Historian of Religion, Science, and Biblical Interpretation
There’s a large group on Facebook for Seminary teachers, where they ask questions, share ideas and lesson plans, etc. I’ve been a (sometimes not-very-detached) observer there, and recently participated in a live-streamed interview with Jenny Smith about various things around teaching seminary. I’ve uploaded it to youtube for wider watching, below with some notes. Continue reading
Hebrews is fun and different. Note that it comes at the end of Paul’s letters (which are arranged in order of length), because even way way back in the day, they were uncertain if it was one of Paul’s letters. And they were right, it’s not. Continue reading
Philemon used to be covered with Philippians and Colossians, and consequently, it went ignored. (Do you remember the last time Philemon came up in Gospel Doctrine?) However, Philemon merits our close attention. It’s short and it offers a great discussion point for something really relevant and important. So, I’ll go long on Philemon (and the bottom has some old-post leftovers about Philippians and Colossians.) Continue reading
First, Nov 9 at the LDS Institute in Mesa, I’ll be speaking and participating in a panel. I’ve titled my remarks something like Harry Potter’s Faith Crisis and Our Own: The Only Way Out is Through. (The latter phrase is something I’ve heard Elder Holland cite in “For Times of Trouble” and “However Long and Hard the Road,” both excellent)
This event is sponsored by a large Facebook group called Uplift, some fliers and more info below. Continue reading
Three cryptic times in the New Testament (Ephesians 1:14, 2Co 1:22 and 2Co 5:5), Paul speaks of the Spirit as an arrabōn, which the KJV translates as “earnest.” But it’s clearly a noun, AN earnest, not an adjective like, “an earnest woman.” So what’s Paul talking about? Continue reading
At an amazing S&I address a few years ago, Elder Ballard described past curriculum as well-meaning, but inadequate.
It was only a generation ago that our young people’s access to information about our history, doctrine, and practices was basically limited to materials printed by the Church. Few students came in contact with alternative interpretations. Mostly, our young people lived a sheltered life. Our curriculum at that time, though well-meaning, did not prepare students for today
A friend asked me for some references on how Evangelicals think about scripture, so I naturally turned it into a blogpost. Let me introduce this with a few basic points about definitions and history. Continue reading
Remnants of the Jerusalem temple
BYU has published a short piece by Judge Thomas Griffiths, called “Imagination and the Temple.” Continue reading
My 2019 FAIRMormon Conference presentation is up now, here. There’s a lot in the footnotes as well.
The takeaway is this: Many LDS have unsustainably fundamentalist assumptions about the nature of revelation, prophets, and scripture. The conflict these cause sometimes leads to a loss of faith, instead of recognizing and reexamining the assumptions. Continue reading
Red brick store in Nauvoo, where the first endowments were done on May 4, 1842.
However the divine inspiration or divine origin of the Torah might have worked, it apparently did not involve starting with an absolutely clean slate.– James Kugel
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