193 - Latest Research: Science & Scripture w/Ben Spackman | Church History Matters I Science & Religion Series

Summary

Church History Matters: Science & Scripture w/Ben Spackman

Episode 193 (Science & Religion Series Ep. 9), Feb 24, 2026

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Overview of Episode

In this rich and deeply engaging episode, hosts Scott and Casey welcome scholar Ben Spackman to discuss the latest research at the intersection of science and scripture, particularly within Latter-day Saint history. The conversation explores 20th-century debates over evolution and creationism among LDS leaders, the development of church doctrine, the changing meaning of terms like "fundamentalism," and how modern scholarship recasts our understanding of both science and faith. Spackman, whose dissertation has influenced prior episodes, brings unique historical and scriptural expertise, shedding light on why these debates remain relevant for believers seeking to faithfully navigate complex church history.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Why Study Science, Religion, and LDS History?

• Spackman's Entry into the Field:
  • Began answering hard science-and-scripture questions from Latter-day Saint graduate students in science-heavy fields, revealing a lack of nuanced resources (06:55–10:16).
  • Found that most prior LDS literature was either poorly researched or overly polemical.
  • Established the need for historically and scripturally informed conversations about Genesis, evolution, and LDS tradition.

Defining Fundamentalism and Modernism in LDS Context

• Historical Definitions:
  • “Fundamentalist” originally a Christian movement (1920s), centered on defending "fundamentals" like Christ’s divinity, miracles, and (for others) biblical inerrancy. (11:47–13:53)
  • “Modernists” responded to new scientific and archaeological discoveries by focusing more on social gospel, sometimes questioning divinity of Jesus.
  • Latter-day Saints aligned with fundamentalism in the early 20th century, except for scriptural inerrancy.
• Meaning Evolved Over Time:
  • By the 1960s, “fundamentalist” was equated more with anti-evolution and young-earth creationism.

Where Did Latter-day Saints Fit?

• A Spectrum, Not a Monolith:
  • LDS views were/are complex and internally diverse, often more nuanced than other denominations (14:39–16:15).
  • While early leaders called themselves “fundamentalists,” their openness to new discoveries and nuances with inerrancy set them apart.

Key Personalities and Debates in LDS Science/Religion

• Joseph Fielding Smith:
  • Advocated for scriptural inerrancy and face-value literalism, seeing any divergence (like death before the Fall, or pre-Adamite humans) as undermining the atonement. (17:26–18:20)
• B.H. Roberts, James E. Talmage, John A. Widtsoe:
  • Also believed God revealed truth in scripture, but saw it as accommodated to ancient understanding—open to interpreting scripture through the lens of modern science. (18:28–19:50)
• LDS Internal Conflict:
  • Debates (Roberts/Talmage/Widtsoe vs. Joseph Fielding Smith) were often rooted in underlying assumptions about the nature of scripture and science, rather than just the scientific facts. (16:27–17:15)

Historical Milestones in LDS Evolution Doctrine

• 1909 First Presidency Statement:
  • Prompted by questions from BYU, originally drafted as adamantly anti-evolution, but later softened after input from Talmage and Widtsoe—more moderate, focusing on divine parentage of mankind. (22:29–27:57)
• 20th-Century Shifts:
  • Church's position fluctuates according to personalities and generational changes among apostles (34:25–38:10).
  • After the deaths of scientist-apostles, J.F. Smith’s views gained dominance, culminating in publication and institutional adoption of "Man, His Origin and Destiny."
  • President McKay and later leaders often pushed back privately against this hardline stance, resulting in public ambiguity but private diversity of opinion (39:03–41:00).

Revelation and Prophetic Fallibility

• Apostolic Disagreements Are Not Apostasy:
  • The robust discussion and even argument among LDS leaders should be seen as evidence of a healthy, revelatory “counsel” process, not lack of inspiration (44:20–46:08).
  • "Prophets are primarily human whom God inspires and touches. They are not primarily avatars of God whose humanity occasionally causes mistakes." (43:39–44:08, Ben Spackman)
• Revelation as Collective, Iterative:
  • Sometimes comes by direct “download,” but often through wrestling, discussion, and even disagreement, per D. Todd Christofferson and Henry B. Eyring’s teachings. (45:47–46:08)

A Shift Toward Moderation

• Ending the Era of Dogma on Creation:
  • By late 20th century, with leadership transitions and increased academic sophistication at BYU, the church moved toward officially approving more neutral statements (e.g., 1992 Encyclopedia of Mormonism article on evolution, apparently penned by Gordon B. Hinckley) (54:36–59:43).
  • Packet of official statements produced, emphasizing the church has no official position on organic evolution, apart from affirming Adam and Eve as Divine creations. (59:53–61:39)

Modern Approaches: Science, Scholarship, and Discipleship

• Diversity of Belief Allowed:
  • Today, both evolution-accepting and -skeptical members have space at church, provided they're not exclusionary or dogmatic (66:44–70:37).
  • Losing this diversity can harm faith—insistence that science and faith cannot mix (a la Joseph Fielding Smith) sometimes pushes believers out when science looms large in their lives.
• Scripture: Read Literarily, Not Just Literally:
  • Ancient texts speak to their own cultures; literalism ignores context. Take scripture on its original terms (71:33–73:51).
  • “It is reading scripture literally. That means in context, as the author intended. And that means we have to recover those contexts that went without being said.” (71:33–73:51, Ben Spackman)
• Best OT Study Advice:
  • Use modern church materials (Come, Follow Me, etc.).
  • Supplement with several translations and good study Bibles (Jewish Study Bible, SBL, Robert Alter). (77:36–79:54)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Concerning Fundamentalism:
  • "By the 1920s that's shifting...1920s is when fundamentalist starts becoming kind of anti evolution and a much more popular, less intellectual movement...So I didn't actually use it in my dissertation much except when other people used it."
    — Ben Spackman (13:36)
• On Prophet Fallibility:
  • "Prophets are primarily human whom God inspires and touches. They are not primarily avatars of God whose humanity occasionally causes mistakes." — Ben Spackman (43:39)
• On LDS Diversity:
  • "It's really not fair to say someone like Joseph Fielding Smith was anti science. He's trying to find scientists that line up with his views and use them as evidence."
    — Casey (17:15)
• On Modern Scriptural Scholarship:
  • "Our understanding of the Old Testament, thanks to discoveries since 1947, has been radically changed.... It changed the context, it's changed our understanding of the language." — Ben Spackman (20:20)
• On Encouraging Scholarship:
  • "President Nelson vocalized as they were seeking the best information possible and then making their decisions based on that and inspiration."
    — Ben Spackman (30:10)
• On Room for Diversity:
  • “[There is] room for people to coexist and get along.” — Ben Spackman (70:37)
• On Reading Scripture:
  • “When we read Scripture, we need to read it literarily rather than literally.” — Casey (72:58)
• On Scholarship as Worship:
  • “To a disciple of Christ, academic study is a form of worship.” — Ben Spackman (82:35)

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Important Timestamps for Segments

• 00:00–06:55: Scene-setting, prominence of science & religion debates, intro to Ben Spackman.
• 11:47–15:48: Detailed definitions and historical meanings of fundamentalism/modernism.
• 17:15–22:29: Underlying assumptions of scripture/science among apostles; science changes since the 1940s.
• 22:29–30:44: Genesis of the 1909 statement and evolution's wider threat (eugenics, Social Darwinism).
• 34:21–43:35: Mid-20th-century resurgence of anti-evolution sentiment; institutional and cultural factors.
• 43:39–46:08: How to handle apostolic disagreement and maintain faithful complexity.
• 54:36–59:43: Encyclopedia of Mormonism’s "evolution" article and church position shifts.
• 66:44–70:37: Church’s current neutral position on evolution; dangers of dogmatism.
• 71:27–74:41: Reading scripture literarily; using multiple translations for richer understanding.
• 77:36–80:18: Top tips for fruitful Old Testament study.
• 80:19–83:54: How scholarship strengthens testimony and connection to the Restoration.

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Notable, Faith-Promoting Takeaways

• Latter-day Saint history includes a wide array of perspectives on science and evolution, even among apostles and Prophets.
• The process of revelation is messy, participatory, and deeply human—diversity of thought is not just tolerated but essential.
• Faithful members can and should use scholarly tools and historical context to deepen their understanding, rather than fear “complexity.”
• Academic study and discipleship are not mutually exclusive; wrestling with the “messiness” can actually help maintain faith.
• With Church leadership’s embrace of good information, today’s Saints have resources and “space” to explore scientific questions without fear of apostasy.

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Further Resources Mentioned

• Ben Spackman’s dissertation: “The Scientist is Wrong”: Joseph Fielding Smith, George MacCready Price, and the Ascent of Creationist Thought among Latter-day Saints in the 20th Century.
• 1992 Encyclopedia of Mormonism “Evolution” article (ghostwritten by President Hinckley).
• BYU’s "official statements" packet on evolution (with 1909, 1925, 1931, and EoM articles).

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"Understanding the historical diversity of thought opens up space for us to explore different things from a place of faith and safety..."
—Ben Spackman (85:18)

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This episode offers a masterclass in the navigation of science, scripture, history, and living faithfully amidst complexity. It is essential listening for any Latter-day Saint (or anyone else!) trying to reconcile scholarly inquiry and discipleship.

