The New “Answering Gospel Questions,” Part 2: Historical Background

To understand why some of us see these new guidelines as so significant, we need to cover some intellectual and religious history which will allow you to “read between the lines” more. And please note, I’m under time constraints and very much in stark “historian mode” here; I have not taken the time to render this more devotional; suffice to say, one can— as I do— believe fully in biblical and LDS prophets while rejecting the fundamentalist constructs often attached to them. 

Part 1: Introduction

Almost from the beginning, Latter-day Saints have operated on two loose competing paradigms of knowledge and “the world.” (I wrote a well-received paper on this for a conference in 2017; see  here for more details, including the unrevised draft.)

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One paradigm is the “infection model,” which presupposes that a hard boundary exists between divinely  revealed (and therefore perfect)¹The “therefore” is non-sequitur. It does not follow from something being revealed that it is complete, absolute, perfect. That contradicts a number of LDS ideas such as progressive revelation, line upon line, etc. knowledge on the one hand, and partial human imperfect knowledge on the other. (I have argued that while revelation is real, by nature it

President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.

cannot avoid having human aspects; all revelation is composite, both human and divine.) But given such a premise, one must zealously protect the one from the incursion of the other;  human aspects can only pollute or infect pure divine revelation. I drew the term “infection” from President J. Reuben Clark, who used it on occasion to describe this kind of thing.

This model has a strong tendency to elevate tradition²by which I mean simply “that which is received or passed on.” and prophets almost to  quasi-divine or inerrant status while downplaying human knowledge-making and discovery as secondary at best.  One author described this concept of prophets, in which

knowledge of divine things had been given to human beings directly, unmediated and uncontaminated by the historical context in which it was received. This presupposed of course, that the biblical writers [and LDS prophets are] essentially ahistorical figures, enabled by the Holy Spirit to transcend their social and cultural settings in order to articulate truths of timeless and universal validity. This meant that revelation was subject to clarification but not real development.

The second paradigm is the “quest model,” expressed by Brigham Young multiple times, e.g.

It is our duty and calling… to gather every item of truth and reject every error. Whether a truth be found with professed infidels, or with the Universalists, or the Church of Rome, or the Methodists, the Church of England, the Presbyterians, the Baptists, the Quakers, the Shakers, or any other of the various and numerous different sects and parties, all of whom have more or less truth, it is the business of… this Church… to gather up all the truths in the world pertaining to life and salvation, to the Gospel we preach, to mechanism of every kind, to the sciences, and to philosophy, wherever it may be found in every nation, kindred, tongue, and people and bring it to Zion.

The “quest model” gives more value to things outside the LDS tradition; truth and goodness are “out there” among our fellow humans, and it is our job to seek it out, evaluate critically, and accept and integrate whatever we find that is true, virtuous, lovely, or of good report. In short, per 1Th 5:21, “test everything, retain what is good.”(This is a quick-and-dirty summary that doesn’t really do justice to either model; for those interested, I provide quotations and more detailed, nuanced analysis in my paper.)

Those two competing models set the stage for the historical background of the new guidelines to asking and answering questions. It is, in essence, an applied question of epistemology, a term I first learned as a missionary from this useful Ensign article; how is knowledge made, and how do we know what we know?

The question for this series, then, is this: how has the Church’s embrace of these two different paradigms shifted over time? How has it portrayed tradition and prophetic/scriptural knowledge on the one hand, and human knowledge on the other?

Especially in the early twentieth century, a perfect wave of social, cultural, intellectual, and scientific changes washed over America, compelling a response and re-evaluation of many things. (I’ve detailed some of those here.) Those changes ultimately generated a number of things, including what would come to be described with a slippery term, “fundamentalism.” (I’ve spoken about that here in an LDS context). It’s hard to define concisely, but for me a short operating definition is this. Fundamentalism assumes that inspiration entails divine completeness and perfection, and the absence of human   (i.e. imperfect or fallen) aspects. You can see how this entails something like inerrancy, whether applied to a book of scripture like the Bible, or LDS prophets and tradition.

Some Protestant groups responded to those early twentieth century challenges (at least in part) by elevating inspired tradition completely over human reason, experience, and research, scientific or otherwise. Not only did this have major implications for Protestantism (see here for one Evangelical-on-Evangelical critique), it also led to an interpretive lens which distorted scripture itself, a fact now recognized by a number of Evangelical historians and Bible scholars.

