SCHOLARSHIP AND THE SEEKER
One of the most persistent over generalizations among the public is that scholarly opinions of ancient documents, such as their authorship and dates of composition, are derived from a largely objective process. Perhaps no one imagines the process is as simple and straightforward as placing a manuscript under a microscope, chemically testing it or measuring it by a simple metric, yet many rigidly assume proposed dates and other determinations as though derived from just such a direct and reliable method. In reality, most dates assigned to ancient texts are not discoveries, but judgments, authorship and the language of composition are assertions based on interpretation of evidence, and theories such as its influences and the reason for which it was written are reasonable inferences, often proposed for further discussion. How easily they are taken for concrete facts.
This is not a shortcoming of critical methods, just how results are often viewed. Judgments are unavoidable. Historians work with incomplete information. They must weigh probabilities, compare theories, and make determinations based upon the evidence available to them. The problem arises later, when those judgments become inherited assumptions, and those assumptions become established facts in the minds of subsequent generations.
Many critics of modern scholarship believe that this tendency is driven primarily by atheism. It is certainly true that many scholars are atheists, agnostics, or otherwise skeptical of religious claims. Yet atheism is not the only explanation for the patterns we observe. The pressures we should look to first are much more human and far more universal.
Imagine a young scholar beginning his career with no strong position on the authorship or dating of a particular text. He examines the evidence. He studies the arguments. Several theories remain plausible. Some appear slightly stronger than others. Eventually he reaches a conclusion and publishes his findings.
Up to this point, the process is generally healthy. The change occurs after the judgment has been made. The scholar is no longer acting as a judge weighing possibilities. He now becomes an advocate for the conclusion he has reached. This is natural. Human beings do not spend years developing an argument only to present it with the same uncertainty they felt before reaching it. Once a conclusion has been adopted, evidence supporting it receives greater attention while evidence against it receives greater scrutiny. Again, this is not dishonesty. It is ordinary human behavior.
The next generation enters the discussion and encounters not the original uncertainty, but the polished conclusion. The caveats remain in the footnotes, but the confidence grows in the summaries. What began as a probability becomes a likelihood. What began as a likelihood becomes a consensus. What began as a consensus becomes a fact. At no point was certainty actually established.
This process becomes particularly visible in discussions of authorship and dating. A document claims to have been written by a particular individual. The evidence is insufficient to prove the claim. Rather than remaining permanently agnostic, scholars often feel pressure to choose between authenticity and pseudepigraphy. Since falsely authenticating a document carries greater professional risk than falsely rejecting one, the safer position gradually becomes preferred.
The result is an asymmetrical system. If a document is authentic but labeled pseudepigraphal, little damage is done to the scholar's reputation. The error is difficult to prove and rarely revisited. If a document is declared authentic and later shown to be pseudepigraphal, however, the mistake becomes highly visible.
Given those incentives, caution naturally moves in one direction. This tendency does not require hostility toward religion. It does not require an anti-supernatural worldview. It arises from ordinary risk management. The same pattern can be observed in countless other fields. Institutions generally reward errors of caution more than errors of acceptance.
A second problem lies in the reconstruction of historical development. Scholars often speak confidently about how doctrines evolved, how offices developed, how myths expanded, how language changed, and how communities transformed over time. Yet these reconstructions are themselves built upon earlier assumptions.
A text is dated late because it contains a developed doctrine. The doctrine is considered developed because it appears in texts dated late. The dates are then reinforced by the doctrine, and the doctrine is reinforced by the dates.
Such models may be correct. Sometimes they are undoubtedly correct. Yet they often possess a degree of certainty that exceeds the evidence supporting them. History is rarely so tidy.
Ideas do not always develop in straight lines. Communities do not all evolve at the same rate. Ancient people were not following the timelines later historians would construct for them. An individual may be ahead of his age. A remote community may preserve an older tradition. A teaching may emerge, disappear, and later reappear. A text may be revised while preserving genuinely ancient material.
The past was a living reality, not a chart in a textbook. For this reason I remain skeptical whenever certainty exceeds evidence. That skepticism applies equally to traditional claims and scholarly claims. A document's self-identification should not be accepted uncritically. Neither should it be dismissed uncritically. The honest answer in many cases is that we do not know.
Modern scholarship often treats this answer as a temporary embarrassment to be overcome. I increasingly suspect that uncertainty is the more reasonable conclusion more often than we admit. Schools and those offering research grants prefer conclusions. Publishers insist on them and readers are disappointed without them. Careers are built upon conclusions, while “I do not know,” though honest, rarely becomes a bestselling book.
