Round Table: Historicity and Revelation – Round One

When John wants to define the anti-christ and, I suppose by extension, apostasy, he uses a definition very much tied to the historical event of Christ’s coming.

So at least some historical events (and Christ’s coming probably tops the list), when denied, pretty much imply a state of apostasy.

On the other hand, I feel no particular commitment to claiming absolute perfection for the scriptures, since the scriptures don’t seem to favor that.

Either ya’ll aren’t interested in this, or you find Dennis’s response as intimidating as I do. Brother dialed it to 11 there.

“The historicity question as it is approached by most anti-mormons and by most apologists assumes the homogeneity of reason and the ontology of dead matter. ”

If I understood the preceding correctly, Dennis seemed to be saying that the problems he finds with the “historicity” question is that it flows from the twin assumptions that: 1, Everyone agrees with me as to what constitutes a reasonable argument; and 2, we can only really draw objective conclusions about empirically verifiable objects and actions (feel free to correct me if I have gotten either one of these things wrong).

Under these circumstances, what is the point in studying the past at all? In particular, what is the point in seeking to verify a particular way of telling the events? I suppose the answer would be so that we can tell stories that seem reasonable and true to us (I am not entirely adverse to an understanding of academia as advanced navel-gazing). However, this doesn’t necessarily make our stories more enlightening, more verifiable, or more compelling than stories told by children, bankers, witchdoctors, or lunatics.

“It reduces the story/narrative of religious life to the ontology of dead matter, and commits “blasphemy” by allowing theoretical science a place in religious story telling.”

This is the matter at the heart of current debates regarding Biblical historicity, in addition to those regarding LDS scripture. In the field of the Bible, the competing fields of literary criticism and biblical archaeology have come to an uncertain truce wherein they have decided that although one side can never throw out the other side’s evidence entirely, it is not possible to actually integrate knowledge from the two fields without observational interference. It simply requires too many assumptions on the part of the researcher in all known cases.

That said, it is somewhat false to compare the state of Biblical historicity to that of Book of Mormon historicity. While there is some archaeological evidence that appears to support some Biblical claims without a lot of finagling, I know of no such evidence in the New World (in this, I am including both hemispheric and limited-geography models). (Should I take a moment to explain that I think that the Book of Mormon is an ancient record translated by Joseph Smith via divine inspirtation? Cause I do.) This, of course, doesn’t really mean anything. The absence of evidence, especially in a wet climate like Mesoamerica and especially in a situation where we are not terribly certain what we should be looking for, should not constitute proof of anything other than the absence of evidence. The situation in the Middle East is unique and it would be a tad absurd to assume that we will find extensive records like we have in Mesopotamia and Egypt elsewhere. Will we ever find extensive records in Mesoamerica (or the whole of North/South America) like we have in Egypt? No, nor should we expect too in any place outside of deserts, which we wouldn’t normally expect your ancient civilizations to want to inhabit. All of which is a long way of saying that the historicity of the Book of Mormon is likely to be up in the air for a long time for people who care about it.

So, to get back to Steve’s original question, “How much of the history need be fact for the Book to still be true?“, I am not sure that this is right question. It will depend first on how you care to define “true” (which was ultimately what, I think, Dennis was trying to get at). A better question might be, “Should we care about historicity at all as part of our process in determining whether or not the Book of Mormon (Abraham, Moses, etc) is true?” I’m not sure. I think Nate, Rosalynde, and Paul Hoskisson are right in pointing to the issue of authority. You do seem to need an actual God and an actual Abraham for the Abrahamic covenant to be something more than a powerful myth. People point to the importance of establishing the historicity of LDS scripture to establishing the validity of Joseph’s position as a prophet, but this seems to me to be a different issue, somewhat likely saying that because Abraham Lincoln didn’t write all the things we thought he had (his secretary seems to have written some of his more famous letters) then Abe couldn’t really have been a very important president. It is going to be ultimately determined by your definition of what makes a prophet or a president, but most people probably won’t agree with you.

“I don’t remember being taught growing up that the Nephites and the Lamanites were the “exclusive” ancestors of the American Indians. Are you sure this is what you were taught? I remember being taught that they were ancestors of the Indians, but I am balking at your assertion that this exclusivity was or still is the “widely-held teaching” of the Church.

John, this is what I remember being taught. I don’t believe exclusivity was necessarily ever explicitly discussed, but it certainly was assumed. Even if you want to deny the “exclusivity” clause, the last line of the second paragraph of the Introduction to the Book of Mormon would seem to indicate that a limited-geography approach is not what the church explicitly endorses today (or ever).

John C.:

How much difference would it make in your personal relationship to either God or the Abrahamic covenant if, entirely without your knowledge, it was nothing more than an inspired myth? If God suggested this account to Joseph Smith and, to a lesser extent, to Biblical writers, then its implications for your relationship to God are presumably true even if there was no archetypal founder of the covenant. So why should the existence of the archetypal founder matter to you? I mean, divine authority is not at stake in the question of whether a text is a parable or history…

RT,
As we’ve discussed before, I don’t think it works terribly well if the Abrahamic covenant is a type of pious fraud. If we’re going to assume that God isn’t lying to us in telling us that it is a good idea to enter into these covenants, why would it be helpful to assume that he is lying to us about the covenants origin? In for a penny, in for a pound.

RT: “If I feel the spirit with respect to the Abrahamic covenant, that means the covenant is true for me.”

Interesting assertion RT – you might be a good Lutheran, but I’m not sure that makes you a good Mormon. Covenants (and their related cousins, ordinances) take more than good feelings or “feeling the spirit” — they take the Priesthood, or “feeling The Spirit”. If the major bases for our covenants are rooted in fiction, not fact (i.e, Peter, James & John never appeared to Joseph, Abraham never existed, etc.), it seems to me that all we’re left with are neat feelings. If we want to assert the necessity of ordinances done with God’s approbation, then symbolism and allegory can only take us so far.

Just to second Steve – it seems that everything Joseph wanted in the end was to Seal up individuals unto Eternal Life. Everything built up to this and it was the ultimate expression of his faith. To deny the reality of such power on his terms is to literally eviscerated Mormondom. We would be left with a dead institution, devoid of any power outside human ethics.

