Posted by Jeffrey Thayne
I have no desire to dissuade anyone from reading this post, but the contents of this post are best understood when prefaced by my previous three posts (“The Greek and Hebrew Intellectual Traditions,” “Dynamic and Active Being,” and “Hellenized Christianity“). Also, I recognize that this is certainly not the only way to interpret Latter-day Saint doctrine. My strong suspicion of the philosophy of naturalism certainly influences the ideas I present here—those with a strong commitment to the philosophy of naturalism will probably disagree with this point of view. However, I believe that the philosophy of naturalism is too often taken for granted and not for what it is: a philosophical assumption, and an unprovable one at that (all assumptions are). More important than anything, I freely recognize that I gloss over many subtleties and nuances in Christian and Latter-day Saint thought for the sake of keeping this post simple and short.
In my most recent post, I explained how certain strands of Greek philosophy corrupted Christian doctrine. Many Christian theologians began to believe that if God is the author of order, then He must also be an incorporeal abstraction. This is because they adopted Neo-Platonic Greek philosophy which believed that unchanging, incorporeal abstractions are responsible for order and consistency in the material world.
The Restoration
Fortunately, modern revelation has clarified the true nature of God. Jeffrey R. Holland describes the beginning of this Restoration:
In the spring of 1820, a 14-year-old boy, confused by many of these very doctrines that still confuse much of Christendom, went into a grove of trees to pray. In answer to that earnest prayer offered at such a tender age, the Father and the Son appeared as embodied, glorified beings to the boy prophet Joseph Smith. That day marked the beginning of the return of the true, New Testament gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the restoration of other prophetic truths offered from Adam down to the present day.3
One of the truths eventually revealed to Joseph Smith was that God is an embodied person: “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s.” (D&C 130:22) Another unique doctrine restored in the Restoration is the belief that God was not always God, but has progressed to His position.4 Thus, God Himself has changed. Joseph Smith also taught that matter coexists eternally with God—He did not conjure it from nowhere.
Knowing that God has a physical nature and changes in certain ways, we cannot fit him into the static, abstract Being category that rules and governs the rest of reality in Greek philosophy. There are two possible routes that scholars can take when presented with these new doctrines.
Route 1: Recategorize God
When following this route, clearly, God does not belong in the Being category, and thus he belongs in the Becoming category. We, as “Latter-day Greeks,”5 assume that if God is not abstract, incorporeal, and unchanging, then He cannot be the source of order and consistency in the world; there must be a more fundamental substrate which is abstract, incorporeal, and unchanging which gives order to the world and which constrains God. This route, I believe, maintains the same Greek philosophical dichotomy that influenced early Christianity. Below is an illustration of how this route fits very nicely in the Greek intellectual tradition; the first diagram shows how the Greeks believed that ideas are more fundamental than the physical world. The second diagram shows how that philosophy was incorporated into Christianity. The third diagram shows how this first route perpetuates, in a way, this same philosophical dichotomy.
Greek philosophy
Reality is divided between abstract, unchanging ideas and material, changing things. The abstractions govern the material things, and can only be understood through reason.
Hellenized Christianty
God governs and orders reality, so He must be in the abstract category. Thus, He must be immaterial and unchanging. He is best understood through rational theology.
Popular conception of LDS doctrine
God has a physical body and changes over time, so He must be in the material category. Thus, He is governed by abstractions higher and more powerful than Him, like natural scientific laws.
This perspective is very common among Latter-day Saint scholars; I believe this is because we live in modern intellectual climate that is generally committed to scientific naturalism. An eternally existing material world, we assume, must necessarily entail a kind of scientific order that predates God. Notice that in each of these stages of development illustrated above, obtaining knowledge of the realm of ideas always relies in some way on reason. With our scientific upbringing, we assume that knowledge of fundamental, universal abstractions is a source of power which allows us to control the material world; thus God’s power is the result of His superior knowledge of the fundamental abstract realities which govern the material universe. We often use technological metaphors to describe God’s power and influence in the world. We assume there is an abstract, incorporeal reality that is more fundamental than God, and His actions are restrained by those abstract, scientific laws.
