Davis article in Dialogue Journal

[Lem]

William Davis has a fascinating article in Dialogue, entitled:

THE Book of Mormon AND THE LIMITS OF NATURALISTIC CRITERIA: COMPARING JOSEPH SMITH AND ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS

An excerpt:

...The pragmatic nature of faith seems not only to reflect a belief in “things which are not seen, which are true” (Alma 32:21), but likewise involves a subjective disbelief in alternative possibilities. Thus, doubt comes to play a role in the composition of faith. The embedded reliance on naturalistic arguments, however tangential, therefore presents the uneasy and troubling possibility that a portion of one’s faith rests upon a foundation of limited mortal assumptions, constrained within the narrow and finite compass of an individual’s personal knowledge, hopes, needs, and experience. As such, the presumably solid rock foundation of faith turns out to contain a lot of destabilizing sand.

Comparing American Seers:

With such thoughts on faith and belief serving as a meditative backdrop, we might treat these naturalistic arguments as a convenient analytic framework to compare—and contrast—Joseph Smith and his 1829 translation of the Book of Mormon with Andrew Jackson Davis (1826–1910), another early American “prophet and a seer,” and his trance performance of The Principles of Nature (1847).9

For within this comparison, we find another complex text produced by a speaker with limited formal education and training, created under similar conditions and circumstances, and a work that stands as its young creator’s greatest masterpiece, even though the text was created at the dawn of the speaker’s career. Davis, like Smith, was raised in a poor household and received little formal education—Davis, in fact, would claim to have received only “little more than five months” of schooling.10 Davis also received visions and met with angelic messengers, who informed him that he was chosen to reveal important truths to the world. Through a mystical process of mesmeric trance and “conscious clairvoyance,” Davis dictated—without the use of notes, manuscripts, or books—his first and most popular volume, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind, which, at approximately 320,000 words, contains a collection of intricate revelations that many of his readers treated as new scripture.11 Though Davis eventually composed more than thirty books, The Principles of Nature would remain “the most famous” and influential text of his career.

These broad-stroke comparisons do not, however, do justice to the compelling and oftentimes uncanny similarities between Smith and Davis. A closer examination of the circumstances surrounding the oral production of their works—both their similarities and important differences—can thus provide crucial insights into the cultural context in which these two fledgling seers performed their respective texts into existence. Moreover, such a comparative exploration alerts us to the problems of invoking arbitrary criteria in a strategic effort to privilege the work of a favored candidate.

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/themenc ... 3N03_4.pdf

[Lem]

I hope Doctor Scratch doesn't mind my noting that Davis' recent book, as well as his evisceration here of a certain type of mopologetics might very well qualify it for inclusion in this year's top ten list. From his conclusion:

While naturalistic catalogues prove popular as rhetorical tools of persuasion, and while the mobilization of exclusionary rhetoric and
claims of textual exceptionalism might appear to buttress belief, such dependence on arbitrary naturalistic criteria runs the risk of making faith more vulnerable. Indeed, the damage might already be done: the common day-to-day expressions of belief in the Book of Mormon strongly suggest that the persistent turn to naturalist comparisons reveals an entanglement of personal opinion, belief, theory, and faith. Belief in the Book of Mormon becomes inextricably bound to disbelief in Smith’s ability to create it—a position that reveals the uncomfortable prospect that the foundation of faith contains limited mortal percep-tions, impressionability, and finite experience.

With such potential hazards, we might pause for a moment to ask what cultural work these comparative lists of selective criteria are actually performing and inadvertently revealing—not just about the texts but about ourselves. Such projects, after all, cannot prove or disprove the divine origins of the Book of Mormon. They never will. Such lists merely consist of tailored, calculated requirements that artificially isolate a preferred outcome, even as they showcase the preconceptions and assumptions of those who create and/or employ them. Such special pleading thus puts our own biases into sharp relief.

