Truman G. Madsen
Truman G. Madsen was a philosopher, essayist, teacher and biographer. He was an emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Brigham Young University, and was Director of the Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies in Jerusalem. He held the Richard L. Evans Chair in Religious Studies at B.Y.U. He has been guest professor at Northeastern University, Haifa, and Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He sponsored several symposia on comparative religion published as Reflections on Mormonism, The Temple in Antiquity, and Chosenness and Covenant in Judaism and Mormonism. Among his volumes on Mormon thought are: Eternal Man, Christ and the Inner Life, Four Essays on Love, The Highest in Us, The Radiant Life. Five Classics, Joseph Smith, the Prophet., Defender of the Faith, a biography of B. H. Roberts and On Human Nature. He was one of the editors and a contributor to the five-volume Macmillan Encyclopedia of Mormonism. He was married to Ann Nicholls Madsen. The couple had three children and a Navajo foster son.
“Actually, the most frightening power of freedom is to freely give itself up to the forces that stunt it.”
“Come to him. He turns no penitent one away. Would you, if you had paid so much in suffering? Would you ever give up? All the doors that are locked against the Lord are locked by us.”
“To be or not to be?' That is not the question. What is the question? The question is not one of being, but of becoming. 'To become more or not to become more' This is the question faced by each intelligence in our universe.”