I like this post a lot, by the way. My sweet, faithful Grandma used to say, If you hear something at church that just doesn’t sit right, it’s probably because it’s not right.

Mark, I really like your point:

I am also inclined to believe that whatever it is that God might do differently from us does not derive from his ability to do away with reason, but instead from his better access to data.

I think this sums it up perfectly. If God commands us to do something that we think is crazy or wrong, say if he commands Nephi to kill Laban, or if he lets the world be filled with evil acts, it’s not because he actually thinks that killing and evil acts are good where we misunderstand them and think they’re bad; he simply knows more than we do about which of his potential interventions to restore short-term good would cause more long-term harm.

Doc, I think this fits well with the line-upon-line model. Because as I read it, that model suggests not only that our understanding is currently quite limited (which clearly it is!), but also that it has some kind of continuity with God’s–even though we’re at a much more primitive level, we’re headed in the same direction.

RT, that’s a fascinating observation about the potential value of exploring ideas about God. And I really like your point that truly incomprehensible truths couldn’t contact us at all, and would therefore be meaningless for us. I also think an important thing to remember in theological discussion is that even though God might well be beyond our current comprehension, the ways in which we formulate doctrine are very much human. One of my Protestant professors actually makes this point about the Trinity–he argues that the “it’s a mystery” explanation is a cop-out, because the doctrine of the Trinity is a human way of describing God, which means it’s fair to subject it to the tests of human reason. God may well be a mystery and ultimate ineffable, but that doesn’t mean that doctrine should be.

Fideline, thanks for mentioning narrative; I agree that they’re often a much more powerful way of conveying truth than abstract reasoning. As you say, narratives don’t simply engage the intellect, they also engage the imagination–and that gives them a transformative power that logical arguments rarely have, I think.

Mark IV said,

So far, we haven’t produced anything like the Jesuits have, but give us time.

That’s an encouraging thought! And I like your point about how much of a role secular reasoning plays in the way we discuss our faith.

Thanks, Jessawhy. (And you’re certainly welcome to steal anything here that you think is worth stealing!) Your primary teaching example is a great one; it’s always interesting to me to see how I have to re-conceptualize the gospel to explain it to kids. I wonder if God finds it as entertaining to do that for us.

Hi, ECS! Thanks for the kind words; it’s always nice to hear that I made sense to someone.

This is a nice summation of my theological distress:

Of course God sees an infinitely greater picture and has a much fuller understanding of things than I do, but if I am to have any kind of meaningful relationship with him, I need his sense of “good” to have at least some connection to my sense of “good”—or else the goodness of God means no more to me than would the “zblgq-ness” of God (or some other nonsensical term).

Although I don’t know very much about how other Christians speak about their faith, I’ve had the thought before that we talk about ours surprisingly often in terms of secular reasoning. Alma 5 and Moroni 10 invite us to experiment, and to examine evidence. The Book of Mormon is full of phrases like “therefore, it must needs be . . .” and “…and thus we see…” which attempt to appeal to reason by constructing arguments and drawing conclusions. So far, we haven’t produced anything like the Jesuits have, but give us time.

I am also inclined to believe that whatever it is that God might do differently from us does not derive from his ability to do away with reason, but instead from his better access to data.

I personally find narratives more appealing than logic, and so I look to the scripture stories for examples of how God interacts with His children in my own search to understand His nature and my relationship with Him.