Taking the Matter Seriously: Part II
A continuation, less formal, of Part I. Most likely the last part.
The following is continuing from Part I critiquing Dr. Michael Ferguson's article in Wayfare Magazine entitled Spiritual Matter: Joseph Smith's Hylomorphic Theology
Intro and Contents
This second part will be less rigorous than Part I and contain more of my personal reactions to the article, and will proceed along the following lines:
Ferguson equivocates on the question of “What is intelligence?”
Ferguson’s examples may prove the opposite of what he might intend if he takes a strong hylomorphic view.
I’ll add some other musings that come up as I read his article at the end.
Scriptural References on Intelligence
The information we have on intelligences or what it means to be intelligent in a Latter-day Saint paradigm is almost at the same time both broad and specific. The sum total scriptural references don't take up much space where it is mentioned specifically:
Intelligence cleaveth unto intelligence, D&C 88:40.
Man was in the beginning with God; Intelligence was not created or made, D&C 93:29.
All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, and this holds for intelligence D&C 93:30.
The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth; it forsakes evil D&C 93:36–37.
Principles of intelligence acquired in this life rises with us in the resurrection; more knowledge and intelligence is an advantage, D&C 130:18–19.
Hierarchy of intelligences; Intelligences have no beginning or end; God is more intelligent than "they all;" The Lord rules over all the intelligences, Abr. 3:18-21.
The Lord showed Abraham the intelligences that were organized before the world was, Abr. 3:22.
We receive a few specifics here, and they are what open up the latitude for Latter-day Saint beliefs on what exactly intelligences are and how they function. Here is a primer on historical Latter-day Saint views on intelligence written by Kenneth W. Godfrey in 1989. It works as a general overview, including an exposition on the thought of the Orson and Parley Pratt, Brigham Young, B. H. Roberts, John A. Widtsoe, and Bruce R. McConkie, but is obviously outdated. There are two notable additions to be made:
Cleon Skousen's Intelligence Theory of Atonement: While Skousen claims his ideas come from Elder Widtsoe, he gives an interesting take on the preeminence of intelligence in a concept of justice and atonement. There isn't a really reliable PDF or transcript of the talk(s) where he lays out his view, but here is a YouTube Video and here is a link that at least won't give your computer a virus. I will be frank that I don't really like this theory, but it is indeed creative and indicative of the latitude available in beliefs and thought on intelligence in a LDS paradigm, and it has been popularized in some circles of Latter-day Saints.
Blake Ostler's formulation and defense of Intelligences as being synonymous with spirit in the teachings of Joseph Smith. This is most explicitly described in his Exploring Mormon Thought series, but a shorter (and free) treatment can be found here. For what it's worth, I tend to support this view.
Equivocation on Intelligence
This all to say, I think there is a little more to unpack in the term intelligence than what Dr. Ferguson assumes. As I mentioned in Part I, I believe that largely is due to space and time constraints. I am absolutely no scholar or expert in neuroscience, so I will leave that particular definition to him, but Dr. Ferguson does trade on some ambiguity with the term in a Latter-day Saint context. If I am to take a definition he offers as: "[T]he functional synchrony of neuronal networks in the human cortex. More plainly, the human brain is a hierarchy of systems which are formed by interconnected cells called neurons. The degree of synchrony within those hierarchically-organized systems reflects the intelligent quality of that brain," this seems to accord with my intuitive understanding of: "Intelligence is a general mental ability for reasoning, problem solving, and learning." In fact to me it is a fascinating thing.
I find in my experience as a high school maths teacher that the more I can help students connect concepts to multiple methods of explanation, experimentation, representation, etc., they are more apt to not only excel in the current subject matter, but are more able to reason through future problems and topics. This seems to work well with my limited understanding of what I take Dr. Ferguson to be describing, but I could be very wrong on this point.
