Testimonies

My Testimony of the Book of Mormon, Scholarly and Personal

As editor of the Book of Mormon critical text project and The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (Yale University Press, 2009), my task has been to recover the original English-language text of the Book of Mormon to the extent scholarly and academic analysis will allow. I have therefore restricted my discussion to the text per se and have completely avoided discussions of whether there are practices found among the cultures of the world (including the Americas) in support of particular readings in the text. Nor have I engaged in any discussion of external evidences for the Book of Mormon, including questions of geography, genetics, and archaeology.

My initial endeavor as editor of the critical text project was to produce a detailed transcription of the original and printer’s manuscripts. And right from the beginning, I discovered errors that had crept into the text as Oliver Cowdery and the other scribes produced the printer’s manuscript from the original manuscript. In fact, there were errors in the original manuscript itself. Within a year or so I recognized that I would not be able to completely recover the original text by scholarly methods. Yet at the same time, I began to see considerable evidence for the traditional interpretation that witnesses of the translation process claimed: (a) the text was orally dictated, word for word; (b) Book of Mormon names were frequently spelled out the first time they occurred in the text, thus indicating that Joseph Smith could see the spelling of the names; and (c) during dictation there was no rewriting of the text except to correct errors in taking down the dictation. Since then I have also discovered internal evidence from the original language itself that argues for a fully determined English-language text:

1. The original text is much more consistent and systematic in phraseology and vocabulary than has ever been realized.
2. Sometimes passages of text are the same, word for word, even though they are found in completely different parts of the book.
3. The original text includes unique kinds of expression that appear to be uncharacteristic of English in any time and place; some of these expressions can be considered Hebraistic in nature.
4. The vocabulary of the earliest Book of Mormon text appears to derive from the 1500s and 1600s, not from the 1800s.

Joseph Smith was literally reading off an already composed English-language text. Taken as a whole, the evidence in the manuscripts and in the language of the earliest text supports the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon was a precise text. I do not consider this conclusion apologetic, but instead as one demanded by the evidence.

The opposing viewpoint, that Joseph Smith got ideas and translated them into his own English, cannot be supported by the manuscript and textual evidence. The only substantive argument for this alternative view has been the nonstandard nature of the original text, with its implication that God would never speak ungrammatical English, so the nonstandard usage must be the result of Joseph Smith putting the ideas he received into his own language. Yet with the recent finding that the original vocabulary of the text appears to date from the 1500s and 1600s (not the 1800s), we now need to consider the possibility that the ungrammaticality of the original text may also date from that earlier period of time, not necessarily from Joseph’s own time and place. The evidence basically argues that Joseph Smith was not the author of the Book of Mormon, nor was he actually the translator. Instead, he was the revelator: through him the Lord revealed the English-language text (by means of the interpreters, later called the Urim and Thummim, and the seer stone). Such a view is consistent, I believe, with Joseph’s use elsewhere of the verb translate to mean ‘transmit’ and the noun translation to mean ‘transmission’ (as in the eighth Article of Faith).

Yet my personal testimony of the Book of Mormon is independent of my work on the critical text project. The Book of Mormon stands on its own and is ultimately not dependent on how that text may vary in printed editions or in the manuscripts. Moroni promised that the Lord will give a testimony of the book to the prayerful reader – irrespective of any infelicities and errors in the text (which Moroni recognized could be there, as he himself noted in the last part of the title page of the Book of Mormon). I received my own personal witness of this book long before I ever began work on this project. I have never needed to prove to myself that the text is from the Lord. Nor have errors in the text ever prevented the Spirit from bearing witness that the book is the Lord’s.

My own personal witness of this book dates from 1979, when I was reading the book during a time of difficulty. I was reading the words that king Lamoni’s queen expresses as she comes out of her state of unconsciousness:

Alma 19:29-30 (original text)

she arose and stood upon her feet and cried with a loud voice saying
O blessed Jesus who has saved me from an awful hell
O blessed God have mercy on this people
and when she had said this she clapped her hands being filled with joy
speaking many words which were not understood

As I was reading this passage, the Spirit witnessed to me, “This really happened.” What is interesting about this passage is that I didn’t actually read “she clapped her hands” (the reading based on the printer’s manuscript), but instead I read “she clasped her hands” (the reading found in the 1830 edition as well as in all LDS editions). Now I do not take this personal witness as evidence that I should reject the earliest reading, clapped. It simply means that the Lord witnesses the truthfulness of this book irrespective of the minor errors that have crept in. I know of no error that changes any doctrine or the basic account of the text. There is no error, awkward expression, or ungrammaticality in any of the printed editions of the book that will prevent the honest reader from gaining a testimony of the Book of Mormon.

———-

Royal Skousen is Professor of Linguistics and English Language at Brigham Young University. In 1972 he received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He has taught linguistics at the University of Illinois, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of California at San Diego, and, as a Fulbright scholar, at the University of Tampere in Finland. In 2001 he was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, Netherlands.

Skousen’s work in linguistics has dealt chiefly with developing a theory of language called Analogical Modeling, a theory that predicts language behavior by means of examples rather than by rules. He has published three books on this subject: Analogical Modeling of Language (1989), Analogy and Structure (1992), and Analogical Modeling: An Exemplar-Based Approach to Language (2002). More recently, he has published on the quantum computation of Analogical Modeling, notably in his 2005 paper “Quantum Analogical Modeling” (available at www.arXiv.org).

Skousen began working on the critical text of the Book of Mormon in 1988. In 2001 he published the first two volumes of the Critical Text Project, namely typographical facsimiles for the original and printer’s manuscripts of the Book of Mormon. From 2004 through 2009 he published the six books that make up volume 4 of the critical text, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon. This work represents the central task of the Critical Text Project, to restore by scholarly means the original text of the Book of Mormon, to the extent possible.

In 2009 Skousen published with Yale University Press the culmination of his critical work on the Book of Mormon text, namely The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text. The Yale edition presents the reconstructed original text in a clear-text format, without explanatory intervention. Unlike modern editions of the Book of Mormon that have added chapter summaries, scriptural cross-references, dates, and footnotes, this edition consists solely of the words dictated by Joseph Smith in 1828-29, as far as they can be established through standard methods of textual criticism. Later emendations by scribes, editors, and even Joseph Smith himself have been omitted, except for those that appear to restore original readings.

Posted December 2009

No Christian can survive the trials and tribulations necessary to develop faith unto life and salvation without wrestling as Jacob did in order to receive a witness of Christ and the restoration of His church in these latter days. Once obtained, that sweet, peaceful, and calm assurance becomes more precious than any worldly promise or pleasure.

At the end of my first year of graduate school at Brandeis University, my major professor interviewed me to see how I was doing. When I mentioned that my faith had been deeply affected by the two semesters spent at his feet, he launched into what seemed like a standard spiel about not worrying if what I had believed had been disturbed. I waited until he had finished and then quietly told him that on the contrary the year had only served to deepen my faith and add nuance and meaning to my witness. Since that year I have never been confronted by a fact that has ever challenged my faith.

In fact, as I have continued to study and read and write, I have never found anything that disturbs my witness. I have found that all things testify of Christ and the truths that His prophets, ancient and modern, have given us. I am deeply touched by the multitude of the seemingly small and the unabashedly grand scale of the evidence for God, for His love, for His omniscience, for His omnipotence, and for His tender care for His creation.

As I have worked to become more full of faith, more committed to giving stricter heed, and more diligent in living my commitments, I have been pleasantly surprised by the things I have learned and the sacredness of spiritual manifestations. But most gratifying of all is the inner peace and deep satisfaction I find in living every day.

God is our Father. He has organized this mortal life for our benefit. He acts in our time and space to help us and bless us. Of this I have no doubt.

——————–

Paul Y. Hoskisson is a professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University (BYU), where he formerly served as associate dean of Religious Education and currently directs the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) and the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies, both located within the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. He has also served as an institutional representative on the Board of Trustees of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

Professor Hoskisson was born in Illinois, grew up in six different states, and graduated from Provo High School. After serving a mission to Austria, he earned a master’s degree from Brigham Young University with a thesis on a Yiddish play, and then proceeded to earn a Ph.D. in Mediterranean Studies from Brandeis University in Massachusetts, writing his dissertation on an Old Babylonian topic. While still in graduate school, he worked at the universities of Tübingen (Germany) and Zürich (Switzerland). His interests focus on Semitic philology and onomastics, as well as on the Latter-day Saint scriptural canon.

