Blake Ostler<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moreover, I believe that there is enormous depth, as yet still largely crying out for exploration, in our doctrine. \u00a0As B. H. Roberts put it,<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I believe \u201cMormonism\u201d affords opportunity for disciples of the second sort: nay, that its crying need is for such disciples. It calls for thoughtful disciples who will not be content with merely repeating some of the truths, but will develop the truths; and enlarge it by that development. Not half \u2014 not one-hundredth part \u2014 not a thousandth part of that which Joseph Smith revealed to the church has yet been\u00a0unfolded, either to the church or to the world. The work of the expounder has scarcely begun. The Prophet planted by teaching the germ-truths of the great dispensation of the fulness of times. The watering and weeding is going on, and God is giving the increase, and will give it more abundantly in the future as more intelligent discipleship shall obtain. The disciples of \u201cMormonism,\u201d growing discontented with the necessarily primitive methods which have hitherto prevailed in sustaining the doctrine, will yet take profounder and broader views of the great doctrines committed to the Church; and, departing from mere repetition, will cast them in new formulas; cooperating in the works of the Spirit, until they help to give to the truths received a more forceful expression and carry it beyond the earlier and cruder stages of development.<\/strong> \u00a0(B. H. Roberts, \u201cBook of Mormon Translation,\u201d\u00a0Improvement Era<\/em>\u00a09\/9 [July 1906]: 713.)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, viewing the question from another angle, I can\u2019t help but think that the matter of \u201cdepth\u201d \u2014 if what is meant by depth<\/em> is simply the kind of complexity that intellectuals and academics love to play and to show off with \u2014 is largely irrelevant.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
It would be fatuous in the extreme for someone sitting in a crowded movie theater to ignore a scream of \u201cFire!\u201d simply because it came from a lower class \u201crube\u201d or \u201cphilistine,\u201d someone whose hands are soiled with (ugh!) trade or calloused by manual labor, or because it was expressed in an uncouth way, or voiced in an unsophisticated accent, or unsupported by allusions to recent developments in critical literary theory.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I doubt that every early Christian was an elite intellectual, capable of holding his or her own with the philosophers of Athens or the scholars of Alexandria. \u00a0But so what?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Could the Greek sophists Protagoras, Gorgias, Thrasymachus, and Cratylus have tied their rough contemporaries Ezra and Nehemiah in intellectual knots? \u00a0Very possibly. \u00a0But what would that matter?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moreover, admonitions to kindness, charity, service, and other such positive attributes are always worthwhile, even if they\u2019re dismissed as lacking \u201cdepth.\u201d \u00a0I would rather live in a society characterized by such qualities than among a colony of supremely clever intellectuals who lack them. \u00a0(That might actually be a good description of Hell.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
And I have little patience for anybody disposed to reject the good news of Christ\u2019s resurrection, or of the appearance of the Father and the Son to Joseph Smith, on the grounds that these accounts lack intellectual subtlety. \u00a0Simple or not, if they\u2019re true they\u2019re of incomparable importance.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 Over the years, I\u2019ve run into the comment \u2014 often, but not always, from embittered and hostile ex-Mormons \u2014 that Mormonism (a term that I\u2019ll use in certain ways until I think of a better one) is a shallow faith, lacking any and all intellectual or cultural merit, satisfying only to unreflective middlebrow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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