By the way, I’m not a Lutheran and I don’t think the Holy Ghost is just neat feelings.

I think priesthood authority is obviously an important part of the gospel. This is clear in all parts of the canon. It’s crucial for our understanding of God that this authority exist. It’s not crucial who holds it or has held it. If Melchezidek (sp?), to pick an example at random, turns out to be an archetypal symbol of a wise priesthood leader, rather than an actual person, this doesn’t seem to me to change the reality of the priesthood given his name at all.

The logical connection between the existence of Abraham and the reality of God’s power as expressed in the priesthood covenant given Abraham’s name is likewise being left as an implication here. None of the comments has spelled out the reason that Abraham’s being a myth would imply that the priesthood covenants God offers us aren’t real. If, as I stated earlier, the Holy Ghost testifies to me that they are real, what else could possibly matter to me?

What’s at stake in this discussion isn’t the reality of exaltation, prophesy, or the priesthood. I think we should be clear on that point. Instead, what is at stake are specific human interpretations of the meaning of each of those points. If Moses, for example, didn’t exist and Joseph’s experience with him was a divine allegory for the power, authority, and leadership role that was being given to Joseph–that doesn’t make the power, authority, and leadership role any less real or divine. It just changes our understanding of a historical event. Nor does it make God deceptive; symbolic communication is not the same as dishonesty.

God’s power and authority, in conjunction with His spirit and some texts, are ALL we directly experience. The narrative content associated with these experiences reflects events not directly accessible to us. That’s the reason that I’m not sure we should particularly care whether the events actually happened or not. If our genuine experience of the divine confirms to us the reality of God’s plan and the covenants we enter, shouldn’t that be enough?

RT,

And what of the Gospels? John says that the spirit of the Anti-Christ is to deny that Christ came in the flesh. Yet by your standard we should have no problem with that because it is a set of historical events and does not matter if it happened symbolically or literally.

Certainly you don’t believe that, so tell me where you are drawing the line on which historical events matter.

JF, I wasn’t dismissive of your entire comment, just your assertion that I’d mischaracterized things and set up a straw man. I still disagree with you on that point.

As for our positions, our stances are probably different in degree rather than nature (i.e., I’d probably be willing to let more things be figurative than you).

But as for your characterization of John H.’s position, I think you have indeed misunderstood all this time. He can speak for himself, but John hasn’t taught that there was no literal first vision, no plates, etc.

Let me clarify a bit of what I was trying to say about living/narrative and dead ontologies. The latter use scientific discourse as its model. Even ordinary discourse is understood as proto-scientific, if unrefined. So, any narrative is ultimately understood as being reducible to a set of expressions that can be couched in terms of a scientific theory. Narratives about the past are then merely cryptically worded theories about what happened in the past. These can be verified or falsified in the same way other scientific theories can be.

I reject the idea that narratives about the past can be couched in a scientific structure. Narratives, like theories, on my view are linguistically fundamental. And I would even argue that ordinary discourse is more like refined narrative discourse than it is like refined scientific discourse. If narrative is linguistically fundamental, then the standards for its appropriate application are not reducible to scientific standards. Instead, narrative discourse has its own set of criteria and we must look at how we use it to see this. If this is right then the way many Evangelicals approach the Bible is just as wrong as historical critical views. And also, the attacks on or defenses of the Book of Mormon tend to both miss the point of treating it as a fundamental narrative. What criteria do Mormons actually use to determine its truth? That criteria gives its meaning for practicing Mormons and that meaning cannot be reduced to scientific claims.

So, where is the ontology in all of this? I believe that 20th century metaphysics has largely embraced the idea that scientific discourse is the model of metaphysical discourse. The upshot is that metaphysics is about static objects with static properties. But if narrative discourse had been taken as equally fundamental, then we would have thought through metaphysical issues differently. The intense commitment to the primacy of their stories invites religious believers (and Mormons in particular) to think the material world differently than scientific practice. Instead of the dead materialism inherent in physicalism, they embrace a world of objects that get their meaning from their careers in life.

When someone says to me, “But the Bible has some supporting evidence and the Book of Mormon does not,” they are entrenched in the positivism that take all discourse to be primarily scientific. But why should we embrace that positivism? Why can’t narrative forms of discourse be just as fundamental?

Er, I was responding to RT in the above.

RT,

If you place no weight on the historical record, what do you actually know about Christ? Unless you are having private theophanies, very little.

What events in the life of Christ are you willing to stake testimony on? What seperates these events from other scriptural events or the First Vision? For example, what if one claimed that the Gospels were fabrications and so was the Book of Mormon. How much would you actually be able to say about Christ and his covenants. If the record is fabricated, why not the doctrine? Maybe the doctrine is “symbolic” and not literal too.

Dennis: Thanks for the clarification. I have a couple of follow-up questions if you have the time.

First, I am not entirely sure what you mean when you say scientific. By this do you mean something like emperically verifiable? Do you mean something like iinert and subject to strictly causal laws? In other words, is scientific meant to refer to a particular epistemological approach or a particular metaphysical approach? (Obviously, these things are related, but humor me with a simplification, if you can.)

Second, I am not quite sure what you mean by “fundemental.” In what sense are you advocating that narrative discourse be treated as fundamental? Are you claiming that some how narrative contains differing ontological assumptions that somehow cut the universe to the joints better?

I confess that I am not sure what to make of the claim that narrative contains its own particular brand of ontology. Suppose that I tell a story about Dennis Potter, a philosophy professor at a state college in Utah, who got up and went to work this morning. If I reduce this narrative to a string of factual assertions which are then falsified or verified by emperical observations of one kind or another (I take it this is what you mean by “scientific”), I would agree with you that such a deconstruction of the narrative misses some vital aspect of its meaning. On the other hand, it seems to me that the meaning of the narrative will shift depending of the sorts of truth values that I apply to it’s component factual assertions. Perhaps I make some sort of ontological mistake in the way that I conceptualize or verify those statements, but I really don’t see how such an ontological mistake (whatever it may be) comes from treating narrative or “scientific discourse” as fundamental. It seems to me that the two modes of discourse are inevitably intertwined and related to one another.

