Unfortunately, we sometimes don’t seek revelation or answers…because we think we know the answers already. Brothers and sisters, as good as our previous experience may be, if we stop asking questions, stop thinking, stop pondering, we can thwart the revelations of the Spirit.

Remember, it was the questions young Joseph asked that opened the door for the restoration of all things. We can block the growth and knowledge our Heavenly Father intends for us. How often has the Holy Spirit tried to tell us something we needed to know but couldn’t get past the massive iron gate of what we thought we already knew?

Not only is this statement true, I believe this sentiment is like a refreshing oasis of sensibility and activism in the midst of the desert that is the lack of commentary on independent inspiration and thinking. In fact, we have sometimes heard council from the pulpit that might actually discourage someone from seeking further personal guidance on a matter, if the question has already been answered. Not that I think Elder Scott was necessarily encouraging people to cease seeking their own answers, but I think there is a prevailing tendency in the Church for members to be overly complacent with what they already “know”.

The whole Restoration that began with Joseph Smith would’ve never happened had he been content with what he already “knew”. The ban that prohibited blacks from receiving the Priesthood or entering the temple would’ve never been reversed in 1978 had all church leaders been satisfied with what some of them felt were unequivocally clear answers.

The “all is well in Zion” mentality that seemed to develop sometime in the 1970s has created an atmosphere that can be hostile to questioning types. I won’t name names, because my intent here is not to attack these individuals, but there has been council from the highest levels of leadership to refrain from asking certain questions (or to only ask the “correct” questions). This in turn has had a detrimental effect on independent Mormon thought. It is one of the reasons that outsiders sometimes view us as “cultish”. Also problematic are the generations of Latter-day Saints that seem to believe we have all the answers and that doctrines or teachings never change, or that our understanding of God or of the world never evolves or progresses.

Thank God, then, for men like Dieter Uchtdorf, who remind us that our whole faith tradition is based on questioning, and that the scriptures and history are replete with examples of people who only got answers and growth because they refused to be content with what was already known. Let me throw in another similar statement that President Uchtdorf made in November 2009:

My dear young friends, we are a question-asking people because we know that inquiry leads to truth. That is the way the Church got its start—from a young man who had questions. In fact, I’m not sure how one can discover truth without asking questions. In the scriptures you will rarely discover a revelation that didn’t come in response to a question. Whenever a question arose and Joseph Smith wasn’t sure of the answer, he approached the Lord, and the results are the wonderful revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants. Often the knowledge Joseph received extended far beyond the original question. That is because not only can the Lord answer the questions we ask but, even more importantly, He can give us answers to questions we should have asked. Let us listen to those answers.

The missionary effort of the Church is founded upon honest investigators asking heartfelt questions. Inquiry is the birthplace of testimony. Some might feel embarrassed or unworthy because they have searching questions regarding the gospel, but they needn’t feel that way. Asking questions isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a precursor of growth.

Really? Given that I’m on a 15-year loan currently (I suppose the companies sending out their propaganda mailers don’t have this information), why in the world would I want to move onto a 30-year term? I imagine that there are reasons that this appeals to other people, but it’s a complete waste of my time to even consider it. To the recycle bin these mailers quickly go. Emily and I are hoping to pay off the home as soon as possible, not as late as possible.

Sometimes they list their options for a new 15-year loan. Now we’re closer to what might interest me. However, it still never interested me.

Why? Because I’m primarily interested in paying off my house as soon as possible, whereas the target customer of these ads would seem to be someone looking to postpone paying off their house for as long as possible. Again, I am aware that most people are probably in that boat and that my household is the exception.

Last month, however, I finally got a piece of refi junk mail that caught my attention. “What did this magical mailer say?”,  inquiring minds want to know. Well, it displayed several refinancing options, all of which were based on a 15-year base term and different payment options. Now, this mailer came from CitiMortgage, my current mortgage holder, so they already knew I was on a 15-year term.

Option one was to reset the 15-year term at a lower APR. Still not interested. This still postpones the payoff date.

Option two was to save $74 a month and keep the same overall payoff date. Hmm, now we’re talking. That piqued my curiosity.

Option three was to keep the same monthly payment, but pay off the house 11 months earlier. Wow! That’s something I can get on board with. Now I’m actually interested enough to get a hold of my mortgage guy and see what he can do.

Not that I’m old enough to have worked with a variety of mortgage guys, but the one I have right now is Marty Qualls, and he’s pretty astute at understanding my needs and determining whether certain refinancing options are helpful for meeting those needs. He laughs when he tells me that 9 out of 10 of the people he helps are lured by the very same loan options that repelled me, but that the oddball types seem to be more interested in paying their homes off early.

So, as it turns out, I’m refinancing my home to a lower APR, keeping the same monthly payment, and paying off the home about 10 months earlier. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Emily and I will hopefully finish off the mortgage around the time our oldest kid is approaching junior high age, which will open up our options to consider future decisions to meet the needs of our family.

Perhaps companies that dump millions of dollars into mailers should better consider whether they’re neglecting a certain percentage of potential customers that are interested in early payoffs.

The following is taken verbatim from Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman. Dr. Ehrman is a renowned New Testament scholar who has written multiple New York Times bestselling books on the topic. His perspective is loathed by Biblical literalists and conservative Christians, but is highly regarded by those willing to concede that the Bible texts have been redacted, manipulated, and changed over time. In this particular segment, Ehrman is discussing how the social context (in this case, the role of women in early Christian cultures) influenced the scribes who were copying the New Testament manuscripts.

