Elizabeth Fenton > Quotes

“Liberation from temporal constraint appears to be an important element of what is occurring in The Book of Mormon and related Mormon scripture.”
― Elizabeth Fenton, Americanist Approaches to The Book of Mormon

“Written language requires such a gift because writing drifts from its original context to an inscrutable mystery separated from contemporary readers by linguistic change and the original speaker’s absence.”
― Elizabeth Fenton, Americanist Approaches to The Book of Mormon

“What we get in any scripture is just one small part of God’s infinite corpus. Writing can never be exhaustive; scripture can never be complete. Not just because God will never stop talking, but because written language can never be adequate to the mysteries of the cosmos. Scripture is always partial: It cannot fully encompass the subjects it hopes to treat. Protestantism, with its central doctrine of sola scriptura, is a lost cause from the very beginning on this Mormon view.”
― Elizabeth Fenton, Americanist Approaches to The Book of Mormon

“Am I not more amazed and moved when a text speaks to me powerfully, deeply, from hundreds or thousands of years ago than when a text sent earlier today by means of, say, text message offers the same sentiments? “I’m here now,” says Whitman. “I am here now,” says a text on my phone. The magical telepathy of the former is amplified precisely by its historicity; the quotidian banality of the latter by its historical proximity.”
― Elizabeth Fenton, Americanist Approaches to The Book of Mormon

“Americans did not challenge the historicity of the scriptures. Rather, they invoked those Scriptures’ authority, subjugated the meaning which was associated with the history they told, and applied them to their present.”
― Elizabeth Fenton, Americanist Approaches to The Book of Mormon