Recently FireTag, who is a Believing member of the Community of Christ, wrote this article on the Community of Christ’s recent choice to join the NCC (National Council of the Churches of Christ) expressing at least some level of concern over their move away from their Joseph Smith Jr. and restorationist roots. Interestingly John Hamer has responded to the post defending the CoC’s move.

The RLDS made a move to try to simultaneously embrace both Conservative and Liberal view points within their Church and here we have two great representatives of both of those view points. This gives us a unique chance to see two perspectives on the same issue — both from within the CoC — and thereby tease out truth, myth, and apologetics. Based on this further information, I am going to reassess Hamer’s original “myths” in light of a fuller knowledge.

The RLDS church only gave women the priesthood because they ran out of male Smiths to lead the church. Status: Myth

This one seems pretty much true to me for pretty much the reasons that John states in his original article. I am familiar enough with the RLDS to know that they did not always pass the presidency on from father to son, contrary to LDS myths. There was one exception where it was passed from brother to brother. The rest were from father to son. But that does mean there was strong precedent that it didn’t have to be father to son, so I believe this one is pretty much pure myth.

The Community of Christ scrapped the Book of Mormon in order to join the World Council of Churches (WCC). Status: Partially True

This claim in particular is interesting because we are seeing an essential replay of it as the CoC joins the NCC. Here is FireTag’s point of view:

Then I read the NCC’s letter explaining their basis for accepting the membership application from the Community of Christ — and now I’m less certain about that interpretation. It seems we made some very important additional theological concessions, actively or by omission, in order to be accepted. The NCC report, published here, makes clear that the NCC is letting the CofChrist join because they believe the CofChrist is sufficiently far from its historical Restoration roots.

Another area of concern to the NCC was the Book of Mormon. Here, their opinion may be disturbingly factual:

“But it is not, in any sense, equivalent to the Bible in the life of their communion. Subscription to its teaching is not required for membership or ordination. While the Book of Mormon is sometimes used for worship, there are parts of the COC that seldom refer to it.”

Here is John Hamer’s point of view:

The Book of Mormon has not been decanonized, and the D&C not only remains canon, new sections of canon continue to be added. The Community of Christ is governed by World Conference Resolutions, not the NCC’s report. What’s happened here is that a group of liberal Christians has recognized that Community of Christ is Christian without requiring the Community of Christ to give up its Restoration scripture. In other words, it’s the mainline Christians who blinked or compromised. That’s the news here that’s remarkable.

You’ll have to read everything both of them wrote to understand their full point of view, but this should give you a taste for the differences. It would appear that the real truth is that the Book of Mormon and D&C are both officially “downgraded” so to speak (having been apparently “unofficially downgraded” prior to this point). So whereas John sees this downgrade as essentially still scripture (and thus the concession is on the part of the NCC) FireTag sees the downgrade as primarily the CoC’s concession.

I should probably note here that some of our Protestant neighbors have been very clear in the past that they have little or no concern with The Book of Mormon so long as we choose to not view it as ‘scripture’ as they understand the term. Consider, for example, Craig Blomberg’s point of view from back in 1997.

Evangelicals would be even more grateful if [Robin’s point of view] led to more modest claims for Joseph’s writings, which did not commend them as of equal or greater authority than the Old and New Testaments. then we might think of them as constituting for the LDS what Luther’s collected works do for Lutherans or what Calvin’s Institutions do for Presbyterian and Reformed thought – important, foundational theological works that nevertheless do not supplant the unique role of the Old and New Testament Scriptures. The Reorganized LDS Church has already adopted this position… (From How Wide the Divide?, p. 54)

It is interesting to note here that Blomberg’s assertion predates this move of the CoC joining the NCC and thus has reference to past changes, including joining the WCC. So it would appear that this ‘myth’ had and has some truth to it and depends largely on how you personally define the word ‘scripture.’

I should also note here that the status of Restorationist scripture in the RLDS prior to becoming the CoC did seem to differ by congregation. Back in the 90s I had already met RLDS members that claimed they did not ever use The Book of Mormon in worship services at all. I do not think this was the ‘norm’ however.

The RLDS church changed its name because it wants to become another Protestant church. Status: Strawman

Based on these articles, I see no reason to believe that the RLDS changed their name because they wanted to become another Protestant Church. However, it is clear that FireTag believes the recent NCC move does essentially move the CoC strongly towards being more of a Protestant Church, at least in some measure.

