David, I think that your approach is necessary in reviewing LDS apologetics. I have never liked band wagon apologetics, agreeing just because the work is a “defende of the faith”. Some are better than others, and some are worse. I don’t think that Greg is put out one bit by your comments.
I would aks also, have you listened to some of the podcasts that Greg referenced to “balance” your own viewpoint.
I confess that I have not because my hearing is so impaired that I can understand but little of the spoken word from the pulpit or other such venues.

Glenn

I’ve not listened to any podcasts, but I have met Dehlin in person. It was a good conversation. We disagreed a lot (ask Tyler). =)

Isn’t boiling down 80+ pages of data down to “Greg Smith cannot countenance anyone with a different world view” more than a little lazy David?

I expected better of you. I’m disappointed.

Hmmmm. I like Quinn in spite of a few errors. I like him as a person. I like his testimony (and he does have one). And, I love the material that he has published. He is no Korihor. As to Smith, I really don’t care for his Temple Interview view of the world. There are things in the story of the Book of Mormon that really are ridiculous. Trying to believe the reported translation process, can lead one to one real conclusion. The document is NOT translated. If anything, it is a revealed document. Channeled, if you will. I happen to believe in the BoM. It makes my heart leap for joy. But, I don’t believe in Nephites, except as a vehicle for the story. And, I don’t believe that Smith is qualified to judge my (or Quinn’s) belief. And, he needs to be re-reviewed as to his qualifications as a scholar. I am not a scholar, I am a librarian, capable of reading the output of scholars.

I have my own problems with Dehlin. He will not answer my questions about his interview with Tom Phillips. I do know a little about the subject that was discussed. There are problems with his story that need to be examined. Never the less, I do like some of Dehlin’s podcasts. I especially like the one with Dan Peterson. If it were not for that podcast, I would have a low opinion of Peterson and his “scholarly” opinion on about everything. I have come to see that his confrontational style is merely to stimulate discussion.

FAIR is as outrageous as FoxNews. Neither are fair. Neither are scholarly. They may have the appearance of scholarly method, but use of footnotes does not make them scholars. Peterson’s ability to read Persian poetry does not make him an expert on Church history. Hamlin is a joke. OTOH, Quinn is able to read Church history, and that does not make him an expert on Persian poetry. Nor does he claim to be.

I am interested in those new approaches to the creation myths. Are they available?

This was interesting, David. Thank you, very much, for sharing your thoughts. It helped clarify, a little more, exactly what was going on at MI (the divisions in direction, I mean). I agree with you that apologetics is useful, when dealing directly with certain church historical issues that are troublesome, but I don’t believe the kind of thing Greg Smith put out, against John Dehlin, is useful, at all. It just creates hard feelings. Plus, it was not a balanced view, in the least.

I’ve always thought of apologetics as the “comfort food” of research. If I see myself as a “believer”, it’s comforting to have someone with expertise pour the gravy on my mash potatoes by providing faithful, confirming information. Of course, it’s not a healthy way to approach life. Often the ruffage – both dietary and scholarly – is what keeps us balanced and on track. Even when it sometimes doesn’t taste as good.

Thanks for your thoughts.

I’ll try to be productive this time. I do have a little quibble with David’s post. I don’t necessary agree with David’s distinction between scholarship and apologetics. For me the primary distinction (or rather how I would define apologetics to distinguish it from academic scholarship–as opposed to, say “gospel scholarship”) is that apologetics requires the reader to accept certain faith claims in order to accept the conclusion or premises of their argument.

There is plenty of good scholarship that can have apologetic value and even intent. In fact, this value and intent can even be made explicit in their scholarship and still be called such. I would further add there is much that FARMS has done that would qualify as this. The moment it crosses the line from good academic scholarship to good apologetics is when the argument provided requires the reader to accept certain faith claims in order to accept the conclusion.

Does Greg Smith’s piece fit this definition of apologetics? At times it moves in this direction, but generally it doesn’t. It is rather just very poor scholarship with apologetic intent (and, in my opinion, little actual apologetic value).

