When You Sum(As,e)--repost

The following post is a combination of three posts originally published on rationalfaiths.com. The graphics and formatting might work better on the rationalfaiths website. I encourage reading and commenting there (the posts are more manageable sizes, too), but I'm reposting the whole thing here primarily for and MTA members who might be interested. (As additional information, I will be posting the third Monday of every month over at rationalfaiths, and several of my projected posts this year relate to Mormon Transhumanism.)

http://rationalfaiths.com/when-you-assume/
http://rationalfaiths.com/multiverse-shapes-laws/
http://rationalfaiths.com/infinite-assumptions/
 

You've probably heard the saying: "When you assume . . . you make a sum of As and e." For you non-chemists, that would be arsenic plus one electron making an arsenic ion with a charge of negative one. That's not a very stable ion, so it's not really found in nature, thus the saying makes it clear that assuming is pretty unstable grounds for anyone to base life choices on.
You're telling me you heard a different version of that saying? Oh well, you get the point. Except that's not my point.

Everybody assumes. Assumptions underlie all our strongest convictions. No one is exempt. In fact, much of our war of words--the battle some wage between science and religion, between liberal and conservative, between literal believer and symbolic believer, between whole-hearted supporter and loving critic of the Brethren--is an often unrecognized war of assumptions. I want to frame for you, hopefully in a new way, different assumptions we make about the universe and about God. Many of the assumptions about the universe are currently discussed by working cosmologists. Many of the assumptions about God have been discussed for millennia. Most of the assumptions I favor are shaped by Joseph Smith and Mormonism. Some of the assumptions might be testable, soon, and others never will be directly testable. Why might you care about these assumptions? From certain assumptions, Science can disprove God. From other assumptions, Science can't teach you anything about God and Faith. From still others, Science reveals God, or at least aspects of God, to us. Do you want Science and God to be at war? Do you want Science and God to be separate realms of understanding? Do you want Science to prove or disprove God's existence? Do you want Science to reveal God's glory? Do you want Science to assist religion in teaching you to become gods? Do you simply want to know what's true, or what's good? What science does for (or to) religion depends implicitly on assumptions each of us makes about Science and about God.

In the following posts I'm not going to argue much for or against a particular set of assumptions, and I'll only give hints of the consequences of making certain assumptions, or of prioritizing certain assumptions over others. I am going to lay out, as best I can, some of the unproven, and in many cases unprovable, assumptions that we can and must make about the nature of existence. Which assumptions you choose affect such things as your belief in God, your willingness to learn new things, and your prioritization of ethical choices--like how you balance the giving of your time and resources to temple and missionary work or helping the poor. We all make these assumptions, even if we don't recognize or acknowledge them. They shape and are shaped by both our thoughts and our feelings. So take a walk with me through a tangle of assumptions and see if you can't figure out just what you take for granted about reality.

The Outline

I'm going to summarize my next three posts right here. Part 1 will appear over the next two days. Parts 2 and 3 will follow in a month. If I've piqued your curiosity, come back tomorrow for a second helping.

1. Assumptions about the Universe
   1. Universe or Multiverse?
   2. Finite or Infinite?
      • Flat or Curved
      • Finite numbers of forces and subatomic particles, or not
      • Big and Small (and Infinite) Infinities
      • Variation among universes
      • Something between/surrounding universes, or not
   3.  Assumptions about Evidence
      • Only objective, only subjective, or a mix
      • What mix is acceptable/admissible
2. Assumptions about God
   1. Limited or unlimited knowledge, power, or presence
      • What is the nature of the limitations
   2. Assumptions about God's purposes
      • Assumptions about the best ways to achieve those purposes
   3. One God or family of Gods
      • Nature of God's family
   4. Human interaction with God
      • How involved is God, and how is God involved
3. Conclusions: We all make assumptions, whether we identify them explicitly or not. Those assumptions bear on such important matters as our belief in God, how we react to new learning, how we feel about good and evil in the world, and how and where we devote our time and resources. For me, it's worth taking the time to explore and evaluate these assumptions consciously, and you are invited to join me or observe my exploration.

The three, nested Klein bottles shown in the image have only one side, like a Möbius strip--the outside is continuous with the inside (although a topologist would tell you that this is only an approximation and that a Klein bottle cannot really be made in our three dimensions--thanks, Dad, for the clarification). Our universe could be flat, or it could have an odd, topological shape like the Klein bottle, only in more dimensions. If this were so, with a powerful enough telescope, we might look off into the distance and see our past selves, just in a mirror image. If you want to learn more about this, I recommend How the Universe Got Its Spots by Janna Levin. It's a fun, accessible read about ideas in modern cosmology. She wrote it so her mother could understand her work.
In this second part of my discussion of cosmic assumptions, I introduce questions about the numbers, shapes, sizes, and compositions of universes. See the introductory post, here.

1. Assumptions about the Universe
   1. Universe or Multiverse?
   2. Finite or Infinite?
      • Flat or Curved
      • Finite numbers of forces and subatomic particles, or not
      • Big and Small (and Infinite) Infinities
      • Variation among universes
      • Something between/surrounding universes, or not
   3.  Assumptions about Evidence
      • Only objective, only subjective, or a mix
      • What mix is acceptable/admissible
2. Assumptions about God
   1. Limited or unlimited knowledge, power, or presence
      • What is the nature of the limitations
   2. Assumptions about God's purposes
      • Assumptions about the best ways to achieve those purposes
   3. One God or family of Gods
      • Nature of God's family
   4. Human interaction with God
      • How involved is God, and how is God involved
3. Conclusions: We all make assumptions, whether we identify them explicitly or not. Those assumptions bear on such important matters as our belief in God, how we react to new learning, how we feel about good and evil in the world, and how and where we devote our time and resources. For me, it's worth taking the time to explore and evaluate those assumptions consciously, and you are invited to join me or observe my journey through this and subsequent blog posts.