Clark, take heart — rounds two and three will come in subsequent weeks.

I don’t know you’re reading this thread, Dennis, but I’d like to respond specifically to your comments on the nature of historicity. First let me clarify that I’ll be using the following terms:

What you call, “rocks or elements,” I will refer to as “dry goods.”
What you call, “dead metaphysics,” I will refer to as “the ontology of death.”
What you call, “narrative ontology,” I will refer to as “the ontology of life.”

First of all, the reason why we adopt the ontology of death is precisely because people generally agree about it. Consider the following sentences:

1. David King Landrith stated, “I was in Philadelphia on such and such a date.”
2. Gordon B. Hinckley said, “I was in Philadelphia on such and such a date, and I received a revelation there.”
3. Joseph Smith said, “I was in Philadelphia on such and such a date, and I received a revelation there.”
4. Joseph Smith said, “Nephi was in the geographical region now known as Philadelphia on such and such a date, and he received a revelation there.”
5. Joseph Smith said that he translated a document that said, “I, Nephi was in the geographical region that will some day be known as Philadelphia on such and such a date, and I received a revelation there.”

In order to avoid issues related to intentionality, let’s assume that these statements are true (i.e., the speakers actually did say what the statements claim they said) and leave aside the question of whether falsehoods are the result of mistakes or deliberate deception. If we approach these statements from the point of view of the ontology of death, then we assess them based on whether there is any evidence for or against someone being in Philadelphia on such and such a date.

Sentence #5 has a different status from the rest. Specifically, it has an additional truth component. Statements 1 through 4 have two truth components:

A. Did the speaker say such a thing? (we’ve assumed here that they did)
B. Does the subject of the sentence do what the speaker attributes to him? (e.g., was Dave, Gordo, or Nephi in Philadelphia on such and such a date?)

Statement 5 has three truth components:

A. Did the speaker say such a thing? (again, we’ve assumed here that he did)
B. Did Nephi do/say the things Joseph attributes to him?
C. Did the speaker translate the document?

Many apologetics for the Book of Abraham assume that statements of like C can be false (i.e., Joseph Smith didn’t really translate the Chandler papyri), without sacrificing the truth of statements like A and B (i.e., Joseph said he translated the Chandler Papyri and Abraham really did the things that Joseph’s translation attributes to him). But regardless of the relationship that we take to hold among the values of these truth components, we can at least agree that these are the components, because our ontology of death provides a framework in which we can all agree to the basic players in the story (in this case, a subject [Dave, Gordo, or Nephi], such and such a date, and Philadelphia). (I’d argue that the drive to preserve scriptural historicity consists of isolating the different truth components of scriptural accounts and showing how many can still be true in light of the falseness of others; e.g., in spite of the Book of Mormon’s own account, the Book of Mormon can be historical even if the Lehites, Jaredites, and Mulekites were not the only peoples in the Western Hemisphere.)

I understand your theory of an ontology of life as follows: We should understand the historicity of the Book of Mormon insofar as it is embedded within the community from which it derives its meaning. Thus, the Book of Mormon must be understood according to the intersection of its own story with personal experiences of those who read it, because its own story is inseparable from the narrative of the lives of those who read it. In other words, by reading the Book of Mormon, we become part of a continuing historical process which cannot be extracted from what follows or precedes it. It is this historical process that defines the ontology and not vice versa. Please correct me if this is not an accurate restatement.

My objections to this ontology of life is as follows:

First, there many different readers of the Book of Mormon and many communities in which it functions. There is no basis for choosing among these to create anything approaching some standard for evaluation. The believer and the skeptic are alike participants in the continuing narrative of the Book of Mormon. Surely, you don’t seek for a kind of relativism in which the truth of the Book of Mormon literally varies according to who you ask.

Second, the thesis that historical claims cannot be assessed outside of this rather bloated historical context is, to my mind, simply false. It is true that everything we do is related to something done in the past or something that will be done in the future. But, the purpose of a theory is to eliminate those relations which have a negligible influence upon the type of event in question so as to allow a more clear understanding of the salient forces at work, and the fact that theories work is proof enough that this type of elimination works. As demonstrated by the analysis of truth components A, B, and C above, such things are meaningfully separated and evaluated, even if their impact on the overall truth of the statement containing them is a matter of continuing controversy.

Basically, Dennis, I’m faulting you for being too holistic. The role of the Book of Mormon in my life is logically independent from the question of its historicity.

Third, considering statements 1 through 5 above, how do we determine which one should be true according to which standard? (I actually have quite a lot more to say about these 5 sentences, but I’ve taken up too much space already.)

Shockingly, I think that I basically agree with DKL (aka AT) on this, although I am less confident than he is that I have actually understood what Dennis is claiming. It seems to me that the role of narrative in the Book of Mormon presents very tricky problems of interpretation, and any attempt to reduce that narrative to factual assertions that can then be verified will inevitably result in some sort of interpretive distortion. However, this seems to me to be entirely a matter of hermeneutics rather than ontology.

(BTW, DKL, I was waiting through the entire post for you to invoke the concept of “dry goods.” I can only hope that it makes an appearance in a subsequent comment.)

I guess that problem I see not only with the BoM historicity but the convincing studies on the nature of God and salvation in the BoM is that if all these studies are even partially right (and I don’t think we can deny them that) then to say the BoM is the “most correct of any book of earth” is absolutely wrong in almost every way.

I’m thinking of pretty much everything published by signature on the Book of Mormon. It seems to be fairly well established that the God which the BoM describes is very different from teh sexually active council of Gods later described by Smith. If we also take into account the obvious influence which Joseph Smith and his context had on the text it would seem that not only is the BoM not entirely accurate theologically speaking, but historically speaking as well. In the face of all this, who could possibly claim that the book is the most correct of any book? What definition of ‘correct’ could they possibly be working with? I don’t think that this necessarily undermines Joseph all that much, but it should certainly undermine any kind of believe that even approaches infallibility for Joseph, the other BoM authors and by extension, our prophets living here today.

