Mystery - with Greg Prince

How much do we really know? And how much should we claim to know?

Ian, Jim, and historian Greg Prince explore the role of mystery in faith. Beginning with a fascinating story about President David O. McKay’s reluctance to “paint Christ,” the conversation unfolds into a wide-ranging discussion about doctrine, certainty, humility, science, temple symbolism, and the danger of claiming too many answers.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out. My name is Jim Bennett, and I am here with the inimitable Ian Wilkes. Ian, how are you, sir? I'm doing very fine today, sir. How are you? I'm doing great, and I am thrilled that Reg Prince has joined us once again. Greg, how are you?

SPEAKER_02 0:30

I'm I'm not inimitable. I may be unintelligible, but that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Well, uh I think you are as far from unintelligible as they come, although the subject where we've come to in your roadmap uh has a little bit to do, not necessarily with unintelligibility, but about things that we don't know. And I think this isn't gonna be one of the most fascinating discussions in your roadmap that we've had. We've arrived at a section that you titled Mystery. And uh I'm just gonna read here this this segment here from the roadmap. You said, when I interviewed artist Arnold Freeberg for the is it pronounced Freeberg or Freiburg? Freeberg, it is Freeberg. Okay. Arnold Freeberg for the David O. McKay biography. He told of meeting with McKay and discussing the paintings of scenes from the Book of Mormon that had been commissioned by Howells, general president of the primary association. Oh my gosh, those were endless, endless discussions. They were trying to illustrate the book in 12 pictures. President McKay said, now whatever you do, don't paint Christ into the Book of Mormon. I said, and this is this is I presume Arnold Freedig speaking, I said, that's the high time of the book. Why not? Oh, he said, the finite cannot conceive of the infinite. I said, you use pictures of Christ as teaching eggs. Well, those are not done by our people. And he made a pronouncement that our people were not to paint Christ. End of the quote. One of the unintended consequences of Joseph Smith's theology was that in narrowing the gulf between the finite and the infinite, he opened the door to trivializing deity and robbing it of its mystery. Bruce McConkey's Mormon doctrine took the church farther down the same road by claiming to have answers for every imaginable question. It doesn't work that way. The response: reassure members that there is much we do not know or understand. Build on what we do know and leave the rest for faith. Mystery when it pertains to the infinite is good. And I read that and I was really struck by a number of things. First of all, uh, it's really interesting that President McKay said those paintings were done by other people, not by us. My understanding is particularly most of the paintings that we use, my father always just used to say they're magazine illustrations. It's like you go into the temple and you have all of these paintings and we decorate our temples with magazine illustrations. But a lot of them are done by Harry Anderson. Uh if you go into the church office building, there's still that huge, massive painting of the Great Commission that was done by Harry Anderson and was commissioned by the church, but Harry Anderson was a Seventh-day Adventist. And I I had never realized that uh there was sort of a reason for not commissioning somebody from the church to do that kind of artwork. Uh that hasn't endured because we have Del Parsons' portrait of Christ that is ubiquitous, that's everywhere, that makes him, in my mind, look like a BYU football player. But uh we have sort of broken that taboo and moved uh away from mystery even further than that. Uh do you have any more sort of insight on that kind of a decision for the church to not paint Christ? I that that's something I had never heard before.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

No, this was a McKay thing, and in my mind, it really differentiates David O. McKay from other church presidents since then. I think he had a profound sense of mystery that I haven't seen in his successors. And I think that's why he told Arnold what he did, and I can see the wisdom in that. Not only do we have pictures of Jesus every time we go around the corner in a chapel, he keeps getting fairer skinned, blonder haired, and bluer-eyed. Yeah. As if we're i it seems like we're trying to create an Aryan Jesus. If you think about where Jesus lived, that's not what they looked like.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

No, and there have been some wonderful portraits of Jesus, most of them not done by members of the church, that lean into what the historical Jesus would most likely have looked like, and he certainly had much darker skin, didn't have blue eyes. But uh I'm reminded, do you know Richard Omen? Does that mean mean anything to you? No. So uh my brother-in-law is Nate Omen, he's a a um professor of law at the College of William and Mary. Uh he's back east there with you, although he's a little further north. But he um his father is Richard Omen, and Richard Ollman is is an art historian and was in charge at one point of the Committee for Temple Art. And he pointed out that the um uh we we asked him, why do you always see the same paintings in the temple? Why do you always see what my father calls the magazine illustrations? And he said, because the process of getting any art approved goes through so many different levels that it's like being nibbled to death by ducks. And getting anything approved is really excruciatingly difficult, and getting any picture of Christ approved is extraordinarily difficult. So we always lean back on the same old stuff and 50-year-old, 60-year-old, 70-year-old paintings that have been around forever.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Yeah, the McKay's point was not what did Jesus look like if we were to put him in a painting? It was look, Arnold, there is a gulf between us and deity that we should respect. And one of the ways that we should respect it is by not trying to humanize the deity. Now, granted, uh we worship Jesus as having been a human being, mortal, but the point went much deeper than that. What is mystery in religion? To me, it's the very essence of religion, it's what keeps us striving, never reaching that destination, but always enriching ourselves as we move along that journey. If we just think of God as daddy, um that misses a lot. And that's where I think, in an effort not to be like them, meaning the other churches that existed in 1830, we went far in the opposite direction and stripped away much of the mystery that is symbolized by the rituals of other Christian churches. Think of the Catholic Mass. It's laden with symbolism, and the symbolism has the goal of trying to increase the likelihood of the encounter between the human and the infinite. And as you read in what I had written, Bruce McConkey, I think, in a well-meaning attempt, took us farther from where we need to be by saying, Well, you can't ask me a question for which I don't have an answer. That's stripping the mystery, but in stripping the mystery, you're missing a lot. And that's what I think we should try to get back to.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Well, citing Bruce McConkey reminds me of the passage in your seminal book, David O'Maye and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, and the reaction that President McKay had to the publication of Mormon doctrine. And there are a lot of stories involved in that. But one of the things is that President McKay absolutely thought that you couldn't define Mormon doctrine. I mean, what wasn't that part of President McKay's pushback?

