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For those imbued with Mormonism, the most appropriate figure for talking about the word of God in the twenty-first century is Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, presider over doors and gateways, and with one face looking forward, the other back. 

Ahead is a new period as Mormonism becomes a worldwide church, entailing increased contact with world religions and with the secular culture of the modern world. Over the next two decades millions of converts will come into Mormonism from religions that have widely divergent understandings of the character of the word of God or the divine mind. The missionaries who bring them in will encounter questions concerning fundamental issues of faith which will come to fruition sooner or later. The challenge of this exercise in relative perspectives will be equaled or exceeded only by the encounter with the secular culture; as the church population expands and the Church Educational System remains in steady state, the thinking of more and more young Mormons will be formed in systems of secondary and higher education in which the concept of the “word of God” is not hard currency but is usually more like the Italian lira, or the Confederate dollar. As the church in its processes becomes more dependent on technology, and members become enmeshed in a technological world, they will face the temptations of technology, whose values and modes of thought work like acids on what Mormonism has hitherto been. What is taking place among Mormons in a secular culture is a collision of world views. 

In addition, for the first time serious efforts of wide-scale textual criticism of Mormon scriptures have begun among Mormon scholars and have already engaged large parts of the Mormon intellectual community in the discussion, either as proponents of the new views or as defenders of the traditional ways.[1] Many Mormons will therefore be obliged to con front more directly during the twenty-first century issues which the church has generally side-stepped during the twentieth century. 

Looking back to the beginning of Mormonism, one can view the development of a dynamics of revelation unusual, if not unique, among the world’s religions: the claims of a living prophet speaking continuously for God; the promise to all believers that through the Holy Ghost God will speak to them directly; and a concept of revelation that requires rational ratification. Historically, these three elements have sometimes moved harmoniously together and have sometimes wobbled out of round, as one or the other has received excessive prominence. It would seem natural, therefore, to expect a certain tension to grow as the central hierarchy endeavors to retain tight control over a worldwide church which is every day taking into itself more elements of diversity. Beyond the tuggings and contests of institutional authority is an indeterminately large number of people, in and out of Mormonism, who hunger for something to feed their souls, those of whom Milton said, “The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.” They will seek out the word of God in whatever forms they can find, the voice of the Ultimate in the cosmos, speaking in judgment on the world, commanding duties, and offering redemption. 

In this light no question appears more basic for Mormonism than: What shall we understand by the word “revelation,” or by phrase “the word of God”? This question is the repository of all questions of faith and authority, the cog that makes the other wheels turn. 

Talking about the Word of God

In the world’s long march, however, many forms and concepts have been associated with “the word of God.” We can gain in clarity if as a first step we look analytically at any proposed concept of the word of God ac cording to the following categories: 

(1) Do we think of revelation as propositional, that is, as information communicated in the form of sentences which God speaks to humans (“Hear, O Heavens and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken” [Isa. 1:2])? Or is it experiential, consisting of words which humans speak about their experiences with God (the numinous aspect of their existence) and the interpretations they make of them (“In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord … and then said I, ‘Woe is me! because I am a man of unclean lips'” [6:1,5])? 

(2) Should we consider the word of God as absolute and unimprovable (“We have the mind of Christ” [1 Cor. 2:16]), or is it partial and relative to the understanding of the hearer (“when I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child” [13:11])? In either case, what authority does the word carry? 

(3) Shall we think of the word of God as mediated or unmediated? Does it come to us through the intermediary of another person (or book or tradition which goes back to another person), or does it come to each individual directly? If it is mediated, how do we satisfy ourselves about the reliability of the mediator? If it is unmediated, how do we know that the experience or message that comes to us is from God and is not simply the voice of our own fears, hopes, or prejudices? 

(4) If we accept as the word of God that which comes to us by tradition, how are we to discern the word of God from that which is merely the status quo? 

Faith, Authority, and Revelation

A framework for discussing these questions is provided by the series of seminars offered by the German theologian Hans Küng and colleagues at the University of Tubingen in 1982 for the purpose of widening the dialogue between Christianity and Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.[2] Abandoning the proselytizing mode, the seminars attempted first to understand each religion in terms that its own believers would accept, then to identify areas of basic agreement, and finally to delineate clearly what the real differences were so that further talk could go on. 

A specialist in each religion would present a statement of that particular tradition sympathetically and in its strongest light, to which Küng would make a response from his Christian point of view, which in turn necessitated a recognition and a review of the several different positions held in the Christian tradition. Out of this kind of exchange would emerge understanding of other religions and cultures, but no less important would be the new understanding of one’s own religion—”If one knows only England,” said Küng, “one does not know England.”[3] It would be the occasion for Christians to rethink the Christian enterprise. The goal for the Christian theologian was “less to answer all specific questions and formulate every rebuttal than to create something like a presentation of Christianity in the light of world religions.”[4]

If Mormonism could detach itself momentarily from the warm embrace of the proselytizing mode, this kind of exercise with regard both to theistic and secular religions would provide an opportunity for it to respond reflectively to questions common to all. It would be an occasion for Mormons to look at Mormonism in the context of larger relationships—if one knows only Mormonism, one does not know Mormonism. 

Mormonism, like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, presents itself as a revealed religion, in contrast with Hindu and Buddhist religions, which emphasize personal enlightenment or mystical experience.[5] Jews, Chris tians, and Muslims all think of themselves as peoples of the book, in each case a book which contains the revealed word of God. What does that mean for each of them? 

