Jesus blessing Jairus’s daughter

Today, I would simply like to share my conviction that the man who we call Jesus Christ, who was born a little over two thousand years ago, is the promised Messiah, that He is the one who was anointed to save us from sin. I believe in the words of Lehi, the ancient prophet, who said, “Wherefore, redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth. Behold, he offereth himself a sacrifice for sin … unto all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit” (2 Nephi 2:6–7).

The idea of a fall and promised redemption is woven throughout the history of philosophy. Many mythologies account for the evil in the world as the result of a separation between God and man. Christianity promises to reunite God and man through the suffering, death, and resurrection of God’s Son. How this works has been debated ever since it happened, and it is indeed a strange story. But it doesn’t seem like the type of narrative someone would invent if they were trying to deceive the world. It is a narrative that I have committed my life to, and I believe with all my heart that it is true.

Shortly prior to the Savior’s birth, a prophet named Alma said, “Now is the time to repent, for the day of salvation draweth nigh; Yea, and the voice of the Lord, by the mouth of angels, doth declare it unto all nations; yea, doth declare it, that they may have glad tidings of great joy; yea, and he doth sound these glad tidings among all his people” (Alma 13:21–22). God sent messengers to all parts of the world, promising His children that the Messiah would soon be born, who would save them from their follies.

Those who were privileged to receive this news from angelic messengers then shared it with others. These men testified of God’s promise. They were considered prophets, seers of the future, revealers of God’s truth. It is through authorized prophets that God has instructed those who believed in the coming of His Son.

When Christ lived on the earth, He appointed apostles to lead His church when He was gone. The apostles were privileged to witness the greatest miracle in history: after He died, the Savior Jesus Christ came back to life. The apostles touched Him, spoke with Him, and ate with Him; they testified to all they met that not only did Jesus Christ fulfill all the prophecies of His coming, but also that He lives! And that because of Him, everyone else will live again after they die!

After nearly two thousand years of spiritual darkness and confusion, God has again appointed men to act as apostles and prophets, to prepare us for the Messiah’s second coming. There are special witnesses of Jesus Christ living today. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God’s authorized organization, through which we can come to know and understand the Savior’s message, hear His words given through authorized servants, and partake of the redemption He offers.

This Christmas season, I would like to add my voice to the millions of others who have testified that Jesus Christ lives today, that He directs The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through living prophets and apostles, and that through the Savior Jesus Christ, we can find redemption from sin, be resurrected from death, and return to God’s presence again.

Early Greek philosophers saw reason as the conduit through which human beings could access the unchanging certainties of the cosmos. This perspective actually makes some sense. We may age, wither, and die, but the Pythagorean theorem remains unchanged through time. The conclusions of rational thought were seen as the bedrock truths at the bottom of our swiftly changing world.

This understanding of human reason implies that rational people will converge on the same ideas. An interesting, subtle, but extremely important side effect of this point of view is expressed aptly by John Locke: “All that is voluntary in our knowledge, is the employing or withholding any of our [rational] faculties. … But they being employed, our will hath no power to determine the knowledge of the mind one way or another.” Thus, the conclusions of rational thought are inevitable.

Modern philosophers have, to some extent, rejected this ancient perspective on rationality. Instead, reason has been seen as a human tool for satisfying our individual desires. This is easily seen in the example of Sigmund Freud, who believed that human beings possess, at the bottom, a sea of insatiable desires (the id), which are satisfied more effectively by forming a rationality more suited to pursue them (the ego). While few overtly subscribe to Freud’s philosophy, it is merely an instantiation of a widespread modern trend which David Hume summarized when he described reason as “the slave of the passions.”

Michael Oakeshott’s Point of View

In contrast to both trends, Michael Oakeshott did not describe reason as either a conduit to certain truth or a slave of human passion. According to Shirley Robin Letwin, Oakeshott believed reason was “a purely human, but creative power.” Rationality, according to Oakeshott, “is a faculty for inventing interpretations of and responses to experience.”

Basically, reason is the human capacity to “make sense” of the world, to create order and make patterns out of otherwise unordered experience. “In this picture,” explained Letwin, “if a person’s faculties are in good order, he exercises his rationality in whatever he is doing because he is always interpreting his experience and responding in the manner that he selects. This means that whenever a man is aware of anything, he has made something of it.”

There is no single path that rationality may follow. A person may make sense of the same experience in any number of ways. For example, he may make sense of his trip to the fast food restaurant as a deserved reward after dieting for a lengthy time, or he may make sense of the trip as an unfortunate indulgence after a long time of resisting temptation. Which way a person makes sense of his experience is his choice. “In short, to say that a man is a rational being is to say that he makes of himself what he will and that things appear to him as he chooses to see them.”

When we see rationality this way, we see that all of human action and perception involves choice. “To say that human beings possess individuality,” explained Letwin, “means that all are the makers of their own thoughts, … and that they are responsible for what they become.” With this insight comes a danger, however. Letwin warns,

But if understanding rationality in this fashion (as a purely human attribute, instead of as a pipeline to non-human certainties) offers a better explanation of individuality, it also suffers from a great drawback: It allows no escape from the constant flux of human life. And the implications can be highly disconcerting. As there is no cosmic necessity for any human contrivance, everything can be questioned.

What this means is that none of our beliefs or truth claims can be indisputably justified through rational analysis. For example, said Letwin,

however firmly we assert that “every human being is to be treated as an end and never as a means,” that understanding must be a commitment because we accept it even though there are alternatives to it that we cannot demonstrate to be necessarily false. We can elaborate and embellish this commitment, but we cannot establish a universal and wholly uncontentious obligation to regard every human being as an end in himself.

In other words, our most cherished beliefs can never be demonstrated to be indubitably true; we can simply commit to them as an act of faith. We can certainly persuade others to do the same thing; we may even use logic and other persuasive tools to convince them to. However, any subsequent conversion is best compared to a voluntary shift in allegiance, because at no time did we prove that our beliefs were true—we only persuaded others to relinquish their commitment to their former beliefs and commit to a new point of view. According to Letwin, “science is as vulnerable as morality.” He continues:

If we accept a scientific explanation of the precipitation we call rain, we may confidently say that anyone who expects to produce precipitation by rolling stones is mistaken. Our awareness that we may later change our views on rain need not prevent us from declaring the statement to be true. But we cannot ultimately justify our view to the stone-rolling rainmaker other than by declaring a commitment to a particular manner of explaining such phenomena—the manner which we consider to be “scientific.”

In other words, certainty is no longer the product of reason; certainty must be found elsewhere, if at all. I suspect that certainty is not impossible from this point of view—it just cannot be rational certainty. Rational certainty is no more than conviction.

Summary

This view of human rationality makes individuality inevitable. While the ancient view of reason implied that rational people will converge on a single idea, Oakeshott’s perspective implies that divergence of worldviews is possibly inevitable among rational people. Letwin explains, “Disputes are bound to arise not just because human beings can be wicked [as in the ancient view of reason], but because they are rational. … In short, once we cease to think of human rationality as a pipeline to eternal verities, we can achieve a coherent understanding of human individuality.”