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Yes, he was he was never into the fine points of doctrine himself. You read his writings, you read his sermons, it's about a living gospel, it's about pastoral issues, it's not trying to explain in 25 words or less what is justification versus what is sanctification. Right. Right. I think he had the church in a better position in terms of the reverence for the unknown versus the know-it-all attitude that says, we got this.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Well, I one of the things and one of the reasons I think that this subject is very pertinent for right now is that if you listen to President Oakes' recent devotional, which was essentially his first address to the church as president of the church, you see elements of this sort of creeping back into the discussion. President Oaks outlined very specifically a lot of the problems the church is facing and very candidly admitted that we don't have an answer to a lot of them.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

This is in section three of it, he said the Lord has told us very little about some things. For example, we know very little about the spirit world that follows mortality, or even about the spirit world that preceded it. Hooray! That's terrific. It recognizes and stands in awe of things that we don't understand yet. Rather than trying to say we can construct our castles in the sky, we know which kingdom and how far. Um that falls apart pretty quickly, and yet we have a whole church full of people that assume they know it all.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Well, I took that passage also to be sort of a back-handed slap at the Visions of Glory crowd. Are you familiar with Visions of Glory? Not by that name, no. Well, there was a there was a book that was written uh pseudonymously, pseudonymously, uh, by a guy who talked about his visit to the spirit world. And it gets very specific and tells you everything that happens in the spirit world. And uh this sort of fueled uh kind of a whole large movement, and the more extreme elements of that include uh Lori Daybell, Chad Daybell, um, that whole you know, terrible uh group of folks who use Latter-day Saint doctrine or theology to justify murder. Uh, you know, so but there have always been volunteers in the church who are more than happy to explain all the mysteries to you. And I I I took that passage in President Oakes' devotional to be sort of a uh thanks but no thanks, please stop doing that. We really don't know. But I I am encouraged that it kind of opens the door to the reality of accepting and being comfortable with with not knowing. And and and do you see a general kind of reluctance to do that among the lay membership of the church? We want to know. We want to say we have all the answers. And I don't know that there are a lot of members of the church that are comfortable saying we don't.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

We do want to know, but the questions that we should be concerned about are not going to be answered by one-line answers. It just isn't going to happen. Uh that was the major disservice that Bruce McConkey and earlier his father-in-law Joseph Eilding Smith did. Smith had a five-volume set called Answers to Gospel Questions. You can't give me a question that I can't answer. That sidesteps the reality that the most important questions that we have are in this existence not answerable, and humility requires that we stand in awe in front of that mystery and acknowledge our ignorance of it and hope for more enlightenment as we go along.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Well, there Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkey were sort of cut from the same cloth, and Bruce R. McConkey was his son-in-law. And Joseph Fielding Smith's grandson and Bruce R. McConkie's son was a man named Joseph Fielding McConkie, who was also my mission president. And he wrote a book that I read right after my mission that was just called the title of the book was Answers. And that was, and then the subtitle was Straightforward Answers to Gospel Questions. So he obviously cribbed that from his ancestors and cribbed that from his grandfather. But I remember reading that book, and and at the time I was just sort of sort of enamored of the authority and the gravitas of the McConkis and the Smiths. And so I took all of it as gospel. And I remember reading one section in there where he was asked, can you reconcile the theory of organic evolution with the doctrine of the fall? And the answer was no, period. And then he goes on to say, as much as we want to tug at our birthright, uh, we can't do it. This is completely irreconcilable, and we have to reject this. And I look back at that and I go, how on earth does Joseph Fielding McConkey think he has the authority or the wisdom to be able to reject all science on evolution? I mean, the kind of, frankly, arrogance to be able to say, we have these answers, I have the answers, and if you don't go along with these answers, um you are a heretic. And the best example of that that involves all of these men was the story of Eugene England. Ian, do you know that whole story? Eugene England was giving lectures about the possibility of God as a progressing God, that God continues to learn just as we continue to learn. And Joseph Fielding McConkie was at some kind of, I don't know if it was a seminar or what the setting was, but both um Eugene England and Joseph McConkie were there speaking. And Joseph McConkey laid into Eugene England about the idea of a progressing God and said, I don't worship a student God. I worship a perfect God, and this is a terrible thing that you're teaching, and you need to stop teaching it. And Eugene England felt so unsettled by this that he he ended up writing a letter to Bruce R. McConkie and saying, look, if I'm out of line, please let me know. And Bruce R. McConkie's reply is one of the most troubling and offensive things that I've ever read that was written by an apostle. Probably the most troubling and offensive thing was what Delbert Stapley wrote to George Romney about how Abraham Lincoln was killed for freeing the slaves, that God killed Abraham Lincoln for freeing the slaves. That's a whole other tangent. But what Bruce R. McConkie said to Eugene England was: it is my job as the apostle to state the doctrine. And it is your job to either echo what I say or stay silent. And it was, I mean, he prefaced the letter by saying, This is the most important letter you will ever receive, because you are receiving this from an apostle, and I'm telling you what's right and what's wrong, and you are absolutely wrong. And this in response to this, Bruce McConkey went and gave his Seven Deadly Heresies talk. And the first of the seven deadly heresies was a direct slam on Eugene England, and saying the idea that God is a progressing God is a heresy. There is not one ounce of truth to it. And just hammering down on all of this. And I am amazed that Eugene England was able to stay faithful for the rest of his life, because that was just extraordinarily embarrassing and a gut punch to somebody who actually had quite a following and was quite beloved and has written so many thoughtful and wonderful things about the church, uh, only to have it slammed down uh by this sort of we know everything doctrinaire approach. I mean, you probably saw some of that firsthand, Greg, did you not?