Islam occupies the anchor position for propositional revelation: The Koran consists of the very words which God spoke audibly, or caused his messengers to speak, in the most excellent Arabic to his prophet Moham med. The Koran is therefore perfect, definitive, universal, immutable, and its authority is absolute. It is thus the linguistic standard for all other forms of Arabic and is moreover not really translatable, all “translations” of it being considered only aids to understanding the original, which is perfect.[6] In thinking of the Koran as total and complete, I recall a conversation with an enthusiastic supporter of the Iranian revolution in 1979. What role would a legislature play in the new Islamic republic? None, he answered, since all of the necessary laws had already been given in the Koran. It follows that the Islamic state is theocratic and its authority de rives ultimately from the Koran. The state authority is exercised de facto by the clergy, who stand in the stead of God by mediating the Koran to the people.[7]

If we believe that the word of God is in a text, we must raise the question of textual criticism. To what extent is revelation dependent for its meaning and significance on the historical context, culture, and personality of the recipient? As we study the text, do we first ask which manuscripts are the oldest, which have lapses or emendations, which ones follow which rhetorical or structural tradition? That is, do we get at the understanding of the text by using the methods and techniques of textual analysis, which submit the text to the judgment of the analyzer? For Islam, the answer has been and remains “No.” God’s word consists of God’s words. These words do not reflect Mohammed’s times or even less his personality. The authority of the Koran is the linchpin of the entire religion, and Islam will not allow that authority to be called into question by fiddling with the text. To repeat, this position seems to anchor one end of the spectrum: the word of God as found in the Koran is propositional, complete, infallible, and its authority is absolute in all areas of personal or social life. 

The faith that grows out of this concept of the word of God as propositional revelation carries the conviction of infallibility and is powerful enough to move nations and inspire men to suicide missions in a holy war. The word Islam, in fact, means “submission.” It is also a faith which appears at bottom to be fearful, since it cannot tolerate the threat of looking analytically at its foundations. The more a group believes that it has an absolute and unimprovable knowledge of the word of God, or, as in the late Soviet Union, of the workings and destiny of history, the more it becomes intolerant and totalitarian when such a belief is challenged. The group becomes threatened and, in extreme cases, violent, assuming the power of life or death over the challenger. We have the example of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran pronouncing a death sentence on a citizen of another country, Salmon Rushdie, for having blasphemed the word of God. The episode has been repeated in present day Bangladesh with crowds calling for the death of the author Naslima Nasreen, she having, in their view, blasphemed the Koran, the word of God. We also have the example of the young man beheaded in Saudi Arabia in 1992 for “having insulted God, the holy Koran and Mohammed the prophet.”[8]

In contemporary Christianity some fundamentalist Christians hold a similar view of the Bible, believing their scriptures to be inspired and perfect from every standpoint—linguistic, stylistic, logical, historical, scientific—and they would echo the claim of the nineteenth-century millenarian Alexander Carson: “If the Bible is a book partly human and partly divine, it cannot, as a whole, be the word of God, nor be justly ascribed to Him as its sole author … to be God’s book, it must be His in matter and in words, in substance and in form.”[9] It is apparently this kind of conviction that fuels the present crusade of the Christian Coalition to “reclaim America for Christ.” 

Nonetheless, the majority of Christian scholars, both Protestant and Catholic, have not scrupled to look analytically at the founding documents of Christianity and have embraced textual criticism. The time is long past when the majority of Christian scholars can look upon the array of evidence and hold to the view of an inerrant Bible. As a matter of fact, they note that the Bible itself does not claim to be written by God, but by many people in many different places on earth.[10] The books of the Bible reflect the times and the personalities of their authors. They were written in and for a historical context, and they can therefore be understood only in that context. They are inspired and inspiring, but they are not infallible, and their meaning derives ultimately from their interpretation by the individual. Moreover, since their interpretation depends on our changing knowledge of the circumstances of their creation, no interpretation is definitive, although the official Catholic position holds that final interpretation of scripture in matters of faith and morals is the prerogative of the Pope speaking ex cathedra. In any case, the authority of the Bible as the last word which routs all competitors has therefore suffered sore erosion. For most Christians, the authority of the Bible depends on its ability to move and enlighten individual believers. 

With this mode of thinking about the word of God comes another mode of faith. In Arizona, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, Tucson was ringed with missile silos that would have brought in an estimated 350 megatons in the event of a pre-emptive Soviet strike, causing some concern locally about real estate values. There was a big business in bomb shelters. At that time I heard a young Quaker talk about his way of confronting violence and the possible end of the world. He was laboring to establish and equip a playground in a blighted area of Sacra mento. He was not acting on divine instruction communicated verbally about urban renewal, but imbued with the words about God in the New Testament; and being inspired by them, he believed this was the sort of thing God wanted people to do. The word of God is the seed which takes root in individuals and grows toward God. 

In this context, would an earnest Mormon engaged in this discussion with an earnest Muslim and an earnest Christian tilt more toward Islam and the view of an infallible, mediated, propositional view of the word of God, or more toward modern Christianity and a partial, experiential, progressive view of the word of God? What response would be most faithful to the genius of Mormonism? 

When the question is posed in this way, the starting point of the discussion has to be that Mormonism at the end of the twentieth century is and always has been multiple. From its beginnings it has had strong and authentic elements of both views, expressed clearly in its founding documents. It has been the scene, on the one hand, of yearning for certainty and infallibility in the form of a propositional and absolute transmission of God’s words mediated by a prophet,[11] and, on the other hand, the recognition of insuperable limitations of the human condition which make the word of God partial, relative to time and circumstances, and immediate to the individual. 