Debates over the role of women in the church did not play an enormous role in the transmission of the text of the New Testament, but they did play a role in interesting and important passages. To make sense of the kinds of textual changes that were made, we need some background on the nature of these debates.¹

Women in the Early Church

Modern scholars have come to recognize that disputes over the role of women in the early church occurred precisely because women had a role—often a significant and publicly high profile role. Moreover, this was the case from the very beginning, starting with the ministry of Jesus himself. It is true that Jesus’s closest followers—the twelve disciples—were all men, as would be expected of a Jewish teacher in first century Palestine. But our earliest Gospels indicate that Jesus was also accompanied by women on his travels, and that some of these women provided for him and his disciples financially, serving as patrons for his itinerant preaching ministry (see Mark 15:40-51; Luke 8:1-3). Jesus is said to have engaged in public dialogue with women and to have ministered to them in public (Mark 7:24-30; John 4:1-42). In particular, we are told that women accompanied Jesus during his final trip to Jerusalem, where there were present at his crucifixion and where they alone remained faithful to him at the end, when the male disciples had fled (Matt. 27:55; Mark 15:40-41). Most significant of all, each of our Gospels indicates that it was women—Mary Magdalene along, or with several companions—who discovered his empty tomb and so were the first to know about and testify to Jesus’s resurrection from the dead (Matt. 28:1-10; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 23:55-24:10; John 20:1-2).

It is intriguing to ask what i twas about Jesus’s message that particularly attracted women. Most scholars remain convinced that Jesus proclaimed the coming Kingdom of God, in which there would be no more injustice, suffering, or evil, in which all people, rich and poor, slave and free, men and women, would be on equal footing. This obviously proved particularly attractive as a message of hope to those who in the present age were underprivileged—the poor, the sick, the outcast. And the women.²

In any event, it is clear that even after his death, Jesus’s message continued to be attractive to women. Some of Christianity’s early opponents among the pagans, including, for example, the late-second-century critic Celsus, whom we have met before, denigrated the religion on the grounds that it was made up largely of children, slaves, and women (i.e., those of no social standing in society at large). Strikingly, Origen, who wrote the Christian response to Celsus, did not deny the charge but tried to turn it against Celsus in attempt to show that God can take what is weak and invest it with strength.

But we do not need to wait until the late second century to see that women played a major role in the early Christian churches. We already get a clear sense of this from the earliest Christian writer whose works have survived, the apostle Paul. The Pauline letters of the New Testament provide ample evidence that women held a prominent place in the emerging Christian communities from the earliest of times. We might consider, for example, Paul’s letter to the Romans, at the end of which he sends greetings to various members of the Roman congregation (chapter 16). Although Paul names more men than women here, it is clear that women were seen as in no way inferior to their male counterparts in the church. Paul mentions Phoebe, for example, who is a deacon (or minister) in the church of Cenchreae, and Paul’s own patron whom he entrusts with the task of carrying his letter to Rome (vv. 1-2). And there is Prisca, who along with her husband, Aquila, is responsible for missionary work among the Gentiles and who supports a Christian congregation in her home (vv. 3-4: notice that she is mentioned first, ahead of her husband). Then there is Mary, a colleague of Paul’s who works among the Romans (v. 6); there are also Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis, women whom Paul calls his “co-workers” in the gospel (vv. 6, 12). And there are Julia and the mother of Rufus and the sister of Nereus, all of whom appear to have a high profile in the community (vv. 13, 15). Most impressive of all, there is Junia, a woman whom Paul calls “foremost among the apostles” (v. 7). The apostolic band was evidently larger than the list of twelve men with whom most people are familiar.

Women, in short, appear to have played a significant role in the churches of Paul’s day. To some extent, this high profile was unusual in the Greco-Roman world. And it may have been rooted, as I have argued, in Jesus’s proclamation that in the coming Kingdom there would be equality of men and women. This appears to have been Paul’s message as well, as can be seen, for example, in his famous declaration in Galatians:

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free; there is not male and female; for all you are one in Jesus Christ.

- Galatians 3:27-28

The equality in Christ may have manifested itself in the actual worship services of the Pauline communities. Rather than being silent “hearers of the word,” women appear to have been actively involved in the weekly fellowship meetings, participating, for example, by praying and prophesying, much as the men did (1 Corinthians 11).

At the same time, to modern interpreters it may appear that Paul did not take his view of the relationship of men and women in Christ to what could be thought of as its logical conclusion. He did require, for example, that when women prayed and prophesied in church they do so with their heads covered, to show that they were “under authority” (1 Cor. 11:3-16, esp. v 10). In other words, Paul did not urge a social revolution in the relationship of men and women—just as he did not urge the abolition of slavery, even though he maintained that in Christ there “is neither slave nor free.” Instead  he insisted that since “the time is short” (until the coming of the Kingdom), everyone should be content with the roles they had been given, and that no one should seek to change their status—whether slave, free, married, single, male, or female (1 Cor. 7:17-24).

At best, then, this can be seen as an ambivalent attitude toward the role of women: they were equal in Christ and were allowed to participate in the life of the community, but as women, not as men (they were, for example, not to remove their veils and so appear as men, without an “authority” on their head). This ambivalence on Paul’s part had an interesting effect on the role of women in the churches after his day. In some churches it was the equality in Christ that was emphasized; in others it was the need for women to remain subservient to men. And so in some churches women played very important leadership roles; in others, their roles were diminished and their voices quieted. Reading later documents associated with Paul’s churches, after his death, we can see that disputes arose about the roles women should play; eventually there came an effort to suppress the role of women in the churches altogether.