SPEAKER_02 19:24

Let me give you a little bit of historical context. The elephant in this room is Mormon fundamentalism. That's really what we're talking about. It's the idea that there is certitude in everything, and we got it. And by the way, they don't. If you go back to the turn of the 20th century, it hadn't taken shape yet. The catalyst for it was what was called either higher criticism of the Bible or a synonym, the modernist heresy. It was the emergence in the first decade of the 20th century within the United States of the work of German Protestant biblical scholars. The Catholics were on the sidelines because the Pope said, Thou shalt not go there. What the German Protestant scholars did was to apply the tools of scientific methodology to the study of the Bible for the first time. And the response of conservative religions, including the Latter-day Saints, was a wholesale freakout. They thought everything would be lost if we allowed these scholars to go in and pillage the sanctity of the Bible. They were particularly upset about challenges to the creation narratives in Genesis and how that could be, in their minds, blown up by organic evolution, not having any understanding themselves of how those got into Genesis and what they represented. The response of the then church president Joseph F. Smith was to write a treatise that first was a priesthood manual and then became a book entitled Gospel Doctrine that is still in print today after more than a century. He also oversaw the firing of two sets of brothers at Brigham Young University who refused to back off teaching about organic evolution. That was the depth of the threat. His baton was passed to his son, Joseph Fielding Smith, then to Bruce McConkie, and Joseph Fielding McConkie made an ill fated attempt to seize the mantle of his. His deceased father and become the doctrinal spokesperson for the church. What has happened since then? Number one, there is no doctrinal spokesperson for the church anymore. Nothing even resembling the role that Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce McConkie took upon themselves. Number two is there was a manual written in the early 1980s. I think it was called Gospel Principles. It was a nice manual. It was designed for it. It was designed for home branches of the church, for areas of the world in which there weren't sufficient members to have even a branch structure, much less ward. Well, 30, 40 years later, that was reprinted as a priesthood and relief society manual. But there were some changes. The changes were they kept quotations from Bruce McConkie, they deleted all references to his name and his books. That tells you that there was an intentional effort to begin blotting out the memory of that rigid fundamentalism and allow us to start charting a new direction. And the inability of Joseph Fielding McConkie to put on that mantle was consistent with that thrust. That's connecting some dots, but they're not difficult to connect.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

That is fascinating. I did not realize that. And I know that Joseph Fielding McConkey very much wanted to sort of have that mantle fall on him, and it never really did. He was never called as a general authority. He taught at BYU until the day he died. And a lot of professor a lot of students really just adored him, and a lot of students really just despised him. I knew a number of people who insisted that his approach was terrible. I was in the adore camp. One of the things about him that was so remarkable is he had this marvelous sense of humor. He was really funny. And that's not something that you would associate with the McConkey name, but uh particularly one-on-one, you know, he would stand up and he would assume. I used to do a very good imitation of him. I did it for him once. And he went, Do I really sound like that? Because he would talk, he would, no, uh, when we read the Book of Mormon, and he'd always have these long sort of things in the middle of it. Uh, and he had a really good-natured sense of humor about it when he did that. But he he he really wanted to assume that role, and he wanted that role to continue, and you're right, it hasn't continued. And I think that we've kind of stepped away from the idea of any of that um any of that being part of the church. Britt Ian, I want to bring you into this discussion here. Um when when you when you hear all this, um, how does this jibe with your experience in the church and your experience with mystery? And do you think Greg has a point here?