Hi David,

I appreciate your thoughts. I had started composing a post in my head, and rather than leaving some random thoughts from the ill-formed post here, I decided to flesh it out at FPR: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithpromotingrumor/2013/03/wheat-and-tares-apologetics/

I think the attempt to draw a distinction between scholarship and apologetics on grounds of position advocacy would be more potent if you could claim that scholarship isn’t advocacy-driven.

But of course, the problem is that most scholarship is advocacy-driven. Which makes the differences between apologetics and scholarship claiming to be neutral, de minimus at best.

I’m sure David knows about this incident, but a good illustration of his point is the Babel-Bibel controversy in the German-speaking world of the turn of the 20th century. This was the apologetic war par excellence. The preeminent Assyriologist Friedrich Delitszch (son of the biblical translator) delivered a series of lectures on the Mesopotamian influence on the Bible. Delitzsch’s formulations were extreme, and the upshot was essentially that the religion of the Bible (and Western Civilization) was drawn from that of Mesopotamia. Not only did this alarm Christian scholars, but the Jewish public was enraged as well. I’m simplifying a bit here, but the Bible was the unifying factor for German Jews of all stripes and persuasions, and it granted them their moral legitimacy in the eyes of the non-Jewish world, especially with scientific Antisemitism on the rise. The Jewish public viewed Delitzsch’s lecture as an attack on the very foundation of their existence, an attack calculated to rob them of their place in the world as torch-bearers of an enlightened, moral, monotheistic faith. Newspapers, public meetings, and even elementary schools heaped ridicule upon Delitzsch, and a host of educated rabbis and scholars marshalled every defence possible against the Assyriologist’s claims. They turned to the tools of modern archaeology and philology in an attempt to peserve the special status of the Bible as an original revelation from God standing in marked contrast to the rest of the pagan world. The entire episode is well worth exploring as it shaped much of the modern response to biblical scholarship. Shavit and Eran include a condensation of their Hebrew work on the controversy in their book, “The Hebrew Bible Reborn: From Holy Scripture to the Book of Books: A History of Biblical Culture and the Battles Over the Bible in Modern Judaism.” http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Hebrew_Bible_Reborn.html?id=lotp-Coz5_YC

David, I’ve read enough history that I’ve long given up the fiction that most of it is unbiased and free of advocacy. Furthermore, some of the key historical source works for broad swaths of human history were pieces of pretty blatant advocacy. I think you are simply narrowing the definition of the word “scholarship” too much. I don’t see a lot of use in restricting it the way you do. In fact the restriction itself seems more a work of fancy than something you’d actually encounter.

I’m reminded of a dialogue in a TV series between a newspaper editor and his assistant discussing the nature of the work they do. The exchange seems apt here:

Gustoff: Carol – from the time we are but children, we see rainbows as beautiful things, without a doubt in our heads upon sight, they are harmonious to our spirit, I’ve always wondered why that was… Of course people who do not understand science or the refraction of light might see this anomaly in the sky as a harbinger of a natural disaster, thinking that something unwelcome might be coming down from that rainbow…Perhaps vegetation might be ablaze at the foot of the rainbow bringing destruction. At any rate, we will still see these seven colored pieces of information with a sense of fairy tale magic to them. Haven’t you ever thought about that Carol?

Carol: Well no. And even if I did think about it I couldn’t tell. And besides, it’s not even part of our job to think about things. We report to others the outcomes of things that happen.

Gustoff: It’s true that our job is to convey truth to others. But we can never stop thinking. Especially not in those moments when we are obtaining information. Thinking clearly is paramount at those times. In fact Carol, to stop at simply determining whether information is true or false is reckless and abdicates the responsibility of those who deliver information to others.

Carol: OK… but what is there to think about? You can think about something all day, but it doesn’t change whether it is true or not.

Gustoff: No, it does change…
What we report is neither unaffected information nor perceived information. It’s the precursor to a conclusion.

Anyway… scholarship seems to me the same thing. It means nothing and serves no purpose unless it is made to advocate toward something.