Transcript

[Ben Spackman]

Science and religion have always been the same. They have always been at war with each other. They always will be at war with each other, and science will triumph.

[Casey]

Where do Latter Day Saints stand? Are we more modernists? Are we more fundamentalists? Quote by Heber J. Grant where he just said, we are fundamentalists.

[Ben Spackman]

How do you make sense of received tradition when new, reliable information comes along?

[Casey]

Some of those ideas, like eugenics, play out in the 20th century in very dangerous ways.

[Scott]

You can't fault anyone for not knowing stuff that wasn't discovered yet.

[Ben Spackman]

And by the 80s and 90s, church leaders saying, hold on. Our historians who are reliable are producing material that shows tradition is wrong about some of this stuff.

[Casey]

When we read Scripture, we need to read it literarily rather than literally.

[Scott]

I may disagree with this side or that side. This is complexity on display.

[Ben Spackman]

This is the messiest part. I think this is one of the hardest parts for Latter Day Saints to be comfortable with because it gets us into church history. That doesn't seem inspired.

[Scott]

Oh, hello, Casey.

[Casey]

Hello, Scott. Nice to see you.

[Scott]

You too, man. We are back in episode nine of our Science and Religion series, and I gotta say, this has been fun, Casey. This has been a real ride.

[Casey]

Yeah. This is history that we don't get to talk about a lot. We spend so much time playing in the early restoration sandbox that we sometimes don't get into the 20th and the 21st centuries. And there's some really, really fascinating history in those realms, too. This is top for me, where we're talking about sincere church leaders who have different differing opinions and how they kind of go back and forth to assert what they believe is the right thing to do.

[Scott]

Yeah. And. And today's a special treat because we have. I mean, all throughout this series, we've been quoting a guy over and over again, his good work, his dissertation work. His name is Ben Spackman, and he is actually with us today. Say hi, Ben.

[Ben Spackman]

Hey. Glad to be here, guys. I love talking about this stuff.

[Casey]

Yeah.

[Scott]

Well, we're so excited to have you, man. We've got a lot of questions for you, and we know you're. You're just loaded up and ready to go and so super excited to have this conversation today.

[Casey]

And before we start, can I say this? Part of the reason why we did this is last year, I was on the Mormon History Association's committee for Best dissertation, and I got a chance to read 12 more than that, 12 or 15 dissertations, which probably doesn't sound fun to most people out there. And some of them, some of them were better or worse. But I found yours, Ben, to be absolutely fascinating. And it might be because I've worked in this area. I wrote a book about Joseph Merrill, who's a 20th century apostle. But I just thought your work was outstanding and thought, hey, this is a great format to have some discussion about how ideas develop in the church and how we can have friendly disagreement, agree on the fundamentals, but also have a lively conversation about some of the more esoteric or lesser defined teachings within the church.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah. Thank you. I've been surprised to hear from people reading the dissertation. Nobody reads dissertations. Nobody reads dissertations, but I get emails from missionaries and BYU Idaho undergrads asking me questions about page 200 of my dissertation or whatever. And I go, who is reading this and why? But it speaks maybe to the gap in the literature on this topic from an LDS perspective.

[Casey]

Yeah. And I don't want to ruin your chance to write a book, but the dissertation is available. Correct. There's even a link where someone can download it and you posted it on social media the other day, so I don't think I'm.

[Scott]

It's fair game outside of boundaries here. Well, let me just do a quick bio for listeners who are not familiar with Ben Spackman and his work, and then we'll kind of dive into some questions here for you, Ben. But first of all, I just want to say this, that, Ben, you have been studying a wide range of topics. You study Semitic languages, biblical studies, history of science, history of Christianity, primarily Reformation and modern America.

[Casey]

Yeah.

[Scott]

You completed your PhD coursework for Comparative Semitics, which is essentially Old Testament languages and literature, plus a little Arabic, correct?

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah. I had four years of Arabic in grad school.

[Scott]

Yes. And you did most of your grad work at University of Chicago, but then you ultimately received your PhD in American religious History from Claremont University in California, correct?

[Ben Spackman]

Correct. Chicago decided after five and a half years that I could not sight read Babylonian well enough. That was the end there.

[Casey]

We can all relate to being told we can't sight read Babylonian well enough. That's something every time every young student has to deal with at some point in their life. Yeah.

[Scott]

Oh, man, that's funny. Well, and we were just talking about your dissertation, which I'll just say one more time, Casey and I read it. And that's been a major source of information for several of our episodes in this series and is now publicly available on ProQuest. And here's what you would type in to try to find it here. It's titled the Scientist is Wrong in Quotations, colon, Joseph fielding Smith, George MacCready Price, and the ascent of Creationist Thought among Latter Day saints in the 20th century. So there you go. If you want to go check it out, it is one of those abnormal dissertations in that people actually want to read it, which is super cool. Again, welcome on the show, Ben.

[Casey]

And Ben, your bio makes me realize what a Jack of all trades you are studying Arabic and Comparative Semitics.

[Ben Spackman]

I'm all over the place.

[Casey]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ben Spackman]

It's been a long and strange road.

[Casey]

What we would call an intellectual polygamist.

[Scott]

My guess, you'd say, oh, wow, Casey would call you that. I would call you a Swiss army knife.

[Casey]

Okay, okay, that's better.

[Scott]

Casey's more comfortable throwing the polygamous term around.

[Casey]

There's a lot of baggage with the first term, I just realized. But let me ask you this. With such a wide range of studies, what led you to study the history of science in the church, specifically these discussions over evolution in the 20th century?

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah. So towards the tail end of my time at the University of Chicago, I was teaching a volunteer institute class at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. And my class was about 30 PhD students in hard sciences, including one non LDS guy. And they came to me and said, we know what you study. Will you do a class just on Genesis for us and help us make sense of this? And I thought, oh yeah, that'd be kind of cool. Yeah, sure. And over the course of that class, they asked a lot of questions that I had not really asked that got me looking. And I started realizing that there was a need, that there were a lot of questions that did not have good responses or good literature, and there was apparently nobody really working on them. Most of what existed had been written in the 70s and it was either written by people with no particular expertise in history or science or scripture, which meant it tended to be kind of shallow research and low quality, or it had been written by scientists who were trying to defend their legitimacy against people who said, well, evolution is just satanic. How can you be pro evolution and teach it by you?

[Casey]

Or whatnot.

[Scott]

Right.

[Ben Spackman]

And so after that I started kind of looking into it and I taught that class again in some other places. And we ended up out at Claremont, partly because my wife got a postdoc there and I took that as kind of the hand of God, because I knew, well, if I'm going to tackle this topic, I have a little bit of a science background because I did all the pre med classes and took the MCAT and volunteer hospital work and stuff. But I've got the scriptural background for this. I need the American Religious History side. And Claremont had that New Mormon Studies program. They'd had Richard Bushman there. They had a PhD in American religious History. So I applied and started there, and that was my entry into American Religious History. And so for all three years of my coursework, I steered every paper and every bit of research into reception history of the early chapters of Genesis, how was it interpreted in the Americas in the 1700s, and latter day Saints and fundamentalism and all of this stuff. And I had to pick. Other than American Religious History, I had two PhD exams. One of them was either Early Christianity or Reformation. And I went, well, I've already got Early Christianity, let's do Reformation, because that's kind of the basic building blocks of American religious history. And I had to pick a tertiary. And I said, history of science is the logical thing to do here. And so once I passed those, I said, okay, let's do this dissertation. And I did a proposal where my committee said, this looks great, but you have to chop it back because every one of these, I don't remember, eight chapters you've proposed could be its own 200 page book. And my advisor said, it's kind of unusual. Most people come to their proposal with enough research for it to look good and make sense, and then they have to kind of reconfigure. You're coming in with enough research for two books and half a dozen papers. So you've got to narrow down to that core narrative and figure out what that is. That's how I came to this.

[Scott]

Well, we hope that you will actually write those books and those articles because you've got all the material to do, so.

[Ben Spackman]

So they're in early process.

[Casey]

And your dissertation did end up being over 300 pages, so.

[Ben Spackman]

300 pages, 900 footnotes. And most of that was to archival material or interviews that I did myself, not secondary lit.

[Scott]

Oh, wow.

[Ben Spackman]

Okay. That's how new it was. And I was actually very nervous for a lot of it because I suspect in your cases, you were kind of doing something someone else had done and bringing a new perspective to it. And I would say, hey, I found this stuff in the archives. Has anyone done anything on this or this guy? No, nothing. So I constantly had to check myself to go, am I misreading this? Am I overstating this? Because I don't have anyone else I can talk to about it.

[Scott]

You're the guy.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah, yeah. Now everyone talks to me about it, so.

[Scott]

Good, good.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah.

