Testimonies

Please forgive me for a simplistic analogy I have often thought of throughout my career. Years ago, I became familiar with a television commercial geared to children which advertised Tootsie Rolls, a small chewy chocolate-like candy. The refrain echoes, “Whatever it is I think I see, becomes a tootsie roll to me.” It has been my experience that whatever it is I think I see is in truth and serious reality a reflection of the true and living God and His Son, Jesus Christ. In countless ways, I see His hand in my life, and feel the truthfulness of His gospel. All things testify of Him. I leave my testimony here from the perspective of my role as an artist and musician.

The constant struggle for perfection fills the halls of music schools everywhere in the form of scales and endless melodic repetitions. We are quick to tell our students and ourselves that perfection is a process. Yet we yearn for it. We sacrifice our time, talents, and all that we would otherwise be to the pursuit of a moment of creative genius. It is the stuff of movies. In my own struggles, there were many times when I wanted to choose an easier path, though I wonder now if there is such a thing. Music was for me the most honest of all pursuits. In an academic world where a 92% was an “A”, 92% of the right notes wasn’t even passing. One can’t fake Mozart. I often mused at how impossible perfection was—for even if you play all written indications correctly, as the new computer programs could do, there would be something missing. How like my life. It was only with a proper understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ that I began to understand the nature of perfection.

It was my dream to be a fine oboist in the role of a music professor. As there are fewer than 350 full-time oboe professorships in the United States, I also knew that the odds were not in my favor. One day, as an undergraduate, I walked from a class on the far side of campus to the music building. In the preceding class, I had found myself contemplating the many forms of pride. I was deeply troubled by the music world, and my place in it. Too many performers were satisfied not by being good but by being better than others. The constant comparisons were at the heart of music education. I knew as well as anyone that the desire only to be one’s “best self” rang hollow if that “best self” wasn’t good enough to beat the others for a job. What kind of life could that be for a seeker of truth and goodness? As I pondered these questions, an informal cry escaped my mind to the God of the Universe, “If only we musicians knew that we could all play!” In that moment I received a critical answer that has stayed with me throughout my schooling and career. As well as I know anything, I know that, somehow, everyone will have a chance to play. I know that each of us has something to contribute to the artistic world. Our job is to find our own voice and become creators.

The doctrine of agency is one of the most beautiful and essential aspects of reality for an artist to understand. The divinely appointed gift of agency is central to the Creator’s great plan of happiness for his children. As a part of this plan, we are free to act. We have an opportunity to determine good from evil. As we exercise this gift in the choices of our lives, we hope, as all good people of the earth do, to choose well. We strive for the perfection of our choices. We strive to choose always good over evil. We then strive to choose better over good, and then best over better. At various points here and in the eternities we will have rejected evil and all lesser goods. We then have opportunities to exercise our agency to choose between equally good choices based on our preference. To choose between many good things is to choose a color or to choose a pitch, rather than to choose right from wrong. The result is that we choose from a rainbow of beautiful options according to our own vision. In the eternities, the culmination of agency is creation, and creation is art. To be creators in the likeness of our Father should be the goal of every artist.

We few who have chosen the arts as our mortal life’s work are bound by obligations more serious and profound than our all too common struggles for “perfection.” It is our happy obligation to act as a shadow of the great Creator. It is our role to bring about beauty through the exercise of agency.

I testify to the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which fullness can be found in His church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The doctrines therein are not the doctrines of men, but the doctrines of the Creator of heaven and earth. We are made in his image and, as artists, we strive to be like him.

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Elizabeth Young Rennick, assistant professor of double reeds, joined the faculty of Eastern Kentucky University (EKU), where she is also coordinator of chamber music studies, in 2005. Previous to this appointment, she held positions at Snow College (Ephraim, Utah) and Coe College (Cedar Rapids, Iowa). She holds degrees from Brigham Young University (BM and MM) and the University of Iowa (DMA), and considers herself lucky to have studied with Geralyn Giovanetti and Mark Weiger.

Elizabeth is a founding member of Dolce Veloce, an actively touring flute-oboe-piano trio, with flutist Sonja Giles and pianist May Tsao-Lim. Dolce Veloce has had performances in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Iowa, Wyoming, Arkansas, Texas, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Minnesota. She has served in the Cedar Rapids and Dubuque Symphony Orchestras (Iowa) and the Lexington Philharmonic (Kentucky). She was pleased to play at the International Double Reed Society Conference in 2005 (Austin), 2008 (Provo), and 2010 (Norman), and has been selected as a performer in the upcoming 2011 (Tempe) conference. She performs with numerous small ensembles, including the Madison Winds, the resident faculty quintet at EKU, and is especially fond of playing with the Lexington Bach Choir and promoting chamber music in the Lexington area.

An enthusiastic educator, Dr. Rennick frequently works with the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra and is a resident faculty member of the Stephen Foster Music Camps, the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, and Wyoming’s Music, Arts and Technology Festival. Elizabeth enjoys making reeds and looks forward to the publication of her research on oboe reed-making pedagogy in an upcoming volume of The Double Reed. She resides with her husband and daughter in Richmond, Kentucky.

Posted March 2011

The confirming voice of the Holy Ghost has taught me the truthfulness of many ideas. But this revelation thing is an inner experience that does not map to the world we live in. I cannot communicate the feeling of the touch of the Spirit beyond my own skin. I can only state that it exists, testify to the possibility that it can be felt, and warrant that the feeling is as unique and identifiable as the savor of salt.

I know why I do the things I do; it is a simple matter after receiving a revelation from God. But the articulation of the why to my colleagues has been difficult because they do not understand the vocabulary and the culture of revelation.

I cannot say that I have ever successfully accomplished it—how would I know?—but the effort has been invaluable because I have learned to engage my colleagues and listen to them. I have discovered that I have nothing to fear from a mutually respecting knock-down, drag-out wrestle over the mental, physical, and social context of the revelatory core. I am happy to harvest truth wherever I find it, even while mixing it up over observation versus belief with an atheistic (and esteemed) Scottish colleague over a Thai meal in Brussels.

My education in being a chemist in the workplace started with my first job in the Midwest after finishing my degree at BYU. It was substantially different from my exposure as a missionary to life in Germany. I realized there that professional people who claim revelation are not considered normal, and that what our colleagues really want to do is heal that “self-delusion” or gently pry that “juvenile tradition” out of our minds and fill in the hole with their learning.

They do not understand the risk of their assessments, or the challenge they have assumed. It looks easy to persuade a fellow chemist to give up his antiquated and restrictive prohibitions on drinking coffee or alcohol. Why, if he were a real chemist he would drop those juvenile inhibitions after reading a few articles from the New England Journal of Medicine that describe the benefits of a glass of wine with supper. After all, a real scientist would believe the science reported in the peer-reviewed journals.

The lab’s chief scientist stepped into my office and took the visitor’s chair. I was an entry level professional, fully ignorant of company politics and people. I had no idea why she would visit me. I could see she only had one cigarette in her mouth but it produced such prodigious volumes of smoke that I wondered if she had another waiting on deck.

“Dan, I understand you are a Mormon.”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“A practicing Mormon?”

“Yes, but only one wife. Why?”

“I understand that you Mormons don’t drink coffee or alcohol. Is that right? Why not?”

Puff, puff, puff—blowing particulates from pyrolosis of vegetable organics loaded with condensed phase heterogeneous polyaromatic compounds into my face.

“Well, you know, these things aren’t good for you. The prophet Joseph Smith received a revelation about it, called the Word of Wisdom.”

“Oh, a revelation? God talked with him? So, what do you think of the articles that are published in the scientific literature—I am thinking of something that recently appeared in the NEJM that proves a glass of wine with supper is actually good for you. Your revelation really doesn’t make sense compared with scientific research, does it?”

She’s right; it actually isn’t bad for me. Why did I say it that way? Traditional missionary response, for sure. But not such a good answer in this office today. Why is she doing this? I think she would like to rock my boat of belief. What am I going to say to a fellow chemist and the chief scientist?

“Yeah, that’s a good point, [name]. In fact, I don’t doubt that a glass of wine at supper could be good for my digestion, so maybe I slightly misstated my original reason.” Pause, and then inspiration nudges a new idea into my brain. “Indeed, the glass of wine would be very bad for me, but spiritually and not physically. It is actually a matter of commitment and integrity. When I joined this church I made the commitment to keep its dietary code. I practice and strengthen integrity as I keep my commitment.”

What could she say to integrity? That was beyond chemistry. She considered my answer, nodded, stood up, and walked out.

