Gadianton wrote:Trevor,
I'm also interested in your student of the mysteries. I, Trevor, was once a student of the mysteries. That may shock you, but it is true. At any rate, I'd like to throw my two bits on the connection between the student of the mysteries and the apologist. The two are definitely at odds in many cases. Note how the apologists have bragged about the "trouncing" Lou Midgley gave to Chapel Mormon and student of the mysteries extraordinaire W. Cleon Skousen. I for one, believe the apologists are embarrassed by the "mysteries". Yet, all of them no doubt in their younger years leaned in this direction. Perhaps apologetics is a redirection of the energy and wonder of the student of the mysteries. Rather than tackling the location of the Lost Ten Tribes, the apologists go after intractable problems such as whether Mormon was involved in a military transfer. Apologetics, in this sense attempts to legitimize the curiosity, fascination with the arcane, and penchant for undisciplined wild-eyed speculation that has nothing to do with reality which defines the student of the mysteries.
Yes, I think I agree with this. "Student of the mysteries" really seems to describe a Mopologist in a nascent state of development. That said, I wonder if the impulse described in Trevor's musings can really be fully connected to apologetics per se. "Apologetics," as DCP and others are wont to remind us, merely refers to the *defense* of something. What Trevor is describing, though, is a more scholarly and inquisitive sort of pursuit, and although Mopologetics can sometimes seem sort of "scholary" (I'm sure that the reviewers of Quinn's books had to do a lot of work to collect all that clandestine gossip), it is ultimately more about defensiveness, smearing, and vicious verbal parrying. Thus, I doubt very much that any of the senior Mopologists is a "student of the mysteries" in the way that Trevor has outlined.
This is why I mentioned Rommelator in an earlier post. I suspect that the Young Man Carbuncular, a.k.a. Rommelator, is just moving out of his "student of the mysteries" stage. One can sense a certain bitterness in his posts---a certain desire to lash out and take revenge on all of the critics. I wonder, too, if LoaP had once been a "student of the mysteries," though, obviously, LoaP served a mission and got addicted to "bashing" which renders him a Perpetual Missionary type of Mopologist.