Does this point of view conflict with a Latter-day Saint worldview? I haven’t yet made up my mind about the issue. Many moralists argue in favor of the ancient view of reason because the implications of the modern view of reason can lead to nihilism. Oakeshott’s view of human reason, however, lacks the certainty provided by the ancient view, but may, perhaps, avoid the nihilism of the modern. Consider: few Latter-day Saints claim to know indubitably, through logical deductions, the restored doctrines of the gospel. That kind of logical pursuit is not the invitation we find in scripture. Rather, we are invited to commit ourselves to follow the Savior by making promises, and then to be true to those promises afterwards.

Certainly, we claim certainty through divine revelation. Consider Bruce R. McConkie’s claim that the divinity of the Savior Jesus Christ is not established through logic, but by apostolic witnesses. It doesn’t seem as though revealed truth is something that requires reason to be a conduit to certain truth, since none of the important truths of the gospel are rooted in the claims of reason. I will discuss more of the epistemological implications of Oakeshott’s point of view in a future post. For now, let’s consider the possibility that divine revelation is one of many kinds of experiences that we subsequently make sense of. Unique to the experience of divine revelation is the fact that it frequently invites us to reconstrue our understanding of the world, and to make sense of it differently than we had before.

Obedience versus Repentance. Sin definitely interrupts the steady growth that comes with obedience, but where exactly does repentance lead to?

In a previous post (“I Am the Way … Unless You Find a Better One”), I introduced a chart used by Elder Merrill J. Bateman in a CES fireside broadcast. On it, he draws two lines. The first line represents obedience: it rises steadily over time, showing how aligning our will with God’s is the only way to meet out potential for growth and progress. The second line represents sin and repentance: it dips downward, then begins to rise again, fading in an upward direction. Elder Bateman explains, “Suppose one is traveling on the celestial path and commits a sin. The effect is a loss of light. Embracing evil lowers the trajectory of one’s path as the Holy Spirit withdraws.”¹ His chart aptly illustrates the fact that sin interrupts our progress and that only repentance can restore it.

One question hangs in the air: Where does repentance lead us, in comparison to what our condition would have been had we never strayed? In other words, where should Elder Bateman’s sin-repentance line end?

In a previous post (The Benefits of Sin?), I cited a few different experiences in which members of the Church have suggested that we are sometimes better off for having sinned and repented, because we learn and grow so much along the way. One severe problem with this notion is that it would mean that we penitent sinners are better off than Jesus Christ, because he never sinned. If sinning and repenting leads us to a better condition than perfect obedience, then we are privy to wisdom and attributes that the Lord himself—aw shucks—just can’t ever have because he doesn’t sin.

Better Off being Obedient

This notion is inimical to what we know about God’s laws and the Savior’s perfect example in “marking the path and showing the way.” President Spencer W. Kimball said of this notion,

Another error into which some transgressors fall, because of the availability of God’s forgiveness, is the illusion that they are somehow stronger for having committed sin and then lived through the period of repentance. This simply is not true. That man who resists temptation and lives without sin is far better off than the man who has fallen, no matter how repentant the latter may be. … His sin and repentance have certainly not made him stronger than the consistently righteous person. God will forgive—of that, we are sure. How satisfying it is to be cleansed from filthiness, but how much better it is never to have committed the sin! ¹

President Kimball clearly teaches against the notion that the path of sin and repentance leads us to a better condition than we would have been in if we had never strayed from obeying God’s commandments. There is, however, a way to misunderstand his words.

Irrecoverable Losses?

False Notion 2. Another mistaken idea is that repentance can never fully restore us to the condition we would have attained if we had been obedient.

Because President Kimball says it is better off to never have committed sin, it might seem logical to complete Elder Bateman’s chart by drawing the sin-repentance line so that it always stays below the obedience line (see figure). In other words, once we have sinned, it would be impossible to ever regain the lost progress that is caused by sin, even after repenting. We are forever doomed to fall short of the potential we were created with.

Like the first mistaken notion (that sin and repentance leads us to a better place than obedience) this notion is also understandable (that sin and repentance can never recover the progress we would have made through perfect obedience). In fact, I think this idea may be a little more common in the Church than the first one. And I can see why.

For one thing, in our own experiences, even after we have repented of sin and know the Lord has forgiven us, there are still habits and other temporal effects to wrestle with. I may repent of swearing and never do it again, but I continually need to restrain the words that so naturally surface to my lips. A girl who has premarital intercourse may fully repent and be fully forgiven, but that will not remove the baby from her womb. So that seems to indicate that the red sin-repentance line is perpetually lower than the obedience line, even with full repentance.

For another thing, many warnings against sin seem to require the conclusion that, if we are to take sin seriously, we must think of its effects as permanent and insuperable. To imply otherwise, some fear, would be to take sin lightly and lead people to let their guard down against temptation. Those are valid concerns.

Problems

However, the idea that repentance can never fully recover the losses of sin, nor put us back where we would have been had we been perfectly obedient, goes counter to several statements by modern prophets and apostles. For example, Elder Boyd K. Packer has said, “If you have already made bad mistakes, there are ways to fix things up, and eventually it will be as though they never happened.”²

If we really believe Elder Packer’s teaching, then we cannot believe that repentance is unable to ever bring us back to the same condition we would have been in had we obeyed. Indeed, the entire promise of the Savior’s atonement would be undermined. In my next post, I will discuss how we can complete Elder Bateman’s chart to show (1) repentance’s ability to make us “joint heirs with Christ” in spite of our falling short of his perfect obedience, while also illustrating (2) President Kimball’s affirmation that it is always better never to have sinned in the first place. A key to this harmony is found in one word in Elder Packer’s statement.

Notes

1. Spencer W. Kimball, The Miracle of Forgiveness (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1969), pp. 339–60; cited in Spencer W. Kimball, “God Will Forgive,” Ensign, Mar. 1982, p. 2. The omitted portion, indicated by ellipses, brings up an interesting point that I will address in another post.

2. Boyd K. Packer, “The Spirit of Revelation,” Ensign, Nov. 1999, p. 23. See also Vaughn J. Featherstone, [source].

Jeffrey Thayne

According to Letwin, Thomas Aquinas’s work was designed to reconcile scriptural truth with the philosophy of Aristotle. The assumption here is that Aquinas was attached to Aristotle’s philosophy, and tried to reconcile it with revealed truth. This is an important way to understand Aquinas, but it is not the only way to understand him.

In Response to Augustine

Thomas Aquinas. According to Thomas Aquinas, government is necessary even in a godly society, just as a captain of a ship is necessary not only to punish disobedient sailors, but also to direct obedient ones.

Dr. Reynolds suggests an alternative way to interpret Aquinas’s writings: Aquinas may be responding to the previous eight centuries of Augustinian thought. Characteristic of Augustine’s philosophy is a focus on the Fall; man is fallen, and has lost touch with the divine. In Augustine’s worldview, heaven and earth are irremediably separated. The consequences of the Fall may be mitigated by government force, but government force itself is not qualitatively different than the crime it punishes. Government, in this sense, is an inescapable, necessary evil. It keeps us from being killed by using force against those who would kill us. Human law is an “instrument of repression” (albeit a necessary one), and is thus a product of the fall, just as much as it is necessitated by the fall. To claim that a human law can be patterned after divine or eternal laws is silly, because human law is product of sin, and only necessary because of sin.