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Thank you. The section mystery in the roadmap for improving modernism is perhaps one of the most interesting sections for me. I read that and I take a different position to some extent than I think where the conversation is going here. When I was a young man investigating the church, I had many questions, some very fundamental questions about the purpose of life and who am I and why am I here. Those are very strategic, high-level, but very important questions that I had in my life. If you remember the video uh Man's Search for Happiness, yeah, that really struck me. You know, we had this time on this earth, we had agency, and we had purpose and we had meaning. That really connected with me. Fast forward to uh the I was into the seminary for two years from 16 to 18, and then uh institute, and then we then uh I then went to the MTC to prepare to serve a mission, and of course, you and I served our missions together in Scotland. That whole experience, you know, seminary, institute, YSA, the MTC in particular, and then going through the entire structure and organization of a of a mission, gave me, as we discussed earlier, a sense of certainty that we had many answers to the questions. And I uh uh reveled and and cherished the the the uh time of studying and research. As a scientist and engineer, I like to have answers to questions. I accept that I won't get all the answers, but as science and engineering unfolds and you learn things and then new information comes to light and you build on those foundational pieces. That's what me and I'm sure many others actually enjoy and appreciate. When we were serving a missions, Jim, you and I, uh and Greg, you know this as well, you get asked many, many questions from all kinds of people. Um, often those questions are quite specific. For example, where do we come from? You know, the man's search for happiness uh question. And I appreciate Greg raising the point that in President Oakes' remarks earlier uh this week, where he said that we don't seem to know a lot about the pre-Earth life or what happens after we die, I received many questions on my mission and throughout my life as a bishop and serving on the state presidency in respect to uh pre-earth life and you know life here and what happens in the next life. There are these are very important questions to a lot of people for lots of reasons. You know, when we our loved ones leave us, we want to know um are they in a in a good place and what are they doing? The church can get very specific or has done, at least in my experience, in regards to what we do in the next life. And we know we know some of that, at least, from the experience in the temple. You know, when we die, we we we we learn that there's a lot of work that needs to be done um in the next life in regards to all the temple work that's uh is needed. Um I am an individual who likes to have answers to questions. I I don't mind a little bit of mystery, but on those essential foundational pieces. You know, Greg uses the term fundamental. I I I can I see that from at least two angles. I see the fundamentalism within the church, but I also I also uh see the fundamental foundational pieces of of having some degree of knowledge and certainty on those foundational pieces. And for me, they give me a lot of reassurance, and I can then can respond, as I did on my mission, to the many questions that uh that would come. And so I'm comfortable with church providing specific answers to questions as long as those answers are reliable and trustworthy, uh, with good intent, and there's some degree of accuracy. I think when we're talking about uh faith and spiritual things, um, which are more phenomenological uh components of the gospel, they're difficult to um silo, they're difficult to uh give some structure to because people can have an experience like a near-death experience, uh you know, someone else could have a similar experience and then come away with a very different interpretation. I can see why the church would want to be very careful about those interpretations. But in a nutshell, for me, those foundational components of the gospel uh uh uh need to be answered with some structure and some clarity uh to give people like me a little bit of substance. Uh yeah, we've got um many answers or at least some answers to some of the key questions. The other side to that is the mystery for me is the temple experience. We can't talk about the temple before we go, we can't talk about the temple after we leave the temple. Those conversations are assigned to the time that we have in the temple. You know, we go through the the different ordinances and the endowment, etc. We then go into the uh uh ultimate into the celestial room. All this could be found online, of course. This is no secret. And many of the questions that I had about the temple symbols, you know, Greg references the symbols and the uh which I I think that that's the area of the church which carries mystery. And that I find intriguing. You know, the the different symbols, the different you know, signs and shapes, the different words that we use in the temple, for me carry a degree of significant um mystery, which I actually enjoy. I would go into the Cecil room and speak with people who are much wiser than me and ask them all kinds of questions. And again, I would get probably different different answers to those different questions. So uh getting those basic foundational pieces right and reliable is very important to someone like me. And then the mystery is in the uh the symbolism, you know, the the temple experience. And the I I'm comfortable with that because in the sense that it's okay and it's completely appropriate to have different interpretations of the experience in the temple, you know, the mystery side of the church, because that's unique to the individual. For example, I would go through the temple experience, and and certain things would um uh pop out in my mind or impressions, and they I felt at that time that they were unique to me. That my interpretation, my spiritual experience in the temple, and my understanding of the uh the temple experience was unique to me. And I thought that was good, that was special, that was important, and I would come away with a different experience perhaps than Jim Bennett and a Greg Prince. But they were unique and personal to me, and that was personal revelation, and therein lies the strength of the mystery, and that's where I got from Greg's section there, mystery in the road map, which I think is a fascinating section to uh you know to talk about. And we don't often talk about that in the church, so yeah, getting the basics right, you know, having some degree of of of knowledge of of what is and what isn't. I'm surprised that to some extent that President Oaks has talked about we don't know much about the pre-earth life or or what happens in the next life, because there is at least something that we do we do know, but I also see the um the value and the importance of um having some uh not having all the answers to that and having some mystery to that, which again you I think you can find uh through personal revelation to some extent in the temple. So that's my kind of overview of Greg's section there on that mystery, which again I think is absolutely uh intriguing.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Well, what's your response to that, Greg? I mean, Ian wants answers. Isn't that bad? No, I don't think it's bad at all.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

I think uh I've never had difficulty in my own life in blending science and religion. Because somewhere early on, without even knowing that it was going on, I gained an appreciation for boundaries. That there are some things, even about religion, that science can inform. And if so, let it inform. Don't badmouth science. Uh this is something where President Oakes seems to differ from me because he takes a couple of shots in that speech at science. Where science can inform, you better listen to it, because data, if they are true data, will stand. And if you try to go against them, you will suffer as a result. There are other parts of religion that science cannot inform. And that's where I think scientists need to take a step back and exercise their own kind of humility and say, not only do we not have those answers, we don't have the methodology or the machinery that we will ever be able to get at those answers, as far as we can tell. So I think Ian and I are saying the same thing. If there is an answer that can be had, let's go for it. Let's let's not be content with ignorance, but let's also acknowledge that there are a lot of questions about religion that we're not going to be able to answer, and those, by definition, are in the realm of mystery. When I was talking to Paul Dunn, he said that shortly after he became a general authority in 1964, he met with President McKay for over an hour. And he said, I've been an institute teacher for more than a decade, and college students ask a lot of tough questions. I don't have the answers. So I thought I'd come to the source. And he said, he kept firing away all these questions, and he said to his amazement, that for probably half the questions, the answer was, I don't know. Lord hasn't revealed it yet. Now he went on to say in a postscript, it's interesting that the prophet of the Lord didn't know, but all my Sunday school teachers did. But but it emphasizes that there are two categories of knowledge within any religious tradition, those that are knowable and those that are mystery. The boundary between the two of them may be a flexible boundary. As science gets better, it may be able to answer some questions that it couldn't answer 50 years ago or 100 years ago. But there still is going to remain a large domain of questions for which we do not have answers. And our response is in humility to say those are mysteries. We accept the reality of those and acknowledge that we don't have access to the answers. I think the the profound messages of the book of Job including include towards the end of that book, where Job finally shakes his fist at God because he's not getting the answers and says, I demand to speak to you face to face. My words. But the response coming out of the whirlwind essentially is fine. You get a face and we'll talk. It's a colossal put down on Job, who has the audacity to think that he's even capable of discussing those. That's where the voice of God says, okay, Smarty, where were you when I created the heavens and the earth? Where were you when I did this and this? How dare you assume that I'm going to talk to you about those things, you can't even understand them.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