That answer does not weaken my belief in the divine origin of the Word of Wisdom, but it allows me to keep the pearls of my sacred experiences close to me while being open with colleagues who do not buy into angelic ministration as a credible source of information.

Last year I had the opportunity to refine the response. I approached a group of the managers in our plant south of Brussels who had stopped at the coffee machine. The plant engineer, a man I greatly respect and who obviously feels comfortable with me, challenged me, “Dan, here’s a coffee, come drink it with us.”

“[name], thanks for the offer but you know I don’t drink coffee. I’ll take my chocolat chaud.”

“You should; sometimes you just need a coffee.”

“Yes, there is much good in what you are saying. But it’s all about value,” I said, shaking my right index finger at him. “The value I receive from my church membership—you know that’s why I don’t drink with you guys, it’s church—is far, far greater than the taste of the drink or the social moment.” I had not thought of the value approach before; that was new. He probably did not agree that the things of any church are of such great value, but he accepted my perception of it. He is a good man, and I learned from the interaction with him.

So, the social and mental context of this aspect of my faith has been refined by my experience with people who question me. I keep the Word of Wisdom because I desire to strengthen my integrity generally by keeping my specific commitment to God, and because I understand and want the overwhelmingly high and eternal value a temple recommend and callings in the church bring to me. I don’t make this sacrifice of sociality, taste, and buzz because of health or because I fear the chemical effects of trace levels of nicotine or caffeine or an aliquot of ethanol in my body. Belgian beer is only Brussels city water compared with the taste of revelation from the Holy Ghost. It is an easy call for me.

I want to deflect from my faith a common complaint of my colleagues about traditional Christianity (their target is Catholicism and Protestantism; they just assume Mormonism is another Protestant sect). They hate the elitism (or simply dismiss it as absurd) that is bred by the traditional Christian doctrine that declares Christ universally necessary for salvation but restricts Christ’s availability to a handful of the blessed.

They think they have taken a shot at me when they express their anger or contempt for the condemning judgments the blessed ones toss their way. But I am not in their line of fire. In fact, I explain to them that my finger is on the same trigger, that I fully agree with them. It surprises them but I think their model does not permit them to understand. It does not matter, anyway, for they have thrown the Son of God out with the dirty bathwater of traditional Christian doctrines.

My God cannot be a respecter of persons; the elite Christians are self-made, and their judgments of others can be ignored. Further, I know that Christ is indeed universally available and how it is done. That point alone sharply differentiates my faith from that of the traditional Christians.

Receiving revelation does not make me better than anybody else, and I am not their or your judge. While I am not exactly disinterested in others’ salvation, it is not my problem. This saves us both from the ultimate arrogance of the saved that somehow gives them leave to stomp uninvited into another’s beliefs garden.

I know by revelation that this mortal life is not the end of the probationary period, so I don’t have to cajole, threaten, or attempt to coerce anybody to believe. The evangelicals do this when they show up on my door because they do not know what I know. They want me to take that minute to fill in the “I accept Jesus” card just in case I walk in front of a bus later that day. They would hate for “death to send me reeling to an eternity of hellfire and damnation” because they neglected to force me to sign up for their heaven.

*

Another salvo from my technical colleagues is that I must believe in the literal interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis like other traditional Christians, since I am a believer in God the Creator. That makes me a hypocrite to either my science or my religion in their eyes. But the rules of the game change with prophets and revelation. Again, I am not in the line of their fire. Truth is my object, not preservation of my models. The prophets gave me the core ideas that flavor my life with profound meaning, but it is effective science that helps me understand the historical and geological boundaries to those ideas, to clarify the physical context of my faith.

Galileo is a classic example. He brought more light to Christianity with his telescope than centuries of religious scholars re-working the same few words handed down from the apostles and the Jews. The Hubble Space Telescope has continued offering the same curriculum to Christians. I have been taught of the unfathomable and infinite reach of the mind of the living God by its photographs.

I believe in God the Creator, but I do not have to believe that he created the earth in a handful of years. I am happy to have inherited the scientific tradition that established the age and complexity of the earth. It fits my model of the eternal God that a few billion Earth-years are insignificant and don’t show up in the high-level construction plans that have apparently come down to us via Moses.

I believe in Adam and Eve but I do not have to believe that they were a global phenomenon and that all humans on this planet descended from them starting some 6,000 years ago. I expect that Ötzi, Lucy, the Cro-Magnon cave painters of Lascaux, France, the 9,000-year old woman whose remains were fished out of the La Brea Tar Pits, and the Neanderthals whose remains I saw in the Neanderthal Museum in Germany, have a story. Adam and Eve and their role in my faith are not at risk because the core came by revelation, but my understanding of their historical and social context will continue to be refined by science.

I believe Noah existed and I am willing to accept that he spent about one year on a boat. On the other hand, I am not constrained to believe in a global flood that wiped out all life on the earth. The Masoretic and Septuagint texts of the first book of Moses are flimsy protection from the big guns of systematic science. Not even the hero Gilgamesh of ancient Sumer and Babylon can deflect the withering blasts of stratigraphic analysis of the tells and the various isotope-based chemical dating methods. I can easily cut the traditional global nature from the local phenomenon so I can retain the core story. I trust good science to put the boundaries around these stories but revelation to confirm the veracity of the core.

Science cannot, however, discern the origins of the core or analyze its mechanisms. The core does not belong to the world of rational analysis and deductive logic. As I said earlier, revelation does not map to our world. But I can offer up the Book of Mormon as evidence that the collision of the spiritual galaxy with the physical galaxy can produce something tangible that has purely revelatory roots. This book is the word of God and stands on its own.

I also believe in the God of Redemption. In fact, the Great Creator and the Redeemer are the same divine being. This is like a professional engineer being a prophet. It is helpful to me that the essential lawfulness, subtlety, and technical integrity of the Creator find expression in the works of the Redeemer. The conditions of salvation are essentially lawful, consistent, explicable, and understandable, and the consequences of properly executed experimental studies entirely predictable.

The last statement above strikes a sensitive nerve with my colleagues.

*

It was an intense argument about religion and science. The old fellow sitting shotgun was a long-time friend, a professional electrical engineer and entrepreneur. He also had expressed an astoundingly fierce antipathy towards the Christianity of his Italian fathers. His partner was in the back seat, another engineer, younger. They were vendors for a project we were working on.

“Science is reproducible but your religious experience is not. That is why science is better than religion, and why you cannot be much of a scientist if you believe in religion.” That was [younger], in the back seat.

“What do you know about reproducible experiments in religion? How many times does an experiment have to be repeated before its results and principles become credible?” I was going to ask how they could so casually dismiss the common experiences of millions of LDS all over the world, but [younger] cut me off.

“I can see where you are going and think that is a useless argument.”

[Older] jumped in. “I have tried many of the paths my believing friends have recommended but none have worked for me. I would be willing, but I have already proven to me that it is all based on emotions. Religion is a fairy tale.”

There it is. He has done the test. A good man has tried to repeat his friends’ religious experiences and found them all to be incredible and irreproducible. Are mine and my fellow Latter-day Saints’ also all emotional? And the church a modern fairy tale? No, and No; I know better. I don’t have to let this one stand.

“Guys, the experiment works, but there are conditions of humility and desire that are essential. It is totally up to the person whether it works or not. Because God is hidden, nobody is compelled to believe—He is not going to suddenly drop out of the sky in front of you and beg you to believe in him. I, the believer, look about me and see the handiwork of God, while you, the unbelievers, do not. Fair enough. The hand of God is in the mind of the observer, and not explicit in the external evidence.” Then an analogy occurred to me.

“Did either of you take an organic chemistry lab in college?”

No, neither had. “We are electrical engineers, not chemists.”

“It is quite an astounding thing that a group of students can be handed exactly the same written procedures, be given exactly the same glassware and reagents, and that one team will produce no crystals; another a thick, sticky mass of yellow gunk in the bottom of the beaker; and another a beaker-full of beautiful white crystals of, say, vanillin. What was the differentiating factor in the quality of the results?”

They did not respond, but they also did not turn me off.

“It most certainly was not the written experimental procedures or reagents. What other variable was there? It had to be the people! It was variations in their diligence, their interest, their belief, the personal evaluation of the importance of organic chemistry lab, their preparations, and etc.”

This was exactly the analogy I had been looking for to help me deal with this issue. “The same holds for the synthesis of a revelation from God, or, in other words, the test of the spiritual things. We are all handed the same written procedures and reagents. Then the results of the experiment are entirely up to us.”

