Presentism: It's fine except when it isn't

[_CaliforniaKid]

Unbelievers are often charged with judging historical events and characters through the lens of modern sensibilities. This is called "presentism". One argument claims, for example, that it's "presentism" to attack Joseph Smith for marrying teenage girls, since this was a common practice on the frontier in the early nineteenth century.

Yet if unbelievers are occasionally guilty of presentism, I'd suggest that presentism is deeply ingrained into the believing worldview. Presentism, according to Wikipedia, is simply "a mode of literary or historical analysis in which present-day ideas and perspectives are anachronistically introduced into depictions or interpretations of the past." Anachronistic moral judgments are a common form of presentism, but not the only one. I would suggest that believers are engaging in presentism every time they do any of the following:

1) replace the New Testament's sacrificial theology of atonement with their own pet theory
2) explain that the biblical commandment to "fear God" just means respect
3) read the creation story to mean metaphorical days
4) read the flood story as a limited flood
5) read Old Testament prophecies as if they refer to Jesus

And this is just barely scratching the surface. Really, I've never met any believer who didn't routinely use presentism as a hermeneutical strategy. Which means the use of the term as a polemical bludgeon against unbelievers is motivated not by actual historical conscientiousness, but by rhetorical expediency.

There are words for that.

[_Buffalo]

Excellent points. Mormonism is a highly presentist faith - which began with Joseph Smith imputing (then) present Methodist ideas about the nature of God and salvation onto a group of bronze-age Hebrew nomads travelling to the New World.

[_Fence Sitter]

CK,

Would using a recent definition of what constitutes doctrine to define what doctrine meant to people in the past, fit in with what you are saying?

[_DarkHelmet]

This is an excellent observation. In fact, most apologetic arguments are guilty of presentism. They take something embarassing and outdated and try to put a modern spin on it.

Also, I chuckle when anyone says it was perfectly normal to marry 14 year old girls back in Joseph Smith's time. If it was so normal, why were his contemporary peers disgusted by it? And how normal was it for a 14 year old to marry a 38 year old man who already had a wife and kids?

[_CaliforniaKid]

Would using a recent definition of what constitutes doctrine to define what doctrine meant to people in the past, fit in with what you are saying?

Yep.

[_CaliforniaKid]

Excellent points. Mormonism is a highly presentist faith - which began with Joseph Smith imputing (then) present Methodist ideas about the nature of God and salvation onto a group of bronze-age Hebrew nomads travelling to the New World.

Yep.

[_CaliforniaKid]

This is an excellent observation. In fact, most apologetic arguments are guilty of presentism. They take something embarassing and outdated and try to put a modern spin on it.

Also, I chuckle when anyone says it was perfectly normal to marry 14 year old girls back in Joseph Smith's time. If it was so normal, why were his contemporary peers disgusted by it? And how normal was it for a 14 year old to marry a 38 year old man who already had a wife and kids?

Yep.

[_Sethbag]

Watch a primary child recite the 6th Article of Faith and then look me in the eye and tell me the whole concept and understanding of that claim by LDS isn't presentist both root and branch.

[_krose]

I think Smith engaged in extreme presentism when he created an ancient people who followed the future teachings of a future messiah, and debated the same issues that concerned 19th-century Americans (infant baptisms, secret societies, etc.).

[_Sethbag]

Adam was a Mormon.
Abraham was a Mormon.
King David was a Mormon.
Jesus Christ was a Mormon.
Peter the apostle, and his comrades, were all Mormons.
Paul, ie: Saul of Tarsus was a Mormon.
Nephi and Lehi were Mormons.
Laman and Lemuel were disgruntled ex-Mormon apostates.
Alma was a Mormon.
The Sons of Helaman were all righteous young Mormons.
3rd Nephi was a Mormon. ;-)
Mormon was a Mormon.
Moroni was a Mormon.

It really doesn't get any more presentist than this staple of the LDS worldview.

ps: by "Mormon" I mean a member of what LDS imagine to be the one and only true church, which they believe has always more or less existed except during periods of apostasy, and of which they believe the modern "Mormon" church to be a continuation. Adam and all of those down the line are Mormons in the sense that they possessed the two things that Mormons identify as inherently Mormon: the "real" Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the real Priesthood, which is synonymous with Mormon religious legitimacy.