Quinn's "Early Mormonism and the Magic World View"

[_Physics Guy]

I'm neither a theologian nor a philosopher, but I'm somehow skeptical both that the distinction is really so binary between the remote and ultimate God of Athens and the earthier God of Jerusalem, and that the difference between deism and atheism is so blurry. If you're firmly embedded in an anthropomorphic view of God, I'm sure that the "ground of being" seems like something qualitatively different, while the differences between two views that are equally remote from your own may seem insignificant. Blurriness is often in the eye of the beholder, however.

I would say that people conceive of God in the biggest terms they can. For a hungry little clan in the Stone Age, God looks somewhat bigger than a clan chieftain. For philosophers contemplating geometry in the Academy, God looks like the ground of being. There is the God of Psalm 50 who owns the cattle on a thousand hills; that would be shortly after the hundred-hill God, and before the God whose cattle need a million hills. I assume it's a logarithmic scale.

There are not just two Gods at two poles of theology, but a long continuum of conceptions of God. There is a natural tendency for humans to move along this continuum as their world view expands. Perhaps part of the explanation for the early growth of Mormonism is that this movement is not always one way; perhaps a frontier community found itself out of touch with the religions of societies on the verge of industrialization, and stepped back some notches toward ancient times.

For physics professors working on the arrow of time today—at least for some of them—God wrote the laws of nature and set initial conditions. This is the role of God in deism, at least as far as I understand it, but as soon as one supposes that God exists outside time (as modern cosmology would seem to require), then it is the distinction between deism and interventionist theism which blurs, because God could respond to a prayer today by altering the initial conditions of the universe at the beginning of time, to bring about practically anything.

Atheism may not be much more un-Mormon than deism, but deists consider that the universe has a purpose. This has a lot of implications. It seems unfair to both viewpoints to say that the distinction between deism and atheism is insignificant.

[_Johannes]

The question is, insignificant in what way? Atheism and deism look alike from the outside because neither involves externally visible "religious" commitments in the form of ritual worship or distinctive moral and behavioural norms. But this, as you indicate, is an etic perspective. Whether the difference matters depends on who you ask.

As for the differing conceptions of God as cosmic ground of being and God as anthropomorphic Heavenly Father, it seems to me that Christianity has been committed to both ideas since the beginning. This doesn't bother me personally, as I believe that an essential part of Christianity is the dynamic tension or interplay between the transcendence of God and his self-revelation in Jesus Christ. I've come across the idea in Mormon circles that Joseph Smith rescued the original biblical conception of God from corruption by Hellenised philosophers. This was the message of the segment with the Protestant minister in the pre-1990 temple service. But that dog won't hunt. The God of Athens is right there in the New Testament.


[Edited to correct the date to 1990.]

[_Philo Sofee]

The God of Athens is right there in the New Testament.

I am curious about what way you see this Johannes....

[_Johannes]

The God of Athens is right there in the New Testament.

I am curious about what way you see this Johannes....

The best example is probably the "Johannine" writings, which are pretty Hellenic. John's Gospel starts off explicitly identifying Jesus Christ with the Word or Logos, which was a technical concept from Greek philosophy.

The clearest piece of evidence is probably Acts 17.28 (which was written by Luke, who seems to have had a Greek education). This verse quotes a pagan Greek writer's words about the invisible, transcendent god in whom "we live and move and have our being". That isn't, as far as I know, easy to reconcile with the Mormon idea of Heavenly Father.

[_ClarkGoble]

The best example is probably the "Johannine" writings, which are pretty Hellenic. John's Gospel starts off explicitly identifying Jesus Christ with the Word or Logos, which was a technical concept from Greek philosophy.

The clearest piece of evidence is probably Acts 17.28 (which was written by Luke, who seems to have had a Greek education). This verse quotes a pagan Greek writer's words about the invisible, transcendent god in whom "we live and move and have our being". That isn't, as far as I know, easy to reconcile with the Mormon idea of Heavenly Father.

John is likely influenced by platonic conceptions. Certainly a lot of the language is similar. Paul makes use of lots of Stoic philosophers (Stoic materialism was the dominant philosophy of the era) The quote in Acts is actually a bit controversial. For a long time commentators assumed it was quoting Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus although it's not as clear as some assume. However it's generally thought to be Stoic or at least a similar idea penned by Luke perhaps with some intentional ambiguity. If that's correct then it's a statement of pantheism of how man is in God.