Professor Hoskisson is married to the former Joaquina Valtierra, from Spain, and they are the parents of four children. (She teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at BYU.)

Posted December 2009

In my case “a testimony” was not something I had to acquire at a given moment as a response to “doubts.” As far as I can recall, there was never a time from my earliest years growing up in Smithfield, a village in northern Utah, that I did not have an assurance that the gospel I was taught was from God and that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the result of divine intervention in the life of Joseph Smith, Jr. The entire story of the restoration and the message of its teachings seemed to me to be eminently sensible.

This feeling might seem strange given the fact that neither of my parents were gung-ho Latter-day Saints. Neither had more than a few years of schooling in growing up in the Bear Lake country of Utah in the later nineteenth century under frontier conditions. Only marginally literate, they found it difficult to “be active” in the Church, yet they were basically believers throughout their poverty-stricken lives.

I was the last of their six children, but so late in the sequence that I had little association with my siblings. Yet I had the advantage of some kindly neighbors, good friends, and helpful Church leaders, so that my home congregation had about it a genuinely warm feeling. I enjoyed Church participation even though my parents were only rarely involved.

We children realized early that our only chance to “get ahead” was through education; we excelled in school and attended college at the Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah State University) at nearby Logan. My turn (I enrolled in electrical engineering like my two brothers before me) came just three months before Pearl Harbor. I soon started Army Air Corps training as a weather forecaster (at the University of New Mexico and the California Institute of Technology), then served in Brazil, and left the service in 1946 as a First Lieutenant at the age of 22.

I was “moved upon” at that point to serve as a missionary for the Church, like thousands of other ex-servicemen. Assigned to New Zealand, I was sent to the island of Rarotonga as one of the first two American missionaries in the Cook Islands. Associations there with wonderfully warm people and unique opportunities for service influenced my subsequent years for good.

Years of schooling (at Brigham Young University, including a season as an archaeologist in Mexico, and UCLA) followed while my eight sons were born and grew. While finishing a Ph.D. in anthropology I began the first formal teaching in that field at BYU. Later I was employed as head social scientist at a “think tank” in Santa Barbara, California, for five years, but returned to BYU for eight years as head of the anthropology program before retiring in 1986.

Throughout this varied career I have been faced with no issues that have called into question the assurance I have had since childhood that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the divinely-originated institution its adherents claim it is. This is simply not a matter of argument for me. The truth of the matter has been affirmed to me in spiritual manifestations countless times. I have taught lesson material in Church contexts for 65 years; the material is basically True, although some of us teachers have not always grasped or phrased its Truth as clearly as we might have done.

I have also studied the Mormon people at length as an anthropologist, first for my doctoral dissertation (“Industrial and Social Change: A Controlled Comparison of Two Utah Communities,” 1961), and later in many varied contexts, as well as teaching courses and publishing quite extensively on “the Mormon people.” Nothing I have learned in that research has persuaded me that they are other than struggling but devoted believers who are trying to perfect themselves as “Saints.”

In one particular area of study I am in a position to offer unique testimony. I have been concerned for sixty years with the topic of the Book of Mormon in relation to the scientific/scholarly picture of ancient America. As a result, I say that the Book of Mormon is an ancient Mesoamerican record, derived ultimately from a native book written in the fourth and fifth centuries AD. More than four hundred elements of the book’s text are written in a manner and display content that cannot be accounted for except by supposing its Mesoamerican origin. Of all the theories of origin for the Book, the only acceptable explanation for how it came to be published in English in 1830 is that offered by Joseph Smith, puzzling though the details may be. No nineteenth-century person could have known enough about ancient Mesoamerican civilization to account for the depth and breadth of the “Mesoamericanisms” the scripture contains. I have documented this position by reference to an extensive archaeological literature. Details are presented in several books, including An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (Deseret Book, 1985), Images of Ancient America: Visualizing Book of Mormon Life (Research Press/FARMS, 1998), and Mormon’s Codex: An Ancient American Book (in press, 2010).

I knew of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon from the manifestations of the Holy Spirit to me throughout my life as an active Church participant and leader, to which I add my “scholarly testimony.” My years of study of the archaeology of Mesoamerica, in the field, of endless pages of relevant scholarly writings, and of critical consideration of the book itself have affirmed that it is authentically ancient and deserves careful consideration as a truthful record.

I have lived my life of eighty-five years according to the precepts of the gospel of Jesus Christ as taught in the Book of Mormon and by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have served for many years in callings in the Church (including as a bishop and four times as a missionary) in the conviction that I have been doing the will of the Lord. I would not have lived such a life nor invested to such a degree without the conviction that I was acting according to the truth. I now assert it once more.

———————————————-

John L. Sorenson was born in 1924 in Smithfield, Utah, where he grew up. After attending Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah State University), he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, where he was trained (at the California Institute of Technology) as a meteorologist and served in the South Atlantic theater of operations.

He married Kathryn Richards of Magna, Utah, in November 1946, after which he served as an LDS missionary from 1947 to 1949 in New Zealand and the Cook Islands. On his return to Utah, he, his wife, and their young son moved to Provo, where he attended Brigham Young University (BYU). He received a master’s degree in archaeology in 1952 (alongside a master’s in meteorology from Caltech). In 1953, he worked as an archaeologist in southern Mexico with the New World Archaeological Foundation before becoming an instructor in archaeology at BYU. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from UCLA in 1962.

Dr. Sorenson originated the anthropology program at BYU in 1958. From 1964 to 1969, he was head of social sciences at General Research Corporation, doing research as an applied anthropologist. Returning to Provo, he founded Bonneville Research Corporation, a subsidiary of General Research, and then, in 1971, rejoined the BYU faculty as a professor of anthropology. Altogether, he headed the anthropology program at BYU for 14 years, retiring in 1986 after suffering a heart attack.

From 1986 to 2008, he did fulltime research and writing on ancient American civilization and the Book of Mormon in connection with the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS). He was closely involved with FARMS for 28 years, including nearly five as editor of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. He has published some 200 books and articles, including An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (1985), Transoceanic Culture Contacts between the Old and New Worlds in Pre-Columbian Times: A Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography (with Martin Raish, 1988), Images of Ancient America: Visualizing Book of Mormon Life (1998), Mormon’s Map (2000), and World Trade and Biological Exchanges before 1492 (with Carl L. Johannessen, 2004).

He has served as a teacher in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for more than fifty years and has also held leadership positions (e.g., as a high councilman and bishop). He was married to Kathryn Richards for 44 years, until her death in 1991. For 16 years, he has been married to Helen Lance Christianson. They are the parents of 18 children and grandparents of 58, with eight great-grandchildren.

Posted December 2009

When I was a teenager, I read the Book of Mormon. The book contains a promise that if we read it and ask Heavenly Father whether it is true, he will reveal to us that it is true. I put that promise to the test. I knelt down and prayed about the book, and Heavenly Father answered my prayer. I know that it is true. Over the years, I have felt the Holy Ghost many times as I have read the Book of Mormon. My understanding and appreciation of the book have continued to grow over time. The book testifies that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, teaches many other important gospel truths, and shows that living the gospel is the path to happiness in this life and eternal life in the world to come.

When I was 19-21 years old, I served a mission in Italy for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My faith and testimony grew as I taught the restored gospel to others. The opportunity to serve a mission and teach the gospel was one of the greatest privileges and blessings of my life.

At BYU Law School, I teach Professional Responsibility, or legal ethics, among other subjects. Some gospel teachings correspond to important ethical principles, such as honesty, integrity, hard work, service, and treating others as we would like to be treated. These true principles help people to get along together and to make the world a better place. They also help us to grow personally and to have more peace in our lives. The principles of the gospel are consistent with the highest ethical standards.