Looking Back: The Way of the Infallible Prophet

The view of propositional revelation emerged early with the image of Joseph Smith as a choice seer, a modern Moses. Joseph was to be called “a seer, a translator, a prophet, an apostle of Jesus Christ, an elder of the church through the will of God the Father, and the grace of your Lord Jesus Christ.” The Lord therefore enjoined the church to receive Joseph’s word “as if from my own mouth” (D&C 21:1, 2, 4-6). Joseph, then, was seen as the very mouthpiece of God. When Oliver Cowdery, as second el der in the church, “commanded” Joseph to delete part of present-day Doctrine and Covenants 20:37, Joseph immediately wrote to him, asking, “By what authority he took upon him to command me to alter or erase, to add or diminish to or from a revelation or commandment from Almighty God.” Moreover, when Hiram Page, in the manner of Joseph, started receiving revelations through a seer stone, God (speaking through Joseph) said to the church that “no one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church, excepting my servant Joseph Smith, Jr., for he receiveth them even as Moses” (28:2-3) or, we might add, as Mohammed, for the word of God delivered to the church consisted of the very words of God.[12]

This hankering for infallibility can be seen in the tendency of many Mormons to view the Bible as a text which in its original state was undefiled and verbally inspired, a curious view considering the fact that from the beginning prominent Mormons, Joseph Smith among the first, acknowledged the deficiencies of the biblical text. It is doubtful, for example, if the most critical of eighteenth-century philosophes or nineteenth century positivists identified the inadequacies of the biblical text more vigorously than Orson Pratt.[13] Pratt’s intent, however, was not to encourage the appropriate use of textual criticism, but to establish the need for a new revelation and a living oracle to transmit God’s current will and instructions to humanity. Moreover, a substantial current of Mormonism has shown great persistence in avoiding any modification of the King James translation of the Bible, as Philip Barlow has meticulously documented, with some Mormon scholars adopting attitudes even more conservative than those of evangelical Christians.[14]

This absolutist current of Mormonism received what is possibly its most extreme expression in a 1980 BYU devotional speech by then apostle Ezra Taft Benson. Among the “fourteen fundamentals in following the prophets” in Elder Benson’s speech[15] were that the prophet (the president of the church) speaks for the Lord in every aspect of life, spiritual and temporal, including civic matters, politics, and economics, and is the only one who does so. The living prophet takes precedence over all previous prophets, as well as over the standard works. The prophet will never lead the church astray and is not limited by human reasoning. 

It is difficult to imagine a more comprehensive or categorical position of absolute, mediated, propositional revelation. It moves far beyond the infallibility claimed by Roman Catholics for the Pope (who limit the pa pal privilege to ex cathedra statements on faith and morals) to the universality and perfection claimed by Islam for the Koran. It centers the word of God in one man, who is by this definition beyond the reach or limitations of historical precedent, rational evaluation, or any kind of objection, and this in the midst of changing conditions of economics and politics. It is nonetheless true that revelation mediated by a central authority has been part of the Mormon dynamics and has been a necessary leg of the tripod that has sustained the Mormon community of faith. 

It is not, however, the only leg. A no less integral part of Mormon dynamics as we look into the twenty-first century is that any revelation from the hierarchy must be ratified by (1) the personal spiritual experience of each individual and by (2) the exercise of individual reason. 

Even at the beginning the mode of inerrancy (God speaking definitively in sentences in the first person) could not consistently be maintained for long. Even as the early church developed and encountered new situations, the “very words of God” given previously did not suffice, with the result that when Joseph prepared the Doctrine and Covenants for publication in 1835, he introduced numerous changes into revelations previously prepared for the Book of Commandments in 1833. What is now Doctrine and Covenants 20, for example, contained 102 changes, and current Doctrine and Covenants 42 contained 138. The majority of changes were grammatical and stylistic, but some were doctrinal and institutional.[16] To be absolute, the word of God had to be immutable, and these words turned out to be mutable. 

The same may be said of the Book of Mormon, whose origins make it look like a miracle book very much in the same mode as the Koran. The book itself claims to have been brought forth “by the gift and power of God,” the translation of ancient records written in an unknown language and rendered into English, not by a translator who knows both languages, but by a seer who by the “gift and power of God” sees “into hid den things” and goes back to the original source, that is, to God, for a new revelation. This sounds like a dictated book[17]; but in spite of its un usual origins, the Book of Mormon itself does not claim to be inerrant. It allows on its title page that there may be mistakes in it: “if there be faults, they are the mistakes of men.” In fact, the text of the book has undergone many changes in style, grammar, and content, starting with Joseph’s own revision in 1837.[18]

Finally, the absolutist notion of the word of God, the pursuit of absolute certainty and total control, appears to reach for a handful bigger than the hand. For example, previous to 1978 Elder Bruce R. McConkie had denied in the most absolute terms that blacks could ever receive the priesthood in this life because the restriction upon them was built into the cosmos.[19] Yet after the 1978 pronouncement he said, “Forget every thing that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world.”[20] What these words say to me is that what was previously set forth as un improvably true was in reality based on limited understanding. It is wise to change one’s views in the light of new knowledge, but unwise to set down any present understanding as final and unimprovable, lest the absolutistic stance turn out to be self-destructive and everything else set forth by the same way of authority become vulnerable. Grasping after certainty and finality ends up by undermining the possibility of certainty and finality. 

How could it be otherwise? The preface to the Doctrine and Covenants states that these words, which God has spoken, are given “to my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language” (1:24). Since human language reflects and is limited by both personality and culture, it precludes looking on any statement as immutable or absolute. According to this scripture, if God himself were to address a general conference, he would have to do it in a language rooted in and bounded by a culture, and what he said (if it were to be at all understandable to the congregation) would still require rational interpretation. The truth of God’s word can rise no higher than the minds that perceive it. 

Looking Back: The Way of the Individual

If the word of God is mediated to the church through its hierarchy, it is also in an even more basic sense unmediated, coming directly to each individual who must satisfy him- or herself about the authenticity of the intermediary.[21] When we ask if the authority of the president of the church is self-evident to everyone, the answer has to be “No.” Therefore, missionaries urge people to ask God directly while promising them that the Holy Ghost will make the answer known to them. Then a further question arises: Does the answer come to them in the form of a voice speaking in sentences? If so, how do they know that it is the true voice of God? Or if the answer comes in a strong feeling of persuasion, they need to decide on what basis they give greater credence to their own experiences than to other people who have also prayed and have also been fully persuaded by spiritual experiences of contrary conclusions. In any case, it is always the individual who decides the question of the meaning and authenticity of the answer. In the words of Montaigne, “Be he seated atop the highest throne in the world, still must each one sit on his own behind.” 

