The Dialogue I Love

I haven't read Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought very much in the last few years, since it got sort of artsy-fartsy for a while and didn't have a heckuva lot I was interested in.  With the ascension of Kristine Haglund to editorship, however, things are improving.  This was especially evident in the latest issue (Summer 2010).

Admittedly, part of my reason for this post is to plug my own article in the issue, titled "Joseph Smith in Hermeneutical Crisis".  In the article I explore Joseph Smith's ministry as a response to the multiplicity of biblical interpretations that arose in early America's democratic environment.  The traditional Protestant doctrine of "perspicuity" said that the Bible was supposed to be clear and self-interpreting.  The widespread popularity of Scottish Common Sense philosophy only reinforced this expectation.  Many people, including Joseph Smith's contemporary Alexander Campbell, believed that if the process of biblical interpretation could be freed from creeds and other constraints, it would lead to widespread agreement and the unification of Christianity.  Thus it was extremely unsettling for people to realize that in America's democratic environment, disagreement was at an all-time high.  Joseph Smith addressed this crisis by revising and reinterpreting the Bible so as to make it the clear and unobjectionable text that American Protestants expected it to be.

There's other great stuff in this issue, though, besides my own paper.  In particular, Heikki Räisänen's piece on the Joseph Smith translation made an excellent complement to mine.  Whereas I focused on how Smith's revision of the Bible was a response to his historical context, Räisänen looks at the precise ways in which the text was revised.  She does a very good job illustrating that Joseph's changes stood in the tradition of conservative evangelical interpretation of the Bible, particularly with respect to resolving contradictions in the text.

By the way, one thing that neither Heikki nor I researched in detail was how well-known to Joseph Smith's contemporaries were many of the contradictions he corrected in the Bible.  Were these discussed in atheist literature?  Bible commentaries?  Were they well-known enough to have been discussed in Smith's debate club as a young man?  Or were they little-known enough that we can assume Smith discovered them on his own?  This would be a great follow-up project for someone to tackle.

The issue contains other great papers as well, including Ben Park's piece "Early Mormon Theologies of Embodiment" and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's piece exploring the role of LDS women in second-wave feminism.  Ben does a very good job exploring the development of Mormon embodiment theology.  One highlight for me was when he placed it in the context of early nineteenth-century anti-Trinitarianism, which often emphasized God's embodiment as a counterpoint to philosophical theology.  Another highlight was Ben's explanation for why Joseph Smith taught that resurrected bodies contain no blood: namely, that blood was viewed as a "corrupting" influence.  It had never occurred to me before that the Old Testament's revulsion against blood played a role in this particular theological innovation.  (Joseph Smith's hermeneutical lens was peculiarly Old Testament-colored, in a very New Testament-heavy age.)  Ulrich's piece, meanwhile, demonstrates that some LDS women were at the cutting edge of the feminist movement of the 1970's and 80's, keeping pace with the leading lights of feminist theology in such institutions as Harvard Divinity School.

If you find the time to read past the articles section, you will also find a fascinating interview with Mary and Patricia Rorty, widow and daughter of the late philosopher Richard Rorty.  I had no idea that Rorty had married a Mormon, so I read with some interest her reminiscences of his mixed feelings about the Church, and the way they peacefully coexisted in their mixed marriage.  Say what you will about Mormons, but Mary is clearly a very intelligent, perceptive, and progressive woman, just like her late husband.