What it means to be an authority on truth

How we think of truth influences on how we will think about authority. Questions about who can be an authority and why we
trust them are answered very differently from a person view of truth than from an idea view of truth. From an idea view of truth, we assume that a person can only be an authority on subjects they have studied in a publicly replicable and verifiable way—and only insofar as their conclusions contribute to a converging consensus on the issues at hand.¶

Contrary to conventional wisdom, an appeal to authority is not always a logical fallacy, even from the perspective of idea-truth. A legitimate authority in the modern world, however, must meet two criteria:¶

1. He or she must have gained his or her expertise in a way that is publicly demonstrable and replicable by others. Others must be able to obtain the same expertise and arrive at the same conclusions (if they so desire).¶

2. The authority must contribute to a consensus of experts. If an expert’s observations are open to public scrutiny, and his or her conclusions are replicable, a consensus of opinion will form.¹¶

From this perspective, individuals are legitimate authorities if their truth claims are based on public observations that contribute to expert consensus.² Most scholarly dialogue relies on appeals to authority—scientists do not individually replicate every experiment done by their peers. Scholars assume that errant conclusions will eventually be corrected through replication, critical analysis, and consensus-building.¶

This is why, in the modern world, becoming an authority involves a process of peer-review, debate, and academic argument. Anyone brave enough is free to face the intellectual battlegrounds of the academic world. And anyone who is so brave, if they have enough wits about them, can become an authority (expert) in their area of research. No ordination, visitation, or special calling from God is required. One simply has to master the methods of scholarship and subject their work to public scrutiny.¶

From this perspective, prophets and apostles are not considered legitimate authorities, precisely because they do not meet the two criteria above. There is no transcript of Joseph Smith’s conversation with the Father and the Son, and no known means to reproduce that sacred event. These observations cannot be guaranteed by the method Joseph employed. The same is true of today’s Church leaders. The general public is seldom privy to their reasoning, their evidence, or their revelatory communications with God.¶

When seen in this light, it is perhaps not surprising that—as it was more influenced by the philosophical tradition—Christianity came to rely so heavily on rational theology and consensus-seeking councils.³ Indeed, many theologians seek to defend their sectarian traditions not with ongoing revelation, but with systematic logic and reason, in an attempt to build a consensus within their scholarly (or ecclesiastical) communities.⁴ In a world where God was no longer believed to be speaking directly, this was the only viable path to establishing truth.¶

Person-truth can commission messengers

If we think of truth as a person, someone can be an authority even if they cannot open their methods to public scrutiny—and even if they defy expert consensus. God (the Truth made Flesh) can visit and converse with specific persons in specific places and times and commission them to be His spokesmen and to share His teachings. From this view, while these visitations and conversations may not be open to public scrutiny, prophets and apostles can still be considered authorities.¶

Faulconer has noted that, as Latter-day Saints, “We dare to say that God continues to reveal himself authoritatively to human beings through another human being.”⁵ And, similarly, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland has taught, “It is no trivial matter for this Church to declare to the world prophecy, seership, and revelation, but we do declare it.”⁶ Idea-truth cannot have spokesmen. But the Truth made Flesh (Christ) can. He can declare His word through spokesmen chosen at His discretion, usually through no merits of their own (such as, for example, Enoch, Moses, or Saul).¶

From this perspective, to become such an authority on person-truth requires that we are called of God. In the Articles of Faith, we read: “We believe that a man must be called of God, by prophecy, and by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof” (AoF 1:5). Nothing we do on our own volition can make us such an authority on person-truth because it has little to do with scholarly methods (replicable or otherwise). In the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord refers to His servants as the “weak things of the world” (D&C 1:19).⁷¶

The concept of prophets are deeply rooted in Israelite tradition. The Israelites, after all, were identified by their lineage from the prophets Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They were led through the wilderness by the prophet Moses. They gave us the writings of Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other prophets of the Old Testament. We read in the Old Testament that the Lord “testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets” (2 Kings 17:13).¶