They could not respond. I was merciless and drilled the screw deeper. “I plainly state that each of us is totally personally responsible for the decision of belief and the test of the Spirit. It is not God we are testing.”

[Younger] asked, “How did you do with the vanillin synthesis?”

I laughed, and said, “Oh, I was struggling with who I really was in those days. I probably got the yellow mass of gunk.”

Then he said, “Since you are not a good chemist you had to believe in God.”

That was a nasty little poke; not the first one today. I laughed again (these things don’t bother me anymore) and extended my right arm to the back seat and waved my hand about. “See my hand waving around? I am pushing back on you like you have never before felt it from a religious person. You could not answer me, so you had to fall back to a little weak hand flopping and ad hominem. We Mormons are not like your Protestant sect friends. You have no idea who I am and what I believe. You think you know but you don’t. I have tried to get you to stop your headlong rush to beat up the Mormon in the driver’s seat and ask me questions but you would not, and your models are killing you because they are totally useless with me. ”

[Older] said, “You are probably frustrated that you did not convert a couple of non-believers.”

“No, not at all. Your salvation and faith are your problem, not mine. I enjoy these conversations; I learn much by them. And I think the world of you.”

*

I know that one of my feet is already in their court. They don’t see it because they cannot believe that a man who speaks of revelation from the living God can also accept a 4.5-billion year old earth and rigorous science. They cannot see the other foot because their models blind them to possibilities that are beyond the pale of traditional Christianity.

I will have finished sixty years on this planet in July. I have lived with my faith, its doctrines, practices, requirements, and consequences, for five of those six decades.
My family was fully churchless until we came to the LDS church in Nevada in about my tenth year. My faith was not distilled or rammed into my genes by my parents when I was a child. I learned what I learned by study and by revelation; I was responsible for what I became.

The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Church have been a powerfully anchoring force in my life, neither restrictive nor coercive but liberating and compelling to growth. I have been around long enough to see it for what it really is.

It is not a hokey American cult that enriches the few grizzled Elders and good old boys sitting atop the church’s hierarchy, or a beehive of mindless drones, but a full-bodied participative religious experience of love and revelation, volunteerism, and great sacrifice, from the bottom to the top of the organization, in every culture of this world. I love its energy and its power.

I admire the young man, Joseph Smith, called by God to restore the priesthood, the ordinances, the structure of the church, the testimony of Jesus, and knowledge of the eternal nature of man. I owe the Lamb of God for every good thing that I am, and his grace and love for lawfully and mercifully helping me deal with every stupid thing I do. It is my hope to be prepared to meet him at the judgment bar where I intend to personally express my great gratitude to him.

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I built houses and laid stone while finishing my undergraduate degree in German literature at Brigham Young University with a secondary teaching certificate and a minor in chemistry. Prof. Milton Lee, Professor of Chemistry at BYU, invited me to join him as a graduate student in my last undergraduate year. Five years later I departed BYU for Kansas City as a newly minted Ph.D. I was employed by the Midwest Research Institute to provide support to the National Toxicology Program’s toxicological studies around the country. I then took a position in the corporate analytical services group of Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., near Allentown, PA. I have been with Air Products since December 1984. I was lab-based until about 1999 when I accepted the opportunity for a fundamental career change. I have become the global technical product and R&D manager for a new product, responsible for its rollout throughout the world and for keeping the new product’s development pipeline filled. I have learned a lot about high-pressure gases engineering principles and practices. I was based in Brussels for most of the past eight years, and have traveled extensively throughout the world. The best part of this job has been the wonderfully diverse people with whom I have worked in many nations.

Posted March 2011

With some hesitation I make a belated confession. I am not sure if or what I am to write.

Navigating between belief and knowledge is tricky. Well, at least tricky for me. When considering my testimony of Jesus Christ or of his Gospel, I have attempted not to rely on the newest facts or documents found in my research of early Mormonism. And that choice lies at the core of the paths I navigate.

My belief in the divinity of Christ, his infinite atonement, and the restoration of his Gospel is not rooted in facts. It has been found in a quiet morning on a business trip in Cleveland while reading my “travel” Book of Mormon, or while praying to help my missionary companion from Monticello gain his own testimony, or in the solitude of the Sacred Grove. My testimony travels a path of feelings, fragile at times, but inescapably real. When those feelings wane and fears of uncertainty creep in, I find my way back through pondering the things I believe—centered in the Book of Mormon. I don’t seek knowledge at those moments but the unique tranquility of the Spirit. This path is not littered with pseudo-intellectualism (most often of my own making). My study of history, even Mormon history, does not give me a superior advantage to these feelings or beliefs. My testimony is not of history—even Joseph Smith’s history. My testimony is the feelings of gratitude, unworthiness, faith, and love for a Savior. I believe. I honestly and simply believe.

My study of the life of Joseph Smith has resulted in knowledge. The historical record carefully examined reveals the integrity of the man. I have come to love and respect him as a prophet. Placed in context we find a compelling story—messy at times, but compelling. We find the vibrancy of inspiration coupled with the complexities of living at a time of great opportunity and implicit hardships. Within the early Mormon experience the consequences of ego can be seen in ironic tandem and competition with community building. As I travel on this path of gaining historical knowledge, using the aggregate of facts recounted through faded manuscripts, I develop skills to vet out speculation, exaggeration, and misdirection. While these facts can be interpreted into various narratives, I cling to the primary sources, allowing them to shape the story. This adventure is fascinating. It challenges my intellectual capacities and permits me to delve into nuances hidden by both time and agenda. I find myself on a unique path to tell the truth. Knowledge is indeed power.

Your inquiry for my testimony raises the question as to whether you want me to discuss what I know or what I believe. They are vastly different to me. One is acquired by time and work, while the other is a gift. One is lifted by aspiration or recognition. The other only survives by humility. I work to navigate between the two.

I am a believer and I am a historian.

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Raised in Michigan, Jeffrey N. Walker served in the Canada-Montréal Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Upon his return, he completed a B.S. from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude. He then earned a J.D., cum laude, from the J. Reuben Clark Law School of Brigham Young University, where he served as an editor for the BYU Law Review. He practiced in Los Angeles with one of the largest west coast law firms before joining the Salt Lake City law firm of Jones, Waldo, Holbrook & McDonough. He has worked as general counsel for a regional healthcare company, as a national consultant for Lexis/Nexis, and as a founding partner of the law firm Holman & Walker. He is the president and co-owner of Western Architectural Services, a thematic manufacturing company located in Draper, Utah; and a co-founder of the national watch store chain, Precision Time.

Jeffrey Walker is currently the associate managing editor and the series manager of the Joseph Smith Papers for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as the co-editor for the Papers’ legal and business series. He is also a trustee and treasurer for the Mormon Historic Sites Foundation and the managing editor of the journal Mormon Historical Studies. Currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Church History and Doctrine and in the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, he teaches courses on Joseph Smith and the law.

He is married to the former Elizabeth Hepburn, and they have four children, three dogs, four cats, and two grandchildren.

Posted March 2011

Like many of you, my identity is shaped by my testimony, my membership in the Church, my family, my friends, my occupation, and my life experiences—both those that are joyful and those that are challenging. I am a sixth generation Latter-day Saint in virtually every one of my family lines. My ancestors came to Utah with the pioneers and the subsequent early waves of immigration. My parents were born and raised in New Harmony and Cedar City, Utah, but I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and raised in the eastern United States in New York, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. So while I have a typically “Mormon” heritage, I was raised as a member of a religious minority and had wonderful, shaping experiences with people of other faiths and backgrounds.

Most of my friends were Roman Catholic and Presbyterian in New York; Evangelical Christians in Tennessee; Latter-day Saints at BYU and on my mission; and Jewish, agnostic, and “undefined” as I did my graduate work back in Philadelphia. I learned to appreciate their faith and beliefs while at the same time coming to better understand and define my own.

As a committed Christian and as a faithful Latter-day Saint, my identity is chiefly and foremost formed by my faith in and love of the Savior. I was raised in the Church and never remember not believing it, but just as we all need to become fully converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I have had pivotal conversion experiences in my life—as a senior in high school, during my mission, and shortly after arriving at the University of Pennsylvania to work on my PhD. I served as a missionary in the Thailand Bangkok Mission between 1985–86, have frequently taught in Sunday School and priesthood classes, served as a bishop in a wonderful but challenging ward from 1996–2002, and have since served as an ordinance worker in the Provo Temple while also singing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Church work, too, has been a defining and fulfilling factor in my life.