I really like that, Greg. I listened uh intently there, and I really value that perspective. Uh, to add uh to what I've said and to complement what you said, uh, President Oakes organized his talk around four main themes. You can go online and look at that. One of them was humility, remember that, right? And again, as a scientist and engineer, I found and experienced uh immense humility as I as the as these uh ancient mysteries, as I understood them, uh in a very limited uh way, of course, as they were unfolded to me through my whole experience in the church, through service, but in particular in the temple experience, as they, to me at least, they unfolded uh and my knowledge and my mind was expanded spiritually, I found great humility in understanding the details or trying to understand the details behind the symbolism. Again, if you look at the temple, where I think a lot of this um mystery comes together, kind of uh all uh melts together in a very profound, mysterious way, for me at least, uh and centrally through the temple experience. When you uh looking at the creation, for example, uh the you know, as as we're learning about the relationship between God and sorry. That's okay. As we're learning about the relationship between uh God, Christ, the Holy Ghost, and the creation, you know, and the creation of uh humankind, as we're learning about that in the in the material that we see in the temple, I'm I'm not only seeing that from a spiritual perspective, I'm seeing it as an engineer and as a scientist. I'm looking at just the uh the the the the the the code of life, the DNA life being put together through this immense spiritual uh power and energy that God and Christ has. Uh and I'm also outside of the temple, inside of the temple, I'm seeing reference to to, and I and I love space and universe. I I I watch a lot of material on that, and I've always been fascinated with with uh as a young kid, you know, with space and the solar system and the galaxies and the the science behind it, the distances are just um unimaginable. So when I see reference to the sun, moon, and stars, the symbolism, you know, the the whole symbol, uh symbolistic structure of the temple, I'm not only seeing it through um hopefully the humility of the spirit the spiritual side, which is really uh one way, one of several ways of learning, which uh I think we all agree here that's one medium of learning through uh spiritual experiences, which um again a scientist and engineer would be uh more informed uh intellectually if that if they were open to that spiritual experience. But I'm also seeing it from the data, you know, from the science and the engineering, you know, uh like the story about Noah and the Ark and all these phenomenal, you know, the partners of the Red Sea, and you look at the Bible and the Book of Mormon and you ask yourself, could that happen physically? Uh, you know, what are the um uh the physicalities, the physiology of something like that happen? Does does nature behave like that? And if it doesn't, how does that how is that possible? That's a miracle. And so having that I think the the the gospel teaches the humble to see the entire experience in all those different mediums, spiritually and scientifically and and technically and intellectually. You know, God is very, very intelligent. You know, we we talk about you know, the Pearl Great Prize talks about that. We were intelligent intelligence before the world was. You know, we're talking a little bit of knowledge about who we are and and what happened before the we came into uh the earthly existence. So we know some of that, but we were intelligences, and those intelligences are spiritual spirits, and we knew stuff, and God had the plan, and Christ had the plan, and we had some semblance of knowledge of the plan, and we come here for learning and for growth. And I think the whole experience um is understanding the gospel from a technical, intellectual, scientific perspective. Absolutely. I I think that's you know, because we are intelligent beings, we we created in uh as intelligent beings for a reason, for a purpose. It's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. But of course, that spiritual um dimension is absolutely critical to be able to seeing and understanding things from a spiritual perspective. And that was my um when I read this section, I found it so fascinating, and I saw my personal experience in the gospel and in the church through those different ways of learning and understanding and teaching. And when I left the temple experience, I felt um enriched because uh many times, not all the time, I uh the questions I had and uh did it questions that were answered often, not always, uh any other technical intellectual were uh answered. And if I didn't know the answer, it was humbling to be able to go back and learn. Or relearn and learn something new that I didn't know before. And that's the humbling experience for me.

SPEAKER_02 44:08

We keep brushing up against temple. And in my mind, that's one of the great mysteries of Mormonism. But perhaps not what you might think. If I were to give one word synonym for the temple experience, and I've wrestled with this issue for fifty years, it is power. The initial impetus for the church moving from New York to Ohio was expressed in section thirty-eight. Go to the Ohio and you will be endowed with not knowledge, power from on high. And it was the repeated failure of the saints, including Joseph himself, to understand and appropriate that power that kept the evolution of the temple endowment moving forward. It gradually morphed so that the emphasis was not on power, which could be verified as either being there or not being there. In other words, if you tried to raise someone from the dead and it didn't work, it's pretty clear you didn't have that power. And initially they thought they did have that power, and they failed at it. So there was a gradual shift from power to knowledge, but even knowledge is power. So that continues, in my mind, to be the subtext of the temple endowment. It's that continual quest for the mystery of how do you tap into the divine power.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

Very much so.

SPEAKER_00 46:11

Yeah, very much so. Well, that that's where the word endowment comes from. You will be endowed with power. Yes. I mean, when you talk about an endowment in secular terms, you're talking about a financial endowment that gives you the power to be able to. So so, yeah, that subtext has is always there, but we have sort of shelved the idea.

SPEAKER_02 46:34

We shelved it because we failed to understand that it wasn't an automatic. If you go back and look at the first endowment, it was in June 1831, years before they even conceptualized having a building. They did it in a schoolhouse. But the whole point was the Pentecostal endowment that happened to the ancient apostles, that was promised in Luke 24 and was delivered in Acts 2. It was Jesus saying, Tarry in Jerusalem. Why? Because even though I have ordained you, I have authorized you, you have not yet been empowered. And you must stay here until you are endowed with power from on high. So Joseph Smith and the early church were mimicking what Luke and Acts were talking about. Same words, same idea. But they found, much to their disappointment, that it's easier said than done.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Well, that whole Pentecostal experience is consistent with what happened at the Kirtlin Temple. Yes. But not consistent with what the temple endowment eventually became. Correct. Which is kind of interesting. Do you think that that was just sort of a response to the fact that they couldn't duplicate the kind of I think that had a lot to do with it.