As I have studied, taught, and written about the law, I have been impressed that true religious and ethical principles foster better relationships among people and improve the quality of our lives. I have seen the positive effects as people strive to live these truths. The Savior said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). The gospel of Jesus Christ gives purpose and meaning to life, and it increases our happiness and joy.

I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world, and that the gospel is true. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

———–

James D. Gordon III is Marion B. and Rulon A. Earl Professor of Law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University. He received a B.A. in Political Science at Brigham Young University and a J.D. at the University of California at Berkeley. He clerked for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, and then practiced law in Salt Lake City. He has served as an Associate Academic Vice President for Faculty at BYU, and as an Associate Dean and Interim Dean of the J. Reuben Clark Law School. He has published in numerous law journals, including the California Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Texas Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and Yale Law Journal.

Posted December 2009

Faith and Intelligence: a Dialogue with Deity

First Questions

When I was nine years old, my brother Mike and I attended Sunday School at the Lutheran Service Center on Okinawa. Our teacher was an off-duty soldier who served as a layman, not as a professional pastor. One Sunday morning, he told us that unless people accept Jesus as their Savior, they can’t go to heaven. I asked, “What if someone does not have a chance to hear about Jesus?” The teacher said, “That is why we need to be missionaries.” I persisted with another question, “But what if there is an old man in China, and he dies before he gets to hear about Jesus?” The teacher did not know how to answer, so he just repeated his original assertion, “People can’t go to heaven if they don’t accept Jesus.” I did not receive a more definitive answer to my childhood questions until nine years later, when two missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints taught me about the Plan of Salvation.

When I was a senior in high school, Elder Clausen and Elder Knight taught me that the Lord is a God of mercy, who loves all of His children. He would not create a system that was fair to some people and unfair to others. The Lord authored a plan that enables everyone to hear the gospel message, whether on the earth during this life or in the spirit world after this life. The old man in China that I had worried about would have a chance to hear the fullness of the gospel, and he would be able to choose for himself whether or not to accept Christ as his Savior. I immediately knew the truth of this principle of non-discriminatory universal access to salvation. I also felt the spirit of truth as the missionaries explained that Temple ordinances would provide baptisms for the dead and would enable families to be sealed together in bonds of eternal love. Not just for the Chinese man and his family, but for me and our broken but beautiful family, recovering from divorce and other desolations.

Second Questions

When I was ten years old, we lived on Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, and I became friends with Jamie Cross. Jamie and her family were the first Latter-day Saints or “Mormons” I had ever met. One day I saw a book on the couch in Jamie’s living room, opened to a picture of a boy kneeling in prayer. “Who is that?” I asked. “That is Joseph Smith,” said Jamie. “He went to the forest to pray, and he saw God and Jesus.” I accepted Jamie’s answer with the faith of a fifth grader. I never thought about it again until eight years later, when I had developed a habit of stopping in churches to pray, asking God to please show me the right way to go in life.

One May morning in Phoenix, Arizona, I went to pray in the big yellow church building across the street from Maryvale High School. As I was praying, two “glorious personages” appeared to me (the custodian and the first counselor in a Bishopric). “What do you know about the Mormon Church?” they asked. “Wasn’t there a boy named Joseph Smith, and he went to the forest to pray, and he saw God and Jesus?” I replied. The two men invited me to attend an Open House later in the week. I could not attend, but they remembered my name and the name of a high school acquaintance I had mentioned. They called her Bishop and told him about me. Bishop Dan Moore called Nancy Miner, who found me at school and invited me to listen to the missionary discussions in her home.

The missionaries were young, clean-cut, and polite. Elder Clausen, Elder Knight, and Elder Brown did not try to force anything on me. They explained what they believed to be true with a sincerity that impressed me. They instructed me to ask Heavenly Father in prayer about the truth of their message. “We know it is true,” said Elder Clausen, “because we have prayed about it. But people can be deceived. You can’t just take our word for it. You have to find out for yourself from the Lord.” Their respect for my agency created a bond of trust.

More Questions

During my high school years, my friends and I were seeking truth in the cultural movements of that era, as were many people of that generation. During my junior year, I read a book entitled Do It! by Jerry Ruben. The author’s stated purpose was to overthrow the democratic republic of the United States by means of a communist revolution. His strategy was explicit: to destroy the American family. His tactics were specific: 1) promote illegal drug traffic, 2) deflower all the virgins of America, 3) gain control of the press, and 4) stockpile weapons. Ruben’s plan was eye-opening. This was not the peace, love, justice, and freedom that the songs and slogans were preaching. This was not the truth I had been seeking. I decided that if there was anything true, it had something to do with Jesus Christ.

A year later, the missionaries began teaching me the gospel. Their message was a plan of happiness and salvation for all. Their mission was the antithesis of the radical agenda to destroy families through addiction, promiscuity, suppression, and violence. The mission of The Church of Jesus Christ was to foster lasting love through family life. The teachings were basic: 1) to avoid substance abuse, 2) to blossom as a rose through principles of chastity and fidelity, 3) to publish the gospel of peace, 4) and to respect those who have defended our freedoms.

I was able to compare the teachings of the gospel to truths that I had been gathering from many other sources. For example, when the Elders taught about chastity, modesty, healthy living, and wearing white as a symbol for covenants, I had learned about those principles in my weekly yoga class. When they taught about the Book of Mormon and how Lehi had traveled with his family across the great waters to a new land in the Americas, I said, “Yes, I read all about that in the Book of the Hopi by Frank Waters.” The tiles of truth I had been collecting seemed to come together in a marvelous mosaic.

First Confirmations

During the final missionary lesson, the Elders invited me to be baptized on the day after my eighteenth birthday, to be immersed in water, a symbol of a new clean life. I deferred the invitation, saying that I would think about baptism while I was on a “Challenge/Discovery” wilderness scholarship for a month in the Rocky Mountains near Crested Butte, Colorado. The deferral was just a polite way to say “No.” On the afternoon of my birthday, as I was walking home from high school, an inner voice spoke to my mind with great urgency: “Why are you running away? You say that you want love, peace, a happy family, and universal brotherhood. Why don’t you say YES!” After my birthday party that evening, I called the missionaries to say “Yes.”

Eight days later, I was on my way to a month of kayaking, rock climbing, rappelling, and back-packing, ending with a three day solo in the aspens. As we prepared to ascend Taylor Peak, our teacher, Allan Derbyshire, read a quotation by Dag Hammarskjöld from his book of inspirational thoughts. When I borrowed Allan’s book later to write the quotation in my journal, I encountered another affirmation by Hammarskjöld that shocked me with unanticipated confirmation:

I don’t know Who – or what – put the question, I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone – or Something – and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal. From that moment I have known what it means “not to look back,” and “to take no thought for the morrow. (Markings)

Last summer, I returned to the aspen-blessed mountains of Crested Butte for the first time in thirty-five years. It was as if I had only been gone for a day, as if I had come back for an interview with my Heavenly Father to report on some homework he had assigned. The feedback was unexpectedly positive: “Well done, my daughter, well done.”

Further Confirmations

While I was serving a mission in La Paz, Bolivia, my missionary companion Martha hired a Sister from church named Yola to fix lunch for us in her one-room adobe home. Every work-day at noon we got to play with Yola’s four children: Jorge Miguel, Oscar Eddy, Miriam Susy, and Edgar Luis. After I finished my mission, it was hard to keep in touch with families we had known in Bolivia. But my former companion wrote regularly, and in 1980 she sent me very bad news.

In January, the stove had exploded in Yola’s home while the three youngest children were inside. Outside, Yola heard the explosion and ran home to save the lives of the children. The two youngest children, Susy and Edgar, were severely burned on one side of their bodies. They survived after many months of hospital care, but they had terrible scars on their faces, hands, and arms.

I couldn’t stop crying about the accident, and I realized that my grief was nothing compared to what Yola’s family had suffered. I fasted and prayed, seeking comfort in the scriptures and in the Provo Temple. In the temple, a Brother gave a prophetic prayer during one of the sessions I attended in May 1980. He said, “Bless the suffering that friends will be sent to them.”