I married my wife, Elaine, in 1993. After the Lord himself, she is the one great love in my life. Marriage has been a wonderful, challenging, and learning experience. I am the father of two children, Rachel and Samuel, and fatherhood has joined being a husband as another essential component of who I am as a Latter-day Saint. When he was four years of age, Samuel, now almost eight, was diagnosed with autism. This heart-rending reality has forever changed our family and my life, but it has also been a great tutorial and stretching experience.

I am a teacher, a speaker, and a writer. I completed my BA in Classical Greek and Latin at BYU and then received my MA and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in Ancient History. I taught Classics at BYU for nine years beginning in 1994, but in 2003 I transferred to the Department of Ancient Scripture, where I specialize in the New Testament. You can see details of my career and work by visiting my web site or reading a spotlight interview done by the Religious Studies Center at BYU.

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Eric D. Huntsman, associate professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University, has specialized in Roman imperial history and done work on imperial women—particularly Livia Drusilla, the wife of the emperor Augustus. His publications in religious studies and related fields include two BYU Studies articles on Josephus; “Christ Before the Romans,” in From the Last Supper Through the Resurrection: The Savior’s Final Hours (Deseret Book, 2003); “Galilee and the Call of the Twelve Apostles,” in From Bethlehem to the Sermon on the Mount (Deseret Book, 2005); “Teaching through Exegesis: Helping Students Ask Questions of the Text” (Religious Educator, 6.1, 2005); and “The Bread of Life Sermon,” in From the Transfiguration through the Triumphal Entry (Deseret Book, 2006). Together with colleagues Richard Holzafpel and Thomas Wayment, he has co-authored Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament: An Illustrated Reference for Latter-day Saints (Deseret Book, 2006).

More recent work includes three chapters in The Life and Teachings of the New Testament Apostles: From the Day of Pentecost to the Apocalypse (Deseret Book, 2010); “The Six Antitheses: Attaining the Purpose of the Law,” in The Sermon on the Mount in Latter-day Scripture (Deseret Book, 2010); “Livia Before Octavian,” Ancient Society 39 (2009); “And the Word Was Made Flesh: An LDS Exegesis of the Blood and Water Imagery in John,” Studies in the Bible and Antiquity 1 (2009); “Your Faith Should Not Stand in the Wisdom of Men: Greek Philosophy, Corinthian Behavior, and the Teachings of Paul,” in The New Testament Brought to Light: Latter-day Saint Insights into Acts through Revelation (Religious Studies Center, 2009); and “The Lamb of God: Unique Aspects of the Passion Narrative in John,” in Behold the Lamb of God (Religious Studies Center, 2008). Forthcoming in spring of 2011 is a book-length study of the Passion Narratives entitled God So Loved the World: The Final Days of the Savior’s Life (Deseret Book).

Professor Huntsman’s areas of expertise include New Testament studies, particularly the Johannine Writings, Pauline epistles, and Luke-Acts; Koine and New Testament Greek; Greek and Roman history and classical literature; early Christianity and the Roman world; and women in classical antiquity. At BYU, he teaches New Testament, Old Testament, Book of Mormon, biblical Greek topics, Greek and Roman history, and Judaism and Early Christianity in the Classical Near East.

Posted February 2011

Lately I have come to understand that spiritual conviction, like the beautiful lotus blossom in Buddhist iconography, is often found sprouting from the mire of everyday life. In my case, the flower of testimony bloomed during my teenage years in the middle of an ugly and difficult family crisis.

I was raised in a small northern Utah town, overwhelmingly Latter-day Saint, with both sets of grandparents close at hand and family lines running back to early nineteenth-century LDS conversions in Great Britain, upstate New York, and the area around Nauvoo, Illinois. My immediate family, extended family, and even the surrounding community exuded Mormon heritage. That is not to say everyone was orthodox or perfect. One of the conclusions I drew early on in my life, in fact, was not that Mormons were good and non-Mormons were bad, but rather that Mormons were human like everyone else. In our town it was Mormons who burgled homes and embezzled, got drunk on weekends, cheated on their wives, and beat their kids, just like it was Mormons who gave generously to the poor, went out of their way for the needy, served tirelessly in lay church callings, and were as honest as the day was long. For many of my role models, who had been raised in similar rural Mormon communities, the question of goodness was not about whether or not one belonged to the faith per se, but rather whether one’s individual actions were virtuous. Integrity, rather than affiliation, was what mattered most, and the codes to which the general community subscribed—largely Mormon in nature—were those by which I learned to judge myself. This helped me learn to recognize and try to avoid the strong Us-versus-Them smugness that can prevail among the piously faithful.

Our family generally had maintained a modest reputation for virtue, integrity, and hard work. So, when the scandal of divorce hit in the mid-1970s, despite a growing national divorce trend, it was something of a sensation that tarred all of us with a broad brush, quickly and suddenly moving us from our secure place into a different, and less respected, echelon of society. I felt the impact in several ways. What had been a secure home and family life interrupted here and there by the usual sibling tussles suddenly became ‘a broken home.’ Socially and emotionally I was suddenly cast into a great insecure void.

During the summer following my parents’ divorce I worked at a Boy Scout camp near Yellowstone National Park. It was in a remote area, with no electricity and an hour’s drive by dirt roads to the nearest town. I love the outdoors, and had always enjoyed scouting, and each day was exciting and challenging for me, filled with teaching merit badge classes, leading hikes, swimming in a deep blue (and ice cold) lake, and enjoying some of the most pristine wilderness in America. It was nice to be away from the nerve-wracking world of family trauma.

Although camp staff life was busy, there was ample leisure time as well. Before arriving, I had chosen to read the Book of Mormon again (I had read it through when I was eleven), determined this time to test Moroni’s challenge at the end of the book and seek a confirming spiritual witness. I consequently spent many hours absorbed in its stories and pondering some of its truths. Providing counterbalance to this rich spiritual preoccupation were a few of the staff members at the camp, whose convictions varied from committed doubt to sneering contempt. After dinner, casual chats would often lead to gripe sessions about wrongful actions by Church leaders or outspoken criticism of Mormon doctrines at odds with scientific or philosophical theories. As I watched the reactions of other staff, some of them grown men with families, I also became aware of the apathetical comfort of those who chose not to invest too much of themselves in whether or not the Church was true. I was new to such ideas; I had either been insulated from or avoided them to date, but here, alone and on my own for the first time in my life, I decided to try on some of those attitudes. Although they felt dangerous, and filled me with anxiety, my mind felt challenged and awakened by the possibilities that these ideas offered, a brave new world, unbound and unmapped by the codes of my upbringing. In a certain sense it paralleled the surrounding wildness of the remote Wyoming world—both dangerous and liberating—so I was less prone to adhere to the trusted beliefs of my youth. Life took on a hard edge as I felt my soul turning into an arena within which churned a battling array of opposites: good and evil, tradition and progress, belief and doubt, optimism and cynicism.

I finished up my second reading of the Book of Mormon one Saturday evening, and the following day (our day off) I opted not go with most of the staff into town. Instead, with family turmoil in the background and some new questions arising from my forays into doubt, I felt compelled to take a walk in the woods. After meandering a bit, my mind filled with turmoil, I found myself some distance from camp on a bluff overlooking the lake. My personal prayers to date had never lasted more than a few minutes, but that afternoon something deep within my soul drew me to my knees to pour out my heart. It was, as I look back on it now, a watershed moment for me because I was teetering on the edge of faith: no one else was around, nobody was watching me or knew what I was doing, no challenge by an adult nor compulsory deadline had forced me to my knees. It was just me and either God or not-God, and I was determined to wait on Him for some kind of answer or fall through the paper window of illusion into a godless world.

After several hours of a combination of meditation, prayer, listening to my heart beat, and painful, silent waiting, during which time a great anxiety of soul arose within me and seemed to grow larger, I finally concluded that either I was out of tune or timing with the Divine and must continue to walk in blind faith, or that the gaping hole in life’s security that had opened with my parents’ divorce had, with God’s disappearance, just turned into a black, infinite abyss. I stood up and began to walk back to camp. On a whim I did not retrace my steps, but instead worked my way down to the base of the bluff and began walking through the thick pines toward a lakeshore trail.