Allen, you won’t be disappointed. Apart from giving an accurate portrayal of Brother Clark’s service in the Church, Quinn’s book offers an intriguing account of a transformative period in the history of the Church. It was funny to read that when Reuben and his wife left Utah to start a career in Washington and New York, most of their friends thought they were crazy, that it was insane to venture into the “lone and dreary” world and abandon the security of the Wasatch mountains. Through his example and leadership, it is not an overstatement to say that Brother Clark dragged the Church, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the 20th Century (along with David O. McKay).

One final thought: I had to chuckle when I read the diatribe that Greg Smith directed at Quinn’s book. When I read it, there were times when I thought that Quinn was a bit too soft on Brother Clark, that he was trying too hard to please his patrons. Brother Smith and I obviously have different world views.

Casey and David: I believe that your idealized view of “scholarship” is just that — one that is just unrealistic and pragmatically not different from apologetics in practice.

Casey presents “scholarship” (scare quotes and all) as if it were merely sifting through random evidence in a vacuum for self-interpreting truths waiting to be discovered and apologetics is some monolithic and pre-determined activity with no creativity or variance at all. Such caricatures are so far from what actually occurs that it is difficult to take such abstractions seriously.

The notion that apologetics “begins from a single presupposition” is nonsense. Apologetics is merely a form of scholarship that uses evidence to defend a position that the scholar believes is defensible based on the arguments and evidence adduced. However, the position could be in great flux and dependent on evidence and argument or– otherwise the very activity of presenting arguments and evidence would be futile in the first place. In other words, scholarship has been elevated in ways that no human ever achieves and apologetics has been debased in ways that no one doing apologetics would or should accept.

David, you have created a narrative that privileges biblical studies over apologia, but a great deal of biblical studies is defending a position previously staked out and is merely a form of secular apologetics. Yes, in researching a dissertation or doing any form of research one assesses, weighs and changes what one previously assumed or thought based on less-than-complete evidence. But lets admit it; the evidence is always incomplete. Apologetics is merely a form of scholarships that believes a particular view is defensible and seeks to show it. It can also be a research project that discovery all kinds of news views on one’s beliefs — and that is hardly a static endeavor.

However, faith is a different issues. That is why basing faith on evidence (alone) is a bad idea. Faith must commit before all of the evidence is in (because it is never all in). It is like waiting for all of the evidence about the kind of person one’s future wife is and will turn out to be — so one never marries because commitment is foolish based on such scant evidence.

And Casey, if you think apologetics is written in stone, you are badly informed about what apologetics is and the work it has done. Apologetics has been evolving in light of the evidence for the last 100 years, nay – the last 2000 years.

There is not a set-in-stone foregone conclusion.

David: Did you really write #33? I mean, you admit that you are both a scholar and an apologist — and you are a scholar when doing either one.

You say -”“critically,” meaning independent from any contemporary theological perspective or agenda.” Good luck on that one. If you approach “scholarship” apart from who and what you are, I trust that you will lose yourself in the act. Even the assertions you are making about scholarship are not independent of current views of theology and agenda of the academy.

I am in philosophy, and a good deal of recent philosophy (as I know you are aware) is precisely about how misinformed and in-authentic the entire quest is to divorce ourselves from our presuppositions and biases. If it is impossible to do, why pretend that you engage in a superior discipline because it tries to the do what cannot be done?

Properly done – all apologetics is scholarship. However, not all scholarship is apologetics. Though most of it comes pretty darn close.

The idea that one form of scholarship practices critical thinking while other labled forms of scholarship do not is a form of conceit on its face.

I guess my confusion about your original post is that you are criticizing Smith for writing in the mode of an apologist rather than a scholar, about an activity that is focused specifically on the views of people who are frank advocates for various views of the LDS Church and its distinct beliefs. Some of the people Dehlin speaks with are unabashed apologists for the Church, while others are unabashed advocates of views that criticize the Church and many of its basic teachings. An academic article about Dehlin’s project that is totally neutral on the underlyiong truth claims of the Church may be possible, but is not the only legitimate way of commenting on that project, which involves subjectivity per se.