D&C 162

(About this reflection)

Another Grant McMurray revelation—the last in the canon.

I see an unresolved tension at work in this revelation. That statement might not surprise McMurray, who says in the introduction that "even as I present [these words] to the church, I do so sensing that there is more to be said." He invites the church "to join in the task of discerning God's will for us. I am not yet sure what form that will take . . ." So in that spirit, let me offer my own sense of what more there is to say by way of advancing the project to which this revelation calls the "people of the Restoration" (162:1a).

The basic tension I see in this text is that it calls the Saints to pay closer attention to their past, but the text itself doesn't actually engage closely with that past and therefore isn't very helpful as a model for what it seems to be calling the Saints to undertake. The text as it's presented to the church is still overly preoccupied with breaking away from the old forms and the old language—even as it urges the Saints to be cautious of that very impulse.

Ick. That sounds so academic. But I'm trying to articulate something that I think is vitally and practically important for how Latter Day Saints live out the tradition God has given us.

Here's where the text urges the Saints to listen more closely to tradition, or to the past:

Listen carefully to your own journey as a people, for it is a sacred journey and it has taught you many things you must know for the journey to come. Listen to its teachings and discover anew its principles. (162:2a-b)

You have already been told to look to the sacraments to enrich the spiritual life of the body. . . . Be respectful of tradition and sensitive to one another . . . . (162:2d)

You are a good and faithful people, but sometimes you fail to see the power that is resident in your own story and fellowship. Listen carefully, listen attentively, and sense the Spirit among you. (162:8a)

In between that, though—and here's where you see the tension—the text keeps pulliing in the opposite direction, insisting on the value of novelty:

Do not yearn for times that are past . . . [D]iscern the divine will for your own time and the places where you serve. You live in a world with new challenges, and that world will require new forms of ministry. (162:2b-c)

You have already been told to look to the sacraments to enrich the spiritual life of the body. It is not the form of the sacrament that dispenses grace but it is the divine presence that gives life. Be respectful of tradition and sensitive to one another, but do not be unduly bound by interpretations and procedures that no longer fit the needs of a worldwide church. (162:2d)

The spirit of the Restoration is not locked into one moment of time, but is instead the call to every generation to witness to essential truths in its own language and form. Let the Spirit breathe. (162:2e)

The richness of cultures, the poetry of language, and the breadth of human experience permit the gospel to be seen with new eyes and grasped with freshness of spirit. (162:4a)

To which I say, Amen—with reservations. Do new times require new forms of ministry? Of course. Should the Saints not be unduly invested in the precise forms of their sacraments? I agree. Should we allow the gospel to be seen with new eyes? Emphatically! "Let the Spirit breathe"? Fantastically put!

But . . . I think this text makes an assertion that ends up giving too much force to the impulse for novelty. Look again at verse 2e: "The spirit of the Restoration is not locked in one moment of time . . ." Sure, yes. Important to say. ". . . [B]ut is instead the call to every generation to witness to essential truths in its own language and form." Well . . . no. The Restoration is more concrete than that. The Restoration is not a call to express essential truths in whatever language you find available in your time and place. First of all, the whole notion that truths exist independent of language and can be expressed in multiple languages is really problematic. It's a common metaphor for thinking about how language and truth work—I have a hunch I've probably used that metaphor at various times in this blog—but it's misleading. Anyway, even if we agree to run with that metaphor, the Restoration isn't just a call to invest truth in many languages. The Restoration is itself a particular language. It has a particular vocabulary, a particular grammar. The language can certainly change over time, as languages do: certain terms or symbols can become archaic or obsolete; new ones can be invented or imported from other languages; the "grammatical rules" can change to make formerly unorthodox expressions permissible. But there can come a point at which a language has changed so much that what you've really done is created a new language.

It looks to me like that's the direction D&C 162 is moving in, despite its concern that the Saints engage more closely with tradition. The text doesn't use much of the traditional language of the Latter Day Saints. There are references to "the peaceable kingdom," to "Zion," a reference to "the great and marvelous work." "The Spirit of truth." Jesus Christ is named a couple of times, though he's also referred to in more abstract terms as "the One"—"the One whose name you claim" (162:1b), "the One you follow" (162:6c). The primary symbol for God in this revelation, other than "the Spirit," is a Voice, "the Voice that speaks from beyond the farthest hills, from the infinite heavens above, and the vast seas below," "the Voice that echoes across the eons of time and yet speaks anew in this moment" (162:1a-b). There's discussion of the principles of "stewardship" and of "the inestimable worth of all person," which I assume is meant to be recognized as a paraphrase of "the worth of souls is great in the sight of God."

My point is: yes, you can find in this text certain traditional Latter Day Saint terms and concepts. But the dominant impression I get from the document is that of novelty—a new language for God, a distinctively modern idiom. There's nothing wrong with any of that per se. I'm not some conservative railing against liberal innovation. I certainly don't think McMurray should be trying to imitate King James English. And I think the images we're given of "the Voice" are very cool. Even so, I feel . . . impoverished. I love D&C 162; I feel the Spirit speaking to me through this text; there's highlighting all over my copy. But I find it odd and disappointing that a document which gently chastises the Saints for "fail[ing] to see the power that is resident in your own story" and urges them to "listen carefully to your own journey" doesn't attempt to speak more extensively in the traditional language of the Saints, the language of the canon. How can we listen to the tradition if its language isn't being spoken? Couldn't turns of phrase from elsewhere in the canon been more richly woven into this document, thus multiplying the visible connections between this revelation's teaching and the teachings of revelations past?

Milking my language metaphor for all its worth: D&C 162 reads to me less like it was written in the language of the Latter Day Saints than like it was written in a Latter Day Saint/liberal Protestant creole. Not that there's anything wrong with creoles, I hasten to add. But is that really where God wants us to go? The impression I'm getting from D&C 162 is that the Spirit wants to urge the Saints not to take that route, but the man through whom that revelation comes is not well-versed in the language of the tradition himself, because he's received his professional training at institutions where other languages are spoken. He himself isn't listening to the Latter Day Saint tradition and its distinctive scriptures as much as he's listening to the theological conversations of other communities and learning to speak their languages.

That's judgmental of me to say, of course. I'm going to let it stand because I'm prepared to be judged by the same standard. There are those in the LDS community who would fault me for exactly the same thing for which I'm faulting Grant McMurray and other Community of Christ liberals: too much love of novelty, too little respect for tradition. As McMurray says, it's a matter of trying to discern where God wants us to go.