Aquinas responded to this worldview with a much more hopeful picture of mankind. He wanted to “bring heaven and earth closer together,” so to speak. Aristotle happened to be a useful tool of doing so. Thus, from Dr. Reynolds’ point of view, Aquinas used Aristotle to develop a more hopeful philosophy in response to Augustine—he didn’t just develop his philosophy to justify his love of Aristotle, as some have claimed.

Government is Part of the Divine Order

Aquinas believed that government is not always the product of the fall, as Augustine did. Aquinas believed that proper government was an important part of God’s overall order in the universe. It wasn’t just an instrument of repression, designed to restrain the violent (although it did serve this purpose); rather, it was a necessary part of even a righteous society, just as a ship needs a captain even if all the members of the crew are skilled and disciplined. As Letwin explains, Aquinas believed that law serves righteous men “more as a plan for unity than as a restraint to passion.”¹ Only to those who are not disciplined is the law “a deterrent and an educational device.”¹

Certainly, this is a much more positive view of not only law, but also of mankind. We may have unruly members of the crew, but we also have skilled and disciplined members as well; the captain of the ship can discipline the unruly as well as direct the faithful, and in fact is necessary to do both. In the same way, a government can pass laws to restrain criminality, but also to bring order and direction to the community at large. Also, we are not completely cut off from divine reason as to what laws are good, and which are not. There are standards we can measure them by. Government can be an instrument of good, and is a natural part of the order of the universe, not an unnatural diversion from the natural order.

Aquinas speaks of four different kinds of law. He calls these eternal law, natural law, human (positive) law, and divine law.

Eternal Law

What does Aquinas mean by eternal law? Aquinas said:

A law is nothing else but a dictate of practical reason emanating from the ruler who governs a perfect community. Now it is evident, granted that the world is ruled by Divine Providence … that the whole community of the universe is governed by Divine Reason. Wherefore, the very Idea of the government of things in God the Ruler of the universe, has the nature of a law. And since the Divine Reason’s conception of things is not subject to time but is eternal, according to Prov. 8:23, therefore it is that this kind of law must be called eternal.²

I believe that what Aquinas means is simply this: God governs the whole universe in an orderly, lawful fashion. This is eternal law (eternal, in reference to God’s point of view). There is a little bit of mysticism here; we cannot know all of the eternal law, because we do not know the mind of God. However, we can know a portion of it. This leads us to natural law.

Natural Law

Everything in the universe is governed by eternal law; from this this law “being imprinted on them, [things] derive their respective inclinations to their proper acts and ends.”² However, Aquinas said,

Now among all others, the rational creature is subject to Divine providence in the most excellent way, in so far as it partakes of a share of providence, by being provident both for itself and for others. Wherefore it has a share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end: and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law. Hence the Psalmist after saying (Ps. 4:6): “Offer up the sacrifice of justice,” as though someone asked what the works of justice are, adds: “Many say, Who showing good things?” in answer to which question he says: “The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us”: thus implying that the light of natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and what is evil, which is the function of the natural law, is nothing else than an imprint on us of the Divine Light. It is therefore evident that the natural law is nothing else than the rational creature’s participation of the eternal law.²

In other words, natural law is simply that portion of the eternal law that directs us as rational creatures; it is that part of eternal law that pertains to us, and which we naturally know by being rational creatures. Natural law, according to Aquinas, can be considered a subset of eternal law, or man’s participation in eternal law. This law is the same for all people. In response to the question, “Why do people then disagree on the issue, if it is self-evident and the same for everyone?”, Aquinas responds:

In speculative matters truth is the same in all men, both as to principles as to conclusions, but only as regards the principles which are called common notions. But in matters of action, truth or practical rectitude is not the same for all, as to matters of detail, but only as to the general principles.²

Essentially, the general principles are known to all (except those “perverted by passion, or evil habit, or an evil disposition of nature”; thus, most men don’t kill or steal, but you do have a few madmen here and there), but practical applications may differ. Homogeneity is found only on the level of abstraction; on matters of application, heterogeneity may prevail. “Although there is necessity in the general principles, the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects.”² This is where we learn about human law.

Human Law

This is where we see Aquinas expand on Aristotle’s philosophy. Letwin explains Aristotle’s philosophy: “In Aristotle’s picture, legislators are not obliged to copy an ideal, but rather to articulate in more particular and concrete terms what they have grasped as an abstract requirement. … Aristotle accordingly distinguishes between theoretical and practical reason.”¹ This disintction between theoretical and practical reason is preserved in Aquinas’s philosophy. Aquinas said,

We conclude that just as, in the speculative reason, from naturally known indemonstrable principles, we draw the conclusions of the various sciences, the knowledge of which is not imparted to us by nature, but acquired by the efforts of reason, so too it is from the precepts of the natural law, as from general and indemonstrable principles, that the human reason needs to proceed to the more particular determination of certain matters. These determinations, devised by human reason, are called human laws, provided the other essential conditions of law be observed.²

In other words, human law is natural law applied to local and various circumstances. Why must we have human laws, if the natural law is commonly known to all? Because “man has a natural aptitude for virtue; but the perfection of virtue must be acquired by man by means of some kind of training.” Not all have an equal disposition to do good. Some people need to be “habituated” towards virtue; if not at first by natural disposition, then at first by fear of punishment which will later do by natural habit. Thus, it is a practical necessity to enforce laws by punishment, as a means of education.

All (proper) human laws are rooted in natural law in some way; there are two main ways this may happen. The first is that human law is rooted in natural law by logical deduction. For example, a human law that prohibits killing is the logical conclusion of the natural law precept: “One should do harm to no man.” Other laws are derived from natural law by “determination,” (Brian Bix points out that this is not determination “in the sense of ‘finding out,’ but rather in the sense of making specific or concrete”³) which are not inevitable conclusions from natural law, but are rooted in natural law nonetheless. For example, while “the law of nature has it that the evil-doer should be punished; but that he be punished in this or that way, is a determination of the law of nature.”² It is a specific application of natural law; a law created by men to fulfill the natural mandate that men must be punished, but which does not specify how. Thus, these laws may vary from nation to nation, from community; even though they are firmly rooted in, or developed in response to, a natural law which is the same for everyone. An example provided by Brain Bix is that of traffic laws: the natural law mandates that we ought to provide for the safety of others; in response to this mandate of natural law, we form traffic laws to regulate traffic. The natural law, however, says nothing of whether people should drive on the left or right side of the road.³ Thus, these practical applications may differ by locality, even though they are all in response to a universal mandate of natural law.