Nate, I apologize for the lack of content on dry goods. My original post was about twice the length, and it was chock full of dry goods goodness; e.g., it included such insights as “In principle, it’s no more difficult to determine the whereabouts of Gordon B. Hinckley than a sack of flour.” That said, I’m curious why anytime anyone agrees with me they say stuff like, “Shockingly, I think that I basically agree with DKL…” ? I’m hardly the village idiot, you know.

Clark, at some point it becomes fruitless to argue about what Dennis meant (“Follow the gourd! No! Let us gather shoes together!”) But your restatement of his position has more in common with the ontology of death than the ontology of life that he seems to want to espouse. Hopefully, Dennis will comment or explicate in another round his rejection of the primacy of dry goods.

Suppose one did agree that there were 19th century influences, such as (most obviously) Joseph using his own language to interpret the record. I mean, since it is in English at least somehow connected to modern times.

How would that lead one to your much stronger claims that the Book of Mormon is clearly wrong in important ways? These seem to be two very different claims, do they not?

Shockingly, I think that I basically agree with DKL that he is not the village idiot.

To the extent that I understand what Dennis is saying (which is probably very nearly zero), I think he’s saying something much like my argument against the need for an actual empirical Abraham (not, to reiterate, against the existence of an empirical Abraham). Dennis says, “What criteria do Mormons actually use to determine its truth? That criteria gives its meaning for practicing Mormons and that meaning cannot be reduced to scientific claims.” Does this mean that what makes a narrative valid is how we use it? Surely, by the way, we have some criteria for accepting certain narratives as more important than others. After all, we like the Book of Mormon quite a lot but tend to disregard the Book of Zelph (see http://www.bookofzelph.com/) narrative altogether. If the difference is that we pray and receive a spiritual confirmation of the Book of Mormon but not the Book of Zelph, then that is presumably our definition of truth. But this definition is potentially separable from the historical and empirical question of whether there was actually a person named Nephi who travelled from the Middle East to the Western Hemisphere between about 600 and 580 BC.

If the Spirit says the Book of Mormon is a true witness of Christ but the empirics (counterfactually) definitively disprove the existence of a Nephi meeting the above criteria, do we accept the narrative as true under Dennis’s epistemology? Or is it false because the events described in the narrative didn’t empirically occur?

John C,

No, I don’t accuse anybody of being infallible by a long shot. But it’s not too far off the mark to say that most members consider God to be infallible and the words uttered by a prophet and found in scripture are God’s words. How far is this from infallibility really? What BoM studies are showing that even the highest revelation which we have received in this dispensation (the BoM) is very flawed on a number of accounts. What does this say about the other revelation which are not the “most correct”?

John H, I found Dan Vogel’s hypothesis that Joseph made the plates from scrap tin to be one of the most ingenious speculations in his biography.

RT,

“Frank: I think the reason we need witnesses, preachers, and texts is to give us a chance to feel the Spirit, no?”

But you are saying that it does not matter if the witnesses actually witnessed anything. A witness is more than a preacher, it is a claim to have seen something. The gospel establishes truth by calling witnesses and the Holy Ghost confirms the truth of those witnesses. But you are saying that the witnesses’ truthfulness is irrelevant. In fact, their very existence is irrelevant. In this world view, Mormon is just as powerful a witness even if he never existed. But then there is no more doctrine of “witnessing”, just preaching.

DKL: I quite agree with you that a lot of the accounts in the NT are confused on the sorts of details that you bring up, but I hardly think that this constitutes a very good argument that Jesus did not exist. Lots of historians argue that we cannot rely on the gospels to provide us with accurate details about Jesus’s life or teachings, but I this is hardly the same as arguing that he didn’t exist. For example, many of the ancient biographies of Alexander the Great get confused about Persian geography, and offer (often wildly) contradictory accounts of his life, as well as all sorts of theological interpolations (after all, Alexander became a god all over the ancient Near East), but none of this constitutes a good argument that he didn’t exist.

DKL: It seems to me that the best evidence for the existence of Alexander are the Greek cities that were scattered all over the former Persian empire and the Greek kingdoms that sprang into existence immediately after his death. Within a generation or two of Jesus’s death you have churches and Christian communities scattered all over the Roman Empire and a body of writing (both in the NT and out) that purports to describe his teachings. In other words, I think that Alexander’s existence is uncontroversial because there is overwhelming evidence of his later influence on later history. An analogous (not perfectly analogous to be sure) argument can be made for the existence of a historical Jesus. Mind you, I don’t think that this argument gets you all that far, since the bare fact that there was a man in Judea named Yeshua Bar Yosef who preached in Palestine and was executed during the reign of Tiberius Caesar doesn’t tell you much of anything theologically.

If all I have to sacrifice in order to believe the NT is faith in the inerrancy of textual and archaelogical analysis , count me willing.

Very willing.

Consider it done.

DKL,
Frank’s argument is the one most commonly encountered amongst Mormons though. If the academics cannot find proofs of the Book of (Mormon, Abraham, etc.), then I choose to believe what I believe the book says over the academics (this is more the case if academics find evidence that appears to contradict what the person believes about scripture). Dismissing the argument because you feel it isn’t cogent is missing the point.

What if Frank was to say that history has shown that the general academic understanding of ancient history can change radically based on a few potsherds found in an unusual place or Bedouin peddling parchment found in a cave somewhere. I can’t speak directly to the NT because it isn’t my specialty and because the circumstances are a bit different from the OT, but I doubt that most historians are willing to go on record stating that various theories are facts in that period either. You can talk about scholarly consensus if you like, but that is far from a certainty.

The truth is that Frank is calling scholarly consensus tentative, which it is. He is dismissing it if it disagrees with him, which is probably not the best approach to take with everything but, according to Dennis, he appears to have a right to do this. The problem is convincing people like Frank that the historicity matters, even if it leads to places (sometimes) that we don’t like.

David:

I think you’re right. I think many believers in all religions, maybe even the vast majority, are willing to disregard the range of rational conclusions that can be drawn about their beliefs in light of the current evidence. The question I would pose is this: are you sure this is actually a bad thing?