This is a little like Joshua telling the children of Israel that the purpose of Moses leading their generation into the wilderness was so they’d realize Egypt wasn’t that bad and they were supposed to turn around. The mental gears freeze up.

By comparison, John Hamer sees it like this:

My personal view is that Brigham Young was a usurper. I also don’t think he was a good person. But my personal beliefs aside, when I look at the history in an institutional sense, it must be conceded that one of the things Brigham “usurped” was the bulk of the existing corporate structure of the church that JSJr founded in 1830. That institutional historical analysis has zero bearing on the question of divine mandate, since traditional Restoration theology includes the idea that institutions can fall into Apostasy, i.e., the primary institutional heir of the early Christian church is the Catholic Church, but this hasn’t made Mormons accept the Catholic Church as “the true church.”

The view that the Reorganization was the only true continuation of the original church was also a theological claim, held by early members of the Reorganization. Community of Christ abandoned this claim decades ago when it came to understand that the very act of making the claim to be “the one and only true church,” is a sign that you aren’t it (i.e., because there isn’t just one).

Theologically early Mormons believed that they were the Restoration of the New Testament church in every sense, including recovering all the actual historical practices and institutional authority. This was a faith position that was zealously believed, but which cannot be shown to be possible in an actual historical sense. This is no shame on them; people regularly have these notions — the people of the Renaissance actually believed they had given birth anew to the Classical era. Of course they hadn’t. They created something new, because you can never go home again. Likewise the 1830 organization was something new. And the 1860 reorganization, although possessed of vast continuity of membership, belief, and practice with the 1830 organization, was (in fact) a new foundation in an institutional historical sense.

So while the change of name to Community of Christ may not have had anything to do with a change to become more Protestant, it seems very clear that – whether you see it as good or bad – the CoC has moved to become more liberal Protestant.

The LDS church should not end priesthood discrimination on gender basis (or adopt any other progressive ideal); look at what happened to the RLDS church. Status: Myth Based on Truth

John Hamer came down strongest on this myth:

Whereas the other myths are relatively harmless, I find this one to be pernicious. The problem with this comparison is that it assumes that at some point in the 1970s, the LDS and the RLDS church were in the same place and their different paths almost function like a controlled science experiment. The reality is that the organizations aren’t comparable and never were.

Does the Community of Christ’s experience (for good or ill) presage the results the LDS church can expect to reap when women are eventually ordained and welcomed into the leadership? In the words of the RLDS First Presidency, the true answer is: “ @#!*% , no!”

I admit, I largely agree with John’s assessment in the original post that you can’t compare apples and oranges here. The RLDS and the LDS do not share much institutional history at all. So saying “well, the RLDS gave women the priesthood and they dwindled to obscurity, thus if the LDS Church gives women the priesthood they will too” is a logical non-starter for me because it’s too specific and assumes more shared history than ever actually existed.

On the other hand, it did not surprise me when FireTag said the following:

The second largest demographic bloc in the church consists of relatively aged, relatively conservative members still very committed to the uniqueness of the Restoration and uncomfortable with any suggestion that their sacrifices would have been just as meaningful in another denomination.

Consequently, following the 2007 Conference, the First Presidency was left with an “action item” to address the issue of the “conditions of membership”, and has been directing a formal discernment process intended to lead to the January 17 guidance to the church. This issue is considered sufficiently divisive that the leading quorums had clearly indicated a desire not to deal with other divisive matters until the church has proven it can work through the issue. The schism that resulted in the church in the 1980’s over extension of priesthood to women has clearly instilled caution in the church leadership.

So while I do not find anything strictly untrue about Hamer’s original assessment, I do find it to be a case of ‘spinning.’ The truth is that the RLDS did give women the priesthood and that they directly perceive that move as the source of following schism — a fact Hamer never mentioned in his original article.

However, I mostly agree with John. I do not believe the LDS Church announcing a revelation that women are now to receive the priesthood would have any where near the negative effect it did on the RLDS Church, largely because the LDS Church has a stronger history of accepting revelations through their “magisterium.” [1] However, I do think there is a lesson to the LDS Church from the RLDS Churches failures and I think it might hit closer to this mark that John is admitting to.

I suspect the real lesson of the RLDS for us LDS is not that we should or should not give women the priesthood, nor even we should or shouldn’t <fill in the blank here with progressive ideal.> The real lesson of the RLDS Church for the LDS Church is that trying to simultaneously embrace everyone is not (currently anyhow) a road to long term religious vitality. While I am not prepared to say that religiously liberal beliefs are always a death wish (though often this is the case), there really is no doubt that as of yet no on has ever made a vital and growing religion out of this approach.