While human law is a tool to direct the individual towards virtue, Aquinas is clear that “human law does not prescribe concerning all the acts of every virtue: but only in regard to those that are ordainable to the common good.”² Thus, the educative scope of human law is limited. He said,

Human law is framed for a number of human beings, the majority of whom are not perfect in virtue. Wherefore human laws do not forbid all vices, form which the virtuous abstain, but only the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained: thus human law prohibits murder, theft and such like.²

This limit appears to be practical; human law is limited because it is designed for the masses. If it were designed for a group of excessively virtuous people, it would prohibit more vices and encourage more virtues. As it is, it only prohibits those vices and encourages those virtues that the majority of people can habitually abide by. “The natural law is a participation in us of the eternal law: while human law falls short of natural law.”²

One of Aquinas’s central requirements of law is that it has to be promulgated. That is, it must be made known to those affected by it. Also, Aquinas believed the best form of government was a kind of monarchy. This is because laws are designed to unify the populace; monarchy leads to unity, while other forms of government may lead to multiplicity. What should we do if a lawgiver (such as a king) passes an unjust law? The only one who should dethrone a king or leader is the one who appointed him. The noblemen, electorate, etc., ought to rescind their appointment of the leader if the leader is destroying law. This is ideal, because Aquinas is cautious not to promote disobedience, because disobedience may lead to even worse tragedy (anarchy).

When is it justifiable to disregard human law? Only in rare instances, said Aquinas. Laws are just when they are “ordained to the common good,” when they do “not exceed the power of the lawgiver,” and when associated burdens are laid in the community equally.² Likewise, they are unjust when they exceed the authority of the lawgiver, are not ordained for the common good, or when burdens are imposed on the community unequally. Such laws, Aquinas says, “are acts of violence rather than laws,” and “do not bind the conscience, except perhaps in order to avoid scandal or disturbance, for which cause a man should even yield his right.”² Thus, even when laws are unjust, Aquinas is very careful to say that we ought (as in we are morally obligated to) to obey them if doing otherwise would create disorder and anarchy or, in other words, make things worse than they were under the unjust laws. The only time that we should unequivocally disregard human law is when they contradict divine law; “such are the laws of tyrants inducing to idolatry, or to anything else contrary to the Divine law: and laws of this kind must nowise be observed.”²

Divine Law

What is divine law? Simply this: the revealed mandates found in scripture. Divine law may prohibit or encourage many things untouched by human law. Aquinas explains:

Man can make laws in those matters of which he is competent to judge. But man is not competent to judge of interior movements, which are hidden, but only of exterior acts which appear: and yet for the perfection of virtue it is necessary for man to conduct himself aright in both kinds of acts. Consequently human law could not sufficiently curb and direct interior acts; and it was necessary for this purpose that a Divine law should supervene.²

Simply put: while human law forbids and punishes murder, divine law forbids and punishes hateful thoughts. This is an example of a vice that human law cannot address or punish, and is thus left to divine law. In this way, Aquinas recognizes the distinction Augustine made between divine instruction and human law. Aquinas points out that divine law is not necessarily homogenous across time and space, because they are God’s revealed mandates to particular people in particularcircumstances.

Summary

With these four categories of law, Aquinas demonstrates how he believes human law (positive law) can be rooted in natural law. He uses Aristotle’s belief in an orderly universe and his distinction between theoretical and practical reason to explain the relationship between the enactments of a legislature and the requirements of eternal law. Law, according to Aristotle, is an indispensable part of any polis, and is necessary to bring order to the actions of virtuous as well as rebellious citizens. Just as any ship needs a captain, any polis needs law.

Notes

1. Shirley Robin Letwin, On the History of the Idea of Law, (Cambridge: Camrbidge University Press, 2005).
2. Thomas Aquinas, Treatise on Law.
3. Brian Bix, Natural Law Theory.

Jeffrey Thayne

I enjoy studying and reading George Kelly’s ideas, and many of them ring true to me (at least, more true than the majority of psychological theories). I do not believe Kelly’s ideas are perfect; in fact, I think they have some serious weaknesses, which I may address at the end of this series. In the meantime (with the disclaimer that I do not agree entirely with this point of view), I would like to present a basic summary of Kelly’s exciting view of human personality.

Man-the-Scientist

Scientists form theories about the world, and from these theories make predictions about future events. Kelly claims we are all scientists because we all form ideas about the world from which we form expectations, such as how others will react when we greet them, or who we can trust, etc.

First of all, said Kelly, “it is customary to say that the scientist’s ultimate aim is to predict and control.”¹ In other words, scientists invent theoretical frameworks for understanding the world, and evaluate them by how well they allow the scientist to predict what happens in the world around them. When armed with theoretical frameworks that allow them to make reliable predictions about the world around them, physicists and engineers can exert greater control over their environment. Consider, for example, the theoretical framework physicists use to describe electromagnetism. This theory allows scientists to reliably predict the behavior of electromagnetic fields. Because of this, physicists and engineers have been able to develop miraculous technology that allows us to better control our surrounding world. This is part of what Kelly means when he says that the aim of the scientist is to “predict and control.”

Psychologists describe themselves as scientists. They sometimes claim that their purpose is to make sense of human behavior in a way that allows them to predict human behavior. For example, if we can predict which factors contribute to teenage delinquency, we then have greater power to prevent it. If we can predict when people will become schizophrenic, depressed, etc., we can then find ways to prevent, alter, or restore their condition to “normality.” In essence, some psychologists hope to do with people what physicists and engineers do with the natural world.

“Curiously enough,” said Kelly,

psychologists rarely credit the human subjects in their experiments with having similar aspirations. It is as though the psychologist were saying to himself, ‘I, being a psychologist, and therefore a scientist, am performing this experiment in order to improve the prediction and control of certain human phenomena; but my subject, being merely a human organism, is obviously propelled by inexorable drives welling up within him, or else he is in gluttonous pursuit of sustenance and shelter.’”¹

In other words, psychologists describe people as motivated primarily by sexual drives, or by a hedonistic pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, or by stimulus and response, or by genetic determinism. Yet, they attribute their own motivation as a scientist to the desire to understand, predict, and control the world around them. What if, asked Kelly, psychologists began to see even their human subjects the same way they see themselves … as scientists, seeking to predict and control the world they experience? Why should the psychologist see his human subjects any differently than he sees himself?

“Let us,” continued Kelly, “instead of occupying ourselves with man-the-biological-organism or man-the-lucky-guy, have a look at man-the-scientist.”¹ When Kelly said this, he was not referring to scientists. Rather, he was proposing that we, as scientists, think of the human beings we study as people who strive to make sense of the world around them, to find order in their experiences, and to predict and control future experiences.

Construing the World

One of George Kelly’s central claims is reminiscent of Kant’s philosophy (that we see the world through a lens which brings order to our perceptions); we don’t experience the world “as it is”, but rather, how we choose to interpret it. He explained,

Man looks at his world through transparent patterns or templates which he creates and then attempts to fit over the realities of which his world is composed. The fit is not always very good. Yet without such patterns the world appears such an undifferentiated homogeneity that man is unable to make any sense out of it. Even a poor fit is more helpful to him than nothing at all.

Let us give the name constructs to these patterns which are tentatively tried on for size. They are ways of construing the world. They are what enables man … to chart a course of behavior, explicitly formulated or implicitly acted out, verbally expressed or utterly inarticulate, consistent with other courses of behavior or inconsistent with them, intellectually reasoned or vegetatively sensed.¹

The core message is this: the world we perceive and talk about with others is not what is presented to us in the bare facts of experience; rather, we actively organize, make sense of, and articulate the bare facts of experience by forming constructs about them. We interpret our experience, and we can construe it one way or an infinite number of alternative ways.