Assumptions about the Universe

The purpose of this post is simply to examine a number of assumptions made in the realm of physics. Theological assumptions and the practical and ethical consequences of various assumptions must be saved for later posts.

Universe or Multiverse?

An artist's representation of one mainstream model of the progression of universes. Many parts are generally accepted among physicists, while some details are extrapolated from current understandings.

The first question to answer is, what is the universe? Right from this point the language gets messy and the assumptions multiply. Most often, the universe is used to mean the space and time that we live in and can observe, and the stuff beyond our observation that can interact with our observable universe in "normal" ways. I'm going to call that the observable universe. Some people assume that the observable universe is all there is. Many other physicists think it likely that there is existence beyond our universe. They postulate many universes which they call the multiverse. These other universes could arise in a number of different ways, and be connected to or separated from our universe in various ways. There are a few groups of theories about the nature of the multiverse, and while we can't (currently) know which is most correct, just the concept itself influences what are the most logical conclusions about God and about the meaning of life.

Finite or infinite?

I think most modern people think about space and time as going on forever. Because of this you hear arguments like, "With infinite time and space, everything that can happen, will happen, someplace." This is then used to rebut "Intelligent Design" arguments that human life is too complex to have arisen by chance. It's a patently obvious argument. There are only four forces that govern our entire universe. There is a finite number of subatomic particles that make up everything in our observable universe (ignoring for now dark matter and energy, or at least assuming that they are made of a finite number of things). This means that if time and space go on long enough, literally every combination of the things that make up our universe will be tried by the universe just from randomly combining. One of the most peculiarly Mormon hymns celebrates our knowledge that "there is no end to space", and "no outer curtain where nothing has a place". But this argument is only true if our observable universe, or ones very much like it, are infinite. (Side note: I don't like Intelligent Design. Really. A lot. It makes God way too small for me. I also suspect this argument that everything will happen in infinite time and space is flawed, but that's mostly for a future post.)

Flat or curved?

Time and space could be infinite. They could also be finite. It can be argued that time, as we know it, had a beginning with the Big Bang, and that it will have an end with the end of our universe. What about space? Think about our earth. When you go for a long walk, or even drive across country, the world seems basically flat with a bunch of bumps and dips all over it. But we know that if you keep heading in the same direction for long enough you will come back to where you started. The earth is round. The earth is finite. The universe might be round, too. Or it might be a 3-dimensional Moebius strip, or doughnut, or any number of other shapes. The nested Klein bottles (or 3D representation of them) shown in the featured picture show how complex the shape of the universe might be, but living inside it the complexities could be hidden and hard to discern. When it comes to the observable universe, all we know is that it is close to flat for as far as we can see, but there are scientific reasons to ask if the universe might be curved just beyond what we can see, and even theories about what evidence we should look for to answer this question. Time and space in our observable universe might be finite or infinite.

How many forces and particles?

Only 17 known elementary particles. While there are a lot of ways to put these together--more than you or I could count in many lifetimes--the possibilities are still finite.

There are four (and possibly only one) forces that govern how everything behaves in our observable universe. There is a finite number of elementary particles that make up everything in our universe. Is our universe, even if it is infinite in space, time, and/or matter, finite in the ways space, time, and matter can be arranged and interact? Or is there infinitely more complexity as we get smaller and smaller and bigger and bigger, forever? I don't know. No one does, but we actually have some very plausible guesses as regards our observable universe. Unfortunately, that doesn't tell us much about other universes. Does every universe have the same four forces? And if they do, do the forces have the same strengths in the other universes? How about the numbers and types of particles? As far as I know, physicists have not arrived at a fundamental reason why our universe had to have these particular forces tuned just like they are, or these particular particles. And it's possible that intelligent life could emerge or exist in universes with other laws. How many sets of laws can result in intelligent life? Just one, or infinitely many? I lean toward believing the latter, or at least something a lot bigger than one. What do you think?

Tomorrow

I  apologize for cutting this post off in the middle, but I'm at the end of my wife's attention span (for this kind of stuff, anyway), and that is my rule of thumb for post length. Next time I'll continue with the discussion of the multiverse and some thoughts about just how big (and small) infinity might be.

In this third part of my discussion of cosmic assumptions, I explain that not all infinities are created equal. I discuss different sizes of infinity, variation among universes, and assumptions we make about evidence.  See the introductory post, here, and the follow up post, here.

1. Assumptions about the Universe
   1. Universe or Multiverse?
   2. Finite or Infinite?
      • Flat or Curved
      • Finite numbers of forces and subatomic particles, or not
      • Big and Small (and Infinite) Infinities
      • Variation among universes
      • Something between/surrounding universes, or not
   3.  Assumptions about Evidence
      • Only objective, only subjective, or a mix
      • What mix is acceptable/admissible
2. Assumptions about God
   1. Limited or unlimited knowledge, power, or presence
      • What is the nature of the limitations
   2. Assumptions about God's purposes
      • Assumptions about the best ways to achieve those purposes
   3. One God or family of Gods
      • Nature of God's family
   4. Human interaction with God
      • How involved is God, and how is God involved
3. Conclusions: We all make assumptions, whether we identify them explicitly or not. Those assumptions bear on such important matters as our belief in God, how we react to new learning, how we feel about good and evil in the world, and how and where we devote our time and resources. For me, it's worth taking the time to explore and evaluate those assumptions consciously, and you are invited to join me or observe my journey through this and subsequent blog posts.