Again, I am not a neuroscientist, but it does seem to me that Ferguson is collapsing what I'll call LDS Theological Intelligence somewhat into Neuroscientific Intelligence, and does not account for or deal with the revelations in their context. I am not calling into question Ferguson's definition and exposition of intelligence per se, rather I am questioning the direct equation of Neuroscientific Intelligence with LDS Theological Intelligence. I would love some more parsing here, and I would love more clarification as I think that Ferguson may even be onto something in his post. I'm also not so proud as to assume I'll get a response--I don't really merit one--this is just me talking here.
That said, LDS Theological Intelligence necessarily includes the intellectual faculties, for we are also told that: “Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection. And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come.” (D&C 130:18-19) Likewise and, in my view closely related, “[T]hat same spirit which doth possess [our] bodies at the time that [we] go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess [our] body in that eternal world.” (Alma 34:34).
If we have intelligent faculties in this mortal existence—which I take as reason (see Isaiah 1:18, D&C 45:10, 50:10-11), cognition (D&C 50:12, 88:118, 109:14), intuition (2 Nephi 2:5, Alma 29:5, Helaman 14:30-31, Moroni 7:15-19), agency (D&C 58:27-28), among others—it is to me plausible that those intelligent faculties will not be lost in the resurrection like water through a sieve, but that they make up an intrinsic part of who and what we are. I do not think, however, that these faculties make up the totality of our being or existence. This largely from our scriptures on what the Atonement covers such as found in Alma 7, D&C 19, and others. This leads me to believe that though one can make the argument the intellectual faculties are all that is meant by the terms as used both in the scriptures and by Joseph Smith himself, that seems a little reductive to me. On my reading Joseph would use the terms intelligence, spirit, and mind somewhat interchangeably, and the term has morphed somewhat over time. You can look here for a starting point of Joseph’s statements on the idea.
Hylomorphic Implications on LDS Theology
A Personal Problem
I take some issue with the way Dr. Ferguson frames an understanding of what is entailed in matter that is more fine. He describes the argument thus:
“Smith’s additional teaching that “spirit is matter, but it is more fine....” is typically interpreted to mean that “spirit” is an ultra-small substance—something like an extra-powdery particle that we could visibly see if only we had bionic-like visual resolution and subatomic vision. This, in my view, is a misguided understanding of what Smith was teaching about the metaphysics of spirit and spiritualized matter…
“Let’s consider an analogy that may open a new perspective. Think carefully about the nature and qualities of music. Ultimately, music is highly-structured vibration of air. Can music be beautiful? Of course! Can music be spiritual? Yes, music can be profoundly spiritual. But for music to be both beautiful and spiritual, does it necessitate some invisible ether or magical fluid streaming out of the musician’s instrument and into our ears? The answer here is an obvious no. The beauty and spirituality of music are not tantamount to magical fluids or invisible ethers coasting along the vibrations of air molecules toward us. No. The beauty and spirituality of music are represented to us in the highly and delicately structured nature of the vibratory patterns that physically infuse the air around us. This fact may seem trivially simple, yet its depth and meaning are worth contemplation. Music, in all its richness, spirituality, and potency to motivate goodness itself, is matter that has been made more fine or pure.
Ferguson, Spiritual Matter, emphasis mine
I take issue with this framing for two reasons:
This seems, as I stated in Part I, to be an oversimplification and misrepresentation of the "majority view." The majority view is such because most have read the full context of the scripture he referenced (D&C 131:7-8) and also the statements of Joseph Smith surrounding that same idea (found here: Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Section Four 1839-42, p.207)
The language Dr. Ferguson uses seems a little... condescending. Perhaps not in the first quotation above, but certainly in the second. The framing of musical intimations as "magical fluids" aren't really taking the matter seriously, and show a somewhat disturbing lack of respect for a much-debated metaphysical view. I'll link Stanford University's Encyclopedia Entry on Physicalism (Materialism) here as a primer on the commitments and issues of this framework.