This becomes evident in a letter that was written in Paul’s name. Scholars today are by and large convinced that 1 Timothy was not written by Paul but by one of his later, second-generation followers.⁴ Here, in one of the (in)famous passages dealing with women in the New Testament, we are told that women must not be allowed to teach men because they were created inferior, as indicated by God himself in the Law; God created Eve second, for the sake of man; and a woman (related to Eve) must not therefore lord it over a man (related to Adam) through her teaching. Furthermore, according to this author, everyone knows what happens when a woman does assume the role of teacher: she is easily duped (by the devil) and leads the man astray. So, women are to stay at home and maintain the virtues appropriate to women, bearing children for their husbands and preserving their modesty. As the passage itself reads:

Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.

- 1 Timothy 2:11-15

This seems a long way form Paul’s view that “in Christ there is … not male and female.” As we move into the second century, the battle lines appear clearly drawn. There are some Christian communities that stress the importance of women and allow them to play significant roles in the church, and there are others that believe that women must be silent and subservient to the men of the community.

The scribes who were copying the texts that later became scripture were obviously involved in these debates. And on occasion the debates made an impact on the text being copied, as passages were changed to reflect the views of the scribes who were reproducing them. In almost every instance in which a change of this sort occurs, the text is changed in order to limit the role of women and to minimize their importance to the Christian movement. Here we can consider just a few examples.

Textual Alterations Involving Women

One of the most important passages in the contemporary discussion of the role of women in the church is found in 1 Corinthians 14. As represented in most of our modern English translations, the passage reads as follows:

³³For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints, ³⁴let the women keep silent. For it is not permitted for them to speak, but to be in subjection, just as the law says. ³⁵But if they wish to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. ³⁶What! Did the word go forth only from you, or has it reached you alone?

- 1 Corinthians 14

The passage appears to be a clear and straightforward injunction for women not to speak (let alone teach!) in the church, very much like the passage from 1 Timothy 2. As we have seen, however, most scholars are convinced that Paul did not write the 1 Timothy passage, because it occurs in a letter that appears to have been written instead by a second-generation follower of Paul in his name. no one doubts, however, that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. But there are doubts about this passage. For as it turns out, the verses in question (vv. 34-35) are shuffled around in some of our important textual witnesses. In three Greek manuscripts and a couple of Latin witnesses, they are found not here, after verse 33, but later, after verse 40. That has led some scholars to surmise that the verses were not written by Paul but originated as some kind of marginal note added by a scribe, possibly under the influence of 1 Timothy 2. The note was then inserted in different places of the text by various scribes—some placing the note after verse 33 and others inserting it after verse 40.

There are good reasons for thinking that Paul did not originally write these verses. For one thing, they do not fit well into their immediate context. In this part of 1 Corinthians 14, Paul is addressing the issue of prophecy in the church, and is giving instructions to Christian prophets concerning how they are to behave during the Christian services of worship. This is the theme of verses 26-33, and it is the them again of verses 26-40. If one removes verses 34-35 from their context, the passage seems to flow seamlessly as a discussion of the role of Christian prophets. The discussion of women appears, then, as intrusive in its immediate context, breaking into instructions that Paul is giving about a different manner.

Not only do the verses seem intrusive in the context of chapter 14, they also appear anomalous with what Paul explicitly says elsewhere in 1 Corinthians. For earlier in the book, as we have already noticed, Paul gives instructions to women speaking in the church: according to chapter 11, when they pray and prophesy—activities that were always done aloud in the Christian services of worship—they are to be sure to wear veils on their heads (11:2-16). In this passage, which no one doubts Paul wrote, it is clear that Paul understands that women both can and do speak in church. In the disputed passage of chapter 14, however, it is equally clear that “Paul” forbids women from speaking at all. It is difficult to reconcile these two views—either Paul allowed women to speak (with covered heads, chapter 11) or not (chapter 14). As it seems unreasonable to think that Paul would flat out contradict himself within the short space of three chapters, it appears that the verses in question do not derive from Paul.

And so on the basis of a combination of evidence—several manuscripts that shuffle the verses around, the immediate literary context, and the context within 1 Corinthians as a whole—it appears that Paul did not write 1 Cor. 14-34-35. One would have to assume, then, that these verses are a scribal alteration of the text, originally made, perhaps, as a marginal note and then eventually, at an early state of the copying of 1 Corinthians, placed in the text itself. The alteration was no doubt made by a scribe who was concerned to emphasize that women should have no public role in the church, that they should be silent and subservient to their husbands. This view then came to be incorporated into the text itself, by means of a textual alteration.⁴

We might consider briefly several other textual changes of a similar sort. One occurs in a passage I have already mentioned, Romans 16, in which Paul speaks of a woman, Junia, and a man who was presumably her husband, Andronicus, both of whom he calls “foremost among the apostles” (v. 7). This is a significant verse, because it is the only place in the New Testament in which a woman is referred to as an apostle. Interpreters have been so impressed by the passage that a large number of them have insisted that it cannot mean what it says, and so have translated the verse as referring not to a woman named Junia but to a man named Junias, who along with his companion Andronicus is praised as an apostle. The problem with this translation is that whereas Junia was a common name for a woman, there is no evidence in the ancient world for “Junias” as a man’s name. Paul is referring to a woman named Junia, even though in some modern English bibles (you may want to check your own!) translators continue to refer to this female apostle as if she were a man named Junias.⁵

Some scribes also had difficulty with ascribing apostleship to this otherwise unknown woman, and so made a very slight change in the text to circumvent the problem. In some of our manuscripts, rather than saying “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives and fellow prisoners, who are foremost among the apostles,” the text is now changed so as to be more readily translated: “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives; and also greet my fellow prisoners who are foremost among the apostles.” With this textual change, no longer does one need to worry about a woman being cited among the apostolic band of men!