Variation among universes

The questions I ended yesterday's post with are ones we have to ask about every possible universe, if there is more than one. Are the numbers of universes infinite, or finite? Is there stuff between the universes, or does nothing exist except where there are universes? Are other universes finite or infinite? Do other universes obey the same laws and have the same subatomic particles as our universe? All of these are currently unanswerable questions, but the ways we think about God, religion, and any number of other things implicitly affirm certain subsets of assumptions and deny the possibility of others. Extrapolating back to our implicit assumptions can reveal inconsistencies in our beliefs. One of the most disconcerting is revealed when we think about there being no end to time and space in our universe--something many of us assume--and also accept the idea that there are multiple universes. Is it even possible for there to be two, infinite universes? If a universe is infinite, doesn't it reach everywhere? And if it reaches everywhere, wouldn't two, infinite universes overlap each other in time and space, and be one universe? The answer to these questions is no.

A line can be infinite and still be infinitely smaller than a plane. This heirarchy of infinities has no end, in theory. Whether it has a practical end in our cosmos is an open question.

Big and Small Infinities

Different sizes of infinities is not an idea that cosmologists or mathematicians struggle with, but the rest of us don't always find it so natural. Infinities come in different sizes. They come in vastly different sizes. Imagine infinitely many libraries. How many books are in those libraries? How many pages? Letters? Ink molecules? Atoms? Getting the idea? But this doesn't begin to show the scope. There are infinities so big that other infinities might as well be zero, when you put them next to each other. In the limit approaching infinity (you probably can't really get there), some other infinities are zero. And there are potentially infinitely many sizes of infinity. Our Cosmos (that's what I'll call the sum of everything that is) might be made up of finities and infinities nested inside of each other, with some being so big that others vanish in insignificance, while others are so close in size that they have to share importance equally. The accompanying figure is intended to help you grasp this idea visually. First take an infinite series of points, sort of like counting by 1's from negative infinity to positive infinity. That's a lot of counting, but it doesn't compare to the number of points in a continuous line spanning that same range. And a line is infinitely smaller than an infinite plane. Add a third dimension, and you are infinitely bigger. Is there an end? I don't know. I think some really smart people would be surprised that their beliefs carry implicit assumptions about infinity that might not be true, or at least don't support their religious (or anti-religious) conclusions. What do your beliefs imply about the infinities of the Cosmos? I'll come back to that question in the future as we think about various understandings of Mormon Gods. Until then, maybe just try to get used to the idea that infinity comes in many sizes.

Evidence

Nearly certain knowledge results when all our sources of evidence agree. When various sources disagree or are silent, we can have many different reactions. A few of the possibilities are shown in this figure.

One key factor influencing individuals' beliefs is the nature of acceptable evidence. Most of us generally believe scientific data, with varying degrees of common sense scepticism. We are influenced by our expertise, our emotional investment in the subject, and our confidence in the practitioners or reporters of the science. Where we take issue is primarily in interpretation. Whether we can identify them or not, we are at least vaguely aware that scientific interpretation is influenced by human biases and methodological biases. For example, someone like me gives more weight to the professional opinions of LDS Egyptologists regarding the Book of Abraham than to Egyptologists who haven't shown a deep (or even passable) understanding of Mormonism. It's a bias I like. Another way we select our biases is in accepting or rejecting personal, subjective experience as credible evidence. Typically, people accept a level of subjective experience as evidence, but require checks and balances on its credibility. We require multiple witnesses in court. We require multiple labs to reproduce results on important findings. We require ourselves, as researchers, to replicate results multiple times in an attempt to reduce instrumental error and subjective, human error. Some psychological research must accept personal experience as real because that is the reality being studied. Where we divide is when scientifically objective reality and subjective personal experience conflict--or appear to.

I am not a cosmologist. I am not a climatologist. I am not an evolutionary biologist. I am a biophysicist, so I have many of the tools to understand and partially evaluate the explanations of these groups when their claims interest or influence me. So I make judgments about evolution, global warming, and the size and nature of the universe based on expert reports.

I am not a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator. I did not know Jesus or Joseph Smith personally. I am not a theologian, nor am I a historian of religion. I have received answers to prayers and had experiences where I believe truth was revealed to me. My grandparents' grandparents knew Joseph Smith, personally. I've read a fair amount, including a modest amount of theology, philosophy, and history. In other words, I have some of the tools to evaluate the claims of professionals and prophets. I have my own witness, but I also trust my grandfather's testimony who knew and trusted his grandfather, who personally knew and trusted Joseph Smith. It's third hand trust, but it's trust earned by lifetimes of demonstrated goodness, intelligence, and love. I trust these personal, subjective experiences. I claim them as evidence, for me. There are at least two other ways to treat these evidences: claim them as evidence for everyone, or reject them as evidence for anyone. Rejecting them for the purposes of scientific study does not require me to reject them as true, only as objective. What evidence do you accept? What checks and balances have you applied to it? These are questions I think you can't ever stop asking if you aspire to eternal progression.

