The post title comes from Methodist preacher Enoch Mudge’s (1776-1850) manuscript sermon outline (Boston Univ. School of Theology Library) and suggests a typical style and raison d’être. “Stationary” or located Methodists like John Mott Smith left more extensive notes of sermons and such men might engage Greek and Hebrew in their preaching, territory usually occupied by the frequently more educated clergy in establishment pulpits. Methodist La Roy Sunderland published his sermon “This Life is a Time of Probation” in The Methodist Preacher in 1830 and quoted Greek words in his narrative on judgement in Revelation 20.

Generally though, this classification of churches and sermons fell out along related lines of clergy versus layman, intellectualism versus piety, enlightenment versus “affections.” In colonial times these “rivals” had often existed in the same pulpit (or preacher) but nearer the Revolution, things began to heat up in New England, with “intrasectual” war opening up in public venues. It was one thing to steal converts, quite another to call other preachers by interesting names, or claim their reasoning ability to be equivalent to a breeze. Such rationalists saw fire and brimstone competitors as ignorant of the true meaning of the Bible and were nearly always from the Puritan-Calvinist corner. There were many exceptions of course and Calvinists saw the warfare open among their own.

These sorts of arguments were illustrated in preaching styles. Expository preachers might focus on a particular book of scripture. One spent several years worth of Sunday preaching examining Romans essentially verse by verse, employing various translations and appeals to Greek, etc. Topical evangelist preachers found this nearly useless in stimulating crowds to belief and charged that it put scripture ahead of God.

Mormon preaching seemed to partake of both styles. Topical in nature, it often moved to the expository rather than fire and brimstone. Joseph Smith’s revelatory style was unusual, but to Latter-day Saints it felt like inspired understanding. Joseph’s style developed over time and ended with a blend of exposition and topic or even a text, though the latter had a rather liberal sense. Over time it is Joseph’s avant-garde exposition that is remembered most often (think King Follett), though we do tend to cherry pick quotations.

Preaching in modern Mormonism has varied significantly over the same spectrum. How would you classify the sermons in the recent General Conference? Seen any exposition lately? I think it’s relatively rare. We’re Methodists! (grin)

For the most part, this contrasted mightily with his Protestant brethren, who wrote out sermons or sermon notes, sewed them together and left them in pulpits for future reference. Many published their homilies and the sermon library of early America is large. Joseph Smith’s extemporaneous speeches, never practiced or read, reminds me of George Whitefield or the Wesleys. Whitefield at least, appeared to speak extemporaneously but actually engaged in memorizing large texts which he could then “mix and match” as occasion seemed to dictate.

Edwards did not do this. By self admission he just couldn’t memorize those large chunks of writing (some ministers put the extemporaneous sermon on par with hysteria and Edwards was a pretty conservative guy anyway). Hence his sermons survive in large part because of his self-recording. Edwards sermons were, if not spell-binding by virtue of freedom of delivery, artistic, in point of fact. And Edwards’ phrasing was copied religiously by his contemporaries and successors. Edwards employed definite strategy in sermonizing, a strategy that is clearly repeated in Lehi’s dream of the Book of Mormon. Edwards observed that it was “God’s” strategy to lead the sinner through the terrors of judgment and darkness, a wilderness in fact, to a final bright city full of joy. Edwards is nevertheless most famous for his images of hell, rather than heaven (and possibly gets a bad rap over this). One of my favorite bits comes from his Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God delivered at Enfield, Conn. in the summer of 1741:

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and you healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a fallen rock.

Somehow this reminds me of Jacob’s preaching especially in 2 Nephi 9, but other places too.

Edward’s use of language was expert. Not the drama of Whitefield, but the imagery and poetic descriptions engaged his listeners (and readers) and fellow ministers. And while he died twenty years or so before the Revolution, his library of sermons helped shape first the apocalyptic and then the millennialist fervor that surrounded the war.[1]

Preaching is always a reflection of culture, but it can drive it too. And there is no better illustration of that than Joseph Smith. Never a great speech-maker like Edwards, Joseph’s sermons, such as they survive, became bedrock for large parts of Mormonism in its early times and in a resurgent sense in the 20th century. I see them fading in importance now in some respects. Not that Joseph’s words will be forgotten, but they will be increasingly cannibalized or I should say, proof-texted or acontextualized.[2] (More so as the reconstructed texts of the 1850s fade from view, I think.) And while the magnificent Papers of Joseph Smith will preserve many of the raw sources, the sermons themselves may come to be curiosities of past centuries. But to paraphrase Joseph, this boy will always find them fascinating.

I mentioned preaching manuals in the title and I thought I might write something about Edwards’ contemporaries training manuals. Edwards himself didn’t write any training materials beyond his own sermons and published discussions, but he did do something that greatly influenced evangelical preaching in his lifetime and later. He held “schools of the prophets” for bright students like Bellamy and Hopkins. They did the same. These Schools of the Prophets were repeated and Joseph and Sidney may have borrowed from them in a way a suppose. Hence Edwards’ on the ground training set the course for much of New England’s clergy for decades after his death. Is Edwards’s influence still felt? I think so, certainly among Calvinists at least and his “Papers” project is in some sense reflected by Joseph Smith’s.

