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Against Systematic Theology

| briansabey

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

-Emily Dickinson

I participate in a theology book club in which we are reading Exploring Mormon Thought, by Blake Osler. Osler is interesting in that he is doing systematic theology, but at the same time he questions the value of systematic theology, doubts its ability to attain its own goals, and admits the limitations of language and the necessity of experiential and relational knowledge in spiritual matters, in contrast to propositional beliefs.

I agree with his questions, doubts, and admissions. I appreciate his work and consider it worthy of our time and attention, but I could be just as good a Christian without once cracking a book of systematic theology.

Now I want to be clear that I am fully in favor of careful thought and intellectual rigor, of seeking greater and greater light and knowledge. Indeed, doing so is a spiritual necessity. If our light and knowledge is not growing, it is shrinking (see Alma 12). Far more than most brands of traditional Christianity, LDS thought enjoins intellectual effort as a duty: we are commanded to “seek out of the best books words of wisdom” and informed that we cannot be saved in ignorance. My target here is not intellectual effort or even theological carefulness, but solely systematic theology. Continue reading →

Faith and Intellectual Integrity

| briansabey

I hope this essay will be helpful for dealing with honest questions and for helping others who are dealing with honest questions related to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many of the things I write will apply equally or almost equally to faith journeys within other religions as well.

When people leave the Church, I would suspect that their questions about doctrine and history are not usually the main issue, but in many and probably most cases, they are one of the issues. And I think such questions can be more productively dealt with in a Church culture where there is, perhaps appropriately, certain pressures to express certainty and to stand united behind all the teachings of the prophets, and where our manuals and lesson plans tend—again, perhaps appropriately—to focus on reaffirming core doctrine rather than exploring the limits of what we know. Continue reading →

Why we must resist demonization, Even of the worst fascists

| briansabey

As I begin to write about the worst Fascists (i.e., the Nazis), it occurs to me that humanity is altogether more wonderful and more terrible than we commonly imagine it, more angelic and more diabolical. The mundanity and the moral and intellectual mediocrity of most lives is not the native and inevitable condition of the average human soul, but rather an impasse between vast forces of good and evil and immense impulses towards life and towards death. From this conflict we seek refuge in numbing routine and stultifying dogma, content for the most part to experience the battle at a safe remove, transmuted into art. Our impulse towards life and effort, fierce as the Sun, is satiated, because we are thinking and acting; and our impulse towards rest and stillness, inexorable as outer space, is mollified because our thoughts and actions rotate, like the Earth itself, in the same circuit every day. Continue reading →

A Reader’s Response to Haidt’s The Righteous Mind and The Necessity of Morality Beyond Evolution

| briansabey

I recently read Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion. It is worth reading, but it was a very mixed emotional experience for me. Politically, it was interesting, insightful, and personally affirming, while philosophically it was interesting, insightful, and personally aggravating. Continue reading →

The Evils of Contemporary Life And A Possible Partial Solution

| briansabey

The Evils

Contemporary life in America, while full of material blessings, is plagued by emotional and spiritual poverty, mental health issues, and loss of felt community. Among the chief contributing factors to these plagues is a loss of several kinds of meaningful connection.

  • to worthy purposes
  • to nature and food
  • to local community
  • to our bodies and the material world

Contemporary work is marked by a shallowness of purpose: we work for employers whose goal is to make money and in return they give us money. That’s it. Very often, it is not even imagined by either party to this transaction that a higher state of things is possible. Furthermore, the extreme division of labor that has taken place since industrialization means that our work is often so specialized and narrow as to be almost entirely disconnected from the rest of our lives and our larger ideals. Thus, not only the purpose of our work but also its content lacks the ability to connect us to meanings worthy of a life’s devotion: the purpose is money; the content is a super-specialized function so narrow and obscure as to be spiritually impoverished. Our careers–for those who are fortunate enough to have a career rather than a mere job or unemployment–most often lack any sense of vocation.

The complexity of contemporary economics and social life also obscures certain realities and involves us in moral compromise. Continue reading →

In Defense OF DEVILS

| briansabey

How’s this for a lighthearted proof of the devil’s existence: there is no reason that a person cannot at one and the same time have a robust moral code and charity towards those who fail to satisfy its rigors. That is in fact what Christianity has always demanded. Likewise, there is no reason one cannot have both a commitment to systematic foundational doctrines and openness to other perspectives and even to revising one’s own most basic beliefs in response to new evidence or insights. Yet for some mysterious reason, despite numerous individuals and even small sub-cultures demonstrating that these ideals can be achieved, they have never been realized by any society in recent recorded history, nor have any of the ancient societies that have claimed to have achieved some utopic vision at some point in their history been able to maintain the achievement.

Western society before the Enlightenment had a comparatively exacting moral code and a strong commitment to certain doctrines, including but not limited to those of Christianity, yet it was decidedly unchristian in its responses to moral infractions and religious dissent. There is no reason it could not have progressed towards tolerance and openness while keeping its faith. That is exactly what Christianity’s law of love required, and I think it was desire for power far more than for truth or for God that caused intolerance and dogmatism to be so dominant for so long. Martin Luther King Junior’s message, though not all aspects of his life, perfectly demonstrated the possibility of remaining fully Christian while moving away from dogmatism and intolerance, and he is only one prominent figure within a multitude of whom the same could be said. Their stories are the leaven within the story of civilization. “I have seen the promised land,” he claimed–and for my part, I believe him. 

But we have not followed Martin Luther King’s message of brotherhood. Continue reading →