Is Mormonism More A-Philosophical Than A-Theological?

Mormonism has recently (over the last few years) been described as “atheological,” for a number of reasons (focus on praxis, no official theology–creedal or otherwise–no widely recognized or official theologians, continuing revelation, etc). I think this is mostly right, though the designation is also unfortunate because this seems to imply that there is no such thing as Mormon theolog(ies), which is manifestly not the case. (It’s more accurate to say that systematic theology is something contemporary Mormonism generally resists, though there are famous and influential Mormon systematic theologies). Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the way Mormons conceive of and “do” theology does seem to be different in many ways from the ways Christian theology has been conceived/done. Atheology (or some variant) might, for the moment, be the most useful descriptive term. 

But I wonder if it isn’t more accurate to say that Mormonism is more anti-philosophical than anti-theological. I’ve been reading Givens’ and Grows’ new bio on Parley Pratt over the holiday break. The authors compare Pratt to St. Paul regarding Pratt’s influence in shaping, telling, and publishing early Mormonism. There seem to be sufficient parallels to make the comparison, but the authors’ assertion that Paul systematized Jesus’ teachings is not very accurate, in my opinion. Paul seems to be little aware of Jesus’ teachings and parables or even his life events, at least according to what we see in Paul’s letters. Paul was almost single-mindedly concerned to explain the consequences of Jesus’ resurrection for Gentiles and Jews. In comparison to the import of the resurrection, he payed nominal attention to what Christ’s death might have meant; his main focus was on his own encounter with the resurrected Christ and what Christ’s resurrection meant for all of humanity. In a way Paul contributed to a systematization of early Christian thought, but more in the sense of becoming an additional source rather than doing systematic work himself. Paul’s corrections of his followers regarding particular doctrines or practices and his missionary travels themselves do a sort of systematic work but Paul himself is decidedly not a systematic theologian or philosopher. Here, of course, I’m following Badiou’s interpretation of Paul, but I think this is generally accurate. I mention Badiou purposively because for Badiou, Paul is the anti-philosopher par excellence. Paul is a fervent believer first and a fervent believer second. He had no interest in creating a philosophical system or in elucidating laws and norms for behavior and ritual. For Paul the Christian is the bearer of universal love and truth, that which is beyond the law, and therefore beyond philosophy. Paul was interested in how fidelity to the event of the Resurrection might manifest itself in the believer, not in how the believer must assent to particular rational principles in order to be called a Christian.

I see Pratt along these lines as well, though he certainly did systematize and propound what essentially became the earliest methodical reading of Mormonism (more so than Paul did with early Christianity). But in Pratt, above all else, we have, like Paul, a fervent believer in the truth of the event of Mormonism, but not as essentially tied to the life and character of Joseph Smith. As the authors point out, Pratt was somewhat unusual in that he was one of the first to be converted by the Book of Mormon before knowing anything about the Prophet. Perhaps even more importantly, it was the event of the Book of Mormon more than its contents to which Pratt initially began his faithfulness. Though he systematized and defended what he saw as Mormon thought, Pratt seems to me to embody the anti-philosopher more than the philosopher, embodying one more concerned with the subject, truth, and universality, the preaching of the word as truth, than one concerned with describing a system of rational principles which is self-sufficient.

And here is where I think we might see Mormonism itself as potentially a-philosophical; not that it’s irrational or fideistic (decidedly not) but that Mormonism is made up of people preaching (virtually everyone is a preacher in some way in Mormonism), practicing, imitating. Not only no official philosophers and theologians, but even the practice of philosophy is theoretically discouraged (in a different way than philosophy simply being condescendingly looked down upon, which is usually the case). I mean here that in theory Mormonism is simply preached as fidelity to events and practiced, almost mnemonically at times, as a cluster of practices, traditions, and rituals, not as a rationally sufficient system of doctrines and teachings, though doctrines and teachings make up part of its core. Pratt seems to embody this, both in his preaching and in his defending. In other words, in some ways he’s even more like the Apostle Paul than Givens and Grow suspected. And therefore Mormonism today is possibly even more Prattian than one might otherwise suspect. The possibility that Mormonism is anti-philosophical more than anti-theological is something I want to come back to in the future.

[Parenthetically, Joseph Spencer's article on Badiou and Mormonism in BYU Studies, supports, in general I think, this view].