Materialism, also called Physicalism to distinguish from the colloquial definition (a desire for material things and physical comfort over the spiritual), is roughly the doctrine that everything that exists or could exist is physical (tangible, exists in reality) by nature. Now, just as above with intelligence in a theological sense, this has quite a broad set of adherents and divisions and discussions in it. One example is eliminative materialism, something of a radical materialist view which states that certain "common-sense" mental states, such as beliefs and desires, do not exist in a complete/rigorous accounting of the mind. It's a lot, but there's the Stanford Encyclopedia link above to get a start. Or you could read what Tarik LaCour puts out for a Latter-day Saint accounting of it as well.
This all to say: you can pooh-pooh materialism/physicalism all you'd like, but you need to reckon with the "why" it's viewed that way. One should also probably take into account the discussion around the idea of spirit as an "extra-powdery particle" viewed in context of both the philosophical and theological commitments. I listed the most relevant quotations in Part I.
That said, Ferguson’s ideas as to what constitutes a refined matter are interesting. I will be first to admit that my line of thinking followed something like a refined metal or similar: spiritual matter is somehow processed or sanctified so as to become devoid of impurities, whatever those may be. The idea of the matter becoming enriched and enlivened by action such as music or art is interesting.
But even here I think Ferguson misses something of a philosophical point: it seems to me that we don’t call music the matter—read vibrating particles, structured or not—that we perceive. In his account he seems to have created his own “magical fluid” of highly-organized vibrating particles that enter our ears to be interpreted in the brain, and thereby is guilty of what he’s trying to avoid. This may very well be the mechanics, but doesn’t quite account for the meaning he’s trying to get at. Seems to me the fact that vibrating air becomes organized and energized doesn’t explain the “beauty” and “spirituality” he references, as those are subjective experiences and how we perceive them is covered in the field of aesthetics. Suffice it to say here that there is pretty hot debate as to what beauty and spirituality “look like” philosophically-speaking.
Transcendent-ism
I also take some issue with the term transcendent. This largely because I find it vague and unhelpful. It seems to have a lot of play in pseudo-philosophical or publicly intellectual conversation (a.k.a Twitter and the like).
As a broad definition, let's take transcendent as "implying something more." This could be applied to nearly everything. I teach high school mathematics, and trust me the students believe in something outside of my classroom. Anything, in fact. If we are all metaphorical high school math students in a worldly classroom, and that's what Ferguson is getting at, this is still fairly ambiguous. Likewise as a maths teacher, I know and strongly believe there is “something more” than your standard algebraic problem on the page with respect to the subject and its application. That doesn’t help the student get any more meaning out of the quadratic equation, though.
We know both through revelation and scientific observation that there are other celestial bodies present in the universe, and that presents a whole host of questions about our existence and place in it. This is fairly clear in considerations of space by the likes of Frank White and Carl Sagan, and what inspired the Apollo 8 Astronauts to read from Genesis on Christmas Eve, 1968. Man has been fascinated in the things beyond our current reach. The popular term for this phenomena is the Overview Effect, or the radical shift in our perception of life on Earth specifically once we see or understand that our planet is a small dot on the vast backdrop of the universe.
It also seems to me fairly evident that the younger generations of the current era—2023 at the time of this writing—are grappling with serious questions around meaning. The recent U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on loneliness and isolation, as well as this pre-pandemic Pew Research poll on teen views on anxiety and depression and other related studies seem to be but the tip of an iceberg of a re-recognition of the need for meaning. This is obviously not a new nor unique concern: just read Nietzsche, Sartre, or Plato. Even in our current Internet era, meaning is something the likes of Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins don't want to jettison, and something that Jordan Peterson has built his career carrying on about. It's a perennial concern: we as homo sapiens seem dissatisfied generally with what seems to be. If it turns out not to be, this search or need for meaning certainly feels endemic to our species.
If Ferguson is talking about a transcendent reality as somehow divorced from materiality of spirit and eternity of element as found in a Latter-day Saint paradigm, I don't really know how one reconciles it. There was the Transcendentalist movement typified by such personalities as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. The seminal work in this movement, in my view, is Emerson's Divinity School Address delivered at Harvard. You can read that at your leisure. One tenet of transcendentalism leans hard into an idea shared somewhat by Ferguson, if I read him right:
'The foundations of man are not in matter, but in spirit. But the element of spirit is eternity. To it, therefore, the longest series of events, the oldest chronologies are young and recent. In the cycle of the universal man, from whom the known individuals proceed, centuries are points, and all history is but the epoch of one degradation.