Two years later, I was ready to graduate from BYU with a Master’s degree. While I was waiting to hear about a job offer in Salt Lake, I had a dream. I dreamed that I moved into a home on the Avenues in Salt Lake with my former BYU roommate Carla. When I told Carla about the dream, she said that a vacancy was possible and to call if I got the job. I did get the job, and I moved into the Willis home, a block down from the old Primary Children’s Hospital.

One evening three weeks later, I felt prompted me to visit Karen, a Sister who lived across the street from the hospital. I said, “I can’t go tonight, but I promise I will go tomorrow night.” The Holy Ghost said, “Okay.” The next night, I went to visit Karen, but she wasn’t home, so I walked towards City Creek Canyon to look at the sunset. A nurse, a social worker, and two little children were ahead of me, a boy and a girl. When we got to the edge of the canyon, I noticed that the children had dark hair and bright eyes. They were wearing plastic bracelets, so I knew that they were hospital patients. Then, the girl started to go down the steep slope.

The nurse said, “Come back, Susy!”

When she said “Susy,” I had a moment of incredible recognition.

“Where are these children from?” I asked the social worker.

“From Bolivia,” he replied.

“Miriam Susy!” I cried out. Then I tried to remember Edgar’s name.

“Oscar Eddy? Edgar? Your mother is Yola, and your father is Felix, and you have a dog named Tarzan.”

“No,” they said, “Ya tenemos otro perro (Now we have a different dog).”

It was the last night that Edgar and Susy were in the hospital for in-patient care. It was the only night that they took a walk. Heavenly Father was the one who heard my prayers. He knew where we were and how to bring us together. Such dramatic answers to prayer may be once-in-a-lifetime miracles, but my daily bread also consists of quiet confirmations. My quest for love and truth has led me here, to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, a journey of faith and intelligence, a career of scholarly and spiritual dimensions that I never could have imagined as a child seeking answers to important questions.

———-

Dr. Cynthia L. Hallen has a degree in Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English from the University of Arizona. Her dissertation topic was “Philology as Rhetoric in Emily Dickinson’s Poems.” She is an Associate Professor of Linguistics & English Language at Brigham Young University. She has a BA in English and an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language from Brigham Young University. Her interests include exegesis, figures, lexicography, philology, poetics, stylistics, translation, and creative writing. She is the chief editor of the Emily Dickinson Lexicon (EDL), an online dictionary containing all the words in Dickinson’s poems. In 2007, the EDL project received the Albert C. Colton award from the Utah Humanities Council. The Emily Dickinson Lexicon website includes a renovated edition of Noah Webster’s 1844 American Dictionary of the English Language. Her publications include articles in Dickinson Studies, the Emily Dickinson Journal, Dictionaries, Names, and the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. For two years, she worked as the Research Assistant for Dr. Arthur H. King of the BYU Moral Studies Group and served as his Teaching Assistant for Honors/English Shakespeare classes. She is presently the Honors Coordinator for the BYU Department of Linguistics & English Language. She began studying the poems of Emily Dickinson while she was working on a scripture lexicon for the Translation Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Posted December 2009

Things of the Earth

This testimony is a very slightly modified version of an article that appeared in Brigham Young Magazine (Winter 2000), which was, in turn, condensed from an essay published in David L. Clark, ed., Of Heaven and Earth: Reconciling Scientific Thought with LDS Theology (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1998), which includes the complete text of this essay as well as ten other essays by Latter-day Saint scientists. It appears here by intent of the author. – ed.

“Yea, verily I say unto you, in that day when the Lord shall come, he shall reveal all things. Things which have passed, and hidden things which no man knew, things of the earth by which it was made, and the purpose and the end thereof; Things most precious, things that are above, and things that are beneath, things that are in the earth, and upon the earth, and in heaven.” (D&C 101:32-34)

I wait anxiously for the day when these “things of the earth” will be revealed. But in the meantime, how can I, as a scientist, continue to practice and believe in my religion? Are science and religion “incompatible and mutally exclusive” as biologist Edward O. Wilson proposes?¹ Or can they “live harmoniously together in the human soul” as suggested by physicist Freeman J. Dyson?²

My intent here is to provide some justification for why I continue to believe in God, in the Book of Mormon, in Joseph Smith, and in the modern hierarchy of the LDS Church when I have been trained in the fundamental tenets of science and accept them as being true. In my profession I teach and study geology. I have specialized in the study of Earth’s architecture (structural geology) and in understanding the ages of rocks and minerals (geochronology). Much of what I have learned from my studies and believe to be true is seemingly incompatible with the scriptures. I say “seemingly” because I believe that all apparent contradictions between religion and science will disappear as our understanding approaches God’s understanding.³

During the past few years, my research has focused on determining the ages of rocks and minerals. In 1983 I established a laboratory at Brigham Young University dedicated to geochronology, and during the past decade I have used isotopic dating techniques numerous times, such as to obtain more precise ages for dinosaur bones found in Utah and Colorado, to determine the rate of movement along the Wasatch Fault zone, and to help calibrate the geologic time scale. In all of my studies, I have found no reason to doubt the reliability of the methods used. I believe that the ages obtained by these methods, often registering in millions or hundreds of millions of years, reflect events that happened on this world since its creation. The principles that govern isotopic decay and the use of this decay for determining ages are as well established, accepted, and understood as are the laws of motion and the law of gravity. These ideas cannot be dismissed as mere scientific nonsense, unless we are willing to throw out the whole of science itself.

First Encounters

I write from the standpoint of a scientist who believes deeply in the truths and theories of science, yet sees no serious conflicts between science and religion. However, in order to understand the influence of different views of science and religion in my life, I need to travel back for a few moments to my youth, to the time of my introduction to life, science, and religion in the small Mormon town of Pleasant View.

Pleasant View, Utah, spreads out like a warm and careworn patchwork quilt along the foothills of a mountain called Ben Lomond. From almost anywhere in town you can see far out over the valley to the waters of the Great Salt Lake. It is indeed a pleasant view. To me, however, the best view was not out over the valley but straight up 900 West Street, past my home, and up into the towering Wasatch Mountains.

In the hills above Pleasant View, and in the narrow canyons cut back into Ben Lomond above these hills, I discovered something magnificent. I discovered rocks. I brought them home with me. They were my greatest treasures. Some, I was certain, were extremely valuable. Each one I collected had its own special personality and character. I still have many of those rocks on my shelves today. In fact, on a recent visit my father said he had discovered yet another box of rocks in a corner of the basement and suggested that I was now old enough to store them at my own home. Opening that box with two of my own children was like an early Christmas present. We talked and sorted and touched each rock while I told them what they were and where they came from.

At age fourteen, when I went to receive my patriarchal blessing, the patriarch asked me a number of questions before giving the blessing. The only question I still remember was “What do you want to be when you grow up?” My answer was unequivocal: “I am going to be a geologist.” My faith in patriarchal blessings increased substantially that day, for when he gave the blessing, he told me that I would indeed be a geologist.

At the time of the blessing, I don’t suppose I really knew what geologists did or what they believed. If I had, I might have chosen a different career. All I really had in mind as a young boy was that geologists got to collect rocks for a living, and I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than that. I knew nothing about controversies surrounding the age of Earth or evolution, concepts that are central to the science of geology. In fact, what little I did know of these topics came from my mother. I was taught that evolution was really “evil-ution” a doctrine of the devil used to mislead us and destroy our belief in God. I was also taught that the scriptures were plain in describing the age of Earth; it was at most a few thousand years old. I firmly believed that these were fundamental teachings of the Church. As I grew up, I heard them repeated in Sunday School classes, in sacrament meeting talks, and during seminary.

The first time I was confronted by someone with a different perspective was during my mission to Quebec. One missionary, Elder Clayton, was known missionwide because he and his companions always worked more hours and wasted less time than anyone else. He had no apparent fear of people and would stop and talk to anyone at any time even in the most unlikely settings. I always felt a little uncomfortable around Elder Clayton, as did many other missionaries. We referred to him as “Enoch”; we were certain he already had his application in for translation.

