mormon theology seminar

Bridget Jack JeffriesAs a long-time 'inside-outsider' to Mormon culture and studies, I'm always deeply impressed when I meet Mormons who actually believe in Mormonism. By that I do not mean Mormons who profess belief in Mormonism, because obviously plenty of people do that. In C. S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, the protagonist describes a priest of the goddess Ungit who is threatened with a knife to his chest. The priest demonstrates perfect stillness and shows no fear because Ungit is as real to him as the knife touching his chest.That's how it is for people who really believe in their own theology. They aren't threatened by new ideas, by theological exploration, or by dialogue with outsiders, because their faith is something real to them. Believers approach theology from a place of openness and charity, welcoming anyone to the table who is genuinely interested and may have something to add. People who only think they believe get defensive easily, close down dialogue, and chase others away from the table (with a stick if needed).I am grateful that, with the 2016 Mormon Theology Seminar, Adam Miller and Joseph Spencer assembled so many believers (if sometimes unconventional ones). Our conversations were warm and engaging. The breadth of ideas emanating from such a small selection of Book of Mormon text truly surprised me and left me with a lot to think about. Everyone's theological essays were treated with charity and equity, even when we disagreed with one another, with the result that new ideas had a nurturing environment in which to be born.As a student at Brigham Young University (2001-2005), I was struck by how generalized most of the religion classes were. What I mean is, at an evangelical Christian college you can take an entire class on a single book of the Bible, getting in some truly intense study and becoming deeply acquainted with that one book—its authorship, its themes, the setting of its composition, and special details about the original Greek or Hebrew—all in the course of your undergraduate education. Evangelical Sunday school classes frequently spend three to four months on just one book of the Bible. Yet with the religion classes at BYU, half of the Book of Mormon or the D&C always seemed to be crammed into a single two-credit class. Classes at the ward level were similar. I never saw offerings for a study of just Alma—just 2 Nephi, just D&C 121, and so forth.I realized after exiting BYU the comparison was hardly fair. Mormonism had only been around for 17 or 18 decades while the rest of Christianity had been around for almost two millennia. We'd had far more time to develop theology and generate material on which to base specialized coursework. It is in this light that the work of the Mormon Theology Seminar is so important. It may be that someday a class on Alma will draw from our essays when it is studying chapters 12-13. We are generating the specialized study of Mormon texts and the theology therein on which such efforts can be based, and so we add our voices to the growing body of Book of Mormon scholarship and theology and hope that our findings serve others one day.I am grateful to have been included as a participant in this year's seminar, and grateful to Joseph Spencer, Adam Miller, the Maxwell Institute, and the Willes Center for making it happen. I hope other non-Mormons—and especially other Christians—will consider adding their voices to the seminar in the future. The late Gordon B. Hinckley once said to us, 'we say in a spirit of love, bring with you all that you have of good and truth which you have received from whatever source, and come and let us see if we may add to it.' This is the spirit of the Mormon Theology Seminar, and I hope it continues to be so for a long time to come. The 2016 Mormon Theology Seminar recently wrapped up at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. We invited seminar participants to reflect on their experiences here on the Institute blog. This post features Bridget Jack Jeffries, an independent scholar from Chicago with a master's degree in American religious history from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. See more from other participants here.