[Scott]

Well, well, that's us. We want to talk to you about it. So you mentioned the word. You mentioned the word fundamentalism. And that's a word that's gone through some transformation. And Casey and I have picked that up and been using it the last couple episodes. As contrasted to modernists. Right. Fundamentalists and modernists. Could we, before we go on, could we just define these two terms, fundamentalism and modernism, as they relate to the science, religion debates? Because they're two words that have a lot of meaning in a lot of different contexts. But let's define them here in this

[Ben Spackman]

context, early 20th century, there's what's called the fundamentalist modernism conflict. Fundamentalist gets coined in 1920 to apply to a group of people who have been pushing back against some new ideas. They say these are the fundamentals of Christianity that we can't abandon. There's a series of books published called the Fundamentals that tried to lay out what these fundamentals were. And they tended to be things that we would line up with fairly neatly. The reality of miracles, the reality of the virgin birth, the reality of the atonement, the divinity of Jesus, and then also the inerrancy of the Bible, which not so much, but. And modernists were reacting to a lot of new information. Scientific discoveries, archaeological and textual discoveries, German biblical scholarship and evolution. They were saying maybe tradition's not really giving us a good idea of what the Bible really says. We don't think those things are fundamental. What is really fundamental is essentially the social gospel, doing good, starting orphanages, make building schools. And we're not so sure about the divinity of Jesus. If you, if you go read those books, the fundamentals, they don't really have anything about the age of the earth. They don't really have anything asserting a worldwide flood. They don't. They have very little about evolution. It's not at all what you would think of with the term fundamentalist. There's nothing young earth creationist in it. It's actually a very intellectual movement. By the 1920s that's shifting. 1920s is when fundamentalist starts becoming kind of anti evolution and a much more popular, less intellectual movement.

[Scott]

Right.

[Ben Spackman]

And then kind of by the 1960s is when we get fundamentalism really associated with kind of young earth creationism and things like that. But it's a very shifting term. So I didn't actually use it in my dissertation much except when other people used it.

[Casey]

You correctly point out it probably means something different today than it did in the early 20th century when these debates are happening.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah.

[Casey]

And I hope our listeners will keep that in mind, especially in a Latter Day Saint context where fundamentalist is almost always associated with people that left the

[Ben Spackman]

church and practiced plural marriage or whatnot.

[Casey]

Polygamy.

[Scott]

Yeah.

[Casey]

Well, let me ask you then, now that we've defined the terms, where do Latter Day Saints stand? Are we more modernist? Are we more fundamentalist? In our series, we noted a quote by Heber J. Grant, given in the early 1930s, where he just said, we are fundamentalists. And yet I don't know if we comfortably fit into either category. Where would you place Latter Day Saints on that spectrum?

[Ben Spackman]

Right. Well, back then, in the early 1920s and 1910s, I think we would have been very comfortably fundamentalist. I think it's only the inerrancy part we might have quibbled with. But on the one hand, we were very firm about the atonement and Jesus divinity and all of that. On the other hand, we were also, in some cases more than others, quite willing to look at new discoveries and say, well, how does this reshape our understanding? Because this is relevant. It's just not determinative the way the modernists think. Neither of these groups were what we would think of as a particular church. I mean, there were fundamentalist Catholics, there were fundamentalist Baptists, there were fundamentalist Presbyterians, there were Modernist Catholics, and so on. So it was more about how do you make sense of received tradition when new, reliable information comes along? How do you make sense of that? And in that framing, Latter Day Saints very much have a story. We very much have our own fundamentalist modernist controversy.

[Casey]

Yeah, just like you were saying, there were fundamentalist Catholics and Modernist Catholics. There were fundamentalist Latter Day Saints and modernist Latter Day Saints. And this isn't really a story with good guys and bad guys. It's a story about differing ideas and people that felt really passionate about them and. And worked to put their ideas out there and hopefully engage in some lively discussion about who was right and who was wrong.

[Ben Spackman]

The thing about. About arguing ideas is you're often arguing about something other than what you think you are on the surface.

[Scott]

Say more about that. What do you mean?

[Ben Spackman]

Well, so I'm jumping ahead a bit, but when we have Joseph Fielding Smith arguing with Talmadge and B.H. roberts, on the surface they're kind of talking about science, but below the surface, what you find are starkly differing assumptions about what qualifies as science, what is the nature of Scripture, and how do we mesh those two. And they never seemed to recognize that they had different assumptions. They never Recognized that they were kind of talking past each other and so recognizing the assumptions we have and being able to verbalize that and kind of say, is this reasonable? Where did I get this from? What are the alternatives? What's at stake here? That's a useful conversation to have. Yeah.

[Casey]

Because it's really not fair to say someone like Joseph Fielding Smith was anti science. He's trying to find scientists that line up with his views and use them as evidence. Right.

[Ben Spackman]

Well, Joseph Fielding Smith, properly understood and defined, was very pro science. The problem is one of his assumptions was. Well, he had a couple of key assumptions, but one of them was that Scripture was essentially inerrant and Scripture had scientific facts in it from God, who was omniscient. And the third key one is you can read and understand Scripture at face value. So he thought true science was revealed in Scripture and human science had to take its cues from those facts revealed by God in Scripture. And so human science in his mind was a lesser form of science that had to conform to the obvious facts God had revealed. So if you define science in that way, it makes sense. The problem is the actual scientists in the quorum and most other people did not define science that way. They did not understand Scripture that way.

[Casey]

What are the assumptions that someone like B.H. roberts is operating off of? What's the other side of the equation?

[Ben Spackman]

I think we can put Roberts and Talmage and Witso, kind of treat them together and it's useful to do so. They also believed that God had embedded scientific facts in Scripture. They shared that one. But where they differed was how do you understand those? They thought the scientific facts in Scripture, God would have accommodated to the Israelites understanding. And therefore, if modern science showed the earth was really old, that must be what Scripture was really saying. Modern science revealed those facts in Scripture. They weren't available to you at a face value reading. They also didn't think Scripture was inerrant, or to put this differently, purely divine. They thought Scripture had a strong human factor. You know, the personalities of the prophets were at play. The languages and culture and history of all affected the message. And you had to take those into account when interpreting scripture. Joseph Fielding Smith, with face value, thought, no, God speaks clearly. He thought Scripture was essentially dictated. And if I'm wrong, it's because I can't understand the plain words of Jesus. That's almost a direct quote from one of his things. So starkly differing assumptions about what the nature of Scripture is, how we should understand it, and how other discoveries should affect how we interpret and Understand.

[Scott]

Now, you've been at this game of trying to understand scripture. You've put a ton of effort into understanding the original languages, the cultures, the context of the time. Like, what would you throw into the conversation? If there's anything that you would say would be helpful in what we've learned in the last, let's say 50 years of scripture scholarship in that would add to that conversation both to the B H Roberts, James Talmadge, Witzo side and yeah, Joseph. Like, what else have we learned since then?

[Ben Spackman]

Well, our understanding of the Old Testament, thanks to discoveries really since 1947, has been radically changed.

[Casey]

Yeah, big time.

[Ben Spackman]

It's changed the context, it's changed our understanding of the language. It's given us much, much older manuscripts to work with. And so I had to fight my own impulse to be ahistorical in understanding Joseph Fielding Smith, because I think the stuff I have access to with a mature understanding of standing on the shoulders of 50 years of giants, he simply, it had not even been discovered yet, for the most part.

[Scott]

So you can't fault anyone for not knowing stuff that wasn't discovered yet.

[Casey]

And when you say 1947, I assume you're meaning discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[Ben Spackman]

So you've got the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are the ones everyone knows. They gave us the oldest manuscripts and a bunch of material roughly contemporary with Jesus and Judaism of the period. But that's also when they discovered the text from the city state called Ugarit, which are much less well known. This is a city state that speaks a language very close to Hebrew, just northwest of what we would think of as Israel. It's in Syria today. Ros Shamra is the name of the city and it has made so many things in the Old Testament make sense that the Old Testament authors just assumed all their hearers would understand because they were talking to their contemporaries. I even had one of my professors, not at BYU say, just as you need the Old Testament to understand the New Testament with all of its Torah of Moses and laws and things like that, the Ugaritic texts are the Old Testament of the Old Testament. And so if you're doing an Old Testament PhD with languages, you really can't get it without doing Ugaritic anymore. So there's that stuff. There's maturing understanding of Egyptian texts and Assyrian and Babylonian texts. There's just so much stuff. But one of the things that this does, and I think we'll talk about this more later, is it shows us what creation accounts were trying to do in the Ancient near east and what they weren't trying to do.

[Casey]

Okay, okay, we could go off on a tangent, and maybe we need to bring you back to talk about nearby Near Eastern creation texts. But let's focus on this science and religion, this modernist fundamentalist paradigm in the church. It seems like the inciting incident, maybe the first thing that brings these issues to the forefront is the 1909 First Presidency Statement on the origin of man. So how does that fit into this context we've been talking about?

