Canon, Doctrine, Truth and all that

I've been teaching Sunday School for the past year and half, and several of the issues raised in the discussion so far have come up repeatedly in class. I'll give my thoughts on just a couple.

1) Canon, doctrine and truth:
Millet, as Rob points out, gives a fairly simple test of what is "doctrine." Is it in the standard works? Is it in the teaching materials? Is it in recent conference talks? This is, to me, somewhat interesting. In his conception, "doctrine" is a superset of "canon" (which I take, I feel with good justification, to be the four standard works). He doesn't include (at least not explicitly) numerous other materials generated within the church like non-general conference talks (talks given at regional or stake conferences, for instance), church publication articles, books written by general authorities, Michael McLean soundtracks, and a host of other materials available from the church distribution center (with an easy to use order form sent out with your Ensign :)). He rather explicitly excludes arcane teachings, like the troublesome statements in the Journal of Discourse.

So, Millet proposes a two-tiered approach to the acceptability of teachings which I personally feel is over-simplifiedl; it's doctrine or it's not, with not much gray area in between. Perhaps he doesn't really feel this way, but believes its the simplest method of dealing with Christians unfamiliar with the various forms of church discourse, but I think it misses important points. Other Christians are very familiar with the "authoritativeness" questions; they get questioned again and again about why some verses in the Bible are "more true" than others. They also have to balance teachings of modern preachers against personal interpretations of scripture. It seems to me like approaching questions about arcane teachings of past prophets with that common framework is a better way to bridge gaps than to simply say "we don't teach that, so it isn't doctrine (even if one of our prophets once said it)."

2. Institutional versus Personal Revelation:
This builds a bit off the last point. The question often arises about where Truth lies, and how we can get at it. Rob mentions the promise, based on Sec 107 and backed up by many presidents of the church, that if you follow the majority of the twelve you will not go astray. That's comforting inasfar as it goes, and I have no intention of ever deviating from following the Apostles and Prophets. But...

Personal revelation must needs be in constant tension with institutional revelation. In theory it seems truth should be truth, regardless of how it is received. And we should always be able to pray and receive confirmation of revealed truths. Except often I've met sincere people who have struggled with contradictory revelations. Faithful members who pray and receive revelation that homosexuality is not a sin. Investigators who pray and receive revelation that the Book of Mormon is not true. And because of the primacy we give in the church to personal revelation I often have no recourse in such discussions but to bear my own testimony (that homosexuality is a sin, that the Book of Mormon is true) and assure them that somehow both things must be simultaneously true.

I could go on at length about truth and certainty and probably sneak in some Bayesian probability theory, but I won't.

3. Can truth change?
Faced with prophetic teachings about blackness and the mark of Cain or the essentiality of polygamy for exaltation or any number of other doctrines that were once widely believed by the church (including by its leaders) to be true and now are not, it seems to me that simply saying "that's not doctrine since we no longer teach it" is insufficient.

With regards to the practical aspects and policy positions of the church, I can understand how they might change. Men of African descent weren't given the Priesthood; now they are. There's no necessary contradiction between that and an unchangeable God revealing his will through Prophets if we accept that practices are often defined by the time in which we find ourselves (c.f. Word of Wisdom). I can reconcile things being "alright" at one point and "not alright" at another; their fundamental nature didn't change, but the environment surrounding them did, and the "goodness" or "badness" is inherently a factor of the interaction with the environment, not the object itself. Wow...that's way too unclear, even for me. Really I just mean that practices may change because of differences in the world where they occur, rather than with God.

But doctrinal statements aren't like practice (or, IMO they shouldn't be). I usually conceive of them as existing in a non-physical plane. So, for example, Millet's explanation that prophetic teachings of blood atonement were just overheated rhetoric originating from mid-19th century Mormon revivalism doesn't sit well with me. It cheapens doctrine, in a sense, making it instrumental rather than primal, as if the point of prophetic teachings isn't to illuminate, only to persuade to action. Maybe that's the right way to view it, but it will take me a lot of thinking and questioning before I'm willing to accept that model.

So this post makes it sound like I spend all my time questioning the fundamental epistemological soundness of the Church. I don't. Really, I think I've come to the same uneasy equilibrium as most of you. Some things don't make sense to me, but that's because of my limited perspective, and I'll just do my best to follow both the Prophets and my own conscience and hope they don't conflict too often. And if/when they do, I'll do my best to choose what's right and trust in God to deal with me justly.