Fundamentalism is idealistic; it too closely associates  scripture and prophets with divine omniscience and perfection, and does not take sufficient account of scripture’s human medium, human audience, and human interpreters. It often ends up with a de facto belief that scripture is divine dictation.
One historian writes that certain groups at the turn of the century

acknowledged that Scripture possessed a human as well as a divine character and they consistently denied mechanical dictation theories of inspiration. But the supernatural element was so essential to their view of Scripture, and the natural so incidental, that their view would have been little different had they considered the authors of Scripture to be simply secretaries. Their language and metaphors sometimes betrayed this fact. James Brookes, for instance, spoke on one occasion of “the Holy Spirit in the last letter He dictated to the apostle Paul. . . .” At a major Bible conference on “the Inspired Word,” organized by millenarian leaders in 1887, William Hoyt, although he attacked a dictation theory, spoke nonetheless of the prophetic portions as a “photographically exact forecasting of the future. . . .” Using a term just coming into vogue, he said the Bible was in every detail “kept inerrant.”

Latter-day Saints responded to those early 20th century challenges with similar theological rhetoric and emphases as conservative Protestants. I don’t have time to flesh out all this history, nor has a good one been written that really covers this well, imo. But as I have studied that 20th century Protestant history, it’s very difficult not to encounter certain LDS episodes and statements without seeing them as doing something very similar, i.e. “elevating inspired tradition completely over human reason, experience, and research, scientific or otherwise.” In other words, historical shifts pushed some leaders defensively into emphasizing the  “infection model,” elevating tradition to quasi-divine absolute status, and downgrading human contributions.

A few examples:

• • In the late 1920s, Church leaders brought out New Testament scholars from the University of Chicago to instruct CES teachers during Summer School. The Church Commissioner of Education M. Lynn Bennion recorded that

President Grant said something in my presence that was indicative of his attitude. He referred to the [non-LDS] Bible scholars who had taught at BYU [summer school for Seminary, Institute, and BYU Religion teachers]. He said, ‘we have the truth — We should be teaching them; not them teaching us.’ (Archival source)

• • Certainly the Gospel of Jesus Christ and priesthood authority as possessed by the restored Church is valuable and central and the reason for our missionary work; but does that entail that Latter-day Saints can learn nothing from people who have devoted decades of their lives to studying the language and context of, say, the Book of Romans which most of us find quite foreign and confusing? To issues of grace and law?
• After Joseph Fielding Smith published his anti-evolution book Man, His Origin and Destiny in 1954, President McKay solicited letters from scientists seeking their thoughts. Henry Eyring’s brother Leroy— also a chemistry professor— wrote,

This book speaks as if all had been revealed and we need only look back to the ancient scriptures for all knowledge.
(Archival source)

• This is, of course, what Joseph Fielding Smith did when it came to science.  On one occasion, he said bluntly

I do not care what the scientists say.
(Archival source)

• On another,

the scientist is wrong in his deductions regarding the age of this earth, and life upon it…. I think I have better grounds for mine.
(Archival source)

• Scripture, in Smith’s view, provided better grounds and better understandings of scientific questions than human sciences such as biology and geology.
  • By contrast, successive First Presidencies in the early 20th century consulted scientists extensively when considering science-related doctrinal questions, and they rejected Smith’s specific claims and his paradigm that you could derive science from scripture.
• Smith was asked by one reader if his book expressed an official statement of Church doctrine. He replied,

Are not the words of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Parley P and Orson Pratt, John Taylor and George Q. Cannon reliable?
(Archival source)

• That was tradition, which made it true and official, in Smith’s view. That human science had developed far since the late 1800s was irrelevant.
  • Notably, usage of terms like “reliable” or “trustworthy” is a fundamentalist trope associated with inerrancy.
• During the mid-century, Church manuals on scripture were often commissioned from trained LDS scholars; however, the internal review was often scathing in detail and expressed aspects of a fundamentalist, inerrantist, “infection model.” This disallowed the presence of any real human aspects  in producing scripture, and polemicized against scholarly human training in understanding or interpreting scripture.  Here are two examples of reviews of manual drafts by the committee, made up of several Apostles. From 1945-

‘John has him stress.’ This expression which occurs from time to time that John makes the savior do this or that is distasteful. This criticism was offered in the other lessons on the synoptic Gospels. While the author means, without question, that John and Mark, record some saying of the Lord, yet the matter is written in such a way as to convey the thought that John or Mark put into the Savior’s mouth words which they desire him to express.
(Archival source)

Scripture had to be the actual words of Jesus, and the Gospel writers served essentially as secretaries and organizers.

