of his career.
    
    Reply
  4. Humble Critique says:
    
    October 14, 2011 at 8:04 pm
    
    John, and other moderators: Don’t you think it is disrespectful to invite busy people to sit down for marathon interview sessions, receive gracious, charitable, and in some ways indulgent treatment from them, then to turnaround and host a moderated forum where people can’t post lists, but can take personal pot shots at the good faith of your Mormon guests and can make unsubstantiated accusations that they are just in it for the money?
    
    If Givens or Bushman had been so brash and uncharitable in their interviews, or if they had ascribed terrible personal motivations to post-Mormons generally or specifically, I think you would rush to the post-Mormon’s defense. Instead, we have heard Givens and Bushman express empathy for those who have felt betrayed by the church, hurt by teaching practices, or experienced any kind of disillusionment. This has gone a long way toward dismantling the too-common facile duality between the faithful and the unbelieving that has sadly crept into the culture of the church as we experience it. When we hear of members that are unsympathetic and unbending when interacting with people that struggle with belief, at least we can say Terryl Givens and Richard Bushman are striving to change this aspect of our culture from the standpoint of faith.
    
    I have enjoyed many of your interviews and I appreciate your efforts at bridge building. I think you have shown disaffected or hurt Mormons that many comfortable believers can closely relate to them. I think, however, that you could do more to challenge the easy retreats and ad hominem attacks lobbed by the unbelieving. You may not want to referee this much, and I respect that this is your forum so you should handle like you want, but everyone benefits by at least acknowledging the good faith and sincerity of people that feel differently from us. To end on a lighter note, I pity the fool who, like Mr. T 01., really thinks that money carries so much weight with scholars.
    
    Reply
    1. Anonymous says:
      
      October 14, 2011 at 11:39 pm
      
      Although you lost me a little in your opening paragraph – I don’t know what you mean about can’t post lists?? But regardless I think your sentiments are noble and I applaud your overall message.
      
      Reply
    2. Jonah Swan says:
      
      October 15, 2011 at 6:56 am
      
      Three comments:
      
      1.     Personal attacks should not be part of the discussion. Wondering whether money is a motive? That may be slightly personal, but is it unwarranted? Not sure. Listen to apologists make generalizations about those who leave the church, stating that the reason they leave is because of unrighteousness and sin. It’s very common–and wrong in so many ways. Let them make those statements and we get to attack those statements when it’s our turn to speak. I’m fine with that.
      
      2.     An author or a thinker better be ready to defend the positions they take and defend them vigorously against attack. Bad ideas need to be vetted and attacked–not the people–but the ideas, the positions.
      
      3.     I think back on what D Michael Quinn said about BYU–about it being an Auschwitz for the mind. That was a bomb. I never really grasped it back then when he said it because I was too devout and orthodox. The bomb detonated later on in life like a time bomb and then I was grateful for that statement when I could fully understand it better. Even when I eventually understood it, I knew it was an exaggeration (Nothing is like Auschwitz. Nothing.) That was a pretty aggressive statement, but sometimes we don’t speak the truth when we dumb it down and make it more subtle. Christ used hyperbole and other rhetorical tools on the attack: think whited sepulchers/dead men’s bones, etc.
      
      Similarly, in person, when face-to-face, our facial gestures, our body language, and voice inflections communicate so much more than words. My child could let out a scream that says more than a thousand words–I run quickly, heartbeat racing, blood pressure spiking, and adrenaline in a rush. If my child mumbles or whispers in an emergency, I’ve lost the essence of that communication. Same with written words: let it out, think about your thought, get to the essence of it, focus your words into the tip of spear, and throw it at the idea, the position you want to attack and use every ounce of force you have. Why hold back? Some targets–not all–are worthy of our force. You and the truth are a single inseparable instrument. Use all of yourself, all your strength, and chuck it.
      
      Reply
      1. Anonymous says:
        
        October 16, 2011 at 1:41 am
        
        For me personally I found the comments that criticized his speaking style to rude and uncalled for, and I actually really enjoyed his speaking style.
        
        I also found the comments about his motives for writing books to be rude since they are basically calling him a liar. Those are the same kind of attacks that we do see from time to time from active members of the church against those that leave — meaning that are completely based on nothing but conjecture. Lets not get into the game of saying what someone else thinks and believes. Just accept the fact that it is possible for intelligent reasonable people to disagree.
    3. Michael Rider says:
      
      October 19, 2011 at 8:16 pm
      
      Thanks, Humble Critique. While we’re lovingly bashing John, I observed the following which stuck out during the second half of part IV:
      
      Dehlin: So, in some strange way, he needed something physical to kick-start the process?
      
      Givens: That seems, to me, a good hypothesis that would explain his transition through these different mediums.
      
      Dehlin: Yeah, ’cause again, why is he doing all this? If he’s just making up a book, why doesn’t he just produce the book? Why does he have to, like, go through this spectacle of translating for everybody?
      
      Givens: Yeah, exactly.
      
      Dehlin: I mean I guess it’s ‘cause he has to tie it to actual plates because he wants people to believe the story, right?
      
      Givens: Yeah, but, like I said, you can have the story without having the physical artifact it comes from.
      
      Dehlin: But the physical artifact makes it real, like you say. It’s the difference between he made it up and no, there were real artifacts, right?
      
      Givens: Yeah, possibly so. I mean one contemporary example of fraud is probably the most successful one of that preceding generation was James McPherson who purported to have discovered some ancient Gallic manuscripts which he translated into the poems of oseum. And he publishes these in the late 1700s in England to just fantastic reception and acclaim and these poems are still published all the way into the early 20th century. There were a few skeptical readers like Samuel Johnson who thought there just wasn’t the ring of ancient authenticity to those translations and so he asked him to produce the originals, which McPherson said he would do, and then he never did. And so, gradually, the consensus grew that that was indeed a fraud. But his poems were popular nonetheless.
      
      Dehlin: Alright, um, let’s see, so, so he creates the Book of Mormon and he starts the church. What do you make of Grant Palmer’s…
      
      Typically, John does an excellent job summarizing the view of his guest in a brief sentence or two as a transition to his next question. In this case, however, the summary/transition was not even remotely representative of what Givens articulates as his view with regards to the Book of Mormon. In fact, it is the opposite and it came off to me as being John’s opinion, which is perfectly fine, but I have to say it was a bit surprising based on the conversation that precedes it.
      
      Reply
2. Ringger says:
  
  October 6, 2011 at 2:20 pm
  
  Jonah, would you send me a note at eric_ringgerNO@SPAMhotmail.com ? (remove the obvious pork) Thanks, –Eric
  
  Reply
  1. Jonah Swan says:
    
    October 10, 2011 at 8:29 pm
    
    Ringger, Good to hear from you. What do you have in mind? I look forward to talking.
    
    Reply
    1. Ringger says:
      
      October 10, 2011 at 8:37 pm
      
      Hi, Jonah. If you’ll send me a private email to the address posted above, I just have a question for you. –Eric
      
      Reply
      1. Jonah Swan says:
        
        October 10, 2011 at 10:02 pm
        
        OK. Not going to run a traceroute on my smtp headers or anything like that are you :-)
Anonymous says:

September 29, 2011 at 12:27 pm

Jonah – Regarding, “Terryl has nothing new, nothing interesting to say” — all I can ask is….did you listen to the podcast at all? Nothing new or interesting to say…..for a believer/scholar of Terryl’s status/stature to say on record? Really?

It seems like your argument is primarily against religion…not against Terryl or Mormonism specifically….which believe me…I COMPLETELY understand.

And yet most of the world is religious….that’s just a fact. So from my perspective, there’s HUGE value (and novelty) in understanding how someone as thoughtful and as well-read as Terryl Givens makes it work intellectually.

For me, this podcast is priceless in that regard. But yeah…if you reject or devalue all religion….then I can see why you would respond the way you did. But I’ll be honest — I see your response as unfortunate. Can’t we simultaneously have a perspective, and yet show respect to other perspectives?

Reply
1. Jonah Swan says:
  
  September 29, 2011 at 4:05 pm
  
  John,
  I listened to the entire podcast and took notes. I really enjoyed it. Having said that, the truth matters!
  
  You’re right about the big picture. There is a place for religion. I truly believe that. I feel that deeply. I just don’t think that what we witnessed is religion. Don’t get me wrong, I fully believe Terryl is a very spiritual man, but that’s not what I witnessed in this podcast. The intellectual twisting, the reconfigurations of positions, the recalibration of nuances of thought to make theology work do not for me constitute spirituality. It actually evidences a closedness, a partiality to the system of theology over the vastness of truth that the world offers us.
  
  So here’s my question: is there a scholar who faces up to the truth, stares it boldly in the face, and accepts it despite its awful consequences? Is there a scholar who stops defining the truth as a pleasant surprise or a comforting thought; someone who understands that sometimes the truth is painful?
  
  The fully ripened fruit of knowledge may in fact be difficult and bitter to swallow. When we partake, it may thrust us headlong out of our ignorant paradise and into the lone and dreary world where we find ourselves on a darkling plain at the edge of a precipice where Morpheus greets us, “Welcome to the desert of the real.”
  
  Spirituality is on the other side of that.
  
  I want to witness a new kind of scholar–Adam in the lone and dreary world building an altar from stones that he himself has gathered–an altar of his own making, not the crumbling and decaying remains of our former temples. I want to see him plunge his spade into the soil to rebirth Eden by the good tilling of his own pragmatism and spirituality.
  
  The era of these old guard guys arguing for the Book of Mormon’s historical authenticity is over. We need to move past it. That’s where our greater spirituality lies. It’s waiting for us, but these old guard scholars are holding us back.
  
  Reply
  1. Anonymous says:
    
    September 29, 2011 at 8:38 pm
    
    Jonah,
    
    Just so I can understand your position, can you give me an example of someone testifying to some specific religious truth that is credible to you?
    Regarding “a scholar who faces up to the truth, stares it boldly in the face, and accepts it despite its awful consequences” — that’s exactly what I thought Terryl did. That’s why I enjoyed the podcast so much. Terryl seemed very willing to call a spade a spade. I found Terryl’s approach to be very pragmatic…bordering on heretical (compared to the traditional. orthodox LDS mindset).
    
    I guess I’d love to see an example of that for which you pine.
    
    John
    
    Reply
    1. Jonah Swan says:
      
      September 30, 2011 at 12:53 am
      
      John,
      How about accepting the obvious truth–that the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham are 19th century fabrications, lies. On the other side of that realization, I’m very open to many spiritual discoveries and experiences, including faith-promoting, gospel-building experiences.
      
      What I won’t accept: scholars making a cautionary tale out of BH Roberts who is their intellectual and spiritual superior. Unbelievable.
      
      Reply
      1. Anonymous says:
        
        September 30, 2011 at 2:16 am
        
        Jonah Swan,
        
        In his book, Givens calls B.H. Roberts something to the effect of “one of the greatest minds in the history of Mormonism.” And my read of Givens’ take on B.H. Roberts is that Givens sees Roberts as nothing short of heroic. In fact, in the podcast Givens explicitly states that B.H. Roberts was a model for how to approach the Book of Mormon with integrity.
        
        You seem to be blinded by anger or something. Or we simply disagree. But you clearly don’t understand what Givens is saying in my view.
        
        John
      2. Jonah Swan says:
        
        September 30, 2011 at 4:12 am
        
        John,
        I am not so genteel that I wouldn’t metaphorically kick someone in the teeth and I make no apologies for that. It depends on the person and my level of disagreement and disappointment. It’s time for us to cease being so precious, so delicate and genteel.
        
        I’ll forget what you said about being blinded by anger. I’ve never read Terryl’s books, so I have no idea what he says about BH Roberts in his books, BUT I did listen to the podcast and I know what he said here. That’s all I really care about. Here’s an excerpt:
        
        “One of BH Roberts’ problems was that he operated throughout on a totally wrongheaded assumption: that the Book of Mormon claimed to be a history of the entire western hemisphere. That’s an absolutely ridiculous notion.” According to Givens, this is supposed to make me introspective; supposed to make me wonder: “What kind of paradigm am I operating within that is also wrong headed and erroneous?”
        
        To me, that position unacceptable–especially since modern science proves out BH Roberts and shows him to be correct years in advance of the conclusive evidence!
        
        The more important point of mine that you should have answered is this: why doesn’t Givens admit that the Book of Mormon is a fiction? His refusal to accept this fact causes Givens to contort himself into theological knots and I don’t find this interesting at all. At one point, he calls Ostler’s BoM theory “beautiful” although he doesn’t buy it. Beautiful? These apologists sometimes disturb me. They love these apologetic devices, these theological twistings and contortions, but not the Truth! Not the difficult truth. They would twist themselves into a misshapen theological fraud rather than acknowledge the truth.
        
        We no longer see any of these scholars make arguments against evolution, but here they are making arguments against modern scientific evidence about the ancient Americas–and the case against the Book of Mormon is more damning and conclusive than the case against creationism in the Bible!
        
        Here’s a matter of fact: our people suffer silencing, shunning, judgement, shame, depression, anxiety, fear, and most of all, they have no pathway to honest discourse with their families and loved ones. My cousin’s wife was on the edge of divorcing him–for a virtue; for discovering the truth; for discovering that the Book of Mormon is a fraud. He loves his wife who is an uber orthodox return missionary. He’s loyal. He’s devoted. He’s a great man. Why should this be the case? If you believe that a leveling of all opinions will solve this problem, I disagree. All opinions about the Book of Mormon are not created equal. The truth matters. The only solution is to get rid of these impossible apologetic positions and admit that the Book of Mormon is a fiction. Then, all our people will be able to talk openly, not just in forums and not just in private conversations with red-pill Mormons, but also in their own wards and with their own family members. The larger community of Mormons will continue to believe in the Church, as they should, but they’ll cease to be so arrogant and cock-sure about everything. A little theological humility will go a long way for us as a church.
        
        All virtue begins with honesty. Let’s start there; with honesty. The longer we tolerate this pablum, this drivel about the Book of Mormon, the longer our people suffer. Figure it out. You have the power to do it, but you’re busy being diplomatic to the wrong people. Unite the clans Johnny. Unite the clans. :-)
        
        Jonah
      3. Hermes says:
        
        September 30, 2011 at 4:38 pm
        
        Hardliners are probably never going to deny the historicity of the BOM en masse. If we approach things this way, we widen the gap swallowing people like your cousin, Jonah. Getting doubt recognized as a socially acceptable position would help things a lot. If Packer and company could add vocal doubt to belief and silence (the only two positions currently acceptable for church members in good standing), then your cousin’s believing family would suddenly lose the prophetic pressure to cut off one of their members. They could still disagree with him, believing the myth he doubts, but they wouldn’t have a prophet of God backing them up if they decided to turn that disagreement into a reason to disown him (effectively).
        
        You have to respect the other idiot if you want him to respect you.
      4. Jonah Swan says:
        
        September 30, 2011 at 5:14 pm
        
        Hermes,
        I agree and disagree:
        
        First, you’re right, some hardliners may never deny the historicity of the BOM, but that’s only because our theological system has positioned the formula for belief in that way. I was as devout as a person could be, but I eventually came around to the truth after three years of research. I still live a life of orthodox faithfulness (and intellectual heresy). I’m a red pill Mormon waiting for our better moments. Discovering the truth about our scriptural foundations is not as faith destroying as some think. I have that hope for the rest of the church. I have great faith in the truth; that it will ultimately prevail over concealment. Further, I believe the Saints are capable of discovering the awful truth–and I believe they’re capable of continuing to believe on the other side of that discovery.
        
        Second, I agree that like you said, most things don’t happen en masse, and that’s fine with me.
        
        Third, mass defection or mass rejection of the BOM’s historicity is not necessary. An apologist tries to create a context and a climate in which faith can exist. Unfortunately in our culture, what has been created is a climate of absolute certainty. We don’t need to convince everybody. We simply need to create a context in which doubt can exist. There are many ways we can do this.
        
        Fourth, is diplomacy important? Yes. How important is it? It’s importance runs inversely in relation to the passionate certainty of the opposition. Some walls cannot be broken except with explosives.
      5. Jfs says:
        
        October 1, 2011 at 4:58 am
        
        John,
        
        THANK YOU and THANKS to TG for these episodes! Wonderful, rich, engaging, brave, illuminating….I could go on. More than anything, very helpful to me and I’m sure many others.
        
        John, as a listener to MSP for years now, I don’t remember and episode where you reacted so genuinely and spontaneously and so often with eplies to things like ‘Really?!’ and ‘Now, wait!…’ and other reactions to his responses that seemed to take you by surprise. I’m wondering, do you feel differently at all about any issues after this wonderful discussion?
        
        I love to listen to TGs take on difficult issues and Mormonism is general, however, I don’t think the average member who confronts these issues will ever be able to approach them with the same breadth and depth.
      6. Carey says:
        
        October 1, 2011 at 11:55 pm
        
        Your way off on your analysis here of what Givens was saying. While you comments may be correct in a different context they don’t really apply to Givens is saying about the BH Roberts.
  2. Hermes says:
    
    September 29, 2011 at 8:52 pm
    
    “I want to witness a new kind of scholar–Adam in the lone and dreary world building an altar from stones that he himself has gathered–an altar of his own making, not the crumbling and decaying remains of our former temples. I want to see him plunge his spade into the soil to rebirth Eden by the good tilling of his own pragmatism and spirituality.”
    I like your position here, Jonah. But I guess I think Terryl is more sympathetic to this than you might think. I think many apologists that we younger bucks fault for being close-minded or cowardly are really just expressing viewpoints forged in a different age, an age when telling any kind of truth that flouted official teaching (even a watered down version of such truth) was really rebellious. I think these guys (particularly Terryl) are authentic. I think they have something to offer. I don’t agree with them about everything, but I don’t even agree with myself all the time. It’s good to have them talking to us, particularly those of us who are too intimidated to use our real names or be who we really want to be in the world, with our families, and with our church community. They give us ways of reaching out to friends and family authentically that do not involve inflicting unbearable pain. My mom won’t read Bagley or even Fawn Brodie, but she will read Terryl Givens, and I can talk to her about the power of Mormon myth in a positive, constructive way.
    
    I suspect, in light of your second comment, that you and I are not really that far apart. I suspect you appreciate Terryl giving what he could (even if it ultimately was not what you would have offered, or perhaps because it was not). Sure it’s not enough. My offering, if I ever have one, won’t be enough either, even though it won’t be as institutionally LDS as Terryl’s. I hope that is OK, because that is the way things always happen. It is not in the nature of humanity to create something that is finally enough. I may do better for myself than you or Terryl would do for me, but I cannot claim to do better for you than you do for yourselves.
    
    Reply
  3. Carlosgaido2002 says:
    
    October 2, 2011 at 1:18 pm
    
    I noticed that too. At the end, I felt that he was OK with every single position out there and somehow managed to link them in his head.
    
    Reply
Carlosgaido2002 says:

September 29, 2011 at 12:30 pm

Well, Jonah. It seems like you already made up your mind on the subject. I hear that LDS.org has lots of forums for people like you.

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Nelson Chung says:

September 29, 2011 at 5:02 pm

John, that interview and Givens himself are amazing. Thanks for doing it.

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Verminpants says:

September 29, 2011 at 5:11 pm

Marvellous! I agree with Terryl about Romantic poets and poetry reflecting very much Mormon theology. Lord Byron actually reminds me of Joseph Smith! In fact George Byron, I think, would consider himself somewhat of a prophet. ‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know.’ Byron reflected very much upon the relationship between the imagined and the real, especially on the line of the sublime which very much resonates Mormon thinking.

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Shara says:

September 29, 2011 at 5:15 pm

Ok – just on part 3 right now, but Terryl Givens expressed well one very important principle that I really value think is lost in LDS culture today. He said that Mormonism/LDS church doesn’t have eternal status. It is simply our current incarnation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is a very expansive idea in my mind, one that really resonates with me.

He also talks about how the LDS church has a responsibility of priesthood and temple ordinances, but said there are other important players as well. That thought made me stop and think “I wonder what sort of responsibilities were other religious belief systems given have that we should be aware of.” What responsibility does Buddhism have? What is their important contribution? What about Islam and Judaism? What are some of their tenants and faith practices that would enhance the worship and understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Great food for thought.

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DefyGravity says:

September 29, 2011 at 5:55 pm

I’m listening on the website, the the 3rd part only plays for about 4 minutes. Just fyi

Reply
1. Anonymous says:
  
  September 29, 2011 at 6:16 pm
  
  DefyGravity – The site is often slow during the first 48 hours of a release. Please check back and let me know if you’re still having trouble tomorrow. Also, please check out iTunes to see if you have better luck there. Thanks!
  
  Reply
celeritas says:

September 29, 2011 at 5:56 pm

Truth is knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come. From two eyes of perspective, in our short lifetimes, we must synthesize multi-dimensional fields of knowledge as quickly as possible. Yet, what we learn in fine, local field resolution is more slow and methodical requiring more careful thought and experiment. The discovery of truth is a massive undertaking requiring super accelerated reading, perception, and action! The law of gravity has so many evidences for its truthfulness, yet belief continues to produce rewards. We can ride a roller coaster and use it without knowing how it works. Others are designing experimental machinery to measure precisely gravitational waves and fields, and working to discover the elusive graviton. It takes entire lifetimes to study just the 19th century of world history. What did the people of the ancient world really think of God and eternal principles? Nibley helped us harvest divers thought only after vast data mining in the ancient world in 12 different languages. Givens has dug deep to discover thought on pre-existence which not only correlates with mormons but throws more light on the topic. How radical to uncover the thought that the fall could turn out good for us, that god is passible, that atonement and intercession includes infinite empathy, sufficient to save even our dead, or to continue to write new sacred books. Uncovering thought and philosophy in correlation with our faith tradition means that other labs in the world have confirmed a truth proposed, making it less alien. Obtaining these eyes of understanding requires perception through the optics of 1000’s of writers, thinkers, experimenters. If Michael Coe or Grant Palmer after deep and wide study found alternative explanations on the other side of the historical cliff notes shared by the mainstream and yet still admit that Joseph was a genius, then it merits more study by the thoughtful and inquisitive. To find that perhaps a correlation with a new atheist on God as a super-evolved human – even if it does seem to counter Isaiah 43:10 and violates orthodox rules on god as the causeless cause, at least it is a form of theogony to be analyzed and discussed for what it could mean for the future of our race in both motivation for good and computational ethics. Apotheosis of this variety pulls God just slightly to the left of an infinite bounded integral giving us greater hope as we have a shared dna between god and the human family. What will we be doing in 1M years in heaven? Could it be that given the difficult odds of the drake equation that life is so rare, intelligent life even more rare, that there were civilizations which have progressed millions of years to be regarded by us as gods? The truth is that the probability for this is not 0 in a universe with >300sextillion stars. Is the universe a machine to produce gods? Teilhard a paleontologist concluded that the ultimate purpose in our undergirding cells and matter-in motion in the cosmos is to produce Christs – christogenesis. What is Zion? The united, the free – and their were no poor among them for Christ did give them a new heart, and they chose good despite their own vulnerability.

Reply
1. david packard says:
  
  October 26, 2011 at 2:07 pm
  
  celeritas,
  I, for one, enjoyed your discussion on our quest to understand and make sense of layer after layer of information. Mormonism offers hope understanding this information/knowledge in a way that brings tremendous meaning and purpose. It also can sound extremely weird, and way outside the mainstream Christianity. I don’t care how far “out there” Mormonism is (or the portion of it I choose to embrace is), in terms of the “weirdness factor” somehow becoming an indicator of how likely this Mormonism is to be true. To paraphrase Givens, once you’ve gone down that rabbit hole of religion, it’s all weird. This is roughly no stranger that most other faiths, so measuring against them as standards of truth based on “weirdness factor alone”, is silly. However, some of your expressed are are really cool, but aren’t really taken seriously among even most thinking mormons. God’s DNA, Universe Machine to produce gods, and the like are really thought-provoking, but it is very difficult to have a conversation with other LDS on this topic without sheer craziness taking over. That’s why I don’t personally get much benefit (socially/spiritually) sharing these kinds of ideas. All responses are either crazy (in my view) or that they think I’m smoking something. Hard to get a responsible dialogue going, I guess.
  
  Reply
Lindsay P says:

September 29, 2011 at 8:11 pm

John and Terryl,
Thank you for the fascinating series. I enjoyed it thoroughly and it’s probably my favorite podcast (which is saying a lot, because I love all of the podcasts!). Terryl, I loved your position on Frontline’s The Mormons and was always curious about how you reconciled some of the things that I have struggled regarding current doctrine and culture and past historical challenges. You have such a lovely and ethereal point of view, grounded in intellectualism, which is refreshing. You made one of the most compelling arguments for Joseph Smith’s divine role, that I’ve ever heard. I’m not sure I’m on board, but it’s a very interesting and thoughtful take. I will probably listen to this again and again to absorb every morsel. Thanks for doing what you do and interviewing with Mormon Stories. You made me think! Also, well done John. This was a fantastic interview.

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Hermes says:

September 29, 2011 at 8:32 pm

After listening with great interest to this podcast, I really like Terryl Givens, though I still cannot believe in the Book of Mormon as a serious historical record. Whenever the podcast turned to literalist apologetics, I just could not follow it. Perhaps this is because I tried so hard to make the Book fit hard evidence for so many years: maybe if I had stuck to reading ancient fables and kept my nose out of modern anthropology and history, maintaining the illusion of historical Nephites (and Llamanites) might have been easier. Kudos to John for asking all the tough questions, with one slight exception: you let Givens get away with llamas as horses and obsidian clubs as swords, but did not comment on what the heck cureloms and cumoms are supposed to be. What gives?! (Please note that this is said tongue-in-cheek!)

While I am not impressed with Givens’ defense of the Book of Mormon as history, I think there is value in approaching it as a sign fraught with meaning. There are important lessons to be learned from it (lessons of myth rather than of history), and I like the way Givens thinks when it comes to drawing these out (though I admit I joined John in dismissing him initially, owing to the literalist apologetic, which I find untenable). I am thinking I will have to look into his published work unworthy of Deseret.

I liked Givens’ openness to learning from deeply flawed people (i.e. human beings, a category which includes prophets). I liked that he did not try to push blame onto the intellectually disaffected (who according to certain apologists should have known better than to believe their teachers and leaders in church). I liked that he takes a historical perspective when looking at Mormonism. I wish he were my bishop. I wish I could have spoken with him before I went to BYU, instead of coming away from there with my faith smashed by the likes of Boyd K. Packer, who seems diametrically opposed to Givens and Bushman from where I stand. (Honestly, while I want to believe Givens when he says that there is no great conspiracy to hide the truth about church history from members, it is hard in light of talks like Packer’s infamous address, “The Mantle is Far, Far Greater than the Intellect,” BYU Studies 21.3 [1981]: 1-18. How is this not at least an effort to set up and legitimize such a conspiracy? I cannot tell. For what it is worth, however, Packer did much more damage to my testimony with this talk than anyone has ever done by telling me the whole truth, even when it was not exactly what I expected. I think Givens is onto something when he says that betrayal in the present is a bigger problem for the church than having some sordid history.)

Thanks for a really good podcast.

Reply
1. Anonymous says:
  
  September 29, 2011 at 8:45 pm
  
  So glad you enjoyed, Hermes.
  
  Reply
  1. Hermes says:
    
    September 29, 2011 at 9:53 pm
    
    I always like your podcasts, even when they break my heart (like the one on Eugene England). This one was particularly good, in that Terryl was willing to open up honestly and answer even the toughest questions without getting overly defensive. I really appreciated how open and thoughtful he was.
    
    Reply
    1. Anonymous says:
      
      September 29, 2011 at 9:57 pm
      
      Me too. And yes….the Eugene England story is a TOTAL heartbreaker. May Terryl’s story end much happier. :)
      
      Reply
2. Matt says:
  
  September 29, 2011 at 11:47 pm
  
  Thanks! You expressed my feelings exactly
  
  Reply
starry night says:

September 29, 2011 at 9:02 pm

Terryl Givens has been a favorite since I heard him on PBS. I loved this – I will be listening again and taking notes next time. A few of the specific ideas shared were particularly soothing for my own sore spots. Thanks to both of you for a very thought provoking podcast.

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Nelson Chung says:

September 29, 2011 at 11:00 pm

Givens-Bushman-Hardy: The Holy Trinity.

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notknowingbeforehand says:

September 29, 2011 at 11:38 pm

Listening to Terryl Givens talk is like listening to silk. He is a symphony conductor of the English language.

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LoveIsBig says:

September 29, 2011 at 11:55 pm

Thanks for another great podcast! I loved hearing Givens mention some philosophical/temperamental ties between Joseph Smith and the Romantics. It’s something that has fascinated me, and I’ve never heard it mentioned before. Joseph really was Byronic in some ways, and I love that Lord Byron was apparently one of the people who appeared to Wilford Woodruff asking for his temple ordinances to be performed (along with Wordsworth, Goethe, Schiller, various founding fathers, et. al.). Mormonism and Romanticism is a very rich vein indeed.
I’m less convinced by the Book of Mormon historicity arguments. To me, the thematic unity of the book implies single authorship. If it had been produced over centuries by many various authors in various periods of social history (like the Bible), I think it would have that “ad hoc” feel Givens finds lacking. I suppose you can argue that the voice of Mormon the Abridger drowns out the original author’s voices…but none of this seems terribly convincing to me. I’d be delighted to be convinced of the historicity of the Book of Mormon, but I’m still waiting (and not with bated breath). Until then, an unhistorical Book of Mormon works just fine for me.

Anyway, I really appreciated hearing Givens’ approach and was fascinated and inspired by what he had to say. Kudos to all involved.

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Chino_Blanco says:

September 30, 2011 at 1:20 am

Re the 5th segment and the mention of Kathleen Flake’s suggestion that there would’ve been easier ways for Joseph to satisfy the demands of his sex drive than to create a whole new purpose-built theology: this maybe kinda worked back in 2006/07 but after the YFZ Ranch raid in 2008 is probably a line that ought to be retired. At this point, in 2011, repeating it only brings to mind the (very recent) spectacle of Warren Jeffs and his courtroom antics and ongoing headline-making shenanigans.

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1. Jonah Swan says:
  
  September 30, 2011 at 4:49 pm
  
  Yes, Chino. Thank you for your observation. That defense is ludicrous.
  
  There is a better explanation for Joseph Smith’s sexual conquests and for a lot of the other things he did: Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
  
  Reply
Maddymort says:

September 30, 2011 at 3:44 am

My journey of discovery outside the Church manuels began 5 yrs ago. Thanks John and Terryl for an awesome interview. I’m so glad John provides a place where these topics can be explored honestly. I laughed when Terryl mentioned Mother Teresa not having to go to Spirit Prison, because that was the lesson (not literally) in Relief Society just 2 weeks ago and I just couldn’t go along with that. How lucky you are Terryl to be able to work at U of Richmond. What a beautiful campus! Though it wasn’t my son’s first choicefor college, it would’ve been mine….. I’ll be looking forward to future interviews.

