Edit 10/19/2009: Yeah, I'm going to get a lot of hits on this entry. (Thanks, Steve!) Those of you who are LDS or who know a good deal about LDS doctrine, feel free to comment!
This past weekend I attended the second Faith and Knowledge Conference held in Boston at the Harvard Divinity School. It was good to see a lot of my friends from Yale and from the last conference we held there two years ago. I love being a LDS religious scholar, and it's a very fun, intelligent, and engaging group of people that seem to comprise the rising generation of religious scholars, at whom this conference is aimed.
I took 18 pages, single spaced, of notes over the course of Saturday and I won't type up anything resembling exhaustive highlights. Two interesting points stood out as food for thought.
From my friend Deidre Green: a dangerous feminine way of sinning is the opposite (generally speaking) of the masculine way of sinning. Valerie Saiving says that for women sin might have to do with giving too much of oneself, so that they have no identity. Underdevelopment might be the sin for women. Jesus seems to think you can gain your life by losing it, but I saw once in my high school girlfriend someone who wasn't developing herself as much as she should because she was spending too much time serving.
From Gwendolyn Reynolds: the priesthood is like the sports arena for LDS men. If you don't stay worthy during the week, you can't play on Sunday by passing the sacrament. The vessel by which we get to show off our "LDS masculinity" is taken from us. It's an interesting inversion of what it means to be masculine.
And well, while perhaps not as interesting as the other talks, here's mine (Hey, it's my blog. Deal.):
First, know that I'm a theological minimalist. All that you must believe to be a normal Latter-day Saint is contained in the first few temple recommend questions. The godhead, the atonement, and the living prophets. That's it. Pretty minimalist. The rest of what you have to do to be a temple-recommend-holding Latter-day Saint has to deal with things you do, not things you believe. Orthopraxy is much more important than orthodoxy.
Second, understand that I think the role of an LDS systematic theologian is to help construct LDS theologies but eventually you will run into areas where we don't yet have revelations on the subject. At that point the task of the theologian ends, and the task of the prophet begins. Theologians in the LDS setting do not create doctrine.
So, here's the traditional argument that LDS use against homosexual marriage. You'll notice I point out where I feel we have to make assumptions. (P) stands for "axiomatic premise."
1. P: God is male.
2. P: Purpose of existence is to become like God, eventually.
3. P: In order to be like God we must be married. (D&C 132:19-20.)
4. P: Becoming like God entails that we live the kind of life God lives. Moses 1:39.
5. P: God’s work and glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man—us, his children.
6. God is married. (3, but there isn’t a lot of data on this, just a vague notion of “Heavenly Parents” from manuals and the Family Proclamation)
7. Hence, to live the kind of life God lives, we must have our own spirit children. (4, 5)
8. To have our own spirit children requires us to be married. (3, 4, 5)
9. Assume: God is married to a woman. (1, 3, 6, “Oh My Father,” Hymn #292-which might be Adam-God doctrine influenced anyway, ?)
10. Assume: Only a heterosexual partnership can generate spirit children. (8, 9?)
11. Hence, to have spirit children, we need to be in a heterosexual marriage. (9, 10)
12. Hence, homosexual marriage are at best a temporary union, and at worst are detrimental to heterosexual unions in the next life. (11)
In short, since I think the canonical basis for a belief in Heavenly Mother is shaky, I am not comfortable demanding it of LDS in order to be rational and consistent. Since we need that belief to be more than shaky, the argument against homosexual marriage is not as strong as we think.
The comments on my paper were interesting. Taylor Petrey thinks that line 7 is more of an assumption than line 9 or 10, the lines I thought were shakiest. Kathleen Flake wanted me to parse out what I meant by "married" and she's right that I didn't explain it out. In the end, though, this is the argument that most of us LDS have constructed. It's the argument I myself make to my LDS homosexual friends and what I myself believe. I want to make this absolutely clear: I am a card-carrying Latter-day Saint and believe the doctrines taught by our current prophets and apostles. But to be intellectually honest, I have to admit that, given the current state of what we know about the doctrine of God's marriage, there are a few (small) leaps of logic we must make to construct this argument. Hence, not a house of cards, but not built on a rock either.
3 comments:
Do you consider the ordinances canonical? I do, because "in the ordinances thereof, the power of godliness is manifest."
So, with the ordinances, the LDS argument against homosexuality is founded on a large batholith of quartz monzonite.
Though I understand that not all of your argument is strictly doctrinal, I also find it the most plausible explanation for our church's stance on homo/heterosexuality. I guess I don't have much to contribute to that discussion right now.
I would like to comment on the discussion of "feminine sin." I wonder if it is really possible to "give too much," losing who you are in the process. Christ and God do absolutely everything in service and yet I think it's safe to say they have the most powerful and well-developed personalities in the universe. For me, God is not only love embodied, but also common sense incarnate.
Two thoughts:
First, on the feminine sin of giving too much. I actually think you're right, you've identified something important.
My main thought on this is that it's a matter of the Martha Syndrome--where a woman can be worried about the wrong things. This can often include a woman worrying (rightly) about the success of her husband, children, home, etc., to the detriment of her own spiritual growth (wrongly). Obviously this is an over-simplification, but it seems to fit in a broader category. I just think that more men have problems being selfish and more women care deeply about others--which leads to more men being selfish and more women needing a reminder that they can take a minute for themselves.
"Development" seems to encourage people to imply that our lives come to be meaningful through our identity--rather than service which yields our lives identity. To be frank, I don't think that Jesus spent a lot of time complaining to His Father that He didn't feel like He was His own person. Similarly with the most notable and unique characters of scripture: Paul, King Benjamin, Alma the Younger--they are all characterized by their actions, relationships, and lives given in service. Similarly with the great sisters of the church: I don't think that Sheri Dew has spent three seconds worrying about her identity. Similarly with married sisters--as President Hinckley talked about, what do we do for our women? We get out of their way and let them shine.
As Elder Maxwell talked about, living the gospel somehow invigorates the soul in such a way that our personalities become more unique and meaningful.
On homosexuality, I have a very different take. I would agree with your logical tree in most cases, but that's not the tree that I would have drawn.
I would start with the "God wants what is best for us, he calls prophets, they tell us what is right" tree, but that ends up being a cop-out. I still think it's important, and I don't fault anyone who uses it, but I think there are better reasons.
I would end up going this route:
1) In order to be with God, we must be like Him.
2) He has created a plan that enables the latter, in order to enable the former.
3) This plan includes covenants--punctuated and sanctified by ordinances--that require obedience in order for this character-change to occur.
4) One such ordinance is the eternal covenant of marriage.
5) Marriage is ordained of God, and is defined as an eternal covenant of love and faithfulness between a man and a woman (among other things). (You can't stop here, or it's another "God said so" argument, so keep reading if you've come this far.)
6) Part of the reason why marriage is ordained the way that it is is because men and women are eternally complementary in nature, and, when joined in an eternal marriage (and when they keep that covenant) men and women are changed to become more like God. Just think of your example about women giving too much of themselves.
You can take that road further too. Too often, it feels like we have children by commandment or fiat. I tend to believe that having children (now or in the eternities) is a lot more about loving children than it is about imitating God. When we become like God in heart--filled with charity and a desire to bring others to God, then having children is a natural outgrowth of character, not another item on a checklist.
Final note: I reserve the right to be wrong. Something tells me I might regret something that I've said here, but I'm too lazy to check it over. :>)
BTW I think it's awesome that you get to chat it up with Kathleen Flake.
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