Disheartened, I climbed over fallen logs and made my way through the underbrush until I suddenly came out into a small clearing shaped like a teardrop, the point of which was uphill, towards the late afternoon sun. Light streamed at an angle through the trees at the top of the clearing, illuminating the round white flowering tops of bear grass clumps that dotted the meadow. And, in the instant it took me to register that light reflecting off the flowers, I suddenly was overwhelmed, and felt showered with a deep sense of love and peace and well being. In that same instant something happened inside me as well; it was as if a dark window in my soul had suddenly been thrown open, and I knew, could sense and feel, that my soul was infinite, eternal. Prior to that moment I had inhabited a two-dimensional world where I defined existence by the coordinates of time and place alone. Suddenly, a third dimension of existence came into being. It is very hard to articulate, but I suddenly could feel myself having existed before I was born and knew that my existence would continue on forever after death. And, unlike other mystical or ephemeral impressions I had experienced before or have had since, this existential awareness anchored in my consciousness, becoming as much a part of me as an arm or an eye. And, in retrospect, it was not just a simple cognitive acquisition, like learning why it rains; nor was it a fact to be processed and remembered, like π to ten decimal places. It became part of how I interacted with life, and filled me with an immense awe at the magnitude of both the world I inhabited and also the infinite love of God.

Walking back through the woods I was filled with both elation and a more sobering sense of life’s gravity. God’s existence was now a personal matter, not just an issue for debate or casual doubt. It was a verity around which the rest of my life must necessarily revolve. It was as though I had been born blind, unaware of the sun save for the fantastic descriptions of it by the sighted, which were often drowned out by the skepticism of the blind majority, when suddenly my eyes could see. God’s existence became for me like the daily presence of the sun, illuminating my walk through life. I could no more doubt God’s existence than my own, and from that moment until now I have walked the earth under His light. Sometimes clouds of despair have dimmed that light, and I have had nights of the soul when I have walked on in darkness, making my way dimly through trials and challenges by the reflected light of others’ faith. Yet I knew, and know, that God is out there, that even during the darkest times the sun will rise again, and that my faith has been and will be rewarded.

From the mire of my confusing and troubled adolescence came the beautiful flower of conviction that has filled me through the years since. I firmly believe that, regardless of one’s upbringing—and especially for those raised in the faith—achieving personal conviction through faithful action initiated on our part is the most important step we can take towards building a relationship with God. I know that the flower of faith has sustained me during life’s turmoils and has been the basis for some of the greatest insights I have gained in my subsequent life as a spouse and as a father, and in my professional life.

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J. Scott Miller is a Professor of Japanese and Comparative Literature at Brigham Young University. Following a mission to Japan, he received his B.A. from BYU in comparative literature and later earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in East Asian studies from Princeton University. (He has also studied at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.) He was an associate professor of Japanese at Colgate University, in Hamilton, New York, prior to joining the faculty at BYU in 1994. At BYU, he has served as chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages, associate dean of Undergraduate Education, Honors Program Director, and co-director of BYU’s International Cinema program. His research and publications revolve around nineteenth-century and modern Japanese literature, oral narrative and translation theory, and early Japanese sound recordings.

He has served in various Church callings, most enjoyable among them Primary pianist, stake music chair, and young men’s president.

He met his future wife, Judy Caccavella, in the Princeton Ward while going to graduate school. They are the parents of Michela and Joseph.

Posted February 2011

As a saint in a modern scriptorium,
I join with this thoughtful emporium
As a scholar to share
The delight that I bear:
“New truth! ad majorem Dei gloriam.”

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Thomas W. Draper is Professor of Human Development in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University. He earned a Ph.D in developmental psychology from Emory University. He has also taught at the Atlanta University Center and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; done test construction and research for Educational Testing Service, of Princeton, New Jersey; and directed BYU’s graduate program in Marriage, Family, and Human Development.

Dr. Draper specializes in family methodological issues and biological development. He has published on family economics and poverty, the definition of marital dyads, and the biological precursors of personality. His work has been widely published and republished, including articles in top family journals, the International Encyclopedia of Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Neurology, and the Family Studies Decade Review Yearbook.

Posted February 2011

When I joined the LDS Church, over thirty-seven years ago, we were living in a small village in North Wales, and I was teaching and carrying out research in chemistry at the University of Wales in Bangor. At that time the local branch of the Church was very small. Very soon after becoming a Church member, I was informed by an evangelical graduate student that our book of scripture known as the “Pearl of Great Price” was merely a poor translation of the “Egyptian Book of Breathings”. Now I had never heard of the latter, and was only scantily aware of the former, and so I was intrigued and somewhat curious. The missionaries looked very nervous and worried when I asked if they could enlighten me on this issue, and the mission president, whom I did not know, lived many miles away. So, turning to an old friend who was teaching at Brigham Young University, I asked him for some help, and he sent me much of Hugh Nibley’s writings concerning the book of Abraham. I devoured the material, and could not wait to discuss the matter with the student, only to find, much to my disappointment, that he knew next to nothing about it and that he was only repeating something he had heard an evangelical friend quote! However, my reading of Brother Nibley’s extensive writings opened my eyes to the fact that there were well-educated and well-respected LDS scholars researching and writing on matters that interested me greatly.

At that time it appears that I was one of very few Church members teaching at a university in the U.K., and so opportunities for enlightened discussions on matters such as science, religion, and the restored Church were very limited. The only recourse I had was to purchase and read as many books written by LDS scientists as possible, and I thoroughly enjoyed my introduction to the thoughts and conclusions of such scholars as the late Henry Eyring, James E. Talmage, Harvey Fletcher, John A. Widtsoe, etc. I found the philosophy of Eyring particularly attractive when he stated that there were a small number of concepts that he absolutely knew to be true and upon which he based his strong testimony, and that there were also questions to which he felt that he had correct answers, but that he was happy to place the many other questions to which he did not know the answers onto the “back burner,” so to speak, confident in knowing that one day, maybe not even in this life, he would have answers to all of them.

Reading the Book of Mormon, and thinking and pondering its words, led to that life-changing phrase that I remember expressing out loud to my wife: “The more I read this book, the more I think that it is true!” My testimony of the book and of the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ developed quickly from that time. There is something quite remarkable that occurs to the reader when he or she decides to distill and think hard about the words and concepts that are found in the Book of Mormon. There comes a clear feeling that these are important and that they represent scriptural truths; such a feeling I now know comes directly from the Holy Ghost.

Some years later I wrote a book of about 250 pages with two of my colleagues on a topic and subject in which we were considered experienced and experts. With such modern conveniences as computers and appropriate software to help, the project took about two years to complete. Upon reading the finished book, I found several errors that we had missed during an extensive proofreading period. Upon comparing our book-writing project with the production of the more than 500 pages that comprise the Book of Mormon, which Joseph Smith completed in less than 90 days, I quickly came to the conclusion that there is no possible way that he could have completed that task unaided, given: (1) the very limited schooling that he had received, (2) the relative complexity of the narrative, (3) the dearth of any reference material at his disposal, and (4) that the volume is essentially unaltered from the original, except for some typographical and minor grammatical changes. Consequently, since there were witnesses to his having dictated the text himself from ancient records in that time-period, I am convinced that he must have received divine inspiration in accomplishing this task. My re-reading of the Book of Mormon many times since that first occasion has strengthened my testimony of the importance and the veracity of the text, and with each reading I gain new insights into the great Plan of Salvation that our Heavenly Father has for mankind. Albeit there are still a number of minor features in the book that puzzle me, I am quite content that someday they will become clear.

Other features of the Restored Church that impress me greatly and that signify to me that Joseph Smith’s experiences and narrative were truthful include the following:

1. We have prophets to guide and counsel us in these days (just as in days of old), and the administrative structure of the Church is based on that of the early Christian Church.
2. There is total harmony between the teachings of the Bible and those found in the Book of Mormon.
3. The Church is missionary orientated—which is what Christ intended and commanded for his followers to do.
4. The Church concentrates on giving everyone an opportunity to hear its message, and does not become involved in any criticisms of other religions and their beliefs.
5. The moral code of living it advocates is based directly on the teachings of Jesus Christ.
6. Its strong support of the nuclear family, and of traditional family values that fly in the face of all the current trends with which we are bombarded daily by various media.
7. It supports a huge number of humanitarian causes quietly, efficiently, and without fuss.

