Hugh Nibley

About the Book

Influential yet often confounding, Hugh Nibley drew on a fund of strong faith and deep learning to challenge both believers and scholars to rethink the ideas and history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Joseph M. Spencer examines Nibley’s theology, social criticism, and thought. Nibley’s elite academic training led to a long career at Brigham Young University. There he used ancient texts and comparative history to support his religious claims and confront modern culture and values. Spencer reveals Nibley as a serious thinker whose theology of grace buttressed the whole of his work. As he shows, readers misinterpret Nibley by seeing his scholarship as separate from his theology and social criticism, rather than as a unified project that emerged from the many streams of his wide-ranging thought.

Clear-eyed and accessible, Hugh Nibley provides a much-needed guide to the work of an important yet misunderstood theologian and intellectual.