McMurrin on Evil

As a follow-up to yesterday's post on the problem of evil, I want to talk about Sterling McMurrin's surprisingly positive evaluation of the LDS view: "It is in the explanation of moral and natural evil, the most persistent problem with which theistic philosophy must contend, that Mormon theology exhibits its chief theoretic strength" (p. 91; all quotes are from the Signature edition of his short book The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion). The key to Mormonism's approach is its willingness to embrace "the heresy of the finitistic concept of God" (p. 95).

Remember that the essence of the problem revolves around these three statements: God is good, God is all-powerful, and there is evil in the world. The "problem of evil" is that we want to affirm all three but we can only have two. Approaches to the problem either deny one of the three (which requires a lot of explanation) or try to accept all three despite the inconsistencies (which also requires a lot of explanation). Here is McMurrin's analysis and placement of Mormonism in this schema:

The thesis that God being conditioned by his own uncreated environment is not absolute in his power reconciles the doctrine of the infinite goodness of God ... with the reality of evil. Clearly the three concepts of the absolute goodness of God, the absoluteness of his power, and the positive reality of evil are not mutually compatible as ingredients of a theistic world view. One of them must be compromised to save the other two. No cultured religion can sacrifice the first; traditional orthodox Christianity has at times lived with inconsistency and at times hesitantly sacrificed the third; Mormonism, much liberal Protestantism, and some philosophical theology have sacrificed the second. (p. 105)

What McMurrin calls "Mormon Finitism" is the essence of the Mormon approach to the problem. The following passage fleshes out that concept a bit.

In Mormon thought evil is seen as a positive factor in the natural world and in human experience, and the primary meaning of human existence is found in the struggle to overcome it. ... The demonic factors, whether moral or natural, are given elements of the world. Moral evil, the evil that men do, is the inevitable consequence of genuine moral freedom. Natural evil, the evil that the world does, results from the moral neutrality of the universe. God is not ultimately responsible for either that freedom or that neutrality. They are among the elemental uncreated facts of existence. But by entering creatively into human and natural history, God struggles endlessly to extend his dominion over the blind processes of the material world and to cultivate the uses of freedom for the achievement of moral ends. (p. 96-97)

McMurrin freely admits that his sketch of the Mormon approach is not necessarily accepted, appreciated, or even recognized by most Mormon commentators on the subject:

Mormon literature and Mormon sermons are, of course, replete with the common rationalizations of evil that are more or less standard for theistic religion: that natural or nonmoral evil is a consequence of moral evil, administered by God as either punishment or discipline; that both natural and moral evils are instruments or occasions for the achievement of greater goods, or are partial or incomplete or unrecognized goods; and that evil is a necessary contrast to give meaning and reality to the good, for without evil there could be no good. (p. 97)

He adds, "Perhaps it is the ready accessibility of these facile but superficial explanations of evil that has so commonly prevented the Mormon theologians from discerning the great theoretical advantage available to a Mormon theodicy by reason of the non-absolutistic character of the Mormon metaphysics and theology" (p. 97).

If you like this kind of stuff but haven't read McMurrin's book before, you should buy a copy and do so immediately.

Comments

[Clark Goble]

Hmm. I think I'll still stick with the position that McMurrin's book is a horrible one. What we need is something like Blake's book (but with more variety of theological views) and written as a more introductory text.

[Dave]

Clark, you devoted several posts at MM to the book in 2004, so I'm surprised you'd call it horrible.

[Eric]

I am an idiot when it comes to this kind of stuff, but I would like to improve. McMurrins's book is one that I was planning on getting. Are opinions on this book really that varied, from must read to horrible?

[larryco_]

An interesting side note is that McMurrin gives credit to the finitist approach to the problem of evil to B. H. Robert's book
"The Truth, The Way, The Life". McMurrin wrote one of the forwards in the book.

[Clark Goble]

Dave, most of those posts were me going through why it was horrible.

[Seth R.]

What do you mean Clark?

Horribly written?
Horribly cited?
Poorly thought-out?
Or just plain evil philosophy?

[Geoff J]

Eric,

I very much enjoyed McMurrin's book. I almost let Clark scare me out of reading it too but I'm glad I didn't -- I think it is extremely instructive to those of us with little background in Mormon philosophy and theology. McMurrin lays out the various issues and explains where he thinks Mormonism generally stood on the subjects at the time (1965 I believe.) See my beginning of a series on the book here. (I linked to Dave's and Clark's reviews there too).

[Aaron Brown]

What Geoff J said.

But maybe I should check out Clark's stuff and see why it's so awful.

Aaron B

[Dave]

Thanks for reminding me of my old posts on McMurrin's book, Geoff. I actually forgot I had posted anything on it earlier!

[Clark Goble]

Seth, all of the above. (grin) It's amazingly dated and, I think, misleading.

[Clark Goble]

Just to add, I really think anyone interested would find Blake's book better (and his second one is out) Yes it is a bit more involved and, of course, longer. And it admittedly does have the flaw of not addressing the range of potential views. But it really is heads and shoulders above McMurrin. You'd definitely learn a lot more from Blake. I suspect people reading McMurrin will come away with erroneous ideas outside of some fairly vague general points. (i.e. Mormon finitism is a good solution to the problem of evil)

[Dave]

Clark, I skimmed the tables of contents for the two Ostler volumes. He obviously deals with a bunch of interesting topics and does so at much greater length than McMurrin. But I didn't see anywhere where Ostler tackled the "problem of evil" (a well defined problem in theology) head-on, although there were several chapters on related topics. Not having read Ostler's books yet, I can't really compare his discussions to McMurrin's.