[Ben Spackman]

There's a specific catalyst and there's the more general stuff in society that's happening that we've already talked about a little bit. There's the early fundamentalist, modernist stuff that's dealing with these Near Eastern discoveries. There is the fact that scientists are very much coalescing around evolution and saying, this is solid science. This is not merely a hypothesis. This is the best explanation there is. There is what's called the warfare hypothesis, and I've talked about this elsewhere, but science and religion as we think of them do not exist until the mid-1800s. You can't even talk about science and religion before the mid-1800s. If you go back in time to, you know, Copernicus and Newton, we learn about their discoveries in a very secularized context. They all thought that they were doing theology. If you read, you know, Copernicus, who discovers the elliptical orbits of the planets, he's not studying elliptical orbits of planets. He is trying to determine God's harmonies of the universe. But that's stripped out. And we just get the math presented to us in physics class. Right. Newton wrote far more about religion in the Bible than he did about gravity or calculus. Basically, the idea was you can study God directly by becoming a theologian, or you study God indirectly by studying nature, because nature is God's creation and it reveals God. You know, Psalm 19, all things reveal the glory of God. You know, the heavens and the earth and all this stuff. So they all thought that they were doing theology. And it's in the 1800s when this really kind of separates and modern science starts coming into play. And in the late 1800s, there are two guys who popularize an idea about what is the relationship between religion and science. And it is. Science and religion have always been the same. They have always been at war with each other. They always will be at war with each other, and science will triumph. And so coming into the 20th century, that's a super popular idea. It's still dominant today. It's drastically wrong, but it's really dominant all of a sudden. Between science now supposedly being the way to validate all knowledge. You know, to say something is scientific is good. To say it's unscientific is very bad. And then to have science and religion being portrayed as at war with each other, and you get all these new discoveries from German scholarship and archaeology undermining traditional ideas of the Bible, while you've got Darwin saying, actually the earth's a lot older and Adam and Eve may or may not have evolved, but evolution is true. Religion really feels like it's on the back foot. So that's kind of general stuff that's going on. The specific catalyst we know, because the draft of the 1909 statement says people associated with BYU, whether that's students or professors or people who lived around, I don't know, they had asked the church, what's our position on all this stuff? And that was the specific catalyst. But everyone else was asking the same questions because it was very much in the air.

[Casey]

And, I mean, the 1909 statement is more nuanced than maybe some people sometimes give it credit for. As you read through it.

[Ben Spackman]

It is. Yeah.

[Casey]

One of the most interesting parts of your work was the background behind how it was written. Initially, it's drafted by Orsne F. Whitney, and then John A. Widtsoe and James E. Talmadge give input. How does it develop and change?

[Ben Spackman]

So Orsnef Whitney is asked to be the voice, and he writes a draft, which we don't have, as far as I know. And it gets revised into a second draft, which we do have. And it is bluntly, unapologetically, anti evolution. It critiques Christians who accept evolution as watering down. The Gospel, says Latter Day Saints do not do this. We draw a line. We believe Scripture, and the First Presidency sends it out to people not in the presidency or in the quorum of the 12 for evaluation. And two of those were James E. Talmadge, who's not yet an apostle, and Johnny Widzo, who's not yet an apostle. And we have Wizo's detailed comments and general summary that he sends to the First Presidency. And we have a letter from Orson F. Whitney kind of back to him. And we have some other things. But to compare Whitney's second draft to what gets published is stark, because all of that blunt, anti evolution stuff gets taken out, presumably, by the First Presidency.

[Scott]

Right.

[Ben Spackman]

It still reads as somewhat skeptical, but it's not the absolute rejection bright line that Whitney drafts. And that, to me, was significant.

[Casey]

And it seems to be engaging with what's probably the Most offensive interpretation of evolution, which is we're not children of God, we are evolved creatures of the come up. That seems to be what the 1909 statement is really concerned about is people looking at evolution and saying, well then God doesn't have anything to do with man. All this happened accidentally, which we'd still have a huge issue with today. But when it comes to other aspects of it, I don't know if you could say Talmadge and Widtsoe were pro evolution, but it seems like they wanted to keep certain avenues of exploration open. Is that the best way to say it?

[Ben Spackman]

They did not think that evidence could be shunted aside the way people like Joseph Fielding Smith did. They thought it was evidence that had to be taken seriously and that you could not get out of scripture what Smith claimed you could get out of scripture. But that concern in the 1909 was a general concern. Evolution has never been strictly or even really about the science. It's been about this collection of issues that people bring to it. I mean, two that we didn't bring up there was social Darwinism, which at the time was saying, well, if I'm a robber baron and I'm on top, it's because I'm the best. And so clearly the people down at the bottom who are poor and sick and disabled, we should not be doing charity for them because that's bad for the human Ra there. That plays directly into eugenics, which was started by Darwin's cousin. Right. So I mean, this was never strictly about the science. It was about a lot of other things.

[Casey]

And you can see their concern because some of those ideas, like eugenics, play out in the 20th century.

[Ben Spackman]

Absolutely.

[Casey]

In very dangerous ways. So it was really responsible, the first presidency to issue a statement on this to deal with some of the more sinister concepts associated with evolution. But it's also interesting that they, they sought the council of scientists to see how they could find a more moderate approach. The thing I came away with in this entire thing is that the role of the first presidency is sometimes to moderate some of the more extreme voices in the church.

[Ben Spackman]

Well, I think they were doing what President Nelson vocalized as they were seeking the best information possible and then making their decisions based on that and inspiration. It was a really fun day in the archive when I came across that draft with Witso's notes and letters.

[Scott]

Yeah, I had never heard of that before until I read your dissertation. And that was eye opening. And it does take away any question as to what they were responding to in the environment. Right. Now, in fact, let's talk more about the ongoing 20th century discussions over the church position on evolution. Who were the key voices? We've mentioned Joseph Fielding Smith. We've mentioned James E. Talmadge, Johnny Widtso, B H Roberts. Anyone else? Anyone else you'd add to that?

[Ben Spackman]

Well, I mean, Joseph. Joseph F. Smith, of course, who is president of the church through 1918.

[Casey]

Yeah. So he's the leader of the first presidency when the 1909 statement comes out. And his position is way more complicated than people generally assume. You were just talking to us before we started recording about some letters you found. Tell us a little bit about that.

[Ben Spackman]

His take was that evolution was probably false, but he also thought Darwin, if I can quote from him here, he said, I regard Charles Darwin as one of the most able and devoted students of nature the world has known and as an investigator whose labors have been of incalculable good to mankind.

[Scott]

Wow.

[Casey]

Joseph F. Smith wrote that.

[Ben Spackman]

Joseph F. Smith. That's 1911. And there's the 1911 thing at BYU that I assume you've talked about before. But that very same year, he takes geologist Frederick Pack, who is an old Earth pro evolution, species can shift death before the fall kind of guy, and says, you're doing good work. I want to encourage it. In fact, I'm going to create this standing committee of apostles and LDS scientists to interface with you so we can profit from your work. That's not something you do if you think evolution is scientifically false and also a satanic heresy. So he's skeptical, but he's open. Right.

[Scott]

That's hard to do. Right. That's hard to do. And that's actually beautiful to see him hold both of those intention.

[Ben Spackman]

So then you've got Frederick Pack. Frederick Pack, who is a player, an influential, a good bit behind the scenes for 20 or 30 years as an LDS geologist who's very trusted and also becomes essentially the general church Sunday school president. The titles are a little bit fuzzy and they shift, but they like his work. They put him in positions where he can talk about it more, and he does to church members, to seminary and institute teachers, to byu. There's Adam Bennion, who is not a scientist, but he's also kind of an administrator in the church education system. And he talks about science and religion a good bit. He is pro evolution. He begs people to keep an open mind. He uses books by Christians who are scientists who are trying to explain scripture in light of evolution and evolution in light of scripture and generally trying to find more of A co. Space for existence as opposed to. No, this is absolutely false. And Bennion eventually becomes an apostle under President McKay in, I think, 1953.

[Casey]

In the 1950s. Yeah. That's where Bennion joins the Quorum of the Twelve.

[Scott]

It seems like, in the 1930s. And we talked about this in previous episodes once. There's kind of this big, you know, debate that comes to a head with BH Roberts and Joseph building Smith. And the First Presidency gets James E. Talmage involved to do the Earth and Man.

[Casey]

Yeah.

[Scott]

Pamphlet that he does. And Heber J. Grant says, let's. Let's. Let's leave the science to the scientists and let's get busy preaching the gospel. And it kind of seems like the church position on evolution is we don't have a position on evolution. And so things kind of settle in the 1930s, but then there seems to be a resurgence in the mid 20th century.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah.

[Scott]

What are the factors that lead to that? You want to talk about that?

[Ben Spackman]

Oh, yeah. This is the messiest part, and I think this is one of the hardest parts for Latter Day Saints to be comfortable with because it gets us into church history. That doesn't seem inspired. It's kind of focused on the human aspects.

[Scott]

Okay.

[Ben Spackman]

So in 1931, there are really only two other apostles who kind of side with Joseph Fielding Smith. But by the early 1950s, all of those apostles are dead. There are no more scientists in the Quorum. And all of the younger apostles have grown up listening to Joseph Fielding Smith preach. And they think about Scripture the way he does. They interpret scripture the way he does. So all of a sudden, his paradigm is the dominant paradigm in the quorum of the 12. And he had been trying to publish his book, Man His Origin and destiny, for 20 or 30 years. And it had always been shot down by the reading committee, which Widtso was on. And so now that WITSO is gone and there are no other scientists in the Quorum, he publishes it. He does not go through the committee. He bypasses the committee, but he publishes it. And then it gets pushed by younger apostles in General Conference. That gets pushed on all seminary and institute teachers at the special BYU summer training. And the assumption is, well, he's the president of the quorum of the 12. This is the church's position on this stuff. And that gets amplified by some of these younger apostles, like Markey Peterson, who is a journalist. And as he's interviewing stake president, he says to them, do you believe potential stake presidents? Right. He's trying to call new leadership in Stakes, he says, do you believe the gospel? And if they say yes, he says, I mean, do you believe the gospel as preached by Joseph Fielding Smith?

[Scott]

Oh, so Smith, what was he really asking there? Help me with that, what's he asking?