SPEAKER_02 48:00

And then when you moved into the Nauvoo period, other elements came into it, and the whole temple experience became a way to enshrine plural marriage in a cloak of secrecy for their own survival. So does plural marriage become the power? No. Plural marriage was their rationale for taking it undercover. It was the deep secret of Mormonism, and those who were inducted into it were put under a strict cloak of secrecy to the point that if you take the words literally, if you divulge this information, you will be killed.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

But but a lot of those words also were lifted from the Masonic sort of Sure. Absolutely. Because what Joseph Smith saw in Freemasonry, he appropriated for a different reason, but using the same rationale. And he knew enough about Masonry to understand the power of those symbols.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

Yeah. This is fascinating. What's come to mind now, as I'm listening to you both, is this is probably where the conversation will diverge, I think, in terms of my understanding and interpretation. As I look back on those experiences in the temple, and I felt a degree of when I was acting fully into the church, a degree of certainty. I had many answers to questions, and I I I hear myself say that, and I can see here why that would come across quite arrogant. You know, we have all these answers to questions, and I I agree, I think we need a level of mystery and unknown to keep us humble. I I want to say this that in hindsight, looking back, reflecting on all the good things that I experienced in the church and in the temple, and the experiences in the temple, which I still hold dear, which are very personal to me, I've now come to the conclusion that those unique, very unique, distinct symbols, the very unique uh thinking of modernism towards God and deity and theology and faith, that the only few things I can extract from it that I still value are the universal conformance from it and not the distinct uniqueness. What I'm saying is that I don't no longer believe that the only path to God is through learning the mysteries of Mormonism. I've learned for myself that uh one can find God and understand or wrestle with the mysteries of God and life and the purpose of life without an organized religion. That relationship between an individual and God is personal, it's profound, it uh many answers can come from that, a lot of intellectual answers can come from that personal experience, and a lot of uh um spiritual and profound experience can come from having a direct experience with God, and I believe that one does not have to experience the entire symbolism and structure and organization of the Mormon church or any religion for that matter, Catholic, Protestant, or otherwise, that those mysteries can be unfolded to the individual directly and not through some uh middle agent, so to speak, that that might claim to have some kind of exclusive knowledge or wisdom or insight on certain mysteries. And so that is probably or maybe not, we'll see where the conversation goes, where we might diverge. What I'm saying uh uh in a nutshell is that one does not need an organized religion to um try to understand and unfold the mysteries of God, that they can be experienced directly through uh people's own spiritual experiences. For me, my temple is nature. You know, I I there's a lot of things in my life now which have replaced nature. I see a lot of symbolism in nature. We see symbolism uh related to nature all the time, and I'm uh humbled by the power, to use your word there, Greg, of God who created this extraordinary life for his planet, us humans, uh, nature. You know, this this is spoken about uh extensively in the in the Mormon temple experience. But I get that now uh without attending the church. I don't need walls, I don't need to go to the temple, I don't need to do the audiences because ultimately the audiences in themselves won't save you. It's it's who we are, what we do, our love, our kindness, our forgiveness, how we serve others, I believe ultimately is uh the things that will save us. And you know, all these mysteries, I think it boils down to following Christ, following his example, understanding the uh, you know, why Christ did what he did, what he was trying to do, who he was. You know, we I've heard that the discussions on uh uh at church on the mysteries of Christ. And sure there are there are mysteries and you can you can you know research uh all kinds of stuff at every level, but ultimately I think what will save us is not the specifics, the prescribed for specifics which are uh the certain process that you have to follow in the temple, you know, the things that you have to do at the veil, the words that you have to say, the things that you have to enact out when you know when we reach the veil. I no longer uh accept those things. I think we are accepted by Christ and God for all the good that we do and the kindness and love that we show and the service that we we offer. So if you strip away all those messages, I think it boils boils down uh boils down to that.

SPEAKER_02 54:27

Uh I agree with you, Ian. I don't disagree at all with what you're saying. Having spent as much time around the non-LDS religious world as I have, I am in awe of the sense of mystery that other religionists have. The temple and the temple endowment are Mormonism's response to mystery. But those are two separate things. The endowment is what gets focused on a lot. Consider, though, the whole issue of sacred space, which clearly is not unique to Mormonism. We have our own flavor of sacred space. In going to the temple or any other sacred space, including nature, what is the hope, what is the quest? Is it not to try to narrow the gap between the finite and the infinite and somehow to tap into it, even if momentarily? That's where mystery can play out in a more tangible way than in our mundane everyday lives. And so when you hear about temple experiences among Latter-day Saints, very often it's not the endowment session, it's that that individual was in a place and of a frame of mind and spirit that even if only instantaneously there was some bridging of that gap, and there was contact between the finite and the infinite. And that's something that is unforgettable.

unknown 56:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:16

That's interesting. I want to throw this at you as well, and then uh hand some time back to Jim uh for his thoughts. Um all these conversations that I have with you, I I sometimes forget our listeners are following this, which is a very important part of these conversations. But I learn so much from you both. And as I'm listening, I'm learning from you both. And something I just realized just now, when we look at the temple experience, it's very process-driven. It's very structured, it's very organized. There's a lot of detail, it's a very prescribed process. And I remember uh there were certain parts of it that I would forget, right? Certain words said in a certain way, sometimes, not always, I would forget. And I was reminded at times in the temple, in this lesson room, that if I don't remember the exact words and follow the process, that God would not receive me into heaven, into the kingdom. And that worried me a lot. And I would do my very best to remember the entire process and remember what I had to do and how I had to do it, and the sequence and order of things, and exact words, and um uh the physical things that you have to do in the temple in a certain way, which, if we do it in a certain way, would only be accepted by God. That worried me. What I'm saying is that when we get too prescribed, too detailed, we lose the the very essence of what we're trying to do. I I no longer believe I have to get into heaven by repeating certain words in a certain way. I just don't believe that. Uh the people on the planet who are just wonderful people um who do extraordinarily good each day, they don't know about this. You we can argue, well, hey, you know, when they die, uh some morning will end up doing the work for them and do the proxy work and we'll say those words on behalf of that individual. Um, I guess there is that there is that response. But when we get too prescripted, too detailed, and I think this is one of the points I think you were speaking about earlier, if I understood it correctly, then we do lose the mystery. You know, when we when we get so detailed, we lose the mystery and the meaning of the of the whole experience. So in the one part of my conversation, I've talked about the need for intellectual answers, science, engineering, which someone like me, I I really value. And yes, not that's not complete without the spiritual experience, and I hope I've highlighted that. On the other side, I'm now saying that if it gets too much, too process-driven, too prescriptive, it it dilutes the whole experience because you're being told what to do, and you're not free to think and feel and explore intellectually and spiritually the different um aspects of the temple experience and what that means specifically for each individual uniquely, because each experience is is unique. Does that does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 59:44