One of the most profound ideas of Mormonism, one most central to its genius, comes from Doctrine and Covenants 88:1-15, which declares that the light by which God created the universe, the sun, the moon and the earth, is the same light which is found in every person. It is through this light that we are connected to God. Because of this light there is a part of every person that is God. 

In 1831, when the excesses of revivalistic religion threatened to fragment the newly formed Church of Christ into just another frontier sect[22] beyond rational check or balance,[23] another revelation came to Joseph giving the key for discerning which revelations came from God and which did not. It begins with an appeal to reason: “And now come, saith the Lord, by the Spirit, unto the elders of his church, and let us reason together, so that ye may understand” (D&C 50:10). Revelation from God is both rational and self-verifying: “he that preacheth and he that receiveth, understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together. And that which doth not edify is not of God, and is darkness. That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day” (vv. 22-24). 

The same test is proposed by the Book of Mormon. The word is a seed. The test of its goodness is whether it sprouts and grows, i.e., whether it enlightens the understanding, expands the mind, enlarges the soul, and brings forth increase in the living of one’s life (Alma 32:28-41). This concept of the word of God will not serve as the basis for authority to be exercised over others; but for the individual who experiences it, its authority is bedrock. 

The test of revelation is thus understanding and intelligibility, the coherence of “hidden things made known” with a growing body of understanding, coupled with a pragmatic confirmation of their goodness in one’s life. Revelation depends on the understanding and experience and thus the reason of the recipient for its completion. According to this view, it is therefore incorrect to say that “when the Brethren speak, the thinking has all been done.” Rather, the word of God is not alive in the world until it has entered into the mind of an individual and the thinking has started. 

The same approach that was set forth as a check on the revels of the Spirit also became the check on the excesses of authority and hierarchy. In 1839, after the disaster of the Missouri attempt, Joseph in Liberty Jail set forth a revelation (not a propositional revelation, by the way, with God speaking in the first person, but an experiential revelation showing him the meaning of recent events): “We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise un righteous dominion,” that is, they will try to put their authority to the service of covering their sins, or gratifying their pride and ambition, or exercising control and compulsion over others. They do not realize that their authority, their priesthood, does not, cannot, work that way. It can be exercised only by persuasion, which by its nature appeals to the mind and understanding. The only lasting “dominion” is established without recourse to compulsion (D&C 121:34-46). The authority of the priesthood thus looks like Alma’s description of the progress of the seed. It grows slowly, and the soil must be nourished and cultivated. The effect of the word of God in Mormonism, in its ideal form, is a reconciliation of the need for hierarchy and organization with the need for individual liberty and initiative. 

This view is supported by the declaration in the Book of Mormon that “the Lord doth grant unto all nations, of their own nation and tongue, to teach his word, yea, all that in his wisdom he seeth fit that they should have” (Alma 29:8). Here we learn that the word of God is to be found universally, but it is spoken of as relative to people and place. Does this refer to the Koran, the Bagavad-Gita, the teachings of the Buddha? Did God grant to any during the seventy years of the late Soviet Union that they should perceive his word in any way and speak it? Could we imagine Mormons studying the sacred books of other religions to see what words God has caused to be taught among them? Yes, if we still have in us the leaven of the 13th Article of Faith, if we actively seek after whatever is good and true from whatever source, accepting the idea that the word of God consists of the words which lead to God, and that God strives among all nations. 

This notion suits well the ideas of human freedom prevalent in Mor monism and encourages individual initiative: “It is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant… men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will… for the power is in them wherein they are agents unto themselves” (DC 58:26-28). When people are anxious to know what God wants them to do, it may be that God is just as interested in seeing what they want to do. I think of Lowell Bennion’s ranch for adolescents in difficulty and his efforts on behalf of elderly people in their needs. I think of Eugene England organizing a Food for Poland campaign at that time of extreme need in the early 1980s. These and similar efforts show a faith that did not wait until instructions came down through channels, the kind of faith which like a seed grows toward God. 

In summary, I believe that a statement faithful to the whole range of Mormonism on the threshold of the twenty-first century would say that revelation in the view of many Mormons is prepositional and absolute— God speaking in sentences tells the president of the church what to do. On the other hand, the course of history and many founding statements show revelation instead to be experiential and partial, consisting of the description which individuals give of their experiences with God and the conclusions they draw from them. The word of God, either to individuals or the church, is never absolute or definitive, since the doctrine of continued revelation guarantees that even apostles and presidents of the church, speaking in their most categorical terms, might, in Elder McConkie’s phrase, be “speaking from limited understanding,” which will cause their statements to be modified in the future. Thus despite the belief in mediated revelation, coming through the president of the church or other general authorities, the burden of ratification is ultimately cast on individuals, who make the decisions themselves, whether by seeking after the unmediated revelation coming directly through the Holy Ghost, or through the exercise of rational and critical faculties, or sometimes simply a leap to an authority-based faith. The Mormon venture advances to the degree that a climate of persuasion enables institutional authority and individual growth to move in harmony. Since such harmony is the highest achievement of any human society, we should not expect it to come easily or quickly. 

Looking Ahead

If the foregoing analysis approximately describes the situation of Mormonism at the end of the twentieth century, we can expect a number of issues concerning the word of God to persist into the next century. The first may be the problem of distinguishing the word of God from the status quo.[24]