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Chino_Blanco says:

September 30, 2011 at 1:25 pm

Thoughts on Part 2 ( hey, if you’re gonna post five segments, I’m gonna assume we’re all invited to leave up to five random comments ;-) ):

Discussing what *works* means talking about our preferred outcomes. Assuming, as the discussion in this segment seems to suggest, that the only acceptable outcome is continued growth (or at least avoidance of any moves that might trigger a contraction), the question that comes to my mind is whether or not the default defense (i.e., the literal interpretation of key elements in the Mormon story) is, in fact, still capable of getting the job done? The assertion that another retrenchment would only present a problem for well-read Mormons is looking increasingly wobbly as the ground continues to shift and a younger generation of LDS keeps leaving for reasons that are increasingly indistinguishable from those that are driving the exodus from other Christian churches. My sense is that engaging the concerns identified in the research at that link might be more useful than shutting down consideration of a swath of potential institutional LDS responses with a reference to the (arguably) less germane example of the Community of Christ.

Anyway, I’m noticing a pattern here: I’m nodding along with the tentative/descriptive bits but then these get punctuated by a declaration/prescription that leaves me shaking my head. For example, I wouldn’t bridle if someone suggested that the Church *could be* as true as the Gospel, but I’m no longer comfortable with the more famous declarative formulation of that line when it gets used in a way that sounds suspiciously (to me) like a thought-terminating cliché. The Church is *not* going to succeed at “being as true as the Gospel” on the basis of pronouncements regarding where or when B.H. Roberts or Eugene England happened to get things right or wrong, but rather on the basis of its example of how to treat our fellows in accordance with Gospel principles.

So, I was enjoying the subsequent discussion about the rejection of a capricious God in favor of a constant, compassionate deity willing to take risks in order to promote the happiness of His people. But then I wasn’t. The discussion got Hegelian in a way that once again threw me for a loop, but at least the discussion about the one-third and the how/why of their casting out reassured me that I wasn’t the only one feeling slightly confused. Talk about capital-T Tragedy if that 1/3rd had anything like understandable reasons for their reluctance to get with the program…

Moving on, the “mired in banality” observation rings true but there’s got to be more on offer than instrumentalist arguments if that banality is to be redeemed in any meaningful way. Or, if not, at least it ought to be an instrumentalism that’s defended on the basis of a more universally useful pragmatism. Or maybe it was. At this point, I’m having trouble ignoring a nagging voice that’s chiding me for expecting more than a narrow defense of the LDS status quo and it’s getting in the way of my ability to listen and type.

But now this idea has got my full attention: equally compelling evidence for both sides must be presented in order for agency to do its work of sifting the wheat from the tares. Ugh. Right back to Abraham. And since I don’t get this chance very often, this is my big shout out to Isaac: It gets better.

Meanwhile, Earth is an uneven playing field but God is striving. Just like the rest of us. But not all of us. Or something.

See also Saturday’s Warrior.

Reply
1. Anonymous says:
  
  September 30, 2011 at 1:35 pm
  
  ALWAYS love your perspective, Chino. Thx for sharing. Keep it up.
  
  Reply
  1. Chino_Blanco says:
    
    September 30, 2011 at 1:49 pm
    
    Just for the record (and I’m regretting that I feel compelled to add this), that Terryl Givens took the time to share his thoughts and that you took the time to broadcast them counts for a whole helluva lot in my book. My view is that whatever our views might be regarding Mormonism’s past or prospects, good on anybody who’s taking the time to document the journey.
    
    Reply
2. Nelson Chung says:
  
  September 30, 2011 at 2:12 pm
  
  I have no idea what the hell you are saying.
  
  Reply
  1. Chino_Blanco says:
    
    September 30, 2011 at 2:36 pm
    
    And that’s OK, Nelson. I suppose it makes us even. I have no idea what “Givens-Bushman-Hardy: The Holy Trinity” is supposed to mean.
    
    Reply
    1. Anonymous says:
      
      September 30, 2011 at 7:57 pm
      
      Chino_Blanco, this is probably a moot point in your exchange with Nelson Chung, but the “Holy Trinity” comment was a play on the “Unholy Trinity” epithet. The “Unholy Trinity” is a oft-quoted nickname for Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris (Givens-Bushman-Hardy being perhaps the antithesis of these men).
      
      Reply
      1. Chino_Blanco says:
        
        September 30, 2011 at 9:02 pm
        
        Hmmm. Fun explanation. Gotta say, though, I’d expect someone capable of that kind of wordplay to garner at least something from my comment. Nelson apparently had no idea what I was saying. What’s up with that? Or do I just need to play along and leave a truly inscrutable comment for his amusement?
Aaron T. says:

September 30, 2011 at 1:51 pm

Chino, agree with you – that argument really needs to go away. Just like the best lie is the one closest to the truth, the best self serving proposition (whether it be sexual, financial, or otherwise), is the one that makes the inappropriateness seem most palatable, given the contextualized and unique status of the predator.

Reply
Sophia says:

September 30, 2011 at 2:42 pm

I really hope that the delay in the history updates and church material is inefficiencies as Givens suggests. I have considered that myself at one point and was more compelled to question that delay and consider more seriously that there is motive. A loving motive that assumes members won’t handle it to be sure and erring on the side of caution to keep things as they are to ensure the tithes and organization continues to exists. *I* would have handled it and preferred the honesty but more wouldn’t and they know that. I agree with Givens these men and women serving in the general authority capacity are most concerned with their duty at hand but I will say one thing, the way it is may have worked this long but it will not work this way for too much longer and sadly, the church will roll forward and just say the loss is “sign of the times” as the less informed parts of the globe continue to hold to the iron rod!
It is refreshing to hear someone at peace and what not as Givens is. I also enjoy John’s zeal and questions as they are the very things *I* would be asking!

Reply
1. Anonymous says:
  
  September 30, 2011 at 8:11 pm
  
  Yeah, I really like Givens’ comments on that subject (especially about Church and CES manuals being “deplorable”). I agree that the Church does have some “bureaucratic inefficiencies” in regard to disseminating scholarly work in Church History down to the curriculum. However, I also think that many active members of the Church are just not that involved or concerned with learning about Church History. I also think it is fair to say that the Church will continue to lose members until they do a better job of focusing on historical/doctrinal inaccuracies and misinformation (or complete lack of information) in the curriculum.
  
  I know that some Church leaders would argue that a fact like Joseph Smith translating the BoM from a seerstone in a hat may be information that is “true, but not useful.” However, if that fact alone is enough to compel a member to leave the Church altogether, then I think it is a useful and very important fact (even important enough to be in a Church/CES manual). I’ve heard of many members being shaken by that fact alone (I’m probably one of them).
  
  Reply
  1. Sophia says:
    
    October 1, 2011 at 3:56 pm
    
    Yes, it is all useful to me! If, as this interview highlights, someone’s testimony is a true belief in a story and that story turns out to be varied, I want to hear the variations and make my own decision. If I should decide it isn’t true then the motives of the church should be the whole 90 and 9 thing and address it honestly and openly. As Givens says, and I agree, truth needs no defending, and “God” can defend himself. Very simple perspective that has always resonated with me. My fathers generation was actually told to “stay out of the mysteries” by general authorities. Isn’t that absurd? The entire foundation of the church is founded on mysteries that profess to be true. If we disagree with their version of anything we are tossed aside as apostates. Something is really wrong with that! Who are they at the iron rod and who are they in the great and spacious building???
    
    Reply
Anonymous says:

September 30, 2011 at 4:51 pm

Terryl Givens is awesome. Thanks for doing this interview, John.

I’m only midway through the second part, but I did want to comment on Dr. Givens’ view of the atonement. I don’t understand the atonement, and the explanation of Dr. Givens, I think, highlights one of my misunderstandings. Dr. Givens mentioned the consequences of sin that we do (or must) experience in mortality. Those consequences do cause us suffering (spiritual and physical). So, in essence, the atonement sounds like dual-suffering to me. In other words, we suffer for our sins, and Christ also suffers for our sins. Don’t we also experience the effects of a separation from God when we sin (including the suffering that comes from that separation)? Why would Christ, in mortality, also need to experience that separation (from the Gethsemane to the cross) if we will experience in mortality anyway? If Christ’s sacrifice is purely for post-mortal suffering that we may suffer at the judgment bar of God, then I am further confused by the unforgiving nature of Christ’s father (i.e., an Old Testament God who is angry, jealous, and vengeful). How could Christ be one with his Father if that was the true nature of God? In my mind, they would be near opposites.

Reply
1. KC says:
  
  October 3, 2011 at 4:43 pm
  
  Ive had the same questions on the atonement, especially in light of DC 19: 16-17
  ” 16 For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;
  17 But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;
  
  Difficult to square, especially after talks like from E. Christoffoerson in conference who seemed to say that our suffering was useful and necessary. Sorry this just doeent make sense in light of DC 19 or anything the Jesus Christ said or did in the New Testament.
  
  Reply
notknowingbeforehand says:

September 30, 2011 at 5:39 pm

For four and half hours, Terryl Givens maintains his composure without a crack while John comes at him with every doubt, issue and question regarding the church’s history, administration, and theology. Then John says “who is this Lord Byron guy anyway”, and Terryl goes apoplectic. I love it!

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Drew says:

September 30, 2011 at 5:53 pm

Terryl- Thank you for doing the interview. John I think you did a great job asking great questions. I started this podcast looking for answers. I am desperately trying to find away to have some kind of believe in the divine and in the LDS Church. I can appreciate a lot of what Terryl had to say and I think the theology he shared was both interesting and compelling. However, it is not the theology I have been taught my whole life in the LDS church. Listening to Terryl share his beliefs, as well as guys like Dan Weatherspoon share their beliefs, I can’t help but think that in order to still believe in Mormonism I have to reinvent the theology. I have not found a way to do that yet. I really appreciate the the interviews with those who have found a way to reconcile all of their issues. Thank you both for taking the time to share your thoughts.

I have one gnawing question for Terryl. Several times during the interview you talked about the fallibility of prophets as well as the possibility that the scriptures may have embellishments, like the number of dead during battles in the B of M. You also, stated you thought it was possible that Moroni may have edited the book. I understand that the number of dead during a battle is immaterial to the message of the B of M however, I makes me wonder what else is wrong with the book? It seems to me if God is OK with his prophets being wrong and his scriptures being wrong. Then why should I listen to the Prophets? I would really love someone to answer this for me. I feel like I could put an awful lot back on my shelf if someone could give me a compelling reason to listen to the GA and give me any kind of confidence that they are actually speaking for God.

Reply
1. Matt says:
  
  September 30, 2011 at 7:01 pm
  
  That’s one of the problems I have struggled with I well. Most church apologists are comfortable with the idea that “past” prophets, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and so on, have made some pretty clear mistakes. If this is the case though, why doesn’t the same also apply to our current leadership in the church? Why aren’t we allowed to disagree if we think they’ve done something wrong?
  
  Reply
  1. Nellie Chung says:
    
    October 3, 2011 at 12:52 am
    
    I found this economics model helpful. You may or may not:
    
    https://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2004/06/a-model-of-information-and-prophetic-counsel/
    
    Reply
jake says:

September 30, 2011 at 11:17 pm

Another great podcast (and I’m only half way thru). Thanks John and Terryl. My hat’s off to you, Terryl. You have such a unique and fresh approach to Mormonism – and religion / philosophy in general. *Sigh* with my 30 plus years of faithful mormon indoctrination, I’ve gotten pretty damn good at black/white reasoning. For me, it still comes back to Truth. No matter how warm and fuzzy the spiritual experience (which isn’t a bad thing at all in and of itself, only), unless God(s) delights in treating their offspring like lab rats, it makes no sense to rely on such feelings as a basis for Truth.

Too bad Darwin didn’t publish On The Origin of Species 50 years earlier, and Joseph Sr.’s family read that book instead of the Bible. Maybe today we’d have all the good in Mormonism w/o having to contort logic/truth.

Reply
Adam says:

October 1, 2011 at 2:48 am

This is by far the best interview I’ve heard on Mormon Stories so far. I look forward to the next podcast in which he’ll discuss the Book of Mormon. Any idea when that will take place?

Reply
Anonymous says:

October 1, 2011 at 6:15 am

I don’t want to sound mean spirited, but Givens seems high on the fumes of his poetic wax. He seems nice enough, but his unorthodox views reveal nothing more than the simple motive of wanting more book sales. John seems flabbergasted most of the interview and offers some good BS detection, but then seems to forget it all in the end and ungnashes his teeth at the thousands of unstripled warriors who will have their minds blown back into their skulls by such a “beautiful” StayedMormon moment? I wonder what the GRE defines as sophistry. In my cloudless sky, a dry mouthed pedantic is not a breath of fresh air. Truth cannot be showered away in a eugenics lab or edited out of the mouth of Yaweh. Believe me. Scouts honor. Which I’m glad to find out, may be all I need to get through the veil and past all those labanizing cheribum. Maybe this will be the next token: “Hold on. I’ve got it… Here’s my new name badge…Yes I’m of the custodial class… Now I know not, did you need the cub scout two finger or the boy scout three fingered sign…I’ve got both…Wait, no I’ve got one more. Which one would you like…?”

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Ubik1967 says:

October 1, 2011 at 12:43 pm

Fascinating podcast episode. This is part of MS “Inside the mind of the apologist series”.

When the subject of the truthfulness of Mormonism gets tired you can move on to the question of: how do they do it?

This man is a premier example of an extremely intelligent person (no doubt much more intelligent then myself – really) that has intimate knowledge of all the facts at had and yet is a sincere believer. Yet to me the truth of the matter seems to me quite different and as obvious as my nose on my face.

The mystery of how people like this do it is (for me) one of the most intriguing questions out there.

Listening to this podcast provides clues. It seems like he is capable of shooting multiple explosive fireworks of facts into the the sky all at once and then connecting the dots to create images of truth. It does not make it real (the constellations are not real) but maybe useful. It’s almost like a form of modern mysticism. I’m starting to admire this almost like a new (or maybe it’s not so new) kind of art form. I think I am starting to enjoy it now because I no longer feel threatened by it.

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jg says:

October 1, 2011 at 7:58 pm

I loved the discussion. It was the most relaxed I’ve seen John, and the most open. Terryl is one of the most articulate believers the church has. I especially love that he’s fairly empathetic with those that don’t believe. Without a doubt, this was one of the most important MS interviews done to date.

Terryl I’m so glad you did this. Thanks! And I can’t wait for the next one.

I also really appreciated your boldness, in a few places in particular. 1/ denouncing polygamy as inspired and eternal in nature. 2/ highlighting that while we say we have an open cannon, we really haven’t opened it since about 1918. 3/ highlighting the almost criminal way that the church has taught its history, especially in seminary and the manuals.

While there are far more things I like about Terryl’s perspective than I don’t like, my primary criticism would be that his view and version of mormonism is not the experience that nearly anyone has in modern mormonism. I see how he can pluck out the universalist references that Joseph made for instance and call it mormonism, but his world view and the average latter-day saint’s is much different than each other. Admittedly, Terryl’s version of mormonism is more interesting, but it doesn’t match in lots of places. For instance, his view on the degree of fallibility in prophets would not even match what those fallible men in office today are willing to acknowledge and promote.

In short, I wish we had more like him.

Almost thou persuadest me to be a believer…again.

Reply
Stone says:

October 1, 2011 at 10:27 pm

John and Terryl,
HUGE THANKS for this interview!!!!! Once I started….I couldn’t put it down. The questions explored were spot on and the answers were enlightening and invigorating for me. I feel that there is so much more to “The Plan” out there and this helped open the possibilities for me again within a Mormon context (which I love) and am trying hard to make work despite some of my sincere concerns.

I have lots of other questions, but I’d love to ask Terryl a long, run-on, multi-part question with some background before I get there :) :

It seems that, as a church, we continue to pound home the “us vs. them” approach or the “we are living in enemy territory” mentality…….We continue to hear talks about the ever increasing “moral corruption” of the world and the black and white view of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, satan is out to get us, etc. …….While I believe that historical issues are the MAJOR reason why the younger generation is leaving the church, I would put this “Moral Positioning” as an emphatic #2 or #1a on the list of real reasons why we are losing so many young people.

I recently re-engaged with an old mission friend. A WONDERFUL, FANTASTIC missionary and person. 10+ years later he has left the church. He writes that he still LOVES the church, but he just can’t agree with some of the church’s “moral positioning”. He is out…he is gay….and now he has no place in the church. Here is a GREAT person who served the Lord with full purpose of heart and still LOVES the church in many ways, and yet, just 10 years later feels that he has no place in the church…..what a TERRIBLE loss for us and for him and his family as well!!!

So here is my question FINALLY:
How do you address the subject of homosexuality within the eternal framework that you’ve built around the gospel “plan” or the eternal progression of man/woman?
Where do gays fit into all of this?
How can we find a safe place for these dear brothers and sisters in the church from a doctrinal perspective?

It’s my belief that the church can more easily fix the historical issues (I just wish they’d do it), but this “moral positioning” issue is one that I still can’t quite wrap my mind around.

It seems to me that if we allow people to truly exercise their free agency and leave some issues up to them and God (ie. what we’ve done with birth control, addressing matters in the bedroom, working mom’s, etc.), while encouraging what we believe/THINK God is asking of us, then we’ll be headed in the right direction……However, it just feels like we keep drawing the line in the sand on this issue and the line seems ever so silly in light of what we are learning about the true feelings of our gay brothers and sisters who don’t want to feel the way they do but cannot deny it any longer – like my old mission friend.

Would love to hear this topic brought up in PART II

THANKS AGAIN TO BOTH OF YOU!!!!

Sorry for my rant here!

Reply
Aaron T. says:

October 2, 2011 at 11:55 am

Just finished listening. The best Mormon Stories podcast to date. Thank you both.

Reply
Tearjerker says:

October 2, 2011 at 1:53 pm

While half of the conversation still flies over my head, there is so much to apprecite, and to bathe myself in…as part of my journey. My heart took a leap at the topic of the 1/3 of heaven that rejected the gospel plan. Yes, there could be such a simple solution, and concern, that there was even much to object to in a plan that brings so much pain and grief to the world, to individuals and families.

Like Stone, I have much concern for our gay brothers and sistes who are rejected for being true to themselves, and their feelings.

Much yet to hear, and I will go over the comments again when finished.

John, will Terryl read and respond to the forum as well.

Thanks for this and other podcasts!

Reply
IHT says:

October 2, 2011 at 10:38 pm

I’m feeling hopeless. Terryl seems to be a really good and intelligent guy (respect for him!) but he seems to be an another good guy who tries to gave a framework how the illogical LDS gospel could work.

Reply
Nellie Chung says:

October 3, 2011 at 12:56 am

I can’t wait until his 2-volume work on the history of Mormon theology comes out.

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Gail F. Bartholomew says:

October 3, 2011 at 3:28 pm

Dr. Givens and John,

The first few moments of the second hour I want to comment on. Dr. Gvnens when you ask the Missouri church” how is it working for you” you imply that successes for a religion can only be measured by numbers and money. It seems to me that there are far more important ways to measure success of a religion. The fact is focusing on historicity implodes most religious structures. When you read even faithful New or Old Testament scholars you see that if they rely on the history they would not have any faith. It seems to me a much better measure of a religious system is how trans-formative it is on a personal level, and it also seems that emploding historical fact is never a foundation for lasting transformation. Oh by the way there are examples of numerical and monetary religous success that embrace a huge amount of falability in their history, notably the Catholic Church and the Jewish Religion.

Reply
1. Nelson Chung says:
  
  October 3, 2011 at 8:18 pm
  
  Gail, most NT scholars are confident about the historicity of the Resurrection.
  It’s the details they’re not so sure about. And this is precisely Givens’s
  position regarding the restoration, as he stated in support of Boyd K. Packer’s
  assertion about all truth not being useful.
  
  Reply
  1. Gail F. Bartholomew says:
    
    October 4, 2011 at 12:11 am
    
    Problems of the historicity in the New Testament may not be the Resurrection but things as central as the authors of the Gospels see the divinity of Jesus very different. I disagree that NT scholars are even confident about what the Resurrection means. OT are pretty confedent that Abraham was not a real person these are very central ideas. The Missouri church has not backed away from Joseph being a prophet or Book of Mormon is still one of their standard works and is considered scriptures. What they have backed away from is they do not insist on the historicity of the Book of Mormon and do not try to hid the problems in Joseph’s narrative. Given’s was comparing that to the Salt Lake church’s insistence on historicity of the Book of Mormon and refusal to talk about the problem with Joseph’s narrative. He did say that the church’s view was not the same as his view, he did imply that the Salt Lake Church’s stand was more successful than that of the Missouri churches. This is what I am taking issue with.
    
    Reply
    1. TG says:
      
      October 4, 2011 at 3:03 pm
      
      A point of clarification. Numbers have nothing to do with the success of a religion qua religion, ie, as an institution or belief system that has the power, as Gail suggested, to be spiritually transformative. As I understood the question (and over six hours of interviews I could well have been mistaken) the implicit issue was whether de-emphasizing the historicity of the Book of Mormon would make the church more appealing or palatable to a broader constituency. And in that regard, and that regard only, I maintain that the precedent of the CofC suggests probably not, based on comparative growth trends. If I said or implied that the LDS church is more successful than the CofC in any other sense, I apologize and hereby clarify.
      TG
      
      Reply
  2. KC says:
    
    October 4, 2011 at 3:14 pm
    
    I think Bart Ehrman would disagree with you. Is there a mainline NT scholar with university credentials outside of evangelical and mormon circles who are confident about the historicity of the resurrection? At the very least it is a minority opinion among scholars that the resurrection is historical.
    
    A couple of interesting debates on the resurrection,
    
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhT4IENSwachttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTpx9IYm2bM&feature=related
    
    Reply
    1. Nelson Chung says:
      
      October 5, 2011 at 3:47 pm
      
      Thanks for linking the Debate. I actually read the entire transcript. And Craig asserted that the majority of NT scholars are convinced of the historicity of the resurrection. And Ehrman assented. Craig also gave Ehrman a whupping with Bayes’ theorem.
      
      “Is there a mainline NT scholar with university credentials outside of
      evangelical and mormon circles who are confident about the historicity
      of the resurrection?
      
      Most of them.
      
      Reply
JT says:

October 3, 2011 at 3:39 pm

A Comment on Limited Book of Mormon Geography- critical responses welcome (because I have not thought through this thoroughly)The apologetic move from the Hemispheric to a Limited Geography Book of Mormon model (LGBM ) is not a paradigm shift. Rather, it is ostensibly an alternative hypothesis within the same naturalistic paradigm – the paradigm of real people living in real places developing real material cultures, by natural means that could, in principle, leave real material traces. LGBM does become a paradigm shift when its implicit supernaturalism is acknowledged as being essential to what it is designed to explain (e.g. glowing stones in airtight barges with inadequate means of air exchange and waste disposal).This necessary mix of paradigms is what makes any claim of LGBG providing intellectual plausibility intellectually defenseless since supernaturalism has no limiting constraints with respect to how it can clean up any mess that objective facts present.

At most the LGBM a pseudoscientific hypothesis. Why? Because it was put forward to explain the lack of evidence of claims made by a text having an alleged supernatural provenance. In other words, LGBM is not derived or motivated by any objective empirical observations.

This makes the LGBM no different than “new earth” creationism theory. It is a wishful expression of faith masquerading as science. It provides only a similitude of intellectual legitimacy that depends on the inability of its adherents to distinguish scientific plausibility from the philosophical impossibility of disproving the not impossible.I do not think LGBM meets Dr. Givens definition of valid apologetics.

On a related note:
I have difficulty understanding the apparent alacrity with which some LDS intellectuals accede to virtually all past LDS prophets, seers and revelators being deluded about the Lamanite ancestry of indigenous American peoples. For one thing (among many) we have to dismiss Oliver Cowdery’s written report of Joseph Smith telling him directly that Mormoni explicitly told him the American Indians were the literal descendants of Jacob [1]. Such a report seems to carry as much evidential weight as internal textual clues from Book of Mormon. And, perhaps more importantly, it seems to undermine stated first purpose of the Book of Mormon – “to show the remnant of the House of Israel …” ? (That is, unless we accept the possibility that ancient Siberians and Mongolians descended from the 10 lost tribes if Israel [2])Someone please help me understand how this “double dip” undermining of LDS dogma need not present a very serious problem? [1] Oliver Cowdery “Letter IV” Published 1835 in Messenger and Advocate[2] “DNA and the Book of Mormon” by David G. Stewart, Jr., FARMS Review, 18/1 (2006), page 128 “The Bible declares that the ten tribes were dispersed to the “land of the north” (Jeremiah 3:18)—a designation for which few lands seem as appropriate as the vast steppes of Siberia and Mongolia. The DNA commonalities between modern Siberian and Native American populations may not have been indigenous to the predispersion inhabitants of east Asia but could have been introduced to both locations by migrants from ancient Israel: to east Asia by dispersed lost tribes of the northern captivity and to the Americas by the Lehite and Mulekite groups described in the Book of Mormon.

Reply
1. Nelson Chung says:
  
  October 3, 2011 at 7:32 pm
  
  JT, those who complain about the BoM not leaving any traces are akin to Creationists who cite gaps in the fossil record as evidence in their favor.
  
  Reply
  1. jg says:
    
    October 4, 2011 at 2:00 am
    
    I may not understand your point, but the comparison your making seems pretty unreasonable. It is reasonable to expect the events and details of the book of mormon would leave traces and evidence. It is not reasonable to conclude that the absence of fossils prove or strengthen creationism.
    
    Reply
  2. JT says:
    
    October 4, 2011 at 9:50 pm
    
    I do not think the analogy works. Rather, Book of Mormon advocates more closely align with creationists.
    Special Creationists/Book of Mormon (BoM) advocates both base their theories on religious texts and support them using “arguments from incredulity” (i.e. Life/BoM is too complex/amazing to … ) and using “gaps” to argue how their theories cannot be disproven. In other words, neither has amassed significant positive scientific evidence in its support.On the other handNeo-Darwinists/BoM critics both offer positive scientific evidence to support naturalistic theories that explain what IS observed in the fossil/archeological record. Also, they both have multiple lines of converging or complementary evidence that lend further support. So,Neo-Darwinists/BoM critics see the same gaps in the fossil/archeological record as Creationists/BoM advocates. But for them this “absence of evidence” simply means their is no reason to support Creationism/BoM historicity. If positive scientific evidence was forthcoming for the BoM advocates’ position, I would hope that BoM critics would be open minded enough to consider it. P.S. The formatting distortions that occur when I hit “post as” are a mystery to me. I added extra returns this time as a countermeasure. I’ll find out now if they work!
    
    Reply
    1. JT says:
      
      October 4, 2011 at 9:51 pm
      
      Nope, it didn’t work … just one run-on string of too many words (though the too many is my fault)
      
      Reply
  3. david packard says:
    
    October 29, 2011 at 4:57 pm
    
    I do thing at one level the analogy is sound, insofar as it goes. Both Creationists and BoM critics draw conclusions (or support conclusions) with an absence of evidence. And we’ve all heard the saying, “an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” or some variation of that. But let’s think about what this is saying. How you set up your assumptions that your testing is what’s really important. The above statement isn’t even true, strictly speaking, and the principle illustrated in such statement is helpful only in light of setting up the hypothesis you’re testing.
    
    Is it reasonable to assume that there will be gaps in the fossil record, given the way the vast majority of modern biologists view the principles of evolution? Yes. Gaps are going to happen given the percentage of life forms that leave observable fossils given the relative speed of evolution. If you want to attack the principles of evolution, you’ve got to attack it with much more than gaps. You need gaps plus a flawed theory (of speed of mutation, etc.)
    
    On the other hand, is it reasonable to assume that we would not have found credible archeological evidence in favor of the BoM historical narrative, given the way we used to understand the Hemispheric model. No. How about an extremely small BoM geographic model, perhaps a tiny piece of unspecified land somewhere in the American Continents. (Of course, there’s the issue with the way Mormons understood the geography differently for 175 yrs., and the difficulty finding such geography consistent with the text we have.) Answer: the lack of evidence is speaking loudly but not nearly as conclusively.
    
    The analogy, therefore is not as helpful, in my view, because the BoM the critic is measuring the absence of evidence against the traditional hemispheric or similar model. As you change the BoM geographic model, you shift problems from archeological evidence over to something else: to feeling like you’ve tortured the previously treasured narrative. I am a believing LDS, so this shifting of problems isn’t something that is purely academic to me. I believe it is far more likely that we misunderstood the historical model of the BoM, than it is likely that our originally understood narrative hasn’t been validated through forthcoming archeological evidence.
    
    Reply
JT says:

October 3, 2011 at 3:43 pm

A Comment on Limited Book of Mormon Geography- critical responses welcome (because I have not thought through this thoroughly)

The apologetic move from the Hemispheric to a Limited Geography Book of Mormon model (LGBM ) is not a paradigm shift. Rather, it is ostensibly an alternative hypothesis within the same naturalistic paradigm – the paradigm of real people living in real places developing real material cultures, by natural means that could, in principle, leave real material traces.

LGBM does become a paradigm shift when its implicit supernaturalism is acknowledged as being essential to what it is designed to explain (e.g. glowing stones in airtight barges with inadequate means of air exchange and waste disposal).

This necessary mix of paradigms is what makes any claim of LGBG providing intellectual plausibility intellectually defenseless since supernaturalism has no limiting constraints with respect to how it can clean up any mess that objective facts present.At most the LGBM a pseudoscientific hypothesis. Why? Because it was put forward to explain the lack of evidence of claims made by a text having an alleged supernatural provenance. In other words, LGBM is not derived or motivated by any objective empirical observations. This makes the LGBM no different than “new earth” creationism theory. It is a wishful expression of faith masquerading as science. It provides only a similitude of intellectual legitimacy that depends on the inability of its adherents to distinguish scientific plausibility from the philosophical impossibility of disproving the not impossible.I do not think LGBM meets Dr. Givens definition of valid apologetics.On a related note:
I have difficulty understanding the apparent alacrity with which some LDS intellectuals accede to virtually all past LDS prophets, seers and revelators being deluded about the Lamanite ancestry of indigenous American peoples. For one thing (among many) we have to dismiss Oliver Cowdery’s written report of Joseph Smith telling him directly that Moroni explicitly told him the American Indians were the literal descendants of Jacob [1]. Such a report seems to carry as much evidential weight as internal textual clues from Book of Mormon.

And, perhaps more importantly, it seems to undermine stated first purpose of the Book of Mormon – “to show the remnant of the House of Israel …” ? (That is, unless we accept the possibility that ancient Siberians and Mongolians descended from the 10 lost tribes if Israel [2])

Someone please help me understand how this “double dip” undermining of LDS dogma need not present a very serious problem?