[Ben Spackman]

I think what distinguished Smith from the First Presidency at that point was he thought ideas like pre Adamites and the age of the Earth and death before the Fall were absolutely central to the gospel. And this is what 1931 had been about. The first presidency in 1931 said, we have no doctrine on death before the Fall either way. We have no doctrine on pre Adamites either way. But because of the way Smith read Scripture, Scripture had a position on those things. And Scripture dictated a young earth, no death before Adam, no pre Adamites. If you believed that stuff for him, that went directly to undermining Jesus in atonement. And so it was absolutely central to the Gospel primarily because of the lenses he brought to Scripture. And so I suspect because he was preaching those things that he could show in Scripture whether his interpretation was correct or not. Elder Peterson felt like this is a more scriptural gospel than what I'm hearing from President McKay who disagrees or doesn't have a position. So there's a big human factor and President McKay is the other half. President McKay and the other members of the first presidency, they disagree with this stuff really strongly, but they don't do anything about it in public, presumably because McKay's personality is very non confrontational. He believes very strongly in agency. And McKay, if he'd said something in public, I think the next 40 years of history would have been very, very different. But he doesn't. And what happens in the next 30 years is Smith's interpretations and the assumptions that generate those interpretations, those become church doctrine, those become orthodoxy.

[Casey]

Now President McKay does. I guess we don't know if. Well, J. Reuben Clark gives a speech called when are the Writings of Latter Day Saint Scripture? And it seems like that coming right in the midst of all these intense discussions was the First Presidency response. But it doesn't seem like it had as big an impact as say, James E. Talmadge's talk given in the 1930s. Did you discover any reasons why? Because I would say President McKay did respond. He said J. Reuben Clark to say something. But it just seems like that talk, which we refer to all the time and as part of the prediction serve as seminary readings for seminary teachers, just isn't well known or well circulated in

[Scott]

the church or well contextualized. Right.

[Ben Spackman]

Well contextualized.

[Scott]

Well contextualized.

[Ben Spackman]

There's a little bit of conflicting historical information about whether he went down directly to address that, whether McKay asked him to. There's some things that suggest that Harold B. Lee asked him to, which would be kind of odd. But regardless, because nothing in his talk addressed the age of the earth or evolution or pre Adamites or how to interpret Scripture, no one took it as having anything to do with what Joseph Fielding Smith was writing or preaching. Yeah, privately, yes. Publicly, not remotely.

[Casey]

The talk is a marvelous set of general principles about the words of the prophets and how they fit into our epistemology. But you're right, it doesn't address that specific issue. So I guess people just assumed, well, okay, this is good guidance, but it wasn't meant as a corrective, I guess you'd say.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah, it wasn't a counterpoint from the First Presidency. It wasn't a rebuttal in any way,

[Scott]

but it actually kind of seems like it was meant to be a rebuttal, wasn't it?

[Ben Spackman]

Probably.

[Scott]

What do you think?

[Ben Spackman]

I think the balance of evidence says it was probably meant to undermine what Joseph Field League Smith was preaching. And we know that President McKay took other private steps to undermine that. He sends Adam Bennion down to BYU to talk to the geology department and say, don't believe any of what the fundamentalists are telling you right now. And he uses that term fundamentalist. Well, at least in the. The geology professor who remembers this, remembers the term fundamentalist.

[Scott]

Secondhand account, sure.

[Ben Spackman]

And he responds to dozens of private letters saying, this is not the position of the Church. This is not an authorized book. He does not speak for the First Presidency. But again, none of that is public. And even his letters are so little known that I think two decades later, when one of them gets published, there are BYU professors who say, well, this is obviously a forgery.

[Scott]

Oh, wow.

[Ben Spackman]

And another apostle might be. Harold B. Lee says, well, this is the only letter like that he wrote. And he was under pressure from his liberal son at the University of Utah. So even to other apostles and BYU professors, nobody knew about these private letters McKay was responding to.

[Scott]

Can I just pause for a second? I want to go back to something Casey said. He said, there are no good guys and no bad guys in this history. Especially when you're talking about people of differing opinions who are wonderful people. We're talking about apostles here who have very differing opinions. So this is complexity on display here, right?

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Scott]

And so maybe you could just pause for a second and model for us, like, how do you make sense of all that? Complexity and the differences of opinions among apostles on this in a paradigm of discipleship where you still sustain these leaders while maybe disagreeing with one or the other positions on that, like how does one do that in a faithful way? And even today reading the history and you're like, oh, I may disagree with this side or that side, is that okay, Ben? Can we do that? And if so, how do we do that?

[Ben Spackman]

Well, I. So seeing the diversity is useful and understanding why the diversity exists is useful. It undermines the idea, and President Eyring has talked about this, it undermines the idea that the way prophethood works is God just kind of downloads new correct information to all the apostles minds at the same time.

[Scott]

Right.

[Ben Spackman]

Some of my testimony that allows me to deal with this was actually my extensive work in the Old Testament. Because in the Old Testament you see God allowing his chosen prophets to have their weaknesses and foibles fully on display, even when they have deeply negative consequences.

[Scott]

Interesting.

[Ben Spackman]

God's prophets are not robots or puppets and people will recoil. Well, of course they're not. But the way we act kind of assumes that revelation is just kind of dictated. And so for me, I, I'm very comfortable with this stuff because I've spent 20 years deep in it. I think I have a fairly complex and mature understanding of what prophethood and inspiration mean. And so I'm comfortable seeing apostles argue with each other in public. That to me does not undermine their calling.

[Scott]

So what assumptions do you have about prophets that make that okay?

[Ben Spackman]

Well essentially that, and I'm paraphrasing that liberal softy Bruce R. McConkie here, that prophets are primarily human whom God inspires and touches. They are not primarily avatars of God whose humanity occasionally causes mistakes. They start with the human part and God adds a bit of the divine. That doesn't mean that some revelation doesn't come dictated. That doesn't mean they don't have visions or dreams or whatever. I'm just talking about the general default mode of operation of prophets, ancient and modern.

[Casey]

And I think when we talk about divine process too, there's this wonderful talk that President D. Todd Christofferson gave where he was talking about how revelation comes to the church. And he gave two examples. He said, first it can come like it did to Simon Peter when he received the. The dream that the gospel should go to all nations. And then the example President Christofferson cited was section 138. Section 138 is this vision of the spirit world that's received and bam, the prophet received it and we're all on board and let's go. But then he said the second method is council, where they consider scripture, they consider past practice. They have discussions, sometimes really intense discussions to find their way forward. Like, there's this other wonderful quote where Henry B. Eyring said he attended his first meeting with the general authorities of the church. And he. He couldn't believe the way that they were talking to each other. He was like, you know, I came from a business background, and in business you respect, you know, your. Your seniors. But there was such a freedom and a fluency back and forth in the meeting that totally surprised him. And that, in its own sense, is divine. Like, everybody is trying to do what's right, and they might really strongly disagree, but there's this fluency and freedom to say what you want to say that sometimes leads us towards the divine conclusion. God wants us to find that.

[Ben Spackman]

That, I think, is kind of the model. Well, I have a couple things about this. I mean, you've got The Constitution, which DNC tells us somewhere is inspired. I have not a DNC. Section 101.

[Casey]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ben Spackman]

Well, how was that written? Was it one guy, still, small voice, in touch with the Spirit, who writes it all out? Nah, it's, you know, a couple dozen people locked in a hot room for weeks, arguing with each other and hammering it out. And yet that produces an inspired thing. I like taking that and using the metaphor of Job where God speaks out of the whirlwind. Not peaceful calm, but out of the whirlwind, out of the chaos and the maelstrom, comes this Revelation. And then you get Acts 1528, where the council says, it seemed good to us and to the Holy Ghost. So, you know, we've been talking. It seems like the right thing to do, and we think we've got confirmation from the Holy Spirit. That's a mode of revelation that we don't tend to think about much. But for me, that makes a lot of room for understanding why apostles could have ideas 180 degrees opposite from each other.

[Scott]

Yeah.

[Ben Spackman]

And to go back specifically to Joseph Fielding Smith, he shows a lot of integrity against strong pressure because in his mind, and he says this explicitly several times, he says, this is not me. I'm not interpreting. This is simply what the Lord says. Now, I think he's wrong about that. But he says, this is what the Lord says, and we're bound to believe it and bound to defend it. And that's why he preaches the earth is young. That's why he preaches. No Death before the fall, because he thinks it is just clearly revealed in Scripture. And he stands for scripture and truth. I also stand for scripture and truth. But I understand things differently than he did, just as McKay and other apostles understood things differently than he did.

[Casey]

But, I mean, is there something to be said about the role of that? I work with other churches as part of my responsibilities. And sometimes, I mean, people look at our church and they marvel at our unity. But behind the scenes, there's quite a bit of discussion and debate and everything like that. And sometimes, yeah, when a church completely goes one direction or another direction, it does seem like they get into trouble. I'm glad to know that in the 30s and the 50s, the 70s, and today, there's a wide diversity of opinions. There's some really different people in the First Presidency and the Quorum of the twelve, because they keep kind of pulling us back towards the center. And I don't know if I have the evidence to say this, but Joseph Fielding Smith became president of the church. He only served briefly.

[Scott]

I think you can back that up. I think you can back that up historically.