In any case once you invoke the Stoics you basically have a materialist ontology more or less the same as Orson Pratt's minus the atomism of Priestly. For Pratt this is the aether (from before the notion of aether was falsified by tests of the speed of light) and corresponds to the fire of the Stoics. It's the divine spirit that perfuses all things. For Pratt's theology it is unity with this substance that enables the unity of divine beings. Effectively it's Pratt trying to inject something akin to the ousia of the Trinity back into Mormon materialism. Prior to the revelation on spirits as matter Parley Pratt held to a more emanation model of God and divine creation where our spirits were literally made out of the spirit of God - in many ways Orson's later work is a materialistic rethinking of that notion. Despite the extreme similarity with Stoic views so far as I know Orson didn't read the Stoics. He was more exposed to Scottish Realists like Reid. If so then his ideas may just be combining his brother's earlier ideas with Leibniz' monodology or Spiniza's notion of God.

I should add, going back to John, that the Stoic notion of Logos and the Platonic Logos aren't that different. The Stoic divine Logos is the active reason pervading the universe and thus also the Fire of Stoicism or Orson Pratt's spirit subtstance. Paul uses Logos in a more Stoic context in places like 1 Cor 1:24, 2 Cor 4:4, or so forth. The invisible God for the Stoics isn't immaterial. It's quite important to realize this for their ontology. So when Paul talks about the "image of the invisible God" in Col 1:15 he's really using Stoic notions of the Logos and why the universe as a whole works as a well functioning organism.

[_Philo Sofee]

Very interesting material Clark. I always like reading what you write. What do you think of Margaret Barker's claim that John's logos is very similar to Philos logos?

[_ClarkGoble]

Very interesting material Clark. I always like reading what you write. What do you think of Margaret Barker's claim that John's logos is very similar to Philos logos?

I've only read enough Baker to be dangerous so I don't want to speak to her arguments. I've not read her on this, but many have noted parallels with Philos form of Hellenized Judaism. (As an aside the JST of Gen 1-2 has similarities to Philo's commentary too) I don't know enough about the nuances of Philos' conception as it differs from the loose notion in Stoic and Platonic schools to say much there. My primary interest with both is philosophical and not so much historic. I often think scholars are so desperate to write something unique that they push the language more than a little past the breaking point reading far too much into nuance. So while I buy the loose parallels when you get much further I get more skeptical.

I should add relative to the original comment on this page that the "God of Athens" in scripture ends up being a trickier issue than it first appears. For one in an emanation model it's fine to talk about how divine beings are the image of the One for instance. This becomes important in say the pagan religious Platonism of Iamblicus or Proclus of late antiquity. (The era just before the Christians really did in the Platonic schools and persecuted them the way a century or two earlier the pagans were persecuting the Christians) You also see it in the hermetic writings of this era. The big innovation in Christianity which most tie to Augustine but which really started earlier was unifying the God of Athens as this transendent origin and ground of being with the personal God of scripture. It's that move that I think is problematic. At least problematic as Augustine did it. The same move also created the novel idea of creation ex nihilo which broke with platonic emanation theories and created the absolute ontological divide between man and God which was alien to platonism.

It's creation ex nihilo that as I've said is the major divide between Mormonism and traditional Christianity. I think nearly all theological differences end up resting on that in one way or an other. Orson Pratt, whether you buy his theology or not, shows how rejecting that ontological difference allows even traditional platonic models to work with Mormon thought. (While I find Pratt fascinating I confess I find him a really, really bad reader and philosopher - his polemic against immaterialism is just embarrassingly bad)

Some sense of being and grounds is necessary. That's why I raised the deist/atheist point. I think the ambiguity is more than an etic one though. There's really a semantic question of whether you call this ground God or not. The Greek philosophers did but primarily because they had allegorized away all the personal deities. (In a way the charges against Socrates leading to his death were quite accurate) So I'm actually quite with the atheists in the semantic issue. Indeed I've thought that in many ways Mormons ontologically are in the atheist camp. (Brigham Young in particular is interesting since while he primarily see theology as a kind of anthropology adopts an ontology that sounds a lot like 20th century physicalism)

The question which Mormonism has steadfastly not really questioned, outside of Pratt to a small degree, is what the relation of being as such is to God. A few recent figures have a bit. Sam Brown did a presentation at this year's SMPT on the subject which was great. And Adam Miller's secular grace (the topic of most of his non-Mormon oriented books) is really about that issue. Unfortunately Adam didn't do a good job tying this secular Grace to God. (He may address that in his latest book - I have just started reading it)

[_Johannes]

Thanks for that, Clark. Some very useful and thought-provoking stuff. I had no idea that there was such a similarity between Stoic thought and Orson Pratt's ideas. It's particularly interesting that he seems to have arrived at them independently, or through the channel of 19th century thought.