[1] Oliver Cowdery “Letter IV” Published 1835 in Messenger and Advocate

[2] “DNA and the Book of Mormon” by David G. Stewart, Jr., FARMS Review, 18/1 (2006), page 128 “The Bible declares that the ten tribes were dispersed to the “land of the north” (Jeremiah 3:18)—a designation for which few lands seem as appropriate as the vast steppes of Siberia and Mongolia. The DNA commonalities between modern Siberian and Native American populations may not have been indigenous to the predispersion inhabitants of east Asia but could have been introduced to both locations by migrants from ancient Israel: to east Asia by dispersed lost tribes of the northern captivity and to the Americas by the Lehite and Mulekite groups described in the Book of Mormon.

Reply
1. david packard says:
  
  October 29, 2011 at 6:10 pm
  
  LGBM does retain all of the supernaturalism found within the BoM, but it does at least reduce the problem of no credible archeological evidence. So is that like straightening up the dec chairs of the Titanic? I don’t think it is. While I think you point is fair, and in fact what a lot of my more literalist friends argue (parsing out “scientific problems” to make one feel better, when the core belief is utterly unscientific to begin with), I think there’s an important reason I find LGBM at least interesting.
  
  I have no desire to take a story narrated by Joseph the Prophet while looking into a hat about glowing stones touched by the premortal Jesus Christ and match it up to the real world I live in. That miracle doesn’t require any evidence to me. It’s like a story within a story within a story, far removed from history. It can be a true story at several levels, independent of the (lack of) evidence. On the other extreme, the very existence of Nephites and Lamanites on this continent 1700 yrs ago goes much further and intrudes into my world much more. And when there’s no evidence that this story fits in the real world I live in (and I admit there should be), I do have to make a hard decision.
  
  And this is what makes me different I guess: I don’t feel the need to adopt the dichotomy of totally true / totally false. There are a variety of ways Joseph Smith could have been inspired by God when producing the BoM without the necessity of the hemispheric model. LGBM is only one of those ways. It’s by any means entirely satisfactory, but it’s interesting.
  
  Beginning with the assumption that there is a God out there, that should be expected to intervene in the lives of human beings, is absolutely necessary before any of this can make sense. I agree with Givens’ implication about this. I also have respect for people who don’t share this assumption, and really know I can learn a lot from these people (Richard Dawkins is a good example).
  
  I have a world view with that assumption. Nevertheless, supernaturalism being invoked (by people with this same assumption) to solve the evidentiary problem of the hemispheric model, on the other hand, starts to look like a magic wand that eliminates all problems. When taken to the extreme, any belief system of any kind gets validated with that magic wand, which can render rational thought, faith, maybe even morality unnecessary.
  
  Reply
  1. Jonah Swan says:
    
    October 29, 2011 at 6:15 pm
    
    Limited Geography is a fiction about a fiction. Further, it is simply not enough to stand on its own. For the limited geography theory to even work, one must also buy off on a hundred other apologetically tricky, but blatantly dishonest arguments. Taken in total, all of these apologetic arguments dissipate rather quickly one someone spends some time doing research.
    
    Reply
Nelson Chung says:

October 3, 2011 at 6:59 pm

Also John, you might want to check the “most Mormons who know all about Mormon history don’t find the Mormon narrative credible” statement. You do acknowledge possible bias in your sample. I have two different sources that this is not the case.

Reply
1. Curtis Weber says:
  
  October 4, 2011 at 2:48 pm
  
  Add me to the list of people who know a lot about Mormon history and find the narrative credible. Great podcast, as usual, John. So glad you’ve discovered Terryl Givens. In addition to his books, give his 2005 Worlds of Joseph Smith presentation and BYU forum address a listen.
  
  Reply
Wade says:

October 4, 2011 at 3:02 am

Thank you for this wonderful and thought provoking interview. In part 2 Dr. Givens mentions that contemporary atheists speak of the possibility of a super-evolved deity. I ran across this a few years back in an interview that Dawkins gave to Terry Gross on Fresh Air. I just about fell off my chair when he said the following:“Any creative
intelligence of sufficient complexity to design anything comes into
existence only at the end product of an extended process of gradual
evolution… God indeed can’t have just happened, if there are Gods in the universe,
they must be the end product of slow incremental processes”.This quote can be found just after 20 minutes into the March 28, 2007 interview, here is a link: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9180871

Reply
1. JT says:
  
  October 4, 2011 at 11:59 am
  
  Wade,
  
  Perhaps this does not reflect the intent of your post, but think it is important to anticipate how Richard Dawkins’s ideas may diverge more from Mormon theology than they align with them. The parallels shown here are likely superficial and it would be wrong to get too “confirmationally” excited by this apparently unwitting endorsement.Vey likely: 1. He would say that such an advanced alien life form would have evolved over billions of years starting from the same inert 92 elements we find on this earth.2. He would say that this evolution occurred by a process of “mindless” natural selection acting on random mutations that had no predetermined endpoint and no inherent purpose. The particulars of life-development are exquisitely contingent. 3. He would dismiss vague notions of pre-mortal existing spirit bodies and pre-spirit body “intelligences” as having nothing going for them other than someone’s creative imagination and would challenge Mormons to look for the precursors to these ideas in other human minds. 4. He would say there is simply no evidence of resurrected beings (again, some from of transcendental form of matter) and would argue that belief in such is therefore unwarranted. 5. He would point to the work of physicists, such as Sean Carroll, who carefully outline arguments against any conception of a human soul that enjoy as much scientific rigor to our current knowledge that the earth is not flat.6. Such an alien life forms would probably NOT see themselves as “our gods,” or having anything to do with humans since their own natural evolution occurred completely independently. 7. The natural history of such “god-like” aliens is finite – the conditions for complex life have only existed for a few billion years (the Universe is only 13.7 billion years old, not infinite). And the Universe is likely to have a finite lifespan (time and space ripped apart by cosmic expansion) and therefore all natural history is finite. (It is also made finite by the probability of destruction by Supernova explosions)etc.Please note, this does not take away from the uniqueness and novelty of Mormon Theology relative to traditional Christianity.
  
  I am simply saying that it is misguided to make too much of a “first-glance” parallel delivered from an authority figure from the “other-side” and make too much of it.
  
  For one thing, it betrays a sort of perverse privileging of authority (and Dawkins is not an authority in hypothetical extraterrestrials – but who is?).
  
  For another, unless it is followed up by a serious exploration with a willingness to confront and accede to the discrepancies, it is merely an exploitation of the superficial. I think it is interesting to see that Dawkins does not dismiss such possibilities. This displays his intellectual honesty and openness to new information. But it is as important to point out that he would almost certainly say that there is no good reason to believe such exists.I think faith should be content to prosper in its own realm and not play “grab bag” with science. It is better to look for the reasons (or promptings) for believing in a particular theology elsewhere. Faith just doesn’t have a good track record when it appeals to science. Besides, this is the faith-stance that Jesus taught anyway (Mark 10:15).
  
  Cheers
  
  JT
  
  Reply
  1. Nelson Chung says:
    
    October 4, 2011 at 2:59 pm
    
    You’re right about the the deity not very parallel to the Mormon God, but Dawkins’s argument is just plain ignorant. Biologists don’t have a very good grasp of complexity. The big bang was an transition from simplicity to more complexity, not the other way around. Randomness increased after the Big bang. Simplicity can begat more complexity, and that is what happens when you unzip a computer file. As long as the universe is compressible, it could have come about from something simpler.
    
    34wET%@#$ not compressible
    0100100010001 compressible
    
    And the universe is definitely compressible; its fundamental laws can be summed up in a few simple equations. Furthermore, scientists are looking for the “theory of everything” that would unite all the laws of nature.
    
    Biologists should stick to being biologists.
    
    Reply
    1. JT says:
      
      October 4, 2011 at 6:17 pm
      
      Nelson,
      
      Would replacing, “as long as the universe is compressible” with “as long as the universe is de-compressible”?Or, perhaps better”as long as cosmic space-time expansion fast enough to allow the total entropy of the universe to keep increasing from what was its maximum value at the start (as well as from what it is at any time”?I don’t know what Dawkin’s argument was – or if he was really making one. But it might be fair to speculate a human might be likely to mistake an alien being in possession of sufficiently advanced technology to fool him into being a God? Hasn’t this happened between humans? I think it’s OK for biologists to have an opinion on other subjects as long as they are reasonably well informed, not dogmatic, and welcoming of better arguments.
      
      Reply
      1. Nellie Chung says:
        
        October 5, 2011 at 2:07 am
        
        JT: Dawkins’ argument was that God is not a good explanation for the complexity of the universe because God itself is even more complex, hence needs an explanation for itself. That is why he said if a deity exists, he must have evolved.
        
        But a perfectly simple God can bring about a complex universe.
      2. JT says:
        
        October 5, 2011 at 12:38 pm
        
        Indeed, a perfectly simple God can do anything one might imagine.
  2. Wade says:
    
    October 5, 2011 at 6:12 am
    
    TJ,
    
    Thank you for your thoughtful comments on my post. I agree with you that Dawkins would have no
    intention of endorsing Joseph’s God (or obviously anyone else’s for that
    matter). I think your assessment of
    what his response would be is pretty accurate.
    
    My intention is certainly not to bring Dawkins into the
    Mormon camp (it is actually a pet-peeve of mine when apologist types manipulate
    ideas into tidy pat Mormon answers). My
    purpose was simply to provide a resource to an interesting comment that Givens
    offers in the interview.
    
    Since you bring these extra issues up though, let me share
    some of my thoughts on the matter…
    While I certainly can’t speak for Givens, I don’t think he was using
    arguments from atheists to validate his own thoughts on faith, but rather to
    point out that ideas in general are more nuanced and complicated than we humans
    sometimes give credit. I enjoy the
    contributions of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, et al, and I think they are not
    only valuable, but necessary to any honest dialogue among seekers. Unfortunately I believe they too often fall
    into the same snares of absolutism that the likes of McConkie et al do (that
    the world is always black or white). I
    agree with you that it is a dubious endeavor to use faith to play ‘grab bag’
    with science. Likewise I think
    outspoken atheists too often hurt their argument when they conclude that it is
    possible to ‘prove’ religion wrong. I
    believe in organic evolution (in the way that you eloquently described), I also
    believe in other aspects of scientific naturalism, and I value humanism and
    other ‘secular’ philosophies. At the
    same time I have faith in Joseph’s expansionist view of God. I don’t think I am playing ‘grab-bag’ with
    science.
    
    Finally
    I too appreciate Dawkins openness to the possibility of a ‘super-evolved’
    deity, but of course you and I both know that his overall message is that there
    is no God. I too disbelieve in the God
    that Dawkins describes, his ‘God’ is very specific, it is black and white, not
    actually nuanced or “open to new information”.
    Mine at this point is much more expansive. Thank you TJ (and John and others) for contributing to my ongoing
    faith journey.
    
    Reply
    1. Wade says:
      
      October 5, 2011 at 6:15 am
      
      Sorry, I didn’t mean to include the extra spaces in the previous post.
      
      Reply
    2. JT says:
      
      October 5, 2011 at 12:23 pm
      
      Wade,
      
      I found myself lining up with all of your points and finding more to think about. Thanks.
      
      I agree about the problem with claiming things (or non-things) proven (or disproven). Perhaps, if pressed, these “new atheists” would agree.
      
      Dawkins does make the “orbiting Celestial teapot” argument – the point being that some things are just so improbable that they are virtually (but not absolutely) disproved – which simply makes them an irrational basis for any life- organizing worldview.
      
      Dawkin’s also defined his position as technically agnostic – with atheism simply meaning possessing no-belief, rather than as a positive belief in the non-existence of God. He (or perhaps on of the others) said that their atheism is the same as a Christian’s atheism with respect to other gods, like Zeus – that they just take it one god further. I can understand how his read of the evidence would put Zeus and the Christian God on equal footing. We all know what it feels like to not believe something that it not disproven – I appreciate that point.
      
      Dawkin’s also gave himself an agnosticism score of a 5/6 where 3/6 represents taking God’s existence as a 50:50 probability and 6/6 as “absolute” atheism. I found that pretty interesting.
      
      Of course, this does not come out in the heat of his rhetoric in which he mostly criticizes the more dogmatic/fundamentalist strains – but he does use a blunt tool that seems to pound indiscriminately on all believers – and also does not show much understanding when it comes to the real human needs that religion serves and offers no ready alternative.
      
      Philip Kitcher is a philosopher at Columbia University who is a “kinder-gentler” atheist. He writes a critique of the “New Atheists” here:
      
      https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-5930.2010.00500.x/pdf
      
      Kitcher also wrote an excellent book entitled Living with Darwin: Evolution Design and the Future of Faith.
      
      https://www.amazon.com/Living-Darwin-Evolution-Design-Philosophy/dp/0195384342/ref=pd_sim_b1
      
      He talks about in this book in a podcast linked here:
      
      https://www.pointofinquiry.org/philip_kitcher_living_with_darwin
      
      Best wishes
      
      JT
      
      P.S. Yes, I too don’t know what’s up with the formatting. Let’s see what happens to this.
      
      Reply
      1. Wade says:
        
        October 5, 2011 at 2:44 pm
        
        Thanks for the links, I’ll check them out.
        Wade
KC says:

October 4, 2011 at 4:21 pm

Enjoyed the podcast, kudos to Terryl Givens for coming on the show. I can respect someone who knows all the problems with church history and the official church narrative, BofM problems, etc but finds a way to continue. Terryl is a good guy but I have wondered how Givens, Daniel Peterson, John Sorenson, etc . continue to defend all these issue when they know the evidence against just the Book of Mormon alone is substantial. I think for some of these guys their reputation, career, church standing, social circles, and livelihood is tied to and dependent on being apologetic. I respect Terryl Givens approach but was surprised he had not listed to the Dr Michael Coe interview.

One more minor issue. At the end of part 5, Givens states that his operating premise when he writes about the BofM is that “if the BofM is true it will remain standing after you throw the worst that can be said about it, at it.” OK, but it will remain standing for whom? It has not remained standing for me and I think many who listen to these podcasts, nor thousands more who leave the church each year. It has not remained standing to those outside the mormon community. So who will it remain standing to? Just apologists and those members who are unaware of all its problems? Im sure it will remain standing but it will be to fewer and fewer people.

Reply
1. TG says:
  
  October 5, 2011 at 11:42 am
  
  “ I think for some of these guys their reputation,
  career, church standing, social circles, and livelihood is tied to and
  dependent on being apologetic”
  
  Rats. Outed at last.
  
  Reputation: As a
  professional educator with a PhD, not believing in angels and gold plates may
  have serious repercussions for my reputation.
  
  Career: How will
  I prosper at a secular university as an English professor who doesn’t believe
  the Book of Mormon?
  
  Church Standing:
  Not sure what I would do with my life if I am released as substitute Sunday
  School teacher.
  
  Social Circles:
  Indeed, here in the Bible belt ex-Mormons are shunned.
  
  Livelihood: Yes,
  the loss of 600 dollars in royalties (my last check) will mean serious
  cutbacks.
  TG
  
  Reply
  1. Anonymous says:
    
    October 5, 2011 at 11:45 am
    
    I love Terryl Givens.
    
    Reply
    1. Wade says:
      
      October 5, 2011 at 2:45 pm
      
      Me too.
      
      Reply
2. Nelson Chung says:
  
  October 5, 2011 at 4:05 pm
  
  “ I think for some of these guys their reputation, career, church
  standing, social circles, and livelihood is tied to and dependent on
  being apologetic”
  
  Someone is parroting Bob McCue.
  
  Reply
KC says:

October 4, 2011 at 8:38 pm

Listened to episode 4. I am struck by just how deep the memory hole goes. Givens talked about the rabbit hole but it’s the memory hole that seems to gobble up all the past statements and beliefs on these problematic things in mormon history. Book of Abraham for instance, Givens said it didn’t matter what was on the actual papyri that joseph said he used to translate the book of Abraham. He could have done it through revelation only. It dosent matter if the papyri were Egyptian funeral documents. Except if we dig deep in the memory hole we see that it was precisely the position of the church and joseph that these documents were written by the hand of Abraham and translated by Joseph into the Book of Abraham. Ditto for the gold plates of the Book of Mormon. Now its ok to say, the plates didn’t matter, they were just a conduit. But again if we look in the memory hole we find a plethora of statements from prophets and apostles that are contrary to these new thoughts. Do we just forget everything that has been said in the past so we can make room for new theories?
It seems we want it both ways; our prophets are Gods spokesman and he gives them direction, guidance and answers, but on the other hand when what they have said doesn’t fit the new paradigm we drop their statements in the memory hole.

Reply
1. Anonymous says:
  
  October 4, 2011 at 9:44 pm
  
  KC – My interpretation of Terryl’s argument is that he believes in the possibility of even radical fallibility by church leaders….though he can speak for himself.
  
  Reply
  1. KC says:
    
    October 5, 2011 at 6:39 pm
    
    Ok, John, now we are getting somewhere. That’s what I am desperately searching for. An honest answer, someone of Givens reputation willing to admit this. I listen to mormon stories in hopes that I can find someone who will put forth something that makes sense of all the inconsistencies. So if as you say that is Terryls’s position then, Hallelujah! I know all the paradoxes, discrepancies are not going to be resolved but at least if it’s the position of Givens that “he believes in the possibility of even radical fallibility by church leaders” (again your words) that’s an honest answer that makes sense. The pain and agony, disruption to ones life that occurs when you find out that the very foundations of faith upon which you have based the most important decisions of life are not what they appear to be, it is devastating. Marriages, family relationships, careers, can be negatively impacted because the church has not been forthright and honest about its history and its founding narratives. So, I desperately hope people like Givens have the courage to stand and if indeed that is his postion, state it.
    Many have tried ( England, Arrington, others) and they have be squashed.
    
    Reply
2. Anonymous says:
  
  October 5, 2011 at 9:11 pm
  
  Given’s defense of the Book of Abraham sounds similar to Hugh Nibley’s defense when he said that Joseph did not directly
  translate the Book of Abraham from the Papyri but was instead “inspired” by the Papyri to translate records that are still, to this day, buried somewhere in Egypt. It was very important to Joseph that the church believe that the Papyri was created by Abraham because it was physically used as proof to support his translation. In fact Joseph physically drew new imagery on the actual Papyri to fill in the missing and damaged portions of the vignette in order to support his story of Abraham.
  
  Reply
  1. KC says:
    
    October 5, 2011 at 11:07 pm
    
    Good points, furthermore, this translation theory runs into problems when the anachronisms in the text are examined.
    Pharoah- didn’t become the title for the king of Egypt until 18th dynasty, 1560 BC (long after Abraham lived) In Abraham’s time the kings of Egypt were not as yet called Pharaohs.” At no time in Egypt was the word used as the actual name of any king
    Chaldea- Chaldeans” do not appear in history until the 12th century B.C., quite a few centuries after Abraham lived. The earliest mention of them in historical records is in the 9th century B.C., in Assyrian records. It was not until 721 B.C. that they established themselves, by seizing the throne of Babylon, ultimately establishing a Chaldean dynasty in Babylonia, which ruled from 625 to 539 B.C. It is only after this that the term “Chaldea” or “land of the Chaldees” came to be used for “Babylon”.
    Egyptus- Hams wife name but intended to be the source of the name of the country. The name “Egypt” is not Egyptian, but Greek (‘Aigyptos’), and thus was not used for the name of the country until the Greeks had contact with it, long after Abraham’s time.
    
    Reply
    1. Jonah Swan says:
      
      October 5, 2011 at 11:21 pm
      
      I know a writing is bogus when it tries to perpetuate the claim that blacks descended from Cain and then from Ham after the flood, through cursed lineages. The curse of black skin theology is alive an well in the Book of Abraham.
      
      Similarly, the Book of Mormon extends the tower of babel mythology. It’s not even close to reasonable to believe that the tower of babel story is the reason for the diversity of languages on the earth. It’s very easy to conclude that this is simply a myth, but the Book of Mormon extends this myth by bringing the brother of Jared (at the time of the tower of babel) into the Book of Mormon narrative.
      
      Reply
      1. Anonymous says:
        
        October 6, 2011 at 1:53 am
        
        Not sure if it matters to your point or not, but I believe its the Book of Moses that has the references to Cain. I know the LDS church has a long a sorted history with this topic and and I’m not about to act as a defender of it, but I do think you sort of misrepresented it a bit. I’m not saying that your arguments don’t represent someone peoples views, but I think you know they don’t reflect the only perspective on the subject.
        With respect to the Great Tower referenced in the Book of Ether as much as feel like I’ll lose all credibility I think Micheal Ash actually had a pretty good explanation here https://www.deseretnews.com/article/700068940/Michael-R-Ash-Is-the-Tower-of-Babel-historical-or-mythological.html?pg=1I know this conflicts with one published in the Ensign that re-affirmed that we believe in all literal old testament stories https://lds.org/ensign/1998/01/the-flood-and-the-tower-of-babel?lang=eng but that’s exactly why I’ve ended up here at Mormon Stories.
      2. Jonah Swan says:
        
        October 6, 2011 at 1:58 am
        
        Actually, it’s in the Book of Abraham. Check out the detail: Abraham 1:21, 23, 24, 25
Anonymous says:

October 5, 2011 at 4:18 am

With respect to authorship of the BOM or Book of Abraham we pretty much just 3 choices. 1) It was written solely by Joseph, 2) it was by third party or 3) it was a translation or transmission via the God. I realize that you can also intermingle 1 and 2, and there could be multiple third parties, but essentially those are the choices.

I think part of the problem is that we all want to use the BOM to actually prove the existence of God so our belief in the BOM becomes a circular argument and that sucks because we aren’t left with something that we can 100% completely prove. And for most us we grew up are hold life thinking that “they” have actually proven it, and we still hear others bearing testimony of that fact, and we all know now that isn’t the case.

I’ve recently read Grant Hardy’s “Understanding the BOM” and so it really resonated with me when Givens referenced it as being a support of the claim that BOM is not chloroform in print. I was able to discover a brilliance in the BOM that I never knew existed before whether the book was an actual historical record or not.

Another book I read recently was Bob Bennett’s Leap of Faith: Confronting the BOM Origins. Its a pretty good book, but not nearly as scholarly as Hardy’s and I assume Givens is (will be reading that next), but it did a good job of honestly exploring some of the internal and external issues with testing whether the book is a forgery or not. It would be a great read from someone that has explored this issue at all — and its even sold at Desert Bookstore so you can actually assure them its safe to read :)

But in the end if you accept choice 3, that God was involved, then you end up going down the rabbit hole, and once you go down in it then all things are possible. And by reading Hardy’s work and Bennett’s (to some degree) I was able to at least gain an appreciation for the complexity of the actual text, irrespective of anything else, and find that I still could make the decision to believe if I so chose.

Another think I read recently that really resonated with me was Givens speech which referenced in this podcast “Lighting Out of Heaven” especially the last few paragraphs which seem relevant to what I’m saying. https://speeches.byu.edu/reader/reader.php?id=10924

Reply
Terryl Givens says:

October 5, 2011 at 12:28 pm

Much of the discussion on this board has centered on
paradigm readjustment:

“come up with some explanation,” “theological twisting and contorting,” “somehow
managed to link [divergent positions],” “connecting the dots to create images
of truth,” “tries to give a framework,” “uses a memory hole,” etc.

But that is the burden placed upon all of us as beings of
limited knowledge, confronted every day by a tidal wave of competing and often
conflicting data, sensations, spiritual intimations, testimonies, and
experiences. What we find in life never self-organizes into coherent patters of
meaning. So we construct a paradigm in light of which an underlying meaning
becomes apparent to us. And if we are at all adaptable, we adjust that paradigm
as new information and experience enters our orbit. For thousands of people, developments over time push
them into skepticism or utter rejection of particular kinds of religious
affirmation (like assent to Christianity, or to the LDS faith). And when others
don’t follow that same trajectory, they cry fraud, or deception, or disdain for
truth. That is a rather chauvinistic and
mean-spirited attitude, given that they have to do their own share of radical realignment. A Mormon such as myself
may have to relegate Joseph Smith’s statement about Lamanites in North America to
the “memory hole,” and adjust my corresponding understanding of prophethood to
entail a fallibility more in keeping with his own insistence on being a flawed
instrument-perhaps even more flawed than he recognized. Meanwhile, many others
take such new information and readjust in another direction, deciding Joseph
Smith and the Book of Mormon were frauds. But they too have to make comparable use of a “memory
hole,” disposing of and explaining away the myriad spiritual witnesses that
they at one time recognized and testified of. Usually they do so by
reinterpreting those experiences as self-deceptions and delusions. Of course,
there are implications there as well for what their paradigm now has to entail
with respect to the possibilities of spiritual knowledge, of a benevolent
Father who is able and willing to reveal truth to individuals, etc. These same
people also have to deal with non-spiritual data that once made a different kind
of sense: complex patterns in the Book of Mormon, resonances of the Book of
Abraham with other ancient texts, etc.

Because so much of what feeds into a person’s data set is
personal—traumas to themselves and loved ones, deeply private and subjective
experiences, personal impressions—it is impossible and certainly unfair to
impute bad faith to those who move in either direction, out of the church or
further in, as they continue their quest.

Reply
1. Jonah Swan says:
  
  October 5, 2011 at 1:45 pm
  
  Terryl (I’ll assume it’s really you),
  That’s fantastic feedback. I have a few questions for you below:
  
  Do you think it’s possible that our spiritual experiences with scripture tell us more about our relationship to that scripture than they do about the scripture itself?
  
  Do our spiritual experiences need to follow the epistemology that our church has formulated for them? Is it possible to draw different conclusions from our spiritual experiences? For example, if I have a spiritual experience while reading the parable of the good Samaritan, does that spiritual experience necessarily imply that the parable of the good Samaritan is an actual historical account instead of a fictional parable? Isn’t it easier to maintain a more expansive view of our spiritual experiences rather than to use them to contradict the overwhelming accumulation of scientific evidence? Haven’t you afforded that same spiritual allowance to Joseph Smith anyway (he had no idea what was happening: translation, transmission, inspiration, expansion, etc. to account for the problems with the Book of Mormon or the Book of Abraham)? Accordingly, even if I were praying to understand whether the Book of Mormon were “true,” perhaps my spiritual experience with the book reflects an altogether different truth–i.e., the truth of my spiritual relationship
  with the many human narratives and theological principles found in the Book of Mormon.
  
  Should a scientific proposition (the historical accuracy of something) be subject to the domain of prayer and spiritual experience? Should I pray about the age of a rock? The human sciences and the natural sciences often do not mix. Why should we try to mix them in our religion? Why apply spiritual methodologies of knowing to scientific questions?
  
  Isn’t it much easier to be flexible in our understanding of our spiritual experiences than to doctor up the theology and history?
  
  Much thanks,
  Jonah
  
  Reply
  1. Brian Hales says:
    
    October 6, 2011 at 2:43 am
    
    These are
    very good questions that deserve answers from those of us who believe Joseph
    Smith was a virtuous man and a true prophet of the living God.
    
    Perhaps I
    can address the questions one-by-one.
    
    “How do you explain the fact that Joseph
    Smith’s practice of polygamy never complied with his own supposed revelation on
    topic (Section 132)? That revelation specifically forbids Joseph from taking
    wives that are already married to other men. As you know, Joseph Smith married
    and had sex with up to 11 women who were already married to other faithful
    members of the church, one of which was an apostle.”
    
    This question is well phrased and
    reflects the common position that Joseph Smith practiced sexual polyandry. The writer correctly observed that he taught
    that sexual polyandry was “adultery” and the woman would be “destroyed” (D&C
    132:63). While a strong tradition has been established that the Prophet was a
    sexual polyandrist, evidence for the behavior is problematic. Todd Compton proposed a plausible reconstruction in his
    award-winning, In Sacred Loneliness, for sexual polyandry between Joseph
    Smith and plural wife Sylvia Sessions Lyon.
    However, new evidence demonstrates the timeline to be in error. New documents in the Andrew Jenson papers
    support a religious divorce followed by a polygynous sealing and the absence of
    sexual polyandry. Beyond the case of
    Sylvia Session, all other accusations of sexual polyandry have been published
    by distant observers and/or biased anti-Mormons with the first complaint not
    printed until 1850, six years after Joseph Smith’s death. (See https://josephsmithspolygamy.com/JSPolyandry/AllChartExcerpt.html.)
    Despite much assuming by numerous researchers since Fawn Brodie’s 1945 No Man Knows My History codified the
    belief, the proponents of sexual polyandry in Joseph Smith’s plural marriages
    have yet to produce even one solid evidence of its existence. In fact, a starting point for those who
    disagree with me would be to produce a single believable account documenting
    the behavior.
    
    Observers
    need to address the fact that none of the wives complained, none of the
    polyandrous husbands complained, none of the officiators and witnesses
    complained, and even Nauvoo anti-Mormons John C. Bennett and William Law did not
    complain about the nonconventional sexual polyandry or Joseph Smith’s alleged
    hypocrisy.
    
    The primary
    problem with the tradition that Joseph Smith practiced sexual polyandry is that
    it is built upon an assumption. What
    other reason than sex would have compelled him to marry any woman at any
    time? If we ignore his theological
    teachings regarding eternal marriage, no other answer seems the least
    believable. Libido libido libido is the
    only conclusion. However, Nauvoo
    polygamists did not ignore his doctrines and neither should we if we truly want
    to understand what was happening.
    
    The Prophet
    taught that the new and everlasting covenant of marriage supersedes all old
    covenants (D&C 22:1, 131:2). In
    other words, a woman might have a legal marriage binding her to a husband
    civilly. But in Joseph Smith’s theology,
    if that woman were subsequently sealed in the new and everlasting covenant of
    marriage to another man, the legal marriage, the “old covenant” would
    be “done away.” It would no
    longer authorize conjugality between her and her legal husband. She would experience ceremonial polyandry
    (two marriage ceremonies), but not sexual polyandry. Were connubial relations to continue, they
    would constitute “adultery” and the woman “shall be
    destroyed.”
    
    It is
    illogical to assume that a woman would accept the part of the new and
    everlasting covenant that permits her to become a polygamous wife, while reject
    another part of the new and everlasting covenant that “does away
    with” her old marriage covenant. Do
    we believe the Prophet’s polyandrous wives were that duplicitous and
    hypocritical?
    
    New research
    demonstrates that Joseph Smith contracted “eternity only” plural
    marriages, meaning only for the next life.
    Such sealings did not authorize sexuality on earth. The precise dynamics of the Prophet’s
    thirteen “polyandrous” sealings are not entirely discernable due to
    the absence of documentation. However,
    historical evidences indicate that he and other Nauvoo polygamists obeyed the
    new and everlasting covenant of marriage and the limitations it thrust upon
    previous legal matrimonies.
    