Preachers are pretty cool. I’m no good at it myself, but I can admire a good pulpit-master. (grin)

————–
[1] Edwards could be seen as anticipating Joseph Smith’s Book of Abraham too. His imagery fused the physical and spiritual in a way that reminds me of the Abrahamic text: planets go around the sun for Edwards to show how the Christian orbits Christ the Sun of Righteousness. God made the trees to bloom by the brook in anticipation of how the Holy Spirit nurtures the soul of man. In Abraham at least our modern interpretation suggests the equation Kolob = Christ, etc.

[2] I don’t mean to suggest that sort of thing is new or evil or the like. Church teaching and preaching and even Nephi I suppose, has always done this.

Anyway, my present work centers around the 16 June 1844 sermon “variorum.” A variorum is a study of text variation over time. Various editions of KFD5 exist and editors molded the text in different ways. These editions tend to follow a similar pattern through time though some texts have a richer history than others. Creating a variorum is a tedious operation with little veins of gold sometimes appearing, but mostly it’s tedium. The price you pay for thoroughness. And of course it has to be done several times. Based on the fact that no one is perfect – and especially me.

For KFD5, and many of the other sermons of JS, the first print expression was in the Deseret News. The Church Historian’s staff supervised the printing of the history in the News most of the time and took some pride in doing so. They were angry when their other duties (they usually had to clerk for the legislature for a few weeks every year) placed the printing duty in the hands of the regular News staff, who seemed to bungle the operation often enough. (Albert Carrington was bad-mouthed as a rule. (grin))

After the D News edition, the history and therefore JS’s sermons went to England where the history (not the News per se) was reprinted in the Millennial Star. There were sometimes various other printings of the sermons in the 19th century. These were usually extracted from the Star, even in Utah, rather than the News. JS’s words were treated with some freedom by editors in the 19th century. The 20th century saw firming of the text, partly by virtue of improved printing technology. While 19th century editors might modify text rather extensively, 20th century editors were ever more conservative. This pattern is observed in LDS scripture publication in a compressed way. The Joseph Smith Papers Project has shown this in the magnificent manuscript revelation books heading up the Revelations and Translations series. I anticipate we will see more of this good stuff in the Documents Series.

We’re moving into a new generation of texts and in a way my work is a signal of that. I refer to the cessation of printing of the History of the Church. It is a great work, but it’s use has come to a climax and it is itself now a part of Mormon history. That is sad in some ways. But inevitable even in a very conservative organization like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. New interpretations will come forth, better ones in many ways, but less connected with the source-makers if not the sources. Our distance from those sources is becoming New Testament like, though we don’t have the same text challenges as biblicists by any means. But we are moving from the culture, text and thought of the 19th century Church.

T. Edgar Lyon, a pioneer in modern Mormon historical efforts, saw this early on and communicated this nostalgia in a few reminiscences. One told of the “Old Nauvooers” and their testimonies a hundred years ago. That generation has long since passed and I fear an ever larger segment of Mormonism will forget them or never know them. Our official texts don’t mention those rank a file much but play to succinct formulaic repetitions of visions, martyrology, and the “essentials.” It’s a natural process and we even see it evidenced in the Book of Mormon. Legend and myth making.

The books we write, the songs we sing, the posts we blurt are like grass. It dies in it’s season and those grass blades are forgotten, becoming the mulch that nourishes the new. But perhaps someone a hundred years from now will still be wondering what Joseph Smith really said on such and such an occasion. My book won’t answer that question, but perhaps it will satisfy the yearning as it speaks to the impossibility of the task.

Will we write books in Heaven? I wonder. It is said there are books there, books of life. I wonder if there are any math books? And I wonder if I’ll get the chance to hear Joseph preach. I would like that.

This next is not an ad, but it appears with the DNews ads in 1857:

——–
DIED
In this city, of influenza, October 2, TAMSON VILATE, daughter of Phillip and Elizabeth Margetts, aged 10 days.

“Dearest sister, thou hast left us,
Here thy loss we deeply feel;
But ’tis God that has bereft us,
He can all our sorrows heal.”
——–

The Providence of God is a view many Latter-day Saints share without much examination. The sisterhood thing is also very interesting.[1]

A lot of the early DNews “ads” were lost and found stuff but here’s an interesting one that is not:

NOTICE.
JOHN H. PICKNELL is always on hand at C. Taylor’s slaughter house to kill beeves for $1 per head, and will pay a good price for hides.
N.B. Tripe and cow heels always on hand.

A possible Christmas gift guys! Cow heels for your sweetheart.
————
[1] The words are frequently quoted in Protestant death notices in the 19th century. They come from a hymn by L. Mason usually under the title “Death of a Schoolmate.”