I've always thought that the Johannines are profoundly influenced by Platonism. It's been said that John's Gospel, if it was discovered for the first time today, would be pegged as a gnostic rather than an orthodox text (gnosticism being, of course, deeply influenced by Middle Platonism). I love the Johannine writings - that's why I chose Johannes as a user name - but let's not be naïve about their intellectual history. I was always taught that the Acts quote was from Cleanthes - thanks for that article. Fascinating stuff. I avoided mentioning St Paul, as I think he is a difficult case when we're talking about Athens v Jerusalem, but I accept the point that there is Stoic influence in the Pauline texts.

I believe that you can also see patristic writers, long before Augustine, equating the god of the Bible with the god of Greek philosophy when they are addressing pagans for apologetic purposes, but I'm in a bit of a hurry right now and I don't have the references to hand (shades of DCP!).

[_Physics Guy]

I'm also thankful for the introduction to Stoicism. I looked it up on Wikipedia, and found it interesting—my philosophical background consists of one freshman survey course three decades ago, so Wikipedia holds revelations for me.

Boldly blundering along, though, I still feel that Stoic monistic materialism illustrates the continuum of concepts of God, rather than representing a pole.

The aether was supposed to be material, yet not material like rock or water. But is it really accurate to translate ancient categories into modern ones so simply? It's not clear to me, in these ancient philosophies, where the boundaries were between physics and semantics. Were Stoics really asserting that spirit was made of an invisible material substance, or were they only insisting that it was in some way real, despite not being made of ordinary matter? What did they really mean by "material"?

What did the Stoics think that air was? Or light?

Between the pagan deity made of flesh and blood just like humans, and the transcendent God who makes space and time from nothing, the aetherial world-spirit seems to me to be an intermediate conception along the continuum. If you take certain statements about the aether seriously, it may still seem like a materialist pantheism, but the sense in which aether is material seems awfully weak.

(The much later history of aether theories, from the 19th century until today, is interesting and maybe not even irrelevant, because it illustrates well the way that physics and semantics can be hard to distinguish in practice. In the 19th century people didn't really believe in aether, but they couldn't admit it; today we actually do believe in aether, but now we can't admit that.)

[_Physics Guy]

If it's fundamental to Mormonism to reject creation ex nihilo, what do Mormons make of the Big Bang? It looks awfully much like creation ex nihilo: time and space themselves began, a finite time ago. So do Mormons have to hope that the reigning theory of scientific cosmology will prove wrong, and let the universe be eternal after all?

Or should we hope to pin down the time at which God the Father was born as a man, on some other planet? Perhaps ten billion years ago? Perhaps only eight? Is God twice as old as the sun? Or only just a bit older?

If the only God with whom we humans have to do organized this solar system, and then waited 4.5 billion years to put humans on Earth, so that they could persist unto exaltation, then it seems as though it must take around 5 billion years to go through a generation of Gods. That's about how long it takes big stars to form, fuse their way up to iron, and explode in supernovas that scatter heavy elements into space, to enrich the next generation of stars. Astronomers recognize three such generations ("populations") of stars; our Population I sun's grandfather* was a stellar Adam (a Population III star that formed from pure primordial hydrogen and helium with virtually no heavier elements).

So if Mormon Gods take about the same length of time to exalt a new generation of Gods, it would seem that the God of God's God must have had no progenitor. Spontaneous abiogenesis has a hard enough time forming microbes. How did it work for that very first God?

I'm not really asking these as snarky gotcha questions to shoot down a Mormonism that I imagine to be defined by what are probably just old speculations, and not really church doctrine. My point, though, is that modern science is surprisingly compatible with a transcendent God who made everything, but a material God who is made of flesh and blood, and simply organized pre-existing matter, seems kind of hard to place within modern science.

It's fine if you don't think about it much, but once you do, doesn't it all start seeming like science fiction? Are these Gods really different from super-powered aliens like the ones in Star Trek and Marvel comics? Entities like that aren't necessarily implausible. They just don't seem like Gods.

(*The sun did not have just one grandfather, or even just a few. The sun probably incorporates atoms from many earlier stars, plus a lot of primordial hydrogen and helium that had never been part of any stars before. But some of the sun's atoms are now in their third star. Probably none of them have been in more than two successive previous stars—the universe hasn't been going long enough for that.)