    “If polygamy was a revelation, why
    didn’t Joseph Smith’s first and second counselors know about the revelation
    until after they had discovered Joseph’s sexual relationship with Fanny Alger?”
    
    It appears
    that perhaps a dozen people in Kirtland, Ohio were personally advised of Joseph
    Smith’s first plural marriage to Fanny Alger.
    Evidence indicates that he carefully chose those he informed and for
    good reason. A March 1830 revelation
    warned that lofty gospel teachings, which included polygamy, needed to be
    taught with care: “For they cannot
    bear meat now, but milk they must receive; wherefore, they must not know these
    things, lest they perish” (D&C 19:22).
    Neither Sidney Rigdon or Frederick G. Williams (counselors in the First
    Presidency), nor Oliver Cowdery (Associate President), ever accepted eternal
    plural marriage teachings. In addition,
    nowhere are we taught that Joseph was obligated to share everything he received
    by revelation to even his counselors or other Church leaders. In April 1843 he declared: ” It is my meditation all the day & more than my meat &
    drink to know how I shall make the saints of God to comprehend the visions that
    roll like an overflowing surge, before my mind” (Ehat & Cook, Words of
    Joseph Smith, 196).
    
    ” How do you explain Joseph Smith’s
    lies about Polygamy to the Saints, to the families of the polygamous wives, and
    more importantly, to his own wife?”
    
    Church
    leaders denied polygamy in a variety of ways even while some members were
    practicing authorized plural marriage.
    This contradiction is difficult for us to accept today in light of the
    commandment to not bear a false witness (Exodus 20:16). Evidence shows that Joseph Smith was
    confronted with three conflicting commandments.
    First, he was directed to not bear a false witness (Mosiah 13:23,
    D&C 42:21); second, he was instructed to both build temples (D&C
    88:119, 115:8, 124:39) and send out missionaries (D&C 88:81, 84:76); third,
    an angel with a sword commanded him to
    practice plural marriage. The historical
    record demonstrates that he could not have accomplished all three
    simultaneously. Upon truthfully
    admitting that the Latter-day Saints were practicing polygamy, state law
    officials would have brought legal recourse and imprisonment. The resulting incarcerations would have
    prevented plural marriage as readily as nonparticipation. They would have also curtailed missionary
    efforts and temple building.
    
    A close
    examination of the denials shows that most hinged upon technicalities in
    definitions. For example, Joseph Smith
    had no association with John C. Bennett’s “spiritual wifery” and
    could truthfully deny it. Danel Bachman
    similarly observed: ‘Most of these
    denials stressed semantical and theological technicalities. That is, the language of the defense was
    carefully chosen to disavow practices that did not accurately represent Church
    doctrines.” Todd Compton wrote: “Faced with the necessity of keeping polygamy
    secret, the Mormon authorities generally chose to disavow the practice,
    sometimes using language with coded double meanings.” Fawn Brodie agreed: “The denials of polygamy uttered by the
    Mormon leaders between 1835 and 1852, when it was finally admitted, are a remarkable
    series of evasions and circumlocutions involving all sorts of verbal
    gymnastics.” Many of the
    disavowals of the practice of polygamy were sometimes based upon doctrinal
    hair-splitting that contrasted gentile “polygamy” with celestial plural marriage.
    
    It is
    doubtful that listeners and readers were completely convinced. Many if not most could read between the lines
    and it does not appear that such tactics were overly effective. Still, plain efforts were made to avoid
    outright lying, while accomplishing the other commandments incumbent upon them.
    
    ”How do you explain the fact that he employed
    his position of authority combined with the threat of spiritual punishments to
    coerce and manipulate young women (early teens) into marrying him and having
    sex with him?
    
    A great deal
    of misunderstanding surrounds Joseph Smith’s sealings to two fourteen-year-old
    girls, Helen Mar Kimball and Nancy Winchester.
    Nothing is known regarding the Winchester sealing, but Helen Mar Kimball
    left a record that indicates the marriage was not consummated. Stanley B. Kimball, Heber C. Kimball’s
    biographer, wrote: “Many years
    later in Utah she [Helen] wrote a retrospective poem about this marriage from
    which we learn that it was ‘for eternity alone,’ that is, unconsummated.
    Whatever such a marriage promised for the next world, it brought her no
    immediate earthly happiness. She saw herself as a “fetter’d bird” without
    youthful friends and a subject of slander. This poem also reveals that Joseph
    Smith’s several pro forma marriages to the daughters of his friends were
    anything but sexual romps. Furthermore, the poem reinforces the idea that,
    despite the trials of plurality in mortality, a ‘glorious crown’ awaited the
    faithful and obedient in heaven.”
    
    In 1894 the
    RLDS Church was suing to obtain possession of the Temple Lot in Independence,
    Missouri. The Hedrikites who owned the
    temple lot sought witnesses to prove that Joseph Smith taught and practiced plural
    marriage. Since the RLDS church did not
    practice polygamy, they could not be the true successor to Joseph Smith’s
    church and did not own the Temple Lot.
    Joseph Smith had six living wives in 1894, Helen Mar Kimball, Zina
    Huntington, Mary Elizabeth Rollins, Malissa Lott, Lucy Walker and Emily
    Partridge. Of those six, only three,
    Malissa, Lucy, and Emily, were asked to testify. This is strange because Helen Mar Kimball had
    written books defending polygamy and Zina Huntington was very well known. Important to the Hedrikite case was to verify
    sexual relations in the plural marriages because nonsexual sealings would not
    be considered genuine polygamy and the RLDS attorneys would excuse them as
    nonissues. Both Malissa and Emily
    admitted in testimony that they experienced sexual intercourse with Joseph and
    Lucy admitted it in other testimony. So
    why were Helen Mar, Zina, and Mary Elizabeth not deposed by the court? Helen was only fourteen when she was sealed
    to Joseph and indicated in her poem the marriage was not consummated and Zina
    and Mary Elizabeth were polyandrous wives.
    If Joseph had sex with Helen and with his polyandrous, wives, it is
    strange they were not called to testify as well.
    
    The
    historical record shows that Joseph Smith gave only one ultimatum for a woman
    to join him in plural marriage. It occurred
    to Lucy. Joseph first introduced the
    principle of plural marriage to her in 1842, but she demurred. He waited until May of 1843 to finally
    readdress the issue. During this later
    meeting with a total lack of romance, he instructed Lucy saying: “I have no flattering words to offer. It is a command of God to you.” Then he gave a very singular directive, “I
    will give you until tomorrow to decide this matter.” This twenty-four hour time limit is sometimes
    misrepresented as indicating that Joseph commonly gave ultimatums to his
    potential plural spouses, to quickly press them into compliance. In fact, after her initial introduction in
    1842, Lucy agonized for many months as the Prophet patiently waited. Lucy related:
    “I was tempted and tortured beyond endurance until life was not
    desirable. Oh that the grave would kindly receive me, that I might find rest…
    Oh, let this bitter cup pass. And thus I prayed in the agony of my soul. The Prophet discerned my sorrow. He saw how
    unhappy I was…” Only after
    witnessing Lucy’s turmoil, Joseph gave Lucy the twenty-four hour
    ultimatum. That night she prayed
    fervently and received a visitation from and angel affirming to her that plural
    marriage was correct. After she shared her
    experience with Joseph, he led her to a chair and gave her a blessing.
    
    Statements concerning
    Joseph Smith’s sealings to three of his plural wives are sometimes cited as
    evidence that he made exorbitant promises to women if they would submit to the
    marriage. Included are accounts involving Sarah Ann Whitney, Lucy Walker, and
    Helen Mar Kimball. I don’t have time to
    address these now, but it is incorrect to say that Joseph Smith manipulated them
    with impossible promises. Perhaps I can
    post again if there is interest.
    
    From your own personal perspective,
    do you think that our modern statutory rape laws matured and evolved to protect
    young, naive women and to counter exactly this kind of manipulation by savvy
    and sophisticated charmers?”
    
    This
    question assumes Joseph Smith was sleeping with fourteen year olds, which is
    unproven and I believe is in error. It
    is problematic to make assumptions and then to condemn the Prophet based upon
    those assumptions. I would challenge any
    reader to show that he was having sex with fourteen year olds or practiced
    sexual polyandry.
    
    The Nauvoo
    City Council passed a resolution setting the minimal age for marriage at
    fourteen. This paralleled the Illinois
    statute exactly. But it is important to
    note that the policy in Utah, which I believe began with Joseph Smith, was to
    let the women mature. Eugene E. Campbell
    described Brigham’s instructions given in Utah:
    “One of the more distressing developments was the number of men
    asking [Brigham] Young for permission to marry girls too young to bear
    children. To one man at Fort Supply, Young explained, ‘I don’t object to your
    taking sisters named in your letter to wife if they are not too young and their
    parents and your president and all connected are satisfied, but I do not want
    children to be married to men before an age which their mothers can generally
    best determine.’ Writing to another man in Spanish Fork, he said, ‘Go ahead and
    marry them, but leave the children to grow.’ A third man in Alpine City was
    instructed, ‘It is your privilege to take more wives, but set a good example to
    the people, and leave the children long enough with their parents to get their
    growth, strength and maturity.’ To Louis Robinson, head of the church at Fort
    Bridger, Young advised, ‘Take good women, but let the children grow, then they
    will be able to bear children after a few years without injury.'”
    
    These are
    good questions. Unfortunately, a
    traditional view has been created by authors like Fawn Brodie that depict the
    Prophet and Nauvoo polygamists acting like comic book characters, not
    historical figures. If we base our
    historical reconstructions upon credible evidence, Joseph Smith emerges as a
    virtuous man, who didn’t want to practice plural marriage, but upon threat of
    an angel, obeyed.
    
    Reply
    1. Jonah Swan says:
      
      October 6, 2011 at 4:01 am
      
      Brian,
      It’s great for you to reply here. I appreciate you taking a stab at it. Here we go quickly (I work 80 hours a week and it’s amazing I still find time for this stuff):
      
      Quick response:
      I read every single page of “In Sacred Loneliness” and you misrepresent the book here. No disrespect, but you do. The proposition that Joseph Smith’s marriages were sexless is preposterous. In Sacred Loneliness never denies the sexuality of Joseph’s relationships; never presents the entirety of those relationships as sexless, celestial unions–but here you do!
      
      Further, you seem to be demanding evidence other than the diaries and accounts of his wives and their known relationships. There were no headcams back then, but I guarantee you that even if there were headcams back then and even if we did have it all on tape, there would be plenty of members to stand by the fact that Joseph Smith is a virtuous man, despite the damning evidence to the contrary. There was an article recently that stated that despite all the crimes that Warren Jeffs has been found guilty of, his followers still stand by him as a prophet. Sound familiar? There is a way for you to reconstruct history in a way that makes Joseph Smith virtuous, but rather than attack your belief in Joseph Smith, I’ll just ask you a question:
      
      Is it possible that Joseph Smith himself has taken on layers and accretions of meaning as a religious symbol that make him impervious to honest scrutiny?
      
      One new theory you raised was this idea that Joseph Smith’s “eternal marriages” trump, supersede or preempt the marriages of the women who were already married lawfully to other men. That would really suck to be a member of the church back then wouldn’t it? Too bad the temple endowment wasn’t available to you before Joseph Smith swung by, trumped your lawful marriage, and stole your wife! You just got superseded! As Brigham supposedly said to Henry Jacobs (as he took his wife), “It’s time for men who are walking in other men’s shoes to step out of those shoes.” If it’s true, that story really gives you a distaste for Brigham Young. Henry, you’re fired! Superseded!
      
      Also, the problem that this entire line of logic runs into is that you seem to be clinging to “eternal marriages” and the perpetuation and validation of the eternal principle of polygamy just as the church is officially distancing itself from polygamy? So, why don’t you tell me: does the church officially renounce polygamy or does it still cling to polygamy as an eternal principle?
      
      Reply
      1. Brian Hales says:
        
        October 6, 2011 at 7:19 pm
        
        Hi Jonah,
        
        Thanks for the comments. Sorry the formatting of the message was so wierd. I wrote it in WORD and copy/pasted and
        wha-la, strangeness in the pasted formatting.
        
        Of course I may disagree with In Sacred Loneliness. You
        wrote “The proposition that Joseph
        Smith’s marriages were sexless is preposterous.” This is true for the Fawn Brodies of the
        world and Todd, and George and Larry and Richard and Gary etc. They were all
        sure JS practiced sexual polyandry. But
        what about the evidence?
        
        Your question, “Is it possible that Joseph Smith
        himself has taken on layers and accretions of meaning as a religious symbol
        that make him impervious to honest scrutiny?” is interesting and undoubtedly
        the opinion of many is yes. Joseph said
        God teaches “line upon line,” so “layers” might describe his divine
        instruction. Regardless, I believe the
        Prophet was always worried about “honest scrutiny” from his God, but in Nauvoo
        became quite self-reliant with respect to other members and leaders. That said, I don’t think he committed adultery because he taught repeatedly that adulterers would be damned by his
        God (D&C 42: , 63:14-16, 76;103) and that adultery was next to murder (Alma
        39:5).
        
        Your comment:
        “That would really suck to be a member of the church back then wouldn’t
        it?” seems to assume that the men were making all the decisions and the women were
        “puppets” on a string controlled by Joseph or Brigham. If you’ve studied the lives of Zina
        Huntington or Sylvia Lyons, for example, I don’t find such a milquetoast women. Here we may just have to agree to disagree.
        
        The question whether the Church still believes in
        eternal plural marriage is easy. Yes
        with no apologies. It is gospel meat so
        they don’t teach it to unbelievers and milky Church members (which is a majority unfortunately). But we seal widowers to a new living wife
        every day in our temples creating an eternal polygamist.
        
        Perhaps we could try a new approach. I believe individuals who believe JS
        practiced sexual polyandry have to make many assumptions. Indeed, I’ve said many times that the
        greatest evidences supporting polyandrous sexuality in JS’s plural marriages
        are (1) assumptions and (2) the fact that you cannot prove a negative. Of course, neither of those are actual “evidence,”
        but the Fawn Brodies of the world seem to treat them as such. Here are the assumptions for proponents of
        sexual polyandry:
        
        First, they must assume sexual polyandry occurred
        because there is no solid evidence to support it. We have solid evidence for sexual relations
        in eleven of JS’s NON-polyandrous plural marriages and solid evidence for
        sexual relations in zero of the polyandrous sealings (detecting a pattern
        here?). This observation generally
        carries little weight with most observers due to their remarkable willingness to
        assume sex where there is no evidence.
        In some ways, this first assumption is the mother of all
        assumptions. Kind of like Frodo’s ring
        that ruled all other rings in “Lord of the Rings.” For many and maybe even for most, the
        assumption of polyandrous sex is as good as documented history and other
        assumptions are essentially dismissed as nonissues. This phenomenon is probably due to Richard Bushman’s
        astute assessment: “Polygamy is an
        interesting thing because it serves as a Rorschach test. People project onto Joseph Smith and
        polygamists their own sense about human nature.”
        
        The second assumption is that JS practiced sexual
        polyandry and nobody thought it worth mentioning. John C. Bennett reported in 1842 that some of
        JS’s plural wives had legal husbands, but no one else mentioned it or
        complained about it until William Hall’s 1850 publication. As I wrote in my previous post, none of the
        wives complained, none of the polyandrous husbands complained, none of the
        officiators and witnesses complained, and even Nauvoo anti-Mormons John C.
        Bennett and William Law did not complain about it. This is curious because sexual polyandry
        today is at best novel, nonconventional, if not repugnant and devious. In the pre-Victorian era of the 1840s, polyandrous
        sexual relations would have been essentially indefensible as morally acceptable. If you read of the moral standards of that
        period, sexual polyandry would have been a hard sell even for a charismatic
        leader like Joseph Smith. But even the lack of complaints is less
        strange than the lack of reports. If JS
        had taught it was acceptable, then why didn’t someone somewhere mention that?
        
        At this point we need to stop and consider a third
        Brodiesque assumption to which you may not be willing to agree. She completely ignored Joseph Smith’s
        theology of plural marriage apparently under the assumption that Nauvoo polygamists were
        also ignoring it. This is very
        improbable, but it seems that every writer to date (and I mean every writer)
        has failed to contextualize Joseph Smith’s polygamy and alleged polyandry
        within his marriage teachings. Nauvoo
        polygamists were universally repulsed by the doctrine and virtually none wanted
        to practice it. If it had not been
        commanded, but instead only permitted, very few would have entered into
        it. So why did they go along? It is because of Joseph’s teachings and
        spiritual witnesses that many reported. So
        if you are not willing to assume Nauvoo polygamists were ignoring JS’s
        teachings, then we have four more assumptions that advocates of sexual
        polyandry in JS’s life must also accept.
        
        Assumption number three is that Joseph Smith and his
        polyandrous wives were willing to commit “adultery” with the women being “destroyed”
        because of the sexual relationship (D&C 132:63; see also 41-42). In fact, adultery would equally destroy the
        men as well. As you observed in your
        first post, Joseph Smith’s theology includes the teaching that polyandrous sex
        was adultery.
        
        The fourth assumption I mentioned before. It involves assuming that the polyandrous
        wives were grossly duplicitous. That is,
        that they would accept part of the new and everlasting covenant permitting them
        to become polygamous wives, but would reject the part of the new and
        everlasting covenant that makes all old covenants, including all old marriage
        covenants (i.e. the legal marriage) “done away” (D&C 22:1).
        
        A fifth assumption is based upon Joseph’s teachings
        that exaltation occurs only to sealed couples.
        Hence, a woman married to a nonmember (for example) could be sealed to
        Joseph for just the next life. Contrary
        to what you have read, “eternity only” sealings that did not authorize sex
        between the woman and Joseph did occur.
        Joseph Smith’s theology provided a reason other than sex for him to be
        sealed to some of his plural wives. BTW,
        polyandrous sex does not increase a woman’s fertility or her ability to “multiply
        and replenish” the earth (this is basic reproductive physiology).
        
        The last assumption is similar to the second. There is no evidence that any one in Nauvoo
        or any Church member or polygamy insider ever complained about the Prophet’s
        obvious hypocrisy. Joseph taught sexual polyandry
        was adultery but was practicing it with up to thirteen woman according to
        advocates, and apparently no one cared enough to have voiced concern or
        condemnation.
        
        In review:
        
        Assumption #1: That Joseph Smith practiced sexual
        polyandry because no solid evidence is available that he did.
        
        Assumption #2: That no one cared enough about the
        behavior to report or complain about it although non-polyandrous polygamy was broadcast
        by many.
        
        Assumption #3: That Joseph and the plural wives
        would blithely commit adultery, with the women promised that they would be “destroyed”
        because of the relationship.
        
        Assumption #4: That the polyandrous wives would
        accept part of the new and everlasting covenant (polygyny is acceptable) while
        simultaneously rejecting another part the new covenant (that old covenants were
        “done away”).
        
        Assumption #5: That nonsexual “eternity only”
        sealings could not or did not occur and sex was essentially the only motive for
        JS’s plural unions.
        
        Assumption #6: That no one cared about the Prophet’s
        hypocrisy including men like William Law.
        
        Please understand that I am not trying to change
        your position. I’ve learned that the
        only people who can believe some other motive than sex compelled JS’s polygamy,
        are those who believe he was a Prophet in the first place. Everyone else will assume sex and I don’t
        blame them. What other conclusion could
        they draw?
        
        My goal is simply to show that the historical record
        does not support these assumptions that are fraught with credibility and plausibility
        problems. These observations will not
        sway unbelievers, but it shows believers (like me) that the most reliable
        documentation supports that Joseph Smith was a virtuous man and driven to
        plural marriage by something besides libido.
        
        Sorry this is so long. Thanks for reading. Comments?
        
        Best,
        
        Brian Hales
      2. Anonymous says:
        
        October 6, 2011 at 8:57 pm
        
        It is truly incredible the lengths apologists like yourself will go to rationalize the behavior of Joseph Smith. Of course Joseph used Polygamy for sexual purposes. William Law, Joseph’s councilor in the First Presidency, said he was shocked once to hear Joseph say one of his wives “afforded him great pleasure.”
        
        Joseph wrote a letter to Nancy Rigdon, who had refused his proposal of Marriage, explaining the justification for polygamy and the pleasures associated with it, dated 11 April 1842 –
        
        “So with Solomon first he asked wisdom, and God gave it him, and with it every desire of his heart, even things which may be considered abominable to all who do not understand the order of heaven only in part, but which, in reality, were right, because God gave and sanctioned by special revelation. A parent may whip a child, and justly too, because he stole an apple; whereas, if the child had asked for the apple, and the parent had given it, the child would have eaten it with a better appetite, there would have been no stripes all the pleasures of the apple would have been received, all the misery of stealing lost.”
        
        I think Joseph viewed polygamy as a pleasurable experience, what do you think?
      3. Jonah Swan says:
        
        October 8, 2011 at 5:31 pm
        
        Brian,
        You’ve admitted that your opinion contradicts the work of known and respected scholars on this topic. For that reason, I think you need to spend your time writing a more in-depth paper to articulate why you disagree with respected scholars and state the case for your position. Based on what I see above, it appears you’re making postulates in a vacuum, ignoring the critical evidence that has led other scholars–and me–to conclude the Joseph Smith’s relationships were indeed sexual. Despite all this, publish the link to your paper and we’ll give it a read.
        
        In the meantime, you really need to edit your posts (you can still do that; there IS an edit button) because you’re formatting makes it tough to read.
    2. Anonymous says:
      
      October 6, 2011 at 5:02 pm
      
      Brian,
      
      You said “Observers need to address the fact that none of the wives complained, none of the polyandrous husbands complained, none of the officiators and witnesses complained, and even Nauvoo anti-Mormons John C. Bennett and William Law did not complain about the nonconventional sexual polyandry or Joseph Smith’s alleged hypocrisy.”
      
      William Law DID complain when he published evidence of Joseph Smith’s hypocrisy and polyandry in the Nauvoo expositor. John C. Bennett DID complain when he wrote a scathing exposé of Joseph Smith, entitled History of the Saints, accusing Smith of crimes such as treason, conspiracy to commit murder, prostitution and adultery. I don’t know where you are getting your history but your sources and/or your interpretations of them are questionable.
      
      Your statements reveal an interesting schism of thought currently going on in the church. Many literalist/fundamental thinking members still support and try to defend polygamy as a true virtuous revelation from God, while non-literalist members admit that Joseph was a deeply flawed individual who made many mistakes including introducing and lying about polygamy but nevertheless was still a true but possibly fallen prophet.
      
      The troubling fact is that both camps continue to defend a charismatic leader who convinced followers to surrender their will to his for ultimate salvation. When one truly dives into the history of Joseph Smith one discovers a pattern of deception. There is a difference between an isolated incident and a pattern. Treasure Digging, The Book of Mormon (DNA evidence, anachronisms, lack of archaeological, anthropological, cultural, linguistic, and metallurgical evidence to support claims), The Book of Abraham, Kinderhook Plates, The Greek Psalter, The Temple and Masonry, The Kirtland Bank Fraud all reveal this disturbing pattern of deception.
      
      Thanks to the internet and honest historians the truth is out there. The apologists are continuing to have a devil of a time rationalizing it away but ultimately all truth loving people will encounter their own crises of faith and be forced to decide what is right and what is easy. I believe the only way the Mormon Church will survive is to confess and forsake the indefensible literalist point of view and move toward a classic protestant-like church that focuses on Christ and not on priesthood power.
      
      Reply
      1. Brian Hales says:
        
        October 6, 2011 at 7:31 pm
        
        Hi MRT01,
        
        I just posted some more comments for Jonah.
        I disagree that JCB and WL complained about sexual polyandry. And before you quote anything from Bennett, it is best to establish that he even once sat down with Joseph Smith to learn about plural marriage. I have an article coming out in the Journal of Mormon History showing that Bennett was completely in the dark. If you have evidence to the contrary, please share. So far as William Law, he accused Joseph of adultery with Maria Lawrence, not polyandry with any of his plural wives who had legal husbands. This is my point. People complained about sexual polygyny but not sexual polyandry. If you are going to question my research, please be specific. Most of the sources are available online so we don’t have to sort through dusty books. It is important to examine the tradition and the alleged evidence that Joseph Smith practiced sexual polyandry.Thanks,Brian Hales
    3. New2podcasts says:
      
      October 6, 2011 at 5:07 pm
      
      It was wrong from the beginning and it is still wrong. Power and affluence corrupts just as it has from old testament times. The pervs tried to cover up their own lusts by making it a church-wide principle and the members still buy into the idea as God inspired.
      
      Maybe folks with your perspective have lust for little girls and don’t give reality a chance to condemn the pracise as it would close the option down completely.
      
      Reply
      1. Brian Hales says:
        
        October 6, 2011 at 7:39 pm
        
        I’ve not been active on blogs because of the time they require.
        
        However, NEew2podcasts – your comment is so unfair and not useful.
        
        I consider myself thick skinned. But I’m also pragmatic with a busy schedule. I entered this discussion because my publisher encouraged me to do so. If fielding messages like New2podcasts is part of the game, I’ll need to pass.
        
        If you have specific questions, I pick up the mail at http://www.JosephSmithsPolygamy.com.
        
        I admire Terryl and wish him the best!
        
        Brian
      2. New2podcasts says:
        
        October 7, 2011 at 5:36 am
        
        My apologies for overstating the time period practice of then and now. The contemporary church (I hope) does not groom girls for future personal consumption and that was not fair to put it onto this group of intellectuals that are too personnaly investd in the church to just get out of the practice. Given your intellectual capabilities I am sure you are aware that most non intellectual members of the church of jesus christ of latter day saints do not know that the man that they revere (when they sing praise to the man) was having sexual intercourse with those who our contemporary society would regard legally as children. Further more I can see that I have wrongly drawn the conclusion that contemporary males who defend an early 19th century man for having sex with children would not neccessarily want to have sex with teenagers themselves.
        
        Sorry if you must remove yourself from this blog and save so many folks from listening to your drivel. Thicken up your skin and take a stand for truth and right! Einstein.
      3. Brian Hales says:
        
        October 7, 2011 at 2:30 pm
        
        Hi Again,
        
        No problem – I should be more tolerant.
        
        Time will limit my participation in any blog.
        
        Take Care,
        
        Brian
2. jg says:
  
  October 6, 2011 at 5:27 am
  
  Like I said, one of the most articulate believers in the church.
  
  Thanks Terryl.
  
  Reply
3. Anonymous says:
  
  October 6, 2011 at 6:52 pm
  
  Not only do former believers reinterpret spiritual experiences as self-delusions but others also reinterpret spiritual experiences as a general knowledge of a loving God and not as an affirmation of a specific doctrine. What about non Mormons who have similar spiritual experiences regarding what they interpret as truth when it conflicts with Mormon doctrine or science for that matter? Do Mormons interpret their subjective spiritual experiences as self-delusions or of the devil?
  
  Reply
4. Anonymous says:
  
  October 6, 2011 at 10:46 pm
  
  Terryl, loved the podcast. You’re awesome.
  
  You mentioned a letter that a member had sent to Joseph F. Smith, asking whether polygamy was an eternal principle (with JFS answering that he wasn’t sure). Could you please provide the source for that? I would love to read it. Thanks again for taking the time to do this podcast. I know that it was invaluable to me.
  
  Reply
5. Chanelle says:
  
  October 7, 2011 at 5:35 pm
  
  Thank you for sharing your many insights and beautiful perspective of the church and the gospel.
  
  I am sitting here listening to this 5+ hour podcast for the 3rd time now. I have so many questions I’d love to hear your perspective on, but in reality, there is only one that matters to me. I don’t care about the personally disappointing particulars of the church, because I think those can be worked out. But having lost both of my parents to cancer in my teen years, and continuing for the 20 years since to live faithfully active in the church, never feeling their presence in my life in a way I have felt other spiritually moving moments, my most difficult struggle is believing that they still exist. After your near drowning experience, do you believe in an afterlife? You used the word “annihilation” in describing the way you felt in that near death moment. How have you reconciled this?
  
  Reply
6. Jonah Swan says:
  
  October 10, 2011 at 4:37 pm
  
  Terryl,
  I originally listened to your podcast only moments after listening to the entire Daniel C Peterson podcast, so my comments are reactions to the combined experience of listening to you and Peterson in a single setting. That’s not fair to you since you and Peterson are different in so many ways. I’m new to Mormon Stories, so as I get some time, I’m going to listen to your thoughts again as a standalone experience.
  
  Reply
Anonymous says:

October 5, 2011 at 3:02 pm

Hey All!

For the record, I will be compiling the best questions from here and will be presenting them to Terryl in a follow-up interview….so please know that he won’t be responding as much directly here (he’s a super busy guy, as you know).

Thanks for your interest!

John

Reply
Anonymous says:

October 5, 2011 at 3:02 pm

Hey All!

For the record, I will be compiling the best questions from here and will be presenting them to Terryl in a follow-up interview….so please know that he won’t be responding as much directly here (he’s a super busy guy, as you know).

Thanks for your interest!

John

Reply
1. Nelson Chung says:
  
  October 5, 2011 at 3:56 pm
  
  Can you also consider these two questions about his book?
  
  1. When is his two-volume history of Mormon theology going to come out? I looked on his website and it doesn’t say.
  2. Will it cover the interaction with Biblical studies, such as the discovery of a divine council in ancient Israelite religion?
  
  Reply
2. Jonah Swan says:
  
  October 5, 2011 at 4:20 pm
  
  If that’s the case, I added a few questions in my reply to Terryl.
  Thanks,
  Jonah
  
  Reply
3. Nelson Chung says:
  
  October 5, 2011 at 8:44 pm
  
  Also: A little inoculation through the CES can prevent more apostasy, Givens said. What about missionary work? How do we do missionary work in the U.S. with all this new information on Church history?
  
  Reply
4. Chanelle says:
  
  October 7, 2011 at 5:40 pm
  
  Thank you for Mormon Stories and for this interview in particular.
  
  I have many questions I’d love to hear TG’s perspective on, but in reality, there is only one that matters to me. I don’t care about the personally disappointing particulars of the church, because I think those can be worked out. But having lost both parents to cancer in my teen years, and continuing for the 20 years since to live faithfully active in the church, never feeling their presence in my life in a way I have felt other spiritually moving moments, my most difficult struggle is believing that they still exist. After his near drowning experience, does he believe in an afterlife? He used the word “annihilation” in describing the way he felt in that near death moment. How has he reconciled this?
  
  Reply
5. Jonah Swan says:
  
  October 9, 2011 at 6:56 am
  
  John,
  Here’s another question for your next podcast with Terryl:
  
  Hypothetically, if it turns out that the Book of Mormon is a fiction and that this can clearly be shown to your satisfaction–and please consider the full implications of that proposition as a potential domino effect on Joseph Smith’s other claims relating to the first vision, polygamy, polyandry, etc.–what would you want your legacy to be as 1.) a lifelong church member; 2.) as a scholar, and 3.) as a human being? Also, in the context of that hypothetical, would you have lost anything at all by failing to discover this fact during your lifetime? If so, what?
  
