I realize now that it is not midnight I meant Kevin Barney.

Reflections on the Documentary Hypothesis
Dialogue Spring 2000 Vol 33 No 1 page 57-99.

I also noticed I called him Wendall when I meant O. Kendall White. And the table which puts White in the Secular Liberal range can be found on 62.

Boot to the head.

Maybe a different J.?

I agree Matt that BOM translation is still grossly missunderstood.

Second, I understand the points made and nod to a lot of them, within my own family and immediate relations there has been something of a change in attitude over the past few years on the history of the church and the humanity of the individuals within it.

However, in saying that, I think if you head down the road of reducing the miraculous in Mormonism you will remove the spiritual centre and leave a protestant style church not entire dissimilar from the COC or the RLDS of the 70s and 80s.

I think Bushman was the way to go with this, I see nothing wrong in suggesting that Joseph was effected by the magical world view of his time which may have helped him to have a more open view of visions and revelations than your modern fellow. The idea that he used “peepstones” to translate or big glasses or whatever does not take away from the miracle of translation. However if you start to chip away at the ancient text, or if you say that Prophets are just guys who were good leaders, Brigham wasnt really prophetic style prophet or that there was no first vision as such, then I feel the church would be unrecognizable.

This is to some effect what Joseph did to Christianity with Mormonism he challenged the established “facts” of God with his own “facts” he created a whirlwind of change. If you then say it was mostly the vision of brilliant mind, well then is it easier to say the whole thing is just a lot of whoey?

Zelph, Adam-ondi-ahman are not deal breakers, for me, but if the book of Mormon becomes a nice 19th century document does it not break the ideas of Mormonism?

As you say, and I guess what I am pointing to, is that it is nearly impossible to seperate the miracles of Joseph from the religion and leave it whole. The CoC in my opinion have done that and it has shattered them to some extent.

I think J. Stapley and his table he did a few years ago showing where people fell on a scale shows a concept of intellectual understanding of Mormonism. I think if you move the church to where Wendall White is on that scale you are going to have a greatly reduced faith.

I say all this, a believer in limited flood, limited geography, evolution and understanding that Prophets and Apostles have human nature that does not seperate from them just because they are in a calling thus they are not always correct in all things but are correct in all the ones that matter.

Sam, yeah, Machen’s Greek manual is still, so I hear, the standard. And I’m sympathetic to your sentiments.

Dave – I think there’s something to that, though I’d be hesitant to minimize the degree to which Fosdick and other Protestant liberals did, in fact, reinvent Protestant Christianity; for one thing, they completely rethought what atonement meant – a doctrine that’s pretty fundamental to Christianity. I don’t know, actually (as Jonathan points out) that the problem of inoculation actually goes as deep in Mormonism as it does for these Protestants. In terms of Christianity in general, I suspect Mormons are pretty comfortable being basically theologically conservative Christians.

Stapley – as to your question, I recommend ‘The Book of Mormon Movie.’ Also, the following pictures: here, here, etc. I was taught in Sunday School that ‘by the gift and power of God’ meant something similar to the gift of tongues helping out missionaries in the MTC to learn Spanish.

Joel – thanks.

Jonathan – I agree, actually, with the point about robustness; I think Mormonism is quite adaptable. This means, though, that adaptations are possible, and even likely.

Dave – the CoC is an interesting test case. I think they’ve had something like their own fundamentalist/modernist crisis, complete with the sort of schism from old denominations like the one Machen led.

I appreciate this thoughtful essay on the stakes of inoculation. This is History at its best–the past employed to help understand the present. I completely agree with you about the possible benefits of inoculation as a spiritual revitalization–though I think it might require an engagement in the complexity of historical inquiry that many non-historians just do not want to make