A similar change was made by some scribes who copied the book of Acts. In chapter 17 we learn that Paul and his missionary companion Silas spent time in Thessalonica preaching the gospel of Christ to the Jews of the local synagogue. We are told in verse 4 that the pair made some important converts: “And some of them were persuaded and joined with Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the pious Greeks, along with a large number of prominent women.”

The idea of women being prominent—let alone prominent converts—was too much for some scribes, and so the text came to be changed in some manuscripts, so that now we are told: “And some of them were persuaded and joined with Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the pious Greeks, along with a large number of wives of prominent men.” Now it is the men who are prominent, not the wives who converted.

Among Paul’s companions in the book of Acts were a husband and a wife named Aquila and Priscilla; sometimes when they are mentioned, the author gives the wife’s name first, as if she had some kind of special prominence either in the relationship or in the Christian mission (as happens in Rom. 16:3 as well, where she is called Prisca). Not surprisingly, scribes occasionally took umbrage at this sequencing and reversed it, so that the man was given his due by having his name mentioned first: Aquila and Priscilla rather than Priscilla and Aquila.⁶

In short, there were debates in the early centuries of the church over the role of women, and on occasion these debates spilled over into the textual transmission of the New Testament itself, as scribes sometimes changed their texts in order to make them coincide more closely with the scribes’ own sense of the (limited) role of women in the church.

Footnotes

¹See Ehrman, The New Testament, chap. 24. I have depended on this chapter for much of the following discussion. For a fuller discussion and documentation, see Ross Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo, Women and Christian Origins (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999). See also R. Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings: Women’s Religions Among Jews, Pagans, and Christians in the Graeco-Roman World (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992), and Karen J. Torjesen, When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993).

²For further elaboration, see Ehrman, Jesus, 188-91.

³See Ehrman, The New Testament, chap. 23.

⁴For a fuller discussion that shows that Paul did not write verses 34-35, see especially the commentary by Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987).

⁵The fullest recent discussion is by Eldon Jay Epp, “Text-critical, Exegetical, and Sociocultural Factors Affecting the Junia/Junias Variation in Rom 16:7,” in A. Denaux, New Testament Textual Criticism and Exegesis (Leuven: Univ. Press, 2002), 227-92.

⁶For other changes of this sort in Acts, see Ben Witherington, “The Anti-Feminist Tendencies of the ‘Western’ Text of Acts,” Journal of Biblical Literature 103 (1984): 82-84.

Terryl Givens: Here’s the other remarkable thing about Mormonism, and it saddens me that Mormons haven’t caught hold of the power and the beauty of this aspect of their theology. You know, Mormons, ironically (this is just perversely ironic), Mormons are criticized for being exclusionist, right? We shut down the temple to all except those who have recommends, and we talk [about how] you gotta be a Mormon… No! Mormons are the most inclusivist theological system that exists in the Christian world, separate and apart from Universalist Unitarians themselves. In Joseph’s Smith’s vision, everybody is going to be saved, except that handful who absolutely refuse to accept the conditions of their salvation.

And it strikes me that this is the greatest selling point, so-to-speak, of Mormonism, is a God who says, as we’re told [in] D&C 88, that beautiful verse where we’re told that everybody will receive that which they are willing to receive. So, you know, all the universalists in Joseph’s day were writing about this. They were saying, “Yeah, it just doesn’t make sense that God would condemn you if you’re not baptized, or you were born a pagan.” But they didn’t know how to reconcile the need for a Savior with that desire to universalize salvation, and Joseph comes along and reveals this whole plan of vicarious salvation, work for the dead, teaching the Gospel in the Spirit World. I mean, God is not only the most compassionate, but He’s the most generous and inclusive God of any creedal system. It’s just marvelous to me.

In part 3, the interview has taken an interesting tone, where John Dehlin, the interviewer, is almost using Terryl as his own personal belief consultant. John queries Terryl in general about the traditional Mormon concept of the Great Apostasy following Jesus’s ministry, and the seemingly tribal God found in the scriptures that only interacts with His small group of chosen people, be they Nephites or Israelites, to the exclusion of the vast majority of humanity outside these privileged groups. Is it not terribly inefficient, John asks, that God’s divinely sanctioned religion has such a limited reach? “It’s so narrow,” he laments, “and so few of God’s children are privileged to actually benefit from the teachings.”

Terryl Givens: Well, I think about it largely through the prism of, again, my wife Fiona, who was raised a Catholic, and brought to her Mormonism a wonderful set of perspectives and understandings. She was the one who first pointed out to me that, if you look at the allegory of the woman in the wilderness, in chapter 12 of Revelation, that Joseph glossed that in a particular way, or he says, “That’s about the apostasy,” right? And then the woman flees into the wilderness?

Well, what I find absolutely remarkable is that when Joseph recorded the very very first revelation that mentions the Church that he’s going to restore, at first he talks about the formation of a Church in the Book of Commandments. But when he recasts that revelation in Doctrine and Covenants 5, he changes the wording, and he refers to the coming forth out of the wilderness of the Church. So, he’s obviously influenced by Revelation 12. He’s inspired by that language and he’s trying to draw a parallel. And what Revelation 12 says is that the truth was not taken from the Earth, but that it retreated into the wilderness where it was nurtured of the Lord.

Now think about the implications of that. The Church is in the wilderness; it’s being nurtured by the Spirit of the Lord, throughout this period of so-called darkness and apostasy. This, to my mind, gives us a radically different paradigm for understanding the relationship of Mormonism to the rest of the Church and understanding the place of Mormonism in dispensational history. It also gives us an answer to the question, “When is Mormonism going to produce a Dante, or a Shakespeare, or a Beethoven?” And the answer is, “We don’t need a Mormon Dante, or Shakespeare, or Beethoven. We have Dante, and Shakespeare, and Beethoven. We’ve got Handel’s Messiah. Why do they have to be authored by Mormons?” In other words, Joseph seemed to be suggesting that there is this reservoir of truth and beauty throughout the Christian world and even beyond, and his job was to try to select from these scattered fragments of Mormonism and reconstitute them into an institutional church.