The basic rationale of a scientist is to observe, to hypothesize; to experiment, and to deduce whether the hypothesis can be sustained or needs to be modified. This approach has served me well in regard to the restored Church as well as in the field of chemistry—provided that I accept the fact that there is a spiritual component to life in addition to the ubiquitous material world in which we currently live. Consequently, there are some things that we have to discern through prayer and meditation and which cannot be understood from physical laws and principles. I have met and talked with great scientists who are believers and with others who claim to be agnostics or atheists, and my experience tells me that religious belief is a very personal matter, and that being brilliant in one particular area of study does not make that person omniscient in all others. Humility is crucial; it pays to be open minded and to be willing to accept that there are some things that science may never be able to answer or even comprehend. My personal belief in a Heavenly Father and his Son Jesus Christ is very strong, and since science represents a search for truth, I see no qualms between accepting my own scientific training and my testimony of an overall creator, who is the Father of our spirits, and who is omniscient as far as we are concerned.

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Noel L. Owen earned his B.Sc. (Honors class 1) in chemistry from University College of North Wales, in Bangor, Wales, and received his Ph.D. in spectroscopy from the University of Cambridge, both in the United Kingdom. He then spent a postdoctoral year at Harvard University. Subsequently, he also received a D.Sc. in spectroscopy from the University of Wales.

From 1965 to 1987, he taught chemistry at University College of North Wales, interrupting his time there for visiting professorships at the University of British Columbia in Canada and the University of Utah, and for research sabbaticals at the universities of Oslo (Norway), British Columbia, Copenhagen (Denmark), Utah, Durham (United Kingdom), and Cambridge. In 1987, he joined the faculty of Brigham Young University, where he served as associate chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry from 1995 to 2001. In 1994, he was a visiting professor at the University of Durham.

Professor Owen served as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy (1987-1994) and is a member of the Royal Chemical Society, the American Chemical Society, and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy. He is the author of 122 publications, including a book and several book chapters.

Posted February 2011

My view of the world and the gospel has been deeply affected by my upbringing. My family traveled constantly during my early years; I attended schools in Taipei, Tehran, and Athens before returning to the U.S. for junior high and high school. The impact of those years is distilled in my memory of a chance meeting I had with a ten-year old Palestinian boy, outside our hotel in East Jerusalem (as it was called in 1963). I don’t remember exchanging a word, but I do remember looking into his eyes and recognizing he had a different existence than I did. Ever since then, I have had to square my existence and my beliefs with the fact that the world is wide and varied; that the happiness and well-being (here and hereafter) of every other person who has, or does, or will live on it means as much to my Heavenly Father as my own.

Returning to Carbon County, Utah, as a seventh grader, I had little in common with those around me. I took refuge in sports and studies as I had done when we moved between places overseas. But I began to get in touch with the Mormon roots of my mother’s family. It wasn’t until we moved to California that I first heard the story of Joseph Smith’s vision, sitting in a Sunday School class. Some time later I learned about the Book of Mormon, which would become the key to my spiritual life and the way to stay true to my own vision of a young Palestinian and the world he represented.

I love the Book of Mormon for many reasons. I have felt its power affect the life of my family on a day-to-day basis. It speaks in clear, strong ways about the doctrine of Christ. But what I would emphasize here is how deeply moved I am by the very idea that such a book exists: that another scripture, from a different time and place, testifies that Jesus is the Son of God. The Book of Mormon teaches as well that other books of scripture will yet come forth. This is a simple, powerful idea: that God is mindful of all peoples, in all times and places. It reaches out and fills the horizon. It brings unity and purpose to life as I know it and feel it. The Book of Mormon means that I can believe in and testify of an all-embracing Father in Heaven, who has always known and loved my young Palestinian friend as well as He has known and loved me, and that every person who has ever lived holds a place in His plan of salvation.

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Frederick W. Axelgard is a husband and the father of five children, and grandfather to six grandchildren. He received his PhD in international studies from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His professional career has focused on the politics and security of the Middle East, during which he served in the U.S. Department of State and at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. D.C. For the past decade he has been a director and vice president with responsibility for Middle East business development in General Dynamics Corporation.

Posted February 2011

Books have typically defined both my intellectual and religious life. In my very early teens a relative gave me a book surveying world archaeology, and from that time some tie to antiquity formed in my soul and brain and eventually dictated my selection of graduate studies. That fondness for archaeology and ancient history began to intermingle with my understanding and testimony of the Book of Mormon when I found Thomas S. Ferguson’s One Fold, One Shepherd among my father’s books. From the time I first picked it up, my interests in the gospel and in archaeology had fused. My father never got the book back.

I took that excitement about the Book of Mormon and archaeology with me on my mission in Spain. When I returned, the excitement still burned brightly enough that I decided that I should take my new fluency in Spanish to the chronicles that surely supported everything in the Book of Mormon. I wanted to be able to say that I knew that they were true because I had read the sources and they said just that. I did: They didn’t. I didn’t lose any faith in the Book of Mormon, but I certainly lost faith in LDS writers who opined about New World history and the Book of Mormon (including One Fold, One Shepherd). By the early 1970s, I resigned myself to the role of gadfly, poking at the obvious problems with the armchair archaeologists and their misuse of information relative to the Book of Mormon. Then I met John Sorenson.

Dr. Sorenson allowed me to vent about the problems that were obvious in the way LDS writers had attempted to use archaeology and history in support of the Book of Mormon. His response was to give me a manuscript (about a decade before it was published as An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon). At that time, my mental picture of Nephites and Lamanites vacillated between movie depictions of ancient Jerusalem and the Romans-from-an-alternate-universe depictions of Arnold Friberg. Sorenson painted a picture that comfortably placed the Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica. I didn’t, and don’t, agree with all of Sorenson’s analyses, but he gave me a context in which for the first time I could see how the Book of Mormon could plausibly fit into a real place and time.

Nevertheless, the Book of Mormon took a distant back seat to the exciting world of Mesoamerican studies. However, while doing some fieldwork in Guatemala, all of the note cards I had amassed towards a dissertation were stolen. In the days of typewriters rather than computers, there were no backups. Lost was lost. Right at the point where all that remained was the final examination and the dissertation, that disheartening loss and our economic realities led my wife and me to decide that I should stop my program for a year and earn some money to get us on our feet. It has been a very, very, long year.

While concentrating on trying to find a way to support and raise a family, interests in Mesoamerica lingered in my reading. Eventually, it was the Internet that provided the impetus to reintegrate my academic interests and love for the Book of Mormon. While participating on a fascinating email list, the owner/moderator of the list asked if I would be willing to write a weekly column. I remembered James Faulconer‘s book entitled Scripture Study: Tools and Suggestions (FARMS, 1999). Faulconer suggested that one might go through the scriptures slowly and to ask lots of questions of them. Having read several scholarly commentaries on books of the Bible, I keenly felt the lack of a similarly scholarly and comprehensive commentary for the Book of Mormon. I agreed to do the article as an ongoing commentary on the Book of Mormon that would go slowly so as to be able to ask lots of questions of the text.

It has been a fascinating project and in some ways a blind leap of faith. Considering my background in Mesoamerican religious ethnohistory and Sorenson’s foundational work, I determined to read the text against a Mesoamerican historical and cultural background. When I started, I didn’t know if it would work, but I began as though it would. I soon found that whenever I attempted to look ahead I was going to be wrong. I had to plug along a verse at a time. It was not so much a process of fitting the Book of Mormon into a Mesoamerican setting as it was the text opening my eyes to the world in which it was written. The authors had to tell me their story; I couldn’t impose one on them. Why did the people in the Book of Mormon have the specific problems they had? Why did Nephite apostasy always take a very similar form? Why was victory defined so differently from my understanding of European history? Why did some faith-promoting stories in the text make so little sense if you looked at the story carefully? The authors seemed to patiently explain how their particular culture at their particular time provided the background that seemed to naturally answer such questions. Of course, I mean that metaphorically. The text, seen through the plodding and gradual travel through time and space, was not only a different kind of fit than I had imagined, it was a better one.

The Book of Mormon is very different from what I read as a teenager or even as a young father. The text is the same, but now I read about some of my best friends. They were real people with real lives, real problems, and, perhaps best of all, real solutions. Even after the commentary was published, the Book of Mormon keeps reminding me that there is even more to its story. I had thought I would have finished, but it seems that there is still more to understand. The Book of Mormon has become richer, more nuanced, more understandable—yet no more true. The Book that Mormon created was written by a very human man. It was translated by a very human man. Nevertheless, both Mormon and Joseph were touched by the divine, and it is the divine that shines in and through the text. It makes so much more sense to my mind as I understand it against history. The divine in it continues to make sense to my heart. It always did. It always will.

