The Promise of Genealogy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Genealogy is central to Mormon practice and identity. Coincidentally, genealogy is central to postmodern philosophy in the strain from Nietzsche to\" \/>\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\/faithpromotingrumor\/2008\/10\/the-promise-of-genealogy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Promise of Genealogy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Genealogy is central to Mormon practice and identity. 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{"id":953,"date":"2008-10-22T20:06:06","date_gmt":"2008-10-23T01:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/faithpromotingrumor.wordpress.com\/?p=953"},"modified":"2008-10-22T20:06:06","modified_gmt":"2008-10-23T01:06:06","slug":"the-promise-of-genealogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithpromotingrumor\/2008\/10\/the-promise-of-genealogy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Promise of Genealogy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This radical contingency is cause for reflection about the radical contingency of all things around us. Nietzsche had the same reaction, not only to his own radical contingency, but to the contingency of the things that were considered to be the most foundational, namely, morality itself. He suggests that morality has a history, one that can be critiqued and reformulated. Foucault continued this project, suggesting that the very notion of the self, sexuality, and other foundational notions of modernity are all produced in history.<\/p>\n

The complicated issue that genealogy raises for Mormons<\/a> is that it lies in tension with another fundamental concept in Mormonism, that truth does not actually have a history. In this view, truth is eternal and not subject to a genealogy. This notion is expressed in our mythology by describing the Gospel as the \u201csame,\u201d without a genealogy, in every dispensation. We often have a longing for a history which doesn\u2019t change, a \u201crestoration\u201d of a pristine truth untarnished by history.<\/p>\n

I am not sure that both views can be sustained in Mormonism. This tension marks the boundary between the modernist impulses of Mormonism, and its postmodern potentiality. Either, genealogy and history are fundamental, or truth is eternal. Fortunately, there is another strain in Mormon thought that sees truth in a genealogy. The notion of continual revelation relies on this genealogical conception of truth, that it has a history and adapts in time and circumstance.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"