Rex E. Lee speaks at the J. Reuben Clark Law School about 1986. Courtesy Janet Lee.
We
gain understanding by two processes. I will refer to them as the rational
process and the extrarational process.
My theses are that each of these processes plays an important role in our fulfilling that ancient and all-important mandate to "get understanding" (Prov. 4:7), that there is no inherent inconsistency between the two processes, and that our eventual achievement of total perfection will require the use of both processes.
My theses are that each of these processes plays an important role in our fulfilling that ancient and all-important mandate to "get understanding" (Prov. 4:7), that there is no inherent inconsistency between the two processes, and that our eventual achievement of total perfection will require the use of both processes.
The
rational process is the one that you are accustomed to using in your academic
work. Its tools should be familiar to all of you: reading, analysis, research,
criticism, and, generally, problem resolution by thoughtful inquiry. Properly
applied, it is a strenuous, taxing, and frequently frustrating experience.
It is my belief that the difficulties and frustrations of the rational process are inextricably interlaced with the plan of eternal progress and that a principal objective of this plan is to achieve a facility and, eventually, mastery of its use.
It is my belief that the difficulties and frustrations of the rational process are inextricably interlaced with the plan of eternal progress and that a principal objective of this plan is to achieve a facility and, eventually, mastery of its use.
At
the time that the era of free agency was ushered in, God informed Adam,
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" (Gen. 3:19). That metaphor
has far broader application than the relationship between physical work
and the achievement of the necessities of life. Just as hard labor or
exercise strengthens our muscles and makes them more useful, so also the
hard, frustrating straining of our mental abilities to the point that--symbolically,
at least--they ache just as a muscle would ache results in the strengthening
of our ability to use these processes. It is not easy to become a great
football player, weight lifter, or discus thrower; no one ever achieved
greatness in these endeavors without extensive and continuous sweat of
the face. Similarly, no one ever achieved excellence of the mind without
really pushing himself or herself. The requisite mental effort is difficult,
frustrating, and often tormenting, but it is an inseparable aspect of
the law of eternal progress. Only by the sweat of our intellectual faces
can we taste the bread of contentment that comes from having successfully
challenged and mastered the rational process.
The
acquisition of understanding through the rational process takes on a special
dimension for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The restoration of the gospel has provided many of the answers to life's
great questions. Since the answers to these questions have come through
the only infallible source of knowledge--direct revelation from God--there
is no need to resolve them rationally.
Take
an example that is of perhaps lesser substantive importance but provides
a cogent illustration of the point. I don't smoke tobacco, and I don't
drink alcoholic beverages. The question whether I would smoke or drink,
even in moderation or on isolated occasions, for the achievement of certain
social or business objectives is simply not an open question. The answer
to that question has been provided for me by God himself in a revelation
given to Joseph Smith, February 27, 1833 (D&C 89:5, 8). For other
people, the question whether to smoke or not to smoke involves the kind
of balancing of interests that is characteristic of the rational process,
weighing such considerations as the probable shortening of life by a decade
or so against the delightful smell that tobacco smoke imparts to the clothes
of its users.
Similarly,
we hear a lot these days to the effect that confining sexual relations
to the marriage context is outmoded and society would be better off if
this idea were discarded. Much can be said and ought to be said in rational
opposition to these suggestions. But you and I, as members of The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, do not really approach that issue
on a rational basis. The Lord has revealed to us that the misuse of our
powers of creation is an offense second only to the shedding of innocent
blood. That kind of knowledge supersedes any possible conclusions of human
beings, no matter how brilliant and no matter how skilled in the use of
rational processes.
There are other examples: we baptize
by immersion at eight years of age; we meet once a week to partake of
the sacrament; we confer the priesthood upon those who qualify at age
twelve; and we do vicarious ordinance work for the dead. As to these practices
and these beliefs, the rational processes are simply irrelevant. Even
if I should conclude that I would be a happier person if I smoked and
that the delightful smell on my clothes and the aura of distinction and
dignity that surrounds smokers is more important than ten or fifteen years
added to my life, I still would not smoke. I don't need to concern myself
with whether eight years is really the best age for baptism, or twelve
the optimum age to receive the priesthood. These for me are not questions
which are subject to the rational process.