Oh yes. I attended a temple wedding in the Salt Lake Temple many years ago. It was for a friend. The officiator was a formal former president of the Salt Lake Temple, so very serious man. He begins by addressing the bride and the groom and says, Now I will be saying some words to perform this ceremony. And if you don't pay attention to everything I say and respond exactly as I tell you to, and then he paused. He said, It won't make a bit of difference. And all the tension immediately dissipated from the room.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:35

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:36

And and he got it absolutely right. Ian, it's exactly what you're talking about that we let the form get in the way of the essence. And sometimes we allow it to destroy the essence. Give mystery space, and it will work its magic. Don't chase it by getting too hung up on ceremony. The ceremony exists to try to gain access to that intangible reality. Which circles back to what we started with on this whole thing is let's make room for mystery within Mormonism.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:19

Well, it's gonna become scroll and what we write about an hour. I think we can uh we're we're we're kind of close to the end here. Uh you're talking about this guy, I remind again of you writing it out, President McKay. Uh one of the things that President McKay said about Temple is how disappointed he was the first time he went through. Do you recall that? Am I breaking it up?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:51

Jim, you were breaking up in what I just heard.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

Oh, I'm sorry. Uh I I I seem to recall that President McKay expressed disappointment in his first experience with the temple. Yes. Uh can and that that can you s expand on that a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:15

It was because, as he later said, I got too hung up on the mechanics. Exactly what we've been talking about.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:23

Well, Howard Anderson said to me at one point that he had a conversation with uh President McKay uh nearly grandfather-in-law. His grandfather-in-law, my uncle, uh, and I think one of the sources for your book.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:41

Yes. Very important source for the book.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:44

Uh, but he I remember talking to him about the temple, and he said that President McKay, and the family name for President McKay, and when we talk about him the family is Papa Dade. Yes. Uh when Papa Dade uh was talking to him, he said, the older I get, the more natural the temple experience becomes. And uh Howard was very struck by that because for most people, and certainly for me, there's nothing natural about the temple experience. It's it's an entirely unnatural, sort of artificial, strange, unusual thing, and that near the end of his life, uh Papa Dade kind of came into his own with that, and that it became sort of second nature to him. He transcended the mechanics. Yes. And you know, I I and I still have a ways to go to get there. I I find the temple experience uh not to be a natural experience. I'll just leave it at that. I don't want to dive too deeply into that, but other than to say that I think part of that comes from his willingness to accept ambiguity, accept mystery as part of the experience. That that the the older, certainly the older I get, the paradox is that uh the more cognizant I am of what I don't know. You know, the kind of certainty, Ian, that you were talking about that we had on our missions. We knew everything when we were 20 years old. Um now that we're much older, uh I'm just well aware that I of how much I don't know. And I see that in President Oaks with this devotional, is that President Oaks is somebody who projects a certain aura of certainty when he gets at a pulpit. And that has shifted dramatically since he's become president of the church. There is a humility there. There is uh a sort of understanding of the overwhelming responsibility with which he's been tasked that I think embraces, Greg, the very mystery that you're talking about. Do you see that in President Oakes' demeanor now? Do you see a shift?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:08

Yes. Uh my father was in several bishoprics and later became a bishop, and he said, I've learned there's a big difference between a bishop and a Rick.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:25

That's true.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:26

And you can sit next to the president's chair for 40 years. This is viewing it from a distance. I've never sat near or in it. But when you sit in it, the world can change, and it can change radically and it can change rapidly. And we have seen that in some presidents in our lifetime. Jim, you've talked before about some of the changes that President Lee went through, as have I. Changes that President Kimball went through. And according to his son, those changes took place within hours. Like he woke up the next morning after Harold B. Lee died and realized it was a different world. So, yes, uh, and I think one of the major triggers for that kind of change, for that kind of humility, is sitting in the president chair, having that mantle suddenly placed upon your shoulders and realizing, yikes, this is not easy. This is going to require even more humility than I thought I already had.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

Absolutely. I this has been, I think, one of my favorite episodes because this is something that I don't think we talk about nearly enough. Uh, this is something that I think is a frightening subject for church members. Uh we we just sort of pride ourselves, we have the restoration of the gospel, and so all of the answers have come back to us and accepting and embracing the reality that there is so much we don't know, and that what we don't know dwarfs the minuscule amount that we do know. Uh, that's that's kind of a terrifying place for people to be. And I think it takes a great deal of spiritual confidence to be able to walk into that place and and live with it and and just accept it and embrace it and stop trying to fight it.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:41

Because I think I think it's important to differentiate mystery from fear. We're not talking about fear, we're talking about awe, we're talking about humility, we're talking about acceptance of a power not only above ourselves, but for the most part incomprehensible, and that's okay. It's not something to fear.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:12

That is an excellent, excellent point, because I think so many people confuse the two that the mystery is a source of fear, and that awe and fear are in some ways polar opposites. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:27

The next time the uh sky is clear and the stars are so close you could pick them from the sky and go somewhere where there's no light pollution. You go you go to the clearest uh moment in experience of seeing uh the stars just marvel at the experience, the feeling that God is the great engineer, God is the great scientist. Look at the engineering of the universe, it's extraordinary. Look at the science, look at the gas giants, you know, Jupiter, Saturn, look how it's all formed, look at how it's all uh seemingly organized in one sense and then chaos in another way. There's certainly a power, use your word, behind this great, extraordinary, mysterious, wonderful, awe-inspiring universe. The spirituality that comes from that is just extraordinary to see uh that immense uh experience with the limitations that we have, uh, you know, through the the physical and the emotional and the spiritual limitations that we have.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:45

