Dr. James E. Faulconer, a philosopher, theologian, and research fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute, was on the Maxwell Institute podcast to discuss his latest book - Thinking Otherwise: Theological Explorations of Joseph Smith’s Revelations. James Faulconer’s discussion covered many topics that we discuss on MostMovedMover. I enjoyed every minute and found joy in aligning his views with a few of our posts. The list below highlights the relationship between snippets of his quotes with posts from MostMovedMover.

Theology means to talk about God. ‘How do I reflect thoughtfully about God and how God has revealed himself?’

which aligns with a primary topic area where I ponder the attributes of God with posts like, Does God exercise faith?

Performative theology is the process of responding to scripture

which aligns with another primary topic area where I ponder the scriptural testimonies of God’s openness with posts like, Is God without beginning of days or end of years (Alma 13:7-9)?

‘So it’s a question about how we are related. And we don’t really have to answer the question of how these things come into being. The answer is just, they are.’

which aligns with my discussions about agency being understood as a choice of relationships as I discussed in What is the agency of Man (D&C 93:30-32)?

‘It isn’t at all uncommon for [Latter-day Saints] to really mix, in an odd way, traditional theological ideas about God and the way that he is perfect or the way that he is in time or not in time.’

This quote aligns with my post where I ask, Does God live within time?

‘There’s matter in the mix; there are other agents in the mix. God is not in a universe that he created from nothing and has absolute control over. And we don’t want to live in a universe that he has absolute control over.’

The varied views of Foreknowledge under Omniscience and The material God of the Latter-day Saints and the birth of Christ are two examples where I discuss ideas related to this quote.

‘If I say to myself, “Jesus Christ is the Truth,” then what I’m saying is living in the world in the way that he would or that he does, is living truthfully. Now, that does relativize it to a certain extent, but it doesn’t relativize it to my desires or my convenience … So, I think that the relativized version of this is relativized to a being who has perfected his way of being relative to other beings. … if I live by the Spirit, then it must not be true that there’s a handbook that I could memorize and just by acting according to the rules in the handbook would be able to live successfully. If there’s no such handbook, then living by the Spirit makes sense.’

This concept has garnered some attention with posts like Is truth similar to intelligence in that it can act for itself and change? (D&C 93:30), Truth becomes more but has always been so, and True and Living (D&C 1:30)

’[T]he revelations Joseph Smith gives us say that ultimately there is no “One.” There is no one thing that explains everything. There are multiple ones—intelligence, raw matter, God.'

Needs a future post. This is the key element that Openness theologians have failed to tackle.

[The idealized one God] doesn’t exist! But we make up this fantasy, as it were. We accept this fantasy idea of God and then say, “Well, that is what I should be like.” And are just distraught when we can’t be like what doesn’t exist.

I touch this topic when I asked, How shall we be made free?. You can find the above-quoted snippets in context detail below.

On theology

But when I think about theology I’m trying to use the word in its etymological meaning, “talk about God.” And so this is a matter of saying, How do I reflect thoughtfully about God and how God has revealed himself? And what can I say about that as I reflect on it? Not necessarily to establish what no one could disagree with but just to say, as much as anything else, here’s an interesting idea, perhaps it’s something we can follow up on, perhaps it’s something we can consider. Not, “here you go, now we’re all done.”

I think it would be a mistake for us to have some kind of officially curated and declared theology, I like it the way it is right now. I think it’s the best way to do it. But I don’t think that means we shouldn’t have theology and I never have thought that we shouldn’t do theology at all.

“performative theology,” which is a matter of thinking about scripture and analyzing scripture and responding to scripture. And I think that is, at least from my point of view, perhaps the most important kind of theology we do.

The one thing

Is the universe ultimately one thing or many things? The traditional answer has been, “Well, there’s just one ultimate thing.”

So that’s been the argument for thousands of years, and yet it seems to me that the revelations Joseph Smith gives us say that ultimately there is no “One.” There is no one thing that explains everything. There are multiple ones—intelligence, raw matter, God. At least those. And if you say, “Well then what’s behind them?” The answer is, “There’s nothing behind them, that’s what there is.” … I think an incredible insight on Joseph Smith’s part that you don’t have to think that way.

