Blake's first chapter in The Problems of Theism sets up pretty well the whole basis of LDS theology. I've long said that once you reject creation ex nihilo that the vast majority of LDS theology follows naturally. However there is also the issue of what doing theology consists of. Mormons have, despite a few theological writers, always had a deep and abiding distrust of theology. I think that this arises out of a feeling that what is important in religion isn't discussion of things, events or the like. Rather religion is about personal relationships. This isn't to say one can't or shouldn't talk metaphysics. Just that the emphasis, perhaps in part because of our rejection of ex nihilo, is on relationships with God modeled on human relationships. Just as we don't consider friendship by first turning to ontology, we ought not with God.
Allow me to quote Blake for those not familiar with his book.
Joseph Smith's most breath-taking and frankly audacious insight is that God seeks a peer relationship with us! He wants to bring us to relate to him and to one another with the very kind of interpenetrating love that hte divine persons in the Godhead have for one another. To share the very kind of love shared by the divine persons, it is necessary to be as they are: It is necessary to share a peer love. God is not after the relationship of master-to-slave, of a designer-to-the-designed, of a human to a lower species of life; rather, he seeks our love in response to his. Like a human father, he seeks to create a world that gives us the opportunity to grow and become everything that he is.
However, such peer-love is impossible in the creedal Christian tradition because by nature we do not exist in the same way that God does. (3)
I'd add that not only do we not exist in the same way but we can't exist in the same way. But beyond that I'm 100% with Blake up to this point.
I become a bit more uncomfortable when he ties this essentially with Libertarian free will. This isn't because I have huge issues over Libertarianism. I'm agnostic on the issue at best. However it does seem to me to put the cart before the horse theologically. That is it moves from a discussion of relationships conceived of non-metaphysically and instead delves right into metaphysics. That is, I suspect one might criticize Blake for doing the very thing he accuses our other Christian friends of. Of course as anyone who sees the name of this blog knows, I don't mind metaphysical discussions. And I think that in discussing punishment and responsibility Libertarian oriented theologians have a strong argument. But I admit that I'd like to see the metaphysical arguments over what is or isn't free will either tied to the nature of arguments in terms of the Other ala Levinas or else just kept separate.
Moving on I think Blake brings up an excellent argument against more Calvinist like approaches to God. (Although I think the rejection of ex nihilo as a theological starting point makes this debate a bit moot) The kind of relationship a being like God could enter into if everyone obeyed is simply weaker and less significant than relationships where those he interacts with could disobey. A genuine relationship means that there must be a gap between the two that is not dominated by one or the other. Put an other way, it is not enough for God to be Other for us. We must be, in some significant sense, Other to God. Traditional Christianity sees the gap between God and man as an ontological gap entailed by ex nihilo. Mormonism takes the interesting path of saying there is a two way gap due to an absolute ontological inability to control the Other. In a certain sense, even as we reject the metaphysical gap most other Christians embrace, we put in its place an if anything stronger gap.
So strong that I suspect some Christians get uncomfortable because it infringes upon their notion of omnipotence. But this highlights the significant difference of placing relationships logically prior to ontological absolutes like power over things.
Much of the rest of this chapter maps out the consequences of taking relationships between persons seriously as a way to understand God. I'll just invoke a slight quibble over Blake's adoption of Burber. Burber talked about the I-It relationship versus the I-Thou relationship as a way to distinguish these two basic approaches. I'd simply suggest that in the I-It relationship we're talking about "it" or "things" in a certain sense. Roughly in the sense Nietzsche talked of as a kind of power or Heidegger as a kind of technology. Things are seen as things in terms of the ability of an actor to use them and thereby dominate them. While it's certainly fruitful to approach things in this way, there is a sense where it doesn't go far enough. Things are themselves not fully open to our domination. So this I-Thou relationship perhaps ought been seen as establishing the world as being beyond total possible domination.