From 1944-

That Matthew or Luke or John, wrote to correct, or re-interpret, Mark, we do not accept…. The translation by Goodspeed from Mark 10:25 verily is a mistranslation: ‘Whoever wants to hold the first place among you must be everybody’s slave.’ We seriously doubt that this is according to the original or the Greek; if so, then let us hold to the Authorized version….³None of the committee knew Greek.
We feel sure that much of the criticism we offer would have been greatly modified or removed entirely, had more attention been given to the knowledge the Lord has given us in our present-day revelations and scriptures, rather than the reliance upon professional men who are uninspired by the Spirit of the Lord.
(Archival source)

• The idea expressed in the latter criticism found expression especially  in the 1950s and 60s, marshaled to elevate and equate tradition with ultimate divine knowledge. If tradition is all truth, then it shuts out human research and knowledge.
  President J. Reuben Clark

There is abundant evidence that those who are preparing lessons for our Church institutions have something of a knowledge of secular scholarship, which they seem rather fond, if not proud, to display; but there is almost nothing to indicate that they have ever really delved into our own Church history or doctrine. The early brethren of the Church not only had great intellects but they also had great faith and knowledge and testimony and devoted the bulk of their time to a study of the Gospel. A scholarly examination of what they have said and written would bring material that would be infinitely more valuable to our people than anything any sectarian has ever written.
(Archival source)

Elder Joseph Fielding Smith,

The commentators in the world, no matter how hard they study, no matter how great their research, no matter how much they understand about ancient languages, customs, etc., must inevitably fail in their interpretations of the sacred Scriptures for they are spiritually discerned…. And a man trained in the spirit of the world, and the learning of the world devoid of the spiritual guidance, will invariably fail in reaching correct conclusions.
(Archival source)

Elder Mark E. Petersen

We understand the Bible better than any other people. It is not because we are smarter than they are. But we understand the Bible better than the  rest of the world because of the new light we have received from heaven in modern times….. They may do research on the history or the geography of the Holy Land and may know more about those subjects than the Latter-day Saints who have never made that kind of research. We are grateful for knowledge of that kind and believe that it may develop much useful information which can be very helpful to us when properly used…. Some may think we speak from a sense of egotism when we talk like this, but of course that is not so. It is simply a case of the wisdom of man versus the revelations of God. There is simply no comparison between their uninspired worldly-wise opinions and the actual word of God as given to us in modern revelation. We as teachers in the Church must teach the revealed word of God. We have no need for the uninspired conjectures of the clerics of the world concerning the doctrines of Christ. That is why we do not send our men to divinity schools. We do not encourage our men to go to these schools. We have had a few go and some have come back almost spoiled, so far as we are concerned, because they have brought back so much sectarianism with them that, as a matter of fact, their actual faith in some instances has been shaken. We do not encourage that. That is why we so much prefer our own training in the revealed word.”
-Mark E. Petersen. “Avoiding Sectarianism” [address to religious educators, 22 June 1962] full talk printed in Charge to Religious Educators, 2d ed. [1982], 113-19.

• • Do we need Church writers to study tradition and the teachings of the prophets? Absolutely! Is it, however,  a pure divine source of knowledge? No.
  • Do we turn to non-LDS for doctrine? No. That is the purview of Apostles, set in order by God. Does that entail that we can learn nothing from non-LDS scholars or historical training, particularly something that might not dovetail with tradition? No.
  • Will you learn more about “doctrine” by studying LDS history? Yes. Will you learn more about the New Testament from reading LDS history rather than Bible scholars, LDS or not? No.

Now, as you’re gathering, this issue is all about striking the right balance, which can be quite difficult while swirling in the maelstrom of a particular time. I have the luxury of scholarly hindsight. And to be clear, I agree with President Clark and others that there were some real issues in the 20th century, I do not intend to portray them as “villains” here. Certainly some Latter-day Saints getting academic training did want to turn religion into a system of philosophy and ethics, largely similar to the modernist Protestants who decided the sine qua non of the Gospel was not Jesus’ divinity, atonement, and resurrection, but ethics and charity.  But in responding to these issues, some leaders overreached in their rhetoric,  an overcorrection that had real effects. Other leaders saw things differently, but they had less impact. Few Latter-day Saints today would recognize name Stephen L. Richards as an Apostle and member of the First Presidency, but he represented more of the “quest model,” as did Widtsoe, Talmage, and others. One more recent one was President Ballard, whom I’ll discuss in the next installment.

Further reading:

• On the nature of prophetic knowledge, a follow-up, and discussion of the flawed “acting as a man” paradigm.
• On Evangelicals and scripture.
• LDS History and History-writing
• History, Fiction, and Scripture in LDS history
• The Nature of HIstory
• How we conceive of the nature of revelation and history and interpretation matters. Why? Because presuppositions on those shape how we interpret the data.
  • Post
  • Popular Video on the nature of revelation

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