Christmas is just around the corner, which means you will be buying books as gifts, putting books you might enjoy on your wish list, or (this trick works quite well) buying the books you want to read and giving them to a spouse or relative. The first volume of the LDS publication Saints is an easy choice: it’s really cheap and everyone should read it. I’ll add another good choice to your list: the two-volume series on Mormon doctrine and theology by Terryl L. Givens, Wrestling the Angel (OUP, 2015) and Feeding the Flock (OUP, 2017).
First, some general observations. The series is subtitled The Foundations of Mormon Thought, a nice description that sort of straddles the line between doctrine and theology. The first volume covers broader doctrine, topics like the godhead, Christology, and the Fall. It includes chapters on Mother in Heaven and Adam-God doctrine, so Givens is not steering around controversial topics. The second volume covers church organization and practice, things like LDS priesthoods, ordinances like baptism and the sacrament, temple stuff, and disciplinary procedures and issues.
What I really like about Givens’ treatment of topics in both books is the historical approach he takes. On any given topic, he reviews both the Christian precursors and contemporary Christian doctrine and practice, as well as the historical context and development (change over time) of each LDS doctrine or practice. This historical approach, or at least historical introduction, to each topic explains a lot more about these topics than the standard summaries of LDS doctrine that have been written over the years. The Church ought to shell out for 5000 copies and send one to each seminary and institute teacher in the Church.
Here are just a couple of quick examples from the second volume, which I am still wending my way through. In the section on baptism (p. 149-66), he reviews Christian baptism doctrine and infant baptism before getting to Mormon baptism; reviews the tension in both Christian and LDS doctrine between baptism as effecting remission of sins and baptism as simply a sign of forgiveness granted by grace or faith or the Spirit; discusses the now-discarded 19th-century Mormon practices of rebaptism and baptism for healing; and finally discusses vicarious baptism and the general Christian problem of salvation of the unbaptized that it tries to solve. In this and other chapters, you are likely to come away understanding that “restoration,” as exemplified in the actual history of the Church, involves adding things, changing things, getting rid of things, re-purposing things, renaming things, and so forth.
Another section in the second volume discusses “the sacrament,” by which Mormons mean what other Christians call the Eucharist (p. 197-204). [And what other Christians call “sacraments” we call “ordinances.”] He reviews how Protestant reformers rejected the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence, but quickly disagreed with each other about just how much Presence remained in the reformed doctrine of the Eucharist. By the 19th century, some Protestants had rejected any trace of Presence in the emblems, essentially the LDS position. Givens also reviews how the LDS sacrament became, by the 20th century, a renewal of baptismal promises or covenants (displacing re-baptism in this regard). Which is a little odd when you think about it: we don’t have a doctrine of expiring baptismal vows that need to be renewed every few years, like your car registration or your library card. That’s an example of re-purposing at work.
I could do three or four similar examples for each chapter in both volumes. It gives me hope, in this era of Correlation and dumbed-down curriculum materials, that someone like Givens can author a serious treatment of LDS doctrine and thought like this. If you don’t own this yet, put it on your Christmas list.
Wheat & Tares 
I read Wrestling the Angel and recommend it. It is very well done and does the reader the service of creating space for different beliefs. I’m working through Feeding the Flock now. It is well worth anyone’s time.
Sounds like interesting books. I have largely avoided religious books besides the Standard Works although for understanding other religions I also have Bagavad Gita and a Strong’s Concordance. I even perused for a little while the “Urantia Book” which is a strange thing and unlikely to be inspired.
What do the wags on this site recommend for Michael 2 to read if he can be persuaded to read even one religious book this year?
I think Givens might be too strong of medicine for him.
Mike suggests “What do the wags on this site recommend for Michael 2 to read if he can be persuaded to read even one religious book this year?”
The words God intends for me to know are either given to me directly to my mind (rare, but highest quality) or reading scripture (words written by prophets or at least persons claiming to be prophet).
I value your thoughts and the thoughts of other people, but I don’t need a BOOK for that. That’s so 15th century! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press
Some kinds of truth or wisdom are found in many sources. As it happens I enjoy 15th century technology (books) and have many. Just not church books that seem to serve no purpose; neither instructive nor entertaining, where science fiction (and sometimes fantasy) is both.
C.S. Lewis’explores what if Adam and Eve had NOT eaten the forbidden fruit; a story found in Perelandra series. James Blish’s “A Case of Conscience” made a big impact on me, as does its wonderful cover art by Darryl K. Sweet, a piece he titles “A Problem of Ethics”. It sets up a superbly difficult ethical dilemma patterned after the Garden of Eden. To do one right thing violates another right thing.
