Item Detail
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9380
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1
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37
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English
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Positivism or Subjectivism? Some Reflections on a Mormon Historical Dilemma
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Journal of Mormon History
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Spring 1994
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20
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Salt Lake City, UT
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Mormon History Association
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1-23
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Recently, Martin E. Marty observed that the disagreements between advocates of the traditional and new Mormon history (which he termed a crisis) were inevitable. A majority of Mormons are unaware of this historiographical debate. However, Hill notes that Church history has been eliminated from the seminary and Sunday School curriculum and some on the faculty at BYU are turning away from history as a tool for studying Mormonism. This seems paradoxical since Mormonism is a historical faith with historical claims. Hill theorizes how this current situation came to be. To understand this situation, he divides the ways of looking at and writing about Mormon history into two viewpoints: subjectivism and positivism. He employs simple definitions for these terms. He defines subjectivism as "that what we know exists essentially in the mind" and positivism means that "history is taken to be potentially verifiable." He discusses the approaches that various writers, historians and Mormons employ in looking at events in Church history. He also discusses the way Joseph Smith viewed his own history. He observes that the differing accounts of the First Vision is evidence of the Prophet's basic integrity and his wish to convey the truth as his inspired understanding grew through time. He points out the drawbacks and contributions of subjectivist and positivist thought in interpreting Mormon history. He notes that we can learn how to view Mormon history from the way Joseph Smith's own history was, i.e., open-ended and subject to change. Joseph Smith "cared more for what history might reveal than for what had been revealed." For Joseph Smith, there was no finality in history. His was a "history-affirming faith, not a history-denying one."
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