[Eric]

Well, maybe I should read both? Would it make sense to read one before the other? I would need something pretty basic to start with. I never took any philosophy classes. So what I need is Philosophy 101 for mormons. Or Philosophy for Mormon dummies.

No offense to Blake (he may read this after all), I have never met him of course, but he always seems so confrontational and sure of himself. Kinda ratta-tat-tat this is how it is. Am I misreading him because of the debate style of discourse? Is his book this way?

[DKL]

By dated, I think Clark means that it basically assumes an enlightenment view of human knowledge, and in the 20th century, this means it falls loosely into the category of positivism (the quasi-official verdict on positivism is that it can be rejected without discussion). I haven't read McMurrin's book or Blake's, but, I've argued with Blake about whether positivism had a shred of validity on Clark's thread on positivism; I was as unimpressed with him as he seems to have been with me. In any case, I'll probably will read all these books at some point.

But the problem evil is a pretty straight forward one, and in the excerpts you site here, McMurrin's re-iterates it with admirable succinctness.

[Geoff J]

Comparing the McMurrin and Ostler books is like comparing an apple to a watermellon. I loved both books. Blake covers a few subjects (mostly the attributes of God in book 1) in great detail and McMurrin covers a lot of topics shallowly. I think Clark is just wrong about the value and quality of McMurrin's book. I think it is an excellent primer. I plan to continue my series on it until I get all the way through the book.

I have a copy of Blake's new book and already read the first chapter. I will probably start a series on it tonight. It too is excellent.

Eric - Yes you should read both (all three actually). McMurrin's is a better place to start I suspect though.

[Geoff J]

DKL,

Blake said he has reevaluated his position on positivism as a result of blog discussions (see this comment). I have to assume your comments helped him see the subject in a new light.

[DKL]

Interesting comment, Geoff. It seems that I should have been more impressed with Blake.

[Clark Goble]

By dated DKL, I mean philosophy has progressed a lot the last 50 years. For instance all of Plantinga's work on the problem of evil obviously can't be addressed by McMurrin. Whether you agree with Plantinga or not, clearly it is very important to the topic.

Also, by the time McMurrin is writing positivism's days were already largely over. Yet even though it is from the 60's it does feel like it was written much earlier (IMO). However McMurrin doesn't really embrace positivism in the least. He just touches on various points, often with only a handful of major philosophers, many getting only a sentence or two. If he at least adopted a positivist approach but did it in depth then I probably wouldn't mind as much. The problem is that McMurrin just gets so many things wrong and then the rest is very, very superficial or presupposes already familiarity with the figures.

BTW - I sure hope you aren't impressed with someone based upon whether they are a positivist or not. (grin)

[Dave]

A short aside in defense of McMurrin: the book was (according to McMurrin's own Foreword) "based on a series of lectures delivered at the University of Utah in January and February of 1965," which were in turn based on a single paper read to a scholarly audience in 1959. He stated, "It is not my purpose here to present a systematic treatment of Mormon doctrine" but only to "differentiate Mormon doctrine from the classical Christian theology as that is set forth by the major theologians or expressed in certain of the historic symbols of the Christian faith." In light of that modest goal, the book is a gem.

As an exercise, try thinking of any Mormon Studies books published in that general era (help me out here, Justin) that have worn as well as McMurrin's book. I came up with (in no particular order) the following candidates: Brooks' Mountain Meadows Massacre (1963), O'Dea's The Mormons (1957), Nibley's An Approach to the Book of Mormon (1964), Arrington's Great Basin Kingdom (1958), and Brodie's No Man Knows My History (1945). These too, I think, have been in some sense displaced by more recent scholarship, but each is still well worth reading (although I confess I just could not manage to drag myself through Great Basin Kingdom despite my best efforts). For an older book, I think the proper measure for being an enduring classic is whether it opened new and fruitful lines of inquiry, not whether its factual observations and detailed argument remain valid fifty years later. (Clark, I know you're just making a good case for Blake's more detailed and up-to-date volumes, and you have probably convinced us all to go out and buy them, so consider your quest a success.)

[Dave]

Eric, I don't think you'll find a Mormon Philosophy 101. Your best bet is to read a good intro to philosophy (try the ones by Blackburn and by Solomon but not the one by Scruton, in my General Books list on the left sidebar), then a good intro to Christian theology (try the one by Olson in my Religious Books list). I found each of those in my local public library, by the way. Then you'll be ready to tackle either McMurrin or Ostler profitably.

[Eric Russell]

True, Dave, there's no Mormon Philosophy 101, but I took Mormon Philosophy 415 at BYU. :)

We read B.R. Roberts "Mormon Doctrine of Diety" which I thought was a good beginning text on some of the issues.

[Eric Russell]

Speaking of which, that reminded me that I wrote a paper on the problem of evil for said philosophy class (actually 215) that I have online in case anyone is particularly bored. It is here.

[DKL]

Thanks for clarifying, Clark. My impression of your take on the book was apparently overly-influenced by your "never ending thread on positivism."

Clark: BTW - I sure hope you aren't impressed with someone based upon whether they are a positivist or not. (grin)

No. I seriously dislike Wittgenstein--early, middle, and late. Also, positivists outside of philosophy tend to irritate me, because they have an overly simplistic view of science. In fact, I think that the dominant misconception of positivism derives from it's overly simplistic interpretation by non-philosophers (otherwise, why would the counter-arguments be so simplistic?). That, and the fact that continental philosophy has made it chic to discuss difficult topics without even a token attempt at achieving clarity.