It took me a while to retrieve the name of that book. I could not remember the author or title, but I remember the cover well enough and the story. So I looked in my portfolio of cover art, recognized the style of Darryl K. Sweet, explored his cover art, and there it was.
A good synopsis is: http://www.conceptualfiction.com/a_case_of_conscience.html
It is a lot more complicated than the synopsis but the essential elements are described. His conflict is that the planet, Lithia, is perfect in every way, but apparently not created by God, but had to have been created by *something*.
It is for him a faith crisis.
But the biologist on the mission, Father Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez, has a strange, surprising interpretation of the planet. A Jesuit as well as a scientist, Ruiz-Sanchez is disturbed by the resemblance between Lithia and the Garden of Eden before the fall of Adam. He wonders whether he has encountered a new world without original sin. And if were so, “could men bear to live among them?”
The more he learns about the Lithians, the more Ruiz-Sanchez fears that their apparent perfection is a snare for the human race, a temptation to embrace a worldview that morals can exist without law, without restriction, without conscience and without God. “What we have here on Lithia is very clear indeed,” the Jesuit biologist tells his colleagues. “We have—and now I am prepared to be blunt—a planet and a people propped up by the Ultimate Enemy. It is a gigantic trap prepared for all of us—for every man on Earth and off it. We can do nothing with it but reject it, nothing but say to it, Retro me, Sathanas. If we compromise with it in any way, we are damned.”
“…the official Church policy on contact with extraterrestrial intelligent life forms. The policy described such life forms as being possibly without immortal souls, or having immortal souls and being “fallen”, or having souls and existing in a state of Grace, listing the approach to be taken in each case.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Case_of_Conscience
I remember on reading Orson Scott Card, “Folk of the Fringe”, what were Mormon positions on extraterrestrial aliens. I doubt there IS a position. Deal with it when the situation arises!
Anyway, sorry for wandering off into the wilderness. I was chasing a squirrel. Or its equivalent in xenobiology.
Closer to the topic at hand, while I doubt there is or can be such a thing as “Mormon Thought”, I am intrigued by someone’s belief that such a thing exists and can be described.
Thanks for the review, Dave B. I have the first book in the pile on my nightstand but I may need to bump it to the top. I always enjoy what the Givens’s have to say.
Michael 2;
That was a fascinating outburst, very revealing..
So we are not on the same page, not even in the same library. Maybe in alternate universes is a good approximation.
I don’t believe in or read science fiction. Like Star Trek was so boring and silly I couldn’t stand watching it.
So we are a long long ways from understanding each other.
I do like to indulge in my hobby of Sasquatching, looking for Bigfoot footprints and generally finding them, Sometimes scaring people and always raising laughter. (I would never actually construct them, wink). That might be a sliver of common ground.
Since we both read scripture, probably not through the same optics, what are your thoughts on the admonition – out of the best books seek words of wisdom. Books being defined broadly and metaphorically to include just about anything in print or on the web for starters..
Do you find more inspiration and wisdom in science fiction, than say in real history ( if it even exists) ?
Do the words you perceive that God gives you directly in your mind ever prove to be wrong?
[The other] Mike writes:
“So we are not on the same page, not even in the same library. Maybe in alternate universes is a good approximation.”
That is a strong reason to be here, to experience other kinds of thinking and help sort out my own.
“I don’t believe in or read science fiction.”
That makes as much sense, and for the same reason, as “I don’t believe in God”. In order for that to make sense, one must define God, and then not believe it.
Science fiction is a vast realm of literature, including (probably) every other genre. Very little science fiction makes it to movies so don’t judge the genre by movies and television that use the name science fiction when there’s very little science and even less intelligence.
Now that I think on it, “I Robot” made a pretty good movie; the theme explores what would happen if it was possible to engage a computer and robots to make a perfect society. Sooner or later the computer would realize that humanity itself is “imperfect” and must be controlled for its own good.
But is that different from communism? Or Mormonism? Not really; all of these things intend to create a utopia, a perfect world, but with imperfect humans. How is that possible? The idea of “I, Robot” is that it is NOT possible!
“The Man Who Counts” explores strategy; making alliances with the LESSER of a competitor since he has much to gain and is already losing. To ally with the stronger is a mistake since he’s already stronger and sees you as a challenger or competitor. Could you write an essay? Sure, but who would read it? So wrap it into a story; crash land on a planet more or less constantly at war, figure out who is going to give more assistance and be grateful.
A real world counterpart is Dr Lawrence Peter’s little book, “The Peter Principle”. It helps you understand who are your friends and who are your enemies at work even before you have met any of them.
“So we are a long long ways from understanding each other.”
I knew that from the beginning; but that’s no excuse to not TRY to understand other people.