The Word of God vs. the Status Quo 

Given the popular belief in apostolic infallibility, many people reason that the Brethren are instructed constantly by the Lord and therefore easily conclude that everything in current belief and practice in the church is upheld by, and is in conformity with, the will of God. If God wants any thing changed, he will say so, and the message will come from the top down. Yet many people are uncomfortable in maintaining beliefs that seem to hang in the air waiting for God to speak further. Therefore, in or der to defend the current position, they invent reasons for it, and these reasons metastasize into doctrines, which become part of the status quo and which in turn come to be accepted in all docility as the word of God. An example is in the question of the blacks and the priesthood. There was no founding revelation for such a practice: the only person in all of the scriptures to be “cursed as to the Priesthood,” i.e. the Pharaoh pictured in facsimile three of the Pearl of Great Price, was white, and Joseph Smith himself ordained Elijah Abel, a black man, to the priesthood and sent him on missions. Nonetheless, a prevalent cultural belief at that time, the status quo, was that blacks were inferior, still laboring under the curse of Cain or Caanan, and Brigham Young accepted it in the nineteenth century.[25] Joseph Fielding Smith and his son-in-law Bruce R. McConkie both echoed it in the twentieth century.[26] B. H. Roberts also endorsed it and even elaborated on another reason given for withholding the priesthood from blacks: they were less valiant in the pre-existence.[27] In 1978 all of these statements which had been proclaimed and accepted as the word of God were unhinged. Brigham Young was wrong. Joseph Fielding Smith was wrong. Bruce R. McConkie was wrong. B. H. Roberts was wrong. Either that or Spencer W. Kimball was wrong in now extending priesthood to all worthy black men. What had been accepted as the word of God turned out to be the status quo. Venerating the status quo as the word of God is not easily distinguishable from idolatry, always a vexatious problem, but one we will continue to encounter in the future. 

Textual Criticism 

The mode of infallible and absolute revelation will continue to conflict with the increasing activity of some Mormon scholars in textual criticism. By its nature, textual criticism leads to the idea of partial and relative revelation, if not to the denial of the authority of a given text. Problems arising from textual criticism have recently been manifested in two areas: (1) attitudes of some Mormon leaders toward the Bible, and (2) attitudes of some scholars toward the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham. 

In 1925 the battle of fundamentalist Christianity against the rising forces of modernity[28] was joined in a courtroom in Tennessee, where high school teacher John Scopes was brought to trial for teaching ideas of Darwinian evolution. William Jennings Bryan, assisting the prosecution, staked the entire case for Christianity against its arch foe on the existence of an inerrant Bible which needed no interpretation: “Bryan was determined to defend as literally true every word of the Bible. In the deepest sense, he had to defend it; he needed reassurance and certainty, and since childhood, he had learned to rely on the Bible as the source of reassurance and certainty.”[29] While the prosecution technically won and Scopes was fined $100 for teaching evolution, the cause of fundamentalist Christianity ultimately lost in the minds of the general public.[30]

In 1994 the dynamics of the Scopes case were replayed in Mormon ism, when a Mormon stake president in Nashua, New Hampshire, ex communicated David P. Wright, an assistant professor of biblical studies at Brandeis University, for “apostasy.” The “apostasy” did not consist of any moral lapse, but rather of Wright’s insistence on the right to publish the findings of his research in his field of study. One of the incriminating points urged against Wright by the stake president was that Wright did not believe in a literal flood of Noah; we have to believe in a literal flood, said the stake president, or else we make God a liar.[31] To the extent that leaders continue to refight in the twenty-first century the battles that were fought and lost elsewhere in the twentieth century,[32] textual criticism of the Bible will continue to be a source of tension. 

Textual criticism of uniquely Mormon scriptures, specifically the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham, becomes an even thornier matter: Are these two texts translations of ancient documents, or are they nineteenth-century documents? Textual criticism will continue to nudge inquiring people closer to one of the following decisions: (1) these texts are ancient, authentic, and inspired, or (2) they are nineteenth-century, spurious, and not inspired, or (3) they are nineteenth-century and in spired. 

What does it imply for faith to believe that the Book of Mormon is a nineteenth-century document? For those who have relied on the Book of Mormon as an icon, a warrant for the rest of the Mormon venture, the shift is immense, as it is for those who have held that Joseph Smith was either a prophet (i.e., an authentic messenger) or a fraud. Of course, it is possible that Joseph was neither infallible nor fraudulent, and that the origins of the Book of Mormon still differ from traditional understandings. In any case the documents that came forth through Joseph depend on their religious content for their value, and their precepts are verified by their effects in personal experience, which indeed the Book of Mormon proposes as the test of its truth (discussed above in connection with Alma 32). 

To illustrate, Cervantes was a historical personage, and Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are literary personages who may have been modeled on one or several historical personages, or on none at all. The value of the work of Cervantes does not depend on the literal historical accuracy of his accounts but on their power to inform the human condition. In the critical assessment of Mormon texts there are those who conclude that Nephi is a personage like Don Quixote, while on the other hand there are those who hold that Nephi was a personage like Cervantes. I do not expect the question to be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction anytime soon. 

Secularization and the Acids of Modernity

How might the Mormon mode of the word of God fare in a secularized society? “Secular” refers to “life lived out within the confines of this world.” The challenge of secularization derives specifically from the en counter with science and technology, which operate from the supposition of a mechanistic universe, a cause-and-effect universe which moves according to law and not according to an intervening God in control of everything. Science moreover is corrosive of ethical standards, since it is concerned with describing what is and cannot bridge the gap between is and ought. 

Returning to our comparison with Islam, we are reminded that Islam from its inception has existed in the world as a totality, encompassing politics, economics, and morals, the whole based on the total and final authority of the Koran. It would be unthinkable for a Muslim to admit a split between politics and religion. Has not the degeneracy of the West, especially in its sexual laxness and promiscuity, demonstrated what hap pens when morals are not dictated by the divine law? Have not science and technology, which carry with them their own inherent authority, priorities, and imperatives, ended up by relativizing and undermining all traditional moral codes? 

How can Islam face this crisis? Is it possible to accept science and maintain revealed values? Can Islam just say “no” to science and technology? Such was the stance of some of the revolutionaries in Iran just after the revolution in 1979. One example shows how. A physics professor, about to begin a lecture on quantum physics, held up a pair of dice to demonstrate the concept of randomness and statistical probability. A revolutionary in the classroom took charge of the class and forbade the professor to go further; since everything that happens in the world happens by the direct will of God, he declared, any attempt to show randomness goes directly counter to the revealed word in the Koran.[33] Yet science, technology, and industrialization are forces that will not be turned back. Islamic cultures are tied to political and economic forces throughout the world, and they sometimes depend on technology for their very existence, as in the recent war between Iran and Iraq. 