But the point is God has made abundant provision for there to be sources of inspiration, truth, and beauty throughout culture and throughout history. Mormons don’t have the monopoly. And, in the book When Souls Had Wings, I engaged in an experiment upon that principle, where I investigated the history of one such idea, the Pre-existence, and found that, indeed, there are hundreds and hundreds of manifestations of that beautiful truth in history, philosophy, theology, and art, throughout the West, going all the way back to earliest recorded religious history. So that’s the first point that I would make, is that this so-called “narrowness of Mormonism” isn’t the problem that we think it is, because nobody is claiming (or nobody should be claiming) a Mormon monopoly on the avenues to these truths and what they represent.

Second of all, I think if I go back to my statement about the most important part of the institutional Church being the ordinances of the temple, then you don’t need a church of two billion people, if your principle role is to serve as custodian of those rituals and make them available, and also provide the means whereby their benefits can be extended to the entire human family, either vicariously now, or throughout the Millennium, or however you expect that’s going to be fulfilled.

And then finally, if you return to what I said earlier about Mormon universalism, then you understand that you don’t have to be a member of the institutional Church in order to secure your salvation. So, I think the image is much more apt, to think of Mormonism in the way that Christ referred to the leaven and the bread: all it takes is a little bit of leaven. And Mormonism is here to provide that, as I understand it.

John appreciates those sentiments as being “beautiful”, but counters they appear to be out of place compared with longstanding rhetoric in the LDS Church. “But that’s not how we’ve culturally evolved, with the encouragement and seeming endorsement of our top leadership,” John explains. He feels the Mormonism he was raised with taught him “to feel sorry for everyone around me that wasn’t Mormon, to consider them to be less-than, to consider our Church to be superior in every way. And I didn’t even feel like I was raised with any type of encouragement to feel reverence or respect [towards other faiths].” John then mentions in mock tone a few traditions of other religions that he learned about under the context of ridicule. He then continues, “If we mentioned any other religious tradition at all, it was to compare how wrong they were and how right we were.”

Conceding that this triumphalist mindset isn’t limited only to Mormons, John explains that it nonetheless set him up for a religious “PTSD” or faith crisis, as it led him to “acquire a world view that I was better than everybody.” This could leads to people’s faith being shattered, he exasperates, because they could get reared under such a mindset in the Mormon Corridor (i.e. the geographical area running from Idaho to northern Arizona where the population is heavily Mormon), and then go out into the world and “they find these amazingly, wonderful, thoughtful, spiritual Jews, or Catholics, or Muslims, or Hindus, or Buddhists, or atheists.” They then feel terribly deceived about humanity. John asks, “We come by [this negative] mindset honestly, right? Or not? Was I just in this corner of Mormonism that was out of touch with this broader, expansive view that you’ve just communicated?”

Terryl Givens: No, I think what you’re describing began in the Brigham Young years. If you look at the rhetoric of Brigham Young and everyone else speaking in the Tabernacle in the 1850s and 60s, you see pretty virulent hostility and animosity towards the rest of Christiandom, and you can see that that’s the aftereffects of the martyrdom and the expulsion. And then what happens in the 20th century, of course, is the kind of diatribe against the Catholic church which pervades our culture. I think that we as a Church are guilty of an institutional sin in the way that we have trumpeted Mormon triumphalism at the expense of the virtue and value of other religious traditions and individuals, and that’s a sin for which we need to collectively repent.

But I would say that there’s nothing conducive, well, not nothing… There isn’t [laughs] a lot that’s conducive to such a view in Joseph Smith himself. Now, many people point, rather unfairly I think, to the language of the First Vision experience where he talks about [how] the [creeds of other religions] were an abomination, you know. But give me a break. He’s writing in a 19th century vernacular in which that kind of language is absolutely de rigeur.

John Dehlin: What do you mean? Wait. Translate. Because it is offensive to me. D&C 1 is offensive to me. But I know people who don’t see it that way. So how can I not see it that way?

Terryl Givens: Because you can’t find any religious language in the early 19th century that isn’t exclusivist in that way, that isn’t triumphalist, right? [partly joking]  The Baptists hate the Catholics. The Catholics—I mean, for heaven sakes, right?—the Catholics are the Great and Abominable Church of the Devil to everybody. I mean, that’s not unique to the Book of Mormon. And they couldn’t hold office in half the states before the Civil War. Just read any of the pamphlet wars going on in the early 19th century, and the rhetoric is just absolutely beyond the pale. So Joseph Smith is simple employing a vernacular, as I said, that is absolutely typical of religious culture in the early 19th century. Unfortunately, it ends up being canonized in scriptures that we still read and disseminate today. And that’s part of the reason for this triumphalist rhetoric that’s been very damaging.

But my sense is things began to change under President Hinckley. Not just because he was much more media savvy and conscious, but because from the pulpit, he actually said on occasion that language of us being the “only true church” can be misunderstood, it can be hurtful, it can be harmful. And so I think he tried to encourage a retreat from that kind of language and that kind of attitude. But I think we’ve been very slow to catch on to that.