Even if a text involves unusual characteristics beyond anything that we might personally describe as “natural,” the conclusion that the text must therefore be “divine” reveals a fatal leap in logic. We thereby display a faulty line of syllogistic reasoning that equates things purportedly unique and allegedly inexplicable with things miraculous and divine, as if these concepts were all somehow synonymous.

The persistent valorization of such projects, which ultimately compete with the development of authentic faith and potentially threaten whatever faith may already exist, should therefore make us pause and question their real value. Though such catalogues of criteria aim to impress (and entertain) an audience of believers, and though they might initially appear to strengthen faith, their effects prove ultimately unreliable and illusory.

Moreover, they obfuscate historical complexities, transforming the young Joseph Smith into a two-dimensional, illiterate, know-nothing boy, when a close reading of historical sources rather reveals a young man with a gifted intellect and ambitious desires for self-education and self-improvement. Perhaps most importantly, however, naturalistic sets of criteria reveal more about ourselves than they reveal about Joseph Smith or the origins of the Book of Mormon: instead of discovering eternal markers that signal the presence of the divine, we merely discover the limitations of our individual experience, the borders of our imagination, and the measure of our credulity.

[bolding added]

[Res Ipsa]

Interesting article. Thanks for posting it.

[Philo Sofee]

A great and interesting read.......

[Gadianton]

That seems to be the more common experience for those who go beyond the surface and look for rational support.

[Moksha]

Andrew Jackson Davis

[Kishkumen]

Bill Davis is one of the most important Mormon Studies scholars of our time. He is definitely perceived as a threat by such people as Brian Hales, and he has already entered the sights of Interpreter. I feel fortunate to have found his article on John Bunyan and the Book of Mormon a while ago. He definitely has more insightful and groundbreaking things to say about the Book of Mormon and its composition than all of the Mopologists put together. That is why he has them so freaked out.

[Philo Sofee]

Bill Davis is one of the most important Mormon Studies scholars of our time. He is definitely perceived as a threat by such people as Brian Hales, and he has already entered the sights of Interpreter. I feel fortunate to have found his article on John Bunyan and the Book of Mormon a while ago. He definitely has more insightful and groundbreaking things to say about the Book of Mormon and its composition than all of the Mopologists put together. That is why he has them so freaked out.

It is interesting that the more informed and better intelligent scholars always freaks out the Mopologists......its why we need the Jenkins, RItners, and Daviss and Grindaels of reality.

[Kishkumen]

It is interesting that the more informed and better intelligent scholars always freaks out the Mopologists......its why we need the Jenkins, RItners, and Daviss and Grindaels of reality.

The odd thing to me is that Davis has not set out to attack Mormonism. The Mopologists seem to be attacking him in order to protect their own assumptions about Mormonism. They want LDS people to remain comfortable in these assumptions, and they play the role of gatekeepers to keep these Mormons from feeling challenged in any way. Davis provides a much richer vision of Joseph Smith and what he was doing than the Mopologists do. The Mopologetic Joseph Smith must remain, in certain key ways, a two-dimensional caricature of a person.

[Philo Sofee]

It is interesting that the more informed and better intelligent scholars always freaks out the Mopologists......its why we need the Jenkins, RItners, and Daviss and Grindaels of reality.

The odd thing to me is that Davis has not set out to attack Mormonism. The Mopologists seem to be attacking him in order to protect their own assumptions about Mormonism. They want LDS people to remain comfortable in these assumptions, and they play the role of gatekeepers to keep these Mormons from feeling challenged in any way. Davis provides a much richer vision of Joseph Smith and what he was doing than the Mopologists do. The Mopologetic Joseph Smith must remain, in certain key ways, a two-dimensional caricature of a person.

Well said Kish..... yes, it also appears, at least to me, that the fuller more fleshed out Joseph Smith has always involved a more robust treatment of his humanity and his environment, not the projecting and stilted Supernatural paradigm of Early Mormonism which Mopologists cling to so desperately. The Mopes give every indication that they are stuck in their myopia of their own outdated creation.