One day while I was working with Elder Clayton on an exchange, we tracted out some potential investigators in an apartment building. At one point in our conversation, one of them asked us what our church taught about evolution. I responded that we believed it to be a false theory. Elder Clayton, in his calm and pleasant manner, interjected that he believed I was wrong. His understanding was that the LDS Church took no official stand on evolution. I was completely astounded and distraught, and I felt the blood rushing to my head as I checked my anger, for this was heresy to me. We left, and on the way back to our apartment I let him know that the Church could not tolerate such doctrine. I pointed out the obvious implications that evolution had for fundamental tenets of the gospel like the Fall and Atonement, the Creation story, and our relationship to God. He said he understood what I was saying, but he stuck by his belief that the Church had not taken an official position. Although I felt vindicated that day, his comments had a profound effect on me: they opened a crack in my mind with thoughts that had not been there before; they helped me to be more open and willing to listen the next time a similar discussion occurred. I am indebted to Elder Clayton for the day we shared together.

The next encounter I had with these theories was on my return to BYU in the winter of 1974. I enrolled in a historical geology class taught by Dr. Lehi F. Hintze and was cruising along in the course, doing quite well and feeling only occasionally uncomfortable about the vast ages that were proposed for the periods of geologic time, when Dr. Hintze decided it was time to talk more pointedly about evolution and the age of Earth and to give us his view of the LDS Church’s position. It was a difficult week for me. During our discussions, I again felt flushed and uncomfortable, but I couldn’t simply ignore what Dr. Hintze was saying. Elder James E. Talmage, he pointed out, had written and talked about the creatures that “lived and died, age after age, while the earth was yet unfit for human habitation.”⁴ Elder John A. Widtsoe had written about the “vast periods of time” required for each class of animals to arise, dominate the earth, and then become extinct.⁵ Many other quotes and articles were presented, but perhaps the most significant for me was the copy of a letter sent by President David O. McKay to William Lee Stokes, an LDS geology professor at the University of Utah. The letter, dated 15 February 1957, stated that “on the subject of organic evolution the Church has officially taken no position.”⁶

Elder Clayton, my one-day mission companion, had been correct! I felt embarrassed by what I had said to him, and yet I felt a great sense of relief to know that I could continue to study geology and to learn and believe its fundamental theories without throwing out my religion in the process.

And so I became a geologist, as my patriarchal blessing said I would. I have never regretted the decision. My study of science has sometimes forced me to challenge other long-held tenets of my faith. But I believe the outcome of this process has always been to eventually strengthen my testimony of the gospel, to make me a better person and a more understanding teacher, and to bring me a bit closer to the truth.

Worlds and Time without End

Geologists today believe that Earth is 4.5 to 4.6 billion years old.⁷ For most of us, including the scientists who determined these ages, this vast expanse of time is totally incomprehensible. But even numbers like a billion don’t seem so big when we begin to contemplate the numbers of stars, planets, and galaxies in the known universe. There are perhaps 400 billion stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy, with an estimated 300 billion planets that could support some type of life.⁸ The number of total galaxies is not known but has been estimated to be at least 100 billion, and in each galaxy, on average, there are 100 billion stars. This gives us a rough estimate of 10 billion trillion stars or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.⁹

In attempting to understand these numbers, I think I begin to understand something about God. I begin to understand what He means when He says that His works are “innumerable . . . unto man” (Moses 1:35), and that His name is “Endless,” for He is “without beginning of days or end of years; and is not this endless?” (Moses 1:3).

In general, I am a firm believer in the idea propounded by Galileo, and reiterated more recently by Elder James E. Talmage, that the holy scriptures were never intended to teach scientific principles. In his letter to Castelli on 13 December 1613, Galileo observed that “scripture deals with natural matters in such a cursory and allusive way that it looks as though it wanted to remind us that its business . . . is about the soul and that, as concerns Nature, it is willing to adjust its language to the simple minds of the people.”¹⁰ Elder Talmage said, “The opening chapters of Genesis, and scriptures related thereto, were never intended as a text- book of geology, archaeology, earth-science or man-science. . . . We do not show reverence for the scriptures when we misapply them through faulty interpretation.”¹¹

Most misconceptions that arise between science and religion could be avoided if we kept these ideas in mind. Sometimes, however, I believe that we can gain useful insights by combining science and the scriptures. This is apparent in trying to understand how our belief in God is compatible with the vast stretches of geologic time, the huge numbers of stars and galaxies now known to exist, and the enormous reaches of space. The Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price describes one of the most glorious experiences that a mortal man could have and gives insights into these ideas of time, space, and very large numbers.

Moses was “caught up into an exceedingly high mountain” (Moses 1:1). (There could have been no better place for the vision Moses was about to have than up among the rocks that had probably been around during much of the history Moses was about to witness.) And Moses “saw God face to face, and he talked with him” (Moses 1:2). What he then saw was the world in intricate detail, from the beginning to the end. For God said to Moses: “I will show thee the workmanship of mine hands; but not all, for my works are without end. . . . And it came to pass that Moses looked, and beheld the world upon which he was created; and Moses beheld the world and the ends thereof, and all the children of men which are, and which were created; of the same he greatly marveled and wondered.” (Moses 1:4,8) When the vision ended Moses was drained and did not recover his strength for several hours. In contemplating this experience, he stated, “Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed” (Moses 1:10).

Man was nothing! This was Moses, a former prince in the Pharaoh’s court, who may justifiably have thought that he was something, that he was somebody, that he had accomplished quite a bit in his life. What a shock this vision must have been! For now Moses realized that man was nothing, something he had never supposed. I believe he was beginning to see the immensity of God’s creation, and it brought home to Moses the same feeling that I get when I stand outside on a clear night and contemplate the stars, or when I hike up into the mountains and look at rocks that were first formed billions of years ago.

Later in the Book of Moses, after Moses had been visited and tempted by Satan, his vision of God and the world reopened, and God showed him the “earth, yea, even all of it; and there was not a particle of it which he did not behold, discerning it by the spirit of God” (Moses 1:27). At this point Moses was bold enough to ask God a question. He asked Him why He had made all these planets and people and how they were made. It appears that God was not going to give Moses a complete response. I often take this approach with my children when they ask me a question that will take too long to explain. God said, and I paraphrase, that He did it “just because.” Yes, He had His reasons, but they were for His “own purpose” (Moses 1:31). However, God did explain, among other things, that the creative work had been accomplished by the “word of my power, . . . which is mine Only Begotten Son” (Moses 1:32).

Moses, like my children, wanted to learn more: “Tell me concerning this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, and also the heavens, and then thy servant will be content” (Moses 1:36). At this point God revealed to Moses the great plan, the reason behind all of creation: “The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine. And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words. For behold, this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:37-39)

This vision of Moses is simply packed with ideas that were unknown or only in their infant stages in the scientific community at the time of Joseph Smith. For example, what did God mean by “the heavens, they are many”? The wording of this passage makes me believe that God was not just referring to the stars we see in our own heavens at night, but to other heavens as well. The heavens spoken of here may represent galaxies, and we certainly know today that “they are many.” However, it was not until the early part of the twentieth century that scientists were even certain that other galaxies existed.¹² Will these galaxies “pass away?” Before the development of modern theories of cosmology, it was believed that the heavens were static and immutable. Today it is believed that galaxies have a finite lifetime: they are born, they live for several billion years, and then they will die in either a general collapse of our universe or in a slow burnout as the universe continues to expand.¹³

An alternative hypothesis is that the heavens spoken of in this passage represent different universes of which ours is only one of many. As strange as this idea may sound, it is today one of the prominent scientific theories for the origin and demise of the universe. Physicist Andrei D. Linde, one of the proponents of this theory, wrote: “Just a few years ago there was no doubt that the universe was born in a single Big Bang singularity. . . . Now it seems more likely that the universe is an eternally existing, self-producing entity that is divided into many mini-universes much larger than our observable portion.”¹⁴

Moses also learned in his vision that there are worlds without number that come and go on the eternal stage, and he learned that the inhabitants of Earth are “numberless as the sand upon the sea shore” (Moses 1:28). These were certainly not well-known facts in Moses’ time, nor even in Joseph Smith’s time, but they are beginning to be established today.

