Bracketing Truth Claims?

There is a lot of talk among Mormon scholars about bracketing truth claims regarding the historicity of the Book of Mormon.  This immediately leads to the question: why would one want to bracket truth claims?  The answer is generally that we can understand a particular part of Mormonism better by bracketing truth claims about other parts of Mormonism.  We can also engage in more fruitful dialogue with non-Mormons if we bracket certain Mormon truth claims in our discussions with them.  Whether these claims are true or not, it is not clear to me that these advantages of bracketing truth claims outweigh the disadvantages.

Although in our post modern age it may seem passé, to me the purpose of both religion and the academy is precisely to discover and understand truth, not to bracket it.  Our quest should be for the good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy.  If we bracket truth claims about the historicity of the Book of Mormon, for example, I believe many elements of the text become less comprehensible, and, indeed will become misunderstood.  Furthermore, it give non-Mormons a distorted view of what Mormons really believe.  Mormon truth claims are central to the nature of Mormonism and the beliefs of individual Mormons.  Bracketing or ignoring them necessarily distorts what Mormonism is really all about.  It is essentially pretending that Mormonism is something different than it really is.  Bracketing truth claims never helps us understand the truth in the broader sense.  It necessarily masks, hides, or distorts the truth, whatever that truth may be.

It seems to me that if someone has to bracket their truth claims about Mormonism in order to facilitate dialogue, it should be the non-Mormons.  Mormon truth-claims are an integral part of Mormonism.  To understand it properly you need to understand those truth claims.  It really doesn’t help a non-Mormon understand Mormonism better if she doesn’t understand that Mormons believe in the historicity of the Book of Mormon, the deity and resurrection of Jesus, or the authentic prophethood of Joseph Smith.  If we bracket truth-claims about these matters, non-Mormons will never accurately understand Mormonism.  Thus, if non-Mormons really want to understand Mormonism, they shouldn’t want or ask Mormons to bracket our truth-claims.  Rather, they should tentatively bracket their own truth claims so they can better understand ours.  

I’m not asking for special treatment for Mormonism in this regard.  This is precisely how I approach any other religion.  Even though I am an outsider to those religions, I seek to understand them as the insiders understand.  What non-Buddhists might think about Buddhism is far less important to me than what Buddhists think about Buddhism.  When I approach the Buddhavacana, I understand that most western non-Buddhist scholars believe that most of the Tripiṭaka does not represent the actual words of the historical Buddha.  I get it.  But when I read that scripture, I try to understand what it means to Buddhists who believe in the historicity of the Tripiṭaka, because that permits me to understand Buddhism better.  I bracket my truth claims in order to better understand Buddhism.  I don’t ask the Buddhists to bracket their truth claims.

That does not mean, of course that there aren’t a lot of things about Mormonism that can’t be discussed without any reference to truth-claims: the social order of a Mormon ward; the colonization of Utah; the impact of the Deseret Alphabet, etc.  But bracketing truth claims about the Book of Mormon will ultimately lead to misunderstanding that book.  Grant Hardy’s wonderful Understanding the Book of Mormon is a case in point.  Although he chose to bracket historicity issues, the fact of the matter is, there was no reason for him to do so.  He could have written precisely the same book, with precisely the same insights, without bracketing historicity.