In effect, this comes down to our beliefs about the inherent value of faith. If we consider faith (e.g., in Jesus Christ or in the Book of Mormon) to be an inherently valuable thing, then it seems admirable to set aside the empirical evidence altogether, as I think Frank suggests above he is willing to do. If, on the other hand, we consider the value of faith to be contingent on some kind of correspondence between the belief system that is the object of that faith and the range of reasonable conclusions that can be held in light of currently-available empirical evidence, we may be inclined to think unkind thoughts about this approach.

For purely extra-rational reasons, related to my own experience of the divine, I find faith in Jesus Christ to be inherently valuable. Hence, I would hope that nearly no empirical evidence could weaken that faith. Of course, it would certainly affect the range of things I find reasonable to believe in, but faith has very little truck with rational belief in the first place.

Sorry for not posting more quickly. I hope folks don’t mind if I rewind the discussion somewhat to Dennis’ comments.

It seem’s Dennis’ point is really about scientific meaning and literary meaning. Put perhaps in an overly simplified manner, the kind of narrative the scriptures focus on is open to endless interrogations. That is, if we consider the set of statements translating the text or portions of the text, we have an infinite set. By scientific we often mean that a text can be reduced to a finite set of statements. In history, those set of statements are akin to simple statements of fact. (i.e. Bethlehem is in the Middle East) In terms of fundamental statements, this set is finite.

What I think Dennis is saying is that the set of scientific statements can’t capture everything important about the text.

To a degree I agree. However I hope Dennis isn’t saying that the scientific statements don’t matter. Personally rather than priviledging one above the other, as is so often the case, I think we need both. Beyond those two aspects to the text, we have the problem that the text is about things like justice, repentence, love, etc. Those topics exceed the text. The text can be seen as a flawed and limited attempt to bring us to the true meaning of those notions. But that means that to understand the text we must go beyond it in a certain sense. (Obviously not the sense of looking beyond the mark, but in the sense of looking to the mark)

1. The word egyptology has no place being in the same sentence with the word inerrant, much less being modified by it.

2. Historicity does matter to me, but that doesnot mean that the scientific evidence is sufficient to shed important light on the question. The labor supply function for teenagers also matters to me, but that does not mean I know what it is from the available scientif evidence.

3. Faith can be viewed as a kind of empirical evidence, just evidence that is not easily transmitted to others. There are actually lots of evidence of this kind. I would guess it is as easy or easier for me to test, spiritually, someone’s faith claims as it is for me to test the scientific claims of a researcher on ancient Mayan culture.

4. Decent statistical work always gives both a “best guess” and an interval around that guess that indicates its precision. Thus, if I estimate that the labor supply elasticity of teenagers (to wages) is .5, I also might report that there is a 95% chance that the real value lies between -.2 and 1.2. Since that range takes in pretty much every value that anybody could possibly think was reasonable, the interval reveals that my estimate is not much more than a wild stab in the dark. Textual analysis has more difficulty reporting its interval, but the errors are all still there, they just can’t be so easily quantified. So it is perfectly possibly to be all in favor of hearing the most rational best guess, and then pretty much ignoring it because you think the best guess is uninformative. That’s quite scientific. Especially if I have access to other evidence, faith is, after all,the evidence of things not seen, that gives me a different and more precise piece of evidence. Gravity, on the other hand, is rather precisely measured, so this does not apply equally to all scientific answers.

5. The fact that God is involved wreaks havoc with scientific methodology, even gravity. Based on a huge amount of empirical evidence, I would say the chance that somebody rises from the dead are extremely low, if that probability is being drawn from the same distribution as all the deaths one hears about. But Christ’s death was not drawn from the same distribution, it was drawn from a different one. And so those other deaths are not scientifically informative. Similarly, making inferences to religious events from what normally happens or should happen, when God is unobservably altering things in the background according to His plan (and He is a God of miracles), means that all such conclusions are subject to a horrendously large source of error. An error that goes entirely unquantified by the applicable researchers because they have no way to quantify it. Often, they deny it exists. That is their prerogative, but it does make their research less useful to me.

6. So yes, I am always interested in hearing the scientific evidence, because sometimes it helps me differentiate between competing hypotheses, both of which are consistent with my beliefs arrived at through faith. But those results as a basis for religious beliefs, when based on textual analysis or archaelogical analysis, are like estimating the height distribution of American males using me and my brothers, then denying that anybody whose height fell outside the range of our family heights could possibly be American! My brothers’ height may be the best available guess, but staking your belief structure on it would be moronic. Compared to textual analysis, getting answers to prayer, a difficult and laborious process, starts to look downright easy.

Frank, saying that Christ’s death “was not drawn from the same distribution [as all the deaths one hears about]” begs the question.

I wish you’d expand on what you mean by faith being a kind of empirical evidence and testing faith claims, because I do not believe I understand you. The way I see it, my belief system has no impact at all on whether (say) planets move in circular or elliptical orbits. Likewise, whatever the mayans did or did not do is logically independent of any opinion I hold about it.

On a side note: What you describe in terms of intervals of accuracy only hold in deterministic systems, like quantum physics or polling. Indeterminate systems (like classical physics) are unable to provide such intervals of accuracy. (The irony is that most people believe that classical physics is deterministic while quantum physics is indeterministic, when the reverse is true [I’m drawing on Popper here]. But that’s a separate issue.)

RT, I think you’re right that we’re in the minority in wanting to discuss such topics, only I’m not sure that warrants congratulations.

Me thinks some people here think too much. Could they try dumbing down the conversation a little so the average person might follow it. :) Or maybe they could translate it using shorter and choppier sentences below. Seriously, this has been very interesting. I wish I had enough background to understand half of this stuff though.

RT, sorry to ruin your irony by requiring an explanation. It just goes to underscore the point that Bob Caswell made several months ago when he said I was out of my league here.

P.S. It’s an oversimplification to say the average of multiple independent observations is ALWAYS better than any of the individual observations. This issue has to do with the ratio of error variances in each observation and the underlying distribution. In the present discussion, it seems clear to me that both spiritual witnesses and scientific knowledge have important error variance but also important informational content. If we don’t agree on this assessment, perhaps we should discuss further.