Yet uncertainty is not weakness. It is simply an acknowledgment of reality. The further back we travel into antiquity, the fewer witnesses remain and the more dependent we become upon reconstruction. Reconstruction has value. It is necessary. But reconstruction should never be mistaken for observation. Nor should what we can prove based on evidence be taken for all that that was.
Many of the dates, authorships, and developmental models that dominate modern discussions of ancient literature may ultimately prove correct. The problem for the spiritual seeker is not that scholars reach conclusions, but that the distinction between evidence and inference is too often forgotten. When that happens, assumptions inherit the authority of facts, and future generations begin building upon foundations whose uncertainty has long since been concealed beneath the weight of repetition.
For the academic, this amounts to some improper conclusions. When it becomes a burden placed upon seekers or those proposing faith based systems, or a tool for controlling or influencing personal beliefs, it becomes manipulative and oppressive to conscience, thought and religious liberty. It arises from a category error that should be countered and corrected so that faith based beliefs and systems, if detrimental or unhelpful, may be properly countered within the framework in which they exist.
The Responsibility of the Seeker
If the limitations of scholarship are real, it does not follow that scholarship is without value. Quite the opposite. The seeker of truth, who yearns for understanding, should be willing to learn from anyone. Atheists, believers, historians, clergy, skeptics, mystics, and scholars of every tradition may possess pieces of information that help illuminate the whole.
The mistake lies not in listening to them, but in surrendering judgment to them. Many people reject scholarship because they perceive bias. Others reject faith because they perceive bias. Both approaches are immature. The fact that a source possesses biases does not make it worthless. It simply means that its limitations must be understood.
An atheist scholar may be predisposed toward naturalistic explanations. A committed believer may be predisposed toward interpretations that support cherished doctrines. A denominational scholar may face pressures from institutions, traditions, congregations, or publishers. An independent scholar may face pressures of a different sort, including the desire to be original, controversial, or recognized. No one stands completely outside such influences.
The solution is not to trust no one. The solution is to trust no one completely. The independent seeker is therefore wise to consider diverse opinions while remaining free to accept none of them. The purpose of examining evidence is not to discover whose authority should replace our own. It is to better understand the matter under consideration.
Indeed, accepting either the scholar's conclusion or the believer's conclusion without personal investigation merely replaces one appeal to authority with another. Such dependence is intellectually dangerous because conclusions are always downstream from assumptions, and assumptions are often invisible to those who hold them.
Even when a scholar presents evidence fairly, the seeker should remember that evidence and interpretation are not identical. A person presenting evidence is often presenting an interpretation simultaneously. The facts themselves may be accurate while the framework used to organize them remains debatable. This is why serious inquiry requires looking beyond conclusions and examining the evidence directly whenever possible.
Nor should we imagine that the strongest interpretation available today must therefore be correct. Evidence is frequently incomplete. Sometimes it is misleading. Sometimes it points strongly in one direction only to be recontextualized by new discoveries. Entire scholarly reconstructions have been overturned by a single manuscript, inscription, archaeological find, or forgotten source. What once appeared decisive can become questionable overnight.
This does not mean evidence is useless. It means evidence has limits. The desire for certainty often exceeds the amount of information available to justify it. For this reason, I have increasingly come to believe that drawing conclusions is not always the highest objective. Sometimes remaining open to multiple possibilities better reflects the actual state of the evidence. The person who prematurely closes a question may gain confidence, but confidence and truth are not always the same thing.
This is particularly important in spiritual matters. The spiritual seeker is not a scholar. He may benefit from scholarship, but he is not bound by its objectives, methods, assumptions, or restraints. The scholar seeks conclusions that can survive scrutiny within an academic community. The seeker seeks communion with God. These goals overlap at times, but they are not identical.
The reason scholarship survives being wrong is because its purpose was not to provide certainty, but to construct increasingly useful and evidence-based models of reality. Those models are provisional by design. A good historian does not expect his conclusions to remain untouched forever, he expects them to be refined, challenged, and occasionally overturned. Likewise, the purpose of testimony, as used by the faithful believer, is not to compel assent. A testimony that could compel belief would cease to function as testimony and become proof. Its purpose is different. It exists to expand the listener's awareness of possibility, invite inquiry, and encourage pursuit.