[Casey]

Yeah. Okay. Well, he was 93 when he became president of the church. And this is his big chance to codify, to issue a new origin of man's statement. And he doesn't do that. It seems like as he. As he matured, he became more moderate as well. Or am I wrong here?

[Ben Spackman]

There's very little in my research from that period of his life. I strongly suspect he did not actually change his views, but also was not inclined to preach them as freely, if that makes sense. In his general conference talk where he is first president of the church, he said something like, everything I've preached in the past, I would preach again. I stand by that. You know, something like that. But. But it's true that he doesn't issue any kind of statement or things like that. And it may be. I have no information on this. It may be that he tried and it didn't work in the council because that happens later on in the 80s. He's also 93.

[Casey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Spackman]

I imagine you just don't have as much energy to pick fights or push controversial things at 93.

[Casey]

Well, one of the interesting things we found was that Scott and I went through the whole history of statements on evolution, and it seems like today's views are. We've sort of returned to that moderation where the article on evolution that's in the Gospel library application actually states the church has no official position on organic evolution. And that's from an article published by the church in 2016. So how do we get from this mid 20th century, where we very much shift against evolution, to where we're at now, where we seem to have returned to more of a moderate 1930 stance to the point to where it would be really surprising if a general church leader gave a talk that said definite things about creation. When I tried to find one, I found stuff from President Holland and President Christofferson where they basically said, we don't know the details of the creative process, but here's the most important thing to know. It was purposeful. It was directed by God, it was enacted by Jesus Christ. How did we get from there to here?

[Ben Spackman]

Well, again, there are personalities at play after the death of President Smith. Younger apostles who have grown up in an era of not quite as charged around evolution and where the science is more established, they also have different views to some extent. And you have people like President Hinckley who, it's circumstantial, but President Hinckley seems to have been kind of a, at least old Earth, death before the fall, the science is very reliable kind of person. They helped shift this a bit. This isn't in my dissertation, but under President Benson, there were two occasions where he wanted to have the church write an official doctrinal statement against evolution. And neither of them went through.

[Scott]

Interesting.

[Ben Spackman]

In 1986, it was because his two counselors, Monson and Hinckley, essentially said, what are we going to accomplish with this? Why do we want to die on this hill? What's the possible blowback on this? Whatever they exactly said to him, they kind of talked him down and said, this is not a thing that will move the gospel forward. But at byu, there was also a shift. They moved towards hiring. In the words of one person I interviewed, they quit hiring scriptorians and started hiring scholars.

[Scott]

What does that mean? That's charged.

[Ben Spackman]

There had been in the 50s and 60s a lot of people who were teaching in the religion department who their degrees were not really relevant. And they largely repeated what they were hearing from Joseph Fielding Smith and the creationist fundamentalist Christian material that was being circulated. And by the 70s and 80s and 90s, people who are going through a PhD program in old Testament are getting the kind of training that reorients them towards creation texts and makes them aware of their assumptions more so you have far fewer people in the religion department, which does a lot of writing of church manuals and other things where they are no longer in the oh yeah, scripture compels us to a Young Earth scripture compels us against pre Adamites.

[Casey]

I have to briefly address that scriptorians versus scholars idea, which does pop up sometimes, and I would hope that we don't see those two terms as mutually exclusive of one another. I work with some wonderful people who are scholars and great scriptorians, and I hope vice versa is true.

[Ben Spackman]

Right.

[Casey]

But yeah, I mean, there were some very, very firm views among religion teachers about the age of the earth or, you know, the means God used to create our bodies that maybe have been moderated a little bit now too, as

[Ben Spackman]

well, if I can flesh out his dichotomy a little. There is a difference between a disciple who has, say, Romans memorized in the King James Version, and someone who can actually sit down and tell you what Romans is actually about. And we used to have a lot of people like the former, and we're now getting more towards the latter. Ideally you have both, but that was one of the trends in terms of events. You have the 1992 Encyclopedia of Mormonism, which shifts things a bit, and there's a story there. Have you talked about that already?

[Casey]

We talked about it briefly, but you probably know more about that background than we do, so fire away.

[Ben Spackman]

So, you know, late 80s Macmillan Press comes to the church and they say, hey, we publish encyclopedias of different religions. They go to public libraries. There's nothing like this for you guys if you're interested in doing it. And the church jumps at the chance. And the way this works is you've got several tiers of editors and multiple writers. And there are two apostles assigned who read every article. And any apostle can read any article draft at any time. And that happens multiple times. There are a couple articles that pertain. There's one on creation, there's one on evolution. And the evolution article, they have multiple authors writing multiple drafts, going in multiple directions. And the first and second level editors are saying, well, hold on, if you're going to bring in that, you also have to bring in this for fairness. And these article drafts just keep snowballing and getting longer and longer than Macmillan wants the word limit to be. And there are. There's a little bit of acrimony occasionally between different editors and different writers who are trying to push things in different directions. They send a draft up that gets approved and comes back, and then approval is withdrawn several times. Oh, and finally an article comes down that is very short. I think it's under 500 words, with the instructions, print this. And that is the article that gets published with the pen name of a Physics professor who had been authoring some of the other drafts. Well, that was actually written by President Hinckley.

[Casey]

The article.

[Ben Spackman]

Whoa.

[Scott]

Seriously?

[Ben Spackman]

He is the only functional member of the first presidency at the time. President Benson is the president of the church. What seems likely to have happened? So there's a little bit of documentation for this and a little bit of reading between the lines, and it makes sense to me, but, you know, it's not like I have Hinckley's journal. Okay.

[Scott]

Okay.

[Ben Spackman]

President Hinckley was himself likely quite pro Old Earth. You know, all of that stuff. When he was asked about evolution in the past, he said, you know, I studied all about it. Didn't bother me then, didn't bother me now.

[Scott]

Yeah.

[Ben Spackman]

I have documentation that his favorite classes in college were geology, that he took two of them, and that he got as. And do you want to guess who he took those two geology classes with at the University of Utah? Frederick Pack.

[Casey]

Okay.

[Scott]

And Casey, who was his mission president?

[Casey]

Well, his mission president was a guy named Joseph F. Merrill. Eminent scientist.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah.

[Casey]

From the University of Utah. Also, who. President Hinckley wrote his epigraph. He wrote his obituary in the church magazine.

[Ben Spackman]

President Hinckley's formative mentoring on these questions would have come from people with much more of a reconciliation way of making sense of things. And so what I think happened is Hinckley, who was very pro this stuff, did not feel like he could do something that President Benson, whom he was serving as councilor, would not approve. And so what he does that threads the needle is he goes back to those 1931 first presidency minutes, which had been rumored, but no one had ever actually seen them. He pulls out those first presidency minutes from 1931 that say, you know, biology and physics, these do not concern us. Leave science to the scientists. And that is the bulk of the evolution article in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. And that's what gets published. And people who knew at the time, they said, William Evanson has no access to the first presidency minutes from 1931. This could not have been written by him. This is coming from someone else. And it was President Hinckley.

[Casey]

Is William Evanson still with us, Ben, or is he passing?

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah, I have a research interview with him that I recorded. Okay, that's kind of where this is coming from.

[Casey]

Okay, so did he say that? Did he say that President Hinckley was the author? I got to push you a little bit on this.

[Ben Spackman]

It's probably Noel Reynolds who said that, but I think so. Reynolds was one of the first tier editors and he's still alive. And I interviewed him and there's a lot of Encyclopedia of Mormonism stuff in special collections, and those are my sources. I might have another one. But I think both Evanson and Reynolds were the ones who said this came down to us from President Hinckley and that it was probably Reynolds who pushed me into the speculation of why it was withdrawn and pushed back and the threading the needle with 1931. Which makes a whole lot of sense.

[Casey]

Yeah.

[Ben Spackman]

Because President Benson could hardly be opposed to the first presidency declaration. Well, it wasn't declaration, but the first presidency minutes from 1931.

[Casey]

Another interesting wrinkle here that you're probably already familiar with. It was in 1992 as well that BYU started publishing a packet that goes

[Ben Spackman]

out of the Encyclopedia of Mormonism.

[Casey]

Yeah, it's still available. You can still walk into the Teacher Resource center and there's copies there ready for you. That Packet has the 1909 First Presidency Statement. It has the 1925 First Presidency Statement that's literally just titled Mormon View on Evolution. And then it has that 1931 statement as well, which, like you said, in 1992, would have been fairly hard to obtain for a rank and file member of the Church. So those two things seem to be linked to each other and that still feeds the discourse. When a student comes to me and says, what about evolution? I usually refer them to that packet and say, go read through the packet and here's what the leaders of the Church have said, and then let's talk about it together.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was William Evanson who was the first one to say, well, can we just package this stuff together with the Encyclopedia of Mormonism article and make it available to students? And part of the catalyst for that was there was a pamphlet that had been written by a BYU professor that cherry picked church statements and creationist statements to make it seem like the Church had a formal position against evolution which had no scientific evidence behind it. And they would distribute this in religion classes, even after being told not to by the Church, by the BYU President, they would put it outside their class and say, I can't hand this out to you, but if you want to know what the Church says, you should read it. And occasionally some of those professors would imply to their students that this was church produced and had been approved by correlation. So this was an attempt at a counter packet that really had the official stuff.