'We distrust and deny inwardly our sympathy with nature. We own and disown our relation to it, by turns. We are like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox. But who can set limits to the remedial force of spirit?
'A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal as gently as we awake from dreams. Now, the world would be insane and rabid, if these disorganizations should last for hundreds of years. It is kept in check by death and infancy. Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise.
'Man is the dwarf of himself. Once he was permeated and dissolved by spirit. He filled nature with his overflowing currents. Out from him sprang the sun and moon; from man the sun, from woman the moon. The laws of his mind, the periods of his actions externized themselves into day and night, into the year and the seasons. But, having made for himself this huge shell, his waters retired; he no longer fills the veins and veinlets; he is shrunk to a drop. He sees that the structure still fits him, but fits him colossally. Say, rather, once it fitted him, now it corresponds to him from far and on high. He adores timidly his own work. Now is man the follower of the sun, and woman the follower of the moon. Yet sometimes he starts in his slumber, and wonders at himself and his house, and muses strangely at the resemblance betwixt him and it. He perceives that if his law is still paramount, if still he have elemental power, if his word is sterling yet in nature, it is not conscious power, it is not inferior but superior to his will. It is instinct.'
The issue comes from the very first line: "The foundations of man are not in matter, but in spirit." This comes from something of a hard buy-in to Cartesian dualism—which was prefigured in Aquinas—that matter is a completely separate category from spirit. They have absolutely nothing to do with each other ontologically. The problem this poses is pretty apparent: how does an immaterial, unrelated thing (the spirit) move or cause movement in something material and necessarily related (the body)?
And further: Ferguson misunderstands the philosophical landscape regarding this sort of conversation, it seems to me. In this focus on a transcendent paradigm, he seems to contradict himself here:
In tension with the rich physicality of Joseph Smith’s teaching, the Restoration operates in a modernity that has fractured physical and spiritual into philosophical dualism. This dualist fracture routinely forces the choice between the explanations of physical science or the luxuries of spirit that lavish Smith’s revelations. I see this forced choice as not only leading many of the best and the brightest directly away from the vibrancy of the Restoration’s light, but also as a wholly false framing…
I see Joseph Smith in many ways as intellectually resonant with Aristotle, the prodigy-student of Plato. Given Smith’s work to doctrinally rebaptize Christianity into a universe of physical matter, major aspects of Joseph’s doctrines are harmonious with Aristotelian thought, especially the insistence that in and through material being we encounter a transcendent reality that animates us with meaning.
Both the Harvard address and the quotation above from Nature seem to intimate a belief in the divinity of man, and while this may seem at outset to be congruous with the Latter-day Saint teaching of the divinization of mankind,1 the foundational belief is not based completely on an internal, intrinsic, self-propelling property of humanity, but relies in the capacity of humanity to come into close relation with the divine. The invitation is to "come unto Christ and be perfected in him" (see Moroni 10:32 emphasis mine, and John 17).
The Revelations of Joseph Smith lean much more into, again, the union or marriage of spirit and body--both substances material--into a soul. It's not about separating or bifurcating things; it's about uniting and sealing those things, or those people, or whatever it is, to God. It's unity in plurality, not divinity in singularity. Ferguson may agree here, as he thinks that “the Restoration operates in a modernity that has fractured physical and spiritual into philosophical dualism.”
This connection is not inconsequential; the ideas of Joseph Smith and the Transcendentalists were taking hold of the nation at about the same time, and they seem to diverge on very fundamental questions as to what makes one human, again which Ferguson agrees with. I'm not saying that Dr. Ferguson espouses transcendentalism in the same sense, but it does raise some questions as the language used is similar. And one thing he does get right, but I think the foundations of the idea are a little off, is found in his statement that "human beings themselves are aspirants through faith to bodily exaltation and divinization of their own material substance." I don't know that you get to talk about transcendence and bodily exaltation and divinization in the same idea. To me they seem diametrically opposed. At least, you don't get to do that in a 19th-century context. Maybe you can in a 21st-century situation.