The 2012 Summer Institute for Editing Historical Documents will be held 5–9 August at the Omni Hotel in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Institute will be funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission through a grant to the Association for Documentary Editing.

Faculty members will include Cathy Moran Hajo (Margaret Sanger Papers), Robert Haggard (Jefferson Papers, Retirement Series), Andrew Jewell (Willa Cather Archive), J. Jefferson Looney (Jefferson Papers, Retirement Series), and others to be announced.

The Institute is free, and a travel stipend will be provided to those living outside the Charlottesville area.

Applications will be available on the ADE website on 3 January (www.documentaryediting.org), and the deadline for applications will be 1 March.

For further information, please write or e-mail Beth Luey, Education Director, Association for Documentary Editing: ADE.edcttee@gmail.com; 31 Middle Street, Fairhaven, MA 02719.

First, for the reasons already stated, this book is important. But there is another reason why I enjoyed Making: it has footnotes! No endless flipping between some intermediate page and the back of the book to consider sources and comments. This is pleasant reading. Thanks to UoOP, the editors and authors for this boon.

Making has eleven essays, plus an introduction by the editors. The contributor list is a fine one. Essays and authors:

1. Parley P. Pratt and the Coming of a New Religious Tradition to America by Jan Shipps.

2. The Family Life of Parley P. Pratt: A Case Study of Mormon Plural Marriage by R. Steven Pratt.

3. Parley P. Pratt and Early Mormon Print Culture by David J. Whittaker.

4. “‘Tis Not for Crimes That I Have Done”: Parley P. Pratt’s Missouri Imprisonment, 1838-1839 by Alexander L. Baugh.

5. “We Glory in Tribulations”: Parley P. Pratt, Martyrology, and the Memory of Persecution by David W. Grua.

6. “All of One Species”: Parley P. Pratt and the Dialectical Development of Early Mormon Conceptions of Theosis by Jordan Watkins.

7. Parley P. Pratt, Mormonism, and Latin America: A Mission’s Contribution to Latter-Day Saint Growth by David Clark Knowlton.

8. Honor, the Unwritten Law, and Extralegal Violence: Contexualizing Parley Pratt’s Murder by Patrick Q. Mason.

9. Martyred Apostle or Un-Saintly Seducer?: Narratives on the Death of Parley P. Pratt by Matthew J. Grow.

10. The Murder of Parley P. Pratt and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, by Richard E. Turley Jr.

11. Finding Parley: A Family’s Quest to Fulfill Parley P. Pratt’s Dying Wish by Robert J. Grow.

The genesis of Making was a 2007 conference held in Fort Smith, Arkansas, celebrating the bicentennial of Pratt’s birth and the sesquicentennial of his death at the hands of Hector McLean. Hence some of the content of the book has been available since then (for example, Shipps was the keynote speaker). Anyone who has been involved in the publishing of conference proceedings knows all the wonderful itches that need scratching there.

How do the two books compare? Apostle Paul obviously benefits from much of the content of Making and they share an author/editor in Matt Grow. On the other hand, each provides different emphases. For example, Making has Watkins’ chapter on Pratt’s theosis doctrine, (Apostle Paul scatters some of this through the book (but see 331-6) and a brief epilogue. Both generally get it right. Making places more emphasis on Pratt’s heaven than his protology. Distinctions are important here. Both books might have been more careful on this, but both give us interesting views of PPPs ontology/cosmology.

The contributors to Making give us a range of efforts from established scholars like Shipps and Whittaker to a new generation of thinkers like David Grua. Mason’s chapter is an important one, and should lead the reader to his recent volume The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South (Oxford, 2011).

Making devotes four chapters to Pratt’s murder and situates it in Mormon and American thought at the time. It’s been posited that Pratt’s murder was a major component behind Mountain Meadows. Turley considers this in his essay, looking at Bill Bagley’s work as a pivot point in his discussion. Latter-day Saints will surely benefit from this portion of Making and the exposition of Pratt’s death in the context of Mormon and anti-Mormon narratives. We also have Robert Grow’s essay on Pratt’s burial site and the recent attempt by Pratt’s descendants to locate his remains and transport them to Utah (a last request of Pratt).

And of course, there’s polygamy. Pratt was not on board at first, but became a convert to the system. His family life is treated in both books.

Parley P. Pratt and the Making of Mormonism
Edited and with contributions by
Gregory K. Armstrong, Matthew J. Grow and Dennis J. Siler
The Arthur H. Clark Co.
An Imprint of the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 2011
351 pages
$45.00

If you are reading this, Making probably deserves a place on your bookshelf. While Apostle Paul has the advantage of cohesiveness in presentation, Making offers a nice way to focus on particular subjects. The fact that we have a volume (Making) by this university press is important too. It’s a marker of a maturing field.