“Since we both read scripture, probably not through the same optics, what are your thoughts on the admonition – out of the best books seek words of wisdom. Books being defined broadly and metaphorically to include just about anything in print or on the web for starters.”
Wisdom is, to me, the application of knowledge. First obtain knowledge, then figure out when, where and how to use knowledge. You can either wait for circumstances to arise and only then try to figure it out (could be fatal), or you can learn from others; and some of that learning is in stories, either real or fictional doesn’t really make a difference to the moral of the story.
Science fiction allows to create exactly the amount of detail needed to explore the application of some bit of knowledge. No more, no less; no BAGGAGE. History is loaded with baggage; in fact, without knowing the baggage you cannot know history. I think that is the point of the book this page is discussing.
But science fiction turns all that around; eliminates the baggage and by so doing reveals more clearly the point being taught, which because of its complexity may require a story to convey a single idea.
Consider the story of the girl captured by reptilian aliens and raised in their way of thinking, the “Talma”. The teacher draws two circles on a paper and asks a student, how many ways are there from this circle to that? The student identified one path and was dismissed from the school. Another student drew two paths and was dismissed. But the human girl said, “There is no limit to the number of paths”, the correct answer. Some paths are more efficient but that wasn’t stipulated. It is thinking out of the box in popular language.
Same story; different page. The children are making a game and it is probably one you have played (as have I). Each child adds a rule to the game while obeying rules already created. The human girl was the last to make a rule. She said, “I win!” and the other children said, “How can you do that?” and she said, “I created a rule that says I win”. Another said, “But any of us could have done that!” to which she replied, “Yes, but I did it FIRST” [Barry Longyear, “The Tomorrow Testament”, https://www.hazelden.org/OA_HTML/hazAuthor.jsp?author_id=331
The application to the Real World ™
Vietnam War is likely the real world model for these stories. Russia and its proxy North Vietnam versus United States of American and its proxy South Vietnam. How can we extricate from that?
So this book, Tomorrow Testament, explores that very question. The human girl raised in the enemy way of thinking now can see the binding rule that if broken unjams everything. It is like a logjam on a river; it is a dangerous job to find the log that, if removed or moved, will unjam everything.
In the story, the girl identifies that the binding rule is the treaty to support humans on a contested planet; and the reptile people, the Drac, have a similar binding rule. She tells the humans to abrogate the treaty, walk away from it. So, reluctantly, they do; and suddenly this contested planet now must make peace, or not, but at least does not drag into it two empires.
So it is that Richard Nixon abandoned military involvement in South Vietnam. Naturally it fell to North Vietnam, but with the Americans gone, the Russians also left, and Vietnam seems to have done fairly well for itself since then with tourism flourishing at HaLong Bay in particular.
Its application to me: I now look for “binding rules” when I seem to not be making progress in something. It is a rule YOU MUST BREAK to make progress. Adam faced such a choice. I do from time to time; a matter as simple as tending to my family OR going to church. Tending to family is a rule, going to church is a rule, if family won’t go to church then you have a choice to make.
“Do you find more inspiration and wisdom in science fiction, than say in real history ( if it even exists) ?”
Yes. Real History, as you hint, is still just words written by people. If you have a connection to those people it makes a HUGE difference. I keep my Norwegian family history and I make it as real as possible; been back to the homesteads in Norway.
Good science fiction *is* often history! Poul Anderson, one of my favorite authors, often weaves historical events into his stories. His aliens tend to speak Danish. One such, Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, is a rich novelization of ancient Scandinavian history. It is still on the SF shelf because Poul Anderson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrolf_Kraki%27s_Saga_(novel)
Having been “turned on” to history I now study it intensely but at random; something will catch my eye and then I delve into it such as trench warfare in World War 1. The binding rules explored by science fiction author Barry Longyear played heavily in the developments of World War 1. Treaties, in other words, compel nations to war that don’t want war!
“Do the words you perceive that God gives you directly in your mind ever prove to be wrong?”
No. Occasionally they also don’t prove to be right but never wrong. That is to say, I heed an inspiration but don’t always know what calamity I just avoided. Keep in mind I use the word “God” in this context as more of a place-holder for whatever did actually advise me on these few occasions.
Sounds like an awesome book! Honestly it would be one that I would want to write 🙂 I have had what some people would call a faith crisis, but I really just let go. Based on what God has taught me, I find a lot of our attitudes and beliefs are not compatible with the root of our canon (Bible/BOM). Our driftings and failures really don’t match up with our claims.
I have tried to respond to Michael 2 several times and my computer keeps doing unpredictable things and killing off my comments.
I do believe the forces in the internet for security and usefulness will eventually be overpowered by the forces of chaos and mischief making. This is an early example.
Getting out my hula hoop. .