Some, however, have been more successful than others. The Church of England has capitalized on their more secular and cultural roots to embrace both religiously conservative and liberal points of view. But they have the added advantage of being a state religion supported by taxes. And I’m still not sure I’d call them a “success” either. In a similar fashion, Liberal Jewish religions have strong ethnic and cultural roots to pull upon.

Likewise, I suspect that three generations from now, there will still be a Believing Mormon community and a “Menu Mormon” community. Yet, I do not think these comparison are all fair. For example, I suspect a huge percent of the future Believing Mormon community will be decedents of Believing Mormons today. By comparison, I suspect that no matter how many generations you flash forward in time that the Menu Mormon community will always still be overwhelmingly first generation. The Menu Mormon community is, and probably always will be, a “Rejectionist Community” in that they theologically share primarily a common rejection of other people’s beliefs. If the LDS Church disappeared tomorrow, the Menu Mormon community would as well.

We should certainly have a strong desire to integrate those who “practice but do not believe” as far as possible into the LDS Church, but not at the expense of the religion itself. To me, this is the real lesson of the RLDS to the LDS. A religion (well, particularly Christian religions) exists to allow those that share a set of beliefs to strengthen each other’s beliefs. When the RLDS (and any liberal Christian sect) made a move towards trying to embrace ‘both sides’ they did so at the risk of no longer being a religion. Yet, I do not blame Religiously Rejectionist communities for wanting to integrate with their more conservative counterparts, for they lack a life of their own. I have not yet even worked out my personal answer to this very real dilemma, but I’m virtually certain the RLDSs approach is at least somewhat causally linked to their current situation.

Comment over at Millennial Star.

Notes

[1] I should note here that I do not buy the myth that all the LDS Church needs to do to get their members to change beliefs is to “have a revelation.” The LDS Church, belief in the authority of its own magisterium aside, is still a group of humans with all that that implies. This means that at best the LDS Church can only change conservatively or they risk undermining the logical coherency of their own truth claims and thereby no longer having a set of shared beliefs. (i.e. become a ‘non-religion.’)

One interesting point he makes is similar to one of my past posts: the shock that the big bang started in a low entropy state despite no known mechanism to explain it. And, as with my last quote on this subject, the first thing he looks to is some sort of multiverse whereby the nearly impossible can take place on it’s own.

But here is an interesting quote:

The big bang is [in a multi-verse model] not the beginning. The big bang [might be] explained by something pre-existing to that [in a bigger multi-verse], and that is the only hope I think we have of dynamically coming up with a reason why our observable universe had a low entropy in early times.

Life as We Knew It tells the horrifying story of a teenaged girl that is watching the world come to an end because an asteroid hits the moon and moved it out of orbit. This in turn leads to massive natural upheaval that culminates in a perpetual winter.

The scene I’m referring to is the one where the radios, that have been dead up to this point, finally start to work again. “The President” (who is never named anywhere in the book) goes on the radio and claims that – despite the death of nearly everyone in the United States — things aren’t so bad and they’ll get better soon.

It’s an overt out of character and out of setting jab at President George W. Bush.

This otherwise somber book that became so popular largely because of how realistically it treats the end of the world, actually took a moment to insert a comic jab at George W. Bush. We all get a quick laugh and then the book goes back to being realistic again.

Unfortunately, this scene will do a lot more damage to the timelessness of this book then it will do to President Bush’s it-can’t-get-worse reputation.

Imagine generations from now, children and adults read Pfeffer’s book and come to this scene. What are they going to think of it? They will not have known President Bush any more than we know President Truman and maybe even a great deal less.

Worse yet, Bush may not have such a negative reputation by then. While this seems unlikely to us now, bear in mind that Truman was even less popular than Bush. Bush may, for all we know, be thought of as a hero that saved the Middle East by then. While this is improbable, it’s not impossible; it will all depend on what actually happens in the Middle East in the future and that book isn’t written yet. So future readers will have no idea what to make of the scene. They will lack the context required to realize it’s just a typical-of-our-times slam on President Bush.

Instead they’ll say “What the heck!? That was so unrealistic! No President of the United States could ever been that stupid!” And indeed, Bush never did anything even remotely this stupid in real life.

Instead, future readers will think Pfeffer was making an general anti-establishment anti-politician jab and not a very well done one at that. Only historians will know that she was stepping out of character and setting for a moment to do the popular thing and bash Bush.