These concepts would make good items for further discussion, but I want to come back to the most important idea that Moses was taught during his vision — the purpose for all of creation, which was “the immortality and eternal life of man.” I believe that in his vision Moses glimpsed what eternity was like, and this glimpse was one of the main reasons he was left to exclaim that “man is nothing.” Eternity is a concept that is frequently talked about but seldom, if ever, comprehended. But what better way could God have found to impress upon Moses the idea of eternity and immortality than by showing him a small part of creation. Compared to eternity, a few billion years of Earth history are nothing. Compared to infinity, what are a few billion trillion stars and planets? They do not even scratch the surface of the totality of creation.

So do we as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have a problem with an Earth that is 4.6 billion years old? Unequivocally no! How can we be concerned with a mere 4.6 billion years when we believe in an eternal God, when we believe in the immortality and eternal life of man?¹⁵ Elder Bruce R. McConkie, in a general conference address in 1982, suggested that the six days of creation were more properly thought of as periods of time. He said: “What is a day? It is a specified time period; it is an age, an eon, a division of eternity; it is the time between two identifiable events. And each day, of whatever length, has the duration needed for its purposes.”¹⁶

We should not, therefore, worry about accepting these concepts of science, concepts that deal with vast ages and very large numbers, for they help us to gain a small but important insight into one of the main characteristics of God and godhood: the concept of eternity. To me these discoveries of science add to the greatness of God, lift and inspire me, and help me to see I am indeed nothing compared to God and His creations. Carl Sagan, the eminent astronomer and unbeliever, had some interesting words of advice for those of us who are believers. He said:
How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed”? Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.¹⁷

I don’t think we need to wait for that religion to emerge; it is here already. We do not believe in a “little god,” and our prophets have always emphasized the greatness and beauty of the universe God has created. For us, each new discovery of science should be as a new revelation; each discovery gives us a more complete understanding of how God works. Our god is not a god only of the supernatural, miraculous, or mysterious. He is a god of truth and knowledge; He encourages us and desires for us to learn and gain knowledge. Brigham Young said that Mormonism “embraces every true science and all true philosophy. . . . True science, true art, and true knowledge comprehend all that are in heaven or on the Earth, or in all the eternities. . . . All truth is ours.”¹⁸

We believe that “whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection,” and that “if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come” (D&C 130:1819). We have been taught to “study and learn, and become acquainted with all good books” (D&C 90:15), to “seek not for riches but for wisdom” (D&C 6:7), and to ponder and study things out in our own minds before we ask God (D&C 9:8). After all, God has challenged us to become like Him, to become gods, to gain His glory — and His glory is intelligence (D&C 93:36).

As science demonstrates the order and law of the universe, we should not feel threatened but should gain a greater reverence and awe for the marvelous work of the Creator,¹⁹ for “he comprehendeth all things, and all things are before him, and all things are round about him; and he is above all things, and in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things; and all things are by him, and of him, even God, forever and ever” (D&C 88:41).

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Notes:

1. Edward O. Wilson, “Evolutionary Biology and Religion,” lecture given at Catholic bishops’ meeting, 1987. See David M. Byers, ed., Religion, Science and the Search for Wisdom (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1987), pp. 82–90.

2. Freeman J. Dyson, Infinite in All Directions (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 11.

3. This statement is paraphrased from Henry Eyring, The Faith of a Scientist (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1967), p. 99.

4. James E. Talmage, “The Earth and Man,” address delivered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle Sunday, Aug. 9, 1931, and printed in the Deseret News, Nov. 21, 1931.

5. John A. Widtsoe, Joseph Smith as Scientist, manual distributed by the General Board of the YMMIA (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1908), p. 52.

6. This letter and others like it have been widely distributed, but they have also been criticized as not being official Church documents. These letters are private correspondences signed only by President McKay, not by the entire First Presidency. For me, however, at the time I first read one of these letters, it carried a great deal of weight because it came from the prophet and President of the Church. I still find them to be useful and important documents today.

7. See G. Brent Dalrymple, The Age of the Earth (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 396. Some new data have appeared since the publication of the book, but the general conclusions have not changed.

8. See Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), pp. 298–301.

9. See ibid. pp. 5–7.

10. See Giorgio de Santillana, The Crime of Galileo (Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1955), p. 39.

11. Talmage, “The Earth and Man.”

12. See George O. Abell, Exploration of the Universe, 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969), p. 608.

13. See Tony Rothman, “This Is the Way the World Ends,” Discover, July 1987, pp. 82–93.

14. Andrei D. Linde, “Particle Physics and Inflationary Cosmology,” Physics Today, September 1987, p. 68.

15. Brigham Young said, “How long it [the earth] has been organized is not for me to say, and I do not care anything about it. . . . whether the Lord found the earth empty and void, whether he made it out of nothing or out of the rude elements; or whether he made it in six days or in as many millions of years, is and will remain a matter of speculation in the minds of men unless he give revelation on the subject.” (in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. [London: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1860], 14: 116.)

16. Bruce R. McConkie, Ensign, June 1982, p. 11.

17. Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (New York: Random House, 1994), p. 52.

18. Young, Journal of Discourses, 14:280–81.

19. See Richard H. Bube, Putting It All Together: Seven Patterns for Relating Science and the Christian Faith (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1995), p. 66.

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Bart J. Kowallis, professor of geology at Brigham Young University, did his undergraduate degree at BYU and then went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. He teaches classes in Physical Geology, Structural Geology, Field Geology, and Physical Science at Brigham Young University, where he has worked for over 25 years. His research and publications focus on geochronology, stratigraphy, and structural geology, particularly of the Mesozoic rocks in Utah. Since 2001, Professor Kowallis and his students have mapped along the south and north flanks of the Uinta Mountains in cooperation with the Utah Geological Survey and the United States Geological Survey. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and was honored in 1986 with an Alcuin General Education Teaching Award and in 2003 with a Karl G. Maeser General Education Professorship, both from Brigham Young University.

Posted December 2009

‘HOOKS’

We perhaps too cavalierly overlook what, for want of a better term, I call ‘hooks’–the experiential ‘hooks’–that, in each of our lifetimes, more commonly I suspect than we readily recognize, have often unexpectedly amazed and spiritually ‘grabbed’ us. If ‘hook’ is a rather crude expression, connoting as it does over-dependency, even addiction, we might further relate to it the metaphorical notion that the Savior himself is the great Fisherman and we the fish he rescues from a sea of aimlessness, self-absorption, and ultimate despair. I believe that each of us has encountered such testimony-galvanizing ‘hooks’–often in particular role models–but we can with time all too easily dismiss or forget them. The Spirit, as we are told, is just that fragile. You know when you know, when it has spoken to you. The trick is not to forget.

As I have commented about a number of LDS Russians I have at one time known to be dynamic and fully engaged disciples and leaders:

It is a further witness that in the seemingly alien environment and culture of Russia there were still those who heard our missionaries’ message and at least for a time felt the Spirit so deeply. The genuineness of their conversion was evidenced by their remarkable faith, humility, enthusiasm and eagerness to serve. Even those who were our branch and
district presidents and are no longer with us once manifested those same qualities and clearly felt the Spirit. They have simply forgotten it and not allowed it to continue as a force that pulsates in them and informs their lives. The Spirit is that tenuous. (Thomas F. Rogers, A Call to Russia: Glimpses of Missionary Life [Provo: BYU Studies, 1999], 175).