Eternity of Matter
In Part I, I showed that Dr. Ferguson is more in conversation with Aquinas than with Aristotle if we're taking into account a "transcendent reality that animates us with meaning." This because I feel Aristotle—though materialism is a later philosophical development—shares more with the materialist in his preoccupation with the natural world and its foundations, opposing his teacher Plato. In this way both Joseph Smith and Aristotle harmonize: matter seems to be the fundamental building block of all that is, and that matter seems in some sense to be eternal.
Joseph Smith through the Revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants speaks a little more on this subject with respect to eternal significance:
All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence. Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light. And every man whose spirit receiveth not the light is under condemnation. For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy; And when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy. The elements are the tabernacle of God; yea, man is the tabernacle of God, even temples; and whatsoever temple is defiled, God shall destroy that temple. The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth. Light and truth forsake that evil one.
D&C 93:30-37, emphasis mine
It will take a whole series of posts to go into what may be implied by the "elements [being] eternal," as there are questions as to what the element is referring: are they the elements of spirit? Are they separate from spirit? Is there no intelligence in element? Each of these should be carefully considered.
Suffice it to say that it should be obvious that Joseph Smith in the Revelations thought matter—if we take the term broadly as "that of which stuff is made"—is eternal. And eternal by definition is both forward- and backward-reaching.
There is another hermeneutic we can use to look at what it means to be eternal. In Moses 7:35 and D&C 19:10-12 eternal roughly interchanges with god or perhaps godly. Therefore, just as eternal punishment is God’s punishment and eternal is a name of God we could also think, contra most theistic dualists and Platonists, that material is godly if element and matter are to share some correlation of meaning in the revelations (D&C 93:30-37). This cutting right in line with the Prophet Joseph Smith’s teaching:
The mind of man is as immortal as God himself. I know that my testimony is true, hence when I talk to these mourners; what have they lost, they are only seperated from their bodies for a short season; their spirits existed coequal with God, and they now exist in a place where they converse together, the same as we do on the earth. Is it logic to say that a spirit is immortal, and yet have a beginning? Because if a spirit have a beginning it will have an end; good logic. I want to reason more on the spirit of man, for I am dwelling on the body of man, on the subject of the dead. I take my ring from my finger and liken it unto the mind of man, the immortal spirit, because it has no beginning. Suppose you cut it in two; but as the Lord lives there would be an end.—All the fools, learned and wise men, from the beginning of creation, who say that man had a beginning, proves that he must have an end and then the doctrine of annihilation would be true. But, if I am right I might with boldness proclaim from the house tops, that God never did have power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself: intelligence exists upon a self existent principle, it is a spirit from age to age, and there is no creation about it. All the spirits that God ever sent into the world are susceptible of enlargement. The first principles of man are self existent with God; that God himself finds himself in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was greater, and because he saw proper to institute laws, whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself, that they might have one glory upon another, in all that knowledge, power, and glory, &c., in order to save the world of spirits.
-Discourse, 7 April 1844, as Published in Times and Seasons, Page 615
I think it fairly plain that if spirit is matter, and perhaps if spirit = intelligence, that Joseph’s Ring analogy is a fitting one for not only the spirit, mind, or body of man, but also of those things which form up said spirit, mind, or body.
I think I’ll leave it there for now. This has been sitting in my to-do pile for quite a bit now, and it’s time to move on to other topics!
Endnotes
Apotheosis is the term I borrow from Blake Ostler. His series Exploring Mormon Thought is the most complete treatment of the idea as far as I am aware. A primer can be found in his article on page 31 of the first Spring 2005 edition of Element entitled Re-vision-ing the Mormon Concept of Deity.