On what it feels like to be a Mormon ‘apologist’

Last updated on: January 5, 2019 at 3:49 pm by Dan Peterson

On what it feels like to be a Mormon ‘apologist’ 2019-01-05T15:49:34-07:00 Dan Peterson

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We drove around the Arc de Triomphe tonight, in Paris
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I published this article in the Deseret News on 29 October 2015:

Few, if any, medicines cure every patient. Even the best pharmaceuticals can sometimes cause harm, hence the obligatory warnings. One in 7 flu vaccinations leads to coughing, abdominal pain or nausea. One in a hundred causes fever.

But this scarcely means that vaccinations are without value.

So, too, with “apologetics,” arguments marshaled to defend a (typically religious) position. Few arguments will convince everybody — otherwise, obviously, informed people wouldn’t still hold differing political, economic, philosophical and religious opinions. But that fact doesn’t, in itself, prove the arguments bad.

Some who’ve failed to benefit from apologetic arguments for Mormonism claim that the arguments are therefore worthless, or even worse. Of course, it’s difficult to know how well they understood the arguments — in my experience, many critics have plainly misunderstood the reasoning — or how much relevant material they’ve actually encountered in the first place.

But perhaps I can offer my own perspective, that of someone who’s been deeply involved in Mormon apologetics for nearly three decades.

Are there still debates? Absolutely. Just as there are about the authorship of the Homeric poems and of Shakespeare’s plays. Do problems remain? Certainly. Do some questions still lack answers? Absolutely. We would love, for instance, to find an inscription identifying the ruins of Zarahemla. It would also be nice to know whether horses, in the modern sense, existed in the Americas in Nephite times, or whether perhaps the Nephites called some unfamiliar other animal a horse — as the Greeks did when they encountered Egypt’s hippopotamus. (“Hippopotamus” is Greek for “river horse”; in German, a hippopotamus is a “Nilpferd,” or “Nile horse.”)

Years ago, my friend Louis Midgley alerted me to an anecdote that the eminent Protestant church historian Martin Marty once used to make a point about Mormonism: The famous 18th-century French hostess Marie de Vichy-Chamrond, the Marquise du Deffand, friend of Voltaire and other leading intellectuals of her day, was conversing with Cardinal de Polignac. He told her that the martyr St. Denis, first Christian bishop of Paris, had taken up his head and walked a hundred miles after his execution. Madame du Deffand replied, “In such a promenade, it is the first step that is difficult.” She meant, of course, that it’s not the claim that St. Denis walked a hundred miles that poses a difficulty. Maybe he really walked only 99 miles. Or perhaps he walked a hundred and two. Such differences mean little. The fundamental question is whether, after his beheading, he walked at all. If that essential point has been granted, the rest is merely a footnote.

In my judgment, which I know is shared by others in my “apologist” circles, there’s far more than enough evidence to justify confidence in that “first step” with respect to Joseph Smith, who restored The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and translated the Book of Mormon, and Mormonism.

The witnesses to the Book of Mormon, the complexity of its content and the speed of its dictation, the manifold ways in which it and other revelations given through Joseph Smith seem to fit the ancient milieu that they purport to reflect, the abundant evidence of Joseph’s sincerity and good character, the profundity of his teachings — these and many other things seem so striking that, for us, many other controversies resemble quibbles over whether St. Denis walked a hundred miles or only 99. (For reading suggestions on some of these topics, see my previous column “Some aids to nourish our faith.“)

Some critics claim to detect desperation in contemporary Mormon apologetics. For myself and, I think I can safely say, for others whom I know, this simply isn’t true. We’re excited and exhilarated by what we see. Of course, we try to defend the Restoration against attack. In this, we follow a remark from an essay on C.S. Lewis by the late Austin Farrer that long served as something of an unofficial motto for the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies and its successor, Brigham Young University’s Maxwell Institute:

“Though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.”

We’re much more thrilled, though, about positive arguments that, we believe, illustrate the credibility of Mormon claims. They can strengthen faith and, where necessary, create doubts about doubts.

Reposted from Paris, France

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