How has Christianity, specifically Catholic Christianity, responded to secularization? Hans Küng gives an intriguing response. Christianity, like Islam, was also once a system that embraced and controlled all public and private life. The law, the church, and the state were a unit. At the challenge of the Reformation and the greater challenge of the Enlightenment, Catholic Christianity thought that it could resist the currents of modernity and restore the medieval paradigm. In 1870 the First Vatican Council devoted itself to condemning all modern errors and to establishing the infallibility of the Pope. Less than a hundred years later, in 1963- 65, Vatican II was obliged to accept what Vatican I had condemned: the vernacular in the liturgy, active participation of the laity, modern science (including the Copernican and Darwinian views), modern history and biblical scholarship, popular sovereignty, freedom of conscience and religion, and the abolition of the church censor and the Index.[34]

How has Mormonism responded to modernity and secularization? One of the significant features of early Mormonism was its confidence in its ability to include the whole world in its embrace. As the elders of the church were enjoined to teach each other the doctrine of the kingdom, their curriculum potentially included “all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand … things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, and things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and perplexities of nations, and the judgments which are upon the land; and a knowledge also of countries and kingdoms” (D&C 88:77-80). There was no distinction between “spiritual” and “temporal” (29:34,35). 

In the nineteenth century the metaphor for Mormonism was Daniel’s stone cut out of the mountain without hands to roll forth and break all other kingdoms into pieces and itself fill the whole earth. This figure lost much of its potency at the end of the century when Mormonism lost not only its economic, political, judicial, and marriage systems, but large parts of its theology. The effort to subsume the whole earth was replaced by the encounter with the world, that is, with all of the forces of secular culture. 

This encounter coincided with a similar transition in Protestant Christianity, which separated into two streams: liberal, social gospel Christianity and fundamentalist Christianity doing battle with the forces of modernity (e.g., Darwinian evolution, textual criticism of the Bible, etc.).[35] Within Mormonism there were likewise two streams: one repre sented by B. H. Roberts, James Talmage, and John A. Widtsoe, who found it necessary to respond to the challenge of science and work out new an swers to new questions, the other represented by Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie, who simply withdrew within the confines of dogma. The second stream ultimately prevailed, with the result that Mor monism’s twentieth-century response to secularization has been like that of both Islam and Vatican I. It has embraced the technology of the mod ern world but has officially turned away from the science that undergirds that technology, as was visible in the Roberts-Talmage-Smith contest of the early 1930s.[36]

In the last half of the twentieth century the response to secularization has been the Correlation movement, an essentially defensive response to the perceived threat of secular incursion. Correlation sought to strengthen the family by strengthening the priesthood, and it sought to strengthen the priesthood by weakening women.[37] This was the time in the 1960s when Relief Societies were deprived of independent control of funds and women were not allowed to give opening prayers in sacrament meetings. 

Another perceived threat during the same period was to the missionary system. The temporary defection of about a third of French missionaries in 1957-58, and the definitive defection of nine of them, was traumatic for some general authorities, and it was from that time forward that the entire missionary system was taken under tighter control. One perceived cause of the French apostasy was too much reading. Hence forth, lists of approved reading materials were drawn up and then shortened. Whereas previous generations of missionaries had been encouraged to reason from the scriptures and to learn how to talk with as many different kinds of people as possible, now they were told to testify, and, if people did not believe them, to move on. This approach produced a different kind of mission experience. 

Correlation took a similar approach to materials for all the classes in the church. In order to forestall divisions and doubts, the questions to be raised were specified, whether or not they were questions faced by people living in a secularized society. In many cases, Correlation has thus turned out a long list of answers to a set of non-questions. 

A Mormon in dialogue with a Muslim- or a Hans Küng-type of Christian, however, would have to rethink a paradox in Mormonism in responding to secularization. On the one hand, Mormonism has always had the element of “coming out of Babylon,” or as Marvin Hill has put it, a “quest for refuge.” On the other hand, it has been decidedly this-worldly and not other-worldly. The temporal and the spiritual are not separated. Beginning with the view of the human being, a person needs a body to have a soul, since “the body and the spirit are the soul of man” (D&C 88:15). Those who went on an iron mission to Iron County or on a cotton mission to Dixie were deemed just as essential to the building of the king dom as were those who went on proselytizing missions. 

Instead of trying to turn back history, both Christianity and Islam, said Küng, would be better advised to observe that contrary to the prophecies of the secular prophets, such as Feuerbach, Freud, Marx, and Nietzche, secularization has not meant the end of religion. Worldliness has not been identical to godlessness. Why? Because “man’s eternal questions about the meaning of life, suffering, and death, about the highest values and ultimate norms for the individual and society, are not simply still with us—they have grown more urgent in the face of political catastrophes and disenchantment with blind faith in progress.”[38] In other words, religion is not a garment that can be put on or cast off but is part of the human condition itself. To what extent will Mormonism in the twenty-first century realize that the only way to oppose secularism is to attend to what people who live in a secular world are seeking for their spiritual lives? This thought brings us to look at another dimension of the twentieth century. 