Unsettl(ed/ing) Science

Most of the assumptions I've identified so far are real, undecided questions in Science. Many of them will possibly never be decided, because pushing back the boundaries of the unknown will only reveal another level that leaves the same questions open--just in a different way. This can be unsettling and disconcerting enough that people react with strong emotion. Some doggedly assert that, even if there is reality beyond what we can observe, it is unethical to use that reality as grounds for deciding what we should do here and now. Others tell themselves, if scientists can't even agree amongst themselves, I don't need to pay any attention to them. I can just decide that my church, or my personal experiences are right without any reference to what has been measured scientifically. I hope most of us make an effort to find the most productive, middle ground to live in, even if it is harder or less certain.

Next Month

I'll give those interested a little time for these ideas to settle. Next month I'll pick up with assumptions we make about God and how God interacts with the observable universe, and I'll try to connect the assumptions we make about the Cosmos to real, everyday ethical choices that confront us.

My Mormon response to biblical authorship hypotheses

After writing this three different ways, here is the best and least dogmatic. I don't give references, but I will identify or insert them upon request.

Here are some dominant hypotheses on biblical authorship:

The Pentateuch was written by at least three authors, J, E, and D, and it was edited during or after the Babylonian captivity.

Isaiah was written by two and possibly three authors, with at least one of them during or after the Babylonian captivity.

The Sermon on the Mount was constructed from a sayings document and wasn't ever give by Jesus in one place (or maybe at all).

What problems does this cause me as a Mormon?

I have to explain 2^nd Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. I have to explain the Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Mormon. This has contributed to some interesting and intelligent analyses of what Joseph Smith meant when he thought he was translating. One is Blake Ostler's expansion hypothesis—the Book of Mormon really had ancient records, but while Joseph Smith was translating, God inspired him to insert other passages that weren't on the plates. It's also contributed to Brandt Gardner's view that the translation process was rather loose, with God communicating ideas that were on the plates into sometimes completely different language than the ancient authors would have used. I've heard other people reconcile these, and other, problems by viewing the translation process as channeling. I think this is supported at least superficially by Joseph's translations of other documents.

I don't happen to like any of these explanations. I believe too many things about the Book of Mormon. I believe it was written by real, ancient prophets. I believe that Nephi actually had the writings of Isaiah and copied them over onto his plates. I believe Jesus really visited the Americas and gave a sermon like the Sermon on the Mount. I believe that Joseph Smith really believed he was transcribing into English the writings of the ancient prophets and that, even though he mostly never looked at the golden plates, he believed he was communicating what was on them. He says he took the title page from the last plate.

Why is it a problem for me to give up these beliefs in favor of something that's more symbolic and agrees with predominant scholarly views of biblical authorship? Here are three reasons:

1. The best objective, statistical, language use analysis of the Book of Mormon (performed by multiple authors only one of which was LDS) shows that Nephi and Alma, at least, are two different authors and that neither is Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, or Solomon Spaulding. Criticisms have been published of this work that leave a small amount of room for error, but do not effectively refute the results. Other published studies contradicting the conclusion of multiple authorship, or supposedly supporting 19^th century authorship, have easily identified and demonstrated flaws in their methodology. I understand enough statistics to come to this conclusion myself, and I'm willing to help anyone else who wants to read the papers see how I arrived at my conclusion and come to their own better informed conclusion. That's a serious offer, but I warn you that you will have to do homework.
2. Royal Skousen's work on the original and printers manuscripts of the Book of Mormon best supports a tight control over the translation, where Joseph Smith was given the words and phrases that he should speak, sometimes including the specific spelling of names, and other times including really awkward English constructions that were removed in later copies.
3. The historical evidence is that Joseph Smith and his contemporaries believed he was translating the actual words written on golden plates, even though he wasn't looking at the plates most of the time. They also believed that these words were written by real, historical people. Joseph said he met Moroni, at least, and stories are that he met other ancient prophets. Multiple witnesses attest to the existence of golden plates with writing on them. Joseph's enemies believed he had the plates and went to some lengths to relieve him of them.

None of these evidences rule out the views of Blake Ostler, Brandt Gardner, or others, but they do give me reason to doubt them. They also give other Latter-day Saints reason to doubt these more symbolic views of the translation process. I fall, at least superficially, into the conservative, Sunday School view of Book of Mormon translation. To me it seems to make God as much of an elaborate deceiver as he would need to be for the earth to only be 12,000 years old. Why make it appear to Joseph Smith like he was translating an ancient text from multiple authors, and put in statistical and historical evidence to back that up, when what was really happening was God was constructing a book in some other way? I don't like that God any more than I like the God of Intelligent Design.

So I've put in a little effort to understand just how seriously I should be taking the biblical scholarship. I haven't come to a final conclusion, yet, but what I have concluded is that someone else is going to have to do this job if they want me to believe differently about Book of Mormon and Biblical authorship. Here, in brief, are my current hypotheses for biblical authorship:

Some single author wrote the Pentateuch (carefully crafted from older, oral traditions) and it was edited during or after the Babylonian captivity.

Some single author wrote Isaiah and it was edited during or after the Babylonian captivity.

Jesus really gave the Sermon on the Mount.