I recommend both of these books. At some point I may say more about Apostle Paul. But for now, stretch your wallets a bit and grab these. You’ll find them engrossing reads.

—————–
[1] Pomeroy plays an interesting if minor role in the early 20th century discussions of the King Follett Discourse.

I think of author Cornelius Ryan and two of this works in particular, the familiar The Longest Day and the less well known perhaps, A Bridge Too Far.[1] Ryan wrote history as “lived history” perhaps because of his journalist background and his work on the frontlines during the war.

The invasion of Normandy and or the poorly thought-out run to the bridge were told not so much from the planning rooms and general staffs of the Allies, but from the point of view of the privates and sargents and 2nd lieutenants and other men on the ground – those men he could find who would tell that story. Of course, the print culture of the day did not want to hear of prisoner massacres or tales of physical/mental abuse that always happen in war. But we got a picture of ordinary guys and at least a bit of what really happened to them, what motivated them and what the tragedy and triumph of war was, for them.

So here’s to the Heroes and Heroines of those years and here’s to Ryan who gave us some “lived history” for those times. God bless those men and women, living and dead, on this anniversary of battle, valor and death.

————
[1] Ryan struggled to finish the book as cancer destroyed his body.

The 2012 program theme is “Documentary Democracy,” an appropriate topic for a meeting in Thomas Jefferson’s hometown. The theme can be applied to the program in two different ways. First, it can be argued that documents are the essential foundation of modern democratic societies, not just the few famous founding documents but a broad, very diverse body of historical, literary, philosophical, and other documents and works. Second, the theme concerns the opportunities and challenges presented by the increasing democratization and globalization of documentary knowledge in the expanding digital universe, particularly in regard to access, diversity, technology, and scholarship.

Prospective presenters may focus on either aspect of the theme or both together. In any case the Program Committee hopes that presenters will interpret our theme as widely as possible. All ideas are welcome. We also encourage submissions from solo editors or projects in the early stages of organization.

Abstracts of a maximum of 500 words are due by 1 March 2012. In a separate paragraph state your name, address, telephone number, email, project, organizational, and/or institutional affiliation, if any, and what audio-visual technology you might need. Please send abstracts within the body of an email and as an attached Word document to: pdc7m@virginia.edu.

2012 ADE Program Committee: Philander Chase, chair; Robert Haggard, Annemarie Kets, Jennifer Stertzer, Vanessa Steinroetter

No this isn’t a post about Steve Peck, much as I think that would be fun. Instead, its in the vein I’ve been sort of mining lately. I hesitate to use the tired “Mormonism and Science” title, but what the heck. Why not?

What I’m really looking at here though is not how Mormons interface with science in the here and now so much as the roots of that interface and its analogues in early America. As a kind of illustration, take William Bentley. Bentley was a Congregational minister in Salem, Mass. from about 1780 to the year before Joseph Smith’s first vision. It’s Bentley’s stance on Science that I think was both prescient in an odd way and at the same time relevant to Mormons.

William Bentley, A Shadow of Joseph Smith?

Bentley was an avowed Arminian which tracked his move to republicanism, a Christian Libertarian we might say. But Bentley was really no friend of religious liberals. Indeed, he was not seen in any sort of favorable light in that camp. They hated Bentley’s inclusion of science in his religious views. (Bentley’s theological forebears included Joseph Priestley.[2])

The buzz words “lived religion” give us an interesting glimpse of Bentley and a contrast between him and Joseph Smith. “Lived religion” lies at the crossroads of laity, liturgy and clergy. Its relevance here is that with the embrace of naturalism Bentley placed himself in a position similar to that of modern liberal Protestantism – for example, his accommodation of requests of admittance without baptism. His church was politically influential, but it died a slow death in Salem – the analogue with liberal Protestantism – it faded because of its failure to appeal to those wanting a more immanent God, a father with immediacy in their lives – the strength of evangelicals like the Southern Baptist Convention today (and for that matter, the Mormons).[3] Republicanism made successful invasion of Salem, but Bentley himself was forgotten.

Edgar Mullins - SBC idol of Harold Bloom - Gone and Forgotten?

Another (regretful) difference between Bentley and Joseph Smith? Bentley left many self-published sermons (a pretty commonplace thing) a huge diary, and literally thousands of sermon manuscripts and notes of others. Imagine a huge cache of Joseph Smith sermons, authored and written by himself! I could only wish.

—————
[1] Bentley was a sort of compromise between the Deists and Liberals. You see threads of this in Joseph Smith, theologically if not personally, and some of his fellows ran with it after his death (Orson Pratt -> B.H. Roberts -> John A. Widtsoe, etc.). A really fine treatment of Bentley is James Rixey Ruffin, A Paradise of Reason: William Bentley and Enlightenment Christianity in the Early Republic (Oxford, 2008). As far as Providence is concerned, Mormons rejected Providence in an important way: they believed in Modern Revelation, Bible Equivalent Revelation. That put them beyond the bulwark of fixed canon, the safety net of “Providentialists.”