Jonathan,

I call claims to have the priesthood of God, a unique set of vital ordinances, and a more direct if imperfect channel of communication with God a serious difference between LDS faith claims and those of the other churches that you listed. Entirely aside from history questions, these factors are reasonably distinctive. (The Catholic church, in particular, makes parallel claims–but those claims and the LDS ones are obviously mutually exclusive.)

I just received this quote in my email.

“Nothing would remain stable in human society if we determined to believe only what can be held with absolute certainty” St. Augustine

Doesn’t it matter that our faith reside in things which are TRUE? If the Book of Mormon is actually a nineteenth century document, aren’t its origins, and thus the originator, suspect, fallacious and unworthy of our veneration?

Melinda, that is certainly a common argument. Furthermore, the opposite argument (i.e., that we can believe in Joseph Smith as a prophet and the Book of Mormon as a testament of Christ, even if it turns out that the book is a 19th-century creation) has the disadvantage of being most prominently associated with ex-mormons like Brent Metcalfe.

But let’s think about your question for a moment. What are we supposed to have faith IN? The standard answer is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So, it’s important for our faith that Jesus actually be our Redeemer. The function of prophets, scriptures, etc., is to bring us into a saving and eventually exalting relationship with Jesus. This is why it’s unusual for us to discuss faith in the Bible or the Book of Mormon; these documents are supposed to build our faith, not be important objects of our faith.

If the Book of Mormon were divinely given to Joseph Smith as a parable rather than as a history, would that make it suspect and fallacious? I think not–it would still be a powerful tool for expressing the truth that Christ is our Savior. (As I argued earlier in this discussion, are Christ’s parables suspect and fallacious? They, too, are fiction.) I’m not arguing for the Book of Mormon as parable, so I won’t bother dealing with its primary difficulty: the fact that Joseph Smith evidently thought the text was history. What I am arguing is that such an interpretation of the Book of Mormon or other historical claims should be seen as compatible with our faith in Christ and the divine plan of redemption.

I think this inclusive view of our faith and our church is important because a fair number of people end up leaving (if already members) or failing to take the church seriously (if investigators or nonmembers) because they have half-considered understandings of the empirical evidence that lead them to conclude that traditional LDS historical claims are impossible. Explaining that our faith revolves around Christ and His divine plan of salvation rather than around history, and that a personal spiritual witness of that plan is individually available, may serve to remove some of the pressure that incomplete understandings sometimes place on these individuals.

It also helps prevent us from building our faith around historical interpretations. This is crucial because we sometimes get history wrong. If we build human mistakes about history into the foundations of our faith, then we, too, become vulnerable in unnecessary ways.

RT, doesn’t it beg the question to assert faith in Christ as the answer to historicity questions? Are you saying that if the BofM is a parable, it is still a legitimate teaching about Christ? What I find perplexing about this argument is that our faith in Christ relies on the accuracy BofM.

In my view, without the historicity of the BofM, Christianity has no stronger basis than any other religion. The Bible, for example, as several people on this list have pointed out, is full of questionable factual material that leads many people to conclude it is a fable or a myth. Without the BofM to verify the Bible, it’s difficult to see how Christianity can hold up as much more than just another belief system.

This is one reason why, IMO, the Christian world as a whole shoots itself in the foot by arguing against the BofM. on the other hand, when the defenders of the BofM are content with it as a fable, or when they decline to examine its historicity, or even when they make it solely a matter of “testimony,” the BofM cannot fulfill its purpose.

In other news, I second DKL’s answer to Melinda’s question.

RT,

I’m with John C. and DKL here. The fact that parables can teach us important spiritual lessons does change the fact that the Book of Mormon goes to great lengths to emphasize that it is telling us a real history of a real people. Further, Joseph himself was unbending with regard to this historicity question (a point Terryl Givens devoted an entire chapter to in By the Hand of Mormon).

So my answer to the original question is yes, historicity matters very much. Having said that, I do not think that modern interpretations of some of that history are all that important. For instance, it matters very much that such people as Nephi, Lehi, Laman, Lemuel existed. It matters that they started in the land of Jerusalem and ended up in the land of promise. Why does it matter? Because they directly and specifically say this is the case. The “Spirit of Truth” then is supposed to ratify this entire story as true. Either there are fundamental historical truths here or God is indeed involved in some sort of pious fraud as John C. noted. But that does not mean the Nephites and Lamanites had to fill all of North and South America. That is what I was getting at with my allusion to modern interpretations of the history.

I think that we can safely assume there is some bathwater in our historical assumptions about most scriptural history, but it seems an indictment of God and his messenger, the Spirit of Truth, to imply there in no baby there at all. That baby is the actual history behind the BoM and stories of Abraham etc..

Is it possible that Joseph Smith did not know the extent to which the BoM is historically accurate?

Clark: If Dennis is only claiming what you claim that he is claiming then I have no problem with what he is claiming. Clearly, the meaning of a narrative cannot be exhausted by reducing it to a list of emperically verifiable propositions. However, it seems to me that Dennis is making a more radical claim, namely that narrative implies a seperate kind of ontology. In other words, he seems to be making claims not only about hermeneutics but about metaphysics.

“John, the gospels in the New Testament are most probably exactly the kind of fictional, falsely historical compositions you’re unhappy with. Furthermore, they were probably written for specific, human persuasive purposes. Do we therefore reject them even though they lead us into a spiritually meaningful relationship with Christ?”

of course not. The Gospels are products of an era that had a different idea of “history” and how to compose than we do today. I don’t mind flawed history, I mind fiction that tries to pass itself of as accurate history.

“With respect to the parables, my point in introducing them is to make clear that scriptural statements need not be literally true in empirical content in order to be scriptural. If we can concede that point, I’ll drop the comparison and we can move on to other issues.”

Certainly. Happy to drop it.

“But who says God has to work according to our preconceptions?”

Um, He does. If He makes claims about being a God of truth who does not lie and then he gives us fiction as history, you don’t have a God of truth, you have a logic puzzle.

Nate, Clark, RT: I also got the impression that Dennis was getting involved in metaphysics here. DP, more clarification please.

RT,

Smith made repeated statements and even prophetic proclamations that are most consistent with the theory that the Book of Mormon is a history of the entire North and South American continents.

