Hugh Nibley: The Day of the Amateur
A boast of Latter-day Saints is that they have never been afflicted with a professional clergy. To this day, what most impresses outside observers is the fact that almost everything the Mormons do is undertaken on a nonprofessional basis -- and it is done pretty well at that. Only when they have brought in professional help have they come to grief. Professionalism is the child of the universities. Its modern rule began with the Sophists of old. Preceding the Sophists were those wise men called Sophoi, ancient traveling teachers who gave the modern world its moral and intellectual foundations. They were, to a man, amateurs.
Then the Sophists, imitation Sophoi, took over and professionalized everything to the highest degree. They were the great professors, and since they professed publicly and for a fee, Socrates, the champion of the independent mind and not one of the Sophists, advised students to examine every prospective teacher's credentials very carefully and critically before enrolling with him. That indiscretion cost Socrates his life, for the whole point of professionalism is that one's credentials should never be challenged.
Official credentials, a foolproof shield against criticism and scrutiny, were naturally coveted most by those who needed them most: it was the poorly qualified who clamored for the status symbol of the degree. As in the days of the Sophist schools, the great demand for this valuable commodity caused factories or this valuable commodity caused factories to spring up everywhere, competing for degree-seeking customers by making their product ever easier and cheaper to get. At the same time the degree became the object -- the sole object -- of "education." And when it reached that point, it was, of course, worth nothing.
Here they jealously perpetuated their own kind in office and shut out those talented students who might threaten their own supremacy in any way. The more intelligent students had always seen through professorial sham, but as the university population soared into the millions, the tension between the two mounted dangerously. It is no paradox that some of the most intelligent students at the best schools have been causing the most trouble. In fact, most students have been galled by the artificial restraint of professional status.
Okay, I'm putting my cards on the table, that this is where I agree with some of the criticisms Mister Scratch and Gadianton have given. Please note that I am not suggesting financial corruption. It's just that I can't reconcile Nibley's sentiments with all of the focus on degrees and the attainment of academic status as a "necessity" for attaining "credibility", or even a "proper understanding", in the field of Mormon studies. There are already amateurs in that field who are taken seriously, like Kerry Shirts, but while Mormons don't question his credibility, someone like beastie, just as one example, is asked, "what are your qualifications?" (At least by some, and for the record, as an initial critic of her website, I think she poses many unanswered questions that have direct implications for the belief that the Book of Mormon is historical.)
To be fair, the Tanners haven't been exempted from the "urge" to add "professor so-and-so" to anything they wish to be taken seriously, but this isn't by any means a phenomenon peculiar to them.
So what is the future of Mormonism? Will they trust the Prophets, or the Scholars?
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