Simply put, a prophet is someone appointed by the Truth Himself to speak for the truth—and is quite literally a “truth-teller.” As Truman G. Madsen noted, prophets are not merely “fore-tellers,” they are also “‘forth-tellers,’ meaning that they speak forth boldly in judgment and in recommendation as to their own time.”⁸ Indeed, the Greek word prophetes (προφάτης) used in the New Testament means “forth speaker.” Similarly, the Old Testament Hebrew word nabiy (נָבִיא) means something very much like “spokesman.” Their authority comes not from their personal wisdom or ability to predict the future, but from their status as an authorized messenger for the King.¶

In the previous chapter, we explained that in the person view of truth, society will not always take a forward trajectory of moral progress. In fact, if societal consensus is not informed (to some degree) by contemporary messengers from God, it will likely be wrong. For this reason, Christ’s servants will often contradict expert consensus. We cannot dismiss the counsel of prophets as just “good advice” to be measured against the conventional wisdom of our times. In fact, the purpose of this divine counsel is often to steer us aright when societal consensus is steering us wrong.¶

The idea view of truth can quietly sneak into the way we think about prophets. From this view, it is not who speaks that matters, but what is said. Someone is a prophet if they teach universal truth, regardless of their divine commission. In other words, if President Monson teaches truth, then he is a prophet. But so is the Dalai Lama, if he teaches the same truth. From the idea view, the content of their teaching matters most. This is why, from the idea view of truth, prophets are only authorities if they contribute to an ongoing consensus.¶

From a person view of truth, however, we are equally concerned about the divine authority of the speaker. In this view, who is speaking is just as important as what is being said. The source matters as much as the content. We see the person view expressed in the temple drama. After they were driven out of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve did not search for abstract “truth.” Rather, they sought and waited for authorized messengers. To us, this is a crucial distinction: their concern was about the source of what they were taught, and not merely the content.¶

The Holy Ghost confirms the divine commission of prophets

The divine commission of a prophet is established differently than the authority of secular scholars and experts. Prophets generally do not have a diploma that establishes their divine stewardship, and there is no (mortal) third-party accrediting agency that verifies their authority. Rather, we must seek personal revelation from God to know whether they are genuine prophets and apostles. From an idea view of truth, the Holy Ghost merely confirms whether the ideas taught are “truth.” But from a person view of truth, the Holy Ghost affirms the stewardship of the person teaching the truths.¶

Seeking personal revelation from God to confirm the divine stewardship of His servants is a kind of “independent verification” that is vastly different from the peer review processes valued by Western thought. When we engage in such prayer and seek such confirmations, we are not comparing the teachings of the prophets against scholarly consensus, nor are we examining their methods and replicating their reasoning. We are instead asking a simple question of God: “Are these men commissioned by you? Are they indeed prophets and messengers with a divine calling?” Brigham Young famously said:¶

Some have misread this statement and think Brigham Young feared that people could be led astray unless they independently verify each of his instructions. However, when read in context, Brigham Young was mimicking what others (nonbelievers) had said about the Saints. He does not share the fears held by nonbelievers, he says, but instead fears that people will not heed the teachings of the prophets with the conviction that comes the Spirit of God.¶

Joseph Smith wrote, “A prophet is a prophet only when he was acting as such.”¹⁰ Some interpret this to mean that a prophet is only a prophet if he is teaching what can be objectively recognized as truth. This adopts the central assumptions of the idea view of truth. But from a person view of truth, Joseph Smith was merely stating that prophets are not on the Lord’s errand every minute of every day—not that we need to independently verify everything they teach before heeding their warnings and instructions.¶

None of this should be misinterpreted to imply that prophets are infallible, or never make mistakes. As President Dieter F. Uchtdorf taught, “There have been times when members or leaders in the Church have simply made mistakes. There may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles, or doctrine.”¹¹ Rather, from a person view of truth, prophets can have a divine commission while also being mortal, imperfect people. King Benjamin expresses this perspective clearly:¶

