Difference between revisions of "Talk:Alma 32:6-16"

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I think the shift from "I ''say'' unto you" in v. 10 to "I would ''ask''" in v. 11 is curious.  Any thoughts on this, or did you have this explicitly in mind already in what you've already written?  I think using the word "say" to pose a question itself creates a kind of tension related to the tension you are describing between the absolute/general and the situational/particular.  And I think the parallel usage of "say" and "ask" raises doubled tension between what is said and what is asked.   
 
I think the shift from "I ''say'' unto you" in v. 10 to "I would ''ask''" in v. 11 is curious.  Any thoughts on this, or did you have this explicitly in mind already in what you've already written?  I think using the word "say" to pose a question itself creates a kind of tension related to the tension you are describing between the absolute/general and the situational/particular.  And I think the parallel usage of "say" and "ask" raises doubled tension between what is said and what is asked.   
  
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More tangentially, I wonder if this doesn't have bearing on our recent discussions on speculation.  The "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" phrase in [[2 Tim 3:7]] (and, less so, the "endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation" phrase in [[1 Tim 1:4]], [http://net.bible.org/verse.php?book=1%20tim&chapter=1&verse=4 NASB] translation) makes me think about the circularity problem you've written about in Alma 36 of conversion (which is fundamentally a question of knowledge, per [[Alma 36:4]]ff).  In Pastoral terms, it seems the questions here that Alma asks are aimed at breaking the endless circle of non-learning that the poor Zoramites are stuck in.
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More tangentially, I wonder if this doesn't have bearing on our recent discussions on speculation.  The "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" phrase in [[2 Tim 3:7]] (and, less so, the "endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation" phrase in [[1 Tim 1:4]], [http://net.bible.org/verse.php?book=1%20tim&chapter=1&verse=4 NASB] translation) makes me think about the circularity problem you've written about in Alma 36 of conversion (which is fundamentally a question of knowledge, per [[Alma 36:4]]ff).  In Pastoral terms, it seems the questions here that Alma asks are aimed at breaking the endless circle of non-learning that the poor Zoramites are stuck in.  --[[User:RobertC|RobertC]] 17:23, 18 Jan 2007 (UTC)
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Even more tangentially, this gets me wondering about Kierkegaard's criticisms of Hegel (your blog comment mentioning Hegel's influence on you is to blame for me thinking about this), I think studying that tension might be helpful in thinking about the tensions here.  This is probably better discussed on the lds-herm list or blog, but here's a quote from the [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/ SEP entry on Kierkegaard] that illustrates the kind of tension that I think has direct bearing on the issue I think these scriptures raise:
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:Hegelianism promised to make absolute knowledge available by virtue of a science of logic. Anyone with the capacity to follow the dialectical progression of the purportedly transparent concepts of Hegel's logic would have access to the mind of God (which for Hegel was equivalent to the logical structure of the universe). Kierkegaard thought this to be the hubristic attempt to build a new tower of Babel, or a scala paradisi — a dialectical ladder by which humans can climb with ease up to heaven. Kierkegaard's strategy was to invert this dialectic by seeking to make everything more difficult.  Instead of seeing scientific knowledge as the means of human redemption, he regarded it as the greatest obstacle to redemption. Instead of seeking to give people more knowledge he sought to take away what passed for knowledge. Instead of seeking to make God and Christian faith perfectly intelligible he sought to emphasize the absolute transcendence by God of all human categories. Instead of setting himself up as a religious authority, Kierkegaard used a vast array of textual devices to undermine his authority as an author and to place responsibility for the existential significance to be derived from his texts squarely on the reader.
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My exposure to both Kierkegaard and Hegel is somewhat superficial, but I tend to sympathize with K.'s criticism described here (though I understand this might very well be a bad caricature of Hegel).  Since you seem somewhat Hegelian, I'd be interested in your response.
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--[[User:RobertC|RobertC]] 23:35, 17 Jan 2007 (UTC)
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:With a glance over my shoulder at Matthew, I proceed to respond. Hegel's most immediate effect in philosophy was a divide between "left Hegelianism" and "right Hegelianism," the former understanding Hegel to have articulated a logic of absolute science that relativized or even overcomes (according to a famous ''Aufhebung'') God, and the latter understanding Hegel to have articulated the most beautiful systematic theology ever in a perfect sophistication of religious thought. The clash was curious because Hegel's work was being read on the one hand as reason at last to relegate religion to a historical (and ideological) moment and on the other hand as a means finally to silence the critics of religion. Kierkegaard was responding to right Hegelianism, not directly to Hegel. That is, he was criticizing the general atmosphere of European theology, which had become overwhelmingly Hegelian. The question of Kierkegaard's relation to Hegel, then, is at the least a question of mediation, but the question also requires one to look quite carefully at how close the right Hegelians were to Hegel's original project, and that is a difficult question to answer.
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:With all of that said, I really enjoy Kierkegaard, and I think his call to radical faith deserves profound attention. The way he went about accomplishing that call is what is ultimately curious to me. I think he did it in a way very like the way in which Socrates issued a call to radical ethics (which is not, in the end, all too different from radical faith). Socrates employed a sort of absolute reason, an unquestionable because universal kind of logic. But rather than taking it up deductively, he took it into the streets and employed it in concrete situations, real conversations with real people (here is the strength of Plato's literary capturing of Socrates' experiences). Socrates, then, set up (I believe on purpose) a tension between the absoluteness of reason and the concrete reality of a face-to-face encounter (and you can see where I'm headed with Alma). The course of his conversations was quite simple: he would draw out of the person he spoke to a couple of beliefs, and then he would drag them through a dialectical exploration of those beliefs according to the strictest standards of absolute reason. When the moment of strict ''aporia'' arrived, the situation's abstract qualities would crumble, and the person encountered would be reduced to the face-to-face reality of the concrete situation. Socrates and his companion would be reduced to concrete community. In those dialogues where Socrates goes beyond the aporetic moment (in, say, the ''Republic''), I think the point of the initial dialectic is to establish a community that then goes about thinking together, whether or not there is anything particular accomplished. As I read Socrates, he summons absolute reason precisely to reject it in favor of the engagement, the encounter, the community. Kierkegaard, I think, does the same with right Hegelianism. Kierkegaard uses Hegelian dialectical constantly, the rigors of the logic that was incredibly popular at the time. But he calls on it precisely to allow it to overcomplicate itself and crumble, so that the thinkers are left with the radical experience of faith. (I'm not sure exactly how to think about community in Kierkegaard, and it is a subject I'd like to take up.) This is my reading of Kierkegaard in short.
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:In a sense, I see Alma as being somewhere between Kierkegaard and Socrates. His use of absolute reason seems to be, in the end, a summons to radical faith, as well as a summons to radical ethics (like I say, I don't know that they are that far from each other). However, when Alma gets to the latter portion of the chapter, his method differs greatly from Socrates' or Kierkegaard's, and so it will be interesting to work through a lot of those details. But that work will have to pave its own way as we get there.  --[[User:Joe Spencer|Joe Spencer]] 15:00, 18 Jan 2007 (UTC)
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Very helpful, thanks.  --[[User:RobertC|RobertC]] 17:23, 18 Jan 2007 (UTC)
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Revision as of 09:06, 3 November 2007