From
the accepted premise that the gospel provides the complete answer to many
of life's great questions, we sometimes make the mistake of assuming that
the gospel forecloses from the rational process a rather vast segment
of problems which we ought to resolve for ourselves and which, from my
understanding of the plan of eternal progress, really require that we
resolve for ourselves--issues such as whether I should be a Republican
or a Democrat; whether we should have an income tax and, if we do, whether
the rate should be progressive; whether our units of local government
should fluoridate their water supply; whether we should be selling grain
to communist countries; and so on. There are many questions such as these
which the discharge of our obligations as American citizens requires us
to work out for ourselves by the application of our own intellectual abilities.
They are the kinds of issues on which two members of the Church can reach
opposite conclusions without impairing the Church standing of either.
And they are the kinds of problems to which, in my view, the law of eternal
progress anticipates that we will apply rational processes if we are to
achieve the corresponding development.
I
turn now to the acquisition of understanding through extrarational processes.
The methods are not the same. The results are much surer, though they
are not as susceptible to our own control.
For centuries, men have been debating
about the nature of God. On occasion, hundreds of the world's best scholars
assembled for the purpose of resolving the issue by application of their
combined intellectual talents. Out of these centuries of rational effort
by the world's finest minds evolved the prevailing Christian concept of
God--centuries, if you will, of application of the finest minds in the
world to this important question! And yet, in the space of just a few
minutes, a boy of fourteen years learned more about the true nature of
God than had come from centuries of the best rational effort of the world's
best minds. The process was extrarational. It did not depend on study,
thought, or contemplative inquiry. It came through revelation, through
direct contact between a mortal man and his Father in Heaven.
Joseph Smith's
experience is the most outstanding example of extrarational learning that
has occurred since the resurrection of the Savior, but it is not the only
instance. Though of less dramatic surrounding circumstances, the opportunity
is available to every earthly creature to gain understanding through the
extrarational process.
Extrarational
learning takes a great variety of forms: the quiet, serene confidence
of total assurance that can accompany the reading of the scriptures, particularly
the Book of Mormon; the ring of truth that is detected upon hearing another
person's testimony; the quiet, yet overwhelming inner conviction that
the work in which one is engaged is truly the restored kingdom of Jesus
Christ. May I share with you a personal experience involving learning
by extrarational means.
The experience occurred in a suburb of
Mexico City, Colonia Moctezuma. My companion and I had returned on one
hot afternoon to discuss what was then the third lesson (dealing with
the Restoration) with a widow and her daughters. The first two lessons
had been rather sterile and innocuous. We had been treated with courtesy
but not much interest, and frankly, I was somewhat surprised that we had
been invited back the third time. The Restoration lesson is distinctive
in its almost complete reliance on individual testimony. At least as we
were presenting it at that time, there were practically no scriptural
references. By that time, we had already explained the need for apostles
and prophets and the fact that these had been taken from the earth in
ancient times. The Restoration lesson consisted simply of recounting the
contacts that had been made between heaven and earth during the restoration
period, and then bearing our testimonies that we knew that these things
had really happened.
The
third visit with this family started out much as the two preceding ones.
And then, something happened that I will remember as long as I live. I
began to recount the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood, how it was
that John the Baptist had appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith and Oliver
Cowdery, laid his hands upon their heads, and restored the lesser priesthood.
As I began to speak, the thought occurred to me: This is really true.
The same man who baptized the Savior himself and cried repentance in the
wilderness really did come to this earth, some eighteen centuries later,
and actually laid his hands upon the heads of Joseph and Oliver, bringing
to the earth once again the authority to do what he himself had done in
the meridian of time--perform the foundational ordinance of baptism. As
this overwhelming impression came over me--that what I was saying was
really true--I could tell that I was conveying the same impression to
the members of that family. And the means of conveyance was not just the
spoken word. The words that were coming from my mouth were not materially
different from the words that I had spoken on hundreds of prior occasions.
And yet I could tell that this same impression, this realization of truth
which I was personally finding so compelling, was also being conveyed
to this widow and her daughters. I had witnessed a manifestation of that
great principle articulated by the prophet Nephi, that "when a man speaketh
by the power of the Holy Ghost the power of the Holy Ghost carrieth it
unto the hearts of the children of men" (2 Ne. 33:1). Before I finished
speaking and before any of the family members had expressed their own
impressions, I knew that conversion had occurred. I knew that these people
knew that John the Baptist on May 15, 1829, had personally made a visitation
to this earth and that his visitation was one integral part of the restoration
of the kingdom of God. I knew that from that point forward it was only
a matter of time until the family would be baptized. And this is in fact
what happened.
Having
examined briefly some of the essential characteristics of each of these
processes, let us turn now to some of the basic relationships between
the two. Two great learning processes: What are their interrelationships?