Here, King Benjamin says three things: (1) People should not fear him as they might fear God, because he is a mortal man, subject to imperfection. (2) People should not trifle with his words but should open their ears and hearts to what he has to say. (3) He has a divine commission from the people and from God to be their teacher. This is what it means to treat prophets as authorities (from the person view of truth): we recognize their mortal fallibility, but we do not trifle with their words. Conversely, recognizing the dangers of trifling with their words is not the same thing as denying their mortality or fallibility.¶

Accepting that prophets have a divine commission yet are also fallible is one thing—living with the tension that this creates is another. What happens when a prophet’s counsel feels jarring, confusing, out-of-step with expert consensus, or even morally difficult to us? The person-truth model does not erase this challenge. In fact, it helps us understand it as an inherent part of a relationship with a living God who works through mortal servants. This tension is not a sign that the system is broken, it is often a sign that we are being invited to grow.¶

When these moments of tension arise, the answer is not to immediately dismiss the prophet, nor is it to blindly suppress our own conscience. Those two options may seem to be “the only game in town,” so to speak, but that is because they reflect a false choice—a choice rooted in misleading assumptions. In contrast, the covenantal model offers a model for moving forward and beyond the tension. First, we anchor ourselves in our testimony of the commission. We can return to the Lord and re-confirm our witness that President Nelson is, in fact, God’s chosen prophet. This is a matter of trust in the source, even when the content is difficult. Second, we take our personal struggle to God. Like Nephi, who went to the Lord to understand his father-prophet’s difficult vision, we can ask God for understanding, patience, and a personal witness of the counsel.¶

The question becomes, “Father, help me understand and align my will with what Thy servant has taught.” This process requires profound humility. It requires us to hold open the possibility that our own perspective is limited and that our deeply held beliefs might be one of the “ideas of God” that He, as the “great iconoclast,” intends to shatter. Sometimes, sustaining the prophet means patiently waiting for more light and knowledge, trusting that God’s wisdom is broader than our own. It is an act of faithfulness not just to an idea we agree with, but to the Person who called the messenger, trusting that He will guide His Church and us through any complexity.¶

Inspired leadership does not require uniform consistency

One implication of idea-truth is that the actions of divinely inspired leaders will be consistent across time. After all, if truth is a universal, timeless, unchangeable set of ideas, then actions based in truth will converge towards the same decisions when confronted with the same set of facts. From this view, just as with physical laws of nature, if you have the exact same starting conditions, you will observe the same results. Any deviation would imply that we have not yet found the fundamental truth of the matter (or that there are undetected differences in the initial conditions).¶

For example, from an idea-truth perspective, if two individuals commit the same serious sin, and each confesses to his or her bishop, the two bishops will be expected to give the same counsel and administer the same ecclesiastical discipline. If they do not, we might assume that one or both bishops are not acting under divine inspiration.¶

Now, someone might (rightly) argue that the two individuals have different life trajectories and experiences, and do not need the same response from their bishops. So, let’s change the scenario to involve the same individual, but in two parallel realities that are identical in every other respect. If the two bishops are both divinely inspired, would we not expect the same response from each bishop? Idea-truth implies that deviations in the face of identical conditions means that at least one of the bishops has got something wrong.¶

Similarly, we might assume that if God inspires the actions of President Russell M. Nelson, then President Nelson is doing the exact same things that President Gordon B. Hinkley would have done in the same contexts, or that “President” Patrick Kearon would have done were he president of the Church instead. We assume that because prophets act with divine authority, their leadership would be the same.¶

For this reason, when we see the personalities of individual prophets filter into their decisions, we assume that those aspects of their leadership are not divinely inspired. When we see the personalities and dispositions of individual bishops filter into their ecclesiastical leadership and spiritual counsel, we assume that—to a significant extent—they are also not divinely inspired. We sometimes hear members talk about “leadership roulette,” or “bishop roulette,” a term that implies that what happens when you seek counsel and confess to your bishop depends as much on the bishop as it does on the specific details of your situation.¶