So this Freakonomics podcast episode about how he wasn’t even an active Church goer, but covered that fact up, is a little disappointing. Ah well, you know what you’re getting when you vote for any politician I suppose.

One thing I’ve found is that I seem to be very sensitive to plot holes. I’m going to define “plot holes” as things in a story that don’t make sense within the logic of the story. Harry Potter flying on a broom is not a plot hole. A plot hole would be Harry Potter failing to remember a spell he used two books ago that would have gotten him out of his current jam. (Not that I know of any such incident.)

I kept hearing about how great the new Battlestar Galactica is. And I’ll admit it’s interesting viewing. I’m a little bit into season two now.

But early into season one, quite early actually, I got that sickening feeling in my stomach that the writers were building up mysteries that they didn’t know the answer to either. This is a common problem in these new style complex shows like Lost. The writers make up more and more “interesting things” but fail to connect them together into a rational logical whole.

When the writers do this, it really bugs me and causes me to lose my interest in the show. (I stopped watching Lost at the end of season two for exactly that reason.)

Now my experience is that I’m willing to suspend my disbelief over plot holes to some reasonable degree. If a story or show is really good for other reasons, I’m willing to ignore a few small plot holes or — better yet — make up reasons for why they aren’t really plot holes after all.

But past a certain point, nothing can save my interest in a show.

I have been told I’m weird in that I judge my enjoyment by whether or not a story is logically coherent. But the truth is that I don’t seem to be alone. Many people stopped watching Lost by the end of season two and only started again once the writers decided to come up with a logical ending and start writing towards it. People can intuitively tell if a story makes sense or not.

I don’t think most people say “oh, I hated that show because it had plot holes.” But I do think shows with plot holes will get labeled “silly” or “that’s just weird” and the over all enjoyment is diminished.

I’m convinced that the reason The Matrix died after episode two was because the ending of episode two (the part with The Architect) was in fact a massive plot hole — a full on contradiction — and that it was impossible for the story to recover after that.

Which brings me back to Battlestar Galactica. I can’t make heads or tails of why the Cylons do what they do. It seems contradictory to me and I just can’t see how it’s ever going to turn out to be logically coherent.

Is it really possible to reconcile all of the following points that have been raised so far by the end of season one?

