Background

I first encountered Terryl Givens name while watching ‘The Mormons’ in 2007. He was included as an expert on Latter-day Saint beliefs. He had been publishing in the LDS space since 1997. Around 2014 I listened to him, and Richard Bushman at a Mormon Studies conference at The University of Virginia while visiting my nephew.

Wrestling the Angel

I just finished Wrestling the Angel and found the book to be thorough in its discussion of the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After reading the book, it helped me understand how our theological views have shifted from Brigham Young and Joseph Smith to the James Talmage era and into the Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie era. As he discussed varied doctrines, there was an implicit statement that there are a few places in our theology open for interpretation and that the divergence in interpretation came from the Joseph Fielding Smith era. In one case he was fairly explicit.

Two of the century’s Mormon intellectual giants, B.H. Roberts and Talmage, both died in 1933. With their passing, the church entered an era of reaction and biblical literalism. One manifestation was persistent efforts by apostles Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie to condemn human evolution as Mormon heresy. -pg 218-

From pages 12 - 15, Terryl lays out some impactful quotes from LDS leaders on theology. I appreciated the quote from Brigham Young.

Our favorite study is that branch which particularly belongs to the Elders of Israel - namely, theology. Every Elder should become a profound theologian - should understand this branch better than all the world. - Brigham Young -

On the openness of God

Wrestling the Angel quotes

With time, the seeds planted in Joseph Smith’s first theophany developed into three interrelated hallmarks of Mormon doctrine about deity. First, God’s personal responsiveness to human prayer; second, his passible nature (i.e., his susceptibility to be moved by emotion); and third, his physical embodiment. -Pg. 74-

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The possibility of God’s condition or mood or emotional state changing was reasonably deemed implausible since all change must be either for the worse or for the better. Neither kind of change could be posited of a perfect God. But Enoch’s weeping God the Father is in no way immune to the vicissitudes entailed by his immersion within a web of human relationships, rather than position outside of them. He participates in rather than transcends the ebb and flow of human history, human tragedy, and human grief. Furthermore, his distress at the predicament humans have brought upon themselves clearly evidences a disappointment, a regret, at the course of events - which can only mean they are not consistent with his will. We are here at almost the furthest remove imaginable from the God of Augustine and Calvin, who predestines even the inheritors of eternal damnation. Mormonism’s God, by contrast, does not control events, predetermine outcomes, or effect a universe totally in harmony with his will. … For Mormons, it is God’s freely made choice to inaugurate and sustain costly loving relationships that is at the very core of his divine identity. -Pg. 88-

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However, it is clear that given God’s relational nature, and his infinitely creative capacity and activity, he is a being whose orbit of relationships and mode of existence are, therefore, in the Mormon conception, ever expanding, dynamic, and open. -Pg. 96-

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It is true that a God who exists independently of moral absolutes, who exists in willful conformity with them rather than as their source, may seem too unstable an entity to be a source of absolute trust and faith. Most Mormons have clearly chosen to value choice and moral freedom - even in the divine - over necessary attributes or nature. To the objection that such a view of deity risks the logical possibility of a fallible God incapable of guaranteeing his promises, on Mormon philosopher responds that he trusts God ‘because He’s told us that he can. My faith in God is grounded in His self-disclosures, not in logical inferences from philosophically constructed premises. -Pg. 97-

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Instead of dwelling outside of space and time, he inhabits the same universe of materiality and temporality as we do. -Pg. 99-

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The Encyclopedia of Mormonism states that ‘Latter-day Saints differ among themselves in their understanding of the nature of God’s knowledge. Some have thought that God increases endlessly in knowledge as well as in glory and dominion. Others hold to the more traditional view that God’s knowledge, including the foreknowledge of future free contingencies, is complete.’ But it is hard to find in Mormon writings either any apostolic pronouncement that limits God’s knowledge of the future or the opinion that divine omniscience would be an impediment to free will. -Pg. 100-

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there is available in Mormonism a plausible way to accommodate all three ‘omnis’: God has all the power there is, consistent with his respect for free will and the laws of self-contradiction; God is everywhere present through the medium of the Light of Christ; and God is possessed of all the knowledge there is. -Pg. 100-

Becoming Like God podcast quotes

I’m comfortable with omnibenevolence, but I don’t like those other terms as they’re applied to the Mormon deity. … In terms of ‘omniscience,’ I’ll tell you why I don’t like that term. Omniscience, when we talk about an omniscient narrator or an omniscient perspective, what we really mean is a perspective that is outside of any perspective. Omniscience seems to imply a position outside of space; outside of time; outside of any subjective positioning. What I think is remarkably ironic is that some people, including some dissidents, have found the Mormon God too limiting. He’s finite. He exists in space; He exists in time; He’s corporeal. I find the omniscient deity of some theological models to be a bit horrifying.

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I think the beauty and power of the Enoch narrative is that we are taught there that the divine perspective is the most intensely subjective perspective that one could imagine. Enoch sees that God sees the world through the lens of human misery — through empathic identification with human misery. When Solomon asks for the gift of wisdom, we’re told that what he is given is an understanding heart. Again, here I think we have this really counterintuitive notion in Mormon theology that to acquire the divine nature means to acquire a kind of wisdom that always emanates from a lived human relationship — and I would much rather envision, adore, and trust in a God whose judgements and valuations are made on the basis of His shared subjectivity rather than some dispassionate, omniscient perspective outside of space, time, and human considerations.

• openness
• voices
• lds