[2] Priestley invented soda pop. Just thought I’d say that. Also, Priestley was not into free will apparently.

[3] Dashes are ubiquitous in JS sermon manuscripts. What can I say? I’m addicted.

http://historycoalition.org/2011/12/02/fy-12-federal-funding-decisions-at-final-stage-action-needed-now/

[I was just sitting here - thinking about where the fun speculations of 19th century Mormonism might lead, and this is what came out. Excuse its ragged form.]

Mormonism has a uniquely materialist bent. It posits that the material is necessary for complete happiness.[1] That while the world is biphasic, physical and spiritual, both are material.[2] Modern physics divides much of its attention between the very large (cosmology) and the very small (quantum phenomena). In the large, physics tells us of a universe whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere and yet expanding. That expansion is apparently going on forever, never to stop.

The expansion of the universe along with the laws of thermodynamics dictate both a lessening of temperature variations among different spatial locations (proceeding to eventual uniformity[3]) and a dissipation of energy, overall system organization degrading to near non-existence. Barring a “big rip,” the first major end stage is the cessation of star formation in about 10¹³ years from now. It’s all down hill from there.[4]

The quantum world is mysterious by “design” apparently, with probability dictating the predictions of the relevant equations. Weird is the rule here: disappearance and reappearance of particles, time reversals, creation and destruction of “matter.” I’ll come back to this in a moment.

While the Mormon view of reality is biphasic, the material worlds are linked. Wherever there is regular matter, there is “spiritual” matter. The latter is apparently matter, but difficult to detect, something on the order of “dark matter.” Living beings are formed of both types of matter, and possibly all of the physical world overlays its doppelganger “spirit matter” version. This has support in some of Joseph Smith’s early revelations (JST, say) and their interpretations by the Pratt brothers in particular.

The “small” universe contains restrictions on what may be known. Further, depending on whether proton decay exists, the progress to an eventual universe steady-state varies. But no matter which version is correct, the large universe cannot support life as we know it beyond about 10⁵⁰ years from now. The so-called “dark-era” begins about a google of years from now. [5] Two different fates are possible from this point depending on whether protons are stable. If not, a sparse-state, where roughly all there is left locally will be electrons and positrons wandering at great distances from one another and that makes for not only a very dark place but an exceedingly cold one, eventually dipping absolute zero. (There are various possible intermediate states I won’t consider here.) If protons are stable, then all matter will decay to iron isotopes which collect in “iron stars” and eventually these may disappear into quantum black holes. In any event, things get dark and as cold as can be.

The Mormon God is some kind of material being, and at least some strands of Mormon theology describe God as a part of the present physical world, even a resident on a physical planet. For purposes of this post, let us suppose this is the case. While God may be highly accomplished in manipulating the material universe on very short (not quantum) time scales, the speed limit of the universe (essentially the speed of light – although that must be defined more precisely than I will do here) defines the maximum rate of information transfer. Additionally, God is required to be local, very local indeed if he were to make visits to earth.

The physical universe offers somewhat limited possibilities in the way of building/sustaining life. Life – at least as we understand it – probably can’t exist outside a star system like our solar system. Moreover, in each such system there is a “sweet spot” – not too far from the central star – not too close. The earth’s orbit defines what is roughly that sweet spot in our particular system. Further, magnetic fields of some strength must exist to protect a planet in the sweet spot (from the rain of charged particles) which requires an internal dynamo system, like our own liquid iron core complex whose useful operation may depend on the moon’s existence. Additionally, solar systems are not generated in any useful stable fashion outside the “sweet spot” of spiral galaxies. Too near the central mass and the density of interstellar objects is too great for solar system mechanics to remain stable long enough to support life and its development (I’m assuming that evolutionary processes account for life here – but claiming some other mechanism doesn’t alter the essentials much). Too far from the central galactic mass and not enough metal is around to allow for planet formation (I use “metal” in a somewhat generalized sense). Our own solar system can be taken to define the galactic sweet spot orbit – though that is naturally considerably larger than the solar system sweet spot orbit. These are a few of the factors necessary to support life as we know it. If God shares the physical world with us and is embodied in matter (protons, neutrons, electrons, etc.) then God is subject to similar conditions and barring technological solutions, would be found in the galactic sweet spot. However, speed limits still apply. No complex material system like a biological organism could approach the speed of light (except in science fiction). The amount of energy required would involve something like converting a large fraction of the mass of the moon to energy. And no material object may travel at the speed of light.