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Brant A. Gardner received a master’s degree in anthropology at the State University of New York, Albany. He published articles on the Aztec Legend of the Suns and Aztec kinship terminology in its descriptive and social uses. From 2007-2008, Greg Kofford Books published his six-volume Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon. Married to the former Valerie Carroll, with whom he has four children and eleven grandchildren, he lives in New Mexico, where he works as a sales engineer in a software firm.

Posted February 2011

Professor Ball has kindly permitted us to use the following text, which is adapted from Terry B. Ball, “Faith and the Scientific Method,” in Approaching a School in Zion: Proceedings of the Third Annual Laying the Foundations Symposium (Provo: Brigham Young University, 1994), 127-133.

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The Reverend John Polkinghorne, a Cambridge professor of physics and a truly world-class scientist, once expressed a dilemma experienced by many scientists who are also persons of faith with the following observation:

There is a popular caricature which sees the scientist as ever open to the correcting power of new discovery and, in consequence, achieving the reward of real knowledge, whilst the religious believer condemns himself to intellectual imprisonment within the limits of an opinion held on a priori grounds, to which he will cling whatever facts there might be to the contrary. The one is the man of reason; the other blocks the road of honest inquiry with a barrier labeled “incontestable revelation”…. If that were really so, those of us who are both scientists and religious believers… would be living schizophrenically, believing the impossible on Sundays and only opening our minds again on Monday mornings.¹

In recent times, religious scientists have not only had to so defend their faith in God and revelation, but also frequently find their commitment to scientific principles unjustly questioned. A Georgia judge, arguing against the teaching of evolution in school, offered an over-zealous polemic that illustrates the point well. Making absurd accusations about the effect of Darwin’s theories on society, the judge claimed that the “monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, pills, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning, and proliferation of crimes of all types.”² Such pejorative and irrational rhetoric only serves to fan the flames of hostility between science and religion while deepening the dilemma for men and women devoted to both disciplines.

Many members of the Church, past and present, though, illustrate the fact that one can indeed harmonize secular scientific learning and spiritual development. Some, for example, though trained as scientists, have provided great ecclesiastical leadership to the Church, like the apostles John A. Widtsoe, a chemist and agronomist; James E. Talmage, a geologist; Joseph F. Merrill, a chemical engineer; Russell M. Nelson, a physician; and Richard G. Scott, a nuclear engineer.³ Others, while maintaining faith in the restored gospel, have made significant contributions to their scientific fields, like the physicist Philo T. Farnsworth, whose research led to the development of television; the chemist Henry Eyring, who developed the Absolute Rate Theory (or Transition State Theory) of chemical reactions; and the physicist Harvey Fletcher, who pioneered the development of stereophonic sound reproduction.⁴ As Elder Widtsoe taught, “The Church supports and welcomes the growth of science…. The religion of the Latter-day Saints is not hostile to any truth nor to scientific search for truth.”⁵

One area of persistent tension between science and religion is that of the relationship between faith and the scientific method. Among practicing scientists there is a wide variety of opinions on the nature of that relationship. A review of the basic philosophies of the two most opposing schools of thought on the issue is helpful in understanding the controversy. For the sake of convenience I will refer to one extreme as scientific atheism, and to the other as scientific theism.

Scientific Atheism

Although the term scientific atheism is usually associated with the Marxist-Leninist world outlook, the term can appropriately be used to describe the extreme position of those scientists who insist that there is, and can be, no relationship between faith and the scientific method.⁶ Three basic propositions seem to lead them to this conclusion. First, they tend to believe that the scientific method is a supremely efficient and reliable tool for discovering truth. As one author describes it, they wish to view the scientific method as a “methodological threshing machine in which the flail of experiment separates the grain of truth from the chaff of error.”⁷

This confidence in the efficiency and reliability of the scientific method naturally leads them to a second proposition, which is that the scientific method in and by itself can answer any kinds of questions. As the nuclear chemist Jan Rydberg professed, “Science has no limits. There are no questions it should not approach.”⁸

With the assurance that the scientific method can efficiently answer all kinds of questions, scientific atheists arrive at a third proposition, which is that there is no need for faith or religion on the part of one skilled at using the scientific method in the pursuit of truth. This proposition was well illustrated by Pierre-Simon Laplace (d. 1827) when, as tradition has it, in response to Napoleon’s observation that he had failed to mention God in his book on the origin of the universe, he said, “Sire, I have no need for that hypothesis.”⁹

Not only do scientific atheists claim no need for faith, they also declare that any conclusions based on faith are categorically unscientific. As Leonid Brezhnev (d. 1982) proclaimed to the Soviet Central Committee, “True science takes nothing on faith.”¹⁰ This philosophy leads it adherents to reject any superhuman source of enlightenment and to disallow any data that cannot be perceived and described by the temporal senses. The final conclusion drawn by those who accept these propositions was well illustrated by the German physicist Wilhelm Westphal when he lamented:

If there is a God, then I am very sorry to say that he has never revealed himself to me. He could have done this, in fact he should have. But he didn’t. Therefore I became an atheist.¹¹

Jan Rydberg confessed that he had arrived at the same conclusion when he declared “I do not need a God,” and “I have no use for religion.”¹²

Scientific Theism

In contrast to the faithless philosophies of the scientific atheists, those who support the tenets of the school of thought I call scientific theism feel that a practitioner of the scientific method need not abandon faith. Although they are willing to agree that the scientific method is an efficient and reliable research tool, they do not believe that it is supremely or unquestionably so. In recognizing that the scientific method does not always yield unchallengeable truth, the chemist John Friedrich offers this disclaimer:

Scientists are quite often misquoted in the area of certainty. I don’t believe anything is absolutely certain. Things are more or less certain depending upon the data which we have to support a given conclusion. If there is a sufficient amount of data supporting some conclusion, and no contradictory data, then we say with a certain degree of certainty that it is a true reliable conclusion.¹³

Dr. Bernard Waldman carried the thought further when he suggested that there are some scientists who, not realizing the limits of the scientific method, are “brash and very sure of what they are doing and how they have solved all the problems.” But, he continued, in his discipline of physics, “the people who make the major contributions and the major breakthroughs are remarkably humble.”¹⁴ In recognizing the limits of the scientific method, scientific theists are also willing to admit that there are some questions that it simply cannot address. While serving as the dean of the College of Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Willis Worcester asserted that these questions often deal with issues of faith, saying that

There are people who feel that everything can be explained on a purely scientific basis, but all of them eventually run into unanswerable questions, questions of their own origin, of the earth’s origin, of their ultimate fate, which simply cannot be answered on the basis of any currently known scientific method.¹⁵

Some proponents of scientific theism are willing to suggest not only that one can utilize the scientific method without abandoning faith, but that, in reality, a kind of faith can play an important role in the scientific method itself. A former dean of the School of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Robert Alberty, expressed the principle this way:

Faith is not too different from a part of the regular life of the scientist. If he didn’t have faith that experiments can be reproduced and that the human mind is competent to learn more and that somehow things can be rationalized, he wouldn’t go into the lab. All these acts of faith are necessary to the scientist. Maybe he doesn’t look at it as faith, but it really is. This doesn’t necessarily make him accept things easily, but it’s wrong to think that he operates by some kind of cold calculating logic. Good scientists are highly intuitive and don’t follow rigid logic. They have a great feel for things, as opposed to a detailed mastery. We present it to our students as if it were all coldly factual, but that’s not the way the frontier of science is.¹⁶

What Alberty would call intuition, others have called inspiration. The Norwegian physicist Ole Gjotterud said, “I feel that science is the process of asking questions and trying to answer them critically, but also with inspiration.”¹⁷ This inspiration is a source of enlightenment that would be discounted by many scientific atheists because it can neither be quantified nor described in terms of the physical senses.

The willingness of scientific theists to recognize that faith and inspiration can play a role in the pursuit of truth facilitates their belief in the divine. Many confess that the further they progress in their scientific investigations, the greater their faith in, and conviction of, a supreme being. Alberty said that it is this very phenomenon that “keeps God alive for scientists.”¹⁸ Atomic physicist Dr. Jules Duchesne agrees, as he concludes that “The scientist’s universe has become so large, so wonderful, so unexpected, he almost needs a God.”¹⁹ Perhaps the best response to the arguments of the scientific atheist was offered by the Nobel Prize winning German physicist Max Born (d. 1970) when he simply declared, “Those who say that the study of science makes a man an atheist must be rather silly people.”²⁰

In my own experience as both a teacher of religion and a researcher in a scientific field, three principles have been especially beneficial in helping me recognize a harmonious relationship between faith and the scientific method:

Principle One: Faith enhances the truths learned through the scientific method.