What biblical scholarship do I have to ignore to believe this? None that I'm aware of. There are serious scholars who believe each of these things, even if they are in the minority. I just have to believe a minority view, not ignore a majority one. Believing these things also allows me to not hypothesize documents that no one has found. I don't have to invent original Jahwistic and Elohistic authors who haven't left any records behind. I don't have to look for a 1^st Isaiah without a 2^nd Isaiah (although I'm fine if people keep looking. Ancient documents are cool). I don't have to invent a sayings document that hasn't been found. I also don't have to reject Joseph Smith's more literal view of how he translated the Book of Mormon.

So what's my point? To you believing LDS biblical scholars—don't assume that you can rely on the authority of predominant scholarly views to convince thoughtful, well read, academically inclined Latter-day Saints to view the scriptures as you do. You have your work cut out. If you think we would benefit from believing the Documentary Hypothesis or one of its offshoots, you need to do a lot better job of making explanations of the hypothesis more accessible to interested Mormon readers. That's a harder job than for an audience that doesn't believe in the Book of Mormon. You aren't just fighting fundamentalist prejudices, you are fighting statistical and historical evidences that are about as strong as they come. You may be able to deal with these evidences and preserve the dominant source critical hypotheses, but you can't rely on non-Mormon scholars to do that job for you. Alternatively, you could take these evidences of the Book of Mormon seriously in the ways I and some Book of Mormon scholars do, and let it shape your biblical scholarship. I know of at least one Isaiah scholar (Avraham Gileadi) and one New Testament scholar (Wilfred Griggs) that have done this and made successful careers of it. I don't know that they were right to do so, but they've impressed me. You'd be exploring minority views, and you'd have to work a lot harder to get anyone to listen to you, publish you, or give you tenure. That said, if I were a betting man I'd bet that scholarship that goes against a mostly literal view the Book of Mormon won't last. I'll keep reading biblical scholarship, when it interest me, but if you want me, and others like me, to keep listening to you, you've got to meet us more than half way. I tried going the other way, and it's too much work for too little reward.

Christ in the New Testament

My third biblical studies book review is An Introduction to New Testament Christology by Raymond Brown. I love it, so this is going to be a very long review. I'm going to focus on the approaches we take to scripture as illustrated in the book. If you want to know what else it talks about, you'll need to go read the book. I give it two thumbs up. Now on to my disjointed review.

Raymond Brown begins quite early to describe different approaches to understanding Christ, or Christology. Besides identifying High and Low Christology (High discusses the divinity of Christ, while Low rejects or ignores it), Brown sweepingly categorizes approaches into five categories: Nonscholarly Conservatism, Nonscholarly Liberalism, Scholarly Liberalism, Bultmannian Existentialism, and Scholarly (Moderate) Conservatism. Of course these don't capture all the nuances that Brown is aware of, but they describe some trends and camps that it can be useful for the student to understand. I'll provide a few excerpts about the various groups.

The Divisions

Nonscholarly Conservatism

Even though the Gospels were Written some 30 to 70 years after the ministry of Jesus, they are assumed to be verbatim accounts of what was said in Jesus’ lifetime.

In other words, everything in the Gospels is assumed to be exactly what happened. While most of us Mormons aren't fundamentalists--particularly not regarding the Bible--this is an approach we often implicitly take, unless we have somehow been trained or trained ourselves to look more critically. Fortunately, it works for understanding lots of good things.

Nonscholarly Liberalism

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the view that there is no continuity between Jesus’ self-evaluation and the exalted Christology of the NT documents. Such liberalism dismisses NT christology as unimportant or as a distortion, and has often been closely associated with the thesis that Jesus was just an ethical instructor or social reformer who was mistakenly proclaimed to be divine by overenthusiastic or confused followers (with Paul sometimes seen as the chief instigator).

These two camps have had much rather unfortunate interplay that we see in many, if not most, public presentations of religion.

On the conservative side, as I have explained, many Protestants reflect the reaction of an earlier generation to the destructive aspects of radical biblical criticism; and most Catholics remain unaware that their church and its scholars have moved beyond views taught in catechism in the first part of the 20th century. On the liberal side, there is a tendency to invoke what the latest scholars are supposedly saying, according to reports in the media. Despite the differences among scholars I shall desciibe below, their efforts pay tribute to the truth that christology is so important an issue for religious adherence that one should not express judgments without seriously looking at the evidence.

Scholarly Liberalism

This differs from nonscholarly liberalism in several important ways. It recognizes that the NT is shot through with christology from beginning to end and that its authors claimed far more than that Jesus was a moralizer or a social reformer. Nevertheless, as the classification “liberalism” implies, it does not accept the high christological evaluations of Jesus in the NT as standing in real continuity with his self-evaluation. In short, high christological evaluations are regarded as mistaken.

I should explain what Brown means by continuity. He means, did Christians in the time of Paul believe the same things as Christians in the time of Jesus, and did Jesus actually teach the things (and mean the things in the way they were interpreted) that the first Christians believed? The question is, did Christian thought change (it did), and if so, how did it change?

Scholarly liberalism has also influenced many who lean toward the views of nonscholarly liberalism. This is the kind of thinking that is pervasive in internet discussions of Mormonism, with varying degrees of usefulness.

Somewhere in between nonscholarly liberalism and scholarly liberalism is the view of those who have read scholarly liberal works (the weaknesses of which they do not subject to suflìcient criticism) but whose view of Jesus is really determined more by their reaction to the suffocating fundamentalism in which they were raised.

I'm sorry to say this flatters neither the individual nor the culture that raised them.