Route 2: Throw out the dichotomy
Alternatively, we can ignore the categories created by the Greeks to divide up reality. This dichotomy is, after all, a product of Greek philosophy, and significantly distorted Christian thought in the first place. There is no revelatory reason to cling to it. The ancient Greeks were asked to transcend their philosophical paradigm when they encountered Christian doctrine. Neal A. Maxwell explains:
Paul’s experience in Athens showed the mind-set of Greek philosophy (see Acts 17). His intellectually curious audience asked about “this new doctrine, … for thou bringest … strange things to our ears†(Acts 17:19–20). Then when Paul spoke of the living God and the Resurrection, he was “mocked†(Acts 17:32) for seeming to set “forth … strange gods†(Acts 17:18; see also Acts 17:29).2
A personal, embodied deity, who could live and die in a particular place and time, who could walk up to you, shake your hand, and ask you about your day, and who also had power to command the elements and organize worlds did not make sense to the Greeks because the ultimate governor of reality was required to be abstract and incorporeal. The ultimate source of order and consistency was, for the Greeks, an impersonal, passive, static set of abstract principles, the kind of thing that can be represented in mathematical equations. To think that a personal, embodied, interacting God is the source of order and consistency does not sit well with Greek thought. It is very possible that Faulconer is right when he says:
I think … [the suggestion] that the Greek and Roman models of thought cannot do justice to the true and living God is not merely a possibility, it is a probability. I believe that most of what passes for talk about God, whether positive or negative, is talk about a god who is not the God of Israel.
When it comes to thinking about divine things, I think it not too much to say that, by itself, Greek thinking locks us out of an understanding of God as a living and acting being, handing us over to the theology of a static and immutable, in other words, dead, god.5
Thus, in Greek thought, either God is abstract and immutable, or He is not the source of order in the world. For these reasons and many others6, I believe that we ought to reconsider the assumptions we’ve inherited from Greek philosophy including the Being vs. Becoming dichotomy. The assumption that a material world must necessarily entail an innate and immutable pattern of behavior strikes me as an unnecessary assumption. It is likely that other philosophical perspectives are available that allow a personal, active, breathing God to also be the originator of scientific order and consistency in our world—the “decreer” of scientific law, for instance. I believe a Hebrew perspective is one among many that may allow for this possibility. From a Hebrew perspective, order does not have to, indeed cannot, originate in universal, abstract principles (since these are not even expressed in Semitic languages), but rather in an embodied deity as He relates with and governs the world.
One reason some scholars are uncomfortable with this perspective is because it would require them to reconsider their commitment to scientific naturalism. Scientific naturalism, however, has many philosophical and logical difficulties, which I will address another time. Also, some fear that this perspective could easily imply a kind of moral relativism in which any moral order is merely the whim of God; however, I will show in future posts that this point of view does not require God to be the inventor of morality. He certainly engages in a world and lives in an environment He did not conjure out of nothing—however, the fundamental constraints of this world may be moral, rather than scientific, in nature, and moral realities may not need to be described in terms of abstract universals.
Notes
1. Dallin H. Oaks, “Apostasy and Restoration,” Ensign, May 1995, p. 84.
2. Neal A. Maxwell, “From the Beginning,” Ensign, Nov. 1993, p. 18. Citations in order are: Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, part 3: Caesar and Christ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944), p. 595; see Robert M. Grant, Gods and the One God (Philadelphia: Westminster Press), p. 75–81, 152–58; and Edwin Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity (Gloucester, Mass: Peter Smith, reprinted 1970), p. 49.
3. Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Only True God and Jesus Christ Whom He Hath Sent,” JesusChrist.lds.org, accessed 25 Jul. 2008.
4. “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man.” Joseph Smith, “The King Follett Sermon,” Ensign, Apr. 1971, p. 13–14.
5. James E. Faulconer, Scripture Study: Tools and Suggestions (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1999), 150–51.
6. The Being vs. Becoming dichotomy makes the doctrine of agency very problematic, among other things.
Perfect. I’m always interested when one starts chipping away at the encrusted doorway of deep paradigm, and finds out that there is a secret passageway beyond, that has been there all along.
Great writing. I like how you helped me realize the nature of my thinking: naturalism. And I am very interested in hearing an alternative. I’ve always thought God to be governed by laws, and I have this vague notion that there are scriptures to support this. God can dictate or determine the laws that govern His influence? And those laws might be moral? So, why would the laws of His universe differ from the laws of another god’s universe? Would not two perfected beings arrive at the same laws? Would not a universal set of laws emerge over eons of time? I am interested in this conversation.
Jeff,
I’m glad you wrote about this.
One other dimension of this that you have not discussed is God’s omniscience. In this regard, Latter-day Saints often want to have their cake and eat it too. They want God to be embodied and yet not embodied — to have a perspective and yet not have a perspective. If we continue to follow your line of reasoning, it seems to me that God must be perspectival. He does not have access to some kind of acontextual view from nowhere. In this regard, there must be similar nuances regarding what it means for God to know everything.