Trying to clarify or expand Terryl’s position, John searches for a metaphor that could further explain it. He suggests that perhaps the variety of religious traditions on Earth is comparable to what Elder Joseph Wirthlin described in his timely conference talk on the orchestra God is conducting, with each instrument playing an important role, and none of them holding primacy over other instruments. God needs the piccolos just as much as He needs the percussion. Is Mormonism “but one player in the symphony?”

Terryl Givens: Well, they’re one player. They’re the player that He designated, to whom He actually bestowed what I believe are very real keys of authority and responsibility. I believe also that the fullest dispensation of truth was made available through Joseph Smith. There isn’t a single other Christian denomination on the planet, for example, that espouses belief in the eternal identity of the human soul. That, to my mind, is a critical, really important component of the whole Gospel picture that’s available through the restored Gospel that we call “Mormonism”—an understanding of human potential and the capacity that we have to become fully like our Father in every way. That’s unique to us. There’s an array of Gospel teachings. It’s not that we have to know all of these things in order to become God-like people. But I think the more fullness of the Gospel we are able to imbibe and have access to, then the greater will be our ability to make progress across the whole array of areas where we need to progress toward a God-like nature.

So, no, I think there is a qualitative distinction. What I’m saying is the fact that we have a particular mandate and a particular responsibility as custodians of the Priesthood and the temple ordinances doesn’t mean that there aren’t other important players in this cosmic drama as well, and much that we can learn.

Still trying to ensure he’s on the same page, John expands the music metaphor. Perhaps Mormonism’s role in the orchestra is comparable to that of percussion, providing the tempo, beat, and rhythm that everyone else integrates with and upon which they base their performance. “It’s unique, and it’s different, and it’s special, and it’s critical. … But the other pieces also are critical, and maybe even the other pieces have their own sanctioned authority in God’s mind and planning, and even crucial parts to the overall plan and destiny of humanity. Can you grant that, too?”

Terryl Givens: I don’t see why not. I think [with respect to] the very designation “Mormonism”, I understand to a great degree why the brethren don’t like the use of that term. I use it because it has a certain valence and cultural history that “LDS” doesn’t. But the danger is to assume that Mormonism has an eternal status, and it doesn’t. Mormonism is the particular incarnation of the Church of Jesus Christ at this moment in time. Everybody will eventually have to bow the knee and confess that Jesus is the Christ. But everybody doesn’t have to be a Mormon and everybody doesn’t have to be LDS. But right now, that Church offers a pretty effective vehicle to get to know Christ and comply with his ordinances.

John Dehlin: Right. So substitute what I said about Mormonism to the LDS Church as an institution, and all I’m trying to say is [that] I have to find a way to piece together a theology, if I’m going to keep believing, that looks with respect and love to other beliefs and non-beliefs, that doesn’t place us in any way higher than them, but instead says, yes, we stand up and say we have an important role to play in the Plan of Salvation. An essential role. But we also realize with humility that there are other essential roles, and somehow it aggregates into something very universalistic and beautiful that is respecting of all traditions and even inclusive of them, not denigrating and relegating. Does that make sense?

Terryl Givens: Yeah, well that’s not just your opinion. That’s what the Lord was saying in 1831 when He said to Joseph, “There are other holy men that I recognize that are engaged in my work that you don’t know anything about.” [Note, see also: Ezra Taft Benson - Civic Standard for the Faithful Saints, or Orson F. Whitney - Conference Report 1928, or this publication instructing church educators how to address the "one true church" concept tactfully]

John Dehlin: Hmm. And you’re saying there’s a reading of Doctrine and Covenants Section 1 and of Joseph’s vision that can still hold that respect and reverence for others?

Terryl Givens: Absolutely, if you make allowance for the historical context and the cultural conditioning out of which that language arose. And that’s why Joseph is so self-conscious about the inadequacy of his verbal presentation of these revelations. It’s not like you have to be unfaithful to Joseph or the principle of revelation to interpret that more generously. Joseph gives you that; [he] grants you that allowance when he says, “I’m struggling. This a broken, shattered language. I’m trying to do the best I can.” But his lifelong project was to revise and revise and try to more closely approximate what the Lord intended there.

John agrees, reflecting on his own understanding that Joseph was “expansive, inclusive, loving and respecting of other traditions and people”.

Terryl Givens: Absolutely. And he’s asked in Washington in 1840 in a public address he gives, “Do you have to be Mormon to be saved?” And he says, “No.”

Anybody who didn’t see this coming has blinders on. In their uninformed zeal to enforce harsh measures on a people they don’t understand, these legislators and those that support them are breaking up families. I’ll be quick to note that I have no sympathy for the troublemakers, but in my experience, there’s an abundance of goodness in the people I’ve known personally that are here illegally.

In the above CBS Evening News segment, a woman interviewed comments that these illegal immigrants “took a risk” when they came over here. They gambled that their families might be broken up, she coldly shrugs. I actually agree with her that they gambled.

They gambled that the American people would be humane and understanding. They gambled that the wink-and-nod immigration system we’ve had in this country for decades would continue to grant them unofficial permission to stay here. They gambled that their children, who themselves had committed no immigration infractions, would be treated fairly. They gambled that they could work hard, keep their noses clean, and thus earn the respect of citizens and hopefully some day use that capital to obtain legal status. They gambled alright.

In last night’s GOP primary debate, Newt Gingrich, in what some pundits are calling a risky re-invention of his political platform, explored the possibility that some GOP primary voters would sympathize with his rhetoric. “I don’t see how the party that says it’s the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families which have been here a quarter-century,” he said. The headlines immediately honed in on his enormous “gamble”. Will he be the next Republican candidate to see a sharp rise to front-runner status, only to see his popularity melt away just as fast, all because of what he said on immigration?