Or are there any?
First,
of the two methods, the extrarational gives the surer results. It does
not follow, however, that anyone who has had hands laid on his head and
been given the promise of the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost,
contingent on his worthiness, has no need to apply his mental skills to
acquire learning. No matter how righteous you are, no matter how carefully
you cultivate the companionship of the Holy Ghost, there are vast amounts
of knowledge which you need to acquire and which you are not going to
receive through revelation. The great plan of eternal progress anticipates
our growth and development through use of our mental skills, the kind
of progress that can come only through the strenuous application of our
reasoning abilities.
Second,
there occasionally exists the tendency among those who achieve proficiency
in either of these processes to downplay the importance of the other.
There is a corollary tendency to assume that excellence in the use of
one of these methods forecloses the need to develop excellence in the
other. The oft-repeated observation that "we have something that no one
else has" is undeniably true. But the fact that we have the gospel should
not be used as an excuse to fail to do the very thing that the gospel
commands, to expand our knowledge of all truth. The eighty-eighth section
of the Doctrine and Covenants is explicit on this point. It does not enjoin
us to seek learning "either by study or by faith." Neither does it state
that "if ye have achieved learning by faith, ye are thereby permanently
exempted from study." Rather, the commandment is to obtain learning and
to obtain it both "by study and also by faith" (D&C 88:118). And I
say to you that no man is truly learned whose learning experiences exclude
either the rational or the extrarational method.
Again,
the experience of the Prophet is instructive. Unquestionably, his was
the prime example of extrarational learning by a mortal. It is interesting,
and in my view significant, that his was an experience that was preceded
by extensive rational effort as well as prayer. Similarly, the famous
instruction given by the Lord to Oliver Cowdery in the ninth section of
the Doctrine and Covenants--and through Oliver Cowdery to all of us--involves
a combination of the two processes: "You must study it out in your mind;
then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that
your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is
right" (D&C 9:8).
We should be both scholarly and
spiritual, and we should discard any notion that there is any inconsistency
in the two methods. The true intellectual is one whose intellect is sufficiently
developed that he recognizes not only the great potential, but also the
limitations of his intellectual capacity. Conversely, there is no need
for the person who has acquired understanding through spiritual insights
to be suspicious of those who acquire learning by study. The scriptural
mandate is that both processes be used. The most learned people I know--and
there are many of them--are people who find no inconsistency between study
and faith and who have achieved a proficiency in each. We should feel
equally at home in the academy and in the chapel; we should recognize
each as a center of learning. We know that the day will come when the
lamb will lie down with the lion. We need not await the Millennium for
the scholar to be a patriarch and the patriarch to be a scholar.
Third
and finally, I have expressed the view that there is no inconsistency
between the rational method and the extrarational method. This does not
mean that the conclusions reached by each of these methods will always
be consistent. Indeed, it is almost inevitable that there will be some
instances in which the rational method will lead us to some conclusion--not
many, but some--which is at odds with what we know to be true because
it has been revealed from God. Now what do you do when you encounter such
instances? (And I reiterate: encounter is almost inevitable.) The answer
is not to stop struggling with the matter on a rational level. But we
must recognize that our rational processes, marvelous as they are, have
limited capabilities. Therefore, the underlying approach must be that
in those few instances in which we find disparity between the conclusions
reached by our rational and extrarational processes, the extrarational
must prevail. We must recognize that in those few instances the seeming
inconsistency is attributable to the fallible nature of our rational capacity.
The answer is not to stop the rational struggle with the problem, but
rather to recognize the fallible nature of the rational process, the infallible
nature of the extrarational process, and the inescapable conclusion that
where inconsistencies in results occur--until such time that they can
be reconciled--it is the extrarational that must prevail.
The
inadequacies of my own mental abilities were impressed upon me early
in life. As a young boy growing up, I would gaze from my perch on a
sawmill into the clear, starry night, unable to comprehend what was
out there. My Sunday School teacher told me that space is without end.
My brain was unable then, and is still unable, to comprehend that fact.
I simply lack the capacity to perceive how it is that space can continue
on and on and never come to an end. And yet my mind
is sufficiently developed to comprehend that the alternative is totally
unacceptable. If there is some point out there where it all comes to
an end, then what is on the other side? These questions concerning space
and their equally perplexing counterparts relating to time supply the
most cogent examples of which I am aware, and other examples give me
a rational basis for my conclusion that in those few instances in which
the rational and extrarational processes yield inconsistent results,
we must rely on the extrarational.