Rosemary DemosI’ve thought a lot about the wrangling that so often happens over sacred text. There’s plenty of it within the scriptures themselves: Abinadi versus the priests of Noah, Stephen versus the Sanhedrin, Jacob versus Sherem, Jesus being challenged on the basis of scriptural interpretation by the scribes and Pharisees. Most of these stories end with the violent death of one of the characters. They remind us that scripture can be divisive, that interpretation of sacred texts can be a dangerous task.But the Book of Mormon predicted that the power of its own text would be in the 'laying down of contentions, and establishing peace' (2 Nephi 3:12). Is it actually possible to foster a questioning and scholarly study of scripture without also fostering contention? Can a Mormon theology based on close reading of scripture stand behind its peacemaking promises? The Mormon Theology Seminar is a kind of experiment in this.For this year’s seminar, we spent two weeks reading and questioning Alma 12:19 through Alma 13:20, only about a chapter’s length. It’s an especially dense selection, full of layered scriptural allusions and irregular grammatical constructions. It highlights some sticky topics like priesthood authority. Even with its numerous references to biblical texts, the passage is particularly Mormon, with the seeds of a theology of premortality, a meditation on agency that delves into the delicate interplay of grace and holy works, and a reworking of the Melchizedek narrative that differs substantially from its biblical counterparts.As for the storyline, Alma 12-13 is fraught with scriptural wrangling. Alma’s sermon is a response to an interrogation in scriptural hermeneutics by a group called the Nehorites of Ammonihah. Alma in turn accuses his questioners of distorting or 'wresting' the scriptures. And in the very next chapter, these same sacred texts are put to flame in the Book of Mormon’s only book-burning incident. Although Alma does end up with a few precious friendships forged out of his encounters in Ammonihah, this debate over scripture is a far cry from the laying down of contention and establishing of peace hoped for by Lehi hundreds of years earlier.But we don’t have to be stuck in a rut of scriptural contention. After participating in the Mormon Theology Seminar, I feel that I’ve experienced a model of its opposite. We were a small core of collaborators (with some input from guests) consisting of two philosophers, two religious historians, a theologian, a rhetorician, a literary theorist, and a sociologist. We traveled from eight different states, were both Mormon and non-Mormon, men and women, and had diverse histories of LDS church involvement. Our insights were varied. Some could speak to the passage’s affinities with St. Augustine and John Calvin. Others saw poetic possibilities or the drama of the passage's storytelling. Some were looking through a lens of continental philosophy.And it worked. Our discussions were exercises in listening and asking questions.And I loved it. I loved the dialogue that happened. I loved digging for questions with as much energy as we searched for the answers. I loved thinking deeply about a particular verse or even a specific word. I loved that we could focus on a text that yielded such abundant fruit, even though (or perhaps because?) the passage was sometimes thorny and puzzling and our perspectives sometimes contrasted with each other.I learned two things about studying scripture.First, that the Book of Mormon is worthy of scholarship—historical, sociological, literary, and theological. Its text is rich. It opens up into an abundant feast.Second, that collaboration works. When people truly listen to one another—trusting a speaker’s sincerity, respecting unique perspectives, saying 'tell me more' instead of 'that's wrong'— the result is amazing. There is nothing more fruitful, more intellectually invigorating and spiritually inspiring than laying down contention and establishing peace with scripture.Before I started this seminar, a friend wished me well with a prediction that my two weeks would be spiritually fulfilling. I wasn’t sure how that would play out. Our seminar discussions were a far cry from tearful or tender testimony meetings. There was a lot of fast talking with ready citations of what some might call abstruse writers. People were jovial rather than sweet. But there was a brightness of enlightenment. Hunger for a feast that could fulfill. Curiosity piqued by the intellect of collaborators. If we call the scriptures a feast, then this was two weeks of indulging in the very best food, leaving me with an appetite for more feasting to come. The 2016 Mormon Theology Seminar recently wrapped up at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. We asked participants to offer a glimpse at what the Seminar's all about. This post features Rosemary Demos. She completed a PhD in Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center this May. Her research and writing focuses on religion in literature. She currently lives in Greenbelt, Maryland. Read more experiences from the Mormon Theology Seminar here.