Personal comments

Here in these verses I feel to point out just a couple of things. First is that because they felt as though they were considered dross of their brethern this very impression of how there brethern portrayed them caused them to be humble. They were treated as the waste of something very preciuos. The rich Zoramites held themselves to be silver and they considered the poor to be their waste. Going back to how God looks upon the heart of the man and not the outward appreance. Knowing that I think that the spirit was able to show to Alma that their hearts were ready to hear the gospel because of the way that they had been treated. Do we not find the more humble in spirit those that have been despised and rejected of men? It keeps mens hearts from feeling as though they don't need God. Otherwise if all is going well then what are we to look to a higher power for? God gives us trials so that we do remember him. When we go through these trials and we still search for God then he knows that we are humble and ready to hear his word. --Jeff Batt 04:50, 24 Oct 2006 (UTC)

Philosophy versus Faith in Alma 32

Okay, Robert. I'm trying to work through the very beginning of the discourse in order to make sense of things here. Reading through what you have posted over the past couple of days, I am compelled to confess the strength of your reading. At the same time, I don't see any way at all yet that the strength of my own has been diminished. I'm wondering, then, if there aren't two strains running through the whole of it, and I think I may have located a way of thinking about these two intertwined themes. I've only just jotted down some initial thoughts on the exegesis here, but let me spell it out a tad more here:

Verses 9-11 sound so profoundly Socratic: Alma asserts the Zoramite position, and then he asks questions in order to force them to engage their own claims. It seems quite clear that Alma's purpose in doing so is to help the Zoramites toward a moment of aporia, to show them that there is a paradox underlying their beliefs, if one follows the logic to the conclusion (this is precisely the Socratic elenchus). But what is interesting is that with verse 12, which forms a curious inclusio with verse 8, Alma abandons the Socratic method entirely, and he never comes to the climactic aporia. What on earth is at work here? It seems to me that Alma regards the Zoramites as bound under a very "logical" or "philosophical" worldview, and he is trying to work between their absolute reason and his own radical un-reason (embodied wonderfully in, say, Alma 36). If there are two worldviews at work here, a sort of Aristotelian worldview on the one hand (Zoramites) and a sort of Kierkegaardian worldview on the other hand (Alma), then the remainder of the discourse is going to be an attempt to draw the two together, to allow the one to give way to the other. The Socratic method would be an interesting way to do that, except that it allows for a sort of absolute reason Alma does not apparently want to affirm. Does this explain the intertwined double-reading of the seed/word business? Is Alma at once trying to draw the Zoramites into thinking about the meaning of faith in the context of engaging a true or false messenger and trying to speak the language of experimentalism, of pragmatism, of logic and philosophy? Is he trying to open the possibility of an experimentalism that confirms one's trust in a messenger so that one develops a very real and vibrant faith (in a messenger)? How do these two worlds collide here? --Joe Spencer 16:13, 15 Jan 2007 (UTC)

I love your point about Alma engaging the humble Zoramites' position in a Socratic way. Yes, I think this opens up different possibilities for reading the later seed-word mataphor. Two more thoughts for now that I want to explore more: (1) The mention of wisdom in these passages seems very significant, esp. in light of the "perfect knowledge" discussed later (this is why I've mentioned that I think "perfect knowledge" should be read with the temple in mind; by the way, I think "perfect knowledge" is a mighty curious term that Alma uses here, and should be considered particularly in light of 2 Ne 9:13ff...). (2) What Alma is really saying about faith in the seed-word section. So far I've been looking at only the initial process of coming to know the seed is good, but I think this is clearly not the focus of his sermon, and has practically nothing to do with the kind of faith he is trying to describe. I think when I get to looking at the latter portion of the sermon more carefully, I will see the main thrust and purpose of the sermon being much more along the lines you are suggesting. This is what I was vaguely hinting at when I wrote the bit about learning if the seed is good or not is a "microcosmic example" of how faith and belief differ from knowledge, but this is not the essence of faith itself (only, perhaps, how one might begin to have faith). I'm sort of ashamed to realize how badly I've read this chapter before, but I was slightly comforted in seeing similar weaknesses in Millet and McConkie's commentary which, interestingly, seems to impose a lot of concepts from Lectures on Faith onto Alma 32. --RobertC 17:29, 15 Jan 2007 (UTC)

I am presently trying very hard to keep from making any comments about Millet and McConkie's commentary. --Joe Spencer 21:42, 15 Jan 2007 (UTC)

I hope you detected the restraint in my comment (James 4:11). I meant "comforted" above in the sense that I have a scapegoat (in their commentary itself and in a shared heritage...). I've found it a useful reference in terms of understanding Mormon culture and a benchmark for what I think are common readings of certain passages. Enough said. --RobertC 23:06, 15 Jan 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. Back to work. --Joe Spencer 14:48, 16 Jan 2007 (UTC)

Saying a question in v. 10

Joe, what you wrote is startling to me--in the good sense of startling.

I think the shift from "I say unto you" in v. 10 to "I would ask" in v. 11 is curious. Any thoughts on this, or did you have this explicitly in mind already in what you've already written? I think using the word "say" to pose a question itself creates a kind of tension related to the tension you are describing between the absolute/general and the situational/particular. And I think the parallel usage of "say" and "ask" raises doubled tension between what is said and what is asked.

More tangentially, I wonder if this doesn't have bearing on our recent discussions on speculation. The "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" phrase in 2 Tim 3:7 (and, less so, the "endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation" phrase in 1 Tim 1:4, NASB translation) makes me think about the circularity problem you've written about in Alma 36 of conversion (which is fundamentally a question of knowledge, per Alma 36:4ff). In Pastoral terms, it seems the questions here that Alma asks are aimed at breaking the endless circle of non-learning that the poor Zoramites are stuck in. --RobertC 17:23, 18 Jan 2007 (UTC)

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