Per Speculum in Aenigmate

Another year is winding to a close, provoking the usual musings on The Meaning of It All. From my current vantage point atop the 2009 holiday season, it is hard to discern a purposeful trajectory in my life. I have had an academically very successful year, yet my prospects for promotion seem distant as ever. I have worked hard to extricate myself from debt incurred by unavoidable circumstances, all the while paying my tithing faithfully, yet my circumstances are straitened as ever.


With this in mind, I commented at fast and testimony meeting this month that my testimony (an LDS term for a heartfelt witness or spiritual knowledge of the truth of the restored Gospel) depends as much on what I do not know as on what I do know. For the uninitiated, we LDS hold special meetings on the first Sunday of almost every month, in which we stand and bear testimony, generally of things we "know" to be true, like the veracity of Joseph Smith's visions of God, Jesus Christ, and angels, and of the book of scripture that gives our religion its nickname -- the Book of Mormon. We typically assert that we "know" God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, and that the living president of our church -- Thomas S. Monson as I write these words -- is his prophet.

But how can we "know" any of these things? If, as Paul asserted, we see "through a glass darkly," is it not the height of impudence to claim knowledge of things that are perforce the domain of belief and faith?

Knowledge, of course, was one of the inducements of Lucifer in the Garden of Eden; we might suppose that a presumption of knowledge of things spiritual is contrary to God's requirement that we walk by faith.

There is no bright-line distinction between knowledge and belief, at least as we experience them in mortality. Faith is defined as the "substance (or assurance) of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." But sight alone is not a requisite for knowledge; many things (of a secular nature) we profess to know, without having seen them, or even an image of them.

Knowledge itself is of a mediate, and not immediate character, as C. S. Peirce demonstrated long ago. That is to say, all cognition is mediate, or apprehended through signs, which are always prior cognitions. As Peirce pointed out in his "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man," there is no evidence that such things as pure intuitions (that is, cognitions not determined by previous cognitions or signs) exist at all, and every reason to suppose, at least as far as this mortal coil is concerned, that they do not. We do not seem to be intuitively self aware, for instance; little children are capable of cognition long before they ever frame a hypothesis of self (and they do become self-aware because of the need to posit a self in which inhere reactions to sensory stimuli originating with the Other). It is likewise wrong to suppose that we have any (intuitive) power of introspection; Our knowledge of the external world, says Peirce, "is derived from the observation of external facts." Finally, we cannot think without signs. All of these axioms and several others besides, are proved in Peirce's so-called "Cognition Series" of three essays, which I recommend to anyone interested in the nature of thought and consciousness.

All of which is to say that we live in a universe, both internal and external, of signs. We perceive nothing except through the mediation of signs. This, I suppose (though this is of course my own opinion), is as true of modes of cognition associated with what we Latter-Day Saints call "personal revelation" as it is with all other perception -- except that the semiosis of revelation is much more vivid than, say, mere contemplation. In fact, for Latter-Day Saints, revelation may be said to be the goal of all cognition, a sort of crowning sign -- reinforced, perhaps, by the light of true inspiration -- to which any enlightened series of cognitions ultimately tends.

For every thought is a symbol (actually, a composite symbol, the makeup of which is beyond the scope of this posting to go into), and the nature of all symbols is to grow, to evolve. Hence one thought/cognition/mental symbol gives rise to another (or, we may say, is predicated on another) ad infinitum. The goal is "pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul, without hypocrisy and without guile" -- knowledge of godliness which is ultimately available only through the Holy Priesthood (LDS readers -- recall that the higher priesthood holds the keys both of the mysteries of God and of the knowledge of God).

The knowledge of godliness, which is not possible without what we now call the Melchizedek Priesthood, but was formerly styled the "Holy Priesthood after the order of the Son of God," is the ultimate desideratum. We receive such sacred knowledge in direct proportion to righteous conduct, for it is only thus that our bodies can become filled with light and comprehend all things, as Section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants explains so perfectly.

This is why we say we "know" that such and such is true; it is, whether we care to think about it or not, a testimony to the operation of priesthood power upon our understanding. And all knowledge is ultimately semiotic in character.

But what of those things we do not know? In my case, I struggle to understand the terrible trials I have been called upon to endure in recent years. I cannot perceive with any clarity the Lord's plan for me, though I have been reading my patriarchal blessing (a sort of personal LDS revelatory lodestar) daily for months. I grope in the darkness, but instead of finding a door handle, encounter only bare and unyielding walls of stone, or so it seems.

The times that try men's souls are times not of knowledge but of faith, where action in the absence of understanding is required. And they are necessary because not only right knowledge, but also right conduct, are necessary for eternal progression. The pangs I haved endured have often reduced me to tears, but in my extremity, as happened just the other day, I still must confess to myself that the Gospel I embraced thirty years ago is the true and right path. And I know this as much for the fact that, despite a train of disapointments and disillusionments and severe trials with no perceptible purpose, I still cling to the iron rod and enjoy "the peace that surpasseth all understanding," as for the additive reinforcements to my testimony that I have been vouchsafed.

All this said, I still wish for greater clarity, that the symbols that are working themselves out in my own particular mortal path would become a little clearer!