This is, perhaps, too much for some, although I think in the LDS tradition one can find elements of it in Orson Pratt's theology. Albeit not well developed. So I'd just say that when we talk of "Thou" we ought not always imagine it is always a human-like "Thou."
The problem is once you accept this as possible, it seems that it raises all sorts of possible problems for a theology of God based upon I-Thou. That is because if I can have an I-Thou kind of relationship with all of reality, doesn't that mean that God and man could have an I-Thou relationship with man the way a man might with his dog?
Blake of course rejects this line of reasoning. But the interesting question is why. Put an other way, what does this say about human nature, perhaps in our earlier development? While Blake's focus clearly is on human relationships with God, it seems to me that it might well be fruitful to take the basic approach but return to the more "metaphysical" questions. I think, in a way, this was what Orson Pratt attempted. Even if arguably he ultimately failed.
Responses to other chapters in Blake Ostler's The Problems With Theism and the Love of God can be found in our reading club page.
"Put an other way, it is not enough for God to be Other for us. We must be, in some significant sense, Other to God."
Very well put, Clark.
Also, I think the carpet is spelled Berber, not Burber....
Interesting point about I-Thou with humans vs. animials or objects. Does Levinas address this in terms of obligation? I just haven't read enough to know. I've also wondered about this in terms of our relationships with others being mediated by God. As I understand Levinas, the problem can be expressed in terms of a Third, and law becomes the mediator. So if I'm ineracting with an object but a human competes for my obligation, the law dictates that I am obligated to the human more than the inanimate object, and my spouse and family over other humans, etc. And so I think law is essentially God for Levinas. But then that sort of negates the possiblity for a reciprocal relationship: in what sense am I Other to the law? So Levinas seems a poor way to conceive of the issue you were raising.
But I think Mormons can appropriate Levinas by saying God mediates all of our relationships. Joseph Smith was more obligated to God than to Emma (e.g. with polygamy). Abraham was obligated to Sarah's wish to banish Hagar and Ishmael (Gen 21 I think) only when God told him to do so. All of our relationships (to things as well as humans I would argue, cf. Nibley on "dominion over the earth" meaning we must be the earth's stewards...) must be mediated through our relationship to God. Where I think this approach gets interesting is in terms of thinking about God's relationship to us. It seems to me His obligation to us is mediated through Covenants (unconditional covenants in particular, like the Abrahamic Covenant, or the New Covenant/Testament of Christ...). But then what and why is there a Covenant? Doesn't this become like Levinas' Law?
Sorry this is all quite rambly, but I think this is where Marion steps in. God is love more than he is anything else. And so Covenant and Law are just manifestations of God-as-Love. The problem is Marion is so hard to read (for me; though Levinas is pretty hard too, so this is all just my thinking inspired by attempts to read them, not really their thoughts...), and without help I get stuck trying to think about what this kind of love really means. But I think this God-as-love approach may be able to avoid the problems you're talking about. God's love toward us who are agents entails a very different kind of relationship than God's love toward objects without agency. But then, to what extent are animals agents and humans aren't? Interestingly, 1 Enoch (acc. to Margaret Barker) talks about humans as animals or angels which suggests, to me, an idea of in-the-covenant salvation. If we enter into the Covenant, God is obligated to love us. If not, we will be cast out and "have no promise."
So, on this view, agency in this life is the very process by which we work out whether God will relate to us as an It or a Thou in the eternities. (It'll be a miracle if anyone can follow my stream of consciousness here, but I have to run now and don't have time to rework this thought....)
While I don't recall Levinas addressing this I-thou with respect to other objects Derrida, who basically adopts a critiqued Levinas after the mid-70's, does. Derrida's clearly thinking of all of Heidegger's considerations on things though as well which ends up being pretty much the same as Levinas. The whole Levinas/Heidegger differences is somewhat complex. Certainly Levinas is taking a different approach and thinks he's critiquing Heidegger but I think he ends up treading over most of the same ground. Much like a lot of Derrida arises out of rethinking language and signs in Husserl but then ends up being Heideggarian. This isn't to deny some differences and definitely differences in tone. But it's more akin to the two Heideggers before and after the so-called "Turn." More a change of emphasis than a significant change of philosophy.