I hope that the Newt’s gamble, and likewise the gamble of good, honest illegal immigrants, pays off. I hope that bold steps forward such as the Utah Compact serve to knock some sense into the blood lust that’s consumed far too many Americans. We talk the talk about how we’re the country that shows the world the way when it comes to benevolence and generosity. Let’s walk the walk.

Petal by petal they gently pull it apart to learn how the individual parts work or to examine its raw biology under a microscope. The problem that then arises is that the rose has now been destroyed in the process and can never be put back together and returned to the living creation it once was.

I have read that humans tend to understand abstract concepts only indirectly, through metaphors or allegories. We take an idea such as justice, strength, or beauty, and conceive of a manifestation of it that’s more concrete or tangible in order that we might discuss it and understand it better. Time is money (“you’re running out of time”, “that incident cost me four hours”), argument is war (“I destroyed his argument”, “your claims are indefensible”), etc.

What if the rose is but an approximation or manifestation of an abstract idea? For instance, let’s presume that a rose represents beauty. Beauty itself cannot be dismantled, broken down into atoms, or reasoned away. Destroying every single manifestation of beauty on the planet will not destroy the idea itself nor its power.

But many people are absolutely devastated upon discovering they’ve dismantled their precious rose, and they set out frantically to piece it back together just the way it was before. I think this is usually an exercise in futility, though, and perhaps even undesirable. Have they really killed off their beliefs? Or have they simply made it necessary to seek understanding and meaning from those beliefs on a deeper, more abstract level? It depends, I think.

I’ve heard it said, “Once you’ve caught your parents filling the stockings, it’s impossible to go back to believing in Santa Claus”. If your approach to religion is similarly literal, then you might be out of luck. But if you are able to enjoy religion on a more metaphysical, meaning-based approach, you can probably rebuild your rose, albeit with different materials and on your own terms.

1. Was this man Abraham?
2. Was he Nephi?
3. Was he a member of al-Qaeda?

As far as I understand, each of these three were men of great faith that had complete conviction that what they were doing was God’s will for them. See the problem?

Call me a skeptic when it comes to scriptural accounts of divinely authorized killing. In today’s society, if or when somebody is found to be plotting such a thing today, we are quick to respond with our full law enforcement resources and toughest punishments, and rightly so. It is evident that we roundly reject the option of allowing people to commit homicide so long as they feel they have been called upon by God. We can look back on incidents such as the Crusades or the Inquisition as horrific examples of what happens when people murder in the name of God. Yet, for some reason, we sometimes allow for this possibility in the scriptures.

To me, this is unthinkable, and I don’t think it’s merely because I’m ignoring Isaiah 55:8, which says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.” Is it just my modern, bleeding-heart sensibilities that have concluded that life is invaluable? Again, I don’t think so. It seems to me that only a cruel and inconsistent God would command one of His children to perform an act that, without explicit divine permission, is designated as the worst kind of sin that a person can commit.

Isn’t that view a kind of moral relativism? I.e., killing is the worst sin a person can commit, unless it’s commanded by God, in which case it’s not only acceptable, it’s obligatory. That makes the morality of killing completely conditional. Simply saying that God’s ways are higher than ours doesn’t seem nearly sufficient to justify such a scenario.

Of course, my perspective on this topic does color the way I read and interpret those scriptural accounts. But that’s probably another topic for another day.

Dallas Green is a Canadian singer/songwriter that my wife introduced me to. He used to be part of post-hardcore group Alexisonfire, but more recently (and more appealing to me) he’s been doing stuff that’s pretty much on the opposite side of the musical scale. Under the alias City and Colour, he’s got an impressive acoustic sound with the band he’s put together.

Green is a very introspective artist, and his ethereal voice powers his melancholy-yet-hopeful lyrics very well.

This past week I saw him in concert with my wife and sis-in-law, and it was a great show. I’ve embedded a playlist on this page with some of my favorite songs of his. Check it out!

As I have often told my sisters in the Female Relief Societies, we have sisters here who, if they had the privilege of studying, would make just as good mathematicians or accountants as any man; and we think they ought to have the privilege to study these branches of knowledge that they may develop the powers with which they are endowed. We believe that women are useful not only to sweep houses, wash dishes, make beds, and raise babies, but that they should stand behind the counter, study law or physic [medicine], or become good bookkeepers and be able to do the business in any counting house, and this to enlarge their sphere of usefulness for the benefit of society at large. In following these things they but answer the design of their creation.

- Discourses of Brigham Young.
Selected by John A. Widtsoe. 1941, 216–17

That’s more progressive than anything you’ll hear even today, 150 years later. Now, in all fairness, Brigham said these words during the Church’s polygamy era, and so you can imagine that having all of those plural wives be stay-at-home mothers wouldn’t work out so well.

Still, I’d love to hear this kind of stuff from the pulpit today. Want to know something interesting? In 1997, in the Teachings of the Presidents of the Church manual, we studied select statements from Brigham Young. (I’d say we studied Brigham Young, but that would be making a mockery of the truth. The manuals weren’t intended to be biographical or historical.) The above statement was in the manual in chapter 19, “The Relief Society and Individual Responsibility”. The manual oddly omits the last sentence of that statement. It seems like it was possibly culled because it doesn’t line up with the Proclamation on the Family. This is most unfortunate, because my suspicion is that we’ll eventually get to a place where a statement such as Young’s will be repeated from the pulpit in General Conference. I think the Proclamation locks us arbitrarily into 1950s notions of family and gender roles, and we’ll soon see that this is as outdated and worthy of the dustbin as sexist and racist attitudes of the past.

Thou fool, that shall say, “A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible.” Have ye obtained a Bible save it were by the Jews?