David GoreSometimes the simplest things are the most valuable. A fire, a cool breeze, a short walk with a friend, a simple, delicious meal, or a good book are among the most simple and valuable things we might encounter. These simple things, alone, are sufficient to remind us what a joy it is to be alive.The Mormon Theology Seminar is structured around and manifests the insight that simple things are valuable. In its essence, the Seminar is just a few people, sitting around a table, reading a book and talking. These practices, too rarely pursued or implemented, reminded me again what a joy it is to study and learn.One might think that sitting around a table reading and talking about a shared text would be the very lifeblood of the academy. Sadly, the actual behavior of academics has more to do with recurring meetings, campus politics, and sitting alone before tele-computing screens. The Mormon Theology Seminar was therefore so personally and professionally refreshing because it removed us from the usual academic rigmarole and placed us in a room with a text.In the Seminar’s 2016 iteration, we read and read and read and talked and talked and talked and wrote and wrote and wrote about Alma 12:19–13:20, a fragment of Mormon scripture just 1,778 words long. Densely packed with theological ideas, textual allusions, plot enhancing themes, and sermonic energy, these words easily sustained hours and hours of scrutiny, criticism, discussion, and argument. In a spirit of collaboration, we pored over this fragment and in the process we grew in understanding and appreciation.The simplicity of this format is its genius.Through this process of textual examination I came to see as never before the rich texture of Alma’s sermonizing and the theological depth of the Book of Mormon. It is a simple and plain truth that the text of the Book of Mormon can sustain much greater scrutiny, study, and consideration than it is often given. All superficial and surface-level examinations seem to pale in comparison to the concentrated, collaborative, and charitable practices of exercises like the Mormon Theology Seminar.Unfortunately, the simplest things are often as rare as they are valuable. For this reason I owe a debt of gratitude to the directors of the Mormon Theology Seminar, Doctors Adam Miller and Joseph Spencer, to the Maxwell Institute, and the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies for making the Mormon Theology Seminar possible. The resources that supported the Mormon Theology Seminar gave us a great and valuable gift. I hope we can, in some small way, pass on that gift with the forthcoming publication of our efforts. The 2016 Mormon Theology Seminar recently wrapped up at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. We asked seminar participants to reflect on their experiences, offering a glimpse at what the Seminar's all about. This post features David Gore, department chair of Communication at the University of Minnesota Duluth. See more here.

In this guest post Joseph Spencer, co-director of the Mormon Theology Seminar, kicks off a series of blog posts from the 2016 Seminar participants. The 2016 Mormon Theology Seminar participants at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.

This guest post is from Julie M. Smith, editor of Apocalypse: Reading Revelation 21–22. The book is now available in print and digital formats. Digital subscribers to the Maxwell Institute can access the entire book online here. In what would become the standard explanation of how parables work, biblical scholar C. H. Dodd proclaimed that the parable “arrest the hearer by its vividness of strangeness, and leave the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought.” ((C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (New York: Scribner, 1961), 16.)) What is true of parables is doubly, if not triply, true of the book of Revelation. Two millennia have apparently not been enough for a consensus to emerge regarding the interpretation of this enigmatic text. Why is that?The book itself gives us two clues in its very first verse, where John describes the text and how it came to be. First, he calls it an apokalypsis (see Revelation 1:1). We recognize the English cognate apocalypse and think, perhaps, of big-budget disaster movies, but the Greek word has a different nuance: it means “uncovering.” The author thus describes his task in writing as one of uncovering truth for the reader, but what truths does he intend to uncover, and how are they to be uncovered?These questions bring us to our second clue: as the Revelator describes the process by which the revelation was transmitted, he explains that it was “signified” by an angel (Revelation 1:1). From a Greek word meaning “to give a sign” (sēmainō), this word implies that the revelation was conveyed through signs or symbols. Putting this clue together with the other, we can say that the author will be uncovering truths by using symbols. This is no surprise. As even the most casual student of the book of Revelation knows, it is chock-full of symbols, many of which strike modern readers as more disturbing than inspiring (what are we to make of seven-headed beasts or death riding a horse?).How do such symbols work? What do they symbolize? If we uncover them, what will we find? How can we know if we are interpreting a symbol correctly? Faced as much with these rich interpretive opportunities as with the attendant perplexing questions, it is no wonder that Revelation has inspired artists, stumped scholars, fueled cranks, and terrified children.Into this wonderland tumbled six LDS scholars interested in gleaning meaning from the final two chapters of Revelation. ((To ease the difficulty of jumping into a conversation that has been going on for nearly twenty centuries, Eric D. Huntsman—one of this project’s contributors—provided participants with a summary of the major ways the book of Revelation is being interpreted. This essay, titled “Interpretive Approaches to Revelation,” can be accessed here.)) The unique format of the Mormon Theology Seminar gave us the space to engage this most mysterious of texts. This volume gathers the papers that resulted from our collaborative study.It is our hope that these essays will open new lines of theological inquiry into the book of Revelation among Latter-day Saints. As the only book-length apocalypse in the standard works, as the final book in the New Testament, and as one of the few biblical texts referenced in the Book of Mormon, the book of Revelation holds a special place in the LDS canon. It demands more of its readers than most scriptural books, but it also offers them more. If we make some small contribution to expanding the circumference of Mormon thought concerning the book of Revelation, we will be greatly rewarded for our efforts.Apocalypse: Reading Revelation 21–22 is available here.Maxwell Institute digital pass subscribers can access the entire book free of charge here.