Joseph came to that conclusion years after translating the plates. This was the point I was making though. Joseph may have been wrong on that point. That does not mean the entire historicity of the BoM is suddenly in jeopardy though. The record itself made no such claims.

…we have to accept the fact that we’re disregarding the opinion of Joseph Smith about Book of Mormon history.

No, we don’t. We simply have to accept that we are disregarding an opinion of Joseph Smith about post-Book of Mormon history.

If the prophet could have been as far off on geography and history as confusing the story of a small part of Mesoamerica with the story of all of North and South America, he could certainly also have been wrong about whether the book was intended as history or parable.

I think you are conflating the actual record with later opinions from Joseph. Joseph never said “my opinions on the Book of Mormon are the most correct on earth”. He rather repeatedly reminded the saints that he was not infallible.

As for spiritual witnesses — along with John C I don’t mind flawed history; I mind fiction that tries to pass itself of as accurate history. Passing something fictional off as something true is called a lie after all.

BTW — even if Lehi is not the principle ancestor of Native Americans today, I have posted in the past on how he is likely a literal ancestor of them all in one degree or another.

I agree with you, Geoff. I’d put it this way: The question amounts to how much privilege we should accord Joseph’s as a reader and interpreter of the Book of Mormon. As far as I’m concerned, Joseph is just another first reader of the Book of Mormon. We should privilege first readers’ interpretations of the Book of Mormon only insofar as we believe the Book of Mormon to be entirely a product of their environment (in Joseph Smith’s case, early 19th century America). The first readers’ impression of a new English translation of Plato, for example, shouldn’t receive any greater privilege than first readers (or any subsequent readers) of the Jowett translation based simply on their priority as readers (one could argue, on the other hand, that readers contemporary with Plato should receive some privilege based on their priority as readers).

At any rate, you can’t privilege first readers’ interpretations of a book unless you believe the book is a product of their environment. Thus, the argument that the Book of Mormon is of 19th century origin based on the interpretations of its first readers is circular.

By the way, I think this is a terrible format for this conversation. Because arguments emerge in bits and pieces, it’s hard for us to adequately engage each other. For example, I have to keep repeating the fact that I’m not arguing against BofM historicity at all. I’m arguing against the idea that historicity is necessary for us to believe in the book (or the gospel).

RT,

I actually saw that you were only arguing against the necessity of historicity but it’s always good to be reminded. That said, I have not seen any arguments that are remotely convincing against the need for historicity yet. Your comparison to parables falls flat because parables have disclosures. It looks like you read farther into DKL’s comment that was warranted as well. Simply because Joseph, as a first reader, may have made mistakes on post-BoM history does not imply that the record itself should suddenly be brought into question regarding its’ status as history. To put it more bluntly: I still contend that if this record is fiction then God is a liar. God guided the process of the translation and the record is unequivocal in its’ self-portrayal as real history. God then confirms the record is accurate to millions of us who ask him. How so we get around that?

Earlier you said: To put this another way, if someone could absolutely prove to you that Nephi didn’t exist, would that be enough to make you lose your faith? For me, the answer is no. What is the answer for you?

I ignored this because it is a loaded question and not fair at all. Lose my faith in what? How about if I asked you some similarly loaded questions: 1. if someone could absolutely prove to you that Jesus didn’t exist, would that be enough to make you lose your faith? 2. if someone could absolutely prove to you that Joseph Smith didn’t exist, would that be enough to make you lose your faith? if someone could absolutely prove to you that God didn’t exist, would that be enough to make you lose your faith?

I think we should avoid all such ridiculous hypothetical questions because none has happened.

Hah! Well alrightee then Steve.

On a separate note — I am obviously not the only one that found my eyes crossing while reading the Dennis Potter portion of this post. It is truly amusing to see all these smart commenters in the thread vainly attempting to decipher that segment of the discussion. No one seems to be able to figure out what on earth he is really saying.

Actually, I saw and appreciated your #31, DKL. And your interpretation of what Dennis said (and response to it) sounded pretty good to me. But others thought he was saying something else (see Nate in #33 and Clark in #34). So despite your excellent comment we still continued having a DP hermeneutics problem…

I think the issue is that Joseph Smith did exist, and he either lied to further his own purposes, or there actually were golden plates that were written on by the hand of Mormon.

“Is there a viable third possibility I am missing?”

Yes. There are many gradations of possibilities, as well, that I think you are missing. Among them is the possibility that Joseph Smith received divine inspiration, interpreted it the best he could, and the BoM is the product. In other words, no one’s lying, it’s just a guy with a prophetic gift and calling trying to interpret all these images and messages as best he can. God doesn’t lie to him; Joseph doesn’t lie to us, but still we shouldn’t presume that the BoM is 100% what it seems to be.

That is just a possibility; not one I espouse, nor one I think is correct.

God is silent all the time about how His word is to be interpreted. Does that make him partially dishonest?

I would like to try to make more explicit a couple of points which I think are sometimes being buried in this discussion.

1. The argument that historicity does not matter, as advanced by RT, seems to beg an important question by assuming that Joseph Smith was indeed called by God and that the Book of Mormon was the product of divine revelation. If that premise is simply assumed, then historicity does not matter, except perhaps to the extent that history can be used as an interpretive tool. However, if that premise is not assumed, then historicity is critical, because the historicity of the Book of Mormon and the appearance of divine messengers in modern times is powerful evidence either for or against his claims.

2. The argument that historicity does not matter assumes that one’s spiritual witness of the claims of Joseph Smith is not necessarily reliable, and that a testimony must be consistent with and should be tested against historical fact, as discerned by rational rather than spiritual means. If a spiritual witness is assumed to be the only way to know these things, then historicity is irrelevant.

I don’t think the proponents of the different views about the relevance of historicity talk past each other unless they explicitly deal with these issues.

“God is not silent on anything that we properly ask for.”

Then why are we having a discussion at all? Seems to me, speaking snarkily, that God would have told given one of us a definitive historicity answer at some point… :)

Here’s my response to David Landrith’s very interesting criticisms of my position.

1st Objection: My view implies relativism regarding the truth of the Book of Mormon (or other historical religious texts).