  Jonah
  
  Reply
6. david packard says:
  
  October 29, 2011 at 7:39 pm
  
  John,
  
  Question about inoculation.
  
  One of the themes your dialogue with TG developed was Joseph’s misunderstanding about his own role. TG is very fluid and articulate about how such possible misunderstandings impacted on accounts of the First Vision, BoM translation, and BoA. This problem has been compounded because the precise role Joseph played (the logistics of how he produced his revelations) somehow became part of the religious narrative, about which a Mormon seeking a testimony could pray and obtain a decisive answer (or at least interwoven into such things he obtained answers about). By comparison, TG mentioned that we don’t appear to be particularly interested in how Paul obtained his revelations.
  
  It is not fun to teach your kids that the BoA contains a divine revelation to Joseph even though he very well may have been confused about the function of the papyri. I’d rather just ignore it. But because I love the church and because I believe it’s true, I have to deal with this unpleasantry. I can’t in good conscience teach the previously understood account and set my kids up for a rude awakening, like the one I had in the late 90s. My parents didn’t really live in the information age, and so they didn’t know, nor were they expected to know by normal standards back then. Now we know. Now we’re reasonably expected to know.
  
  This is inoculation, as you know, and inoculation is a well-developed idea. But the theme (of Joseph’s misunderstanding of Joseph) actually seems (is) quite reasonable if you don’t first get invested in the original narrative. It’s hugely important in my view. It seems it should be the Polio vaccine of Mormonism.
  
  Is this something that could be appropriately initiated from bottom up in the church? (I served as a bishop, and I didn’t feel comfortable at all inoculating, especially in that capacity. My wife and I have and continue to inoculate our kids.) Could we get some kind of “clearance” or at least tacit authorization to inoculate as a grass roots or bottom up. I don’t think we currently have any such clearance. Any idea of how or when we might get this kind of thing?
  
  Are there any signs that we can ever have approved materials (from the top) from which we can inoculate? What’s the likely time-table. I’d hate to wait another generation, because this impacts on the way we build our religious traditions now, and Mormonism offers rich traditions to pass on to one’s family.
  
  Am I waisting my time on this thing? Am I off base, maybe ignoring other important issues in my analysis?
  
  Reply
poopants says:

October 5, 2011 at 4:59 pm

I am still reeling from the utter brilliance of Givens! He has to be my new number one home boy! Ilistening to the podcasts over and over again in my car and getting something new each time. I think I shall buy all of his books and I might even contemplate attending a sacrament meeting. But I repeat!!! I will only contemplate attending a sacrament meeting!

Reply
Ben says:

October 5, 2011 at 8:09 pm

I loved the podcast! It has given me new hope and faith, both in humanity and my own worldview.

One question I had, was how does Terryl view the new emphasis on tithing in the church, and in particular the expenditures on the mall in SLC. For me, I can accept Joseph Smith being flawed, but if that’s the case, that also implies the current administration could be as well, in particular on financial matter with the church?

Reply
Porter Rockwell says:

October 5, 2011 at 8:52 pm

Thanx for a super interesting podcast. Also reading these comments is of great interest :-).

I admire Terryl’s honesty and openness. His approach, tone and humility made a deep impression on me. While listening, a couple of times I found myself thinking that I really wished I could believe like he does, that the model he uses to explain things would work for me. In many ways what Terryl was articulating was beautiful and majestic. But when I take a step back, and examine the issues, for me it falls apart again. BOM limited geomery, just doesn’t hold. And some of the behaviors of past and present prophets I just cannot swallow. The argument that they are and can be radically flawed, etc, can be used to defend any religous (or other type of) movement.

Anyways, this was hugely interesting. I wonder if Terryl in any depth has studied psychological research which tries to explain the way people act and reason, where faith is concerned. The great inability we have to critically examine a position which we have accepted as true, while at the same time we are very able to examine another’s position which we don’t have the same emotional attachment. For example, to an outsider, the Jehova Witnesses faith and religion should’ve just fallen apart when their several, certain, prophesied dates at which Jesus would return did not come to pass. To an outsider this is just shattering evidence, yet there were a very small percentage who actually lost their faith and abandoned the religion.

Why would we as mormons be any different? What is so special about our religion, that we cannot be blinded by just the fact that we hold the church to be ‘true’? To outsiders, there is a mountain of evidence against mormonism. It’s rock solid. There is no uncertainty. But believers don’t see it. Terryl argues that for there to be any room for real faith, the evidence has to go both ways, equally strong evidence for the validity of the truth claims as against. That is God’s plan, that we in this realm of uncertainty can exercise real faith. Yet to millions of outsider there is no question at all – scientific evidence against is overwhelming. And to some insiders it’s the opposite way, it was for me for 30 years – I heard stories about findings that ‘proved’ the BOM, etc. The church has always grasped at any straws that could solidify faith into knowledge. There was no question, I didn’t live in a middle ground, I knew with certainty that it was true. And to me it seems like this is the position we are raised in the church to end up in, it’s the best way to be from an institutional perspective. From what I understand, this position of knowing, doesn’t according to Terryl, constitute real faith. I hadn’t been exposed to opposing evidence that made me float in the space where knowledge was not certain. The position of balancing between finding the evidence on each side equally compelling, and therefore being able to exercise real faith, seems preciously hard to attain.

I would be interested in Terryl’s response to psychological studies, etc, that have been made. The power of conformation bias, insufficient justification, group think etc.

I found Bob Mcue’s writings on this to be extremely thought provoking, and a way for me to analyse myself, and come to a greater understanding on how the human psyche works. The essay – Do smart mormons make mormonism true:

https://mccue.cc/bob/documents/rs.do%20smart%20mormons%20make%20mormonism%20true.pdf

It would be very interesting to hear Terryl’s comments to that essay. It’s a long read, so maybe he doesn’t have time to read it, but perhaps he has knowledge on the subject… would be nice if it could be addressed in the next podcast.

Thanx again for this podcast John and Terryl!

Reply
1. Nelson Chung says:
  
  October 6, 2011 at 12:07 am
  
  McCue drones on and on, but glimpsing that article, I can see where a lot of ex-Mormons get their arguments.
  
  Reply
  1. CT says:
    
    October 6, 2011 at 4:21 am
    
    That’s a big generalization, instead of dismissing McCue and porter rockwell with a flippant one liner why don’t you address the questions he posed, much like the post above by Brian Hales where he addresses Joseph’s polygamy, now that was a well reasoned response.
    
    Given that, regarding the psychology of belief that Porter Rockwell raised in his post, I much prefer the research in Michael Shermer’s book “The Believing Brain”
    
    Reply
    1. Nelson Chung says:
      
      October 6, 2011 at 2:31 pm
      
      Dude the article is over 90 pp. Single-spaced.
      
      Reply
tek says:

October 5, 2011 at 9:52 pm

John you’ve truly outdone yourself this year. The podcasts have been incredible! Just when I think they can’t get any better they do. Thanks for your work and support in this “labor of love”.
I was not very familiar with Terryl Givens prior to this podcast, but he has become one of my heroes! The issues discussed on the podcast are very thought provoking. I especially found his ideas on Joseph Smith and faith to be fascinating. Thank you Terryl for taking the time to share your thoughts with us! Your books are next on my reading list.

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Anonymous says:

October 6, 2011 at 1:30 am

My sincere and deepest apologies; I just couldn’t get through these podcast.

I listened to the first one but kept going over to other sites cause the conversation was just boring.

My appologies for saying that but I just couldn’t stay interested.

Reply
danko says:

October 6, 2011 at 2:10 am

Why do people (apologists) continue to say that the Book of Mormon doesn’t imply geographic isolation? Didn’t Moroni tell Joseph that it was a record of THE former inhabitants of this continent and THE source from whence they sprang? Granted this is only Moroni’s opinion, but wouldn’t he know? Also, isn’t Lehi promised that the land should be kept from the knowledge of other nations, that they may possess the land unto themselves (2Ne, 1). The land doesn’t get overrun by others until after the entire civilization falls into sin, which is many years after their arrival. And, if Joseph Smith, Spencer Kimball, and every other other prophet has been calling the native Americans “Lamanites,” it’s easy enough to say they were mistaken, but that calls into question their general reliability as prophets. It seems odd that the apologists are willing to dismiss all of the prophetic statements about pure-blooded Lamanites in favor of something more scientifically plausible (limited geography theory).

Reply
danko says:

October 6, 2011 at 2:10 am

Why do people (apologists) continue to say that the Book of Mormon doesn’t imply geographic isolation? Didn’t Moroni tell Joseph that it was a record of THE former inhabitants of this continent and THE source from whence they sprang? Granted this is only Moroni’s opinion, but wouldn’t he know? Also, isn’t Lehi promised that the land should be kept from the knowledge of other nations, that they may possess the land unto themselves (2Ne, 1). The land doesn’t get overrun by others until after the entire civilization falls into sin, which is many years after their arrival. And, if Joseph Smith, Spencer Kimball, and every other other prophet has been calling the native Americans “Lamanites,” it’s easy enough to say they were mistaken, but that calls into question their general reliability as prophets. It seems odd that the apologists are willing to dismiss all of the prophetic statements about pure-blooded Lamanites in favor of something more scientifically plausible (limited geography theory).

Reply
Erico says:

October 6, 2011 at 2:50 am

Question for Terryl Givens (maybe this question has already been asked – I haven’t read all of the posts)

Question: It seems that there is a growing acknowledgment by many mainstream church members and some general authorities in accepting the creation and flood accounts (including the Fall) in Genesis as well as other events in the OT as symbolic rather than literal. Where can one comfortably draw the line between metaphorical and literal belief and still maintain orthodoxy? What is the preferred cut-off date? 2000 B.C.? 1000 B.C.? 600 B.C.? 100 A.D., 2011? Or can I pick and choose events and dates cafeteria style? Can one believe the Book of Mormon is not historical yet see it as inspired and still be considered orthodox? Is orthodoxy more aptly defined as an assent to a set of behaviors, general concepts (such as revelation and progression, etc.) and self-identifying with a particular group rather than a litmus test of literal beliefs? Does this create a slippery-slope?

The Book of Mormon and D&C are littered with literal references to persons and events from Genesis which then create some (not all) literal belief problems for those books as well.

Terryl Givens has a beautiful mind and thanks to him and John for doing this podcast.

Reply
Jeralee Renshaw says:

October 6, 2011 at 3:55 am

So, so so so great! I can’t wait to hear more from Teryl Givens. Great job John Dehlin!! <3

Reply
Chelle says:

October 6, 2011 at 11:06 pm

at the end of the first section they talk about all these myths and ledgends of people failing miserably when they tried to bee too much like God. I wonder where those stories come from? Why has the idea that it it dangerous and fatal to think yourself like God been so perpetuated. Who stands to benefit? What is so “wrong” about thinking yourself able to attain Godhood?

Reply
JT says:

October 6, 2011 at 11:58 pm

This interview prompted the following reflections. Perhaps some can relate to them.

I let relatively shallow annoyances pave the way for my leaving Mormonism well before I went looking for defensible reasons. I found the meetings boring, the Bishop’s side-hugs patronizing, the home teaching nagging, the testimonies overreaching, and the organ music grating.

But my problems weren’t all so trivial. There were my first, second and last temple visits spanning 1985 and 1986. Strike 1, Strike 2, Strike 3 – or so it appears in hindsight. There were also the dead silences attending a decade of prayers. Was this self-imposed spiritual deafness or restrained imagination?

I never drank, smoked, fornicated, or broke the law from my baptism at 19 until today, which is nearly 3 years post my official “dismemberment.” My slow and unobtrusive leave taking kept my otherwise faithful family intact. Tithing was crisis-prevention insurance as long as it felt necessary. I resisted thinking of it as extortion.

I never met a Mormon who wasn’t generous and kind in the small East Coast wards we attended. Seeing how these people influenced our children checked every temptation for self-serving intrusion. For several years I was simply too busy second-guessing my doubts to share them. For the last 10 years I was a dedicated early-morning seminary-driving apostate.

My wife’s faith is centered on charity rather than propositional beliefs, so arguing doctrine or history was pointless if not beside the point. She honors my professed validity-based doubt and I her utility-based faith. Thank you Dr. David Christian for this terminology.

When I did go looking for external reasons for not believing, I found more than I anticipated. That surprise was simultaneously confirming and disturbing. It just kept piling up. At times it didn’t seem fair. “God, what were you thinking?”

Very early on I looked to LDS scholars for a lifeline. This was even before feeling blindsided by the temple ordinances. I remember photocopying dozens of BYU Studies articles during my first visit to Provo in 1983. Even then I was trying to figure out how people smarter than me might abide these beliefs. I know now, and knew then, that this was a religiously dismissible question. I needed to answer it none-the-less.

I also read apologetics along the way, along with the Tanner’s poorly typeset catalogue of Mormon problems and then many respected historical works. I found I had to regulate my intake. Too much made it too hard to keep my mouth shut. My wife would ask, “What’s wrong honey?” I’d answer, “Oh, I haven’t been sleeping well. I’ll catch up on it Sunday.” I keep my books at work but not hidden from my wife when she stops by.

I’ve given Mormonism a far greater hearing than I thought I would. I don’t think I could have gone to those lengths unless part of me hoped to find reasons for returning. Apostasy is a tremendous strain even when the Church leaders leave you alone, as they did in my case. Sometimes I felt, “Why don’t the put up some resistance -don’t I deserve that?”

I remember opening the letter from the Church’s “Member and Statistical Records Division” notifying me that “in accordance with your request, you are no longer a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” It was signed by the “Division Manager.” I quickly searched my mind for regret. I didn’t root around for long. I figured it would find me if it were there.

At some point Mormon history began to fascinate me for its own sake. I just finished Dr. Given’s Parley P. Pratt biography and Mark Saker’s “Hearken, O Ye People: The Historical Setting of Joseph Smith’s Ohio Revelations.” Both were terrific in my opinion.

Mormon history dovetailed into my ongoing exploration of the sociology, psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience of belief and decision-making. Things are starting to make some sense, albeit in a tentative and incomplete way. I recommend this path in place of locking horns over disputed facts.

But speaking of facts, the Book of Mormon remains the conspicuous unsolved puzzle. It’s like a bobbing apple, hardly breaking the surface of credibility, yet surprisingly buoyant and difficult to sink my teeth into. Faithful scholars say, “It feels ancient” and “it’s coherent.” But can such buoyant forces defy gravity’s claim on gold plates?

I read Grant Hardy’s “Reader’s Edition” of the Book of Mormon this past summer along with his “Reader’s Guide.” Yes, there is more to it than first meets the eye. But it’s ludicrousness and horrifying depiction of God remains. But now Dr. Givens has cast his vote in its favor and for me that merits consideration. So I’ll keep at it.

Allowing room for doubting doubt is the best I can do now. I try not to let infuriating episodes shut that down. I’ll read and I’ll think – but I won’t pray. I can’t. Moroni 10:4 feels too much like an inverted Catch-22. I can’t go there, it requires pretending – or self-consciously imagining the imaginary is real. Perhaps the way I read and think are sufficient substitutes if the universe ends up spinning that way.

Notwithstanding this borderline sarcasm, my heart does not feel hardened. As I head into my 6th decade, I would like, if I can, to do more than merely tolerate Mormon beliefs. Perhaps the best I’ll be able to do is see in Mormonism as good a validation of group affiliation, pro-social behavior, and death denial as any other non-disprovable belief system. I believe that would be more than enough to love my wife, our children, my brothers, and my father more with each year. Blood is thicker than sacrament water.

Thank you Dr. Givens for moving me toward this possibility. Thanks again John Dehlin for bringing Dr. Givens to us.

JT

Reply
tld says:

October 7, 2011 at 6:17 pm

I stand in awe at Terryl Givens’ ability to express his thoughts in a meaningful and coherent manner. Because of this, I am hesitant in even thinking of challenging any of the positions that he seems to take regarding the Church and its teachings. Moreover, he has studied and written extensively on premortal existence and rightly notes LDS teachings regarding the eternal nature of man. In spite of this, I cannot help but wonder to what extent the Mormon plan of salvation is any longer relevant. If I understand correctly, it is based upon the belief in a literal resurrection, in which the spirit is reunited with the body to form a living soul. Without a literal resurrection, and a reuniting of the spirit with the body, the spirit would forever be hindered in its ability to progress towards godhood.

This belief goes counter to everything that we have come to know about the afterlife. Based on thousands, if not millions, of personal experiences, it is apparent that the spirit does not only not need, but is actually hindered by, a physical body. When a person leaves the physical body and moves into the spirit world, a shape resembling the physical body can persist for a time, but eventually this will dissipate so that all that remains is a state of individual consciousness that we commonly refer to as the soul. Free of any form, this soul is then able to progress though the various levels of the spirit world. There appears to be a choice that the soul can make. Either it can choose to continue on as a purely conscious entity or it can choose to reincarnate into another physical body and repeat the experience of mortal existence.

The beauty of this process, as opposed to the Mormon plan of salvation, is that every soul has the opportunity of progressing to whatever level it desires and in whatever way it desires, limited only by the restrictions it places upon itself. In other words, judgment is self-imposed. As has been frequently stated by those who claim to have experienced some aspect of the spirit world, it is pervaded by light and love. Based upon a soul’s thoughts and desires, that soul may choose to move further into the light or away from the light, into what is sometimes referred to as outer darkness. But those souls who may choose outer darkness are not irretrievably lost. Rather they are ministered to and watched over until if and when they choose to move towards the light. To me, this process that I have described is much more desirable than that taught within the Mormon plan of salvation where individuals are assigned to one of three levels in the afterlife for all eternity and only a limited number can ever hope or expect to return Home.

Thanks, John, for your efforts and your open-mindedness.

Tom

Reply
Dawn64 says:

October 7, 2011 at 6:29 pm

I’m working my way through the fourth installment of this podcast and I want to thank John and Terryl for this insightful interview. It was simultaneously brilliant and awkward. Dr. Given’s articulation of his faith is gently poetic. At the same time, his answers to John’s more difficult questions make him sound like another Hugh Nibley–using the language of hope to construct a shaky defense of JS and the Book of Mormon. I believe his intentions are honorable, his spiritual convictions real. I have to admire any intellectual who would risk the ridicule of the academic world outside of the already-converted to stand by his personal religious beliefs.

Still, much as I enjoy listening, I have very conflicted feelings about this podcast. On the one hand, I hear Terryl say that he is predisposed to accepting mysticism. I hear his views on Book of Mormon geography, historical inaccuracies, questionable behavior on JS’s part. He is either dismissive or inconclusively analytical on most of the hard stuff. I think–yes, finally. A serious, Mormon intellectual who can talk about this stuff and not worry about providing faith-promoting answers. Part of me admires his astounding ability to make the historical problems and contextual conundrums sound nearly credible when described from his historically-informed perspective. But then another part of me–the part governed by the critical thinking area of my brain hears these things and I have the same response John did to some of the trickier explanations: “Really?”

Much of the conversation seems so surreal to me. That grown adults, bristling with PhD’s and academic prowess, can seriously debate the existence of Golden Plates, angelic visitations, and peep stones both fascinates and alarms me in equal terms. I guess it’s the sort of thing that gets debated in religious circles all over the world–just with different mythological props and underpinnings. How is it any different than a debate over whether a specific number of virgins awaits the radical Muslim upon his successful attack on infidels? I think it’s another sign in how far I’ve come (for better or worse) in distancing myself from this construct called Mormonism that dominated nearly forty years of my life.

At any rate, I don’t have any more answers than I did listening to the podcast–only more questions. Strangely, though–I loved it. Perhaps that is the very nature of religion–to continually confound ourselves thinking thoughts about the unknowable nature of existence. Humans, recent research seems to suggest, are hard-wired to be religious creatures.

One question I have for Dr. Givens might be this: Can you ever conceive of yourself not believing in the veracity of the Book of Mormon? Maybe you answer that question later in the podcast–I’m only on episode 4.

Thanks again– wonderful dialogue and it helps those of us who doubt and wonder place ourselves in a larger context relative to others in our faith communities.

Reply
1. JT says:
  
  October 8, 2011 at 2:59 pm
  
  Dawn,
  
  Thanks … I appreciate your thoughts. In particular
  
  “…both fascinates and alarms me in equal terms.”
  
  The fascination here is thankfully greater than the alarm because Mormonism enjoys a history of getting more, rather than less, benign – though it is still has certain propositional (8) beliefs to overcome.
  
  “At any rate, I don’t have any more answers than I did listening to the podcast–only more questions. Strangely, though–I loved it.”
  
  The more questions, and the more challenging, the better. The questions (or responses) to Dr. Givens comments really span the range – from the traditional apologetic arguments (limited geography) to interesting theological ideas like belief becoming a moral imperative when the evidence creates an exquisite balance (notwithstanding scientifically demonstrable hard-wired biases and other frailties of mind, including rivaling unconscious cognitions inaccessible to introspection).
  
  As an aside, missing was a substantive understanding of what science has to add to these issues (which is different from saying one is on board with science). For instance, not seeing evolutionary interpretations in theology (solving the fortunate fall) but not realizing how problematic evolution by NATURAL SELECTION is for theism, which is what makes it scientific. Also the cognitive/neuroscience challenge to “folk psychological” or intuitive foundation of theological conceptions of free will. In the next decade(s) this may become the new front in the war on science by dogmatic religion (IMO). And even secularists will get hot and bothered over it, at least until they realize it is not as bad as they first think.
  
  Thanks again,
  
  JT
  
  Reply
  1. JT says:
    
    October 8, 2011 at 3:01 pm
    
    Correction: ” For instance, SEEING evolutionary interpretations in theology …)
    
    Reply
mike says:

October 8, 2011 at 1:22 am

John,

I really really enjoyed this podcast. I can’t say enough good about it so I hope
this question doesn’t make it appear that I thought Terryl was making bad arguments
but if next time you could question him a little further on polygamy I would
like to hear more of his thoughts on it.
I am a pretty orthodox mormon I think but that area of church history
bugs me a lot. I used to take some solace
in the fact that, like Givens said, many of the women involved felt
disgusted by the thought at first, but then, after prayer felt fine about it. I also took solace in the idea that if it was
just lust, it would have been easier for Joseph to just sleep around instead of
makeup elaborate doctrines about it.

Those arguments don’t
hold much sway for me any more though. Apparently
using religious authority is an effective way to seduce women who are otherwise completely pious. For a modern well documented example google Nick Hacheney. I
believe JS still had the spirit after practicing polygamy so I assume it was
all sanctioned and that his polygamy was much different than what we have seen in
other modern cases but it is something that I have never been able to be
comfortable with and would like to hear more discussion on from someone like Terryl Givens.
Thanks

Reply
1. Andersda64 says:
  
  October 8, 2011 at 11:45 pm
  
  I, too, would like to plumb the depths of the polygamy issue–although I doubt there can really be a satisfying answer to those of us who chafe at the idea of polygamy in general and polyandry in particular. The argument that the women whom Joseph took to wife eventually came around to his way of thinking through prayer and spiritual manifestation is not good evidence that coercion was NOT involved. Nor do the recorded testimonies of these women indicate that they were at peace with the practice.
  
  For those who would argue that the women came to accept and embrace the principle of polygamous marriage, I have this question: would such a claim hold up if the same argument were being made in court on behalf of Warren Jeff’s child brides? I’m sure the majority of WJ’s wives would tell you they are willingly practicing God’s law and the law of the Priesthood to be in polygamous marriages. Indeed, many of Jeff’s wives may be perfectly happy practicing polygamy. However, if I were the prosecuting attorney, how long would it take me to gather psychoanalytical testimony that these women, if not coerced, were at least insulated from accepted codes of civil conduct to the point that they were willing to break laws and moral codes to follow amoral leaders?
  
  I suspect in JS’s time, the onus would have been on the women to show that they WERE coerced into unwanted marriages to the prophet–especially within the ranks of the believing members. Given a climate of male hierarchy and extremely limited women’s rights, is it any wonder that many of these women “came around” to accepting their polygamous marriages?
  
  Reply
2. Nelson Chung says:
  
  October 9, 2011 at 12:16 am
  
  ” I believe JS still had the spirit after practicing polygamy so I assume it was
  all sanctioned and that his polygamy was much different than what we have seen in
  other modern cases”
  
  Well, per Bushman, JS did not receive any revelations when he was sleeping around.
  
  Reply
  1. mike says:
    
    October 10, 2011 at 5:54 pm
    
    That might fit well into the category of being inspired in the commandment, and uninspired in how he went about living it. I know there are a number of people who think perhaps polygamy wasn’t of God at all but that JS was otherwise an inspired prophet. I guess the biggest problem I have with that is that section 132 is also where we get the revelation and authority to perform eternal marriages. It seems like you can’t get rid of one and keep the other. Either polygamy was directed by God, or the entire sealing ordinance of families was fabricated to cover up JS’s adulterous relationships.
    
    Reply
Aaron Hart says:

October 8, 2011 at 11:12 pm

Really enjoyed this podcast. Terryl Givens gave me plenty to chew on. While I don’t fully agree on all his assertions, I do realize that even I am guilty of simplifying some of the arguments against Mormonism purely for convenience sake. While Mormonism still leaves a lot to be desired for me, there are some aspects of Mormonism I have a much deeper respect for through this interview and my own personal studies into spirituality (such as the pre-mortal existence, the eternal progression of intelligence, the role of a prophet, etc.). While I do find Mormonism’s focus on conventional ethics vs theological questions to be its greatest strength, I would also argue that it has been one of those things that has also been most destructive to Mormonism as well (such as view of blacks and homosexuals). However, despite the problems of Mormonism, it is true that Mormon youth are more likely to be involved in their religion and maintain their religious values into adulthood then any other church system. Mormonism isn’t just teaching good ethics; its members are caring them out into their daily lives. So, in that view, Mormonism is doing something that I wish more institutionalized religions could do. So, I walk away realizing that Mormonism still has its problems, but I have more hope for Mormonism because it does get some things right. I still want to see change in Mormonism (updating church education material and making the church financial activities more transparent), but I at least see that Mormonism is not headed for a crash and burn in the future.

Reply
1. Nelson Chung says:
  
  October 9, 2011 at 12:13 am
  
  Hey thanks for those comments.
  
  Reply
Dawn64 says:

October 8, 2011 at 11:55 pm

I, too, would like to plumb the depths of the polygamy issue–although I
doubt there can really be a satisfying answer to those of us who chafe
at the idea of polygamy in general and polyandry in particular. The
argument that the women whom Joseph took to wife eventually came around
to his way of thinking through prayer and spiritual manifestation is not
good evidence that coercion was NOT involved. Nor do the recorded
testimonies of these women indicate that they were at peace with the
practice.

For those who would argue that the women came to
accept and embrace the principle of polygamous marriage, I have this
question: would such a claim hold up if the same argument were being
made in court on behalf of Warren Jeff’s child brides? I’m sure the
majority of WJ’s wives would tell you they are willingly practicing
God’s law and the law of the Priesthood to be in polygamous marriages.
Indeed, many of Jeff’s wives may be perfectly happy practicing
polygamy. However, if I were the prosecuting attorney, how long would
it take me to gather psychoanalytical testimony that these women, if not
coerced, were at least insulated from accepted codes of civil conduct
to the point that they were willing to break laws and moral codes to
follow amoral leaders?

Recently, National Geographic published an article on humanitarian efforts to ease the burden of child brides in third-world countries. One of the issues addressed is the difficulty for aid workers in swooping in and yanking these girls out of the only world they’ve ever known–one dominated completely by men and ancient law. Often when girls do get a chance to leave a horrible marriage, they do not because 1. they have no where else to go, and 2. they would be shunned by their communities and religious leaders for leaving a marriage sanctioned by God himself. I can appreciate that most of JS’s wives were adults (particularly the already-married ones), but they still would have been products of their time, their institutions, and their limited voice in the whole process.

I suspect in JS’s time, the onus would
have been on the women to show that they WERE coerced into unwanted
marriages to the prophet–especially within the ranks of the believing
members. Given a climate of male hierarchy and extremely limited women’s
rights, is it any wonder that many of these women “came around” to
accepting their polygamous marriages?

Reply
JT says:

October 9, 2011 at 1:20 am

Is anyone interested in volunteering to help transcribe these interviews?

Perhaps we could individually e-mail John Dehlin, he could form a list and, depending on how many there are, could divy out assignments.

(Perhaps breaking each episode into 20 minute segments).I would also suggest assigning a “checker” for each episode.Vote “like”or reply if interested.John, I hope I am not causing you a headache. It is just that these are particularly worth making available. This is a feature offered by another podcast that I enjoy and I find it particularly valuable. I have often thought I would like to have others transcribed as well.

Reply
1. JT says:
  
  October 10, 2011 at 4:57 pm
  
  I skipped over Episode 1 and went to Episode 2 – a selfish self appointment, but willing to share the fruits thereof when I finish.
  
  Reply
Jonah Swan says:

October 9, 2011 at 6:26 am

Which is more important:
That we feel free to openly discuss the problematic issues and our corresponding questions, or
That we feel free to openly state our conclusions?

The answer is: yes.

In this podcast, we never arrive at a discussion of the startling, theology-shattering conclusions because these scholars continue to avoid them. This is unfortunate because sooner or later the truth always prevails. As it continues to disclose itself, we will remain unprepared to discuss it and deal with it.

But, more importantly, I truly believe that we sacrifice important parts of ourselves when we fail to draw the obvious theology-shattering conclusions (e.g., the Book of Mormon is fiction). We effectively cut ourselves off from non-theological methodologies of knowing and become partial people.

Matthew Arnold scrutinized this tendency among religious observers in his essays “Culture and Anarchy,” observing:

“. . . the tendency in us to . . . sacrifice all other sides of our being to the religious side. This tendency has its cause in the divine beauty and grandeur of religion, and bears affecting testimony to them; but we have seen that it has dangers for us, we have seen that it leads to a narrow and twisted growth of our religious side itself, and to a failure in perfection.”

A part of ourselves should be fully attuned to the world–to the material world–and not exclusively to religion. Unfortunately, this tendency to bend our perception of reality to preconceived doctrinal beliefs evidences a theological pride that defiantly closes us off from the many secular ways of knowing such as logic, reason, science, evidentiary materialism, the “philosophies of men,” the opinions of others, human connectedness, culture, community, silent observation, disagreement, listening, poetry, intuition, creativity, imagination, human emotions, etc.

The truth requires that we access all our human capacities for knowing; that we become complete human beings. Unfortunately, we have become partial people, lopsided planets, wobbling and reeling out of orbit from the truth, destined for a cold and distant darkness.