And so, the question then becomes, how is it that God is related to human beings? How is it that human beings should be related to one another? How is it that human beings should be related to the earth and other entities? So it’s a question about how we are related. And we don’t really have to answer the question of how these things come into being. The answer is just, they are.

Science and reason killed ‘The One God’

What [Friedrich Nietzsche] says is, “Look, we are at a point where God is dead.” And by “God” he doesn’t mean the being that Latter-day Saints would recognize. He means “The One.” He means the idea that there is one thing that explains everything and it’s behind everything that there is and so on. The notion that there is such a thing is just no longer a viable notion. It won’t work.

But for me, his real importance is that he was the diagnostician of the ills of Western culture. He just sees right through and even if someone has seen right through before, he makes the point so clearly that I think it just catches. When people start to read him … they say, “Wow, I see the point.”

So he’s not the kind of atheist who says, “There is no God and I’m really glad and I’m liberated by this idea.” He found it a depressing idea and it was difficult.

What is the problem with Latter-day Saint thought on God?

DAVIS: [That multiple things explain all is] a stunning and beautiful solution even if it still leaves us with questions about the ultimate nature of some of that. But, I think you make the point that we haven’t fully appreciated this shift that the Restoration brings about. What are some of the ways that you see Latter-day Saints still sort of thinking in terms of “The One” that might not be beneficial?

FAULCONER: Well, I think that it isn’t at all uncommon for us to really mix, in an odd way, traditional theological ideas about God and the way that he is perfect or the way that he is in time or not in time or all kinds of things like that.

With the revelations of Joseph Smith we end up with this odd mishmash of things, so that if you say to someone, “Well, let’s talk about God” they will say things like, “Well, he obviously can’t be in time.” And yet, he does have a body so it’s hard to think of how he couldn’t be in time. Or they will say, “Well, he has a body and since it’s not like ours,” and they end up talking about it very much in the same kinds of terms that one might talk about “The One.”

We think about our relationship to God in terms of somehow we are going to become like him, but when we think about what it means to be like him, we think in traditional terms rather than in the terms of Joseph Smith. We think somehow, his perfection means knowing every minutia about the whole world, never changing in any way whatsoever. I mean, we’ve set for ourselves an impossible ideal, not just because it’s unachievable, but because it doesn’t make any sense.

DAVIS: It doesn’t exist.

FAULCONER: It doesn’t exist! But we make up this fantasy, as it were. We accept this fantasy idea of God and then say, “Well, that is what I should be like.” And are just distraught when we can’t be like what doesn’t exist.

On the perfections of God

DAVIS: It seems like perfectionism is really one of those things where if the command is “Be ye therefore perfect,” and we think perfect means this sort of platonic ideal or whatever or a God that is incomparably other than us, how can we ever get there? It’s just an overwhelming command and it breaks us down sometimes.

So is the God of classical theism, The One, which most mainstream Christians might still subscribe to and the God of Latter-day Saint belief—are we talking about completely different beings? Can we not have a conversation with other Christians that believe in “The One?” It gets thorny.

FAULCONER: Yeah that’s a really hard question because in one sense, yes. We’re just talking about completely different beings. I think sometimes we need to recognize that. I don’t think that that means we can’t have a conversation and I think it’s important to understand that a person can be wrong about what they say about God theologically and still be related to God. And so, even if the person I’m talking to says, “I believe that God is outside of all time and space and is impassable, can’t be touched by any other thing and so on and so forth”—what I should think, I should say to myself, “This person and I disagree about how to talk about God theologically, but she may very well have a genuine relationship with God in her prayer life, in her worship life."

Questions on God’s Omniscience and Omnipotence

DAVIS: That if an omnipotent God who is all good and all wise and all knowing still allows horrible things to happen to innocent people, that’s a problem. How do we reconcile that? Does Joseph Smith’s God give us a different perspective on that problem?

FAULCONER: I think he does. David Paulson who recently passed away gave a very good forum or devotional at BYU some time ago and I think that he was really quite right in saying that Joseph Smith’s answer differs. And the reason that it’s different is that the God that he teaches us knows everything and has all the power that there is, but all the power there is does not mean the ability to do anything whatsoever. It means the ability to do anything that can be done.