Thanks, Dennis.
As far as God’s foreknowledge, I may forgo writing about the subject.
I have plenty of revelatory reasons to believe that, in at least some way, God has complete power over the material world (the life of Christ indicates this quite clearly). I can find no revelatory reason to believe that God has to reckon with a non-moral scientific order.
However, scholars have found plenty of logical reasons to conclude that God’s power over the material world is limited and constrained by scientific law. As I show in this post, I don’t believe in this reasoning; it doesn’t quite square with they way I interpret scripture. The logic used in this reasoning is based upon naturalistic assumptions that I presently reject. I don’t trust conclusions based upon logic alone, without at least some scriptural support.
You point out a logical implication of my post on God’s foreknowledge. I can certainly see the logic in this (and, if I understand other things you’ve written, you don’t believe in God’s exhaustive foreknowledge). However, I haven’t been able to determine what philosophical assumptions the logic of God’s limited foreknowledge is based on, and I can find no revelatory reason to believe that God’s foreknowledge is limited in any way. Therefore, at this point, I prefer not to touch the subject.
It just seems to me as though God speaks in scripture as if He has complete knowledge of the future. He gives specific and detailed prophecy, much of which has come true. I know that the scriptural records of God’s foreknowledge can be interpreted many different ways, so I hope to avoid discussing the subject until I learn more about it.
Let’s not forget the element of time. Foreknowledge may not be applicable to God, or any being not confined in temporal mortality. All things are before Him. Is the word foreknowledge found in the scriptures? This is the first I’ve heard it used.
Jeff,
Just to clarify a little bit, I’m simply not sure whether God has exhaustive definitive foreknowledge. I see little reason for me to ground my faith in this proposition.
Regarding constraints on God, I fully agree with you on the problems of limiting God to the constraints of naturalism. However, certainly you would agree that God is constrained by human agency (i.e., He cannot “force the human mind”). In this respect, I don’t know if it’s accurate to say that God speaks “as if He has complete knowledge of the future.” This certainly may be true of general trends, as well as things that He is going to do. But, as you know, it is one thing to predict generalities and quite another thing to predict everything that a specific person is going to do throughout their entire life. In this respect, I do not see God speaking as if He has complete knowledge of an individual’s future.
In fact, the opposite is (almost always) true. Consider His words to Joseph Smith: “Repent of that which is contrary to the commandment which I gave you, and thou art still chosen, and art again called to the work; Except thou do this, thou shalt be delivered up and become as other men, and have no more gift” (D&C 3:10-11). This type of language is similar throughout the scriptures. Latter-day Saints will often say, if pressed on this issue, “Well, of course, God knew what Joseph was going to do.” But that’s more than what this account is saying. (Another account to consider is God’s command to Jonah to preach to Ninevah, saying that they *would* be destroyed. Things, of course, changed when they repented. Is it possible that God was surprised? Who is to say?)
You are right, I think, in saying that you find no revelatory reason to say that God’s foreknowledge is limited in any way. But the same can be said regarding whether it is unlimited. The issue is a philosophical, theological, and practical one — but not one that is not unimportant. For many people, it really does matter whether God must know everything that they are going to do. I’ve talked to Latter-day Saints who have had a wonderful sense of liberation (in a good way) on realizing that it *might* be possible that not even God knows whether they end up in the Celestial Kingdom. In this respect, their ticket is not already punched according to some kind of divine mind.
But anyway, this is an important issue for the very topic you address. For me, I don’t see how exhaustive definitive foreknowledge makes sense for a temporal God. In fact, I think our desires for this kind of God is a remnant of hellenization. I wonder if Latter-day Saints simply keep the hellenized aspects of God and combine them with the embodied aspects (having their cake and eating it too). This of course implies a problematic dualism in which God is finite and yet somehow infinite–perspectival and yet somehow absolute.
Aaron,
Yes, but we must consider that an embodied God is certainly “in time” in a certain sense. He is not “timeless” meaning that there is no such thing as duration.
Considering the term “all things are before Him” — we must consider two things. First, what is a thing? Is the future a thing? Second, if the future is a thing, it is a modifiable thing? Can the future change? My personal (speculative) opinion is that God does indeed have past, present, and future before Him, but that all three constantly change. Thus, in God’s eyes, I am in the Celestial Kingdom or not right now, but that could change any moment depending on my choices.
[This comment has been edited a couple times this afternoon]
Dennis: In fact, I think our desires for this kind of God is a remnant of hellenization. I wonder if Latter-day Saints simply keep the hellenized aspects of God and combine them with the embodied aspects (having their cake and eating it too).