The purpose of study for a spiritual seeker, likewise, is to prepare ourselves for conversation with God on His terms, while its purpose for the academic is to better understand mankind and his world. Academic standards exist to determine what can be demonstrated publicly. Spiritual truth often concerns matters that cannot be demonstrated publicly at all. A relationship with God cannot be peer reviewed. Prayer cannot be footnoted. Revelation cannot be reproduced in a laboratory.
For this reason, the seeker's journey cannot end with research. Research is only the first step. The Book of Mormon teaches this principle plainly. Moroni does not instruct us merely to gather evidence. He instructs us to study, ponder, and then ask God. Likewise, the Doctrine and Covenants teaches that one must study a matter out in one's mind and heart before seeking divine confirmation.
The process contains multiple stages. First comes investigation. Then comes reflection. Then comes conscience. Then comes prayer. The evidence must first pass through the mind, but afterward it must also pass through the heart, and by this I do not mean emotion alone, but that internal faculty through which we perceive right and wrong, truth and falsehood, goodness and corruption. One might call it conscience, moral intuition, spiritual perception, or the light of Christ. Whatever name is preferred, it is a faculty that scholarship alone cannot replace.
After we have gathered the evidence available to us and examined it honestly, we have only completed the first portion of the work. The final portion belongs to God. There are times when spiritual insight confirms what evidence appears to indicate. There are times when it cautions patience. There are times when it overturns our expectations entirely. Such moments become tests of faith because they require choosing between confidence in our own reasoning and trust in divine guidance.
Such methods, or even interest, may sound foolish to those who believe material reality is the highest reality. Yet the seeker begins with a different premise. The seeker understands that this present world is not ultimate reality. It is a temporary environment through which ultimate reality is perceived only dimly. We see through layers of limitation, assumption, mortality, culture, language, and imperfect understanding. Under such conditions, certainty is often an illusion.
God never directed us to lean upon the research and judgment of other human beings anyway, whether they are wise and expert in their fields or not, any more than He limited our pursuit of knowledge to the books that He authored through prophets and apostles. We should not confuse any part for the whole or any required step for completion. Every part of His creation is the subject of study, and also its means. “This life is the time to prepare to meet God;” it is also a lifelong opportunity and process to seek and get to know Him, and everything in it is intended to serve that purpose, including its experiences, applications, mistakes and lessons learned.
Often we find that the journey is as important, or at times more important, than the destination. The journey is where growth occurs, while the destination is the place the journey prepares us for. An imperfect image of God, as may be assembled from purely human resources, is secondary to the ongoing relationship with the living God Himself, that may be cultivated through every means of learning God has provided.
Seeking and obtaining God and His truth are likewise two separate phases. One is the lifelong process of preparation; the other is the fulfillment toward which that preparation points. We cannot obtain unless we seek, and seeking is a process. The search of the spiritual seeker may be considered a dance with Deity. To dance, we must be participants, not merely observers. It is essential that we let God lead and that we follow, and this includes performing all the steps specifically designated for the one following. As in dance, our own self expression emerges in the process.
Study in this context is not a solitary effort, but a required part in a joint venture in which one partner is both the guide and the object of search. We may think of life’s pursuit of knowledge leading to God as a scavenger hunt between two lovers, designed as both a game and a challenge. The leading partner devised it, determined its themes, selected the landscape and parameters and hid clues, which are specially customized based on deeply personal knowledge so that with effort the other partner may follow and appreciate success. It’s not a means to eliminate unworthy suitors. The intent is not to remain hidden. The search is the point. The clues are designed to be solved so that it becomes an engaging means to draw closer. Its Creator anxiously awaits discovery at its conclusion.
Humility is therefore more valuable than certainty, openness more valuable than conclusions, receptivity more valuable than defense of positions, and willingness more fruitful than resignation due to the impossible size of the mystery. Though it overlaps with and appears similar at times to what is done by academics, the study associated with spiritual discipleship is not merely academic, and therefore must be evaluated according to its own unique purposes and standards rather than those of academia or other disciplines. It therefore benefits from clearly communicated distinctions that identify it as such and set proper expectations.
Seekers are not bound by academic conclusions any more than institutional or traditional ones, or even bound to make many conclusions that do not have to be made for now. Seekers and academics have incomparably different things at stake: for one, it is the pursuit of a clearer and more accurate understanding of the world; for the other, it is the discovery of the Creator, who uses that same world as a medium through which to leave clues that lead us back to Him. Knowledge to the seeker is not an end, but a means. Conclusions that harden into certainty before life itself has concluded, or while there is more to study are premature. They do not represent the culmination of a lifelong disciple’s spiritual quest, but its cessation.