Reply
1. david packard says:
  
  October 29, 2011 at 3:05 pm
  
  It’s more important for us members of the church to be free to discuss the problematic issues and corresponding questions. Conclusions regarding this topic don’t lend themselves to finality very well. They (the conclusions) are often tentative, and they often involve entanglement with complicated social relationships. We have to negotiate an intellectual, social, and spiritual world during this process, and this is a journey. Sharing conclusions mostly seem to be important after you’ve left, or after you’ve decided that you’re not going to think about it.
  
  By comparison, freedom to discuss the hard questions is essential for many people to be able to experience authentic worship, once one is made aware of all of the issues about the subject religion.
  
  I agree that the overwhelming human tendency to cut ourselves off from non-theological ways of discerning reality, once immersed in religion. You have a nice list of many of these ways, and all of them are important ways of embracing what life has to offer, and to have a good chance at knowing the universe has to offer. Singling out only one or two of these and being immersed into this a narrow range of these ways of knowing is limiting.
  
  But can’t this be blamed primarily on traditions (religious or not) had wield a lot of authority and are immersed in dogma that is intolerant to other ways of knowing and seeing the world? Cultures and traditions like this are all over the place. Maybe your point is that theology is more of a selfish epistemology, strangling out all other ways of knowing and experiencing. It sort of eats everything up in its path. My view is that it’s a culture of dogma, unquestionable assumptions, combined with social pressure that does this, which may or may not involve theology.
  
  The reason I am trying to make this distinction, I guess, is that a less dogmatic theology, one that is open to more possibilities but yet tries to acknowledge God’s intervention, seems like it doesn’t have to trump or strangle out all of those other (wonderful) ways of knowing and living life. Sure there will be inconsistencies and conflicts but most of that comes about because we’re using a dozen different methods.
  
  Reply
  1. Jonah Swan says:
    
    October 29, 2011 at 5:24 pm
    
    David,
    You’re right, that both dialogue and conclusions are important. Unfortunately, the dialogue is barely permissible in our culture and the conclusions entirely impermissible. A humble theology as you mention would be very interesting to me. Do you know of any?
    
    I seek to make a distinction: I’m not talking about theology, but theological pride–a pride that overvalues its theology at the expense of other ways of knowing and thus closes itself off from non-theological ways of knowing and from people who disagree.
    
    In this case, theological pride is not actually a theology; it’s a human weakness.   You’ve seen theological pride in Pastor Jeffress, but unfortunately, it’s always easier to see pride when we are the victims of its devaluations. We rarely see it when we ourselves are guilty of it.   In Mormonism, theological pride is alive and well, as when we see scholars and apologists still trying to defend the Book of Mormon’s historical authenticity when such an endeavor is absolutely pointless in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  
    
    I have witnessed the theologically proud make the following reactions to negative evidence that threatens or incriminates their beliefs:
    
    First, they summarily reject or ignore any evidence that appears to conflict with their religious beliefs (ostrich hiding its head);
    
    Second, they falsify the world when they bend reality—lie about reality—in order to force a fit with their preconceived religious beliefs;
    
    Third, they lazily accept the inadequate arguments of their apologetics;
    
    Fourth, they dismiss non-spiritual methodologies of knowing, like scientific inquiry;
    
    Fifth, they attack accusers and seek to discredit them on a personal basis; they devalue those who disagree with them. They and their theological system are the center of the universe and they regularly devalue those people who live outside of it.
    
    Sixth, they dishonestly claim that the issue is unimportant or irrelevant;
    
    Seventh, they intentionally limit the scope of what they can “know in this life” or intentionally obfuscate the truth while simultaneously offering to surrender to the notion that only God knows everything; that we simply cannot know; that we must walk by faith.
    
    Have you seen any other reactions/evidences of theological pride and its response to negative evidence?
    
    Reply
JT says:

October 10, 2011 at 7:03 pm

Around 29:00 minutes into Episode 2 John and Terryl begin a discussion about the nature of God from the theodicy angle.

I just want to point out what I found startling about the exchange leading into this.

Here’s the dialogue:

Dehlin: So, what is your belief in God? How do you shape it given the theodicy alone?

Givens: OK, I am glad that you asked this because to my mind this is Mormonism’s strongest suit. And this is what I find both intellectually compelling and exciting, but I also find it profoundly spiritually appealing. You know all you have to do is the most cursory review of the history of Christian theology and you confront time and time again a God who is the absolute embodiment of evil. … If that is God I reject him.

Dehlin: Or even the Old Testament God is … I have no interest in that God

Givens: [affirming reflectively] Even the Old Testament God …

Dehlin: I do not see that God. You know there’s this argument that the people prior to Christ were just ignorant and Stone Age foolish so that God had to treat them really harshly…You know, I don’t even want to sign up for that, I’m not even interested.

What I found startling was the lack of recognition that the Book of Mormon God “embodiment” of these nasty attributes.

Please open your Book of Mormon to 3 Nephi, Chapter 9. Start reading from verse 1 and stop when feel that maybe this is a God worth rejecting.

The same Jesus makes appearances in the Doctrine & Covenants as well.

Of course, there are simpler ways of making sense of all this….and none have anything to do with gods.

Reply
1. Kevin Christensen says:
  
  October 18, 2011 at 7:24 pm
  
  Interesting comments on an interesting portion of the podcast. The critical approach to 3 Nephi 9 (and the OT and D&C) here strikes me as similar to a Harry Potter reader (or character) who decides that the sole needful key to judging Professor Snape comes from the chapter on the astronomy tower in The Half Blood Prince.
  
  In 3 Nephi 9, and Mormonism generally, as in J. K. Rowling, there is more to to the story. A before and an after, all essential not only for understanding the significance of the astronomy tower, but many other things in Rowling’s books. Just so, there is a before and after, and a wider perspective, and other sources essential not only for understanding the significance of the events in 3 Nephi 9, but their meaning for the both the survivors, and the dead, whose disposition does not end there. I personally find things like Eliade’s Cosmos and History: The Myth of Eternal Return, quite helpful. Also comparisons of 3 Nephi to the Harrowing of Hell literature, which have so much in common as to suggest that the subsequent experiences of the dead would be much like the experiences of the survivors. Just in a different classroom, and perhaps a different teacher. Nibley’s “The Book of Enoch as Theodicy” is also relevant, in approaching related questions and offering solutions by telling more of the story, the before, and the after.. Also, I recommend Rene Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, the penultimate chapter on the “Two Fold Nietzchian Heritage.” Girard offers food for thought on methods, motives, and consequences of different ways we go about selecting from and generalizing about faith communities.
  
  FWIW,
  
  Kevin Christensen
  Pittsburgh, PA
  
  Reply
  1. JT says:
    
    October 20, 2011 at 7:03 pm
    
    My citation of 3 Nephi, Chapter 9 is but one example of the Jesus/God that spilled out of the mind of Joseph Smith – a mind besotted with the OT as much as the NT in all of its now tarnished bronze-age gory glory.
    
    Of course there is more to the gory glory story. And it can be found in all of the books of the Book of Mormon books leading up to and following 3 Nephi. So your Harry Potter analogy does not apply to me. How many proof-texts would you like?
    
    So, of course there are the sweet parts to go along with the 3rd Nephi sort of thing. But this variety rather points to Joseph producing a mash-up construal of God that makes Him seem bipolar. If we go forward a few chapters we find Smith’s children crushing and burning Jesus weeping over and blessing another batch. Again, it’s a ludicrous mash-up of a mind indiscriminately besotted with Bible images spread over 1000 years of different people’s myths.
    
    I am not sure why you need the help of Eliade, the Harrowing of Hell literature, Nibley, or Girard unless it is to rationalize what on face value is this cursing, vengeful, retributive face of Jesus that, while it obviously had some utility for Joseph Smith and his followers, generates dissonance to the modern mind. Did the Jesus speaking in 3 Nephi 9 expect the church members to turn to such authors as you cite to help them understand (i.e. resolve their dissonance)?
    
    I read the Book of Mormon straight through this past summer over a two-month period with no distractions from work. I used Grant Hardy’s Readers Edition. I referenced hundreds of passages and phrases that struck using the searchable on-line LDS scriptures, GoogleBooks, and Google n-gram. I read Grant Hardy’s Reader’s Guide. It was a very interesting exercise. I have now begun Skousen’s critical text version of the Book of Mormon.
    
    Now, I admit, I am no degreed sacred literature scholar, but I think I’ve developed a reasonably accurate preliminary (got that? I said preliminary) comprehensive character portrait of Joseph Smith’s God of the Book of Mormon – a portrait further augmented by his revelations in the Book of Commandments/Doctrine and Covenants. I would bet that my preliminary assessment is more informed that the person who cherry picks passages or gets them filtered by the Ensign or General Authorities. And I do not think the apologetic case that Terryl Givens makes – that it was all just 19th century religious rhetoric, no worse than anyone else -is adequate. Particularly when when the Lord is being directly quoted.
    
    Reply
    1. Kevin Christensen says:
      
      October 21, 2011 at 1:53 pm
      
      It seems to me that the Harry Potter’s wholly understandable, reasonable given his perspectives and experience, passionately negative view of Professor Snape does parallel your approach to Jesus in 3 Nephi 9. For me, it is not a matter of multiplying self-justifying proof-texts, but of finding illuminating contexts.
      
      Eliade provided me with a context for why the voice of God comes and recasts the recent disasters in a ritual context, showing that the actualize what the Year Rites everywhere dramatized. (I’ve published on this topic.in my “Paradigms Regained” essay.) Nibley, in his study of The Book of Enoch as Theodicy, in the first paragraph observes “It is equally easy and deceptive to fall into adolescent disillusionment,
      and with emancipated teachers to smile tolerantly at the simple gullibility
      of bygone days while passing stern moral judgment on the savage old tribal
      God who, overreacting with impetuous and sadistic violence, wiped out Noah’s
      neighbors simply for making fun of his boat-building on a fine summer’s day.”
      
      In the same essay Nibley observes “Though science has conceded an infinite number of possible viewpoints for
      describing any object, in practice it has always insisted that there is really
      only one valid viewpoint: the down-to-earth, no-nonsense reality of everyday
      experience. We see everything, as it were, through a long, thin tube set up
      at an immovable point and welded in position to face in one direction only.
      What do we know of reality? For two thousand years the doctors have allowed
      God in theory unlimited perception while taking it upon themselves to decide
      how things look from God’s point of view.”
      
      So the Enoch literature tells what went on before the disaster’s it describes, and what happens after for those caught in them: “The ultimate vindication of God’s goodness in Enoch is the final disposal of
      the issue. The fallen angels and their followers were to be cast into a special
      prison (cf. Moses 7:38) and kept in chains of darkness, but only for a certain
      set period of time, after which they were to be given another chance to repent
      (cf. Moses 7:39) and then stand a fair trial. Repentance would receive forgiveness
      through the power of the atonement. To make sure that they receive every opportunity
      of salvation, they receive the kerygma from the Lord himself (cf. Moses
      7:47), among others, who goes down to teach and deliver the very spirits who
      rejected Enoch’s teachings: “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins,
      the just for the unjust . . . quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went
      and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when
      once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah.” (1 Peter 3:18—20.)
      “Why art thou disquieted?” Michael asks Enoch. “That day is prepared
      . . . for sinners an inquisition . . . that the punishment of the Lord of Spirits
      may not be in vain. . . . Afterward the judgment shall take place according
      to his mercy and his patience.”
      
      The 3 Nephi teaching is very much like the Harrowing of Hell accounts. Which means that both the survivors and victims receive the same invitation and opportunity to repent. The moment of death is not the final, eternal, definitive meaning of life. Just a spot on a path.
      
      You ask, “Does the Jesus speaking in 3 Nephi 9 expect the church members to turn to such authors as you cite to help them understand (i.e., resolve their dissonance)” where cognitive dissonance is always something that happens to other people, one’s own perceptions being the obvious gold standard of clarity.
      
      Yes. Jesus does expect us to search out helpful insights from all sources. In 3 Nephi, Jesus tells the multitude that they cannot understand all his words, but must “prepare their minds for the morrow.” In 2 Nephi 25:1-5, Nephi says that we cannot understand the things of the Jews save we be taught after the manner of the Jews. To see what they saw, as Margaret Barker puts it, we have to stand where they stood. We have to read in cultural context. Presentist readings, and a hot button proof-text approach will not do if I really want to understand. To have my mind expanded, enlightened understanding, and my soul enlarged. To see that the word does not remain inert and dead, but actually changes while I watch, putting out both roots and buds, and branches, changing shape and meaning. In the D&C 88 we are told to “seek out of the best books words of wisdom,” not to sit like lumps on the assumption that we will be spoonfed, and never be caught off guard, and never, ever be disappointed by anyone. He says, “the best books”, not approved books, correlated books, or even Signature books.
      
      So Barker’s discussion of the theology of the Day of Atonement rituals provides an enlightening context for 3 Nephi for those who seek out the illumination. Those who do not obtain it, cannot benefit, even if the gift has been offered. “What was assumed by the New testament writers was a traditional understanding of the temple rituals and myths of atonement. When the rituals had ceased and
      the myths were no longer recognised for what they really were, the key to understanding the imagery of atonement was lost. It is recognised that certain concepts in the New testament such as covenant, righteousness, justification and grace must have been related to the central theme of atonement, but the overall pattern, it seems, has been lost.” And “To understand atonement we have to understand what the faith community believed was happening when the priests smeared and sprinkled blood, and when the high priest took blood into the holy of holies on the Day of Atonement and then brought it out again to smear and sprinkle around the holy places.”
      
      Further: “When the statutes and laws of the eternal covenant were broken, the fabric of the creation began to
      collapse and chaos set in. Total disregard for the statutes resulted in the return to chaos described in e.g. Isaiah 24.5: ‘The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant.’ Or
      Jeremiah 4.23: ‘I looked to the earth and lo it was waste and void; and to the heavens and they had no light’. Jeremiah sees the world returned to its pre-creation state. When the covenant was restored, the creation was renewed and returned to its original condition of
      salom and sedaqah/dikkaiosune.”
      
      Might that have some relevance for understanding 3 Nephi 8-9, and why the voice of Jesus soon announces a new creation. “Old things are done away, all things are become new.”
      
      Harry Potter, based on what he has seen and experienced on the Astronomy tower, and indeed, through much of his life at Hogwarts, would quite eagerly lead a lynch mob after Professor Snape. So Rene Girard’s ideas on the social mechanisms of such actions turn out to be most enlightening, particularly when considered alongside what readers of the The Deathly Hallows discover regarding the unlikable, unattractive, outcast, reject, Professor Snape. Snape is, according to Girard’s theories of violence in society, a perfect scapegoat, and J.K Rowling knows this. The important thing thing about the scapegoating process is that the guilt of the scapegoated figure is never questioned. All of the evidence is in. All of the accusers are united. And the stones fly without any consideration of whether their might be any vision-obscuring motes deserving of introspective consideration, whether to stand where he stood, and to see what he saw, might provide important information and enlightenment.
      
      Kevin Christensen
      Pittsburgh, PA
      
      Reply
RC says:

October 10, 2011 at 7:54 pm

I am 34 and have only been questioning things for about the past 2 months. After discovering the huge gap between what I was taught all my life about mormonism and a more complete historical record (which I am still learning), I have found myself much more interested in mormonism than ever before. Upon initial realization of this gap, my faith was dealt a major blow and I saw that, at a minimum, the lds church is not everything it claims to be.

There are just so many problems I was unaware of before allowing myself to consider that the church may not be what it says it is – the only true and living church on the face of the whole earth. I feel lucky to have stumbled on this site early on in my crisis of faith and have found some valuable ideas and perspectives that could allow a logically-minded person to be aware of all these issues and still maintain a level of faith as well as doubt.

Terryl’s comments on faith were helpful and make me wonder whether my own faith, while fragile and up against mountains of doubt, may perhaps be stronger than it was just a few months ago when the church was as true as the law of gravity.

Reply
1. Anonymous says:
  
  October 10, 2011 at 8:19 pm
  
  Great comment. Thanks, Ryan.
  
  Reply
2. Nelson Chung says:
  
  October 12, 2011 at 8:30 pm
  
  Thanks for sharing this, RC. I was interested in positive apologetics long before all these issues surfaced. That combined with a resevoir of spiritual experiences helped me avert a crisis.
  
  Reply
JT says:

October 11, 2011 at 1:26 am

On Abrahamic Tests, Polygamy, and theological naturalism(Picking up on Episode 2 – 48 minutes and 27 seconds):Givens: Yes, we use the expression Abrahamic test a lot, and we can mean very different things by that. Kierkegaard’s analysis suggests that an Abrahamic test is one in which we suspend the ethical, where we obey an authority at the cost to our own conscience.Dehlin: Yes, I don’t like that.Givens: Yes, and I’m not sure that that’s a virtuous decision. So I’m not sure, just like I haven’t made up my peace with polygamy. I believe that in some sense that was an Abrahamic test and to go back to your earlier reference to God, no I don’t believe that God has more than one wife. I don’t believe polygamy has any place in the eternal worlds.First, this reminds me of something Jesus was supposed to have said … in D&C 132, verse 51. “Verily, I say unto you: A commandment I give unto mine handmaid, Emma Smith, your wife, whom I have given unto you, that she stay herself and partake not of that which I commanded you to offer unto her; for I did it, saith the Lord, to prove you all, as I did Abraham, and that I might require an offering at your hand, by covenant and sacrifice.A little cryptic here, but I think there is reasonable historical evidence to suggest what the Lord (or Joseph) was referring to. If these were his words, it seems that indeed it was an Abrahamic test and at least the second instance.Second, Was Mary married to the God the Father when He impregnated her? Many prophets, seers and revelators spoke to the literalness and physicality of this conception and pregnancy. I am being serious, and not disrespectful, when I say this episode (at least) strikes me as so much theological flower arranging with equal amounts of selective insertion and pruning of the LDS canon to create a bouquet that only a British Romantic and Idealist would judge as offering such an exquisite balance of “evidence” that his naive overestimate of his intuitive sense of free choice makes belief in it a true moral virtue.Third,Dr. Given’s claim that Mormon theology is “compatible with naturalism” is completely unwarranted in any scientific (empirical) sense – which makes it misleading. There is nothing more to Mormon theology’s claim to naturalism than there is traditional Christianity’s claim to supernaturalism. Spirit “matter” has no stronger claim to reality (or rational sense) than good ol’ spirit spirit.. It has the same standing as any other extraordinary religious claim that cannot be (and perhaps is not supposed to be) objectively verified, like “I saw two personages standing above me in the air.”

Finally

I agree with Dawn64’s earlier comment. “Much of the conversation seems so surreal to me.”

Reply
1. JT says:
  
  October 11, 2011 at 1:44 am
  
  Ignore this – I posted above with better formatting success – although that may be all.
  
  Reply
JT says:

October 11, 2011 at 1:33 am

On Abrahamic Tests, Polygamy, and theological naturalism

(Picking up on Episode 2 – 48 minutes and 27 seconds):

Givens: Yes, we use the expression Abrahamic test a lot, and we can mean very different things by that. Kierkegaard’s analysis suggests that an Abrahamic test is one in which we suspend the ethical, where we obey an authority at the cost to our own conscience.

Dehlin: Yes, I don’t like that.

Givens: Yes, and I’m not sure that that’s a virtuous decision. So I’m not sure, just like I haven’t made up my peace with polygamy. I believe that in some sense that was an Abrahamic test and to go back to your earlier reference to God, no I don’t believe that God has more than one wife. I don’t believe polygamy has any place in the eternal worlds.

First, this reminds me of something Jesus was supposed to have said … in D&C 132, verse 51.

“Verily, I say unto you: A commandment I give unto mine handmaid, Emma Smith, your wife, whom I have given unto you, that she stay herself and partake not of that which I commanded you to offer unto her; for I did it, saith the Lord, to prove you all, as I did Abraham, and that I might require an offering at your hand, by covenant and sacrifice.

A little cryptic, I know, but I think there is reasonable historical evidence to indicate what the Lord (or Joseph) was referring to. If these were the Lord’s words, it seems that indeed it was an Abrahamic test and at least the second instance.

Second,

Was Mary married to the God the Father when He impregnated her? Many prophets, seers and revelators spoke to the literalness and physicality of this conception and pregnancy.

Third,

Dr. Given’s claim that Mormon theology is “compatible with naturalism” is completely unwarranted in any scientific (empirical) sense – which makes it misleading. There is nothing more to Mormon theology’s claim to naturalism than there is traditional Christianity’s claim to supernaturalism. Spirit “matter” has no stronger claim to reality (or rational sense) than good ol’ spirit spirit.. It has the same standing as any other extraordinary religious claim that cannot be (and perhaps is not supposed to be) objectively verified, like “I saw two personages standing above me in the air.

Finally,

I am being serious, and not disrespectful, when I say this episode (at least) strikes me as so much theological flower arranging with equal amounts of selective insertion and pruning of the LDS canon to create a bouquet that only a British Romantic and Idealist would judge as offering such an exquisite balance of “evidence” that his overestimated intuitive sense of free agency would allow making the feeling of choosing it a moral virtue.
I agree with Dawn64. Upon second listening, “Much of the conversation seems so surreal to me.”

Reply
JT says:

October 11, 2011 at 2:35 am

Around 49 minutes into Episode 2 John returns to the issue of belief choice being a moral matter. Dr. Givens then steps back to clarify his previous comments about belief becoming a moral choice only when a person is presented with a situation where the evidence “pro and contra” balance.

Here is the exchange:

JD: I do love the idea that belief exists outside the moral realm. Because I don’t like my disbelieving brothers and sisters being disrespected or judged.

TG: Right. Well, well, you know – what I described was an ideal circumstance right? … But earth is an uneven playing field. And depending on heredity, and environment, and upbringing, and intellectual proclivities, and what we happen to be exposed to the possibility of choosing faith in any one context might not really be plausible. And that’s why I can’t ever judge, and you can’t conclude anything from a person’s decision to believe or not believe, But I think that God is striving to create that balance so at some point in your life there will really be a choice, that you are free to make.

This represents a very interesting theological concession to modern science. I am not sure what can of works he is opening up theologically-speaking – it is worth careful consideration. I am aware that his attempt to preserve his theological notion of free will in the gap left for God’s “striving” is a gap that science is narrowing.

For those interested, consider the following short podcast interview of Dr. David Eagleman, a neuroscientist and author of an excellent popular science book on this subject: Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.

https://philosophybites.com/2011/05/david-eagleman-on-morality-and-the-brain.html

Reply
1. JT says:
  
  October 11, 2011 at 2:38 am
  
  typo: “What can of works he is opening” should read “what can of worms he is opening”
  
  Reply
  1. Anonymous says:
    
    October 13, 2011 at 2:10 am
    
    I believe you can actually do editing even after you have posted your commented. If your logged in just go back to that comment and it should give you the edit button as an option.
    
    Reply
Jason says:

October 11, 2011 at 3:02 am

Dr. Givens,

While you addressed one component of the problem of evil through the need to preserve free agency, this does not address another component of the problem of evil that believers have never answered to my satisfaction. Namely, how does one explain the evil of natural disasters? What are we to tell the Haitian mother who lost her child in an earthquake? For that matter, what good came from the dead child? What good is colliding with another good, as you worded the problem?

Humbly submitted, Jason

Reply
Anonymous says:

October 11, 2011 at 2:07 pm

RE: part 4

Plausible deniability……the anti mormons do the same. We can’t prove anything about a destroyed disapeared ancient peoples.

And Dehlin you do it here too when speaking about the first versions of the first vision.

You also do this when speaking about the treasure digging but Joseph Smith answered those false allegations in his bio that we have today in the Pearl of Great Price. And fact he never found treasure points to the falseness of most of these treasure allegations, since it was nothing more than a contracted summer job.

(By the way I now realise why I found the first couple of podcast here so boring…..its Given’s voice and why of speaking, it put me to sleep more than kept me going at 11pm odd. Maybe you can suggest he take a few oratory classes to keep students awake, cause I wouldn’t be able to! )

Reply
Dell says:

October 11, 2011 at 3:49 pm

Steel….. actually stainless steel wasn’t developed back then but steel, as an alloy of iron with something else, has been around since 2000BC

Steel of the poor quality the nephites had would have long ago rusted away.

But people keep confusing ‘steel’ of the BoM with ‘stainless steel’ invented during the 1800’s industrial revolution ie after Smith wrote the BoM. by the way…

Reply
1. Jacob Brown says:
  
  October 13, 2011 at 2:42 am
  
  No, really. I don’t think it is a confusion of stainless (high chromium) steel and plain steel. It’s really not that simple. The development of steel was a very long process that had many difficult steps. Different peoples developed or adopted the technology at different times. There is evidence that people of Mesopotamia developed steel as early as 900 B.C., but other places didn’t come upon it until much later.
  
  I believe the problem is that there is no archeological evidence that the Native Americans during the time covered by the Book of Mormon had any such technology. The Book of Mormon talks about fine steel, precious steel, smelting ore with bellows and fire, melting ore, etc.
  
  I believe the consensus among experts is that pre-Columbian Native Americans rarely used metal at all. When they did, it was for ornamental stuff. Some tribes seem to have had access to meteoric iron (hematite) that they could beat into small blades or spear heads. But this doesn’t require the smelting required to make steel that is described in a couple locations in the Book of Mormon.
  
  Reply
Anonymous says:

October 12, 2011 at 4:52 am

Teryl, why don’t you start an all new reformed latter-latter day saint church? A modern day reformation where your emotive romantic can slay-with-great-slaughter the irrationally rational natural man. A religion where Magic is more than sleight-of-hand because You say it is. You have many followers, like the moderator and eliza, who profess a love for everything You, and your faith outshines the faith we learn in sunbeams. I want to believe you will have the courage to nail a thesis to a door in SLC. I love your take on the tautology of prophecy where a fallible prophet can put his alleged penis into more than one alleged vagina and still have his calling and election made sure.

In your calling, as professor of religion, can you explain what Joseph Smith shares in common with other martyred charismatics (e.g. Lord Byron, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite)? On that note why read Byron when you can read Bukowski?

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Nathan says:

October 12, 2011 at 6:59 pm

Does anyone have a source for the quote by Spencer W Kimball asking for forgiveness if they were wrong about the policy of priesthood restriction that was mentioned by Terryl?

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Chris Hansen says:

October 13, 2011 at 6:14 pm

I believe that it was in this interview that John was discussing that peep stones aren’t discussed much in the church and asked the question – why did the church decide that peep stones are weirder to talk about than using a urim and thummim to translate? I’ve been thinking about that a lot and had a few thoughts.

I agree that one isn’t really “weirder” than the other. Rather, the reason might be more related to accessibility. No one has a urim and thummim, but anyone can find a rock or stick and claim to receive revelations through it. The early church had a few problems with people such as Hiram Page and Oliver Cowdery giving revelation through peep stones or divining rods which conflicted with the revelations Joseph Smith received. They ground Hiram Page’s peep stone to dust, but really that act itself wouldn’t have stopped him from finding another rock and continuing the practice.

By eliminating peep stones and diving rods from discussions about the revelatory process and focusing on the urim and thummim, the church can eliminate or reduce the problem of members receiving conflicting revelation. If I were to take a stone from my garden and tell my ward that I had received revelation through it, no one would take me seriously since no one believes that such a thing can even happen. If, however, the church was still openly discussing or using peep stones, people would be more comfortable with the concept and might believe me.

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Chris Hansen says:

October 13, 2011 at 6:16 pm

I believe that it was in this interview that John was discussing that peep stones aren’t discussed much in the church and asked the question – why did the church decide that peep stones are weirder to talk about than using a urim and thummim to translate? I’ve been thinking about that a lot and had a few thoughts.I agree that one isn’t really “weirder” than the other. Rather, the reason might be more related to accessibility. No one has a urim and thummim, but anyone can find a rock or stick and claim to receive revelations through it. The early church had a few problems with people such as Hiram Page and Oliver Cowdery giving revelation through peep stones or divining rods which conflicted with the revelations Joseph Smith received. They ground Hiram Page’s peep stone to dust, but really that act itself wouldn’t have stopped him from finding another rock and continuing the practice.By eliminating peep stones and diving rods from discussions about the revelatory process and focusing on the urim and thummim, the church can eliminate or reduce the problem of members receiving conflicting revelation. If I were to take a stone from my garden and tell my ward that I had received revelation through it, no one would take me seriously since no one believes that such a thing can even happen. If, however, the church was still openly discussing or using peep stones, people would be more comfortable with the concept and might believe me.

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1. JT says:
  
  October 17, 2011 at 1:00 pm
  
  Chris,
  
  This is a very interesting question. Perhaps it relates to our psychological biases toward authority and the experience of the transcendent.
  
  A few speculations:
  
  People tend to accept uncritically the pronouncements of the high status authority figures of their group.
  
  But authority figures need to leverage their authority with something greater than themselves – the group’s meaning-maing and identity-making traditions and myths.
  
  This is because the rank-and-file will not abide their leaders taking too much authority unto themselves. For instance, have you ever thought about why U.S. Presidents always end their pronouncements with “may God bless our the USA.” I think this points to our evolved social psychology.
  
  But at the same time the rank-and-file want the magic and they want their leaders specially connected to it more than they experience themselves to be. They want something more than what they find in their own mundane existence, not the least of which is prospect of mundane death.
  
  So,
  
  With the Urim and Thummin Joseph leveraged the authority of Bible with all of its ancient mythic elements. It connected him to prophets of old and their mighty miracles. All things ancient are wonderfully possible and allow us to safely believe without challenge (including from ourselves).
  So, yes, anyone can find a rock and claim they provide purely contemporary spiritual conduits. But Joseph Smith “stole the show” by leveraging the authority of the only certifiably magical ancient Biblical relics.It is the same principle as using King James English to “transmit” the Book of Mormon. It’s the same principle as calling down Peter, James and John to bestow priesthood authority.This, I think, was the genius of Joseph Smith (and/or Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Cowdery). They recognized the power of borrowed authority that was incarnate, not simply the residue passed on in the inanimate pages of scripture. People conflate the boldness of Mormonism for its truth. I remember feeling this as a kid. The mere audacity of it counts as evidence. But this is a separate subject.Thanks for your comment.JT
  
  Reply
david packard says:

October 17, 2011 at 10:00 pm

Terryl Givens makes a rather unique point: we are placed by God into circumstances where we have an authentic choice between two (roughly) equally plausible narratives. Basically one of those choices involves faith in God and in the restored gospel, and the other involves skepticism and an unwillingness to make the move without better evidence. He indicates that our choice between these options is the best reflection of what we love, and this is why such choice involves a moral choice. I think I understand his point, and it contrasts sharply from the counter-point that intellectual honesty (requiring extraordinary claims to be supported by extraordinary evidence) seems to be the way most of the rest of responsible living proceeds (at least in my experience_. He mentioned that this idea is expressed in a talk he gave called “Lightening out of Heaven,” and I remember this talk in a BYU magazine where Givens expresses basically the same point. This is something worth thinking about. Importantly, he side-steps the circularity that would result if one were to point to a scripture stating the same thing, and instead he makes the case by appealing to intuition and logic. Overall, I really enjoyed his perspective. A fair amount of twists and turns to accommodate a rocky Mormon history, but also Givens demonstrates a lot of refreshing honesty and frankness as well. Having this perspective is invaluable for Mormons like me. Thanks, John and Dr. Givens!