For hundreds of millions in the twentieth century the faceless, imper sonal state or mass movement has been the new name of God. Why? No one has expressed the psychology of this phenomenon more accurately than Dostoyevsky in his nineteenth-century portrait of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov. In this parable Christ returns to earth at the height of the Inquisition in Spain. The people recognize him and hail him, but at a sign from the Grand Inquisitor, they shrink back, and the Inquisitor has Christ arrested and put into a dungeon, where he comes at night to visit Christ and upbraid him. Christ came bearing the gift of freedom, says the Inquisitor, but it was a terrible gift for most of humanity. “If for the sake of the bread of Heaven thousands and tens of thousands shall follow Thee, what is to become of the millions and tens of thousands of millions of creatures who have not the strength to forego the earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly?” So long as man remains free, he seeks for nothing so much as an authority at whose feet he can lay his freedom. Humankind are born rebels, but they are impotent rebels, un able to keep up their own rebellion. Therefore, says the Inquisitor, “we have corrected Thy work and have founded it upon miracle, mystery, and authority. And men rejoiced that they were again led like sheep, and that the terrible gift that had brought them such suffering, was, at last, lifted from their hearts.”[39]

This parable is one of the most prophetic passages of the nineteenth century in that it so closely describes what came to be the actual situation of hundreds of millions in the twentieth century.[40] It raises serious questions about the nature of faith, its sources and effects, and points to the most subtle and terrible temptation of our modern world: to absolve ourselves of choice by giving our consciences, our moral power of attorney, to the keeping of another, who in turn pledges us comfort and safety in the flock, or, as in the parable, in “a great, teeming anthill.” 

The temptation comes in the form of an authority-based faith, much like that in Islam, founded on the inerrancy of the written text, or in Catholicism on the ultimate inerrancy of the Pope, or in the secular religions on the infallibility of the Party’s reading of history. In one mode of Mormonism it derives from the commission of the living oracle to speak in the name of God, where this belief assumes a gift of infallibility vouchsafed to the hierarchy, as the phrase comes easily to the lips, “God will not allow the Prophet to lead the Church astray.” The principal concern of the believer is to maintain his or her testimony of that authority. The authority, not care of the soul, has become the object of the faith. 

In contrast to this is faith that is authenticated to the individual, not by an authority out there, but by the effect in here. When we go to the scriptures to find the word as seed, we are never uncertain, never in doubt; the ground always knows when the seed is good. We also know immediately when the light grows brighter. When we go to an external authority, we are never entirely sure. However fervent our declarations, our testimony of something always needs to be shored up by a faith promoting report. It is the difference between two modes of faith, the first saying, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the authority of God to salvation”; the second saying, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation.” The first is a covenant and manifests itself in striving after perfection. The second is a faith of religious intuition, ratified by the mind and marked more by growth and un folding of the possibilities within than by perfection and conformity to an objective standard. 

I nonetheless expect that an authority-based faith will persist and thrive in the twenty-first century, for it is the source of stability when all else trembles, and it has much appeal when the burden of personal freedom and choice becomes onerous or overwhelming. It is one of the places where many people will choose to seek and find one form of the word of God. It is a matter of choice, but it is not the only choice that emerges from the Mormon tradition. At the headwaters of Mormonism, and in distinction to the collectivist mentality so prevalent in the twentieth century, was the Puritan dynamics, standing on the bedrock of human existence: the soul alone on its journey and aware of its peril, in this case before an all-powerful and inscrutable God, who had chosen some for salvation and left the rest to torment. “Here is a matter of terror,” we might hear in a Puritan sermon, “in that few shall be saved.”[41] In the 1832 account of his first vision and his early experiences, Joseph Smith indicates that the beginnings of the marvelous things that happened to him were “the all important concerns for the welfare of my immortal soul” which led him to reflect on “the state of religion and of the world.” Be tween the ages of twelve and fifteen, he states, “my mind became exceedingly distressed for I became convicted of my sins.” The message of the first vision was: “Joseph /my son/ thy sins are forgiven thee. Go Thy way, walk in my statutes and keep my commandments.”[42]

In this original context of Mormonism we see exemplified the primal context of the word of God, the soul alone and in peril on its journey. It is not a faith that can be pursued in comfort and safety, but it is a choice that must be confronted. What is happening at the end of the twentieth century is a re-awakening to the spiritual context of human life. Carl Jung is one eminent example of this way of thinking: the journey inward as the way of individuation and human fulfillment is the last great adventure open to humankind.[43] Another perspective on this thought comes from a post-Vatican II Catholic, Garry Wills, who says: 

The best things in the church, as in a nation, or in individuals, are hidden and partially disowned, the vital impulse buried under all of our cowardly mis- uses of it—as the life of a nation lies under and is oppressed by its crude governing machinery; as the self lies far below the various roles imposed on or adopted by it; as covenant and gospel run, subterranean, beneath temple and cathedral. Life’s streams lie far down, for us, below the surface of our lives—where we must look for them. It is time to join the underground.[44]

The original aspect of Mormonism, the soul on its journey, persists today in those for whom the nurture of the soul is the first consideration. The word of God endureth forever, but the languages, cultures, and world views which express it do not. Moreover, they render any meaning or content that people attribute to it partial and incomplete. What we call the word of God can be no more than our best idea of God and his intentions at any given time, and it is therefore astringently helpful at times to think upon the late Episcopal bishop James Pike and his rendering of the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me, not even the best idea you have of me.” Seeking for the word of God has been a constant in human affairs, and since all meaning is constructed, the words which we attribute to God and then finalize become gods in our own minds. Perpetually seeking for the word of God is and will be seeking after the God beyond our gods. 

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[1] A recent example is New Approaches to the Book of Mormon, ed. Brent Metcalfe (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1993). A spirited rebuttal is in Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 6 (1994), published in Provo, Utah, by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies. Also indicative of serious efforts in textual criticism is The Word of God: Essays on Mor mon Scripture, ed. Dan Vogel (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1990).

[2] The proceedings of the seminars were subsequently translated into English and pub lished as Hans Küng, Josef van Ess, Heinrich von Stietencron, and Hans Bechert, Christianity and the World Religions: Paths to Dialogue with Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co. 1986). 

[3] Ibid., 440.

[4] Ibid., xix. 

[5] Ibid., 166-78,291-305. 

[6] The position of Islam was described in careful detail in ibid., 5-18, 37-49, 70-82, 97- 108. 

