Sterling M. McMurrin on Naturalism

Sterling M. McMurrin

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 denial of the supernatural is not simply a terminological issue in Mormonism, for reality is described qualitatively as a single continuum. The continuity is attested especially by the rejection of the traditional Christian concept of eternity, which is essentially Greek in origin, where eternity means timelessness, the denial of temporality. Mormonism conceives of God as being in both time and space. The natural continuum is evidenced as well in the Mormon view that there is no immaterial substance and that spiritual entities are not less material than physical objects.

This naturalistic quality of Mormon philosophy is without question related to several facets of the attitude, practice, and thought of the Mormon people: the high evaluation placed on the human body, the essentially positive attitude toward sex, the affirmative estimate of human character and human accomplishment, the obvious this-worldliness of the religion with its denial of the distinction between the sacred and the secular, and a traditional enthusiasm for natural science. It is perhaps not entirely inaccurate to describe Mormonism as a kind of naturalistic, humanistic theism.

The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion, Signature Books, 1965

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More from Sterling M. McMurrin

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.

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.