Thursday, August 25, 2022

Henry Eyring's Dualistic View of God

  

Perhaps most significantly, Henry also had a dualistic view of God. He knew from Joseph Smith’s testimony that man is created in the image of God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, and that they have bodies of flesh and bone. However, he also believed that their influence is as expansive as the universe; he has as evidence of that both the inspired writings of Joseph Smith and also his own scientific observations, which showed divine order everywhere. Like Joseph Smith, Henry had no difficulty with the paradox of an individual, personal God who also exerts limitless influence. (Henry J. Eyring, Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2007], 166)

 

In the endnote to the above paragraph, we read that:

 

Henry had a historical analogy for the duality of God’s nature: “If we read the story of Robert E. Lee, the great military tactician, we find that even at Gettysburg his army was maneuvered as though Lee himself was storming Cemetery Ridge alongside Pickett, as well as being everywhere else on the battlefield. Lee’s success as a general depended to a very great extent on the gathering of information about the strength, position and intentions of his adversary before and after the battle started. The result is that any story of Lee as a general would tell about his influence permeating the whole sphere of his activities and very little about Lee the man. In this sense Lee is two people, the man like anyone else, and for far-flung intelligence system which governed the mention of himself and his army much as the wave is spread out in space and governs the motion of a photon or a material particle.

 

“In an analogous manner, we may think of God as the all-wise arbiter of the Universe, with His infinite wisdom having an influence which permeates the most remote recesses of space, and yet being Himself an exalted being with personality and deep concern for struggling humanity. One of the many things the Restored Gospel has done is to emphasize, as the scriptures have always done, the deep personal concern of God for His children.” (Eyring, Faith of a Scientist, 84-85). (Ibid., 312 n. 5)