David and Goliath, Sistine Chapel. Public domain via wikimedia.
(Reposted, but not updated)
First off, go listen to my old podcast here where I talk about David, Goliath, and the Philistines. Continue reading
Author: benspackman
The new Church History evolution topic essay, with commentary
A new Church History Topic essay on Organic Evolution appeared recently. These are not full-blown essays, like the Gospel Topics. Rather, they are meant as concise historical/conceptual summaries provided as background for the Saints volumes, not as a stand-alone lengthy exploration of a subject. You can find them linked, in footnotes, in Saints online. I’d like to provide some notes and comments on this short background essay.
Tales from the Archive: William Berrett on Scholarship in 1958
William E. “Ed” Berrett (1902-1993) figures prominently in 20th century LDS education history. He taught seminary, wrote manuals for the Church and served on the General Sunday school board, briefly became assistant US attorney in Alaska before opening his own practice in Salt Lake, and then returned to Church service. He became a BYU Religion professor, served as vice-president of BYU and CES, and eventually head of Seminaries, Institutes, and Church colleges (excluding BYU.)
On July 11, 1958, President Berrett gave an address to Seminary and Institute faculty at BYU, titled “Scholarship.” It’s quite surprising, in some ways. Below, some excerpts.
Book deals!— Wright, Alter, Misreading Scripture, and others
I’ll post these deals occasionally as I notice them.
Come Follow Me: Numbers 11-14, 21
(Minimal time to update this content, but wanted it back at the top of the posts.)
The Book of Numbers takes its English name from the Greek Septuagint title, a description of the census-taking in its first four chapters. The Hebrew title is a bit more descriptive, bemidbar sinai, “in the wilderness of Sinai.” Note the time in Numbers 1:1. Two years have passed. In 14:29-33, God decrees that that generation— everyone over 20— will die in the wilderness and their children will suffer because of their unfaithfulness. Continue reading
Mormonism as Rough Stone Rolling: Towards an LDS Theology of Encountering “the World”
In 2017, I participated in the Maxwell Institute’s Summer Seminar, with the theme Mormonism Encounters the World and run by Philip Barlow and Teryl Givens. The seminar involves an intense few weeks of researching, workshopping, and writing. The result is a public conference of papers. Unfortunately, the papers that year were never posted onto the MI website, but WVS provided a summary here.
My paper looked briefly at the vertical relationship between Latter-day Saints and God but primarily at the horizontal relationship between Latter-day Saints and “the world.” I proposed two historical and competing models, ways of thinking about our interactions with “the world:”
- The “infection” model, which presupposes that Latter-day Saints received a pure intellectual inheritance of doctrinal understanding through prophets and modern scripture, which must be zealously guarded against outside influence. This model also characterizes almost all truth as “old” and static.
- The “quest” model, which presupposes that more “truth is out there,” and Latter-day Saints must venture out to find it, carefully weighing and “testing all things” to find what is good (per 1Th 5:21)
My paper received some very kind and enthusiastic comments, and I post the unrevised working draft here. I hope, eventually, to revisit and revise for publication, but in the meantime, enjoy.
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Virtual Sperry Fireside On Reading the Old Testament in Context (Updated with text)
This paper and presentation introduces a couple kinds of context and how to get at it, in order to understand the Bible better. Update 05-05-2022, I have made my formal paper draft available here.
If you missed attending one of my firesides or the Sperry Symposium, this is for you. I recorded the audio/powerpoint from my final presentation last weekend, which benefitted from having done it three times. The length is about 1:10, and unfortunately I cut the audio before I closed with some testimony about the utility of the Old Testament, my appreciation for it, etc. The first slide is up for almost two minutes, they do change. And below are books/authors I quote or allude to in the slides. The actual paper has many more references, of course, and I’ll be posting it in chunks. And if you want to link, please link to this post, not direct to the youtube video.
Continue reading
I am very pleased to announce…
I have news! Big news. So read on.
Notes on Genesis 34, 37-39
Today, I’ve got a bit of writing about these chapters in General, an article I wrote in the past on Genesis 38, and some useful tidbits Continue reading
Tales from the Archives: Joseph Fielding Smith, Utah Geology, and Premises
President Joseph Fielding Smith took his understanding of geology and cosmology from his readings of scripture. One of his central premises was that scripture consisted of divinely-revealed facts of religion but also science and history; and therefore, scripture— as he interpreted it— should take precedence over limited and flawed human theorizing, i.e. modern science.
On two occasions, Smith commented on the mountains of Utah, and these illustrate his premises.
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