Brigham on Science and Theology

I probably wouldn't post comments on this short section of American Moses, but it is such a nice complement to Clark's recent posts on the nature of spiritual reality over at The Bloggernacle Times that it deserves mention. We often attribute this line of thinking to a sermon or two by Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, but we should not ignore the optimistic and "science-friendly" views of Brigham Young expressed over many years in Utah.

First, he saw harmony, not conflict, between science and religion:

My religion is natural philosophy. You never heard me preach a doctrine but what has a natural system to it ... All the revelations of the Lord to the children of men, and all revealed doctrines of salvation are upon natural principles, upon natural philosophy.

He seems to be suggesting that God works through natural law and that all events occur in accordance with natural principles. Brigham goes on to explain that what we call miracles or mysteries are simply things we don't fully understand yet. He rejects the idea of supernatural events or a qualitatively different supernatural order.

What is spirit then? Following earlier statements, Brigham held it to be "refined matter," and emphatically not "immaterial substance." Personally, I'm not sure that changing labels (refined versus unrefined matter instead of material or immaterial substance) really changes anything, but it does seem to have moved Mormon thinking away from dualism and toward scientific materialism.

Brigham rejected the view of the Fall as truly deleterious, and looked on Adam with notable sympathy, even admiration. Arrington summarizes: "Brigham's sermons suggest that he saw God, angel, man, spirit, intelligence as merely different names designating related beings in various stages of development. Man is in the middle stage." So the Fall wasn't much of a fall at all, it just inaugurated mortal life, a stage in our eternal progression.

Finally, Brigham had to deal with a 19th-century pseudo-intellectual who had his own ideas about Mormon doctrine. Brigham clashed with Orson Pratt on doctrine and theology for thirty years in Utah. There was "a continuous tension between Pratt the philosopher and Brigham the Prophet." But Brigham had unusual patience and was a master of compromise. Pratt was never disciplined and always had "a measure of freedom in speaking and writing," yet he was still subject to some control over what he wrote and published. Here's Brigham's characteristic summary: "The trouble between Orson Pratt and me is I do not know enough and he knows too much." Brigham, it seems, never let the conflict spiral out of control. They muddled through, which is generally good enough for LDS theology.

Arrington's closing observation: "If Brigham Young was not a systematic theologian like Pratt, he did have certain characteristic emphases, a power of mind, a trenchant vigor, and a recognition of the earthly role of religion that deserve more respect than he has usually been given."

[Note: quotes are from American Moses, p. 201-09; Arrington gives JD references for all his Brigham Young quotes.]

Comments

[Clark Goble]

One big problem with Pratt was that he thought he knew a lot but he really wasn't nearly as well educated as he thought. Further, partially because of his locale, his views of science and philosophy were typically a few decades out of date.

[J. Stapley]

Pratt was never disciplined...

Is he equivicating over the definition of "disciplined"?

[Dave]

JS, I was using "disciplined" in the formal sense of being tried for one's membership or fellowship. I know there was a lot of friction between them, although I haven't read Conflict in the Quorum yet.

[Christian Cardall]

Would it be fair to say that neither Brigham's nor Orson's philosophical/ theological views have aged well?

Are attempted reconciliations with science always doomed to look foolish later on? Late 19th century stuff on the Light of Christ and the Ether, and some of Elder Widtsoe's stuff come to mind.

Or perhaps Brigham and Orson just didn't have a good feel for what, in the end, was well-established science. But in this they have good company---the likes of Thompson, Einstein, and Dirac.

Perhaps the noncommittal blandness of our leaders on such "speculative matters" is the wisest course in the long run. But it's not the only conceivable option: One could hope for more revelation.

[note: submitted via email; posted by Dave]

[Nate Oman]

Christian raises a good point. I happen to really like strange, speculative Mormon theology. I love spirit fluid, Adam-God, pre-Adamites, Pratt's strange monads, and all the rest. On the other hand, it is not clear to me exactly what this stuff is good for. It provides me with a certain amount of enjoyment (always a plus), but I suspect that for many it would simply form a spiritual or intellectual stumbling block.

[Geoff Johnston]

I'm with you Nate. I love the stuff. But nowadays any theological or doctrinal speculations tend to totally freak people out -- let alone speculations from one of the brethren.

(And that's why God invented the Bloggernacle... Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk)

[Bradford Tuckfield]

I don't think Brigham's scientific views are obsolete. One of my favorite scriptures is D&C 130:4-5
"Is not the reckoning of God’s time, angel’s time, prophet’s time, and man’s time, according to the planet on which they reside? I answer, Yes."
Isn't this a statement of relativistic time decades before Einstein? And while attempts to reconcile science and religion frequently look foolish, most of the history of science itself looks foolish in retrospect (Ptolemy's epicycles, the four humors, early models of the atom, etc.) and many results of science support beliefs of religion - the vastness of the universe and "worlds innumerable unto man", the laboratory synthesis of light and Genesis 1, and (I know I'm in dangerous territory) the many other dimensions string theory demands. Didn't the Prophet say that the "spirits of the just are all around us" on the Earth? Well where are they except in the quantum dimensions? This may sound silly and is of course just idle musing; the disproof of string theory does not void Joseph Smith's comment. However the truth of the gospel stands eternal and unshakable and the fads and fashions of science need only catch up. Indeed it has always struck me how scientists can be disdainful of religion and yet place their own unquestioning faith in the unverified absurdities of modern science (like Feynman's "the electron traverses the entire universe an infinite number of times to go six inches forward" explanation of interference patterns), things that will probably look as absurd someday as Aristotle and Ptolemy's metaphysics does now.

[Clark Goble]

Brandford, wouldn't a literal reading of that passage simply mean that a year depends upon the period of rotation for the planet they reside on? I don't see much by way of relativity in it. So I don't think it says anything more profound than that if the earth took 1.5 times as long to orbit the sun that we'd call a year something that was 1.5 as long.