But we are speaking of God here and therefore it seems permissible, within the boundaries outlined here (material body) to allow for God being able, by some sort of technology, to travel near the speed of light. Say 90% of c (or about 168,000 miles per second). Getting up to such a speed would involve reasonable rates of acceleration and deceleration. That adds significantly to any journey time. But let’s assume that God is only minimally inconvenienced by such things. In order to visit the earth, say, to speak face to face with Moses for example, requires that God is relatively close during potential communication episodes.[6] Say within a few light years (how about 12,000,000,000,000 miles). His other administrative domains might require absence of many years, perhaps a few hundred or maybe even a few thousand years.[7] That seems to require an established administrative network, under long-term contract so to speak. I’m ignoring questions of reliability here. Presumably if there is one God-being, and he is in the process of building others like himself, then the existence of reliable administrative networks (think, the steward system in Gondor (grin)[8]) is tenable.

Material systems probably age in a very fundamental sense. Aside from electrons and their antiparticles, the rest may be unstable (folks are looking for evidence of proton decay now) possibly over huge time scales – that only shortens the estimates for time until the “dark era” etc. above. In the end, all material objects will disintegrate, including God’s body – assuming it is some kind of biological system. Thus, in spite of a resurrection and “eternal life,” after interminable years (see above) all biological forms will disappear from the universe. Hence God will have a finite (if extremely large) lifespan. Given the apparent tie (see above) between spirit matter and physical matter, there could be no refuge in retreating from the physical universe.

Hence a theology of the material requires a finite God-span if you will. On the other hand it clearly suggests a progressive God, perhaps even one who evolved from a man-like state.

Further, some ideas in Mormonism must be reinterpreted in this case. The idea of truly infinite lifespans must be cast aside.[9] Intelligence should be thought of as an emergent quality, independently in the physical and spiritual realms. Not in terms of some kind of eternal consciousness, but having finite, perhaps unfathomable spans, not infinite in any objective sense though.[10] A being may perceive its own lifespan as so long that its ending is functionally infinitely far in the future. There are various scenarios to rescue this part of classical Mormon theology, but the idea of ending life is coherent with early Utah speculations of the Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, the Pratt brothers and others.[11]

So, we can be thought of as existing in the “sweet spot” of time as well as space. The universe is at present life-sustaining, (and in this sense, God-sustaining if you will).

Theological considerations like justice, mercy, atonement, sin, repentance, commandments, revelation, prayer may all be reinterpreted in a finite system like this one. In some cases, they are not as satisfying or may seem less effective, but given the fundamental limitations that exist in the universe, they are the best of all possible versions.

Could God be material and yet somehow unaffected by space and time? Not in the physical sense of this excursion. Other distinctions may be possible but they distance God from man in important ways that are, at least in classical Mormonism perhaps, almost heretical. (Part of the point of this business is to trace some of the consequences of the naive materialism of the 19th century when accepted uncritically.)

It may seem fatalistic, but the potential future is so long as to be beyond the ken of anyone. Nevertheless, it will come to an end. Omnipotence in the classical sense is certainly sacrificed. Its logical limits are undoubtedly far outside its practical limits in a material system like this one. Hence, scripture and theological language terms like “forever” and “eternal” and such would have to be thought of as “very long indeed.” Omniscience also cannot exist in the classical sense. While administrative domains might be set up to perceive and react to things, God could not know instantaneously what is happening anywhere. Even if God is present locally then we have to allow for the idea that he receives information at the speed of light, but no faster. Another issue with a material God is the question of knowledge. Distributed knowledge is a possibility, but “infinite” knowledge seems an impossibility. Even extremely large caches of information require technological assistance to a material brain. “Perception” leads to other questions that suggest physical limitations on incoming information. I won’t explore these here except to say they are serious problems and involve us in questions of speed again.

The end of “time” will be a slow process. Eventually new life ceases to come forward, so more intelligent beings cease being produced. Those intelligent beings in existence would still have a “work and a glory” but the end of all things would be in sight. Our present mortal lives are models of this in miniature. Or they can be. Loving and caring for one another is the essence of the good life, even if it is finite.

It seems clear that most religions are quite willing to give up materiality in favor of an unfettered God (or an unfettered soul perhaps). But in Mormonism, the choice seems more difficult and fraught with curious assertions sometimes made in favor of science fiction rather than science.

Personally, I find myself stuck in Joseph Smith’s claims on reality. I have faith in the restoration and I’m a believer. But I also find myself puzzled by the way Mormons often approach science. We’ve got a lot of weird cognitive dissonance sitting around (not that we have a corner on the market).

Rather than the extreme materialist view, I tend to believe that we take some passages of modern scripture too seriously and acontextually (such as the Pratt extraction from the Ramus reports). I’m not taking a materialist theology to heart because I reject the limitations it offers. But that is a matter of faith.