I should add that Levinas did rework his philosophy somewhat after Derrida's critique in "Violence and Metaphysics." So while I tend to emphasize the commonalities there definitely are differences. And Heidegger certainly did change views on some things. Derrida may have changed views somewhat as well, although given the deomonstrative texts of his middle period and his focus on "applied deconstruction" in his latter period it is a tad harder to pin him down.
Anyway, back to your original question I'd have to check in Levinas. I don't know off the top of my head. In Heidegger though there's definitely that "letting be" that is a kind of obligation to the Things themselves. Although you can also see this sense in his authentic/inauthentic modes of being for Daesin in Being and Time. And in his latter texts with "What is a Thing?" or "On the Origin of the Work of Art" he's pretty explicit.
The issue of God as mediator through obligation is interesting. I'd have to think on that a bit. Certainly the scriptures say we all hold obligation to God whether we know about it or not. But if we don't know about it (the interesting case) in what way can we say this grounds our relationships? So I think we have to be careful.
But certainly as relationships develop the matrix of obligations affects all our other relationships. This is rather obvious in marriage for instance. Your marriage doesn't just change your relationship with your girlfriend (or boyfriend). It significantly impacts your relationships with parents, spouse, friends and so forth. In a sense the obligation is an uniting that changes the very nature of "self."
So I think the notion of unity with the Godhead, for Mormons, does flow out of our view of relating and relationships. That'll be important for Blake as well as he starts to discuss atonement and so forth. So I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves.
Regarding Marion. I'll admit I've read some of his work. But I tend to find it problematic on many levels. I understand, I think, what he's getting after and what he means by "God is love." However I think it's hard to reconcile to an LDS view personally. (Although clearly others disagree - Jim Faulconer in particular likes Marion much more than I do) Maybe if I read more Marion I'd like him more, but I have my doubts.
If you're interested I've discussed Marion before. In this exchange with Jim, he's touched upon frequently, even if he isn't the main focus. (Transcendence is) Way back in the early days of this blog I'd discussed Marion and Anselm and laid out a few complaints. Which I know not everyone agrees with. I tend to take Marion as entailing a kind of hidden mystic Hegelism which I don't like too much. I'd also touched on Marion in a discussion of Nietzsche and Christianity.
But ultimately he's one of those figures I'd read more if I had more time. But given my time I've decided he's not a high priority.
I'd add that I think it's very hard to reconcile Marion to LDS notions of God as person or an embodied God. Marion's God is much, much more a mysticized One of neoPlatonism from what I can see. So while some of his discourse about love is valuable, his approach to God tends to be more problematic (IMO). I find Levinas so fascinating because he moves from the traditional view of God as Absolute Other than is traditional in Christian and Jewish mysticism and philosophy. That is God as Other is the starting place but he uses this to consider the "other minds" problem and sees each person as Other in a way logically identical to the issue of God as Other. Obviously from an LDS perspective that is interesting both in terms of content but also as a source for useful arguments applicable to LDS theology and metaphysics.
BTW - regarding animals and perhaps the earth, I think the ecological readings of Heidegger are fairly common. I note Zimmerman's article for the Cambridge Companion to Heidegger on this topic is online. It's "Heidegger and Deep Ecology" and is probably worth reading. I suspect the same ideas are present to varying degrees in the other figures we've discussed in the general Heideggerian movement.
