***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the past couple of days, I happen to have run across declarations (elsewhere) from critics of the Church who express their absolute certitude that there were no physical Book of Mormon plates.\u00a0 Period.\u00a0 End of story.\u00a0 They\u2019re not just saying, I think, that the plates weren\u2019t really ancient or that the plates weren\u2019t really engraved with an ancient Nephite text, nor even that they\u2019re unpersuaded that such plates really existed..\u00a0 They\u2019re saying that the plates were flatly nonexistent, either a lie ginned up by the boundlessly mendacious Joseph Smith or, if they\u2019re feeling more charitable, a figment of his deranged imagination.\u00a0 And that there is no debate on the matter, no contrary position even to be considered.\u00a0 Case closed.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m struck, and mystified, by their certitude.\u00a0 I personally judge the evidence \u2014 chiefly provided by Joseph Smith, the eleven official Book of Mormon witnesses, and the half dozen or so unofficial witnesses (e.g., Emma Smith, William Smith, Katharine Smith Salisbury, Lucy Harris, Josiah Stowell, Mary Musselman Whitmer, and, indirectly, Lucy Mack Smith) \u2014 for the literal, physical existence of some sort of metallic plates in the possession of Joseph Smith in the late 1820s to be extremely strong, indeed nearly if not altogether conclusive.\u00a0 Whatever one thinks of their nature or provenance, their flat existence seems to me difficult to plausibly deny.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
And yet these folks deny it, and seem to have no real problem<\/em> denying it.\u00a0 For them, or so they say, the issue is unambiguous.\u00a0 There just weren\u2019t any plates, and (they sometimes add) it\u2019s simply ridiculous to imagine that there were<\/em>.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll shift gears just a bit:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I was much younger, I had heard the term invincible ignorance<\/em>, and I thought that I understood it.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t.\u00a0 Invincible ignorance, I imagined, was the kind of determined lack of knowledge that not only doesn\u2019t<\/em> know x<\/em> but doesn\u2019t want<\/em> to know x<\/em>.\u00a0 The kind that utterly refuses<\/em>\u00a0to know x<\/em>.\u00a0 The kind that stubbornly goes on asserting falsehoods about x<\/em> no matter how often and how thoroughly it is corrected.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
These plate-denying folks, I would have thought, are prime examples of invincible ignorance.\u00a0 However, as I said, I was wrong.\u00a0 They\u2019re not.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Invincible ignorance<\/em> is a term developed\u00a0 in Catholic moral theology \u2014 it goes back at least to the great Summa Theologica<\/em> of St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), after whom one of my sons is named \u2014 and it refers to the moral status of persons who, through no personal fault of their own, are ignorant of the fact (as Thomas and subsequent theologians viewed it) that the Christian message is true.\u00a0 A person who fails to know x<\/em> because he or she could<\/em> not and cannot<\/em> know x<\/em> is not culpable<\/em> for being ignorant of x<\/em>.\u00a0 He or she cannot be considered accountable or morally responsible for such ignorance.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The precise opposite of invincible ignorance in Catholic moral theory is vincible ignorance<\/em>.\u00a0 It refers to people who were or are in a position that renders them capable of knowing x<\/em> by means of reasonable effort, especially where knowledge of x<\/em> is in some sense obligatory, but who freely choose not to do so.\u00a0 People in a state of vincible ignorance may be granted some excuse for it if they made at least some effort to overcome their lack of knowledge but, if they made no serious effort at all to correct their error, it actually renders their culpability for it greater and more serious.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
These are some of my thoughts, contemplating a few folks who claim to know for certain, without any shadow of doubt or any trace of awareness that there is evidence against their position, that absolutely no physical Book of Mormon plates of any kind, whether miraculously provided or not, ever existed.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from St. George, Utah<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 In case you haven\u2019t heard, Deseret Book and Excel Entertainment have now established a program for streaming videos called Deseret Video+ and, if you scroll down on its initial page, you will see that Interpreter\u2019s theatrical film Witnesses is one of the program\u2019s premiere offerings.\u00a0 Please take a look.\u00a0 And \u2014 […]<\/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":[56,21037,259,19823,19826,19829,936,5691,11099,319,27567,20478,2532,1615,5688,27570,4003,921,6384,21713],"class_list":["post-93947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book-of-mormon","tag-book-of-mormon-plates","tag-book-of-mormon-witnesses","tag-dan-peterson","tag-daniel-c-peterson","tag-daniel-carl-peterson","tag-daniel-peterson","tag-eight-witnesses","tag-eyewitnesses","tag-golden-plates","tag-invincible-ignorance","tag-metal-plates","tag-peterson","tag-plates","tag-three-witnesses","tag-vincible-ignorance","tag-witness","tag-witnesses","tag-witnesses-film","tag-witnesses-of-the-book-of-mormon"],"yoast_head":"\n
Vincible Ignorance<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\" *** In case you haven't heard, Deseret Book and Excel Entertainment have now established a program for streaming videos called\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2022\/01\/vincible-ignorance.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vincible Ignorance\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\" *** In case you haven't heard, Deseret Book and Excel Entertainment have now established a program for streaming videos called\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2022\/01\/vincible-ignorance.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sic et Non\" \/>\n<meta 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<\/a>