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This is a topic that has been on my mind for the last week or so, and I thought I'd make some comments and solicit others' thoughts. It started with this essay by James Faulconer: http://www.patheos.com/Mormon/Living-with-Fallibility-James-E-Faulconer-11-21-2014.html In particular, I really noticed his opening couplet: I saw a blog entry by Dan Peterson calling the "doctrine" of prophetic infallibility "heresy". It sometimes seems to me that we as LDS sometimes struggle with the "conflict" between "Follow the Prophet, he knows the way" and our own need to discern when the prophets/apostles are speaking for God and when they are giving their own opinion. In many ways, the "extremes" are the easy positions to maintain. If the prophets are completely infallible, then we need put no effort into building our own testimony, because we simply accept everything they speak/write. At the other extreme, if they are never right, then we can simply reject everything that they teach. It seems that the "truth" lies in the difficult region in between these extremes. They have a calling and ordination that gives them the right to revelation to teach me truth, but these teaching will come amidst their own peculiar life circumstances and experiences that make their teachings potentially biased, and maybe even erroneous. Sometimes I think this is further complicated by the Church's practice of "correlation". Some believe that everything published by the Church must be "truth" because it has "been approved for publication by the 1st Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. I wonder if this really "the truth". I know for me that there are certain topics and teachings that I cannot say that I "have a testimony" of the Church's official position. Some things I see taught in certain publications (such as the Ensign and other magazines, For the Strenght of Youth, lesson manuels, etc.) seem in error to me, and some seem questionable. Others, I choose to follow along hoping that they are more in tune than I am (which would not necessarily be difficult) Maybe these things are examples of "prophetic fallibility", but maybe they are also examples of ways in which I am "leading myself astray". Discernment, and how we approach the process of discernment can become a very important question. That's kind of where my mind is at today. Anyone with thoughts or observations of their own?
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