DCP: A Testimony is a "living thing"
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 6:13 am
I found this post on the ironically named Mormon Dialogue board interesting:
Bear in mind that this is the Church's top apologist saying this, which is tantamount to a Doctrinal Declaration.
http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/56620-testimonies/
This *is* pretty remarkable, though. I don't know that any of the Brethren have ever described testimonies in quite this same way. Of course, in actual relationships, the "other person" behaves in certain ways... Is this what Dan is getting at? I see him touching upon the tiresome Chapel Mormon notion that testimonies require "work," but that doesn't do much to clarify his basic point... Perhaps he's talking more about Priesthood blessings being administered in order to dislodge meat from kids' throats, or something? I don't really know... In real relationships, there is a certain amount of reciprocity, and I have a very difficult time seeing how this applies for this given analogy.
The more I think about it, the more I find myself feeling that this is yet another ploy to make it seem as if the LDS notion of "testimony" isn't an embarrassment in the academic sphere.
In my view, a testimony is quite similar to a relationship -- to a marriage, for example. (Both the Old and New Testaments use marriage to symbolize the relationship between God and his people -- and for good reasons, this being one of them.) It isn't, shouldn't be, and never was mere intellectual assent to a set of propositions. The relationship entails such assent, yes, but it isn't reducible to simple assertions of alleged fact.
If such a relationship isn't nurtured, is allowed to starve, it will die. Not because it's "hokey" or without value, but because it's a living thing.
I don't imagine that I'm alone in having seen several bitter divorces where one or the other of the former spouses insists that "I never really loved him," or some such thing, maybe even with entire sincerity, when that is almost certainly a spectacular falsehood. But the relationship was neglected, subordinated to other commitments, injured by gross misbehavior on the part of one of the marriage partners . . . whatever. And suddenly, at that point, the "facts" about the ex-partner are transformed almost beyond recognition. Good traits are forgotten; bad characteristics, real or imagined, dominate the picture.
Bear in mind that this is the Church's top apologist saying this, which is tantamount to a Doctrinal Declaration.
http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/56620-testimonies/
This *is* pretty remarkable, though. I don't know that any of the Brethren have ever described testimonies in quite this same way. Of course, in actual relationships, the "other person" behaves in certain ways... Is this what Dan is getting at? I see him touching upon the tiresome Chapel Mormon notion that testimonies require "work," but that doesn't do much to clarify his basic point... Perhaps he's talking more about Priesthood blessings being administered in order to dislodge meat from kids' throats, or something? I don't really know... In real relationships, there is a certain amount of reciprocity, and I have a very difficult time seeing how this applies for this given analogy.
The more I think about it, the more I find myself feeling that this is yet another ploy to make it seem as if the LDS notion of "testimony" isn't an embarrassment in the academic sphere.