Response: I agree that it implies relativism regarding the sense or meaning of the past-tense language. Claims that are to be adjudicated with scientific standards mean something different from those that are to be adjudicated with religious standards. This means that the truth of these different kinds of statements will be adjudicated in different ways. The religious linguistic practices that determine the meaning of past-tense language in religious discourse are locations of competition over meaning. There are usually dominant and dissenting ways of formulating the practice. All of them are equally valid with respect to the way in which they determine meaning. But some practices may be more acceptable than others, morally speaking. Once a practice begins to become fairly fixed in its usage (however) then standards of application within that practice have a certain internal objectivity. So, for example, if I adopt the practice of arithmetic, it will follow that 2+2=4. No other answer will do. Practices may also fail for another reason: they fail to enforce standards of application in a way that the community can adjudicate. Completely private languages are in this boat.

2nd Objection: My view implies a radical holism that is implausible.

In my view, something like holism has to be true unless we can get ourselves to accept the project of formal semantics. The latter (which I have recently rejected, but formerly defended with vigor) employs what are essential abstract metaphysical objects as meanings that can ground an atomistic (meanings of expressions are largely independent of each other) and logocentric (there is one standard of logical comparison between all assertive expressions in any language–this is not Derrida’s logocentrism, but it should have been). However, I reject formal semantics because I reject that anyone can learn anything about abstract metaphysical objects while they are learning language. Perhaps they can learn something about such object after having language (Cf. Hobbes), but not before. Language requires learnable conditions. These are observable. Once we go this route I don’t see how we can avoid the kind of holism that Quine accepts. The problem with Quine’s view, however, is that it retains the logocentrism of the formal semantics project. He recognizes this and makes arguments for it. But I find the arguments implausible. Instead, I argue that language could be heterogeneous with respect to the standards of comparison between assertive expressions. So, really I don’t accept holism as it manifests itself in traditional analytic philosophy. I do accept it in a broader sense. And this heterogeneous holism does require that one be inculcated into a certain practice to understand the meaning of expressions in that practice.

The third objection is really a question. It seems to me that we need to locate the practice in which the statement occurs. Then we need to delineate the criteria of that practice that help to determine meaning.

Dennis, you’re doing just fine! I like the fact that I stretch a bit during our conversations.

I miss logocentric, utlitarian Dennis.

Regarding your response to my first criticism, I have two responses. First, I don’t think that your relativism works in practice. Second, I don’t think that it speaks to the term historicity.

I think that in practice your relativism is less palatable than you make it sound in your description. I’ll leave aside for a moment the question of past tense language, since presumably the standards which adjudicate truth conditions relative to a given community apply likewise to present and future tense language. Let’s say that within a certain religious community, statements relating to the design and building of canals are obtained from gazing at the entrails of sacrificed animals. Within a scientifically oriented community, statements relating to the design and building of canals are obtained from engineering text books and classes that teach from them. Given a conflict between the statements of each community, the question arises as to which community’s statements are preferable (this is the kind of Question that Lauden might ask of Rorty).

Suppose that we hold a tournament wherein each community must build 6 canals, allowing each community to dictate the standards for judging 3 completed canals. If the the canal building language employed by each community is legitimate simply by virtue of the fact that each community succeeds in enforcing it, then it follows that there is no standard to determine a winner of our tournament. As a consequence, we have no way to explain why everyone outside of the stipulated religious community would prefer to have the scientifically oriented community produce its canals. I consider this consequence to be an unavoidable conclusion of the relativism you’ve posited, and I consider it unacceptable. Do you consider it to avoidable or acceptable?

Regarding past tense language, this is probably a good time to go into one of the additional things that I had to say about my 5 sentences (incorporating the same caveats regarding intentionality), and I’m now able to state it rather more clearly than I would have before. You’ll recall that my first sentence was as follows:

1. David King Landrith stated, “I was in Philadelphia on such and such a date.”

There are several conditions that make my statement in sentence #1 true, given identical meanings attached to each particular word that makes the statement. Following are a few of them:

First, if I actually was in Philadelphia on the specified date, and there is a community that accepts this as a condition for its truth. (I consider this kind of truth condition to be in keeping with 20th century scientism)

Second, if I was in Yonkers on the specified date, but the notion of my having been in Philadelphia on that date is edifying and similar to many other edifying stories about cities, and there is a community that accepts this edification as a condition for the statement’s truth. (This kind of spiritual truth is the kind described by Price in his essay in American Apocrypha.)

Third, if I was in Yonkers on a specified date, but being in Yonkers is kind of like being in Philadelphia, and there is a community that accepts this similarity between Philadelphia and Yonkers as a sufficient condition for the statement’s truth. (This kind of truth by proximity is often used by apologists)

I’ve already argued above that we have grounds to consider the scientific truth conditions to be generally superior. I take you to be arguing that other conditions are equally valid within a community that is willing and able to enforce them. But at this point, I think it’s important to point out than when one refers to historicity, one usually refers to the scientific truth conditions. Thus, the question of the historicity of the Book of Mormon is whether there is a predominance of important statements which satisfy the first type of condition, as opposed to the second or third conditions or some other type of condition. Thus, I take your response that we need a new understanding of the term historicity to be saying that historicity (as traditionally understood) is not important.

I realize that one objection to my approach is that my method of analysis favors modern empirical scientism right out of the shoot, and I’m not sure how to answer this criticism. At any rate, I’ve thrown this together on the subway and waiting for “Batman Begins” to begin (back: good flick; though it borrows some elements from Year One [same ending with the joker card], it’s not as Frank Miller as it should be; that said, it weaves the post-Moore superhero tail far better than any previous Batman effort, but not as well as Spiderman 2), and I’m out of time. So I’ll respond to your second point about holism later. (You’ve really abandoned formal semantics? Please say that you don’t now view positivistic empirical scientism as the security blanket for the culture of overreaching imperialistic globalization!)

Technically, we are not supposed to have faith in Jesus Christ so much as faith in his name:

“But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”
(John 20:31)

“Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power:

That the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
(2 Thes 1:11-12)

“But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.

If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified.”
(1 Peter 4:13-14)

“And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.

And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment.

And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.”
(1 John 3:22-34)

etc…

Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention to the blogosphere in 2005.