[Casey]

And on that flip side, we should say that that packet that we still distribute was approved by the Board of trustees. Of BYU, which is the first presidency, the 12, several of the general officers of the church. So it kind of does carry that imprint that, no, this is the official church position on this particular thing. So that's fascinating background to provide, man. And that. That does seem to shift us to the trajectory we're on now where, you know, the church doesn't have a position.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah. I think one of the things that was representative of was that church leaders were starting to take faithful church scholars very seriously again, because from the 50s into kind of the 70s and 80s, it had been a very fundamentalist idea. Well, we have prophets with a direct line to God. We don't need any human scholarship. And that's kind of when a bunch of LDS tradition really gets solidified as orthodoxy. That's when we get the priesthood band gets kind of a unified myth behind it. That's when the King James Version becomes our official Bible. That's kind of when Joseph Fielding Smith's no death before the fall, no pre Adamites becomes a lot more orthodox. That all gets kind of standardized because we don't need outside information. Tradition is direct from God. And by the 80s and 90s, church leaders saying, hold on, our historians who are reliable are producing material that shows tradition is wrong about some of this stuff. And that leads to a number of things eventually that generates the gospel topics essays and the Joseph Smith paper and things like that. So there's much more openness to scholarship as kind of a lesser partner with revelation. Or as President Nelson says, good information leads to good inspiration.

[Scott]

Yeah. And I was thinking of Paul. Like Paul says, God placed into the church first apostles and prophets and then secondly teachers. That's what he said. Teacher, like teachers. Teachers and prophets, like, have been and should be working together, at least in the Pauline conception of it. And it seems like we're at our. Our best as a church when. When that happens, as we saw in the 1930s and today.

[Casey]

Yeah. Do you think Paul was referring to teachers as in scholars or teachers as in the ecclesiastical office that exists in the church? I mean, that. That's the first question.

[Scott]

Yeah, no, it's. And that's fair. But I just, I just love at least the. The idea of this, of, of apostles and prophets not being able to do it all on their own. Like, like all hands on deck. Everybody, like the body of Christ needs every member. Right.

[Ben Spackman]

The people who push back on me on that tend to think that prophets just go into a room and get the direct download from God. They don't need to read anything. They don't need to do research, which again, I think is kind of a fundamentalist idea that doesn't fit scripture history. But I don't. Let's put it this way. President Oaks has much bigger things on his plate than going down to the archives and reading through some guy's journal from the 1940s trying to look for what led to science, religion, conflict. Right, right. It is up to the historians and the Bible scholars and all of these people to kind of research and winnow and produce the best information that can then go up the chain.

[Scott]

Yeah, that seems to always have been the most fruitful way. When that's working well in the church, things seem to be at their best.

[Ben Spackman]

And Cayce brought up Peter's vision that brought in the Gentiles earlier. But I want to point out Peter didn't understand what it meant until he went and talked to other people.

[Casey]

Good point. That's a really good point. Ben, I want to push you on one question.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah, please.

[Casey]

I'm kind of. I want to find a harmony. I want everybody to be on the same page. I teach big classes that have 200 people in them. Can we affirm that the church's position on evolution is organic? Evolution is neutral. When I'm teaching 200 people, if there are people in that room that just firmly believe no way evolution happened, and there are people that believe no, evolution is the way God created our bodies can all kind of exist in harmony. Is it okay to affirm that for those church members out there that might not believe in evolution? Because in my research, one of the things I found was Russell M. Nilsen was actually asked, do you believe in evolution? And he said something like, it just doesn't make sense to me. It seems like he doesn't.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah. He said, it's not the way genetics works.

[Casey]

Yeah.

[Ben Spackman]

I've had people point me to that interview, I think in 2007, and they say, and he's a scientist, he knows about genetics. And I say, well, he's a doctor, which is a little different. And he's a surgeon, which means he's more like the car mechanic of doctors than like a biology researcher of doctors. And I say, do you know when he got his MD? I say, well, the 1940's that's like 1948 or something. And I say, do you know when DNA was discovered? And it's several years later. I don't have any expectation that President Nelson kept up on the literature of genetics and evolution. I don't expect that from him. But yes, that was certainly his perspective.

[Casey]

Yeah. And what I'm saying is President Nilsen definitely read after he got his degree. He was an intelligent guy. He was very moderate on the question, but he just personally didn't believe in it. Is there space for both of those types of people in the church and maybe some people in between that are saying, evolution doesn't seem to work for me, but I can keep an open mind, or I don't believe in every aspect of evolution, because that seems to be the church's position, too. The article that they quote says the church has no official position on organic evolution. But then it goes on to say, but we believe Adam and Eve were the first spirit children of God to exist on Earth.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah, I think that's worded very, very carefully. When I do these things, I'm not trying to push one particular view as a historian and a Bible scholar. I'm mostly trying to make people aware that some of the constraints that they think are really firmly in place are actually artificial and recent. And if we remove those constraints, there are a whole lot of different scenarios. I think there is room for people who are evolution acceptors and evolution skeptics provided that. I mean, I get this all the time. I get evolution skeptics who say, you accept evolution, you're an atheist, you're a wolf in sheep's clothing, you reject Jesus and the church, and we have to keep you from the youth. Where my concern is, is that if you approach scripture and science from the perspective of Joseph Fielding Smith, you create a whole lot of science, religion conflict. And I don't see any hints that science is somehow going to overturn an old Earth or evolution. And here's why that's a problem. I interviewed the son and grandson of a prominent BYU religion professor who had been very much in this camp of, it's evolution or the gospel. You can't do both. Yeah, and his. All of his descendants were out of the church because they had taken that seriously. And they said, well, look, I do this science every day in my lab, so I guess it's religion that's wrong. I think the evolution skepticism comes from a place that also leads to either a hard fundamentalism or a loss of faith. And yikes. So that's where my concern is with that kind of thing. That's. I don't actually care what someone's opinion is. I want them to know the history. Well, I want them to not be having any, like, imaginary straw men in their heads. You know, the people who say, oh, evolution doesn't have a single Scientific fact to back it, I think. I don't know who you've been reading, but it's got a good bit. It has some holes, it has some problems, but that's the nature of science. That is how science works. But generally there's room for people to coexist and get along.

[Scott]

We've been asking a lot of questions with your church historian hat on. Maybe I can ask you a question where you can put your Bible scholar hat on just for a second. What would you say to somebody you do firesides a lot about reconciling science and religion. You speak frequently on reading. There you go. You speak frequently on reading biblical texts like the book of Genesis that are sometimes difficult and trip people up. And so I guess it's not fair to ask you to distill all that you teach on that into just a couple sentences. But what would be, you know, for anyone listening to this, what would you want them to know about scripture that you think would be very helpful and that a lot of people maybe don't see, or it's not intuitive, but could be helpful as we try to make sense of scripture?

[Ben Spackman]

Well, I'm not an inerrantist, but I do think scripture is absolutely true, including Genesis.

[Scott]

Okay.

[Ben Spackman]

One of the key things that people find useful is to recognize that past scripture, and I include D and C in this, but especially the Old Testament was not written for us. We are not its primary audience. They were writing for their contemporaries who shared their culture and their language and their concerns. And so there was so much that could go without being said that it didn't get said. And so fast forward 3,4000 years reading in translation without that shared cultural understanding of what's going on and what are our concerns, we fill that in with our own. And so we naturally look to Genesis as well. It must be talking about material creation. It must be talking about the age of the earth. It must be talking about all this stuff. And being able to show people that it's really not is really useful. It tends to be really mind opening, and it mitigates a whole lot of concerns. And it also shows when I do it well that what's driving this is not, oh, well, science says this, so scripture must be figurative. That's not it at all. It is reading scripture literally. That means in context, as the author intended. And that means we have to recover those contexts that went without being said.

[Casey]

I read a great book this week where the author argued, you know, when we read scripture, we need to read it literarily rather than literally. In other words, we consider the genre the audience. Like you said, Ben, what was shorthand for them? I mean, imagine if someone from Moses Day was brought into our time and we said, oh, that's my Kryptonite. You know, he would have no clue what we're talking about, because that's cultural shorthand for us. And reading it literarily might mean that you read some text very literally. I think the four Gospels are very literal, but other texts, you're looking at it and saying, what are they trying to accomplish here? And what does the genre look like to the people that it was written to? It goes back to that, that verse in the Doctrine and Covenants where the Lord says, I speak unto men according to their understanding and their language. And that language includes their cultural language, too. Yep.

[Ben Spackman]

And in recent times, the church's materials have been doing a lot of good work on this stuff. I'm thinking of Richard Holzoffel's article in the Liahona a couple years ago on accommodation, although he didn't use that word. Come, follow me. And Scripture helps. Old Testament are really good on this stuff. And the 10 principles for answering gospel questions that have, you know, sub paragraphs on things like work to understand the past, understand that revelation is a process, seek reliable resources. There are a lot of Latter Day Saints who just latch onto any old podcast or book that sounds good and kind of tickles their fancy. Even if it's really low quality information, then they don't pick up on the red flags that should say that.

[Scott]

Certainly none that listen to this podcast.

[Casey]

Yeah, let's don't be too harsh about podcast. We're trying, everybody, we're doing the best we can here.

[Scott]

Can I ask, can I be vulnerable with you, Ben? Sure. I'm going to read a sentence that Casey and I put together about scripture and I want you to give us a grade and you can critique it. You can. I mean, so can I, Can I,

[Ben Spackman]

can I try to anticipate doing ahead of time?