Returning to the scholarly views, Brown makes this observation regarding their beliefs:

The historical Jesus was, in fact, a preacher of stark ethical demand who challenged the religious institutions and the false ideas of his time. His ideals and insights were not lost because the community imposed on its memory of him a christology that turned him into the heavenly Son of Man, the Lord, and Judge of the World-indeed, into a God. Without that aggrandizement he and his message would have been forgotten. But if in centuries past such a christological crutch was necessary to keep the memory of Jesus operative, in the judgment of the liberal scholars that crutch could now be discarded. Modern scholarship, it is claimed, can detect the real Jesus and hold onto him without the christological trappings.

Brown, himself, doesn't fall into this camp (he's a Catholic Monk), but he takes their scholarship seriously and has sifted through it--I like to think on behalf of those of us who believe and are unwilling to wade through the sludge of unwarranted assumptions made by unbelievers. My thanks go out to him for this work.

Bultmannian Existentialism

It's hard for me to describe this coherently, although Brown and Sanders both taught me something about it in their respective books. Bultmann (and some of his contemporaries and followers) accepted the methods of the 19th and early 20th century liberal scholars, but rejected their rejection of high christology. They downplayed, however, the literalness of much of the NT message in favor of emphasizing the importance of what we Mormons might describe as the Atonement in modern life. It doesn't really matter if certain events or sayings literally happened or came unmodified from Jesus. The challenge to find salvation applies to us, today, and Jesus and his message (whether from Jesus or from the early Christians) are powerful messages to help humanity. Will we accept the great things God has done for us, rather than rely on our own powers as advocated by scholarly liberalism? (That's my best attempt at translating what I learned, but I warn you it may be seriously flawed)

Scholarly (Moderate) Conservatism

. . . they posit a christology in the ministry of Jesus himself. They would be divided on whether that christology was explicit or implicit. Explicit christology would involve a self-evaluation in which Jesus employed titles 0r designations already known in Jewish circles. Implicit christology would relegate such titles and designations to early church usage but would attribute to Jesus himself attitudes and actions that implied an exalted status which was made explicit after his death.

Explicit christology, which seemed to be fading, got new life in the late 20th century. “Son of Man” remains a title that many scholars think Jesus used of himself. “Messiah” remains a title that others may have used of him during his lifetime, whether or not he accepted the designation.

These scholars may only be conservative relative to liberal scholars, but the ongoing differences of opinion among scholars about such fundamental views of Christ is something to keep in mind. When people claim "broad scholarly consensus" on a New Testament issue, unless they are talking about something very specific and limited, it seems like good advice to take some care in accepting the assertion--even if it comes from an expert. To quote Brown:

This survey shows that scholarship has come to no universally accepted positions on the relationship of Jesus’ christology to that of his followers, except that the extreme positions on either end of the spectrum (no difference, no continuity) have fewer and fewer advocates.

Topics

Jesus' Omniscience

One of the most interesting discussions early in Brown's book was that of Jesus' knowledge of things. Since Jesus was God, did he know everything during his mortal life? As Mormons we don't find it hard to answer no because Joseph Smith put Jesus' growth in wisdom and stature, line upon line, into the Doctrine and Covenants, giving us a second witness on the subject. The New Testament doesn't provide such a simple solution. Brown illustrated how what is shown in the New Testament can be used to answer this question. He showed passages where Jesus displayed knowledge beyond what could have been available to his senses, and passages where Jesus seemed to lack knowledge. I'm still getting used to how scholars like Brown and Sanders collate and interpret the various evidences in such potentially meaningful ways. Brown doesn't answer the question, but he does show the New Testament evidence that one must deal with to come up with a intellectually responsible answer, and gives some hints as to how different people have answered the question. Here is part of Brown's summary:

This chapter has reviewed a range of the ordinary and religious knowledge manifested in the Gospel accounts of Jesus, and throughout there were signs of limitation. Those who depend on a theological a priori argument that, because Jesus was “true God of true God,” he had to know all things, have a difficult task in explaining such limitations. They must resort to the thesis that he hid what he knew and deliberately manifested limitations in order not to confuse or astound his hearers. That explanation limps, for his hearers are portrayed as confused and amazed in any case. Since there is at least one recorded statement where Jesus says that the Son does not know, most biblical scholars will not accept such an explanation and will query the validity of the a priori claim for omniscience.

On the other side of the picture, even in the partial range of Jesus’ sayings considered thus far, there is real difficulty for those who assume that Jesus presented himself as just another human being. Under (A) we saw traditions that Jesus manifested knowledge beyond ordinary human perceptiveness, and under (B) We saw Jesus’ authority in interpreting Scripture and his absolute conviction that God would punish Jerusalem and the Temple and make him victorious despite his sufferings. All this corresponds well to the repeated evaluation of him during his lifetime as a prophet, one of those specially sent by God to challenge the covenanted people. Probably most a priori approaches to Jesus from the “true man” side of the spectrum would accept “prophet” as a historical self-estimation of Jesus, but would argue that he could have been no more than that. However, in the last elements that we discussed in this chapter (B ##8-10) there were already indications that the truth may have been more complicated. Jesus saw himself as so important that rejection of him (not only of God’s message) would constitute the cause for divine action against Jerusalem and the Temple. Indeed he was remembered as saying “I will (or am able) to destroy.” Jesus claims that he is not only to be made victorious (translated by his followers, perhaps post factum, in terms of the resurrection of the Son of Man) but also to have a final role (as the coming Son of Man) when God completes what was begun during his ministry. This goes beyond the claims of OT prophets and manifests a uniqueness in Jesus’ self-estimation. He is not simply one of those whom God sends but the one to bring God’s plan to completion.