Some philosophers of science define life life by its ability to react to its environment. In contrast, Kelly defines life by its ability to represent its environment. Kelly said that he likes his definition of life better “because it emphasizes the creative capacity of the living thing to represent the environment, not merely respond to it. Because he can represent his environment, he can place alternative constructions upon it and, indeed, do something about it if it doesn’t suit him. To the living creature, then, the universe is real, but it is not inexorable unless he chooses to construe it that way.”¹

In Kelly’s philosophy, the world does exist independently of our construal of it, even though we can never access it without actively interpreting it. We don’t create the world itself, but only our interpretation of it. Our interpretive constructs can have a good or poor fit to the actual facts of reality. A poor construct does not allow us to predict our experiences or control the world as well as a good construct.

Summary

In summary, Kelly believed that we experience the world through constructs. In essence, we form “theories” about the world, from which we make predictions. When our theory about the world leads to good predictions, it will also help us control our world more effectively. In this sense, we are all scientists, and thus psychology is not just a scientific study of people, but the scientific study of scientists. Of course, the word theory in this metaphor has a slightly different connotation than Kelly’s term construct, because the constructs we use to make sense of our world are largely inarticulate and implicit, rather than the reflective, thought-through constructs of what we traditionally think of as a scientific theory. In the next post of this series, I will delve deeper into the details of Kelly’s theory of personality.

Notes

1. George Kelly, A Theory of Personality: The Psychology of Personal Constructs (New York: Norton), 1963.

In a previous post (Dynamic and Active Being), Jeff explained a fundamental difference between two ancient worldviews. For Greek philosophers, “The central, basic … properties of an object constituted its ‘essence,’ which was unchanging by definition, since if the essence of an object changed it was no longer the object but something else.”¹ Greeks saw things as being defined by an unchanging, static essence, while Hebrews saw things as being defined by dynamic actions and choices. Rather than me re-explaining the differences, I suggest you review Jeff’s article. There are a lot of subtleties involved, but to put it simply, Greeks defined things by what they are; Hebrews defined things by what they do.

Childish insults. When we mortals call each other “stupid,” we’re trying to say something hurtful about each other’s innate essence. When Heavenly Father calls us “thou fool,” he’s saying something helpful about our present actions.

The Greek worldview is the more prevalent one today. However, large portions of the scriptures were written from the Hebrew worldview, so understanding this lesser-known perspective can help us interpret them better. I’m returning to this topic because I thought of another practical application: insults in the scriptures.

Name-calling: An Early Skill

As soon as I learned to speak to my siblings, an unfortunately high percentage of our speech involved calling each other names. “Dummy,” “butthead,” and “jerk” came just as often as “Milk, please.” Like any good mom, ours told us it wasn’t nice to insult people, and I usually managed to feel bad about it. So you can imagine my surprise the first time I read verses like these:

But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? (Luke 12:20)

Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible. Have ye obtained a Bible save it were by the Jews? (2 Ne. 29:6)

His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant. (Matt. 25:26)

I thought to myself, “Why would the Lord insult people? He is the definition of goodness and kindness, but it’s not nice to call people ’stupid’ or ‘lazy,’ as the Lord does here.”

The answer probably seems obvious to you, given that you’re more mature than I was at seven years old. Being “nice” is not always the best thing to do for someone you truly love. Sometimes we have to wake them up with sharpness before they will listen, such as when the Savior called the pharisees “vipers” (Matt. 23:33).

Of course, that doesn’t mean it was OK for my siblings and I to call each other “stupid” and “lazy.” But what makes the difference? One obvious answer is intent—we meant only to hurt each other. I think, however, that there is another subtle difference, and it’s found in this distinction between the Greek and Hebrew worldviews.

Criticism versus Critique

Semantically, when I said to my brother, “You’re stupid,” I was trying to label an inherent trait in his personal make-up. I was saying, “You are intrinsically stupid. That is why you do stupid things.” Implicit in this assertion is the idea that he can’t change. “You’re innately stupid, so you’ll always do stupid things. That’s just the way you are.”

No wonder we react so defensively to insults like that. We think subconsciously, “If that’s true, then I’m a hopeless piece of work. I’m destined to be stupid all my days, and there’s nothing I can do about it. What a horrible prospect!” Perhaps that is because we think like modern-day Greeks; in the Greek language, labels are descriptive of what we are, and what we are cannot change.

However, when the Lord says to his children, “Thou fool,” he is labeling our actions, not our inherent traits. He is saying, “What you’re doing is foolish.” Implicit in this assertion is the idea that you can do otherwise and stop being a fool. “You’re being foolish. Cut it out. Stop being a fool.”

We react defensively to statements like that when we read it from the Greek perspective. “If that’s true, that I just am a fool, then I’m a hopeless creation. I’m destined to be a fool all my days.” But when we read it from a Hebrew perspective, we think, “I’m being a fool. The Lord wouldn’t point that out just to make conversation; he expects me to do something about it. I can choose to not be a fool.” That is because the Hebrews do not describe people or things in terms of their unchangeable attributes, but in terms of their actions.

Conclusion

This change in perspective turns criticisms into critiques. The Lord is not saying we are foolish or lazy, only that we are currently being foolish or lazy. His harsh-sounding observations are actually hope-filled, because they imply that while we are being one way, we can be another way. And all we have to do is choose otherwise and start doing something else, even if it’s at the inscrutable level of our hearts.

If we hear the Lord’s descriptions of us this way, it is much easier to take chastisement. We find “Thou fool” no more offensive than if the person next to us in line at a potluck were to say, “Hey, that fork you picked up is dirty.” We wouldn’t cry or yell in a wounded tone, “How can you attack me like that? You’re destroying my self-esteem!” We would simply say, “Oh, thanks for letting me know,” and pick up a different fork.

This is what we should and can do when we read such statements in the scriptures. When he says, “Thou fool,” we can reply, “I’m being a fool? Oh, thanks for letting me know. I guess I need to exercise my agency and repent.” In this way, understanding the difference between the Greek and the Hebrew worldviews and their respective languages helps us respond to scriptural chastisements in the way we were intended to—by changing for the better.

Notes

1. Richard E. Nisbett, “The Geography of Thought: Essence or Evanescence?,” eNotAlone.com. This is a fascinating and brief series on the differences between Greek and Chinese thought. I highly recommend it.

Jeffrey Thayne

Plato introduced an important tension in the history of the philosophy of law: Is law a human invention, designed by humans to meet some human need? Or is it a divine invention, discovered by humans and then applied and taught to society?

Aristotle tried to blend the two perspectives, by introducing a distinction between theoretical and practical reason. He said that law is a divine order in the sky which we discover by reason, but which we can apply to meet contingent human circumstances using practical reason. In contrast, Cicero completely rejected the idea that law is man-made and believed that law is a cosmic order intuitively known by all rational creatures. He said that true law cannot be created by legislatures, although legislatures may mimic true law.

The Effects of the Fall

Augustine. According to Augustine, civil laws are entirely human and without divine elements.