The knowledge I can accept that because you live in Canada. Right, Britain and clear skies don't coincide. So if you had said that while still living in the UK, I would not have understood what you meant.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:03

Yeah. UK is is just decimated with with light everywhere. But here in Canada, where you and overcast. Yeah, overcast. You can't see, yeah, you can't see anything out of the UK. But you know, when you when you have, and you've you've had this experience, and you've you've you've felt so close to heaven, and it's so clear, and it's just extraordinary. And you have some answers. You know, we can see Jupiter and Saturn. We know we we know a little bit about these places, very little. We know something. We we know very little, you know, in regards to the rest of the universe. That is completely humbling. I just do I know we're out of time here, but I want to say this thing about President Oaks, and I I do this with respect, but I want to be blunt. I think President Oaks is trying to have his cake and eat it. On the one sense, he talks about humility, and you know, we know we know uh some things that we don't know about. Uh on the other sense, again, it's my interpretation from his talk, um uh there's a limitation on science and engineering, and be careful where you go. Uh, don't go listen to podcasts, you know, don't listen to this podcast, right? Only go to those reliable sources, as presumably within the church, you know, close friends, family who are presumably active, who will give you faithful answers. I I think that is contradictory and it is a mistake in President Oakes' talk. At least this is my interpretation. I can't be the only one that's come away with that interpretation at all. And so, in the one sense that we know some things, some things we don't know. And if you do want to know, just go to these sources. Uh, you know, science and engineering got severely it respects science and engineering. Okay, it talks about science and engineering and respects it. However, you know, you can only go to these sources to uh, you know, to trust it. What about a science engineering podcast? Can you go to those? Well, probably not. So you've got to be very careful, you've got to be consistent, I think. And and here's the thing: we shouldn't be afraid to go seek out intellectual answers from science and engineering and and uh and technology. It you know, the data will speak to it. And I've I I hopefully have articulated this as well as I could on this uh conversation, which has become, by the way, my favorite conversation of all the conversations that I've had.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:23

Let me just read two sentences from what he said. An abundance of speculation and false information in podcasts and on social media surrounds us. It's not a direct shot at podcasts. He's careful, he's brushing up against it. What he's saying is speculation and false information. In other words, it's content, not the conduit, that can be the problem. And then he said, don't be persuaded by false or inaccurate information. Right on. And the purpose of this podcast is not to give false or inaccurate information. So, yeah, I know that he's got an anti-science bias, and that bothers me. But at least when he's coming out and talking directly about podcasts and other sources of information, I can see that his concern matches my concern more than it differs, and that is beware of false and misleading information. And it's even more imperative now in an age of artificial intelligence. The ability to distinguish between truth and error is much more fraught than it used to be.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:52

I I absolutely acknowledge that. At the same time, uh we must go beyond friends and family in the church. Yes. Right, for faithful ancestors. What I'm saying, and I try to be clear about this on the conversation, that there is a very significant, uh, inseparable relationship between science, engineering, spirituality, intellectualism, technology, and together you get the complete experience. And yes, only go and seek out sources of reliable information because we said at the very beginning, there's a lot of misinformation out there. I mean, it we're just inundated by false information. There's no question about that. So it becomes a skill, uh, a technique to be able to seek out and trust sources that we can rely on. And so the data, you know, the the positivistic, the physical world, and the phenomenological, the the the spiritual world, understanding those methodologies, the thinking, and bringing them together to get a fuller, more complete experience, which makes us a more complete individual and a better individual, I think that's the way to go. That doesn't come through, uh honestly, in my view at least, um, very clearly or consistently uh with in President Oakes' talks. I get us then kind of feel in certain parts of his talk, not all of his sport, in certain parts of his talk. I'm saying bring this whole medium together and you will be much more informed and a much more complete and whole person if we do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:41

Yes, I agree. Come and sit next to me on the bench. We're scientists talking to scientists, and I will reiterate my mantra, which I've talked about before. Follow the data.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:53

I I think that's a great uh great way to leave this. Uh, very much appreciate both of your contributions here, and I I I have a lot to think about as a result of this. This has been really thought-provoking in a way that I very much appreciate. Uh, do uh Ian, do you have any parting thoughts before we before we sign off?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:17

God is the great engineer, God is the great scientist, God is the great intellectual intellectualist, uh, God is this great spiritual being that brings all this together and makes all this possible. Can you find it in the Mormon Church? Absolutely. I still retain a lot of uh very personal spiritual experiences, Jim Gregg, from the temple experience, which are very precious to me. And I know that they were profound and very personal for me. Um, but you can also find uh these answers and and and uh just have this awesome experience of mysteries of God and the universe and and life uh without following a organized, prescribed uh religion. There are different paths up the mountain and uh each uh each to their own. What was that famous quote by um I remember the poet, Robert Frost? Two roads diverged in a walk in a wood, and I I chose the one less travel by, and that made all the difference. We walk different paths, and as long as we are uh following the fundamental uh principles of of goodness and love and kindness and the example of Christ, there are different ways uh to uh to heaven. That's uh that's been my experience.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:42

Greg? My parting comment is I will join you in next week's live podcast from the true Zion St.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:53

George. Sounds good. Uh and just so if in case anyone's forgotten, we're going to be discussing a healthy philosophy of sex. So you're not going to want to miss that one. That's going to be a lot of fun. Uh, thank you both. Very much appreciate it. And thank you all to all of you who are listening. We we couldn't do this without you. We are so grateful that you are all part of this conversation. And it's a conversation that we look forward to continuing. And we thank you all very much for participating here with us here at Inside Out. Thanks again to you both. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Greg.