For the believer, like me, in Jesus' divinity, it appears that the Gospels really are filled with evidence that Jesus was limited in mortal ways. For the nonbeliever who would explain away Jesus' divinity by saying he never claimed it for himself, you will have to explain away more than just a couple of disconnected sayings. It appears that actually reading the New Testament limits the possible scenarios more than many people would like.

Brown's Approach

One of the main reasons I love Brown's book is his approach to Christology. He says it thus:

In opting for a desciptive approach to the NT evidence without embracing “cannot have” or “must have” presuppositions that stem from emphasizing one side ofthe “true God, true man” issue, I am not denying that proponents of such presuppositions have something to Contribute to the overall christological picture. Objections raised by philosophers and scientists on one side and corollaries drawn by theologians on the other must be considered seriously, but they must not be allowed to determine what the NT reports.

In other words, the evidence doesn't care if you believe it or not. Christ was reported by both his adherents and his enemies as having performed notable miracles. That is evidence, whether you believe the miracles really happened or not. You can look for naturalistic explanations of the miracles (Jesus didn't really multiply the loaves and fishes, that's just a story introduced later), but you have to actually explain the evidence and not just wish it away. Conversely, you can't just pretend that contradictory passages in the Gospels aren't contradictory. You have to face the evidence that is there and not pretend that some of it doesn't exist, or doesn't matter, just because it doesn't agree with your presuppositions. This doesn't mean that Brown doesn't allow wiggle room for honest differences in belief. What he doesn't allow is arbitrary picking and choosing of what he himself will examine when trying to understand the Christ of the New Testament. The implicit invitation is for us to do likewise and really examine the books that we've had in front of us all our lives.

Brown is intimately aware of a number of prejudices found in approaches to New Testament christology. He highlights a couple more in his chapter on Jesus' views of his own mission:

We come now to the most difficult area for the discernment of Jesus’ own christology-difficult because of the lack of evidence. After Jesus’ death Christians reflected intensely on Jesus’ identity, particularly in terms of titles that expressed their faith: Jesus is . . . Messiah/Christ, or Lord, or Son of God, or Son of Man, or even God (APPENDIX III). . . here we confine ourselves to the very limited evidence for Jesus’ application of the titles Messiah, Son of God, and Son of Man to himself or his acceptance of them when applied by others.

Before I begin, some cautions are in order. First, were we to decide that Jesus did not use or accept one or the other of these titles, that would be no decisive indication that Christians were unjustified interpretative combination of several passages. Yet any affirmation that all this development must have come from early Christians and none of it came from Jesus reflects one of the peculiar prejudices of modern scholarship. A Jesus who did not reflect on the OT and use the interpretative techniques of his time is an unrealistic projection who surely never existed. The perception that OT or intertestamental passages were interpreted to give a christological insight does not assign a date to the process. To prove that this could not have been done by Jesus, at least inchoatively, is surely no less difficult to prove than that it was done by him. Hidden behind an attribution to the early church is often the assumption that Jesus had no christology even by Way of reflecting on the Scriptures to discern in what anticipated way he fitted into God’s plan. Can one really think that credible?

Brown passes lightly over the prejudice of many believers, this time. We must be careful and realize that there isn't much solid evidence regarding what Jesus thought of himself. Brown is less gentle with the scholarly prejudice that assumes all high christology postdated Jesus' life and words. Once again, here is the double edged sword of detailed New Testament study.

Interesting Excerpts

Jesus' claim to authority:

Worthy of note is that the oracles are uttered with first person authority, “I say to you,” quite unlike the prophetic custom of having God speak (“The Lord says . . .”: Isa 1:24; Jer 2:12; Hosea 11:11; Amos 3:1 1; etc.). Why Jesus can speak with such personal authority is never explained in the Synoptic Gospels; indeed that silence over against the prophets’ explanation that word of God came to them implies a very high christology wherein the authority to make demands in God’s name simply resides in Jesus because of who he is.

This certainly never was obvious to me. It seems you can convincingly argue that Jesus' not claiming authority from God as earlier prophets did is, when put together with the things he said and did, a claim to greater authority that the prophets of old.

The resurrection:

The developing sequence from the way in which Jesus presented himself during his lifetime to the way in which those who believed in him presented him afterwards is more complex than such a sequence would be for any other figure. In the case of others one might find an adequate explanation for development in logical, psychological, and other familiar diagnosable factors; but in the tradition about Jesus a unique factor massively intervened that goes beyond human diagnosis, namely, the resurrection. In the publicly received tradition of Israel (i.e., what a later generation would dub canonical) no one had hitherto been raised from the dead to eternal life, and so this claim of faith about Jesus had an enormous import. Besides heralding a victory over death, God’s raising of Jesus to glory vindicated both the origin and the truth of the authority/power that he had claimed and manifested. His followers who saw the risen Jesus realized that he was even more than they had understood during his public ministry. The resurrection, therefore, makes it very difficult to explain away as romanticized creation the more explicit christology attested after the resurrection.