Eight years ago a group of young Latter-day Saint scholars began organizing collaborative in-depth studies of Latter-day Saint scripture. They wanted to bring their academic interests to bear on passages like Alma 32 and 2 Nephi 26–27. Like casting seeds in a field, the Mormon Theology Seminar planned to publish their results. Not only would their work provide new insights into particular scriptures, they also would model fruitful ways for others to get more out of their scripture study. The fruit they distribute would also contain seeds others can plant.In 2013, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies partnered with the Mormon Theology Seminar to help increase the harvest. Two more seminars have been held since then, and now we’re pleased to announce a new series of books:The Proceedings of the Mormon Theology Seminar series displays, in writing, theology as a Mormon practice. This mode of doing theology is different from weighing history, deciding doctrine, or inspiring devotion. Theology speculates. It experiments with questions and advances hypotheses. It tests new angles and pulls loose threads. It reads old texts in careful and creative ways. We publish these experiments upon the word to foster greater theological engagement with basic Mormon texts.The first book in the series, An Experiment on the Word: Reading Alma 32, edited by Adam S. Miller, was re-published in 2014.A new edition of the next title is available today, Reading Nephi Reading Isaiah: 2 Nephi 26–27, edited by Joseph M. Spencer and Jenny Webb. Each of these were previously published by Salt Press and have been copy edited for their second editions.The next book—never before published—is Apocalypse: Reading Revelation 21–22, edited by Julie M. Smith. It will be available later this summer, with more titles to come.Each book will be available in paperback and digital editions.To subscribe, go to mi.byu.edu/subscribe.

Sharon HarrisWhen I moved to New York City five years ago I quickly learned that in New York the introductory social question is, 'What do you do in New York?' The question is not 'Where do you work?' or 'Are you a student?' New Yorkers do all kinds of things, often that defy neat identity categorization such as being a student or being a nurse. Moreover, New Yorkers put a lot of thought and grooming into their self-developed narratives. So you ask the question, What do you do in New York? and give the person a chance to tell her story. This summer from June 7–20 eight of us gathered in New York, and we would have answered that question, 'I do Mormon theology.'It wasn’t that long ago that I first heard the formulation of 'doing theology' and it struck me as simultaneously odd and ambitious, perhaps even a bit pretentious (Who are you to think that you can do theology anyway?). On one hand, 'doing theology' is syntactically unremarkable as a way of identifying academic work: As an PhD candidate in English literature, I wouldn’t say that I 'do English,' but I might say that I 'do literary criticism.' I often say that I 'do early modern,' meaning that within English literature I specialize in early modern historical field. (It’s only now as I type this out I realize how grammatically incorrect and somewhat silly that phrasing sounds.)On the other hand, I sensed that for the seminar co-directors Adam Miller and Joe Spencer—and in short order for all of us—the word 'theology' in the phrase 'doing theology' was by no means a mere placeholder, a way of filling in the blank, a simple identification of an academic field. On the contrary, doing theology was much closer to the Latin facere meaning both to do and to make. To say we were doing theology meant that we were busy, and we were! We wrote over 10,000 words a piece in two weeks, each of us churning out a new short paper each day in the first week and preparing our longer conference paper in the second week. To say we were doing theology meant that the whole enterprise of cracking open, holding up to the light, foraging, plumbing, dissecting, unfolding, questioning, rethinking, reordering, re-doing Jacob chapter 7 took on a palpable urgency: we’ve got stuff to do! There were verb tenses to parse, Old and New Testament echoes to puzzle over, family relations humming through Jacob’s words, and evidence of temple practices wedged into unexpected places. The text was too rich, dense, generous, and dynamic to waste any time.For me that’s where the potential pretentiousness of doing theology melted away; there was too much sweat for pomposity and far too much joy for self-aggrandizement. The question is not, 'Who are you to do theology?' but rather, 'Who are we to leave the scriptures unread, the theology undone?' The Mormon Theology Seminar of 2015 recently wrapped up in New York City (see here). We asked seminar participants to reflect on their experiences, offering a glimpse at what the Seminar's all about. This post features Sharon Harris, a PhD candidate in English literature at Fordham University. See more here. —BHodges