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Swede says:

October 19, 2011 at 10:03 am

Let Terryl Givens, Richard Bushman, Greg Prince and Michael Quinn be our new leaders and help the church drop the 1950 mentality and lead us in the future, with truth and love as the theme.

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Anonymous says:

October 19, 2011 at 10:10 pm

Dr. Givens claims that the problem of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon is a non-issue because the believers didn’t think the way they saw the book “undermined” the validity of the experience.

Well, I didn’t question my spiritual experiences at the time they occurred, either. It was only after I allowed myself to stand back and be objective that I saw the truth. Expecting believers to question something that lived up to what they were conditioned to experience is, in my opinion, a rather week defense. Some people claim psychic surgery healed them. That they don’t question the experience makes psychic surgery a valid medical treatment? Some people believe they’ve been abducted by aliens. They don’t question their experiences either. So…. alien abduction is real?

Further, we don’t know what those witnesses thought privately to themselves. They could EASILY have doubted the experience later in their lives. We simply do not know… so it’s not proof for or against the issue.

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1. Anonymous says:
  
  October 20, 2011 at 12:15 am
  
  While I get what your saying and I obviously have no way to determine what your previous spiritual experiences were I am always skeptical when people believe they can be so absolutely objective as determine to the Truth. I try to apply this both to believers and non-believers. A common theme I hear is that because we know the biological / psychological pressures that stimulate spiritual experiences in the body that that somehow invalidates them. I could apply the same logic to how I felt when my children were born, or how I feel about my parents and my wife. While I recognize that our bodies are the way in which we experience everything, there are ways to construct a spiritual view that is harmony with that information. Is love any less real because we dissect its parts? If I’ve learned anything reading about cognitive science is that we only partially see the present and are constantly re-imaging the past.
  
  I can’t speak to the proof for or against the witnesses but I know that during the podcast with Daniel Peterson he mentioned a book regarding that and for him he thought it was one strongest cases for the BOM. Anyone remember what the name of that book was?
  
  Reply
2. Anonymous says:
  
  October 21, 2011 at 7:49 pm
  
  Heather
  
  Actually we do know that the witnesses doubted their experience later in their lives. Brigham Young even confirmed this when he said:
  
  “Some of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, who handled the plates and conversed with the angels of God, were afterwards left to doubt and to disbelieve that they had ever seen an angel.” (Journal of Discourses 1860, 7:164)
  
  Despite what Dr. Givens says many believers did think the problem of the witnesses “undermined” the validity of the experience. For example this is a statement from a former Mormon leader Stephen Burnett dated April 15, 1838:“I have reflected long and deliberately upon the history of this church and weighed the evidence for & against it-loath to give it up-but when I came to hear Martin Harris state in public that he never saw the plates with his natural eyes only in vision or imagination, neither Oliver nor David & also that the eight witnesses never saw them & hesitated to sign that instrument for that reason, but were persuaded to do it, the last pedestal gave way, in my view our foundations was sapped & the entire superstructure fell a heap of ruins,… I was followed by W. Parish, Luke Johnson & John Boynton, all of whom concurred with me. After we were done speaking, M Harris arose & said he was sorry for any man who rejected the Book of Mormon for he knew it was true, he said he had hefted the plates repeatedly in a box with only a tablecloth or handkerchief over them, but he never saw them only as he saw a city through a mountain. And said that he never should have told that the testimony of the eight was false, if it had not been picked out of him but have let it passed as it was…”
  
  “I have reflected long and deliberately upon the history of this church and weighed the evidence for & against it-loath to give it up-but when I came to hear Martin Harris state in public that he never saw the plates with his natural eyes only in vision or imagination, neither Oliver nor David & also that the eight witnesses never saw them & hesitated to sign that instrument for that reason, but were persuaded to do it, the last pedestal gave way, in my view our foundations was sapped & the entire superstructure fell a heap of ruins,… I was followed by W. Parish, Luke Johnson & John Boynton, all of whom concurred with me. After we were done speaking, M Harris arose & said he was sorry for any man who rejected the Book of Mormon for he knew it was true, he said he had hefted the plates repeatedly in a box with only a tablecloth or handkerchief over them, but he never saw them only as he saw a city through a mountain. And said that he never should have told that the testimony of the eight was false, if it had not been picked out of him but have let it passed as it was…”
  
  Reply
  1. Anonymous says:
    
    October 21, 2011 at 8:06 pm
    
    Wow.
    
    Reply
    1. Swede says:
      
      October 21, 2011 at 8:39 pm
      
      Wow as world of warcraft or word of wisdom….. :)
      
      Reply
    2. Jonah Swan says:
      
      October 21, 2011 at 9:19 pm
      
      Yes, for sure. Thanks MRT01. WOW as in one of the greatest contributions that Grant Palmer made from my perspective. Palmer really did a great job of digging up stuff like this quote from Burnett and others. This quote comes from the “Three Witnesses” chapter in “Insider’s View” which really exposes the three witnesses as unreliable at best.
      
      Reply
      1. Anonymous says:
        
        October 22, 2011 at 5:19 am
        
        Funny enough I picked up By The Hand of Mormon earlier this week and just got to pages 39-42 where he discusses the witnesses. I think roughly the same discussion is in Rough Stone Rolling too. He talks about the spiritual eyes reference that Martin Harris made, but there is no discussion of the others denying it or using the spiritual eyes wording. I did a Google search and found the reference MRT01 above, as well a lengthy discussions of other anonymous regarding the witnesses and possible issues. Nothing really stuck out as much as the quote from Burnett, but I sort of skimmed it all. Then I did the corresponding search for Burnett from FAIR and after a bit found this which directly talks about it. https://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2004_Explaining_Away_the_Book_of_Mormon_Witnesses.html
      2. Anonymous says:
        
        October 22, 2011 at 7:36 am
        
        sunndance –
        
        Other Book of Mormon witnessess besides Martin Harris did use “spiritual eyes wording” to describe their experience. David Whitmer’s testimony spoke of the angel and gold plates in visionary terms. In 1885 he was interviewed by Zenas Gurley. Gurley asked if Whitmer knew that the plates were real metal. Whitmer said:
        
        “We did not touch nor handle the plates…The table had the appearance of literal wood as shown in the vision, in the glory of God… I also saw the ‘interpreters’ in the holy vision”. (Zenas H. Gurley, Jr., Interview with David Whitmer on January 14, 1885.)
        
        David Whitmer also said: “Of course we were in the spirit when we had the view, for no man can behold the face of an angel, except in a spiritual view.” (Anthony Metcalf, Ten Years Before the Mast (Malad, Idaho: A. Metcalf, 1888, 74. The Saints’ Herald, 28 January 1936.)
        
        John Whitmer who was one of the eight witnesses said in 1839: “They were shown to me by a supernatural power.”
      3. Jonah Swan says:
        
        October 22, 2011 at 6:04 pm
        
        The idea that you couldn’t find anything other than Burnett’s quote is astonishing to me. Suggestion: Type “Book of Mormon Witnesses” into Google, hit return, and then read everything you see, both pro and con. Second, buy Grant Palmer’s book “Insider’s View of Mormonism” and read the chapter on the Three Witnesses.
        
        There’s so much stuff that I don’t really want to list it here. Also, I decided that this kind of legwork is an important part of the journey that each person should take on their own. Doubt should be self-generated. Epiphanies should be self-generated.
      4. Jhs66 says:
        
        October 22, 2011 at 7:40 pm
        
        Loved your last three sentences there. So true, Jonah Swan. Nothing can be as persuasive or damning as taking the time to do your own homework. To me, the claims of Mormonism fall in the details. And details take time.
  2. Jhs66 says:
    
    October 22, 2011 at 7:33 pm
    
    Thank you for sharing this quotation. I have never seen anything like it. As John said, “Wow.”
    
    Reply
3. Anonymous says:
  
  October 24, 2011 at 2:50 pm
  
  Yeah, I love this reasoning. Testimonies aren’t proof because they might have privately doubted.
  
  Reply
  1. Anonymous says:
    
    October 25, 2011 at 2:40 pm
    
    I’m not sure if I’m just reading your response as snarky or if you intended it to be so.
    
    But, either way, I stand by my previous comment.
    
    I never said that testimony regarding what someone saw/did/heard isn’t valid evidence for consideration. I said it’s unreasonable for Givens to claim the witnesses never questioned their experiences. He has no way of knowing whether they did or not.
    
    Reply
Anonymous says:

October 20, 2011 at 5:41 pm

I’m nearing the end of the final segment of this interview. John & Dr. Givens are discussing all of the members who have fallen away from the church.

I don’t know about the experience of others…. but it’s been my experience that TBMs don’t think people are falling away because the church is doing a poor job of religious education. They think members are falling away because this is the end of days and “even the elect will be deceived.”

Personally, I think that viewpoint is driving the church far more than the notion that it must change the way it teaches church history.

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1. Anonymous says:
  
  October 20, 2011 at 5:43 pm
  
  I see it all around me. SEVERAL of my friends and family spent days demonizing apostates on their facebook walls after general conference.
  
  Reply
Jake63 says:

October 21, 2011 at 1:53 am

John and Terryl,

God bless you both. That was enlightening, painful and satisfying all at once. I listened to all podcasts twice during my commute and will be purchasing some TG books very soon!

This was, by far, my favorite set of podcasts on MS, which is saying something because there have been some doozies. Many, many thanks.

Jake

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1. david packard says:
  
  October 22, 2011 at 12:57 am
  
  Ditto. One of the best, from my perspective, if not the best MS podcast. For those of us who feel the (perhaps healthy) tension between John’s quite frank and fair questions and Terryl’s thoughtful answers from a perspective of faith, this was spot on. I know some rationally-minded people probably find John’s questions way too forgiving with Terryl’s answers completely undeserving of serious attention. I also know that (on the other end of the spectrum) many or most orthodox LDS would find this dialogue so troubling from the outset that they would call the whole thing apostate, and it would shake their faith down to the core (thus, most of these folks would not listen to it). But for the relatively few of us who find themselves sort of in the middle of the continuum, wanting to keep it honest, yet willing to consider a world view where reality exists beyond the phenomenal experience, this dialogue revealed a valuable perspective on a number of aspects of Mormonism. John, I don’t think Terryl’s insight and perspective would have been nearly as relevant or accessible to me without your soft, yet persistent pounding away at some of the big / stubborn issues. My favorite part: “holy men” that ye know not of. Wow!
  
  Reply
  1. Anonymous says:
    
    October 22, 2011 at 3:51 am
    
    Wow! Thanks, David! I really appreciate the kind words.
    
    Reply
JT says:

October 22, 2011 at 2:11 am

I am not going to like myself in the morning – cause I’m about to rant.

Some time earlier I posted a comment about the mashup-Jesus that Joseph Smith extracted from his OT/NT besotted brain, with 3 Nephi 9 being a prime example. This is prompted by the apologetic stylings of Kevin Christiansen.

Here is the centerpiece of Kevin Christiansen’s pedantic theodcian musings.

“Eliade provided me with a context for why the voice of God comes and recasts the recent disasters in a ritual context.”

First, something about Kevin’s response made me suspect that he thought I was offended by the Book of Mormon’s construal of God/Jesus. Not true. I’m a non-theist now. However, what does offend me is the manipulation of people accomplished by religious institutions that perpetuate retributive gods and, even more so, those who paint lipstick on them.

Anyone interested can read what I said and his response or stop here. I stand by my original points. Indeed, I think Kevin unwittingly confirms them. Of course I do, just like I can’t help myself from piling on a few more – notwithstanding how mean and ornery I’ll feel in the morning.

Kevin’s argument suites a slim slice of Mormondom – a slice that is not the target audience for the Book of Mormon’s rhetoric about how to draw God’s favor or fire. He may have enough education, time, and sufficient respect for modernity to call on Enoch literature, the “Hounds of Hell,” Hugh Nibley and Margaret Barker to rein in God’s fury. But that’s not how it was intended to work – and that’s not how it does work on the minds of most people, both when it was published and today.

I see Kevin as complicit in perpetuating what this “plain and simple” harmful message of “obey and prosper/disobey and suffer” – a mythical dichotomy having zero empirical support (“just world” fallacy). There is no question that this is what the Book of Mormon insufferably pounds away at from start to finish. And if those Jesus-appropriated earthquakes, fires, and choking vapors of 3 Nephi 9 were not enough, then the intentional constraining of Alma from saving innocent women and children from being burned alive – just so that “the judgments which he shall exercise upon [the bad guys] in his wrath may be just.” (Alma 14:11) – tops it.

Perhaps Kevin should fly down to Haiti and get a first hand view of what a real disaster does to real people. I would advise that he not try to console them with theological musings about how God will make it all up to them in the afterlife. They might not appreciate that their lives are but “spots on earth” despite how it works for him.

Indeed, this all too easy discounting of human suffering betrays the cheapness and self-centered blindness of this theodicy. It seems to work best for those susceptible to promises of special spiritual privilege – which Mormons creatively justify with valiant acts in their imaginary pre-mortal lives.

This is a doctrine that makes of the vast majority of human beings mere props in a world carefully arranged for the chosen few’s fair free agency test – a test of a pathetically circumscribed by the ideal of comfortable suburban homes.

But, it’s really worse than this, or at least potentially, and certainly historically. This theology of implicit human discounting is part and parcel of most authoritarian in-group ideologies that carry within them the seeds of atrocity. All that’s needed to trigger their horror show is enough out-group threat and a supreme leader who takes his calling too seriously. The faithful are set up to be easily rallied to fight the infidel (or Gentile) to the death. Didn’t Joseph Smith and Brigham Young walk up to this edge? What if they had a few more guns and a bigger militia? How close did the first Mormons come to really getting exterminated in Missouri and Utah?

I noticed that Terryl Givens waxed elegant about salvation for all. Perhaps it IS the kindest and gentlest in the history of Christian theology (including what the Book of Mormon describes). But Givens failed to distinguish salvation from exaltation – no trivial omission. Mormon salvation just “ain’t all that.” It’s a simple matter of three degrees. As we all know, if don’t believe and do the right things when presented the opportunity (and whose to say that you haven’t been), your eternal accommodation is downgraded installed with celestial glass ceiling. The real world consequences ar real anxiety over eternally split families and a pervasive preoccupation with “making the grade” in tightly prescribed and duly and recorded ways.

3 Nephi 9 is simply one of the bigger sticks in a “carrot and stick” culture – and not so unique. It’s part and parcel of an impoverished dichotomous worldview that most authoritarian religions use to preserve and grow their institutions and that people fall in step with because they need their local group more than they do not need the institution and its myths. Fear is part of the price of hope and security – oversimplification notwithstanding, its cultura/religious economics.

I’m almost done here…

Kevin quotes Hugh Nibley:

“It is equally easy and deceptive to fall into adolescent disillusionment, and with emancipated teachers to smile tolerantly at the simple gullibility of bygone days while passing stern moral judgment on the savage old tribal God who, overreacting with impetuous and sadistic violence, wiped out Noah’s neighbors simply for making fun of his boat-building on a fine summer’s day.”

Can you hear smugness? Can you see Nibley posing his erudition in a mirror that does not reflect the vast majority of the Church? Kevin evidently follows suite. It seems to me that is the Mormonism delivered for mass consumption that most certainly is the epitome of “adolescent gullibility” and is stuck “in the bygone days of moral judgment of the savage old tribal god.” This is the tribal God that lurks in Mormonism’s “most correct book.”

Kevin’s apologetics point to the worse aspect of religious institutions: They cannot drop bad ideas gracefully – and Mormonism has set itself up to do this especially badly.

I’ve heard faithful Mormons say in the face these problems, “You don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.” It strikes me that this has simply led to a failure to change the bathwater – even after the first babies crapped in it so many brothers and sisters took their turn.

Nope, you can’t throw out the bathwater – better to add a bit more “soft soap.” If you stir it hard enough you can still get some bubbles to cover it over.

JT

Reply
1. Anonymous says:
  
  October 22, 2011 at 5:42 am
  
  I think this sort of relates to the issue your talking about.
  
  What did you think about the way Hardy “reads against the grain” in his book Understand the BOM? His ability to scrutinize the narrators using just the text was liberating, but at same time I found myself thinking (or rather feeling) much like you describe above. Am I meant to read that close to it just to make sense of it? Is this even what was intended or are we just inventing meaning to fit our current morals? But then that seemed to be exactly what the narrator “Nephi”, regardless of who is the actual author, was doing as well as he bent the scriptures to fit his interpretation and needs. I felt like it definitively opened a door in which I could turn the whole book on its head, and if I tried hard enough make it mean something different.
  
  The “carrot and stick” culture is seems to be Mormon’s handy work, and Hardy exposes instances where he has to cover the messy details that don’t fit.
  
  Reply
  1. JT says:
    
    October 23, 2011 at 12:00 am
    
    Sundance,
    
    I appreciate what Grant Hardy accomplished in both his “Understanding the Book of Mormon” and his “The Reader’s Edition of the Book of Mormon.” I think he delivers on his stated purposes with integrity and transparency. I would encourage everyone to visit Amazon.com and read his introductions to these books.
    
    As you know Hardy invites readers to consider the Book of Mormon on its own terms as a literary work. His approach is not simply ecumenical, but honors Spinoza’s wonderful dictum, “Non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere!” I think I remember Hardy sticking to the text and not turning to esoteric outside sources to make a case for either its historicity or theology. He did not stand between the reader and the textual evidence.
    
    I would have to go back to his book for specific examples of his “reading against the grain.” I just don’t remember anything that came across as a strained apologetic, if that is what you meant.
    
    With regard to your questions: “Am I meant to read that close to it just to make sense of it?” and “Are we just inventing meaning to fit our current morals?”
    
    I do not think the Book of Mormon merits a close reading in terms of making theological sense of it. One might argue that this would be a serious problem for any revealed religion with universal promises. This was the nub of criticism of Christiansen’s apologetics which is to say, yes, he is in a way “inventing meaning” by re-contextualzing. I think this is called hermeneutics. I spoke my opinion on this.
    
    (I want to add that after a good night’s sleep, and reminding myself of Spinoza, I find myself interested in re-considering Christiansen’s approach and perspective– which means I will and that I am willing to reconsider my opinion if there is good reason to.)
    
    That said, I DO think The Book of Mormon merits a close reading to make literary sense of it. Its coherence and complexity is impressive (notwithstanding its other literary shortcomings). Such an analysis should be informed by expertise, just as the analysis of a complex microorganism should be informed by scientific expertise. This is what Grant Hardy provides and is what I found so interesting and informative.
    
    However, if the “truth” of the Book of Mormon’s origins and content are the issue … well that’s another matter. But here Hardy’s close reading and analysis is still relevant.
    
    I’m a scientist by training and disposition. The naturalistic assumption that science must make tends to overflow into my metaphysics (even as I try to be metaphysically agnostic). That’s just my prerogative.
    
    Given this, I don’t abide “arguments from incredulity.” In other words, I don’t move toward belief along such a faulty line of reasoning as:
    
    With this evidence at my disposal –> I just can’t imagine how Joseph could have done it himself –> Therefore it must be supernatural.
    
    Indeed, I think that anyone who finds spiritual support in this type of argument ought to question the status of his or her testimony.
    
    So anyway …
    
    Since I don’t indulge in “arguments from incredulity,” then I must take careful literary analysis into evidence for (or against) any “naturalistic” Book of Momon authorship theory I might consider.
    
    And furthermore, since Hardy’s analysis points to multiple authors (i.e. three distinct narrative voices plus transcribed epistles, etc), then a multiple authorship hypothesis is worthy of (if not demanding of) consideration.
    
    This should motivate me, or anyone else so inclined, to find the best theory of Book of Mormon Origins, to test the multiple author hypothesis by pushing the literary analysis further and pursuing complementary lines of evidence, such as historical-critical analysis or stylometric analysis.
    
    Where would this lead? – To the best naturalistic theory.
    
    What does that mean? – The most plausible accounting of all the evidence.
    
    What assumptions underlie that judgement? – Whatever ones allow you to NOT see the world as the creation of some pious fraud God who makes it appear too ludicrous to bear.
    
    If you can’t believe that the earth was created in 6 days (literally), then you know what this feels like.
    
    Terryl Givens identified a construal of God that he was ready to reject (hear episode 2, about 29 minutes in). Perhaps this is the same feeling I experience when it comes to both the Book of Mormon and gods generally. I do not know the basis for his rejection. I do not pretend to know completely the basis for mine. But I am confident that it has been augmented by a thoughtful evaluation of a lot of evidence and is sustained by something akin to the assumptions I just indicated.
    
    Cheers
    
    JT
    
    Reply
    1. Anonymous says:
      
      October 23, 2011 at 1:19 am
      
      What I meant by reading against the grain, which I believe was the phrase Hardy used in the first section dealing with Nephi where he shows what Nephi said and didn’t say to tease out instances where perhaps it was Nephi who too harsh and one sided in his narration, and his brothers weren’t as bad as he makes them out to be. And maybe Lehi wasn’t always as pleased with him as we would normally think.
      
      Hardy then did this again when he shows examples where Mormon purposely doesn’t deal with facts that would run counter the point(s) he trying to make.
      
      So what I’m really driving out as you read against the grain and see that these narrators are flawed and have agendas just like anyone else, then it opens yet another dimension in which to interpret the theology of the book itself. So regardless if its a work of fiction or not the author(s) own bias have to be dealt with.
      
      I’d have to go back to the book which I’ve been planning to do but to be honest I don’t get as much time as I want to deal with all this stuff. That’s why I love the podcasting and audiobook because I can listen at work. I just did google the term (literally right now after writing the last sentence) and there is an article that actually points a few more of the reading against the grain things Hardy discussed in his book. So, yes it definitively a term he used and not one I made up.
      https://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2011/08/a-review-of-grant-hardys-understanding-the-book-of-mormon/
      
      Anyways, thanks for your thoughts.
      
      Reply
      1. JT says:
        
        October 23, 2011 at 2:29 pm
        
        Thanks Sundance,
        
        I hope I didn’t lead you to think that I was questioning Hardy’s use of the term “reading against the grain.” I meant that I could not remember specific examples, and that I simply had no memory of instances in which such “reading” that came across as a “strained apologetic” for his personal beliefs.You wrote:”So what I’m really driving out as you read against the grain and see that these narrators are flawed and have agendas just like anyone else, then it opens yet another dimension in which to interpret the theology of the book itself. So regardless if its a work of fiction or not the author(s) own bias have to be dealt with.”I agree. In principle, just because a writer’s words are engraved on gold plates – and they get to us via an angel and seer – doesn’t mean the words did not originate in a brain that expresses biases, ambivalent feelings, etc. And since we can’t interrogate Nephi, Mormon and Moroni, we have to do our best to interpret their meanings, including theological.So, I guess I am offering Christiansen a little more room for his approach. (Two good nights of sleep can do that!)This does make the debate more sophisticated and substantive IF both sides find common ground in this paradigm. And I guess I am ready to do that.So, within this paradigm I would hope both sides agree that we can expect something more from a writer who claims divine inspiration (or who virtually quotes God). So disagreements become centered, in part, on what “more” means and what greater degree is plausible . The naysayer will argue the writing falls short of its claims and will point to anachronisms and other implausibilities.But the apologist will find parallels in the ancient literature, such as “ritualizing context” in reporting natural disasters.At every “weigh station” the apologist will be able to distill a sufficient residue of truth from his argument – while the naysayer will disagree. FOr one thing, they use different balances. The believer’s balance also registers personal “spiritual” evidence – which breaks the common paradigm. The nay sayer’s balance registers other forms of bias (feelings of betrayal, for instance) but bravely sticks to the objective – despite it’s limitations and uncertainties.And on it goes…one eternal round ;)Yup, a close reading does complicate things, but I think in a legitimate direction. But, it is also a direction that can be pushed too far. As I said in my previous response, it cannot be pushed so far that it demands belief in a world too ludicrous to bear. Ozproof’s recent comment speaks to this.I do not think Hardy was not asking the “truth” question. He was simply trying to show that the narrators have more to reveal about themselves than what a cursory (or non expert) reading would turn up. In other words he was not asking the reader to decide that it was “really” Nephi or Joseph Smith. This is what I appreciated.But hardy does leave us is more data to work with. As I said, that data can be used to either support faith or inform a theory of it being fiction.If you accept the orthodox view that Joseph Smith alone translated the gold plates by “the gift and power of God,” then Hardy’s work supports this in terms it being even more impressive a work – it reinforces as “argument of incredulity” which I argue is problematical, though I understand the power of it.If you don’t accept the orthodox view, then his work supports a multiple-author theory with a hidden manuscript.Thanks for the exchange,JT
        
        P.S. Getting back to your earlier instructions for going back and editing a comment … do I have to register for something to get this feature? I don’t see how it’s done. Thanks.
      2. JT says:
        
        October 23, 2011 at 2:31 pm
        
        Gee whiz. I lost all my returns! I’m going to repost. I’ve had success typing a draft into my gmail and cutting and pasting
      3. JT says:
        
        October 23, 2011 at 2:39 pm
        
        Thanks Sundance,
        
        I hope I didn’t lead you to think that I was questioning Hardy’s use of the term “reading against the grain.” I meant that I could not remember specific examples, and that I simply had no memory of instances in which such “reading” that came across as a “strained apologetic” for his personal beliefs.
        
        You wrote:”So what I’m really driving out as you read against the grain and see that these narrators are flawed and have agendas just like anyone else, then it opens yet another dimension in which to interpret the theology of the book itself. So regardless if its a work of fiction or not the author(s) own bias have to be dealt with.”
        
        I agree. In principle, just because a writer’s words are engraved on gold plates – and they get to us via an angel and seer – doesn’t mean the words did not originate in a brain that expresses biases, ambivalent feelings, etc. And since we can’t interrogate Nephi, Mormon and Moroni, we have to do our best to interpret their meanings, including theological.
        
        So, I guess I am offering Christiansen a little more room for his approach. (Two good nights of sleep can do that!)
        
        This does make the debate more sophisticated and substantive IF both sides find common ground in this paradigm. And I guess I am ready to do that.
        
        So, within this paradigm I would hope both sides agree that we can expect something more from a writer who claims divine inspiration (or who virtually quotes God). So disagreements become centered, in part, on what “more” means and what greater degree is plausible.
        
        The naysayer will argue the writing falls short of its claims and will point to anachronisms and other implausibilities.
        
        But then the apologist will find parallels in the ancient literature, such as “ritualizing context” in reporting natural disasters.
        
        At every “weigh station” the apologist will be able to distill a sufficient residue of truth from his argument – while the naysayer will disagree.
        
        For one thing, they use different balances. The believer’s balance also registers personal “spiritual” evidence – which breaks the common paradigm.
        
        On the other hand, he nay sayer’s balance registers other forms of bias (feelings of betrayal, for instance) but bravely sticks to the objective – despite it’s limitations and uncertainties.
        
        And on it goes…one eternal round ;)
        
        Yup, a close reading does complicate things, but I think in a legitimate direction.
        
        But, it is also a direction that can be pushed too far. As I said in my previous response, it cannot be pushed so far that it demands belief in a world too ludicrous to bear. Ozproof’s recent comment speaks to this. The dividing line is very subjective – which means it is influenced by innate dispositions and the integration of a lot of experiences in the subconscious.
        
        I do not think Hardy was not asking the “truth” question. He was simply trying to show that the narrators have more to reveal about themselves than what a cursory (or non expert) reading would turn up. In other words he was not asking the reader to decide that it was “really” Nephi or Joseph Smith. This is what I appreciated.
        
        But Hardy does leave us is more data to work with. As I said, that data can be used to either support faith or inform a theory of it being fiction.
        
        If you accept the orthodox view that Joseph Smith alone translated the gold plates by “the gift and power of God,” then Hardy’s work supports this in terms it being even more impressive a work – it reinforces as “argument of incredulity” which I argue is problematical, though I understand the power of it.
        
        If you don’t accept the orthodox view, then his work supports a multiple-author theory with a hidden manuscript.
        
        Thanks for the exchange. I’ll check out you’re Times and Seasons link.
        
        JT
        
        P.S. Getting back to your earlier instructions for going back and editing a comment … do I have to register for something to get this feature? I don’t see how it’s done. Thanks.
      4. Anonymous says:
        
        October 24, 2011 at 5:26 am
        
        Yea it looks like you have to register to be able to edits of your comments. See https://docs.disqus.com/help/35/
        
        For me anytime I go back to a comment I made it has a “Edit” button where on ones not done by me I see the “Like” button
      5. JT says:
        
        October 23, 2011 at 3:59 pm
        
        Sundance,
        
        I just read the Times and Season review by Julie M. Smith.
        
        I think she quotes Hardy a little out of context in this passage:
        
        “…as Hardy himself points out, the Book of Mormon has the marks of careful craftsmanship, but “the more complicated and interconnected the text, the less likely it is that Joseph Smith made it up” (page xv). The greater the literary complexity of the Book of Mormon, the more likely it is what it claims to be, which places–to put it mildly–a certain burden on the reader.”
        
        First, as a minor point, my copy has this occurring on page xviii.
        
        Second, I would have extracted the following:
        
        “…the circumstances of the book’s production are awkward: the more complicated and interconnected the text, the less likely it is that Joseph Smith made it up spontaneously as he dictated the words to his scribes, one time through. A standard refrain in LDS commentary is ‘Joseph Smith could not have written the book.’ This apologetic point, however, isnot the subtext of the present study. I will argue that the parallels and allusions in the Book of Moron are deliberate and meaningful rather than coincidental, but literary analysis does not compel belief. (Weighing the relative probability of human creativity against divine intervention is always a subjective judgement, and Latter-day Saints exhibit remarkably low leves of skepticism toward angels and miracles.”
        
        I think this is quite fair and transparent. I applaud it. And would not count against Hardy every phrase that a biased non-LDS reader might perceive a tinge of LDS-bias (or apologetic.)
        
        Perhaps Julie Smith does speak for most non-Mormons when she writes:
        
        “The non-LDS reader cannot avoid questions of historicity when Hardy writes on the very first page: ‘The Book of Mormon [was] produced in a sudden rush of revelation as a young, poorly educated New York farmer dictated the text, one time through’ (page 3).”
        
        And I think I recall noticing that Hardy did put forward the Joseph-as-sole-author presumption without qualification – and perhaps this is the best example of bias/apologetic that he lets slip though. But then the single-author theory is taken for granted by most non-LDS readers – and this is the source of tension.
        
        And indeed, the evidence of multiple distinctive narrative voices and the text’s complexity and coherence do make the Book of Mormon’s production by one person dictating one time through an extraordinary accomplishment! And non-believers got to deal with this evidence-based analysis if, in Elder Hollands words, they need to “[crawl] over or under or around the Book of Mormon to make that exit” completely. It does put a burden on them, so they ought to accept it and deal with it.
        