I always thought of the resurrection as one of those things that, while there are plenty of supposed witnesses, it's something there really isn't much proof for, and that scholarship could choose to ignore--even if I wished they couldn't. What I'm seeing as I begin to read is that scholars have to take the resurrection seriously. As a minimum, they have to deal with the fact that early Christians believed it happened. As a maximum, they have to explain why the tomb was empty, and they have to do that by guessing. The historical sources (if they say anything) seem to universally agree that it was empty, but nobody can produce the body to prove how it was emptied. Brown doesn't go into this, but there are entire popular books on it (that I'm not inclined to read) that have collected the historical evidence. I still think it's not provable, and even if we proved Christ was risen, that wouldn't prove everything else we believe, but I was surprised to see how central central the resurrection is to all biblical scholarship, not just the religious.

The tension between Servant and King

All the Gospels present a Jesus who was clearly Messiah, Son of Man, and Son of God (and sometimes specifically Lord) during his public ministry. Gospel readers immediately know this because they are made party to a revelation connected to the baptism of Jesus where God speaks from heaven and calls him “My beloved Son” (Mark 1:11; Matt 3:17; Luke 3:22178). In the two-step resurrection chrístology discussed at the end of the preceding chapter, the ministry of Jesus from the baptism to the cross Could without difficulty be presented as one of lowliness (Phil 2:7 speaks of Jesus in “the form of a servant”) since exaltation came only with resurrection. In ministry christology, however, where exalted status and lowly service coexist, there is inevitable tension.

Let us consider one way in which that tension was handled by the evangelists. A resurrection christology passage, such as Acts 13: 33, can apply Ps 2:7 to Jesus without qualification: “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” The Synoptic baptismal designation, “My beloved son; with you I am well pleased,” has modified Ps 2:7 by combining it with words (italicized) from the description of the Servant in Isa 42:1. By this combination the evangelists indicate that to understand Jesus as the messianic king during his public ministry one must recognize that he was simultaneously both the

Messiah/Son and the Servant who did not cry out (Isa 42:2) and was pierced for our offenses, bearing the guilt of all (Isa 53). Since it is not clear that in preChristian Judaism the ideas of the Messiah and the Suffering Servant had been joined, Jews who did not accept Christian claims might well point out that a Messiah whose life terminated in suffering was a drastic Change of the concept of the expected anointed Davidic king. Christians would reply that Jesus threw light on the whole of the Scriptures and showed how once separate passages should be combined.

Beyond this common approach, in describing the ministry of Jesus individual NT writings treat differently the tension between the exalted Messiah/Son image and the lowly Servant; and this difference contributes greatly to the distinctiveness of each of the four Gospels.

Mark preserves the greatest amount of lowliness by describing a precrucifixion ministry in which no human being recognizes or acknowledges Jesus’ divine Sonship. Thus the christological identity of Jesus is a “secret” known to the readers (who are told at the baptism) and to the demons (who have supernatural knowledge; Mark 1:24; 3:1 l; 5:7) but not to those who encounter him or even to those who follow him as he preaches and heals. Mark 8:27-33 shows how little even Peter, the most prominent disciple, has understood Jesus. He has come to recognize that Jesus is the Messiah, but his understanding of messiahship would not allow Jesus to suffer. He is like the blind man of 8:22-26: Jesus has laid hands on the man, and he has come to partial sight (people look like trees); but it will take further action by Jesus before he sees clearly. If Mark’s readers or hearers wonder why Jesus does not reveal his christological identity clearly to his disciples, the scene of the transfiguration in Mark 9:2-8 supplies an answer. There Jesus is transfigured before them and the glory that has been hidden throughout the ministry shines forth brightly.

The Gospels are easy to read. Thank goodness, or I never would have read them the few times I have. Apparently I missed a few things in my reading, though.

Jesus gives Judas permission to go off to betray him (13:27-30). When he says “I am,” the party of Roman soldiers and Jewishpolice that have come to arrest him fall backwards to the ground(18:6). The disciples of the Johannine Jesus do not flee as he is arrested; he arranges for them to be let go so that it may be seen that he has not lost any of them (18:8-9). This Jesus does not die alone and abandoned; not only is the Father always with him (16:32), but at the foot of the cross stand his mother and the beloved disciple (19:25­-27)-symbols of a believing community that he has gathered.

Therefore, knowing that he has accomplished all that the Father has given him to do and has completed the Scripture, he can decide “It is finished” and give over his spirit (19228-30). Obviously, as last words, this is a far cry from the “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” of Mark and Matt.

These examples suffice to show that despite the four evangelists’ agreement that during his ministry Jesus was already Messiah and Son of God, the way in which they balance that with a picture of him as rejected and misunderstood varies so that very different Gospel pictures of Jesus emerge. For those who accept the later church confession of Jesus as true God and true man, the different picture in each Gospel, while supporting overall that confession, gives its peculiar insight into one or the other side of that mystery: Mark, for instance, more insight into Jesus as true man; John, more insight

into Jesus as true God. No one Gospel would enable us to see the whole picture, and only when the four are kept in tension among themselves has the Church come to appreciate who Jesus is.

I always thought the evangelists described the same events. I still accept it as a matter of trust that they did, and that they each came fairly close to things that really happened, but even if I accept that, they were telling stories with agendas, and I can learn more if I can see their agendas.

Conclusions

Once again, I have both found new thoughts to enrich my understanding, and plenty of room to remain the kind of believer I am. Scholarship places limits on what I can responsibly accept as true. I need to adjust to those limits. I can work on that. Still, an understanding of Christ arrived at without the evidences of the Book of Mormon and modern scripture fails to address the divine Jesus I know. I look forward to when a Mormon Raymond Brown tackles the New Testament and helps me see Jesus with new eyes. If you know of one, tell him or her to get writing, please.