Henry Eyring introduced this principle well when he wrote:

The scientific method which has served so brilliantly in unravelling the mysteries of this world must be supplemented by something else if we are to enjoy to the fullest the blessings that have come of the knowledge gained. It is the great mission and opportunity of religion to teach men “the way, the truth, the life,” that they might utilize the discoveries of the laboratory to their blessing and not to their destruction.²¹

Eyring’s teachings suggest that when the discoveries of the scientific method become working partners with faith each enhances the other to the blessing of mankind.

Principle Two: Faith has an application in the scientific method as well as in religion.

While teaching the Zoramites, the Book of Mormon prophet Alma declared that “faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true” (Alma 32:21). In other words, Alma taught that one can have real faith neither in something that is directly visible nor in something that is not true. This observation leads to the question: How then does one know if something not seen is true? An answer can be found in the definition of faith attributed to Paul in the New Testament epistle to the Hebrews. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Paul’s definition suggests that one can have hope for and faith in a thing not seen, by examining the evidence of its existence. For example, though one has not seen God, the witness of the Holy Ghost can provide sufficient spiritual evidence necessary to develop faith in His existence. Moreover, many have testified that temporal evidence for the existence of God can be found in the complexity and wonders of his creations.

This principle of faith, that through observation of evidences one can have confidence in the existence of something not directly seen, has found similar application in science. For example no scientist has ever seen electrons, yet the evidence of their travel through a bubble chamber testifies of their existence.²² In similar fashion, long before the planet Neptune was ever viewed in a telescope, Adams and Leverrier were able to predict its existence by the evidence of its gravitational influence on the planet Uranus.²³ By Paul’s definition both Adams and Leverrier exercised a principle of faith in their scientific investigations. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

Principle Three: The scientific method and the paradigm for developing faith are remarkably similar.

The scientific method is often outlined in four steps. First, the scientist forms a hypothesis. Second, he conducts an experiment to test the hypothesis. Third, he evaluates the data from the experiment, and, fourth, he draws a conclusion.

In the paradigm for developing faith as outlined in the thirty-second chapter of Alma in the Book of Mormon, some cognates to this four-step process are evident. Alma introduces the process of developing faith with these words:

But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you (Alma 32:27).

Alma seems to be suggesting that the first step is to arouse one’s faculties to a desire to believe. For example, in order to obtain faith in the truthfulness of Alma’s teachings one would begin by observing, “I desire to believe the teachings of Alma.” This can be compared with the scientist’s hypothesis statement (i.e., the scientist would say, “I hypothesize that the teachings of Alma are true”).

After so hypothesizing or arousing ones faculties, Alma indicates that the next step, just as in the scientific method, is to perform an experiment upon his words. He explains how to conduct the experiment and evaluate the data:

Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart (Alma 32:28).

Thus, Alma has instructed that the experiment be conducted by metaphorically planting the seed of his teachings in one’s heart. This can be interpreted as meaning that one is to apply the teachings of Alma in one’s personal life.

The third step of the scientific method, the analysis of data, is paralleled in this chapter by Alma’s teachings that:

behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts (Alma 32:28).

Thus, as one evaluates the data, one recognizes that some kind of growth—a good kind of growth—has taken place!

The final step of the scientific method, that of drawing a conclusion, finds a cognate in Alma’s paradigm for developing faith, when Alma teaches that, after analyzing the data of the experiment upon his words, one will come to the realization that:

It must needs be that this is a good seed or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me. (Alma 32:28)

This enlarging and enlightening can be considered the “spiritual” data produced by the experiment.

It should be noted that this kind of spiritual evidence is very different from the temporal data acceptable to the scientific method. Unlike temporal data, spiritual information cannot be quantified or easily described in terms of our physical senses, but, rather, its observation requires the development of spiritual faculties. As a result, it may never be observed by one who has not learned how to use spiritual senses, or who limits his tools for the pursuit of truth to the scientific method. Moreover, spiritual information may manifest itself in different ways to different individuals. Thus, for those following Alma’s procedure for developing faith, the spiritual data generated may not be felt or recognized by each “experimenter” in exactly the same way. This admission does not, however, diminish the reality or reliability of the data for those who have observed it. Herein may be the greatest source of frustration for scientific atheists. Because they cannot accept or recognize data in the form of spiritual witnesses and evidences, they are handicapped in their ability to learn religious truth, and often deny its existence. As Paul explained to the Corinthians:

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Biologist Hanjochem Autrum expressed a similar concept when he suggested that “Science cannot find God, but the scientist can.”²⁴

In the remainder of this discussion on faith, Alma takes the scientific method one step further and, in so doing, illustrates what every good scientist should do with a newly discovered truth. He instructs that it should be nourished and cared for so that, “then my brethren, ye shall reap the rewards of your faith, and your diligence” (Alma 32:43). In other words, returning to the instructions of Henry Eyring, that “they might utilize the discoveries of the laboratory to their blessing.”²⁵

The scientific method demands that the data gathered and the conclusions drawn from an experiment be reproducible by anyone who follows the procedures of the original experimenter. As Latter-Day Saints we believe that the experiment by which one can gain faith as outlined by Alma does indeed meet this criterion. And this in part helps explain the success of the great missionary program of the church. In a sense, our missionaries challenge investigators to be “scientific” by trying this experiment upon the word, with the promise that if they follow the procedures and carefully analyze the results, they too will come to the conclusion that God lives and that the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is true.

With the understanding of the above principles, that faith can enhance and supplement the scientific method, that the principles of faith can have application in the scientific method as well as in religion, and that the process for developing faith can be similar to the scientific method, we can be confident that one need not abandon faith to be a scientist, and conversely, that a testimony of the gospel does not mandate the forsaking of science.

These principles have served me well as both a research scientist and religious educator at Brigham Young University. Over and over, my faith has informed my science, and my science has informed my faith.

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Notes:
¹ J. C. Polkinghorne, Reason and Reality: The Relationship Between Science and Theology (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991), 49.
² E. Geissler and H. Hörz, “Darwin Today—Introductory Lecture,” in Darwin Today: The Eighth Kuhlungsborn Colloquium on Philosophy and Ethical Problems of Bioscience (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1983), 19.
³ Robert L. Miller, “Science and Scientists,” Encyclopedia of Mormonism (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 3:1272-1274.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1943), 1:129.
⁶ Vladimir Zots, “Atheism and the Spiritual Culture of Socialism,” in Religion in the USSR: The Truth and Falsehood (Moscow: Editorial Board, 1986), 31.
⁷ Polkinghorne, Reason and Reality, 49.
⁸ Cited in Frederick E. Trinklein, The God of Science (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1971), 21.
⁹ Cited in Henry Eyring, The Faith of a Scientist (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1967), 57.
¹⁰ Cited in Stephen Fortescue, The Communist Party and Soviet Science (London: Macmillan, 1986), 22.
¹¹ Cited in Trinklein, The God of Science, 68.
¹² Ibid.
¹³ Ibid., 4.
¹⁴ Ibid., 15.
¹⁵ Ibid., 30.
¹⁶ Ibid., 19-20.
¹⁷ Ibid., 2.
¹⁸ Ibid., 61.
¹⁹ Ibid., 64.
²⁰ Ibid.
²¹ Eyring, The Faith of a Scientist, 37.
²² Cyril Henderson, Cloud and Bubble Chambers (London: Methuen, 1970), 1-5.
²³ Morton Grosser, The Discovery of Neptune (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 99-101.
²⁴ Cited in Trinklein, The God of Science, 67.
²⁵ Eyring, The Faith of a Scientist, 37.

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Dr. Terry B. Ball is a Professor of Ancient Scripture and the Dean of Religious Education at Brigham Young University. Prior to joining the BYU faculty, he worked for twelve years as a seminary and institute teacher.

Professor Ball received his B.S. from BYU in botany and education, interrupting his undergraduate studies to serve a two-year mission in Japan. He later received an M.A. from BYU in ancient Near Eastern studies and a Ph.D. from BYU in archaeobotany, with an emphasis on the ancient Near East. He has taught and traveled extensively in the Holy Land, including teaching at BYU’s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies.

Dr. Ball has researched, lectured, and written extensively about the prophet Isaiah, and has also devoted attention to LDS theology and the environment. In addition to teaching and researching in ancient scripture, he is an active researcher in the field of archaeobotany, focusing on phytolith systematics.

He is married to the former DeAnna Hill, and they have six children.

Posted February 2011