I don’t know. There is not enough data available for me to speculate on the details of what form “pure knowledge” is transferred in beyond the link I already gave. Further, I don’t care all that much because for practical purposes I am mostly interested in learning to hear and understand God’s voice to me better. Sort of like I don’t really care exactly how my TV works in great details — I only really care about my reception.

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Now as to the main topic at hand, your position is clear, the challenge that I raise is for you to make any explanation whatsoever for knowledge or intelligence to be transmitted without any representation.

One traditional hypothesis is that truth is a natural substance, like the traditional conception of grace, sort of like going to the gas station and getting a fill up. I am saying that as a baseline conception, such a perspective is enormously inadequate, as it cannot account for the most basic facts of the matter except in the most magical terms.

For example, you suggest that something with a structure, gets converted to something without any structure or semantics whatsover, and then upon arrival, gets converted back into something that does have structure or semantics? Don’t you see what is logically implausible (to put it mildly) about that?

How would you explain the fact that spiritual influences are described as coming not only from God, but also from men, and devils as well, in a rather large number of qualities and flavors? What makes an evil spiritual influence evil? Does the adversary have the same magical ability to convert knowledge into something without a representation, and then back upon arrival?

It seems that to account for the scriptures with the theory that the spirit is a simple metaphysical substance that is effective without semantic modulation or structure, you would have to argue that there are many different types of the spirit, or that the adversary can literally “enchant” the spirit with different properties. Same deal with the lesser spirits of good things. What say ye?

First, brevity is a blog virtue. (Repeat that to yourself and 5 times before each comment and you will make a lot of new blog friends…)

Second, you are misunderstanding my position to begin with. I never said that the pure intelligence from God did not end up in some representational form in our minds, I simply said I don’t think it is necessarily delivered to our minds in that form. To understand my position read my post and the follow up thread thread where I compare our minds to a Celestial Media Player.

The Lord generally cannot teach us new things without our willing effort to let him, to ponder and think about the impressions he gives us, and to preserve our understanding through obedience. If we are stubborn he can send impressions all day long, or the most incredible experiences, and severe judgments, and not learn a thing. Whatever knowledge fades away almost immediately without perseverance, like last semester’s final exam.

By the way, the whole reason why we have to ponder and study things out in our minds to effectively receive revelation, is that all revelation is representational, symbolic, or sign-ificant. Otherwise it is just whistling in the wind. When we are most in tune, not least, the Lord can speak and can we can hear his voice, or he can give us a vision – both extremely representational, but of little value unless we understand what we hear or see. If we do not seek to understand, no dice. There is no precedent for direct knowledge download.

I think that would generally require the Lord to rearrange our brain structure (physical and/or spiritual) without our involvement, and he seems to have a rule against that, or perhaps a natural constraint makes it essentially impossible. The most high bandwidth form of revelation appears to be visions, actual spiritual experiences that require effort to understand and retain.

I think your conception of “pure intelligence” is untenable. No one has ever, in all of human history, come up with a non-representional mode of thought or communication. The whole value of symbols is that they *mean* something.

Now although, according to the scriptures, the difference between any testimony holder and someone with the gift of prophecy is only a matter of degree, the reason why I brought the scriptures up is they are the primary means by which we may obtain revelation – either deeper understanding or personal guidance as to which principles are particularly relevant in our hour of need. Again, there is no such thing as a non-representational principle.

Furthermore, Joseph Smith in his discourses of revelation through the Holy Ghost distinguished between over-wraught emotions that carried no instruction, and revelations that did carry instruction. All instruction is representational.

Even habits are represenational, i.e. they have a natural structure that causes us, by instinct, to initiate certain responses in certain contexts. That is a developed relationship, that is also representational.

When people dream dreams, or hear voices, or have premonitions, they are only of ultimate value if they *mean* something. All meaning is representational.

The Lord’s definition of truth is “knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they will be”. All knowledge, particularly that sort of knowledge, is representational.

The Lord has said we need to gain knowledge so that we can obey higher laws, line upon line, precept upon precept, and that such obedience is the manner and mode of sanctification. All “lines” and precepts are representational.

Now what good could a lesson have without any meaning? An impression without any content? A book without a story? A still small voice without a voice?

To me it seems that you are speaking of magic, pure and simple. If not, I would love to hear about how intelligence can be communicated or exercised without any structure, semantics, or representation of any kind.

In this thread I am only interested in discussing how we understand what God means when he speaks to us via his still small voice. What he meant when he talked to prophets is a off topic in my opinion.

I think it is useful to think of inpiration/revelation from God as coming in the form of what Joseph called “pure intelligence”. We might need language to write or describe that pure intelligence to others here on earth but God’s “language” seems to be unfiltered pure intelligence to me. That is, rather than sending the intelligence through the filters of our senses for us to interpret, I think he bypasses those filters somehow and delivers understanding if we figure out how to tune our minds to it.

In other words understand what God *means* when he inspires a prophet to say something, in a mortal language, often after a process of translation to a new mortal language, for which the commonplace, non-religious usage may be even further off than the commonplace, non-religious usage in the original language of the prophet, which no doubt deviates to some degree from what God would like to communicate in the first place, because of the “weaknesses of our language”.

Now as I tried to make clear in the second half of my last message, is that I am speaking of language in the broadest possible sense. Some here have chosen to attack the very narrow sense, the one you are not very interested in, but that which you asked me to explain, so I did.