• Number Six is in Baltar’s mind and manipulates him to the Cylon’s ends.
• Yet these ends have included outing the existence of more than one hidden Cylon that acted shocked that they got caught.
• Come to think of it, if the Cylon’s went to all the trouble of having some chip installed in Baltar’s mind so that Number Six can talk to him, why did they not provide a way for him to get off of Caprica in the first place? (It only happened because a selfless solider gave up his place on a ship that accidently crashed.)
• And if they do have a chip in his mind? Why bother with the whole “Number Six in your dreams” thing and why not instead put a tracker / locator on the chip so that they can follow the fleet and destroy them all?
• If they reason to the last question is “they Cylons don’t want to destroy them” then why did they Cylons in the first episode say they did when there were no humans around to trick?
• If they don’t want to destroy the humans, then why do they keep almost doing so?
• Later Number Six managed to material, accuse Baltar of being in league with the Cylons (he is, sort of) and present evidence.
• Just as Baltar finally realizes he has to accept the Cylon God (which is strangely a monotheistic God while the humans are polytheistic) evidence is — within seconds mind you — found that the evidence is a fake. What would have happened if Baltar had held out for 10 more seconds?
• Of course Number Six can’t be found after that because it would have spoiled the plot. Do I really believe the writers know what happened to her? Or was she just conveniently translated up to writer’s heaven for the sake of the plot?
• The Cylons intentionally kept one human on Caprica alive to get him to have a child with a Cylon girl.
• Yet their plan seems to have been that that Cylon would fall in love with him and start to work against their plans. Can you plan to have your plan go wrong? 
• A replicant of that Cylon is also on the Galactica and thinks she is human, though she is worried she’s a Cylon.
• She is ordered to destroy a Cylon battlestation, which she does. It was guarding Kobol and we needed to go to Kobol to advance the plot.
• In doing so, she discovers more replicas of herself, proving she’s a Cylon.
• The replicas don’t try to hide this fact from her, even though she’s suppose to not know as part of the plan. Can a plan include having itself go wrong?
• On the other hand, maybe they wanted to her to find out she was a Cylon. But if that is the case, how did they know Commander Adama was gong to send her and not someone else? Can they mind control him? If so, why all the bother? Just have him blow up the fleet.
• She then blows up the station (killing the other hers supposedly though this is ambiguous) and then flys back to the Galactica and promptly tries to kill the Commander.
• Now mind you, she’s had about a billion opportunities before this point. Why now? The only obvious answer seems to be that now that she knew she was a Cylon, it was too late plotwise to have her Cylon programming come out so the writers had to have her do it at that moment.
• But if this was her real purpose for existence, it sure would have made a lot more sense to have done it during the first episode.
• The Cylon station was guarding Kobol. That was why it had to be destroyed.
• The number Six in Baltar’s head made it clear she wanted him to find Kobol and that was part of the Cylon plan. She had told him to be on the ship going to Kobol. (Hinting that the Galactica would be destroyed, so he needed to be elsewhere.)
• But if the Cylons wanted him to go to Kobol, why did the Cylon’s shoot his ship down? Are they so all-powerful that they happened to know that they could shoot down his ship and crash him onto Kobol without killing him? How did they know this? And how did they plan for their station getting destroyed just after he successfully crashed landed? What would have happened if the Commander had sent the Cylon girl to do this first?
• If the reason they didn’t blow up the station first is that they didn’t know, why did they conveniently forget to scout the area first when they always do that normally?
• The Cylons then start hunting the humans on Kobol, trying to kill them. How does this square with Number Six wanting Baltar to find Kobol and discover what is there? (Number Six lamely says, “what happens on Kobol is out of my control.” Huh? Some plan!)
• And if that was part of the Cylon plan, why did they have a Cylon ship guarding it in the first place? Why not, oh I don’t know, just remove the Cylon ship from guarding Kobol and let the humans think they found it unguarded? The only answer seems to be that it was more dramatic this way.
• And why not have the Cylon that thinks she is human not destroy the Cylon ship? Instead have her just claim she did and then have the Cylon ship move to somewhere else? She is, after all, programmed well enough to kill her own commander against her will! Why not just have her kill her co-pilot, claim the Cylons got her, and then lie? Do the Cylon’s not care about their own ship and all the Cylon’s on it?
• A number six tries to stop Star Buck from getting the arrow that allows them to find earth. She almost kills her and only a last minute burst from Star Buck saves her life through shear luck. But isn’t that part of their plan to let them find this information? (It’s not clear yet if it is or isn’t. But why else risk letting them come to Kobol at all?) Did they plan on Star Buck barely winning the fight by shear luck?

Well, you get the point. There doesn’t seem to be any way possible to explain it all. If there is, I’m going to be very impressed. But most likely the writers are just making things up as they go along and pasting it all together one piece at a time. And I’m losing my interest in the series faster and faster. They’ll probably have to all just wake up from a dream at the end. (I’ve heard rumors that the ending was lame, so I’m already bracing.)

Instead, the writers seem to be aiming at short term emotional impact. It’s cool to have Star Buck have to fight Number Six, so she will have to, even if it doesn’t fit into the plot logically. It’s cool to have the Cylon girl that thinks she is human discover she isn’t, so she’ll be selected for the mission and won’t be killed against all odds. It’s cool to have Adama shot at that moment, so previous better moments will be ignored. Etc. Emotion over logical coherence, if you will.

Note: Please don’t post any spoilers here until I’ve decided for certain I’m not going to finish the series. I still want to give it a chance.

But communist (or not so communist) dictatorships just aren’t capable of good financial management. That’s why this article may well turn out to be the real truth.

I have several bets going with people that within 20 years (probably sooner), the current Régime in China will be gone either through violent overthrow or by being forced by the rising middle class to democratize. Everyone thinks I’m nuts. We’ll see.

Is that a laudable goal, to try to comprehend God? Is God even comprehensible? Please note, I do not mean to ask if God is comprehensible to current mortal man. No, I am asking if God is comprehensible at all.

What does it mean to comprehend something? Try to define that for yourself for a moment to get a feel for the difficulty in doing so.

I would like to propose a fairly simple definition for your consideration. I propose that “to comprehend” something is merely the ability to describe it in terms of the laws the govern it — to algorithmically compress it, if you will. If we comprehend how the world goes around the sun, this surely must mean we understand the laws of physics that cause it to do so. Therefore comprehensibility is equivalent to explanation and description.

Do Joseph Smith’s own writings count as counter evidence if he explicitly tells us what he means?

If we take Joseph Smiths’ revelations as historical documents and as “his” writings, then I’d have to say D&C 93 completely undermines the Swedenborgian interpretation of Mosiah 15:1-5 in favor of a Representational Modalism / Divine Investiture interpretation instead.