Postmodernism and Mormonism: Part 6

[_mfbukowski]

If we step back for a minute, and look at the speech act, we are always communicating to a idealized audience. Assuming that we are perfect in our communication (which isn't the case), our audience will understand our intention to the extent that they (the real audience) resembles our idealized audience. With God, and the assumption of something resembling omniscience, God can (when speaking to a specific audience of one - a person, at a particular place and a particular time) make His idealized audience identical with the real audience. This is an aspect of communication on the part of God. That is, he can predetermine how a communication will be understood - i.e. how it is mediated by the person receiving it. This doesn't mean that it is perfect knowledge, or absolute truth, merely that the communication can be expressed in a way that the intention is fully realized in the audience.

I think this is a very interesting idea indeed. The important part of this, perhaps, is that even if an incoming message is perfectly tailored to the individual, like a radio signal, it still needs an operating "receiver" to correctly interpret the signal. I think the psychology of this all enters into the equation significantly as well.

....People do have epiphanies. They can change people incredibly. And this is hard to attribute merely to language. Within Mormonism, there is this stress on personal revelation that trumps all sorts of other language. Within the Book of Mormon, for example, it is Laman and Lemuel who ask for an interpretation of the vision. It is Nephi who asks for the vision - and the vision is the same (perhaps) as his fathers, but a completely different communicative act because Nephi is quite different from his father.

Taken to a reasonable conclusion (but much farther certainly than orthodoxy would be willing to go) pluralistic views of truth that allow for people to have radically different and even contradictory revelations of truth from God. I certainly embrace this idea. And this is where I would run smack into a wall with your professors that you mention below.

This is one of the reasons I think the Pragmatic philosophy of James and Dewey is so illuminating- it allows for pluralistic truths but yet leaves the possibility of a unifying "truth" which subsumes the others into a broader more general definition in a dialectical approach.

And I think it is clear that the whole approach of Alma 32 as well as the idea of "likening the scriptures" to our own situation is a very pragmatic approach.

"Ehyeh imach," says God to Moses out of the Burning Bush, "I will be with you"; and being-with is a postmodern theme, in three senses: We don't read alone. This means, first, that the text we read is not a naked text whose meaning displays itself to anyone who would see it. It is a text that speaks in certain ways to certain groups of people. We read with-others as part of some groups. That is a rabbinic rule of reading that is being repossessed by postmodern scholars. A second meaning is that, even when reading individually, we read with. As shown by late modern analysts of interpretation theory, we read with presuppositions. A text doesn't simply mean something, but means something with respect to the beliefs and pre-understandings which we bring to the text. Postmodern reading may be distinguished from modern reading, however, by its assumptions that there is an ultimate presupposition without which reading is not the reading we have in mind: namely, that we are reading with-God (even if Jewish readers are not accustomed to enunciating this partnership so explicitly.) This third meaning, we might say, is the biblical ssumption recovered by postmodern readers. We read with others, we read with our assumptions, and we read with God's presence.

This whole notion of "being with" I think also fits well with the Mormon view of the Godhead as seen as a "Social Trinity" with love and purpose as the unifying factor, (we are all in the "family " of God) and fits well with a John 17 interpretation of how we "sit in God's throne". I have said this before, but I think that when God is seen as a man, humanism becomes theology. I know that is a bit of a slogan, but it can be taken as a far-reaching truth as well. I already had my philosophical beliefs when I joined the church and I instantly saw the idea of a "human God" as an extension of those beliefs taken to their logical conclusion. We are all creators and participate in bringing order to the chaos of our own worlds.

And when I speak of how postmodernism and Mormonism are compatible, it isn't because Mormonism is somehow consistently postmodern (because it isn't), it is because Mormonism allows for such views, and even embraces the conflict that they create. I think it causes a healthy base for theological discussion and thought - although most people simply cannot tolerate that which they say as trying to nail jello to the wall.

But if anyone can nail jello, I think you have!

[_mfbukowski]

I think that in many ways, the church has two sides. Perhaps we can delineate between the Church and the Gospel (although many would not). Many members try their entire lives to harmonize all of it. I simply don't find it necessary to do so.I think that you can teach a fair amount of postmodern perspective from the pulpit (and I have) because its all in the presentation. By two sides, I mean that in embracing an open canon, it promoting personal revelation, we make a religion that is not (in its doctrine) tied to tradition and pre-understandings. Although, in its practice, it certainly is.

As a final point, despite the fact that you suggest that such views bring conflict (and they can), the church remains quite pluralistic behind the facade of unity. And (to use an example) Van Hale, despite his public claims to an ahistorical Book of Mormon remains an active, temple recommend holding believer. Despite having a reasonably well defined orthodoxy, we find many believers who don't fit that mold - and they continue to function within the church, and the plurality of views in the church adds to its viability instead of detracting from it. Likewise, my views have not prevented me from functioning or having a voice in the church.

I think also the more we have an intuitive understanding of the way language is used in the church it is possible to integrate these "two sides" into one. Runtu raised the question of if seeing things as they "really are" is compatible with post modernism and I think that for me there is no question that I see things as they "really are", which for me is a belief in pragmatic truth and my understanding of all that implies. That "really is" the way things are.

Let me give one example. I really believe there was "no death before the fall". I can embrace that whole-heartedly, though those words perhaps mean something different to me than they do to others. But guess what- ALL words mean different things to different people!

The way things "really are" to me is that "death" as humans define the word, could not have existed until there was the linguistic and cultural context of "death" as we humans understand it. The "fall" is a very real fall from grace in which we all participate not as our own personal "sin" but as part of the human condition; death is part of this human condition and even having an understanding of the notion requires a "fall" from innocence. Have you ever tried to explain to a two year old why his Mommy is not going to wake up?

So for me the idea that there was "no death before the fall" is a statement about language itself and is very nearly tautologous. Knowledge of good and evil is itself a fall from innocence.

But all that is another much longer story, I just wanted to illustrate my point that there are many ways to understand all this.

But that is indeed the way things "really are".