You speak of listening to a lawn-mower. Well the question of language is what is the lawn mower “trying” to tell you. I.e. what do those noises mean. The question of inspiration is similar. Joseph Smith said that inspiration was worthless unless intelligence was communicated. He criticized the Shakers in particular in that regard. He also said:

No man can receive the Holy Ghost without receiving revelations. The Holy Ghost is a revelator.
(TPJS, 328)

So the question is what is a revelation? Well the common semantics are suggestive enough. A reveal-ation is an uncovering of the truth. Listen to Paul:

Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began,

But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith: To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen.

i.e. revelation is the making manifest of the will and mysteries of God, for a very important purpose: obedience of faith, not just intellectual contemplation.

The words of Jacob are relevant here as well:

Wherefore, we search the prophets, and we have many revelations and the spirit of prophecy; and having all these witnesses we obtain a hope, and our faith becometh unshaken, insomuch that we truly can command in the name of Jesus and the very trees obey us, or the mountains, or the waves of the sea.

Nevertheless, the Lord God showeth us our weakness that we may know that it is by his grace, and his great condescensions unto the children of men, that we have power to do these things.

Behold, great and marvelous are the works of the Lord. How unsearchable are the depths of the mysteries of him; and it is impossible that man should find out all his ways. And no man knoweth of his ways save it be revealed unto him; wherefore, brethren, despise not the revelations of God.

Notice what revelation leads to in the last verse – an understanding of all his ways. Now I cannot comprehend the merest smidgen of the idea that this sort of understanding is irrational or non-representational. The scriptures are full of peons to the power of the *word*, or proper language in general.

So we can advance very far indeed using an inspired theological dialect of our native tongue, what God or angels would use if they wanted to communicate with us according to our understanding. My secondary point (which I did not mean to turn into a full blown discussion), it is somewhat off topic, is that very understanding of the way God speaks in our language, gradually leads to an understanding of how he thinks and speaks in his language. Sometimes we seek to approximate this by returning to the original texts, most notably the Hebrew ones, the more ancient the better.

My primary point is that understanding the scriptures means learning divine culture, “language”, law, and understanding. If you don’t want to call that the “language of the Lord” in the general sense, or if you want to excise the implications of the Adamic language or the language of Enoch no problem. It just happens to a proposition with a very long history in both ancient and modern scripture and prophetic commentary.

I personally would rather talk about why inspiration, knowledge, and truth are necessarily rational and representational in the scriptural sense. Those lawnmower sounds mean or *represent* something, right?

When do you assume this “eventually” will be?

My post is about comprehending what God has to say to us through his still small voice today. Is speculation about some eventual use of a universal language even relevant to the topic at hand? I frankly am totally uninterested in talking about some real Adamic language (or whatever) that may or may not be used by all people in the Millennium or eternities to come (I assume that is what you have in mind).

Further, I am having trouble reconciling your use of that scripture about Enoch and what you say in the next several paragraphs. Are you contending that Enoch actually vocally spoke some divine language? If so I disagree. I think that Enoch spoke in the language of his people but God sent his spirit to sear the meaning of what he said into the hearts of those who heard. We have similar examples of that happening elsewhere in scripture. For instance 3 Nephi had a similar experience and there is no reason to believe he spoke anything other than his own language:

And it came to pass that they were angry with him, even because he had greater power than they, for it were not possible that they could disbelieve his words, for so great was his faith on the Lord Jesus Christ that angels did minister unto him daily. (3 Nephi 7: 18)

Perhaps we are agreeing on this point — I just can’t tell for sure yet.

I do maintain that eventually we will learn to speak and think in terms of God’s language in the grammato-lexicographical terms. I quoted several sources with regard to Zephaniah 3:9 to demonstrate that this is the predominant understanding within the LDS tradition. I no of no contrary assertions, though clearly some are unconvinced.

I also maintain the for unexplained reasons, the purity or commonality of this language has a connection with the exercise of divine power:

And so great was the faith of Enoch that he led the people of God, and their enemies came to battle against them; and he spake the word of the Lord, and the earth trembled, and the mountains fled, even according to his command; and the rivers of water were turned out of their course; and the roar of the lions was heard out of the wilderness; and all nations feared greatly, so powerful was the word of Enoch, and so great was the power of the language which God had given him.
(Moses 7:13)

My suspicion is that the primary aspect of the effectiveness of divine language it that it is simply what is spoken in heaven. i.e. it maps more clearly to the concepts of the divine administration and government, the gospel, the very culture and heritage of divinity, and the law and rule of heaven, than any other language. It is the lingua franca of divine culture.

However, I do not interpret the term “language” so narrowly – as far as I am concerned all culture, all semiology, all law, all habit, all regularity, and all knowledge falls under the rubric of language. That assertion has a heritage that goes back thousands of years. John S. Robertson mentions the ancient belief in the correlation of language and culture. It is all over the Old Testament. Righteousness is defined in terms of abiding the law, and more particularly abiding the spirit of the law, and not just the letter.

Many of the Greek philosophers commented on the correlation between language and culture. Much more modern philsophers, notably Charles S. Peirce, treated this correlation as well. So did the Christian tradition. In fact, religious traditions that are not very particular about words, and the power of the proper understanding thereof, often with a preference for some language hundreds or thousands of years old, are the exception, not the rule. Taoism leans that way, but it is pretty hard to have religion without scriptures, and it is pretty hard to make scriptures normative without authorative traditions as to the proper semantics of terms.

I maintain that scriptural semantics genuinely come in many levels of inspired interpretation, as Elder Oaks has said, and also that spiritual progress entails understanding the *word* of the Lord, both the relationships between scriptural terms, and the proper, inspired semantics of those terms, and implementing those rules, laws, principles into your life, having the law written into your heart and into your mind.

Now I have more I would like to say, but in the interest of decency, I will yield the floor to others.