This sort of thinking assumes that there is a single right course of action for any given context, and that inspired individuals will converge on that course of action. But this is a an assumption inspired by Greek philosopher’s emphasis on universality and non-change. The covenantal tradition does not require this assumption at all. Person-truth (through the Holy Spirit) can reside with us in the individual contexts of our lives, and this does not mean that there is only one course of action that the Holy Spirit will ratify. For example, we might feel prompted to comfort a friend, but what that looks like will depend on our personality, experience, and culture.¶

The same is true for ecclesiastical action. If someone visits his or her bishop and confesses serious sins, it may be that disfellowship, probation, and no action are all potentially good paths forward. What looks to some like “random variation” in ecclesiastical response may be myriads of inspired leaders all pursuing different right answers to the same questions. Similarly, other hypothetical presidents of the Church might have made different leadership decisions than President Nelson, but this does not mean that President Nelson is acting with any less divine authority.¶

God calls mortal people into positions of leadership with different personalities and inclinations, and He allows those personalities and inclinations to shape their service. That is by divine design. It is only from an idea-truth perspective (which its Greek emphasis on sameness across contexts) that we take issue with the idea that different leaders can make different inspired decisions in response to the same conditions. From the covenantal tradition, we can embrace that difference without attributing all of it to fallibility (although, as described earlier, there is certainly some of that too). We can embrace the particularity of divine truth in our lives, our stewardships, and our communities.¶

Reframing Our Questions: Chapter 8

The first question assumes that because truth is an abstract and unchanging idea (the same in all places and at all times), if two prophets give different instructions, then one of them must be wrong. In contrast, the second question relinquishes the need to determine which instructions are based in unchangeable doctrine. In this view, the task before us is to accept that a living God actively chooses and authorizes particular leaders at particular times for His own divine purposes.¶

Idea-truth assumes that if a prophet’s teachings seem to reflect their cultural assumptions, they—by virtue of that fact—cannot also be divine instructions. For example, if prior prophets emphasized dress or grooming practices that are not universally applicable, we might be inclined to dismiss their teachings on the subject as the precepts of men rather than of God. However, person-truth assumes that prophetic teachings can be divinely inspired even if they are not applicable across all times or cultures. We need not dismiss as error prophetic teachings and warnings to Saints of other generations, who were living in different historical and cultural contexts than our own and therefore faced different spiritual dangers than we do.¶

Footnotes

1. For more detailed analyses of scientific and rational authority, see, e.g., Jean E. Hampton, The Authority of Reason (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Theodore L. Brown, Imperfect Oracle: The Epistemic and Moral Authority of Science (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009); Heather E. Douglas, Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal (Pittsburgh, PA: The University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). ↩

2. See, for example, the claim in Brigham Young University’s physical science textbook: “In cases of conflicting claims of knowledge between competing authorities, we often give precedence to those ... that are held to be true by the greatest number and so have been validated by the most witnesses.” From J. Ward Moody, “Knowledge, Science, and the Universe,” in Physical Science Foundations (Provo: BYU Academic Publishing, 2006), 8. ↩

3. For a detailed analysis of the history of rational theology and creedalism in Christianity, see Jaroslav Pelikan, Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003); Roger E. Olson, The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999); Vittorio Hosle, God as Reason: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013). ↩

4. See, e.g., Hosle, God as Reason. ↩

5. Faulconer, “Rethinking Theology,” 180. ↩

6. Jeffrey R. Holland, “Prophets in the Land Again,” Ensign, November, 2006, 106. ↩

7. See also Boyd K. Packer, “The Weak and Simple of the Church,” Ensign, November, 2007, 6-9. ↩

8. Truman G. Madsen, Joseph Smith the Prophet (Salt Lake City, UT: Bookcraft, 1989), 7. ↩

9. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 9:150. ↩

10. Joseph Smith, History of the Church, 5:265. ↩

11. Uchtdorf, “Come, Join,” 2013, 22. ↩