You may be right. However, many scholars have argued that my desire to believe in an embodied God who can control the elements is wanting to have my cake and eat it too. They argue that a temporal God cannot possibly have a perfect command over the material world, and that my desire to believe in an embodied God who is also the source of scientific order is a remnant of Hellenism assumptions about God (omnipotence). As I said in my post, I think the opposite is true: the idea that scientific order must be immutable, ultimate, and incorporeal is the Hellenistic assumption, and the belief that an embodied God can be the source of scientific order doesn’t fit in the Hellenistic world and is one of the treasures of a Christian worldview.
In the end, I wonder if your distinction between an “atemporal” God and a “temporal” God and the logical implications of each is simply the same dichotomy I described in my post (I don’t know). You claim that exhaustive definitive foreknowledge doesn’t make sense with a temporal God; other scholars claim that complete power over the material world doesn’t make sense with a temporal God. In the end, I don’t think I am describing a “temporal” God, I am rejecting the entire Greek dichotomy that forces us to draw limits on God’s power because of His unique embodiment.
The arguments I presently reject are the ones that go like this: “God is embodied and lives in an eternal material context, therefore he cannot have complete control over the material world.” This argument is replete with assumptions about the limits of embodiment, which assumptions we inherited, I believe, from Greek philosophy. It was the Greeks that assumed that one must be incorporeal and atemporal to have power over the material world. I have a hard time seeing how this argument: “God is embodied, therefore he cannot have complete definitive foreknowledge.” differs from the previous in form or structure… is it *possible* that we are mistaken when we assume that one has to be atemporal to have exhaustive foreknowledge? I am still learning about it, I don’t know what assumptions are invoked here, and it may well be that I reject that argument too. I don’t know yet, so for these reasons, as I said, I do not wish to speak on the subject of God’s foreknowledge at this time. Personally, I tend to shy away from reasoning that limits God’s abilities based upon his embodiment—I’ve shown here why I think at least one conclusion (God being limited by science) based on this reasoning is false.
About agency, yes, certainly God respects agency. As I said in my post, I believe that any constraints on God are moral and agentic in nature, rather than scientific in nature. If limits on God’s foreknowledge are truly a consequence of agency, I can accept that. I haven’t been convinced of it yet, though.
Aaron: So, why would the laws of His universe differ from the laws of another god’s universe? Would not two perfected beings arrive at the same laws? Would not a universal set of laws emerge over eons of time?
It is my understanding (although I do not have scriptural support for this) that there are many choices in life in which we choose between to good things. There are many times which it would be right to choose to make either a chocolate or white cake for someone’s birthday. Most of the time, both options are equally as good. Not only are they equally good choices, there is no moral issue at stake in the decision.
To me, it follows very easily that there are choices that gods make that may be of the same nature. In fact, I was told by one of my professors of religion at BYU that one of the things we are to learn on earth is to make that kind of decision. Since (as far as I now) scientific laws, gravity, etc., have nothing to do with right or wrong morality, could it not be possible that a perfect being could design a laws that are different but work equally well for his purpose?
Now, I know that there are many who believe that all perfect beings are alike (because they are perfect, and there is only one right way to be perfect). But is not possible that one perfect being may like chocolate cake while another may prefer white?
Dennis: My personal (speculative) opinion is that God does indeed have past, present, and future before Him, but that all three constantly change. Thus, in God’s eyes, I am in the Celestial Kingdom or not right now, but that could change any moment depending on my choices
By the way, I do appreciate this perspective—it provides the possibility of change, but preserves a detailed foreknowledge, pending present choices, allowing specific prophecy.
Ciera, I agree. That’s why it doesn’t make sense to me to believe Heavenly Father is constrained by natural laws. Why couldn’t the gravitational constant be different in another universe? Who’s to say mass-energy is always conserved? Maybe in some universes, in a way we can’t conceive of, things like that are different. I think what makes a person a god would be principles far more important than obeying inertia.
And Jeff, I just gotta say, those are cool graphics. You need to teach me how to use Photoshop.
I agree, Nathan. Just a thought: some people equate the truth that matter cannot be created or destroyed with energy conservation. Whether this is an application of naturalistic assumptions to LDS doctrine or not, I don’t know.
Aaron: “Is the word foreknowledge found in the scriptures?”
Yes. Acts 2:23; 1 Pet 1:2; and Alma 13:3 & 7.
First things first: chocolate and white cake are NOT equally good things. Who are we kidding?
Aaron, I concur. Chocolate cake is far better than white cake.