FAULCONER: There’s so many other things. There’s matter in the mix, there are other agents in the mix. God is not in a universe that he created from nothing and has absolute control over. And we don’t want to live in a universe that he has absolute control over.

DAVIS: It seems to me that many people who call themselves atheists are atheists precisely because of this problem of evil. It drives them right out. They just can’t abide the notion of a God who would be so cruel. And so there’s this lovely pivot in Restoration thought that allows us to conceive of a loving being who is fully in the problem with us.

FAULCONER: Yeah. I think that if I believed that God is a being like the tradition describes who has all power and all knowledge and who still lets these bad things happen, then I would have to stop believing in God as well. I don’t think I could be a believer. If I was a believer I would have to be a really cynical believer.

On the meaning of Truth

FAULCONER: I think it’s also important to recognize, as I said, that it doesn’t always mean the same thing. Truth in the Jacob scripture means something like “propositional truth.” And so, there’s nothing wrong with using the word in that way, but I think it’s important to recognize that probably the most fundamental meaning for us is this way of being in the world. Truth is a way of being related to other beings, things as well as persons, in the world.

DAVIS: You know, people get nervous at the statement that truth is relative. They say, “You’re relativizing everything, and there have to be eternal truths that are immutable, unmovable, unchangeable.” So how do you think about that?

FAULCONER: Well usually when we think about truth being relative we ultimately mean something like, “It means whatever I want it to. Whatever is convenient for me.” And I think that is an obviously ridiculous way to understand the truth. But I do think it makes sense to say that even propositional truth is relative to the circumstances and contexts in which a person thinks it or says it or understands it or whatever. And that that’s probably why for me the most important definition is that truth is not a proposition but a way of being.

If I say to myself, “Jesus Christ is the Truth,” then what I’m saying is living in the world in the way that he would or that he does, is living truthfully. Now, that does relativize it to a certain extent, but it doesn’t relativize it to my desires or my convenience or something like that. It sets a pretty high bar if I were to decide to do something other than what’s commanded, for example. The bar for doing that is not just my particular pleasure.

So, I think that the relativized version of this is relativized to a being who has perfected his way of being relative to other beings.

FAULCONER: Another way to put that is this shows the need for continuing revelation, both at the official level and at the personal level. We are enjoined to “live by the spirit,” and that means living by that which the spirit teaches us to do. That’s living in a certain way, but if I live by the Spirit then it must not be true that there’s a handbook that I could memorize and just by acting according to the rules in the handbook would be able to live successfully. If there’s no such handbook then living by the Spirit makes sense. So if I have to live by the Spirit then there must not be such a handbook.

God as the Most Moved Mover

DAVIS: Right, different ideas gain currency over time. And yet, I think it’s fair to say that the Hebrew scriptures do sort of describe or refer to a God that changes his mind, feels human emotions, has kind of anthropomorphic attributes, all of these things.

FAULCONER: Right, he moves from place to place. He gets angry. He argues with Abraham or Abraham argues with him, I’m not sure which way that argument went, but you know, Job confronts him and says, “Why did you do this?” These are all things where it’s fairly clear that there’s that element of Hebrew thinking that gets more or less covered over or metaphorized once you get to someone like Philo.

James Faulconer’s 2013 My Journey as an LDS Scholar Speech

In 2013, he shared an overview of his faith and philosophy journey, which is worth including in this post. One topic found in the following youtube video that Faulconer didn’t touch in the above discussion focuses on the student teacher relationship. Minute 38 and minute 47 contain the following quotes.

[It is impossible to be teacher] without asking about my relationships as a teacher to my students. For me, the overarching question is, ‘Is this a master slave relationship?’ If it is, how can I disrupt that mastery and slavery in a way that allows learning to happen? How do I bring character into class as an essential element? … Honor is less to do with dress than how we learn.

Around minute 47, he explains how he does exit interviews with each of his students. In that interview, he asks them to request a grade.

Most of them are reluctant to give themselves a grade because they don’t want to do it. I think they don’t want to do it because they want me to be responsible for that decision. We need to find a way to give them responsibility for learning without just abandoning the class.

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