Allow me now to share with you several of my own ‘hooks’:

–The prophet of my youth and young adulthood, David O. McKay;

–The profound mentoring during my undergraduate years and in an LDS institutional setting by Lowell Bennion, who equally impacted Gene and Charlotte England, Mary Lythgoe Bradford, Douglas Alder, Emma Lou Thayne, and ever so many others;

–Later, the wise and loving tutelage of another remarkable role model and priesthood leader, Jae Ballif;

–The impulse in my senior year of college to approach my bishop and ask him to call me on my first mission. The unforeseen consequences of that ‘road taken’ have been manifold and long lasting. Before that moment I had, though unwittingly, too exclusively pursued the life of the mind. It was the narrow, almost myopic worldview of my otherwise admirable professors and what at least struck me as the shallowness of many of their lives that in that year at last impelled me to opt for something less theoretical and more all encompassing, more existentially challenging and humanly ‘hands on.’ I have since come to view Mormonism as the ultimate humanism–concerned as no other philosophy or social system with the long-term welfare of every individual;

–My own severe crisis of faith while on that first mission: After arriving in Germany, I soon realized that I still did not ‘know’ or sense with enough certainty that what I was persuading others to take upon themselves was actually of God–an impasse whose resolution came weeks later and in a form I did not anticipate. I realized then that I could not in good conscience persuade others to so radically alter their lives, including the forfeiture of ten percent of their ongoing income, if I were not more certain that our message and its sponsoring Church were in fact distinctively divine. So, in desperation, I wrote the then-apostle who had set me apart, Hugh B. Brown, and the young fellow-Lambda Delta Sigma-er, Merriam Dickson, who had already proven such a helpful confidant and friend. Their counsel simply reminded me of those fundamental things we are all asked to do to gain a testimony. I remember to this day, over a half-century later, the very moment and exactly where I was sitting (in the Hannover chapel’s Melchizedek Priesthood classroom, where on early weekday mornings I studied the language and missionary discussions) when, approximately two months later and quite unexpectedly, what I can only call an undeniable ‘witness’ entered my mind and bosom. Prior to that moment–as excessively romantic as this may sound–I had seriously contemplated defecting to France (I’d already studied French at the University of Utah, but not German) and there, too ashamed to return to family and friends, getting lost in the French Foreign Legion (with what dismal consequences during the subsequent Algerian revolt I can now only imagine!). It was in fact an unusually understanding and empathetic missionary assistant to the mission president (designated back then as mission second counselor) who first took me tracting and whom I particularly credit with keeping me aboard during those precarious first weeks; he was an accomplished pianist and aspired to become a surgeon. Instead, I learned a few decades later from his two nephews who were among our BYU Study Abroaders in Vienna that their uncle had ended up a restaurateur in San Francisco, where, never marrying, he contracted AIDS and then returned to his roots in rural Utah, nursed there by a sister until his untimely demise. (For three years in the 1970s, while serving at the Provo MTC, I was further privileged to witness and be deeply impacted by the spiritual wrestling and similar ‘conversions’ of many young missionaries. Their striking transformation was always thrilling to behold and very real–a nearly palpable source of greater and more genuine childlike humility compassion for others, and profound joy.)

–Other instances of what I still consider miraculous intervention and transcendent insight while on my first mission, including the discernment that enabled me to perceive that, as others argued against the Church or threatened to leave it, they were invariably, as Dostoevsky’s Myshkin puts it in The Idiot, “really talking about something else”; the further reassuring discovery that, having for a time managed to put aside my doubts so that faith could have its way, I was not in the least ‘lobotomized’ but still as capable as I am right now of questioning, considering counter-arguments, and entertaining various forms of doubt; and, perhaps most important, the prompting I had while with two more years to serve to propose to my future wife–now both of us over a year beyond our golden anniversary–a decision that has subsequently proved to be more than inspired;

–On that same early mission, the belated discovery through intensive personal study of Acts and Paul’s epistles that, in its organization, lay offices, gifts, ordinances, and their purposes, as well as in its proselytizing thrust and communal lifestyle, the pristine church of Christ and the one I represented were, in contrast to so many others, distinctively one and the same;

—In all this time, Merriam’s steady example of unwavering love, wisdom, sacrifice and faithfulness;

–The response in 1970s India of a venerable Sanskrit tutor, Shri Matiji Pande, to my query, “In your entire pantheon of deities was there ever anyone who taught love for one’s enemies and also voluntarily suffered and died for humankind?” “No,” was her cryptic but carefully considered reply–which further reinforced my conviction that, as the world’s Savior, Jesus Christ is unrivaled and, as we would expect, totally unique;

–The spirituality less articulated than exemplified by various colleagues and peers–the current patriarch for the Church in Russia, Gary Browning, and Don Jarvis, who earlier presided over missions in Moscow and Ekaterinburg and with his wife Janelle has also served a humanitarian aid mission in Belarus, being just two instances;

–In addition to those three years at the Provo MTC, multiple epiphanies that have accompanied my approximately seven years of full-time, often taxing, missionary service, including, again, the firsthand observation of astounding and edifying transformations in converts, enduringly faithful members, and, above all, fledgling missionaries;

–Recognition of the great blessing in the lives of our offspring, their spouses, and those of their children who have served missions and remained full participants in the work of the Church; throughout my extended family and over several generations, incidentally, I have witnessed how consistently closer and more mutually supportive such persons are than those who have repudiated that heritage and so much more exclusively live for and focus upon their immediate selves;

–The heady amalgam of unfettered inquiry and artistic exploration of Mormon roots and culture at BYU that accompanied those almost two golden decades of LDS scholarship, spearheaded by Leonard Arrington and his associates, together with the distinctive combination of like-minded loyalty and unfettered openness to inquiry on the part of so many respected colleagues and students, particularly in the BYU Honors Program and Colleges of Humanities and Family and Social Sciences. In a very personal way, I regard the serendipitous promptings to begin writing serious dramas (occasioned by the casual comment of another respected colleague, Alan Keele) and, after retiring, to take on yet another heretofore uncontemplated avocation–painting–(in turn occasioned by the mundane search for a new eraser) as urgings from beyond my ken that have proved immensely gratifying and perhaps of some benefit to others;

–Again, the almost palpable ‘Spirit of Elijah’ that increasingly overcomes me with nostalgic affinity for departed forebears, perhaps an appropriate preparation for the day I too must leave this life and can, hopefully, rejoin them;

–An increasingly deeper sense that love is the key to all else and that both its ultimate source and its object is Deity–that, without that influence, we are further limited in our ability to properly value what we can know or to care for one another.

Responding from Belarus to the foregoing list, Don Jarvis wrote the following:

I particularly liked your emphasis on memory as a crucial aspect of testimony. The word “remember” in my Word-Cruncher scripture search program produces over 330 verses, including . . . the sacrament prayers, and Alma 5:6. When I used to have someone in my BYU ward or MTC branch looking for some miracle to pump a deflated testimony, I would ask them if they had done what you suggest by recalling personal “hooks” . . . from their own lives. Many, but admittedly not all, found that very helpful. I certainly do. Alma in Chapter 5 talks even more about imagining future events, reminding us that faithfulness is very much an intellectual activity (email, 8 June 2006).

Don’s meaning here, I believe, is, that maintaining a vital and abiding faith requires ongoing reflection and cogitation–a discerning reassessment and sorting out of both our preconceptions and our dissonant, ever competing inclinations by recalling our long term experience and lessons learned but all too easily forgotten–which may in fact be a fair description of efficacious meditation and prayer. None of us is fully insulated, no one completely sealed off from uncertainty and occasional nagging doubt–much as we might prefer otherwise. We are all ‘God wrestlers.’ As with our less than consistently or at all times unambiguously ethical deeds, maintaining faith is all uphill, and its slope sometimes steep. If we think or declare otherwise, as we often do, we are in denial. No one gets through this life free of fault or utterly robotized. We weren’t intended to.

Among my heroes are those mid-nineteenth-century Russians–like Tolstoy, the composer Mussorgsky, and the painter Repin–who so agonized over the plight of the far less favored peasants, tirelessly working in their behalf and yearning to be one with them. Simultaneously, on another continent, a society was emerging with potential for that desired outcome–more beneficial and far-sighted than the socialist phenomenon that so tragically impacted those Russians’ descendants. On their very soil I have witnessed its effects in the lives of a fair number of them. Those effects are not just theoretical. They are very real: Barriers of unfamiliarity, social class, and even nationality disappear; in our interaction we bask together in mutual affection and supportiveness–truly one another’s sisters and brothers. Few religions achieve this. That of the Latter-day Saints can and often does. Or, as Don Jarvis further comments, again from the trenches while with his wife Janelle distributing wheelchairs, arranging for free dental care by States-side volunteers, and staging puppet shows for Belarussian children on personal hygiene: “This ‘going to the people’ is yet another evidence of the Church’s efforts to bridge heaven and earth, so unlike the neo-Platonic dualism of much of ‘classical’ Christianity . . . with its monks, celibacy, and retreat from the world it is supposed to serve” (email 7/2/06).

