![\"Flowers](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/03\/800px-080204_021.jpg\")
<\/a>As many others were, I was shocked and deeply saddened to learn (in my case, on Sunday evening) of the sudden and unexpected death of a young, talented defender of the Restoration: \u201cIn Memoriam: Sarah Allen.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 This is a grievous loss, on every level and from every mortal perspective.<\/p>\n Flying earlier today from Salt Lake City to St. Louis, I unexpectedly found myself seated next to John Thompson<\/a> of Scripture Central, who was headed out with his sister for a family matter. \u00a0I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with him, which lasted for the entire duration of the flight. \u00a0Dr. Thompson has just launched an interesting new podcast, Heaven\u2019s Code: Temples and Texts<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n I\u2019m on the western shore of the Mississippi River right now with Camrey Bagley Fox (who portrayed Emma Smith in Witnesses<\/em> and Six Days in August<\/em><\/a>) and John Donovan Wilson (who played Brigham Young in Six Days in August<\/em><\/a>), as well as with Mark Goodman and James Jordan and Russ Richins (who make up Red Brick Film Works<\/a>). \u00a0We will be working in Nauvoo, Illinois, again this week on our imminently forthcoming series of mini-documentaries, Becoming Brigham<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0It will launch two weeks from today, on Monday, 26 January.<\/p>\n I closed my Sunday blog entry (\u201cSome thoughts on the character of Joseph Smith\u201d<\/a>) with a variation of C. S. Lewis\u2019s famous \u201ctrilemma\u201d from Mere Christianity<\/em>. \u00a0(For a few of my thoughts on his original trilemma, see my 19 January 2023 column in Meridian Magazine<\/em>: \u201cArguing for the Divinity of Jesus.\u201d<\/a>) \u00a0Here is what I wrote:<\/p>\n This strikes me as quite significant, since the three basic options for explaining Joseph Smith seem to be, using the appropriate technical terminology, as follows:<\/p>\n But option 1 appears to be incompatible with the historical evidence and option 2 has no real evidence to support it. \u00a0Now what?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, is this too simple? \u00a0Yes. \u00a0Of course it is. Does it lack the proper nuancing? \u00a0Yes, it obviously does. \u00a0I use the trilemma as a heuristic device. \u00a0By oversimplifying, I hope to clarify<\/em>. \u00a0It\u2019s rather like looking at a map in lieu of an aerial photograph \u2014 even though, as the late University of Chicago historian of religion Jonathan Z. Smith<\/a> liked to point out, \u201cmap is not territory.\u201d \u00a0(For another approach to this topic, still not fully fleshed-out or nuanced but coming from a somewhat different angle, see my 2016 FAIR presentation, \u201cThe Logic Tree of Life, or, Why I Can\u2019t Manage to Disbelieve.\u201d<\/a>)<\/p>\n So I will expand just a bit on what I said, in the first of what may turn out to be several \u201cfootnotes\u201d to the passage cited above:<\/p>\n With Option 1 (\u201cHe was lying\u201d), I was referring to his sincerity in his fundamental claims. \u00a0I was not claiming that he never, ever, said anything that wasn\u2019t true or that he never told a lie. \u00a0There is probably no living person who has never told a lie of one sort or another. \u00a0And even good people sometimes lie, sometimes with very good reason. \u00a0\u201cDoes this dress make me look fat?\u201d \u00a0\u201cDon\u2019t you think that my boyfriend is handsome?\u201d \u00a0\u201cHow do you like the meal?\u201d \u00a0Sometimes, the appropriate answer is not the bluntly honest one. \u00a0When visiting a gravely ill person, or attempting to comfort a seriously wounded person, the best comment won\u2019t often be \u201cYou look absolutely terrible, Christine.\u201d \u00a0Sometimes it will be \u201cYou\u2019re looking better\u201d or \u201cYou\u2019re going to be alright.\u201d \u00a0In a case where a person who has been gravely injured in an accident emerges precariously from a coma and asks about his wife and children, it might not be optimal to respond immediately \u201cOh, they all died!\u201d \u00a0If he is asked whether the D-Day invasion will occur on the beaches at Normandy on 6 June 1944, General Eisenhower\u2019s best answer might not be \u201cWhy, yes! \u00a0How clever of you to figure it out!\u201d \u00a0If the Gestapo asks whether you\u2019re hiding Jews in the attic, responding that, \u201cYes, there\u2019s a family of five up there, just take the stairs to your right\u201d may not represent the moral ideal.<\/p>\n In order to illustrate Joseph Smith\u2019s alleged dishonesty, some critics will point to his claims regarding the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham and similar matters. \u00a0But that\u2019s to beg the question. \u00a0The truth and authenticity of his prophetic claims are precisely what is at issue.<\/p>\n Others, more seriously, will point to Joseph\u2019s denials that he was practicing plural marriage when, in fact, he was<\/em>. \u00a0In those cases, he does indeed seem to have been prevaricating or obfuscating, rather in the same way that the patriarch Abraham (\u201cthe friend of God,\u201d \u201cthe father of the faithful\u201d) does in Genesis 12 and Genesis 20 when he disguises his actual relationship with his wife, Sarai or Sarah, from, respectively, Pharaoh in Egypt and Abimelek, the king of Gerar. \u00a0(For an interesting discussion of the morality of the case of Abraham, see Thomas W. Mackay, \u201cAbraham in Egypt: A Collation of Evidence for the Case of the Missing Wife,\u201d BYU Studies Quarterly<\/em> 10\/4 [1970]: 429-451<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>\n