[Scott]

Oh, sure.

[Ben Spackman]

I would say that that probably needs, that probably needs some footnotes and some explanatory nuance.

[Casey]

Scott loves.

[Scott]

Got it.

[Casey]

Sentence.

[Scott]

He's.

[Casey]

Here's the sentence every episode. And I thought you were going to do it a little bit more sneaky here, Scott, but you're just.

[Scott]

I just want, I just want Ben's feedback. Because I, I.

[Casey]

Okay.

[Scott]

Because I, I, I respect your opinion, Ben. So here it is.

[Casey]

All right, all right, go ahead.

[Scott]

Quote Scripture. Texts are the result of a human divine collaboration written by ancient Authors embedded in their own cultures and crafted primarily for the purpose of doing theology, not science.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah, Yeah, I like that a lot.

[Scott]

Like, a lot like a minus.

[Ben Spackman]

I'm going to go with a minus just because I'm a stingy grader. Things can always be improved.

[Scott]

Wow. Wow, Ben, that's high price coming for stingy grader. A minus. We'll take it.

[Ben Spackman]

You know, maybe B plus if I heard it again, but.

[Scott]

Oh, gee, no, let's go with a minus.

[Ben Spackman]

I think it's really key to recognize the humanity in church leadership and revelation in Scripture, because if you do think it's purely divine, then as soon as you discover some humanity you can't write off, you chuck it. You know, that paradigm breaks very easily.

[Casey]

Yeah, right. That sets up a conflict that doesn't need to be there.

[Ben Spackman]

Exactly.

[Casey]

And that can ultimately be harmful to a person's faith in God.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah. Some people can sustain it throughout their lives, but in my experience, most people just break.

[Scott]

Yeah. Well, this has been so much fun. So much fun.

[Casey]

I want to do maybe one or two more things, so.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah, sure.

[Casey]

This series is coming out at the time the church has started doing. Come follow me on the Old Testament. And you are a popular guy during the early months of each year. See the Old Testament every four years.

[Ben Spackman]

I just kind of imagine the bat signal being put into the. This is my time.

[Casey]

Call Ben Spackman. And we've taken enough of your time, but I was wondering if maybe you could give us maybe like two or three top tips that would help a person to gain understanding as they study this sacred book of scripture, the Old Testament.

[Ben Spackman]

Okay. So this is significant because I would not have said it in the past, so it ought to carry some weight, but I would use the church's materials.

[Scott]

Why would you not have said that?

[Ben Spackman]

Come follow me. And the. Well, you know, I've written on my blog about the fatal flaws of the 1980 Old Testament Institute Manual that really reflected fundamentalism pretty heavily. This year's materials are very, very good. And I think a lot of us, I suspect a lot of us just kind of ignore them, which at times in the past 1980 institute manual may have been good, but they're pretty good, especially the footnotes. And second, especially with the church's new policy, I would say get yourself a second or even third translation, ideally one with some study notes, and work through that. And my favorites tend to be the SBL Study Bible, the Cultural Background Study Bible, and the Jewish Study Bible from Oxford Press and the Jewish Publication Society. Okay, those are Pretty good and have some different perspectives on things then. I really like Robert Alter, but it's a three volume hardcover and it's like $90, so that's hard to recomm to people. But it's also really good for some things that others don't quite get at. So use the church's materials, get a second or third translation and a study Bible or two and enjoy. Just because if you have never really read out of another translation, having things make sense and having notes that make things make sense to you is such an amazing experience.

[Casey]

I could endorse Robert Alter. He came and spoke at BYU and I was so impressed. I did buy that $90 set and used it four years ago.

[Scott]

Me too.

[Casey]

I was doing presentations for Scripture Central four years ago and Robert Alter was just so helpful. Especially once we got past the places where the book of Moses and the book of Abraham were kind of helping me understand it. When you get into those middle sections of the Old Testament where there's not as much restoration scripture to enlighten you, I found those other translations to be really, really helpful.

[Ben Spackman]

Yeah. And to be clear, there's no single best translation, there's no single best commentary. That's why I recommend using several things together. You know, different tools, doing different things. But it's just revelatory. It makes it interesting and new and fresh and there's a lot more to talk about.

[Casey]

Very good.

[Scott]

Okay, one final question for you, Ben. So you've studied our church history, you've studied biblical scholarship deeply. What's ultimately helped you with the testimony that you have today, to have a strong testimony of the restoration, the divinity of Jesus, just talking to you, that comes out really transparently. To what do you attribute that, Ben? Was it your study? Is it something else? What would you say?

[Ben Spackman]

Probably a number of things. So one of those would be some people have the attitude that like you shouldn't read anything that's not scripture published by the church. And a lot of my key assumptions that allow me to make sense of fallible prophets and prophets arguing with each other and weird stuff in scripture and history have come from reading secondary scholarship, from reading Jewish scholars and Protestant scholars and Catholic scholars, because they have some of these problems too. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. And so reading those people has really helped me make sense of our own particular messiness. And I can name a few. I mean, Kent and Sparks books, Peter N's earlier books, those were both huge for me. I mean, Sparks has one called Sacred Word, Broken Word, Inspiration in The dark side of Scripture, where he says, hey, an evangelical, I hold the inerrancy. How do I believe in this thing that has, you know, slavery and contradiction and misogyny and potentially genocide and internal, you know. And I go, I'm not inerrantist evangelical. How do you make sense of that stuff?

[Scott]

Right.

[Ben Spackman]

But reading my scriptures, which sounds so trite, but reading my scriptures regularly, as much in the Greek and Hebrew as I can, really feels to me like it brings me closer to God because it is a disciples work. And I love President Eyring and Elder Maxwell, who said things like, to a disciple of Christ, academic study is a form of worship.

[Casey]

Absolutely, absolutely. And I'll point towards Joseph Smith, too, who learned Hebrew and learned Greek and who said, he who reads the Bible oftenest will love it the most. Yeah. So 100%.

[Ben Spackman]

And I will say this as a scholar, it can be hard to put yourself in kind of a devotional mindset to read as opposed to put under the microscope and research and things like that. But it puts me in a feeling like I am doing the same thing that Joseph did, that Moroni did, that monks in the Middle Ages did, that Paul did, where you sit and you read and you puzzle through and you pray and you grow through the struggle. I feel that kind of unity with God's prophets and other Christians in the past when I do it. That's why I really like visiting, you know, medieval cathedrals and churches and things like that. Because even if we have issues with the theology or the politics that built those cathedrals on the backs of peasants and things, I recognize the devotion that is there and the sacred space and the feeling that is there. But I would say it's largely my studies that have kept me in, as opposed to not studying and leaving.

[Casey]

Yeah. Well, you've done a wonderful work and we have had so much fun playing around with your research. And you also continue to be an advocate for the scriptures and for reading the scriptures and just appreciate everything that you do, Ben, to help so much.

[Ben Spackman]

That's good to hear.

[Casey]

Gain some of the knowledge you've gained, too. Just thanks for what you do.

[Ben Spackman]

Much appreciated.

[Scott]

You're an important member in the body of Christ, Ben Spakman. Your study and your faith are blessing. They're blessing many. So keep up the good work, sir.

[Ben Spackman]

Thank you much.

[Casey]

Well, Scott, this has been a great conversation, and we want to thank our guest, Ben Spackman, for being with us. Anything else we need to talk about?

[Ben Spackman]

So one of the things that I do in these firesides where I have 45 minutes. I don't know my audience. It's not like a Genesis Institute class where I have two hours a week with students over 12 weeks and we can lead carefully and build and things like that is I try to let them know about the diversity of views among church leaders. If President McKay and President Hinckley can be open to evolution, why can't I? If the first presidency in 1931 didn't think that pre Adamites and death before the fall were central to the gospel, why should I let those bother me? Even if other apostles had really strong feelings about them, Understanding the historical diversity of thought opens up space for us to explore different things from a place of faith and safety as opposed to going well. I've been told that I have to choose between the gospel and evolution, but the science is really solid. So what do I do? It really helps people tone it down and feel secure while they're asking and trying to answer questions to learn about that diversity of church views. And that's a key thing that I can do in five minutes.

[Scott]

That's crucial. It gives us the mental flexibility to be able to explore in faith right through study.

[Ben Spackman]

And by faith, it generates this spark for people to go read more church history and to go read more scripture and to read about scripture. And I love lighting that spark of curiosity where people will go out and find books that bolster their testimonies, that bolster their understandings, that deepen things beyond a shallow level.

[Scott]

Yeah. Beautiful, man. Thanks.

[Casey]

Yeah, that is super helpful. And we like it because, you know, sometimes it feels like we left the Doctrine and Covenants. Now we're reading the Old Testament so we don't have to do any church history, when church history does inform all aspects of our faith and life. And here at Church History Matters, we're obviously big fans of church history.

[Ben Spackman]

Church history does matter. Doesn't end in 1844.

[Scott]

Amen. That wraps up our explorations on science and religion. Of course, there's much more to explore, but this is where we land the plane for our podcast, Casey. So next week we will begin a new series. So stay tuned for that. We're very excited to introduce you to another one of our good friends, great scholar, who's going to be with us the entire series, so stay tuned.

[Casey]

Okay, we'll see you then,

[Scott]

Sam.