Mormon Theology<\/a> Seminar on 1\u00a0Nephi\u00a01 and Jacob 7\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Abstract:\u00a0The Mormon Theology Seminar has produced two volumes of essays exploring 1\u00a0Nephi\u00a01 on Lehi\u2019s initial visions, and Jacob\u00a07 on the encounter with Sherem. These essays provide valuable insights from a\u00a0range of perspectives and raise questions for further discussion both of issues raised and regarding different paradigms in which scholars operate that readers must navigate.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I published the following column in the Deseret News<\/em> on 12 November 2015:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hugh Nibley spoke and wrote often about what he called \u201cthe terrible questions,\u201d by which he meant the very biggest of human issues: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?<\/span><\/p>\nMany answers have been given to these questions. Some believe, for example, that there is no God, that the ultimate end of all human life is personal annihilation and, therefore, life has no meaning. (This bleak view was advocated, for example, by the 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.)<\/span><\/p>\nOn this understanding, life arose, simply and exclusively \u2014 but, to current scientific understanding, still quite mysteriously \u2014 from chance events in a warm little pond or, perhaps, near a volcanic vent deep in an early sea. We humans emerged billions of years thereafter via cellular mutations in the line of apelike organisms who are our ancestors.<\/span><\/p>\nOne way of looking at this evolutionary history concludes that it leaves no room for purpose or even freedom of the human will. All is the result of natural processes that we call random only because we don\u2019t know all the factors involved; if we knew them all and possessed enough calculating power, we would be able to see that it was entirely inevitable. And, of course, there\u2019s no room for the soul\u2019s survival after death because there\u2019s no soul. We are, essentially, temporary cell colonies.<\/span><\/p>\nBut this viewpoint seems to entail some potentially disquieting things: If, for instance, our thoughts are merely neurochemical brain events set in motion by a deterministic process that goes all the way back to the Big Bang (perhaps with some quantum uncertainty tossed in to make it a bit less rigid but no less pointless), what can it possibly mean to say that our thoughts are \u201cabout\u201d something? Other bodily functions \u2014 digestion, respiration or blood circulation, for example \u2014 aren\u2019t \u201cabout\u201d anything. They simply \u201care.\u201d And what reason do we have to trust such \u201cthoughts\u201d regarding the nature and meaning of the universe? If our brains evolved to help us survive and reproduce \u2014 which is what the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest strongly suggests \u2014 how can we be sure that they\u2019re reliable beyond those limited functions?<\/span><\/p>\nThus, one way of answering the \u201cterrible questions\u201d is to say that we came from a combination of chemicals, we\u2019re here for no purpose and we\u2019re going nowhere.<\/span><\/p>\nThe French philosopher and writer Albert Camus published a famous 1942 collection of essays titled \u201cThe Myth of Sisyphus,\u201d in which he grappled with this view, with what he labeled the \u201cabsurdity\u201d of the human situation:<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThere is but one truly serious philosophical problem,\u201d he wrote, \u201cand that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest \u2014 whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or 12 categories \u2014 comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nMany, of course, maintain that life is worthwhile even if the claims of supernatural religion are false. Existentialists, for example, assert that humans can create their own meaning in a godless and objectively absurd universe. Orthodox Marxists insist that a purposive society, if not a meaningful cosmos, will emerge through the inexorable processes of history.<\/span><\/p>\nReligious perspectives typically come at these questions from a very different angle. They don\u2019t need to completely reject the scientific theories mentioned above \u2014 some do, some don\u2019t \u2014 but they virtually always see our existence here on Earth as purposeful. We came, in some sense, from God. We\u2019re here for a profound reason \u2014 perhaps \u201cto glorify God, and to enjoy him forever,\u201d as the Westminster Catechism puts it, or, in the words of the Catholic Baltimore Catechism, \u201cto show forth His goodness and to share \u2026 His everlasting happiness in heaven.\u201d And the grave isn\u2019t our final destination.<\/span><\/p>\nMormonism offers unusually specific answers to the terrible questions: However our physical bodies arose, our spirits come directly from heaven, where we lived with God our Father. We gain material bodies here in this world, which serves both as a test for us and as a school for the eternities. We will, if we merit it, live again with God, but in a far richer way for which our earthly sojourn is a necessary prerequisite.<\/span><\/p>\nThe beauty and attractiveness of this worldview doesn\u2019t prove it correct. The wonderful news, though, is that the revelations that support it are corroborated by reliable modern witnesses.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 New, in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture: \u00a0 \u201cLight and Perspective:\u00a0Essays from the Mormon Theology Seminar on 1\u00a0Nephi\u00a01 and Jacob 7\u201d \u00a0 Abstract:\u00a0The Mormon Theology Seminar has produced two volumes of essays exploring 1\u00a0Nephi\u00a01 on Lehi\u2019s initial visions, and Jacob\u00a07 on the encounter with Sherem. These essays provide valuable insights from a\u00a0range […]<\/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-69118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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