I’ve listed a number of what I call ‘hooks’ or promptings that, as I now look back on them, seem to have steered my life in ways I could never have foreseen. These often arose as unbidden invitations or opportunities that in turn required an active choice between two alternative courses of action–one leading to greater personal fulfillment, the other to stagnation. I now view such promptings as tender mercies that, I believe, are how the Spirit most often operates in our lives.

As a patriarch, I’ve frequently been privy to that same process in the lives of now close to fifteen hundred fellow Latter-day Saints throughout the vast territory of Eastern Europe. Each time I travel abroad I keep witnessing the miraculous transformation in those I interview which, they testify, took place after they were sufficiently imbued with faith, testimony, and, through the Spirit’s transcendent power, the concomitant desire and confidence to exercise the discipline and sacrifice that enabled them to change, often quite dramatically.

Like our convert ancestors, new Church members are spiritually quickened. Paradoxically, their vital, whole-souled response to the missionaries’ message fortifies the missionaries’–and our own–ongoing conversion. We are blessed by their example, which draws us to them. Meanwhile, those in succeeding generations have as much need of that same quickening by overcoming a certain complacent drag when, at least at first, the whole thing seems the mere consequence of the family setting in which we happen to have been born. This applies as much to those at all levels who throughout their lives have mostly ‘gone along,’ accepting and dutifully serving in various callings.

The human condition spares none of us nor our loved ones from discouragement and sorrow, and for those who lack faith in immortality and salvation such outcomes and the prospect of one’s mortal finality can only be, however stoically viewed, utterly grim. There is surely an innate need in us all for the wondrous assurances that Christ preached and, in his atoning mission, exemplified. We are therefore truly blessed when, with faith (whatever the skeptical arguments that can also readily occur to us), we ‘buy into’ those assurances and live to cultivate that same faith. We’ve each experienced both it and its opposite. Such faith is an immense blessing, and we should never allow the sum total of inequities, short sighted practices, or the predilections of equally human and at times fallible spiritual mentors–which are ultimately ‘accidentals’ and not ‘fundamentals’–to rob us of remaining fully open to what Christ’s consoling and unmatched restored doctrine can afford us.

Paul honestly asserted that we peer ‘through a glass darkly.’ Even so, I believe that each of us has at times deeply felt the mind of God that Paul knew so markedly contrasts with the mind of man (1 Cor. 2:11-14). I like to call this the ‘epistemology’ of the Gospel. We rightly choose to exercise faith, while we are still at times tempted to believe we may be self-deceived: our faith easily wanes and waxes from day to day, even from one moment to the next. For me, it’s in fact been, as mentioned, quite reassuring to recognize that I could still entertain doubt after receiving the witness that I finally did as a young missionary.

It’s a humbling and perhaps needful thing that we are thrown back on both the finiteness of our precarious physical condition and the limitations of our mortal understanding. Where the challenge of Christ’s teachings and our willingness to believe them is concerned, there is absolutely no definitive proof to the contrary and so much to be existentially gained by continuing in that trusting direction. The equal need of our very loved ones–our spouses and children, and theirs–their similar need for spiritual nourishment and eternal perspective, is key.

By contrast with every theological speculation and every other religious practice of which I am aware, the restored Church and Gospel are so amazingly comprehensive and efficacious in addressing our individual and social needs, so reasonable and correct in their understanding of original Judeo-Christianity, and so profoundly grand in their perspective on our ultimate eternal possibilities–truly the most conceivably viable humanism and literal fulfillment of that great ideal of the fraternity and sisterhood of all humankind.

Meanwhile, I remain pensive and deeply stirred by Simone Weil’s observation that “Instead of speaking about love of truth it would be better to speak about a spirit of truth in love” (Waiting for God). I sense such love in many of my fellow Latter-day Saints and would better emulate them in that regard.

BECOMING ‘GROUNDED’

On more than one past occasion I have spelled out an array of influences and highly persuasive reasons for favoring the teachings of the restored Gospel and further adhering to its sponsoring institution. As I now look back, I recognize how extensively I’ve been privileged to serve that institution and, together with my family, be blessed by it.

Even so — and even after thirty-one years’ employment at the Church’s flagship university and a total seven years’ full time missionary activity — I have often too much been a mere witness or bystander, a ‘fellow traveler,’ more theoretically disposed than existentially committed. Until fairly recently!

I am now seventy-six. This should offer hope to others whom the ‘spark’ has still not fully quickened. How and to what extent have I myself changed, and so fairly recently? It may be the natural consequence of a certain mellowing that comes with advanced age. In any event, I now look upon my religious commitment with increased appreciation and fuller intent than perhaps ever before. The form it takes is really selfish — an instinctive preference for it over anything that might oppose or detract from it. With that heady appeal have come both a lesser disposition toward self-indulgence and greater awareness of and commiseration for others’ travail. This includes, for all our extraneous differences, more satisfaction in associating with fellow Saints as well as a disposition in prayer to affirm my ongoing resolve and preferred good intent rather than so much to seek favors.

This reminds me of Simone Weil’s allusion to the two birds in the Upanishads that share the same limb of a tree. One ravenously consumes the tree’s fruit while the other simply looks on. The second bird’s empathetic detachment more nearly reflects divine perspective and, with it, desirable understanding and serenity. Why I’ve been blessed to feel this way I cannot say. I take no credit.

Two recent novels by Mormon authors –Jack Harrell’s Vernal Promises and Douglas Thayer’s The Tree House–compellingly illustrate a similar spiritual odyssey in considerably younger protagonists In both instances, though in quite different settings: that of lowlife drug culture in the Mountain West and during the ever present Hell of battle in the Korean War. Their characters arrive at a more stable and placid life’s course by first experiencing (and withstanding) extremely violent and potentially destructive opposition. Such opposition can of course take a variety of forms, either physical or psychological. But experiencing it in various personal contexts further attests to the scriptures’ paradoxical assertions regarding the essential role that trials and opposition play in our individual development.

So, blessed we are by the intermittent shadows if we do not finally give in to them. They can then bring us onto more solid ground. Of this I testify.

———-

After graduating from the University of Utah and serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Germany, Thomas F. Rogers earned a master’s degree in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Russian Language and Literature from Georgetown University. Along the way, he also picked up two certificates in the teaching of Russian from Moscow State University and a certificate from the Theatre Workshop at the University of Wroclaw, in Poland.

He taught at Howard University in Washington DC and at the University of Utah before joining the faculty at Brigham Young University, where he served as a professor of Russian from 1969-2000, directing the University’s Honor’s Program from 1981-1983 and editing Encyclia, the journal of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, from 1991-1993. Immediately upon his retirement from full-time college teaching, he served as an instructor in the BYU China Teachers Program from 2000-2001.

Professor Rogers is the author of numerous professional articles, reviews, essays, and stories, as well as of the books ‘Superfluous Men’ and the Post-Stalin ‘Thaw’ (The Hague: Mouton, 1972), God’s Fools: Four Plays by Thomas F. Rogers (Midvale, Utah: Eden Hill, 1983), Myth and Symbol in Soviet Fiction (San Francisco: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), Huebener and Other Plays (Provo, Utah: Poor Robert’s Publications, 1992), and A Call to Russia: Glimpses of Missionary Life (Provo: BYU Studies, 1999). He also translated S. Panchev, Random Functions and Turbulence (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1971), from the Russian.

Along with several awards for teaching and academic excellence, Professor Rogers received the Distinguished Service Award from the Mormon Festival of the Arts in 1988 (the citation from Eugene England pronouncing him “undoubtedly the father of modern Mormon drama”) and the Lifetime Service Award from the Association of Mormon Letters in 2002.

His numerous callings in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have included service as an elders quorum president, Sunday School president, counselor in a bishopric, stake high councilman, president of a BYU student branch, president of a branch in the Provo Missionary Training Center, president of the Russia St. Petersburg Mission (1993–1996), temple missionary and sealer at the Stockholm Sweden Temple (2004–2005), and ordinance worker and sealer in the Bountiful Utah Temple. Since 2007, Dr. Rogers has served the Latter-day Saints of the Europe East Area as an ordained patriarch.

Posted December 2009