The 2015 Mormon Theology Seminar recently wrapped up in New York City (see here). We asked seminar participants to reflect on their experiences, offering a glimpse at what the Seminar's all about. This post features Jacob Rennaker. Posts from other seminar participants will follow.—BHodges Jacob RennakerCollaboration is a sort of magic.In the world of our minds, we're typically isolated from one another. We get most of our information by reading to ourselves the written words of others, and when (or if) we do respond to that information, we usually do so much later. This type of delayed response has its advantages—our responses can allow us to carefully fortify our own internal world against those who see, think, or feel differently than we do.Collaboration with others in person, on the other hand, conjures an environment where you are forced outside of your own carefully constructed reality and into a wild wilderness of opposing (though sometimes overlapping) viewpoints.Collaboration is a dangerous magic. Georgios Choumnos, Metrical Paraphrase of Genesis and Exodus, 15th-16th century. British Library.Here’s the thing about collaboration—it’s dangerous. You never know how it's going to turn out. It can't be controlled in the same way that your previous internal world was so carefully managed. You don’t know what sorts of strange ideas someone else might surprise you with, or how you will respond to those unexpected ideas. You can’t build upon your old defenses, because the magic of collaboration can infiltrate your defenses on any—and all—sides.But there’s something else that makes collaboration dangerous—you are also forced to face what you truly do and do not know, and that sort of vulnerability is on immediate and persistent display before all of the others in your group. To a certain degree, we are all emperors who weave our own false robes—socially, intellectually, and spiritually. And it’s scary to realize that, in certain areas, you’re actually naked. When that discovery happens in a group setting, there’s always a chance that others will see your nakedness, and judge you for it.However, if you’re part of a group that has committed to act charitably toward each other, some of that fear can assuaged—the magic of collaboration can also summon the bonds of charity. As the group works together in this sort of setting, each person can learn to embrace their nakedness, while working together to weave robes that are certainly more humble than their gaudy self-made clothing, but which are also much more durable, and beautiful.Collaboration is a powerful magic.Practicing the magic of collaboration fundamentally changes you. Once you have seen the world through several (or eight) sets of eyes, your natural vision feels terribly myopic. You recognize that your individual sight, while more valuable than you had before supposed, is not enough—will never be enough. But because you have experienced this magic first hand, you can now conjure similarly collaborative environments wherever you’d like, and can help others to realize this power for themselves in an infinite variety of settings.Collaborative TheologyBy virtue of its collaborative nature, the Mormon Theology Seminar is, in its very essence, magic. I experienced this collaborative magic, which took me out of isolation, broke down my intellectual defences, and forced me into a thicket of strange new thoughts about the nature of scriptures, God, and reality itself. But the seminar also provided me with a community of charitable fellow travelers who saw my intellectual nakedness, and didn’t judge me for it. Instead, we worked to help clothe each other, so that we could then venture out to find truths that would have been impossible to discover on our own.This magic of collaboration took such a strong hold of me and the rest of the group that we had trouble disentangling our own independent thoughts from the flow of the group's constant conversations. This spilled over into our group’s final papers, and has changed how each of us understand not only Jacob 7, but the scriptures as a whole, the character of God, and the nature of reality. I hope that you can sense this magic when you read our forthcoming collected papers from the Maxwell Institute.I'm unspeakably grateful for this experience. It helped me to see just how powerful collaborative magic can be, and how necessary that magic is for both discovering meaningful truths, and for truly understanding anything, be it wholly sacred, secular, or some other creature entirely—like theology.Collaboration is a dangerous, powerful magic.I dare you to dabble in it.

The Maxwell Institute is pleased to announce the publication of An Experiment on the Word: Reading Alma 32. Adam S. Miller, who edited the volume, introduces our latest book in this guest post. You can read more about this new title here. —BHodges