Sterling M. McMurrin(1914–1996)

Sterling Moss McMurrin (1914–1996) was an American philosopher, educator, and public intellectual who served as United States Commissioner of Education under President John F. Kennedy. Born in Woods Cross, Utah, he spent most of his career at the University of Utah, where he was the E. E. Ericksen Distinguished Professor of Philosophy.

McMurrin’s philosophical work focused on the intersection of religion and philosophy, particularly examining Mormon theology through the lens of Western philosophical traditions. His books “The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion” and “The Philosophical Foundations of Mormon Theology” remain influential analyses of LDS thought.

Known for his intellectual independence and sometimes controversial views within Mormon circles, McMurrin emphasized the progressive and humanistic elements of Mormon theology, particularly its teachings about human potential and the relationship between humanity and divinity.

Quotations by Sterling M. McMurrin

But wherever the Mormon theologian turns and to whatever tasks, for a long time to come he must work within the difficult but interesting context of a body of thought and attitude that is a unique and uneasy union of nineteenthcentury liberalism with fourthcentury Christian fundamentalism.

The naturalistic disposition of Mormonism is found in the denial of the traditional conception of the supernatural. It is typical of Mormon writers to insist that even God is natural rather than supernatural, in that there is not a divine order of reality that contrasts essentially with the mundane physical universe of ordinary experience known to us through sensory data, which is the object of scientific investigation and is described by natural law. The naturalistic facet of Mormon thought is indicated by the Mormon denial of miracles in the traditional sense of an intrusion of the supernatural that suspends the natural processes. The typical Mormon conception of a miracle is that the miraculous event, though entirely natural, is simply not understood because of deficiencies in human knowledge. From the perspective of God there are no miracles.

The Mormon concept of man exhibits the affirmative qualities relating to the capacity of human reason and the possibilities of free moral endeavor that characterized Enlightenment thought in the early part of the nineteenth century, that were basic to the liberal Protestantism in the latter part of that century and into the present, and that today lie at the foundations of typical secular humanism that has issued from American intellectual life. But Mormonism’s conception of human possibility far exceeds those of humanism and the standard forms of religious liberalism. Its conception of man is an integral element in the doctrine of cosmic progress that lies at the foundation of both its metaphysics and religion and that informs the general character of all Mormon thought. It is held that, in the forward, upward movement of the world in which God himself is involved, the human soul has infinite possibilities, because in an infinite time through the progressive achievement of knowledge and the mastery of moral will it may even know a measure of perfection that marks the attainment of divinity. Such a doctrine, of course, is an invitation to an easy speculation that some Mormon theologians have been unable to resist. And from it has issued a plethora of ideas that at times are quite irresponsible as serious doctrine. Such ideas are, nevertheless, a frank and ample testimony of the possibile reaches of liberal religion when supported by a conception of God that is grounded in the same optimism that nourished the liberal estimate of man.