Augustine, on the other hand, completely denied any divine component to civil law, and embraced the idea that law is a human invention. At first, he believed Cicero’s idea of law as an immutable cosmic order, merely encoded into human language by mortal legislatures; however, he later discarded that point of view. According to Letwin,

This change in Augustine’s view was due to a transformed understanding of man’s earthly existence, and in particular, of the consequences of man’s Fall. Instead of seeing mortal life as a stage in the perfection of man and regarding civil institutions as rungs on the ladder of ascent, he came to describe man on earth as a peregrinus, a foreigner, whose real home lies elsewhere, to which he is linked only by hope. And it followed that no human institution could be an agency of perfection.¹

The Christian concept of a fall introduced a sharp distinction between the mortal and the divine. Augustine did not consider human reason to be “continuous with the Divine Reason that orders the universe,” (as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero each did) because human rationality had been separated from God.¹ He believed that no mortal person can claim indubitable access to the divine world.

Law Cannot Discern Motives

Augustine described a central dichotomy among human beings: the earthly city and the heavenly city. Any individual may be a member of one or the other. What separates those who are members of the earthly city from those who are members of the heavenly city is what they love in their hearts: “the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.”¹ Letwin explains, “It is impossible to discern membership in the heavenly city by observing how a person behaves. … Whether men are members of the heavenly city depends on what they love.” Because the desires of the heart are invisible to others, they are impossible to discern from outward actions. Augustine also made the point that wrongdoing does not consist in action, but in the motive behind action. To illustrate this, he described how God’s commandments may vary with place or time:

God, for certain temporal respects, commanded [some people] one thing, and [other people] another, obeying both the same righteousness: whereas they see, in one man, and one day, and one house, different things to be fit for different members, and a thing formerly lawful, after a certain time not so; in one corner permitted or commanded, but in another rightly forbidden and punished. Is justice therefore various or mutable? No, but the times, over which it presides, flow not evenly, because they are times.²

In other words, in one context it may be God’s will for a man to kill (consider Nephi and Laban), but not in another. Thus, a man may kill in one context because he loves and wants to serve God, and refuse to do so in another context. Other people, however, cannot see his heart and cannot know that his actions are out of love for God. They cannot judge his motivations. Consider, however, a man who refused to kill in the first context. His action was morally wrong, but no external observer would ever know it. Moral behavior consists in loving and serving God. Because God’s commandments may vary and change, and no person is privy to another person’s communications with God or the motivations of another person’s actions, no generalization may be developed to condemn moral or immoral behavior. Civil law, therefore, cannot be based in a universal moral framework. Letwin explains:

Civil arrangements can affect only outward actions. Law cannot therefore shape a heavenly city. While it can distribute and protect property, law cannot decide the spirit in which property is used. Law can punish the wrong done to others, but it cannot punish wrongful loving. That is why no city on earth, even if it is a Christian theocracy, can ensure membership in the heavenly city.¹

Law Can Promote Order

For these reasons, Augustine believed that civil law could not establish a divine order on earth. Such cannot even be the intended purpose of civil law. Augustine thus believed that civil law was completely unrelated to the heavenly city and any of its goals. Its creation could only be intended to serve the needs of the earthly city. Letwin continues:

Because men have fallen, they make things other than God the object of their love and accordingly pursue divergent purposes. And this diversity brings them into conflict with one another. There is besides another reason for conflict: men seek to impose their will on others, for they are driven by a passion to dominate. As a result, human beings are always threatened by violence from those among whom they live, as nothing is so social by nature and so antisocial by corruption as the human race. And that is why, in order to live with any security from violence, men need a civil order. In short, instead of being a means to perfection, civil order is a remedy for sinfulness. It is, moreover, a highly precarious remedy because, being a purely human arrangement for keeping chaos at bay, the civil community is always in danger of disintegrating.¹

Simply put, civil law’s sole purpose is to keep the peace. What does this do to the relationship between law and coercion? Consider a classroom environment; in a classroom, punishment is not the central means of education, and if it is necessary, it is only because of disruption that hinders education. Aristotle and Cicero saw law as a educative tool, a means by which a legislature can teach or inform the polis about the cosmic moral order. Thus, punishment and coercion were merely incidental to law, and there was thus only a weak connection between the two. Letwin describes the difference between this classical view and Augustine’s view:

The association of punishment with law had been taken for granted by Augustine’s predecessors, but was regarded as merely an accidental attribute. This was because in the classical picture, the legislator has the character of an interpreter of cosmic reason for the education of the polis. He is, at least in one of the classical views, a teacher, not a master, and his use of force is only a means of making his teaching more effective. But since Augustine repudiated the conception of a ruler or legislator as an intermediary between the terrestrial community and the heavenly kingdom, and instead regarded the object of the legislator as being to remedy the disorder of “this hell upon earth,” it is not surprising that he believes the legislator can achieve his ends only by repression, by dispensing punishment. Thus law ceases to be identified with reason as in the classical picture, and its association with force and punishment is of its essence.¹

Governments are Effective, Not “Good”

Because coercion is inseparable from law, civil law is, in essence, an instrument of coercion, a tool for keeping violent, unruly, or deceitful people from disturbing the peace of society. Because nobody can see another person’s motivations, and can only punish external actions, law will always be defective, and judgments of court will always be, to some extent in error. That is alright, according to Augustine, because the purpose of civil law is not to sort out the wicked from the righteous and by doing so build the heavenly city (that is a task for God), only to preserve the peace of the earthly city. Peace on earth is worth the price of the injustice and the repression that results from civil law.

By creating civil law, the consequences of the fall may be mitigated. However, government force itself is not qualitatively different than the crime it punishes. Government, in this sense, is an inescapable but necessary evil. It keeps us from being killed by using force against those who would kill us. Human law is an “instrument of repression” (albeit it a necessary one), and is thus a product of the fall, just as much as it is necessitated by the fall.

Because the heavenly city and the earthly city are separated and inherently unrelated, there is no heavenly criteria by which we can judge earthly institutions. The only mark of a good government is whether it keeps the peace (for that is its purpose), even if it does so through unjust means. For this reason, Augustine does not say which form of government is best, for such a question is not relevant. “[The] heavenly city … while it sojourns on earth, calls citizens out of all nations,” he explained,

and gathers together a society of pilgrims of all languages, not scrupling about diversities in the manners, laws, and institutions whereby earthly peace is secured and maintained, but recognizing that, however various these are, they all tend to one and the same end of earthly peace. It therefore is so far from rescinding and abolishing these diversities, that it even preserves and adopts them, so long only as no hindrance to the worship of the one supreme and true God is thus introduced.³

Conclusion

In summary, Augustine believed that law is a human invention, designed and established to maintain peace and order among a society of various kinds of people pursuing various goals. Civil law has no claim to a connection with heavenly law, because the laws of God are related mainly to the motives of the heart, something that no earthly judge can detect. For this reason, Augustine is not concerned about better or worse laws, or better or worse forms of government (as long as they kept the peace and did not interfere with religious worship), because earthly governments are not at all related to the heavenly city and there can thus be no eternal criteria for civil law. Letwin presents a very simple summary:

In principle, then, Augustine offers at least as simple a view of law as Cicero does, but a view from the opposite pole of the Greek tension between law as a foundation of association and law as a moral education derived from eternal verities. Whereas Cicero had escaped that tension by arguing that the law has no justification other than its being in conformity with or a reflection of eternal reason, Augustine escapes the tension by arguing that the law has no justification other than its contribution to the peacefulness of a human association.¹

Notes

1. Shirley Robin Letwin, On the History of the Idea of Law, (Cambridge: Camrbidge University Press, 2005).
2. Augustine, Confessions.
3. Augustine, City of God.