—————
[1] D&C 93:33-4, 45:17, 138:50. I’m not suggesting that this post is anything more than thinking out loud.
[2] See Orson Pratt’s extraction forming D&C 131:7.
[3] Second law. Closed systems suffer entropy-death.
[4] The “big rip” is a strange kind of expansion that tears everything apart only a few billion years hence. (Caldwell, et al., “Phantom Energy and Cosmic Doomsday”. Physical Review Letters 91 (2003).)
[5] A “google” is 10¹⁰⁰, a number so astoundingly large as to be beyond discussion. The numbers get much larger in the iron decay scenario.
[6] Here I’m not allowing for the rather silly speculations that propagate like living things traversing “worm holes” and such. Even assuming such things exist, regulating them is something for Star Trek, not star fact.
[7] D&C 88 might be taken to suggest that there are 12 such domains. But that is outside the realm of the present discussion.
[8] J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
[9] Given the spiritual domain as material, it is not be exempt and there is no real “eternal now” available for refuge here. Such language must be thought of as poetic as it appears in scripture for example.
[10] It may be that in a subjective sense, life might be eternal or that under some circumstances an observer may think another’s life lasts forever.
[11] The material nature of the spiritual was exploited to a large degree. The “recycling” of spiritual beings was an occasional theme as was emergent intelligence.

The Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Volume 2.

The source books for this volume are The Book of the Law of the Lord (December 1841 – December 1842), and four much smaller memorandum books reporting JS’s life via Willard Richards from December 1842 through June 1844. All of these materials are vital in understanding Mormonism and Joseph Smith and their publication in this volume is important to historians of the period and Mormonism in general.

Archival Label for the first Memorandum Book, CHL

The editors supplement JS’s own journal materials with those of other diarists of the period like Wilford Woodruff. Additionally they appeal to various newsprint sources like the Nauvoo Times and Seasons, The Wasp, The Nauvoo Neighbor, The Sangamo Journal, Quincy Whig, etc.

This group of editors exhibit their own style in many respects and while I admit to being spoiled by the work of other volume editors, I enjoyed the discussion points and detail provided by this group. In some respects the tone seems slightly defensive at some spots and this contrasts with other volumes in the Papers I think. For me this surfaced in the editor’s brief discussion of Nauvoo polygamy, the John C. Bennett scandal and related issues. This may in part be due to the necessary brevity invited in such a work, I don’t know. But this is very much a side issue and does not really impact the historical value of the volume. Annotation practices, etc. basically follow the techniques and patterns established in Journals Vol. 1, edited by Dean C. Jessee, Mark Ashurst-McGee and Richard L. Jensen.

The journals contain correspondance of interest, both personal and official. Much of the material in this volume of the Papers has appeared elsewhere, but the volume does a service in providing us with complete verified transcripts of rare documents with the use of imaging technology to indicate the content of erasures and deletions and expert interpretation of Willard Richards’ shorthand symbols. One could hope for facsimile editions, but that perhaps is a purist conceit. I’m an avid fan of this effort and relish the idea of having this volume in my personal library.

Among useful addenda are roughly sixty illustrations, images and charts including nine maps. Biographical and geographical directories, tables of Church, Nauvoo city and Nauvoo Legion officers are given. In short, valuable summaries of local societal structures in JS’s life. The volume contains the always useful list of works cited. Among the people acknowledged by the editors include friends of this blog, J. Stapley, Sam Brown, David Grua and probably others I overlooked (my apologies if that’s the case).

The Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Volume 2. December 1841-April 1843.
Editors: Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, Richard Lloyd Anderson
Publisher: The Church Historian’s Press, Nov. 2011.
558 pages + xl
10.5 x 7.5 x 1.8 in.
ISBN-10 1609087372
$49.45, Deseret Book Co.

———-
[1] It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the coming of Willard Richards. Derby moved to Hancock County, Ill. about 1834 and was baptized a Latter-day Saint in 1840. He moved to Nauvoo in 1842 and wrote in The Book of the Law of the Lord during August 1842. He drifted away from Mormonism in the 1850s. (See the volume’s “Biographical Directory” for more information.)

[2] Non-journal entries of the BLL are not included in Journals Vol. 2. Dean Jessee’s exploits in publishing two volumes of Joseph Smith’s papers twenty odd years ago allowed us views of The Book of the Law of the Lord but was somewhat less robust than the Journals Vol. 2 transcript. Nevertheless, if you can find one, Jessee’s volume has its own attractions. Scott H. Faulrung’s An American Prophet’s Record also contains edited versions of JS’s journals (sans BLL access). One interesting treat in Journals Vol. 2 is a transcript of William Clayton’s Journal for the few days Clayton was with Joseph Smith in Ramus, Ill. in early April 1843. Clayton’s journal was a partial source for Willard Richards’ reconstruction of events during JS’s visit which appears in JS’s journal. (Orson Pratt extracted this material for the 1876 Doctrine and Covenants).

