Out of the best books

The readings for Lesson 23 in the D&C/Church history curriculum illustrate a point I made a few weeks ago—that Joseph Smith had an intellectual temperament: he wanted to expand his learning. At the same time, he was a Jacksonian anti-elitist; and in contemporary Mormonism that Jacksonian impulse, intensified by a fundamentalist-type reaction against modernism, has made "intellectual" a term of opprobium or at least suspicion in LDS circles. Hence this lesson has to include the verses about "being learned is good if you hearken to the counsels of God," and "ever learning, but never coming to a knowledge of the truth." Sentiments worthy of the Scopes monkey trial or Jehovah's Witnesses.

A few years ago, when I was teaching at the University of Utah, I hung in my carrel a framed placard bearing simply the words, "Seek learning by study." The words were from D&C 88:118, of course, though I didn't identify them as such. They spoke to me at a time in my life when I was laying claim to academia not just as a career but as a spiritual vocation. God enjoins human beings to seek learning by study, and as someone teaching in academia, I was helping people do that. I deliberately separated the injunction to seek learning by study from the following line "and also by faith," because during my time at BYU during the academic freedom controversy, I got tired of hearing that line quoted as if it said "but" instead of "and"—as if the point of the verse was to emphasize seeking learning by faith over seeking learning by study, or at least to caution that seeking learning by study is dangerous if it isn't held in check by faith. That's an anti-intellectual, anti-modernist reading of the verse, which I would argue is actually the opposite of where the verse, in context, is laying the accent: the point of the verse is to affirm the value of learning by study over against a notion that all you need is faith.

Anyway, for my post today, I feel moved to offer a list of what I think are some of "the best books" from which I've gained "words of wisdom" over the years, as 88:118 says.

The novels of Chaim Potok. He was drawn to write about characters who are passionately in love with their religious tradition but who are also in love with something that their coreligionists see as alien to the tradition. Potok's novels modelled for me an orientation toward Mormon tradition other than the cool detachment I might have followed instead, probably leading ultimately to separation. Reading his novels literally makes me thank God for sending art like this into the world.

Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I'm a little embarrassed to admit the attraction because it's an adolescent infatuation. But while I was at BYU, Nietzsche gave me a voice for saying "No!" to the pressure to conform and to keep my thinking within "safe" limits. He taught me that believing in eternal progress means accepting that I will eventually have to break with things I now think are true.

Lapine and Sondheim's Into the Woods. Again, a little embarrasing to say. But that musical introduced me to the possibilities of a postmodern morality—a morality based on the paradox that you're on your own in figuring out what's right and wrong, but at the same time you're never on your own because you're always embedded in networks of relationships. In philosophical terms, Into the Woods showed me it was possible to be an antifoundationalist without falling into a bottomless pit of nihilism. That was a realization that ran directly contrary to the common wisdom about postmodernism at BYU, but it was consistent with the testimony I gained during my mission.

Stanley Fish's There's No Such Thing as Free Speech and It's a Good Thing Too. More postmodernism. Where did I buy this book? BYU? The University of Utah? Probably the U. At a time when I was becoming self-consciously postmodern, and self-consciously in retreat from Mormonism, Fish taught me that in a certain sense, postmodernism's rejection of the kind of absolute truth I'd been raised on as a Mormon actually didn't make any practical difference at all. You still have commitments, and you still have to go about trying to make arguments in support of those commitments that will, hopefully, persuade others. That's been a key realization for me professionally and personally.

There are other authors I should mention, at least briefly. Isaac Bachevis Singer and Umberto Eco—both of whom I value, again, because of how they introduced me to postmodern intellectual moves ("antifoundationalist," at least, in Singer's case). Dante's Divine Comedy, which I fell in love with in the year or two before my mission, maybe because it gave me a symbolic world other than that of Mormonism in which I could dare to think through subversive questions I wasn't quite ready yet to confront within Mormonism. Ah, of course, I have to mention John Dominic Crossan and the Jesus Seminar. They taught me ways of reading scripture that were revisionist but not utterly dismissive.

Oh, and how could I forget! I have to mention the Jerusalem Bible I bought early in my mission from the little bookstore across the street from our apartment in La Romana. The commentary in that Bible showed me it was possible to incorporate historical scriptural criticism into a commitment to the text as the word of God. I resisted the attraction for a while, but finally I let myself follow my heart, and it's been a good relationship. That Bible was also my first introduction to Catholic social teaching, which became my model for identifying the social justice strains in Mormon scripture.

This is like a "thank you" speech at an awards show: eventually you have to stop, but you know you're forgetting someone you'll feel bad later for not having mentioned. Let's pray.

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God of wisdom, Spirt of truth—

I give thanks for the books through which you have taught me wisdom over the years.
I give thanks for the joy I find in seeking learning by study.
I give thanks for the ways your Spirit has enlightened my mind and enlarged my soul.
I give thanks for the gifts and inspiration you have given to scholars, novelists, and other writers.
I give thanks for the seemingly chance encounters that have brought certain books into my life at moments when I was open to being influenced by them.

Help me give my students intellectual experiences that will open their minds and horizons as mine have been opened—or more precisely, in whatever way you know will be helpful for them.
Help me write a dissertation that will make a meaningful contribution to scholarship.
Guide my mother to books and other writings that will speak to her now in her need.

In Christ's name, amen.