Jeffrey Thayne

In an earlier post, I presented the traditional formulation of the problem of evil and explained why the reality of agency entails the possibility that people will rebel in their hearts against God and their fellow human beings. I believe, however, that discussions of this nature suffer because of a conflation of terms. We often treat pain, sorrow, suffering, and evil as if they were the same thing.

Hurts so good. There is more than one kind of pain. Healthy exercise requires a kind of discomfort and pain that is intrinsic to getting stronger. Likewise, spiritual growth involves a kind of discomfort that, while definitely unpleasant, is helpful and necessary.

Simply put, perhaps not all pain is bad, nor should all pain be avoided. For example, the pain I feel in my muscles after a healthy workout doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me at all. Recognizing that there different kinds of pain, we may find new ways to think about the problem. Robert Gleave explains:

In the end, many of the world’s thinkers and theologians have difficulties finding a way to reconcile the presence of misery with the existence of God’s omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence. The problem, it seems to me, boils down to the premise that pain, sorrow, suffering, difficulty, and misery are tragic, to be avoided at all costs, that they are definitely not part of a benevolent plan.

… Perhaps by reexamining the beginning premise that misery is tragic and embracing the notion that it is possible for a benevolent Father in Heaven (with a divine purpose in mind) to be causally responsible for the presence of evil and sorrow in the world, we can arrive at a … satisfying resolution.¹

While Gleave has some refreshing insights, I disagree with his choice of words. If I were rewriting the last sentence of the quote, I would say it this way:

Perhaps by reexamining the beginning premise that pain is tragic and embracing the notion that it is possible for a benevolent Father in Heaven (with a divine purpose in mind) to be causally responsible for the presence of some pain and sorrow in the word, we can arrive at a … satisfying resolution.

I don’t believe God is causally responsible for evil in the world, because I believe the genuine evil in the world is the sin that resides in people’s hearts. However, I think it is very likely that God may be causally responsible for at least some pain, sorrow, or suffering. That is because I do not equate pain and evil the way many scholars do.

Hedonism and the Eternal Perspective

The premise that suffering and pain are inherently evil has its roots in a philosophy known as hedonism. Hedonism is the philosophy that pleasure is the ultimate good, and that pain is the ultimate bad. However, what if pain, suffering, and sorrow are not intrinsically bad? Gleave continues:

It may be that this mortal existence is the only flash of eternity where we are allowed to have a veil over our minds and are allowed to experience incompleteness, pain, and sorrow, which give us such richness of experience. From this view, then, perhaps feeling lonely would not be seen as a disease condition but rather as one of the very purposes for being alive.

Pain, sorrow, [and] suffering … then, may not be deficits to be overcome, controlled, removed, or eradicated, but rather they may be gifts from a benevolent Father that can serve as instruments for developing a divine nature. We may perhaps go so far as to see the traditionally tragic elements of life as the very tools of the trade in the construction of heavenly mansions.¹

President Spencer W. Kimball made a similar remark:

Being human, we would expel from our lives sorrow, distress, physical pain, and mental anguish and assure ourselves of continual ease and comfort. But if we closed the doors upon such, we might be evicting our greatest friends and benefactors. Suffering can make saints of people as they learn patience, long-suffering, and self-mastery. The sufferings of our Savior were part of his education.¹

This, I believe, is not saying that pain, suffering, and sorrow are intrinsically good; you don’t escape hedonism by reversing its premises and claiming that pleasure is bad and pain is good. As Carlfred Broderick says,

Latter-day Saints do not believe that pain is intrinsically good. In their teaching there is little of asceticism, mortification, or negative spirituality. … If benefit comes from pain, it is not because there is anything in pain itself. Suffering can wound and embitter and darken a soul as surely as it can purify and refine and illumine.²

Rather, we claim that the suffering is not inherently good or bad… but it has the potential to be either, depending upon our agentic response to it. Through Jesus Christ, suffering can have redemptive qualities to it, and as such can be seen as a blessing. Again, it is not that suffering is of intrinsic value and should be sought after, but rather that it provides an opportunity and occasion for us, through the exercise of our agency, to learn human compassion and find redemption. It can provide us with an opportunity to forgive. In this way, the problem of evil becomes less of a challenge to our faith because the pain, suffering, and sorrow are not necessarily part of the evil to be reconciled with a benevolent God. Also, what is genuinely evil—malice, hatred, cruelty, deceit, etc.—is much easier to reconcile with a benevolent God because these things are solely the product of human agency.

Justifying Evil

One challenge with addressing the problem of evil is that it is easy, if we are not careful, to “justify” the existence of sin. For example, if we claim that it is necessary for my divine growth for me to experience pain at the hands of other people, in a sense I justify their sin. I’ve explained why their sin is necessary for my salvation, and I no longer have the moral imperative to seek to eradicate sin.

This is one reason I want to separate pain/suffering and evil. Genuine evil ought to be eradicated, and thus, by extension, the pain that results from genuine evil. If we have some purpose to keep it around, then it is not genuine evil. However, I do not believe that all pain, suffering, and sorrow are a result of sin, and therefore, by claiming that some pain and sorrow might be morally neutral, I do not believe I am justifying the existence of evil. This is why I have separated pain that results from sin, and pain that results from non-moral causes.

1. Edwin Gantt, “Hedonism, Suffering, and Redemption: The Challenge of a Christian Psychotherapy,” Turning Freud Upside Down (Provo: BYU Studies), p. 53.
2. Carlfred Broderick, “Suffering in the World”

In a previous article (The Benefits of Sin?), I explained that people sometimes suggest they are better off for having sinned because they learned and grew so much in the repentance process, in ways they could not have otherwise. In the following article (“I Am the Way … Unless You Find a Better One”), I explained how that cannot be true, one reason being that it would mean we are better off than Jesus Christ, because he is the only person who has never sinned. A good question arises, however: how can God be all-knowing if he has never experienced sin? How can we learn all things if we only do some things?

Does Opposition Require that We Sin?

Lehi taught that having joy and doing good does not require that we partake of the misery of sin, only that we “know” it.

The beginning of an answer is hinted at in a statement by Lehi in his parting words to his son Jacob. Lehi explains how opposites are necessary in order to have meaningful existence. He says that if Adam and Eve had not eaten the fruit, “they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin” (2 Ne. 2:23). When first reading this, I expected him to contrast the paired opposites with the same verb, like this:

Having no joy, for they
Had no misery;
Doing no good, for they
Did no sin.

Instead, Father Lehi throws in a subtle, unexpected twist:

Having no joy, for they
Knew no misery;
Doing no good, for they
Knew no sin.

