Kishkumen wrote:If you want to see it as pretty mainstream, that's cool with me. In my view, it is more of an newly emerging micro-trend than a mainstream, well-accepted position.
It was widely discussed in the Morm-Ant mailing list in the mid 90's when Brent Metcalf, Bill Hamblin and others were members. So while I guess we can debate how accepted it is (and with what group) it's most definitely not new. Among most apologists I've talked with it's been well known and largely accepted since I was in college volunteering at FARMS in the early 90's.
But I guess in the big picture that's largely beside the point. I truly try to deal with the evidence in as honest way as possible. The evidence for masonic/hermetic influence is overwhelming. I think anyone denying that is avoiding evidence.
Kishkumen wrote:But, the truth is that we have seen something of a change in the way D. Michael Quinn's work on magic, or John L. Brooke's work on Hermeticism and alchemy, etc., have been received by Mormon scholars.
Well I thought and continue to think that Quinn's book was poorly done for a variety of reasons. It was very much a scatter gun approach. I remember a lot of people comparing it to Nibley's work with a lot of the same types of flaws. That's not to deny that many of the things he found were important. They were. It's just the discussion of them was in my opinion lacking. Brooke's was vastly better although it did honestly have some embarrassingly bad parts. (The idea that the Kirtland bank failure was tied up with hermeticism is something even few of the strong Brooke fans think is good - at least I've never found a defender for that section) However around the time those came out there were people looking at the issues in a more rigorous fashion. It's been going on for quite some time.
That said I don't deny that Brooke in particular is well regarded by historians. Juvenile Instructor had a retrospective panel (or was that MHA?) a year or so ago. It ushered in a broader reconsideration of American history that I think was quite fruitful. So people went looking at the influence of broad hermetic, masonic, and spiritualist influences on many 19th century figures like Poe and others. I don't know if it's still in print but there was even a journal focused on the topic for quite some time. Several very interesting books came out of the movement.
I think Quinn's magic book has looked worse over time primarily due to just not having a broader theoretical scaffolding to make sense of the parallels he was finding. It was made worse by the intervening decades being a flourishing of a lot of good work on magic and alternative religions in the medieval through late modern eras.
Of course those are my own views. Other disagree with me. In particular I know many people think Brooke is better than I think it was. And of course we have to distinguish between the broad Mormon history crowd and the broad apologetic crowd. While there is a lot of overlap they really are different groups. Also I'll fully admit that for a decade or so I really wasn't involved in apologetics - primarily due to time issues. So I can't really speak to much in say the era from say 98 through maybe 2008. Even now I don't read apologetics as much as I'd like. So I fully acknowledge a lot of blind areas. The period in the mid to late 90's though I was much more involved with first FARMS and later FAIR.
In the Classic-FARMS days, such works were the targets of lengthy, withering criticism.
I think the history is a bit more complex, although FARMS always had a problem with their reviews in that they often focused on what they disagreed with rather than giving a broader treatment of the book and issues. In particular I'm pretty sympathetic to the Quinn criticisms. But again we have to distinguish the issues, when good arguments are made, from the issues when bad arguments are made. Again, just going by the discussions at the old Morm-Ant, there were plenty of believers and apologists engaging with the issues and offering much stronger arguments than were appearing in the pages of Sunstone or Quinn's books. Even the main FARMS criticism of Brooke, while unbalanced, I think makes some compelling points. The point of dispute ends up being how one reads Brooke particularly to the degree one takes him as offering the explanation of Mormon conclusions. If one reads him as making that claim then I think many of the criticisms of Hamblin, Peterson and company get at a problem. If one reads him more as offering one of many influences that underdetermine Joseph's views, then much of the criticism in the FARMS review falls flat. In particular, while I accept many of the influences Brookes pushes some claims fall flat in my opinion. I don't think he really makes a terribly compelling case for mother in heaven theology coming out of hermeticism for instance. And again the counterfeiting issue with the Kirtland Bank falls flat. I also think that while Brooke does much, much better in the theoretical scaffolding than Quinn, he still has the problem of pretty vague terms like magic. I think the more recent move by people like Steve Flemming to narrow things to say theurgical platonism is much more helpful. (Of course theurgy influenced hermeticism and masonry, but narrowing ones topic and being more clear in categories leads to much tighter arguments)
None of this is to disparage Brooke. I think his book was a key shift in American history and particularly Mormon history. Ditto Quinn for all his books faults. But I'm not sure that means the flaws aren't there. But to be completely fair, it's typical of books ushering in a new way to think about things to overreach, use overly ambiguous categories, and end up having problems.
Where I disagree is just that I think apologists were more attentive to the real issues of the broad esoteric Renaissance tradition that includes masonry, hermeticism, platonism, and so forth. I just think a problem in the early era of this in Mormonism was an attempt to explain too much. To give an example, the shift to a material composition of spirits could be seen in the renaissance tradition - particularly with thinkers like Telesio - it's probably more easier explained by Joseph and others reading discussions of Tertullian's stoicism. Indeed a lot of the phraseology such as "more fine" comes right out of discussions of neo-stoic interpretations of the Trinity. And much of Orson Pratt's later theology in the 1950's has eery similarities to such conceptions right down to how the aether is treated.
Back when I was associated with FAIR in the 90's I certainly engaged with such issues including non-hermetic renaissance figures like Telesio and others. (In those days the web site was just getting going and most of ones work as a FAIR volunteer consisted of answering emailed questions)