[7] As this is being written, reports tell of the strains and tensions of sixteen years of theocratic rule in Iran. After the revolution a parliament was in fact established which passed laws, but these were subject to approval of the grand ayatollah who interprets Islamic law and applies it to daily life, in this case, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Since Khomeini’s death six years ago, no one has attained his personal authority and stature, and the contest is now be tween those who want an Islamization of the state and those who want a modernization of Islam. See “Iranians Open Debate on Khomeini’s Legacy,” Christian Science Monitor, 5 Apr. 1995,1,7.

[8] Joyce Appleby et al., Telling the Truth about History (New York: Norton, 1994), 34, citing The Washington Post, 1 Oct. 1992, A18-19.

[9] Philip L. Barlow, The Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in Ameri can Religion, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 72, quoting Ernest Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 111. 

[10] Küng,32.

[11] See the primacy given to this point in Marvin Hill, Quest for Refuge: The Mormon Flight from Pluralism (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 166 and passim.

[12] This point is developed in detail by Richard Howard in “Latter Day Saint Scriptures and the Doctrine of Propositional Revelation,” 3-7, in Vogel, The Word of God: Essays in Mormon Scriptures.

[13] Orson Pratt, “Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon,” 168-98, in Orson Pratt’s Works (Salt Lake City, 1965; first published in Liverpool 1850). 

[14] Barlow, 174-78. 

[15] Ezra Taft Benson, “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophets,” in Following the Brethren: Speeches by Mormon Apostles Ezra Taft Benson and Bruce R. McConkie (Salt Lake City: Modern Microfilm, 1980), pt. 1.

[16] Howard, 14-16. 

[17] A number of those closely associated with the circumstances of its production believed it was a dictated book. David Whitmer, one of the three witnesses, declared that when Joseph Smith looked into the stone or stones he was using to translate the Book of Mormon, he would see a character from the plates and underneath it the meaning in English. The scribe would then write down what was dictated and read it back. If the scribe’s sentence was correct, the word or sentence in the stone would disappear and a new one would take its place. David Whitmer, An Address to all Believers in Christ (Richmond, MO, 1887), 8. 

[18] Changes in Mormon revelations are discussed and documented by Lamar Petersen, Problems in Mormon Text (Salt Lake City, 1957). See esp. 12-16. 

[19] Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 1st ed. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1958), 476- 77.

[20] Bruce R. McConkie, “All Are Alike unto God,” in Following the Brethren. 

[21] This question is not new in Christianity. When it was exhaustively debated in the Protestant-Catholic controversies of the seventeenth century, the question turned around the Catholic claim to infallibility for the church. Protestants were schismatic heretics, said Catholic apologists, because Christ promised infallibility to the church, and thus the interpretations of the revelation of the scriptures set forth by the church were binding on all Christians. Protestants retorted that the passages cited by Catholics to prove infallibility were ambiguous and susceptible of differing but equally plausible interpretations. The authority of the church to interpret scripture could not be invoked until that authority were clearly established. Now if individuals reading the scriptures could resolve these questions, which were among the most difficult, they could as easily resolve all the others, and the Protestant principle of individual examination was established. The Great Contest of Faith and Reason: Selections from the Writings of Pierre Bayle, ed. and trans. Karl Sandberg (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1963), 23-27,35-36.

[22] Parley P. Pratt, Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, 4th ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1950), 61. 

[23] See Whitney Cross, The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1950), 202, 203, for this assessment of frontier religion.

[24] This formulation is borrowed from Ed Firmage.

[25] Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1855; reprint ed., 1964), 2:172,184. Examples of the currency of the idea of the supposed inferiority of Negroes can be found among the most progressive, even in Abraham Lincoln himself. See David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (London: Jonathan Cape, 1995), 202. 

[26] McConkie, Mormon Doctrine (1958), 102. 

[27] B. H. Roberts, The Truth, The Way, The Life: An Elementary Treatise on Theology: The Masterwork of B.H. Roberts, ed. Stan Larson (San Francisco: Smith Research Associates, 1994), 420-21.

[28] An extensive description of this contest is found in William G. McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607-1977 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 141-78. 

[29] Ray Ginger, Six Days or Forever? Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), 41. 

[30] Ibid., 191. 

[31] “The Wright Excommunication Documents,” Sunstone 17 (Sept. 1994): 71. This was despite the explicit repudiation by Elder John A. Widtsoe of a literal interpretation of the flood story, quoted in Daniel Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1994), 1:432. 

[32] I say “lost” in the sense of “lost in the public discussion of ideas” where evidence is the yardstick. The battles were not lost in the minds of those who made a leap of faith to a pre-determined view of the Bible, nor of course were the battles “won” by those who merely made a similar leap to an opposite view.

[33] Heinz Pagels, The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature (New York: Bantam, 1982), 80. 

[34] Küng, 52.

[35] McLoughlin, 139-78. 

[36] Richard Sherlock and Jeffrey E. Keller, “The B.H. Roberts/Joseph Fielding Smith/ James E. Talmage Affair,” in Gene Sessions and Craig Oberg, eds., The Search for Harmony: Es says on Science and Mormonism (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1993), 93-116. 

[37] The dynamics of pushing men to exercise leadership by subordinating women is il lustrated by a 1973 BYU devotional address of Elder A. Theodore Tuttle, where this aspect of Correlation is explained, “A New Emphasis on Priesthood,” Speeches of the Year: BYU Devotional and Ten-Stake Fireside Addresses, 1973 (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press), 41- 51.

[38] Kung,55.

[39] Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Grand Inquisitor, ed. Anne Freemantle (New York: Fredrick Ungar, 1956), 8,9,12,13. 

[40] Two works describing the details of this “fulfilled prophecy” are Erich Fromm, Es cape from Freedom (New York: Avon, 1941), and Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (New York: Harper and Row, 1951).

[41] David Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1989), 140- 41.

[42] Scott H. Faulring, ed., An American Prophet’s Record: The Diaries and journals of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books in association with Smith Research Associates, 1989), 4,5. 

[43] M. L. von Franz, “The Process of Individuation,” in Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1964), 228. 

[44] Garry Wills, Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy, and Radical Religion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1971), 272.