Know ye not that there are more nations than one? Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all men, and that I remember those who are upon the isles of the sea; and that I rule in the heavens above and in the earth beneath; and I bring forth my word unto the children of men, yea, even upon all the nations of the earth?

[Why then] murmur ye, because that ye shall receive more of my word? Know ye not that the testimony of two nations is a witness unto you that I am God, that I remember one nation like unto another? Wherefore, I speak the same words unto one nation like unto another.

…

For behold, I shall speak unto the Jews and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the Nephites and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the other tribes of the house of Israel, which I have led away, and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto all nations of the earth and they shall write it.

And it shall come to pass that the Jews shall have the words of the Nephites, and the Nephites shall have the words of the Jews…

- 2 Nephi 29:6-13

Sounds logical to me. Why would God limit His interactions to just one people? By reading the Hebrew Bible, one gets the impression that the Israelite God was very tribalistic. But in the New Testament, Jesus, and in particular Paul, open up God’s reach to everyone.

Why the resistance against new scripture?

This Protestant Reformation was in part a reaction against Roman Catholicism, which touted the need for divinely appointed authorities to interpret scripture and bring in new revelations, if needed. Joseph Smith, rooted firmly in the Protestant theology of the day, grew up with the concept of sola scriptura in full force. This doctrine insisted that the Bible as then constituted contained all the knowledge that one needed to know in order to achieve salvation. Tied to this idea was the insistence on the part of some Christian groups that the scriptural canon (i.e. the books that formed the Old and New Testaments) was closed. In other words, they believed that the exact books contained within the Bible (typically the King James Version in that day) were the only books worthy of authority, and any other books were either disreputable and or non-binding with regards to doctrine.

When Joseph Smith boldly (and awesomely) proclaimed that the canon was not closed, that the heavens were not silent, it defied this belief. To many, questioning the absoluteness of the scripture canon was effectively undermining the authority of scripture itself. If the Bible alone wasn’t sufficient for salvation and living a Christian life, then what good was it?

Does the Bible say its canon has been closed?

As an LDS missionary, it was common to encounter potential proselytes with concerns about new or “other” scripture. One argument verse we were trained to refute is found in the book of Revelation 22:18: “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book”. People frequently believe Revelations to be the “final” piece of the Bible, thus neatly completing the canon (which was ostensibly determined by that point) and serving as a bookend to everything authoritative God would have to say to us in scripture.

To the contrary, we would say. The Bible as we have it today was not even in existence at the time Revelation was written. Not even for at least a couple of hundred years later, actually. So the writer of Revelation couldn’t have been referring to “adding to the Bible”, because there was no Bible yet. He must have been referring to the book of Revelation itself.

If that didn’t address the concern sufficiently, we’d then point out that Deuteronomy, the fifth book in the Old Testament, contains a similar injunction: “You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you.” If these words, which preceded those in Revelation by perhaps thousands of years, were to be interpreted as opposition to new scripture, then we’d have a lot skinnier Bible.

What do those verse mean then?

Generically, these verses simply mean that we shouldn’t screw around with God’s word, I suppose. We shouldn’t compose our own literature and try to pass it off as God’s, and we shouldn’t ignore God’s will just because we don’t like it. Of course, personal interpretation and lenses complicate this substantially. But that’s another topic for another day.

So when pondering these verses, why the fiery condemnations and the calls for curses? Bart Ehrman, a leading Bible scholar, explains that the prevalence of scripture manuscript copying errors (both intentional and accidental) were so common and problematic that scribes would often warn future copyists. About such interesting verses, Ehrman writes the following:

This is not a threat that the reader has to accept or believe everything written in this book of prophecy, as it is sometimes interpreted; rather, it is a typical threat to copyists of the book, that they are not to add to or remove any of its words. Similar imprecations can be found scattered throughout the range of early Christian writings. Consider the rather sever threats uttered by the Latin Christian scholar Rufinus with respect to his translation of tone of Origen’s works:

Truly in the presence of God the Father and of the Song and of the Holy Spirit, I adjure and beseech everyone who may either transcribe or read these books, by his believe in the kingdom to come, by the mystery of the resurrection from the dead, and by that everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels, that, as he would not possess for an  eternal inheritance that place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and where their fire is not quenched and their spirit does not die, he add nothing to what is written and take nothing away from it, and make no insertion or alteration, but that he compare his transcription with the copies from which he made it.

These are dire threats—hellfire and brimstone—for simply changing some words of a text. Some authors, though, were fully determined to make sure their words were transmitted intact, and no threat could be serious enough in the face of copyists who could change text at will, in a world that had no copyright laws.

- Misquoting Jesus, pg. 54-55

A tough issue for sola scriptura

It is not uncommon to encounter amateur anti-Mormon literature cite the verse in Revelation, as if that unequivocally answered the question of whether the Bible should be the end-all and be-all of scripture. However, more educated Evangelicals and other Christians often acknowledge the problem inherent in having a doctrine on closed canon: the Bible doesn’t actually mandate it. So to insist on a closed canon, one must rely on extra-biblical interpretations or authority, which totally undermines sola scriptura. For traditions that adhere to this doctrine, the development of scriptural canon is a tough issue to grapple with.

The fact is that when early Christians began compiling sacred books, epistles, and other Christian manuscripts, there was great disagreement on which writings were authentic, important, or useful. Dozens upon dozens of unique pieces of literature were candidates for scripture, and different Christian communities held to different collections. Once the community became more organized (sometime around the 3rd century), the need for cohesiveness and unity became more pressing, but there was no easy way to come to a consensus on which writings to reject and which to keep. It is interesting to consider the lists of books that might not be in your Bible but that at some point in the past were considered holy scripture by certain Christian authorities.