Friday, August 18, 2006
More on "Mormons and the Bible"
Just to follow up on the Mormons and the Bible book summary I did a couple of weeks ago. (Find it via that link, or by going to the July archives.)
I gave a summary of the interesting book, but not too many personal thoughts, so here are some of my reflections.
One thing in particular that I thought was interesting was how wide the spectrum actually is on LDS biblical views. If you think about official church statements, there's the article of faith, "We believe the Bible to be the word of God..." but that's about it-- there's nothing that tells LDS how literal/symbolic the word of God actually is. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just one that I hadn't really thought much about before. So members are free to form their own opinions.
I think this should probably be emphasized more, because as the book points out, the rigid McConkie view has become the norm now. And people who don't hold that view may even feel embarrassed to bring up competing viewpoints.
For example, a month or two ago we had a Sunday school lesson that covered an incident where the Israelites slaughtered an entire city, including women & children--and according to the literal text of the Bible, they were commanded to do so by the Lord. The teacher (Pauline, actually) basically presented this reading of the text as if it were fact, until someone in the class spoke up and said, "Doesn't this bother anybody else?" He didn't say much more than just that, but from talking to him afterward I learned a bit more about he viewed the passage. After reading the book, I can see now that his view was basically that of Lowell Bennion--that our knowledge of God should trump the actual text of the Bible. So in that case, he felt that the Bible was in err because it didn't fit what we know about God's nature from elsewhere in the scriptures.
I think his view is certainly an acceptable view that people can consider. And in fact, I myself spoke up in the class after his comment, to point out that the particular chapter was apparently written long after the events (there was a verse saying something like, "and thus we see how such-and-such started happening"), and that it may well have been recorded wrong. "The victors write the history," and all that—and that is actually my own view on many of these type of Old Testament incidents (although I wouldn't always go as far as Bennion apparently did).
But—and this is what I now think is most interesting—this man apparently didn't feel entirely comfortable expressing his full view in the class. And that's too bad, in my opinion. He would probably have been surprised to find out that Brigham Young called parts of the Old Testament "baby stories", and that his own "controversial view" (as he apparently felt) was probably well within the overall spectrum of LDS belief.
One other thing I didn't mention in the book summary is that Barlow places each of the case studies in the historical context and shows that a lot of times the LDS person's view mirrors the larger view of religious society at the time. What it seems like to me, though, is that due to the LDS emphasis on tradition and authority, the LDS perspective changes in a much different way than does that of larger society.
In other words, Joseph Fielding Smith's reaction to higher criticism was just the same as many other church-goers of his era—but since LDS today revere McConkie as an inspired apostle, and McConkie revered JFS as an inspired apostle, JFS's views tend to still be very applicable in todays' LDS church. By contrast, some random [makes up denomination] Presbyterian church leader from the same time period as JFS might have had a similar view, but those views would likely not count for much in his church today.
This works subconsciously I think, for the most part—but also selectively. That is, even though we all revere Brigham Young as an inspired church leader, his opinion of the Bible probably doesn't get quoted nearly as often as e.g. McConkie's and JFS's. But that doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't.
I gave a summary of the interesting book, but not too many personal thoughts, so here are some of my reflections.
One thing in particular that I thought was interesting was how wide the spectrum actually is on LDS biblical views. If you think about official church statements, there's the article of faith, "We believe the Bible to be the word of God..." but that's about it-- there's nothing that tells LDS how literal/symbolic the word of God actually is. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just one that I hadn't really thought much about before. So members are free to form their own opinions.
I think this should probably be emphasized more, because as the book points out, the rigid McConkie view has become the norm now. And people who don't hold that view may even feel embarrassed to bring up competing viewpoints.
For example, a month or two ago we had a Sunday school lesson that covered an incident where the Israelites slaughtered an entire city, including women & children--and according to the literal text of the Bible, they were commanded to do so by the Lord. The teacher (Pauline, actually) basically presented this reading of the text as if it were fact, until someone in the class spoke up and said, "Doesn't this bother anybody else?" He didn't say much more than just that, but from talking to him afterward I learned a bit more about he viewed the passage. After reading the book, I can see now that his view was basically that of Lowell Bennion--that our knowledge of God should trump the actual text of the Bible. So in that case, he felt that the Bible was in err because it didn't fit what we know about God's nature from elsewhere in the scriptures.
I think his view is certainly an acceptable view that people can consider. And in fact, I myself spoke up in the class after his comment, to point out that the particular chapter was apparently written long after the events (there was a verse saying something like, "and thus we see how such-and-such started happening"), and that it may well have been recorded wrong. "The victors write the history," and all that—and that is actually my own view on many of these type of Old Testament incidents (although I wouldn't always go as far as Bennion apparently did).
But—and this is what I now think is most interesting—this man apparently didn't feel entirely comfortable expressing his full view in the class. And that's too bad, in my opinion. He would probably have been surprised to find out that Brigham Young called parts of the Old Testament "baby stories", and that his own "controversial view" (as he apparently felt) was probably well within the overall spectrum of LDS belief.
One other thing I didn't mention in the book summary is that Barlow places each of the case studies in the historical context and shows that a lot of times the LDS person's view mirrors the larger view of religious society at the time. What it seems like to me, though, is that due to the LDS emphasis on tradition and authority, the LDS perspective changes in a much different way than does that of larger society.
In other words, Joseph Fielding Smith's reaction to higher criticism was just the same as many other church-goers of his era—but since LDS today revere McConkie as an inspired apostle, and McConkie revered JFS as an inspired apostle, JFS's views tend to still be very applicable in todays' LDS church. By contrast, some random [makes up denomination] Presbyterian church leader from the same time period as JFS might have had a similar view, but those views would likely not count for much in his church today.
This works subconsciously I think, for the most part—but also selectively. That is, even though we all revere Brigham Young as an inspired church leader, his opinion of the Bible probably doesn't get quoted nearly as often as e.g. McConkie's and JFS's. But that doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't.
# posted by John Colton @ 8:52 AM 