In physics, the holy grail in the present moment is a theory which explains, with the power of prediction, the fundamental things. The things of the small universe (weak force, strong force, electricity, magnetism) the quantum world, and the things of the big universe – essentially gravity. The historical inspiration for this frenzy was the achievement of the Scotsman, James Clerk [pronounced "Goble"] Maxwell. Maxwell proposed a version of this business, which unites the formerly disperate understandings of electricity and magnetism:

Maxwell's Unified Theory

While I’ve always found physics fascinating, I find a historiographical analogue just as interesting. Historiography has always struggled, and more so now than ever before perhaps, with a dual class system. I refer to the professional university trained historian vs. the interested invested amateur. Often (not always, to be sure) the distance is illustrated by the approach to doing history and theoretical scaffolding. But even that question is beyond what I want to address here.[4]

My own interests in history have been focussed both in the micro world and the macro (I’ll say, contextual) world. When I say “micro,” I mean the genesis of 19th century Mormon texts. In the macro sense I’m also interested in the trail of influence left by those texts and trail of influence on those texts and the trail of the text itself. That is, texts and their exteriors are influenced by writers, editors and readers and their interactions.

In the case of Joseph Smith, the bulk of those texts associated with him were only indirectly produced by him. For example, consider his most famous sermon, the King Follett Discourse. The most important genes of the text originate with two long-hand reports produced during the sermon. From those two reports there is a textual tradition beginning with a composition published in the Church magazine of 1844. The text bifurcates with a new edition produced the following year. That new (imprint) tradition continued intermittently until 1903. In 1856, a new text tradition began by taking the first bifurcation and editing in some (mostly redundant) material from a post-sermon reconstruction by a contemporary diarist. Various editions of this new tradition eventually bifurcated in the 20th century to form the commonly held text in Church imprints. The texts of this sermon, and their evolution, are intimately connected with a number of strands in Mormon history, including the beginning of Utah polygamy and formal community as well as the ending of those institutions, the impact of science on religion and the assimilation and retrenchment of Mormonism relative to American life, to name a few.

In the micro world of history, one deals nearly exclusively with “primary sources.” That is, roughly speaking the material of least distance to the subject.[5] In Joseph Smith’s case, that means the material produced by those who were witnesses to his words say, and best of all, those who recorded those words as they were spoken, to the best of their ability. All those things imply a coming together of ideal circumstances and should never be assumed. Just for fun, here are some example excerpts from a primary source associated with one of Joseph Smith’s sermons. First, to illustrate one practical disadvantage of a primary source, consider this word, appearing in one of those ideal texts: an on-the-spot report by a skilled long-hand reporter.

What is this?

The writer has edited his own manuscript to indicate where and when the report was witnessed and the identity of the reporter.[6] His unhurried script is fairly characteristic and quite readable. (The faint shadow appearing on the first editorial insertion is not an erasure. The foolscap was folded in fourths and written on the quarters of both sides.) The same person, in a more careful mode:

From a Copy Made by Bullock of His Own Original Manuscript

Notice the small size of the script. This particular writer (Thomas Bullock) was capable of such compression he could write readable missives on the back of postage stamps or so the legend goes. The manuscript from which that excerpt was taken is difficult to reproduce in typographical facsimile.[7] The lines are just too stinking long to fit on an 8.5×11 inch page even in landscape mode.

T. Bullock, c1860. While not the ladies man like William Clayton a nevertheless productive polygamist

Next time I’d like to display a bit of the genetic criticism of King Follett (it’s fascinating to geeks like me, but in fact it’s not the most interesting of JS’s sermon-texts “geek-wise” either).
—————–
[1] The robust explanation and details would make things unwieldy. This is not really about mathematical physics. If you are persistent, here is something I wrote a long time ago. Eat it up if you really want to. Kristine, you are not allowed to criticize my prose – assuming you’d want to be bored out of your skull.

[2] Assuming black holes exist, the two worlds are forced to intersect there. A black hole has the mass of a star, and presumably, the size of a subatomic particle. An ugly and beautiful place.

[3] I’m making the false assumption that the acceleration due to gravity remains constant with distance. Hence my kick could initiate escape velocity in reality. But you get the picture.

[4] I’ve been in the borderlands here because of my educational background.

[5] Imagine an original letter written by Joseph Smith of proved provenance. A primary source. Think of Richard Bushman’s biography of Joseph Smith, Rough Stone Rolling. This is a “secondary” source.

[6] It may seem like unreasonable suspicion, but the claim of location (E of temple) should not be taken at face value. An intervening decade can result in fusion of memories,etc. Another independent contemporary witness would be of use here.

[7] A typographical facsimile is a reproduction (in “type”) of a manuscript, which preserves as much of the order, size, line length and other features (even hand drawn arrows and such) as practically possible. Most attempts at manuscript reproduction are referred to as “diplomatic” transcripts and regarded by purists as less then ideal, and by typesetters (at least classically) as much more desirable. I admit to a purist bent. If you have a copy of the recent Joseph Smith Translation manuscripts publication by the BYU Religious Studies Center, you have a good example of a diplomatic transcript. If you’ve seen Royal Skousen’s critical edition of the Book of Mormon (not the Yale edition, the Maxwell Institute volumes) you’ve seen typographical facsimiles. In the sermon book, I do typo facsimiles. (That’s unintentionally funny.)