Jeff, I thought we should continue our conversation here on your blog. By the way, I am not the same Aaron from previous comments.
In your article you make two main arguments: scientific naturalism is “a philosophical assumptionâ€; the being/becoming dichotomy should be replaced with only becoming. I will argue that you are correct in your first argument, but that your second argument still needs supporting. At the end I will comment on Greek religion and philosophy.
Scientific Naturalism
What you term as “scientific naturalismâ€â€”the idea that God is bound by natural law—was proposed by early Mormon scientists like B. H. Roberts, James Talmage, and John Widtsoe. For example, Roberts thought that God was growing in his “knowledge of eternal truths and mastery of eternal laws.â€1
However, I think you are correct to challenge the Mormon adoption of scientific naturalism because our scriptures teach against this understanding. Instead, they teach that God ordained natural laws. In the Pearl of Great Price, we read that the Gods found unorganized matter, gave it a command, “and the Gods watched those things which they had ordered until they obeyed†(Abr. 4:18). In the Doctrine and Covenants, we read that the Lord “hath given a law unto all things, by which they move in their times and their seasons,†and that “the earth abideth the law of a celestial kingdom, for it filleth the measure of its creation, and transgresseth not the law†(D&C 88:42, 25). These verses easily lend to the understanding that matter is intelligent based on the fact that the Gods had to wait for matter to respond, and that matter can choose to transgress the law that it is given.
This has some important implications. First, it implies that the laws of nature are dictated by God and do not exist independent of Him. The second (which has nothing to do with this article) is the question of whether matter possesses free will independent of any interaction with Deity. So, because scientific naturalism is inconsistent with LDS scripture, let’s reject it.
Jeff, your focus on naturalism suggests that you’ve met some Mormon naturalists. That’s interesting because I think the idea has died off.
Being v. Becoming
Your argument against scientific naturalism seems to be your same argument that the world is only a becoming—that nothing exists in the realm of being. This, however, is not enough to deny the existence of universals. (This is the debate over realism and nominalism.) You write,
I would like to know more about the denial of realism. What are the implications of a Mormon nominalism? If God is bound by nothing, then can he do anything he wishes? I’ll answer my own question. No. Even if no universals bind God, particulars still can. For example, one thing B. H. Roberts got right is that limitations are placed on God for every existence that is uncreated and co-eternal with God.2 If intelligence is self-existent then God cannot create from nothing.
My main concern, however, with denying realism is whether it entails the denial of moral law. I think it might unless you can show that morality is derived from the interaction of particulars. You write,
Like you, I agree that divine command theory won’t work. No LDS can consistently argue for it. Anyway, my understanding of ethics is that one can adopt either moral objectivism or moral relativism. (I don’t think this is a false dilemma.) LDS cannot be relativists, so we must be objectivists. But if one is a moral objectivist and denies divine command theory, the only remaining option is realism. I want to say that if God commits adultery then he did something wrong, but to say this God must be bound by morality in some way. And in order to say God is bound by moral law, one must be a realist. Maybe we could direct this discussion to the future post of which you spoke. I’d like you to address how your nominalist view can still make sense of LDS moral commitments.
Also, you call my view “Hellenized Mormonism.†Ouch. (Just kidding. No but seriously.) Your argument for this seems to come from a previous post where you claim that ancient Jews were nominalists. Could you spell out your argument for the claim that realism is Greek? Thanks.
Greek Religion
Although you preface your posts with the comment that your descriptions of Greek culture, Christianity, and Mormonism are simple, I think you oversimplified on one point in particular. You write,
However, the Greek influences that contributed to the Hellenization of Christianity were not the beliefs of the average Greek person. Popular Greek religion was polytheistic. The Greek gods, although not morally praiseworthy, were immortal and powerful. And because of their power they could command respect from humans. Jesus on the other hand was morally praiseworthy yet mortal. The reason Christianity was foolishness to the Greeks was not because the Greeks required an incorporeal deity, but because by definition to be divine is to be immortal. They couldn’t conceive of a God who died. Now, the Greek influences that contributed to the Hellenization of Christianity came from Plato and Aristotle. From them come the ideas of immutability, impassibility, aseity, self-sufficiency, incorporeality, timelessness, metaphysical simplicity, etc. The problem is that when referring to Greek ideas you equivocate.
1. Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: The Attributes of God, vol. 1 (Salt Lake City, UT: Greg Kofford Books, Inc., 2001), p. 299.
2. B. H. Roberts, Seventies Course in Theology, vol. 4 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Press, 1911), p. 70.