Lehi may have intended to communicate a number of different things by his phrasing of this couplet. I wonder if one message is that, while people must leave that state of Edenic innocence in order to experience meaningful good, we do not have to sin in order to experience good. We must know sin, but not necessarily do it. Does that mean we can know sin, its full effects, without actually experiencing it?

The Virtue of Vicarious Experience

C. S. Lewis compares resisting temptation to walking against a strong wind.

C. S. Lewis seemed to think that not only could we understand sin without sinning, but that it was the only way to understand sin.

You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness.¹

A fascinating quote from the Ensign elaborates on this same question:

If we are selective in the things we choose to do in life, we only have time for high-priority experiences. For example, an enlightened mother chooses parenthood over her career. A youth overcomes any desires to follow the seamy side of life in favor of building on positive, uplifting experiences.

Many people feel that vicarious experiences never lead to meaningful understanding. Only the poor can, they say, really understand poverty. Only the sinner can know the nature or the consequences of sin. They claim there is no substitute for direct experience.

Such an argument has at least two inherent weaknesses. First, it’s risky to live in the atmosphere of sin in order to understand it or to help others who are sinning, since individuals may become trapped in the very things they want others to avoid. Taking drugs to know what it’s like, for example, may lead to personal slavery rather than the redemption of others. Second, the argument overlooks the fact that the Holy Ghost can provide such understanding and that man can, by empathy, come to understand, as Jesus did, what sin means to others.

Jesus understood sin better than the sinner, without ever having sinned. Prophets have been and are acute “vicarious” observers of the consequences of sin and thus can provide adequate leadership in helping others overcome sin.

Spiritually guided empathy leads to a greater understanding of the nature of sin than partaking of sin, because the empathizer seeks only to understand and is not subject to the perceptual distortions present in trying to justify behavior.²

We have all had experiences that later faded in memory, or which we sometimes wonder if we truly understood or interpreted correctly. In contrast, many prophets have emphasized the power of a spiritual witness from the Holy Ghost. “When a man has the manifestation from the Holy Ghost, it leaves an indelible impression on his soul, one that is not easily erased. It is Spirit speaking to spirit, and it comes with convincing force. A manifestation of an angel, or even the Son of God himself, would impress the eye and mind, and eventually become dimmed, but the impressions of the Holy Ghost sink deeper into the soul and are more difficult to erase.”³ Of course, this doesn’t mean that spiritual experiences are impossible to doubt after the fact, but President Smith certainly teaches that it is much harder to undo their effects.

Conclusion

It appears that the Holy Spirit’s ability to convey knowledge may be more powerful than we sometimes suspect, even to the degree that it conveys reality and knowledge more purely than direct experience. I can’t help but wonder if that is part of what happened to the Savior in Gethsemane, coming to know the effects of sinful actions he had never performed. And knowing how intense such pure knowledge can be, unmediated by the mind and unfiltered by the flesh, it’s understandable if the rest of us mortals don’t receive it to such a degree on a regular basis.

Notes

1. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Harper Lewis), p. .
2. Phillip C. Smith, “The Virtue of Vicarious Experience,” Ensign, Apr. 1974, p. 20.
3. Joseph Fielding Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions, 2:151.

Jeffrey Thayne

Much of human suffering simply cannot be attributed to moral agency; natural disasters, disease, death, etc., are all the results of mortal weaknesses and natural circumstances for which no human agent is responsible. Nobody escapes this kind of suffering; everybody gets sick, and if anybody escapes a violent death, they will die of natural causes. I cannot say why people suffer the things that they do, and I will not attempt an explanation in this post. In this post, I would only like to present what I believe is a non-satisfactory response to this challenge, and why I think it is problematic.

Abridging God’s Power

A small minority of Latter-day Saints claim that the Latter-day Saint answer to this challenge is that God is not as all-powerful as we have traditionally thought. David Grandy explains that one trend in LDS thought is to talk about a more finite God, whose powers are limited in important ways:

Many, though not all, subscribe to the view that [scientific] laws are binding even on God. He cannot contravene them, though his perfect or near-perfect knowledge of them allows him to do things that may strike mortals as miraculous. Still, he is limited or relativized by certain laws or principles, these having been in place prior to the time that God become God.¹

Thus, some scholars inside the Church believe that LDS doctrine abridges God’s power over the material world. This, say some, presents a possible solution to the problem of suffering, because although God’s redemptive power is still complete and intact, he may not be able to prevent suffering that may be due to immutable scientific principles.

I think most of us will find this solution very unsatisfactory and also unlikely. It is difficult for me to believe that the same Being who calmed the storm, who healed the sick, and who even overcame death itself is in anyway limited in his ability to alleviate the pains and sufferings of the masses because some scientific law forbids him. Nor do I wish to believe in a God “who is a nice enough guy, but whose hands are tied.”² The Savior, while on the earth, demonstrated a remarkable capacity to ease the pain of those around Him.

God has Claimed Responsibility for Some Natural Disasters

Jesus appearing to the Nephites. If God does not intervene in our lives because it would remove our agency, then why has he dramatically intervened many times in the past?

In fact, it seems to me that God has claimed personal responsibility for inflicting at least some pain and suffering upon his children through an impressive display of power and command over matter, particularly prior to his visit to the Nephites on the American continent:

And behold, that great city Moroni have I caused to be sunk in the depths of the sea, and the inhabitants thereof to be drowned. … And behold, the city of Gilgal have I caused to be sunk, and the inhabitants thereof to be buried up in the depths of the earth. (3 Nephi 9:4–6)

This does not sound to me as though human suffering which is caused by natural calamity is always something God “would prevent if he could.” Thus, there must be a more satisfactory ways to explore this problem that goes deeper than imposing arbitrary limits on God’s power. This is why I believe it is important to separate pain and evil, as I will attempt in the fourth post of this series. If all pain is genuinely evil, then God is responsible for at least some evil in the world. Is it possible that there are qualitatively different kinds of pain? This is a question I will address in my next post.

To be Affected

James Faulconer explains that one possible response to the problem of pain by natural causes (and, I suppose, this argument could apply to all suffering) is that to be an embodied agent means to be affected by the world in some relevant way. He says,

I believe one could argue that, by definition, embodied beings are necessarily passive as well as active. They can be acted on; to be embodied is to be able to be affected. In technical terms, it is to be pathetic, to have things happen to one. But to be pathetic is to suffer in the broad sense of the word (and, for our purposes, suffering is not best defined as “feeling pain” because feeling pain is a species of suffering, of being affected). If an argument from the nature of embodiment were successful, it would show that it is logically contradictory to create a world without creating suffering.³

I really appreciate the logic of this thought. It is possible that to be embodied requires us to live in a world that can affect us. Whether or not this is true, I don’t know. At this point, I’ll leave the question unanswered. I’m not even sure it resolves the problem addressed in this series; it is just one of many possible perspectives. I do think it lends more insight into the problem of evil than the claim that God is somehow prevented from easing pain and suffering by immutable scientific laws. In my next post, I’ll talk more about the relationship between evil and suffering.

Notes

1. David Grandy. “Mormonism and Process Cosmology.”
2. Richard Williams, personal conversation.
3. James Faulconer, “Theodicy.”