        But it also does not cancel out all the real problems.In this regard I appreciate Hardy saying comment: “Latter-day Saints exhibit remarkably low levels of skepticism toward angels and miracles.” Also, recall my criticism of the dangers of “arguments from incredulity.” They depend on new evidence and smart people not coming along later.
        
        In an earlier post I made this analogy:
        
        “But speaking of facts, the Book of Mormon remains the conspicuous unsolved puzzle. It’s like a bobbing apple, hardly breaking the surface of credibility, yet surprisingly buoyant and difficult to sink my teeth into. Faithful scholars say, “It feels ancient” and “it’s coherent.” But can such buoyant forces defy gravity’s claim on gold plates?”
        
        My personal tentative answer is that the Book of Mormon does not “defy gravity’s claim on gold plates” – which I mean both literally and figuratively.
        
        But I am keeping at it – and want to go down to my grave as a person who kept his mind and heart un-hardened (despite moments of infuriation that lead to comments like I leveled against Kevin Christiansen).
        
        Since I agree that Hardy’s literary analysis points to multiple authors as being more plausible that a sole author, that seems to be the “naturalistic” theory deserving the most attention – if only because the sole-author theory has met a dead end (Joseph’s mind) – assuming no new evidence turns up.
        
        On the other hand, a multiple author theory has new places to mine for evidence to develop a model of the who, what, where, why, and how of it This would include a deeper literary analysis, more historical-critical analysis, and, perhaps, stylometric (word-print) analysis whose text blocks are guided by the former.
        
        Hey, thanks again for the exchange – it was worth putting aside other plans for my Sunday morning – and I am sorry for being so wordy.
        
        JT
Rea says:

October 22, 2011 at 9:05 am

I’m ready to begin the 5th segment of this podcast, and I’ve found the whole thing fascinating. At first, as I heard Terryl Givens speak so eloquently and thoughtfully, I began to think he might be introducing a way in which I could still believe in the church. Said outcome would be most welcome. (BTW, I am a couple of years older than Givens and must say that the assumption that older people cannot look the church’s issues squarely in the eye and deal with them, is incorrect. But it is very, very hard to do so.) Gradually, as the podcast continued, I began to feel, as I have before, that it’s so much work to believe, so complicated, and I strongly doubt that the God whom I love would make it so difficult to recognie his path.

I do have two issues that I hope may be included in the next session, John. Does Givens believe that the story of the “golden plates” was actually CONCOCTED by JS in order to give his claims credibility? If not, then what purpose did the plates serve, when they were apparently not used in the translation process? Terryl seems to be saying that the plates, as well as the Book of Abraham papyri, later, were just catalysts of some sort for Joseph to receive revelation. This explanation is not satisfactory to me. Again, would God play such games? And would a prophet who spoke with God actually CARE about his credibility in the minds of mere mortals, enough to make up a story that bolstered the prophet’s credibility?

And then a second question: What is Terryl’s perspective on President Hinckley’s denial of the what he called the “couplet” (recited — and taught as doctrine — at every Young Men/Young Women’s meeting as I was growing up) which sttates that “as man is, God once was; as God is, man may become?” President Hinckley’s dodging and denial felt like a huge betrayal to me. Again, the only explanation I can come up with is that a prophet whom I had believed in was — like JS — equivocating truth for the sake of gaining social credibility or acceptability.

Thank you so, so much, John and Terryl, for doing this. What alot of energy it must take for you both. You are so helpful to the cause of developing understanding and respect among believers and former believers, alike. Thanks.

Rea

Reply
Ozpoof says:

October 23, 2011 at 5:35 am

To Terryl Givens said he believes that the Book of Mormon, which includes parts of the King James Version of the Bible complete with the mistranslations, was no way written using many and various sources available to Joseph Smith in his day, rather than inspired by God as Smith claims. This is clearly an example of extreme denial coupled with a mind-boggling underestimation of the ability of a God to construct sentences that don’t need future grammatical and theological corrections (Smith’s move from trinitarianism to separate and corporeal Father and Son etc).

The story is so full of holes that it becomes astounding how anyone with the level of knowledge that Mr Givens appears to have is able to ignore it all so he can continue to have faith.

The notion put forward that God creates a level of uncertainty in order to test the faithful is again a denigration of what I always believed God to be as a Mormon. Even now as an agnostic I have a higher opinion of a God than this! This supposition smacks of those who believe Satan plants dinosaur fossils to fool the learned and gullible.

Ever since I shook off Mormon thinking I have been trying to consider God as a true father. Would a father place tricks, half truths, total lies and outright fraud in the path of his children to see who falls for logic and reason rather than ignoring these gifts and sticking with what (after all the nasties are ignored) gives warm fuzzies? No! A God would never need to use lies as a tool.

The idea that a God would need to remain hidden and truth would have to be given to his children via a series of disreputable men as part of a test is also nonsensical. That’s like a father not telling his children the rules, but whispering them only to one child with a background of telling fibs, and who changes the rules often, each time pretending they were always the original set. Would a father then punish those children who refuse to listen to this child who claims secret knowledge? What kind of children are rewarded in this “back yard”? Those who are easily led, scared of the world, simple? Would a father consider those who tried to find the facts behind the claims of the messenger child as having a flaw that would prevent them from coming into the house to be with the father?

When facts are ignored in order to make beliefs fit, I believe a God would see this as a great disappointment. Mr Givens never seemed to address many difficult questions. He just ignored them or denied they were important at all. Well they are important. If I am told to act in a certain way by people who do not act that way themselves, I have to ask whether they believe what they are expecting everyone else to believe. If they are also claiming direct contact with God, it then becomes a question of “why would God be telling these men to instruct me in ways that they don’t see fit to act themselves”? Is this another trick to weed out the consistent and logical?

Reply
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david packard says:

October 23, 2011 at 9:52 pm

Ozproof, I certainly share with you the frustration of trying to understand why otherwise fairly intelligent, normal people would feel so comfortable characterizing a God as wonderful being who intentionally places future errors into the brass plates/Book of Mormon, that match up with the errors that later reveal themselves in the King James Bible. This is similar to celebrating a god that creates an earth that appears to be 5 billion years old by all powers of observation, only to test our willingness to believe a literal 6,000 year account, and hold an eternity on consequences upon individuals who make the wrong decision about this. Too often apologists (LDS and otherwise) are quick to contort the God they worship (His character, ethics, etc.) in order to make Him fit with what appears to be the evidence.

Terryl, does clearly describe a god who can’t or won’t interfere with human agency, regardless of what the side effects are. So in that sense he describes a god that has to sort of “work within a system” that produces nasty results, and isn’t the creator of the system itself (i.e., god is a product of the universe not the creator of it.). Beyond that, I see that he mostly describes that there’s just a lot apparent chaos, tragedy and misery that doesn’t seem fair. He doesn’t go so far as saying that god is testing people to see if they ignore the obvious truth (except perhaps the question of whether he exists at all). But I do understand the arguments. I don’t think Terryl, for example, thinks hypocrisy disqualifies prophets. But I hear you that this implies that God (who presumably would know that we consider a prophet’s own actions and whether they’re consistent with their preaching) would then expect us to ignore or overlook what we view as serious credibility issues, and then count such belief as a human virtue. I do see that implication, and so those kinds of concerns are completely fair. I still somehow don’t think that Terryl goes that far in describing that god or implying that LDS believers are expected by god to believe in such.

Reply
1. OzPoof says:
  
  October 26, 2011 at 4:38 pm
  
  I’m beginning to think that many exMormons left the church because they had such high expectations of men the believed were called by God; so when the truth was discovered that they were (are) very flawed humans, the shock and disappointment was too much.
  
  Likewise, I always understood God to be good with all the characteristics a benevolent and all powerful being would possess. I find the notion that God intentionally deceives in order to test his children to be astounding. If I was still a believer I would say this is blasphemous.
  
  Isn’t it ironic that those who claim belief in a God need to disparage him so reality can fit belief?
  
  Reply
  1. Anonymous says:
    
    October 26, 2011 at 8:15 pm
    
    I think your misrepresenting Terryl’s position, or perhaps simply overstating it, by saying he said he believed God was intentionally deceiving us. My recollection of the conversation is that he said he believed that God would allow not necessarily prevent Joseph (or others) from making mistakes. I think it goes along the a lines of not getting in the way of free agency. Seems like the same argument as the classic Problem with Evil.
    
    Reply
    1. OzPoof says:
      
      October 27, 2011 at 2:59 am
      
      I’ll have to listen to the podcast again to find the exact place where I heard Mr Givens state that he believes God allows the waters surrounding Mormon history to be not only murky but muddy in order to test blind faith. I remember being actually offended, and I’m and agnostic!
      
      Faith should be the belief in what cannot be proven, not the denial of what can be disproved. Faith does not (or should not) need the elimination of evidence for it to work.
      
      Free agency is impeded all the time by the church that claims to represent God. If Joseph Smith had to be worthy to enter the temple, I doubt he would get a recommend in his time let alone today. Why are apologists so eager to allow Smith the freedom to do whatever he likes yet today the rank and file are made to feel like trash if they enjoy coffee? God knew Smith if you believe in an all seeing God, so he knew this character would jeopardise the reputation of his church and create an obstacle to the salvation of those who hold higher moral standards than Smith held. Again, what is the test here? Does God only want to save those who are willing to believe the words of a man with serious character flaws ranging from dishonesty to sexual depravity depending on the personal standards of the individual observer? Will the Celestial Kingdom be populated by people who ignore truth that makes them uncomfortable so they can keep believing? Are they the ones who become Gods?
      
      I don’t believe creating a murky history that places doubt upon the truthfulness of the church is how God would allow free agency, however, when the church actively lies about its history in order to prevent people making honest judgement, isn’t that standing in the way of free agency? Surely agency is enhanced when people are informed and can make decisions based on truth.
      
      Reply
      1. david packard says:
        
        October 28, 2011 at 5:51 pm
        
        Again, OzProof, I acknowledge your difficulty with any God who would murky up the waters to somehow test his children to see how willing they would to believe in a….well, God who likes to murky up waters a lot (or maybe believe in a God who operates in a counter-intuitive, inconsistent or even dishonest fashion). I think you are completely right on this, I regularly resist and seek a better interpretation from any belief system that degrades God like this.
        
        Strictly speaking, twisting God’s character like this, however, does not in my view screw up one’s free agency. Instead, it just makes God difficult to believe in, it makes him capricious, untrustworthy, and not deserving of worship. Even an afterlife that’s weird, unjust, etc., doesn’t take away free agency. What would limit free agency in my view would be things like immediate physical pain upon committing a sin. Am I right here? Asking people to follow a conflicting set of rules doesn’t impact on agency, it just seems to make the exercise of agency pointless. I don’t know. I may be wrong, but that’s the way I see it.
Anonymous says:

October 24, 2011 at 3:20 pm

I don’t know how you all can dismiss evidence in the Church’s favor as wishful thinking. Maybe you guys should read By the Hand of Mormon. The antiquity of the BoM has been recognized by non-LDS scholars. For example, when Nibley showed William Albright, the father of Biblical Archaeology, Egyptian names in the BoM that JSmith would have had no access to, Albright concluded Smith was a religious genius.

These things happen more often than has been documented. Stephen E. Robinson told us at BYU that his dissertation advisor at Duke (Charlesworth) concluded that Joseph Smith was a reincarnated Jewish scribe. Wilfred Griggs has had similar experiences.

Reply
1. OzPoof says:
  
  October 27, 2011 at 3:04 am
  
  A reincarnated Jewish Scribe? So you are willing to entertain the reality of reincarnation despite this not being Mormon doctrine if it helps you accept Joseph Smith as a man of God who was a true prophet who translated entire books from funerary texts that say entirely different things? Really, how far do people have to contort their minds in order to retain belief?
  
  Reply
  1. Anonymous says:
    
    October 27, 2011 at 6:32 am
    
    You need to read my post more carefully.
    
    Reply
    1. OzPoof says:
      
      October 28, 2011 at 12:45 am
      
      You’re using the magical thinking of others to affirm your view that Smith was something more than just a charlatan seeking power and fame. None of the examples you gave can be considered “evidence in the Church’s favor”. The church itself disregards reincarnation. To use the statement of anyone, scholar or not, who believes Smith is a reincarnated scribe in order to prove Smith was something special is hypocritical mumbo jumbo.
      
      Reply
      1. Anonymous says:
        
        October 28, 2011 at 11:10 am
        
        LOL. What does the Church’s position on reincarnation have to do with anything? That’s Charlesworth’s hypothesis for how Joseph was able to recover ancient sources. If you don’t want to believe he’s a prophet, and you’re the world’s authority on Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, that’s what you’re forced to conclude.
2. RC says:
  
  October 28, 2011 at 10:13 am
  
  That’s interesting to know that even a non-Mormon scholar had to go down a rabbit hole to explain away non-spiritual evidence in favor of the church. Reminds me of TG’s earlier comment which says, in part:
  
  “Meanwhile, many others take such new information and readjust in another direction, deciding Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon were frauds. But they too have to make comparable use of a ‘memory hole,’ disposing of and explaining away the myriad spiritual witnesses that they at one time recognized and testified of. Usually they do so by reinterpreting those experiences as self-deceptions and delusions. Of course, there are implications there as well for what their paradigm now has to entail with respect to the possibilities of spiritual knowledge, of a benevolent Father who is able and willing to reveal truth to individuals, etc. These same people also have to deal with non-spiritual data that once made a different kind of sense: complex patterns in the Book of Mormon, resonances of the Book of Abraham with other ancient texts, etc.”
  
  Reply
  1. Anonymous says:
    
    October 28, 2011 at 11:21 am
    
    Thank you, I commend you for being able to grasp my point when one other has failed. The example I used was an attempt to illustrate Givens’s quote, and you tied it back together nicely.
    
    Reply
david packard says:

October 24, 2011 at 5:17 pm

N-Chung,
I believe Joseph was a prophet of God. Notwithstanding, I still have lots of concerns about much of that “evidence in Church’s favor.” In many cases, well-meaning apologists (and I’m not really including Terryl Givens in this group necessarily) but in many cases, what I was regularly taught was extrinsic empirical evidence supporting the historical literal claims of Mormonism, just weren’t subject to the same evidentiary standards that we commonly use for other important purposes in life. I felt that as a teenager, missionary, and young adult (with no real time to investigate all this for myself) I could safely assume that those apologists (you know, all those smart people) were already weighing both sides for me, and their conclusions were fair. In other words, I didn’t understand the rules. Now I think I do.

I know in your comment you mentioned non-LDS claims (which are presumably more objective) supporting the authenticity of the BOM. I, for one, don’t feel like I am discounting them at all. They are valuable and interesting. But once we subject the claims of Mormonism to rational scrutiny, and consider real-world evidence, then everything (I mean everything) comes in, as you know. It has to, otherwise we’re just playing a little game by bringing evidence into the picture in the first place. And once all that enormous evidence floods in (on both sides) we’ve opened up Pandora’s Box. Much evidence including the difficult/troubling evidence is indeed very stubborn.

Two points here:

1. John Dehlin and others have made this more honest analysis much more accessible to me who didn’t understand the rules the first time around. I’m so glad he has done this over the past 6 or so years. It may not be necessary in a decade or so, because maybe the church’s efforts in this regard will have caught with the information age, but in the meantime, it was a god send for me. (I truly can’t speak for anyone else however).

2. I think Terryl Givens proposes a view that if there’s a situation where the evidence reaches a stale mate (and I’m not declaring where all the stale mates are, because I am no authority by any means!), but if you’ve got a stale mate, then (as long as you really can do this!) an authentic choice in favor of belief in Christ is more moral, all else being equal.

Reply
1. Anonymous says:
  
  November 1, 2011 at 10:02 am
  
  I’m no way saying the net weight of evidence is in the Church’s favor. All I’m saying is that there is strong evidence both ways, and many here lack the neural complexity to process evidence in both directions. As Givens said, they have to explain it all away.
  
  Reply
  1. david packard says:
    
    November 1, 2011 at 4:18 pm
    
    I tend to agree with you. What’s cool, however, is that there are so many here who do appar to have such ability, regardless of how they come out in the end. John Dehlin is a magnet for these kinds of people who are invested in mormonism and who have this kind of preference to (at least try to) subject their own thoughts to critical examination.
    
    Reply
Chris Hansen says:

October 25, 2011 at 1:41 pm

I listened to this series for a second time and have a few more thoughts which I haven’t seen discussed on the message board.

At the end of the fourth podcast, Terryl Givens discusses masonry and the temple. He tells a story of a priest who who celebrated a mass using beer and potato chips instead of wine and wafers in order to make a point to his congregation that the symbols we use don’t matter to the ordinance. He then relates this to the temple by saying that we could rewrite the temple ceremony using boy scout signs and handshakes and it wouldn’t matter because the physical aspects of what we go through in the temple don’t matter.

Dr. Givens goes on to say that although Joseph Smith seems to have believed the masonic ritual was an authentic but corrupted inheritance from an ancient endowment but that most scholars now believe it it to be a fairly late invention. However, he says he does not care what relation it is to the Adamic Endowment and doesn’t believe the temple ritual that we engage in has any inherent value. Rather, the value comes from the covenants we make, the promises we receive, and the relationships that are eternalized. The masonic stuff is only the delivery vehicle for the doctrine and covenants of the temple.

This was a comparatively brief section of the podcast but I think it brought up several issues that warrant more discussion. I think many Mormons would not accept the idea that these are symbolic gestures only and are of no value. The endowment itself seems to be largely structured around making sure everyone in attendance properly learn the signs. There are several breaks in the narrative dedicated to this purpose. I think most would believe what Brigham Young said of the signs during the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, “Your endowment is, to receive all those ordinances in the House of the Lord, which are necessary for you, after you have departed this life, to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels, being enabled to give them the key words, the signs and tokens, pertaining to the Holy Priesthood, and gain your eternal exaltation in spite of earth and hell.” This statement does not leave the impression that Brigham Young thought of the signs as only being symbolic gestures.

To my mind, the temple makes the most sense if masonry is in fact a corrupted inheritance from the Temple of Solomon. Throughout my life I was taught that Joseph Smith got the symbols of masonry and used them to restore the Adamic Endowment. However, in a recent series on the Mormon Expression podcast, George Miller explained that Masonic symbols were invented in the 17th century by the masonic workers guild to help identify the skill level of masonry workers to ensure proper job placement and pay. The symbols were not remnants from the endowment ceremony at Solomon’s temple and have no ancient origin. If this is the case, then why continue using, wearing, and assigning religious value to Masonic symbolism?

If they are only a symbolic delivery system, as Dr. Givens says, and the meaning of the symbols remains the same regardless of whether the Masonic Grip of an Entered Apprentice or the Boy Scouts’ Order of the Arrow Handclasp is used, then why bother using them at all? What value do handshakes and signs add to the promises and covenants of the temple? Why does a promise to follow the Law of Chastity require any sort of masonic elements such as handshakes, signs, aprons, and three distinct knocks with a mallet? If a person can make and receive the covenants of the endowment without the Five Points of Fellowship and the penalties, why not the rest of the Masonic stuff too?

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1. david packard says:
  
  October 26, 2011 at 12:06 pm
  
  Chris,
  
  Great questions, and I enjoyed your comments. My take is that Terryl Givens believe that rituals, ordinances, or other symbolic behavior is kind of like language. The meaning may seem to have come from quite arbitrarily “assigned” signs which have evolved willy-nilly out of culture, independent from any system (e.g., grammar system, LDS Temples) that “adopted” the signs.
  
  However, even God, desiring to communicate to his children will use the language that his children speak. This particular language is not what’s meaningful to Him (God), but rather it’s what carries meaning to us. What’s meaningful to God is our attitude (worshipful), and the substance (the covenants) rather than whatever delivery vehicle of words, signs, gestures, music, tokens, etc. is used.
  
  The temple ritual contains a delivery vehicle (words, symbols, rituals, ordinances, music) all conveying substance and attitude to God. Put a different way, it doesn’t matter what all that language is “saying,” but rather what matters is what we as practitioners of the religion THINK/FEEL they’re saying. (sort of a game with words, I know, but this is an important point.) Because what we think and feel they’re saying conveys our attitude and covenant exchange to God.
  
  Kind of a silly metaphor, but it kind of reminds me of a bird building a next, using some human artifacts such as fishing line, newspaper, a bit of thread from an old rag, and pieces of a foam mattress. Is that bird’s nest any less natural or real than if the bird had built the nest deep in the forest, away from the suburbs? The nest is for the bird (and her chicks), not for us. The bird probably has no clue what’s “real” and what’s “artificial.” Real vs. artificial is our construct. It’s all natural for the bird, and the nest is for the bird.
  
  So to Terryl Givens, the validity of the Temple ordinances do not hinge on whether or not the adopted Masonic rituals contained a corrupted form of Solomon’s rituals.
  
  But this is not the end of the story, of course. Was Joseph sincerely and genuinely mistaken about this, thinking that the rituals he restored were authentic and divinely created in a way that was immune or untarnished from 19th century western culture? I think Givens position is that it’s entirely consistent that Joseph was mistaken about this. Joseph often apparently misunderstood his role in the method of ascertaining the will of God and the method of conveying it to his fellowbeings.
  
  Such misunderstandings would have been unfortunate, but not as potentially troubling to faith, had it not been for the next development: well-meaning members piled on for 150 years, providing argument and some evidence that Joseph’s interpretation of his own role was in fact correct, and that it is important to the validity of the ordinances (and to the Church itself!) that Joseph was correct in such interpretation of his own role. It’s not what you do that gets you in trouble. It’s what you do after what you do…that gets you in trouble.
  
  I guess now the result is this (my view of the podcast’s obvious implication): Faithful LDS need to be fine with God allowing His church for over a century to wrap its arms around an unnecessarily literal view of things, when certain symbolic views would have been sufficient all along. Maybe I’m being kind to the church when I frame it like this. But I guess I want to be kind on this issue, because I’m sensitive to how otherwise wonderful or decent human beings have done this sort of thing all the time, often an institutional level (Western Culture in general for the past 400 years!). This is just human nature, and God (in my view) apparently limits His involvement in this area. This particular view implies that God’s interaction with his children involves God not being conserned about the specific cultural adaptations used to worship Him and even less concerned about our confusion between “literal symbols” and “symbolic symbols.”
  
  The side effect of all this? Well, if your going to make that all okay, then it’s hard to be overly critical of other religious traditions. Terryl Givens appears to be very uncritical of other religions traditions.
  
  Reply
Stefany Clark says:

October 28, 2011 at 1:31 am

Excellent! Up until Part 5!!! Please read THIS LAND Zarahemla and the Nephite Nation by Wayne May and Edwin G Goble, Editors of Ancient American Magazine. Interview them. Stop perpetuating the TWO Cumorahs and MesoAmerican falsehoods. There is a pethora of physical evidence, artifacts, archeology, native american oral history and language and direct quotes from Joseph Smith that the Adena/ Hopewell sphere of influence is Nephite Central. Every question from and explanation of animals, to weather conditions and weapons found in the Book of Mormon are logically explanable through findings from member and non-member archeologists and professionals. FARMS must come to terms with the evidence RIGHT HERE- in THIS LAND. The church must also come to terms with the fact that mesoamerica is clearly not the place where the events recorded in the Book of Mormon took place

Joseph Smith, (signed in his hand) letter to Emma Smith, June 4, 1834, in Jesse, Dean C., 1984 The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith-
“We arrived this morning on the banks of the Mississippi… we left the eastern part of the state of Ohio… The whole of our journey, in the midst of so large a company of social honest and sincere men, wandering over the PLAINS OF THE NEPHITES, recounting occassionally the history of the Book of Mormon, roving OVER THE MOUNDS of that once beloved people of the Lord, picking up thier skulls and bones,as proof of its divine authenticity, and gazing upon a country the fertility, the splendor and goodness so indescribable…”

Reply
1. Anonymous says:
  
  October 28, 2011 at 12:19 pm
  
  Stefany is either an anti-Mormon in disguise or someone who bought Rod Meldrum’s snake oil.
  
  Reply
Dave the utter Rave says:

October 28, 2011 at 2:15 am

TG is such an amazingly clever guy. I can only suppose that his faith in Mormonism is based on the revelatory experience he had when he was around 16, otherwise I don’t think he would follow even his own arguements of support for the faith. He said that this experience did not depend on, nor was it specific to Mormonism but was life changing nonetheless. I would love to know more about this experience, pending Terryl’s willingness to speak of hit.

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Dave the utter Rave says:

October 28, 2011 at 2:33 am

Part 5 – Do we really need to square polygamy with OT practices of Polygamy? I’m not so sure? Was OT polygamy a tennant or dogma of religious practice as it was in the 19th Century or was it a secular practice? God meets us where we are at. Could the marriages of Abraham
, Isaac and Jacob be a representation of an evolutionary stage in the secular development of marriage culture? Ownership of women to ensure the continuation of a dynasty etc? Did God command polygamy in OT or did he simply allow it because that was the stage of developmental culture which included marriage? In other words, Does God just allow these things to develop and evolve on there own? Or does he have to command in all things? But by the time we get to Joseph Smith, marriage practices have developed to a monogamous situation and perhaps more of a egalitarian and romantic status rather that the ‘business’/dynastic arrangement that was in place anciently.

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carson calderwood says:

November 1, 2011 at 2:08 pm

Does anyone have that quote that TG refers to when he says that Joseph even stated that you don’t have to be Mormon to be saved?

Reply
1. TG says:
  
  November 1, 2011 at 6:30 pm
  
  He again repeated that all who would follow the
  precepts of the Bible, whether Mormon or not, would assuredly be savedWords of JS 34
  
  Reply
  1. carson calderwood says:
    
    November 1, 2011 at 7:20 pm
    
    Thank you. I think that will help others be less judgmental of those who do leave and therefore help some come back that otherwise be too hurt to return.
    
    Reply
carson calderwood says:

November 1, 2011 at 2:19 pm

John,
This was the best MS podcast ever! I felt the spirit strongly near the end of the last segment when you and TG were candidly and openly discussing the pains some members of the church members feel and how TG is helping to bridge that gap for you. MS helps bridge that gap for others. I appreciate your efforts so much over the years and love you for the heartfelt efforts you put into this and the work you do to help your neighbor. Thank you John and thank you Terryl for giving us an example of someone who knows so much of the negative yet stays positive. TG is D&C 46:13 to my D&C 46:14!

Reply
1. Anonymous says:
  
  November 1, 2011 at 3:54 pm
  
  Thanks so much, Carson. John
  
  Reply
Uncorrelated Mormon says:

November 12, 2011 at 3:35 am

Simply incredible. There were a few moments that seemed to stretch reason, but those were so heavily outweighed by the amazing insight that Dr Givens brought to the table the rest of the time that it is easily forgiven. I hope he follows up on his comment regarding pushing for new manuals.

Reply
courtney says:

November 16, 2011 at 6:24 pm

Thank you for this wonderful discussion!! I wish everyone in the church could hear it.

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Jared Anderson says:

December 5, 2011 at 2:58 am

Wow, lots of comments. I loved this interview and so much of how Givens framed things was helpful, and a useful corrective to the way I lean. One thing that surprised me was how easily Givens claimed that the New Testament authors penned the works attributed to them. He doesn’t back this up at all; he just says in the face of overwhelming scholarly consensus, “Yeah, I think the gospels were written by the people they are attributed to.”

I was very moved by Givens’ story and inspired by his theological and historical sophistication overall, however. Very well done.

Reply
Anonymous says:

January 12, 2012 at 10:36 am

So I’m a little late to this party…but I just want to say a big thank you to John and Brother Givens. I’ve had many MoSto favorites, but I think the second episode of the Givens series has just captured the title of favorite (for now, at least).

I’m listening to these at a time of some personal spiritual and emotional anguish and despair…hearing Brother Givens affirm his faith – an honest faith which acknowledges problems, mysteries, contradictions, disappointments, etc. – is so heartening.”…I have felt that something real has transpired; something that has eternal and transcendent value…I find much of the process inelegant, and deadening, and tedious, but that’s how most of the gospel is…That’s how the gospel works. We’re mired in banality and there are these eruptions of the divine into our lives that occur from moment to moment.”What an amazingly beautiful and apt description of the best of religious experience generally and the LDS church experience specifically. These “eruptions of the divine” in the midst of banality and difficulty and sadness are what keep me tethered to the Mormon church as both an institution and culture, despite its flaws, and to a belief, or hope more accurately, in God, despite all the evidence that seems to point to his absence. I’ve experienced those “eruptions of the divine.”I’m open to the possibility that they were psychosomatic episodes, as many have come in times of deep yearning and need. Yet others have seemingly come out of the blue, not as a response to my pleadings or yearnings or needings.Or perhaps it’s just the romantic in me, as Wordsworth made me switch majors from business to English. Nonetheless, I like Brother Givens, retain some hope, some faith, that those experiences have a meaning that extends beyond chemicals passing from neurotransmitters.A deep thank you to both of you.

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PapaTony says:

January 22, 2012 at 9:59 pm

I just want to echo the sentiments expressed by Ioway from last week… the second episode in this series was inspiring and encouraging to me as well. As another formerly devout LDS member who’s 35+ yr testimony has recently imploded, this podcast was healing and helpful. Thanks John and Terryl !

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Mike Berkey says:

February 28, 2012 at 8:39 pm

Thank you so much for these fantastic interviews! I didn’t agree with everything Terryl Givens said, but he really does give a genuinely thoughtful, honest, and faithful approach to Mormonism. This should be required listening for every would-be Mormon intellectual.

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289-293: Terryl Givens — An Approach to Thoughtful, Honest and Faithful Mormonism

Episode Transcript

Introduction and Welcome

Part 1 of 5 · Ep. 289

Terryl Givens: Childhood and Conversion to Mormonism

Academic Formation and Intellectual Influences

Post-Structuralism and Mormon Intellectual Discourse

Mormonism, Culture, and Anti-Mormon Sentiment

People of Paradox and the Mormon Experience

Part 2 of 5 · Ep. 290

Personal Faith Challenges and Belief in God

Preconditions for an Embraceable Theology

Faith, the Abrahamic Test, and the Atonement

The Bible, Restoration, and Mormon Literalism

Part 3 of 5 · Ep. 291

The True Church Claim and an Evolutionary Gospel

Difficult Mormon History and the First Vision

Part 4 of 5 · Ep. 292

Apologetics, Folk Magic, and Joseph Smith

The Book of Mormon: Historicity and Translation

Witnesses, Book of Abraham, and Masonic Ritual

Polygamy and Difficult Scriptural Passages

Part 5 of 5 · Ep. 293

Book of Mormon Geography, DNA, and Race Issues

Mormonism, Science, Evolution, and Closing Thoughts

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