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I just finished reading "Mormon Doctrine" by Bruce R. McConkie. I ran across this amusing quote in reference to the Urim and Thummim.

. . . seers receive revelations from God through a Urim and Thummim, the devil gives his own revelations to some of his followers through peep stones or crystal balls.

So when confronted with "Rough Stone Rolling" would McConkie say that Smith received some translations of the Book of Mormon from the devil or would he change his mind entirely about peepstones?

There were many times reading the book that I couldn't figure out if McConkie was intentionally distorting both the History of the Church and/or the Bible or if he was just woefully ignorant. This one has me really baffled.

Here's a large picture of the passage

Tim wrote:I just finished reading "Mormon Doctrine" by Bruce R. McConkie. I ran across this amusing quote in reference to the Urim and Thummim.

Your read it cover to cover? Wow.

Is there anything by McConkie to preclude a stone being both a seer and a peep stone? Smith used the same stone for both treasure hunting and for translating the Book of Mormon.

Fence Sitter wrote:Is there anything by McConkie to preclude a stone being both a seer and a peep stone? Smith used the same stone for both treasure hunting and for translating the Book of Mormon.

And the same stone as a prop for his defrauding people out of their money--oh, damn, I did it again. I repeated just what you said already, twice.

My guess is that the lack of historical insight stems back to the Brethren's vote to table the concerns of Apostle B.H. Roberts' study on Book of Mormon Concerns. With the precedence set to ignore data that conflicted with modern legend, Bruce McConkie probably wrote that passage out of supreme self confidence that he was right.

I'm going to vote ignorant based on a passage I read in Barlow's Mormons and the Bible. On page 188 Barlow comments:

Philip Barlow wrote:As with his father-in-law, Joseph Fielding Smith, the scriptures to McConkie were "everything." He relied on his own understanding of them, he said, as mediated by the Holy Spirit. He was dramatically independent and, with few exceptions, he seldom researched what other church leaders had said about a given passage.

The whole section gives example after example of how McConkie really didn't care what anyone else had to say on a subject, inside or outside the church.

I just finished reading "Mormon Doctrine" by Bruce R. McConkie.

Why? It's not doctrine.

Aristotle Smith wrote:I'm going to vote ignorant based on a passage I read in Barlow's Mormons and the Bible. On page 188 Barlow comments:

Philip Barlow wrote:As with his father-in-law, Joseph Fielding Smith, the scriptures to McConkie were "everything." He relied on his own understanding of them, he said, as mediated by the Holy Spirit. He was dramatically independent and, with few exceptions, he seldom researched what other church leaders had said about a given passage.

The whole section gives example after example of how McConkie really didn't care what anyone else had to say on a subject, inside or outside the church.

Aristotle, why would a 'prophet, seer, and revelator' give a flying f*** what non-apostles had to say?

sock puppet wrote:Aristotle, why would a 'prophet, seer, and revelator' give a flying f*** what non-apostles had to say?

My point was that McConkie didn't care what anyone had to say. This means that for the most part he also didn't care what other prophets and apostles had to say.

My impression was similar to Aristotle's quote.

McConkie thinks he's a great thinker but lacks any tools for rigorous thought. Dogmatic authoritarian assertion is EVERYTHING to him. It's all he's got to help him wrestle with complicated incomplete ideas. Mormonism being a populist cultural system accommodates this really well. But with any knowledge of some of these issues he doesn't come off too well.

I've got a blog post in the queue about how he inadvertently affirmed the Trinity as the only way to believe in God.

P.s. yes, cover to cover but not everyword on every page.