Clark & Robert: I'd just point out that in the next chapter I critique Kant's notion of heteronomy in his ethics. That is, for Kant our moral obligations arise out of our shared sameness in humanity (our autonomy) and not out of the demands of the Other and otherness. I critique Kant precisely in his failure to recognize that we also have ethical duties to treat animals kindly and grounding ethics in our shared humanity cannot speak to this ethical demand. Now Christine Kosgaard has argued that Kant's ethic can accommodate ethical duties owed to animals. Her argument is that Kant sees treating animals unkindly is demeaning to our humanity. See here: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~korsgaar/CMK.FellowCreatures.pdf However, she acknowledgeds that it creates a tension in Kant's thought.
In any event, my agape theory of ethics grounds our obligations precisely in the uniqueness of the other and the Other's call to us at various levels (relying more on Buber and Levinas and Kierkegaard and -- dare I say it? -- Jesus). I think our ethic must accommodate the fact that we have deeper obligations to our children and to other humans than to Fido down the street.
Second, Clark I just wanted to say that there is nothing to say or write about in a history of LDS theology or various views unless folks do the kind of thing I am doing. I am not doing a systematic theology -- I am using analytic tools to explore possibilities of LDS thought. That I sometimes come down with a preferred view rather than just mentioning that there are views is important because there are no views to mention unless someone expresses a view. There are areas where several views are possible within LDS thought, e.g., spirits/intelligences as uncreated (Joseph Smith's view) or spirits as organized from more basic non-personal intelligences (McConkie's view) or first personal intelligences then a spirit birth and then organized spirits (B.H. Roberts' view). However, which view one takes has momentous implications for how a theology can be worked out and what we are. In the end, I adopt Joseph's view, remain agnostic about whether it can be accommodated within B.H. Roberts' view and reject McConckie's/Penrose's view on both textual and substative grounds. Anyway, a history of LDS ideas is different than an exploration of those ideas -- at least as I see it.
Blake, please don't think I'm criticizing you for exploring ideas. I just think that the range of ideas needs expressed somehow and I don't see any resources doing that. In the absence of that more encyclopedic basis then there's always the danger that one idea gets taken as THE idea. (Look at what happened with McConkie)
Of course had I the time I'd set up a wiki or use the FAIR wiki to fix this. But as you know the amount of time I have free is rather small of late. Once we get some more employees at work and some more machinery that should ease up somewhat.
Signature a couple of years ago contacted me regarding an Encyclopedia of Mormon Theology and asked me to do the epistemology entry for some reason. But nothing ever came of it. I think something like that would be extremely useful though. Something like those Blackwell Guides to philosophy, only with Mormon topics.
Thanks for the links, Clark. Your "Anselm and Marion" post was particularly thought-provoking, I really need to dig in try to make more sense of Marion.
My sense has been that he's ultimately trying to argue that if Being is a mortal concept and God is extra-mortal, then thinking about God in terms of being is to reduce our view of(/toward) God to an icon in that God then becomes just a reflection of ourselves. Love then, for Marion, is letting God be God and letting God reveal ("give") himself to us as he is, on his own terms (like "the wind [that] bloweth where it listeth"--I read John 3:8 this morning for SS...). So it's not so much that God can't have a body "tangible as a man's," it's just that we can't say that this concept tells us the most compelling thing about God. My point is that I think Marion is compatible with a Mormon view, esp. when D&C 88, 93, etc. are considered, where God is described in terms of light and truth, not just having a tangible body.
I don't dispute we can do this (although I think the way you read him changes his discourse somewhat). I just think Marion limits God in the manner he does this. While one could say this isn't incompatible with the ways God reveals himself in Mormon eyes, I'm not sure that captures what Marion is after. Marion is, I think, quite wrapped up in the ousia and hypostasis distinction that forms the tradition of the Trinity. Further I think one has to read him in terms of Augustine and Anselm and perhaps even Aquinas. Yet, I'd argue, while there is a lot of value in those thinkers, the basic stance towards God focuses in so much on the ousia that it ends up distorting God.
I suspect I'm somewhat repeating my rejoinder to Jim Faulconer from all those years ago. But to me Marion is still caught up in this particular way of framing the discourse of God which is in turn still trapped in thinking God via the God of the philosophers.
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