First, if you haven’t read my post on 2Ne 1-2, you need to; it establishes that the implicit background of these chapters is covenantal and Mosaic, which is key to understanding what happens in these chapters. Continue reading
Category: Gospel Doctrine
Come Follow Me: 2 Nephi 1-2
Today we enter into 2 Nephi, which immediately raises the question, why is there a second Nephi? Continue reading
Come Follow Me: 1 Nephi 13-14
For those of you who are new to the blog (and the stats suggest there are a few), check out my suggested reading list on the Book of Mormon.
Nephi’s vision seems at times to border on the genre called apocalyptic [link to all my posts and podcasts talking about genre]. Apocalypses came up recently in my first post on Revelation. The genre is important to recognize, because understanding the genre determines how we understand the information presented. Continue reading
Come Follow Me: 1 Nephi 1-7
These are the most familiar chapters to any Latter-day Saint, and I’ve literally spent weeks on them in Institute classes, going slowly and thoroughly. I’d wager many of us could recite 1 Nephi 1:1 from memory, and a good number of us in our mission language; not from trying to memorize it, just from having read it so much. Familiarity does not necessarily mean understanding, though. The following questions appear unrelated, but are clues to what’s going in in the initial chapters and indeed, all of 1-2 Nephi. And it’s quite different than what people assume.
Come Follow Me: 1-2 Thessalonians
We’re moving into some dense historical, textual, and doctrinal territory today, as there is lots of background to cover. I lean pretty heavily on some of my tools. Continue reading
Come Follow Me: Ephesians
My picture, from the Kidron Valley.
As always, it’s important to start with setting and context. Remember back in Acts 19, where the silversmiths who make Athena shrines start a riot and get Paul thrown out of the city? “Great is Diana of the Ephesians”? Paul met some disciples there and stuck around for three months, and now he writes to that congregation. Paul himself is now apparently in prison (Eph 4:1) and writing letters. Whether in Rome, Ephesus, or Caesarea, we don’t know. Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians and Philemon are known collectively as The Captivity or Prison Letters. These are Paul’s Folsom Prison Concert, if you will. Continue reading
Come Follow Me: Galatians
Before talking about Paul’s Letter to Galatians , some notes on Paul’s Letters in General
The ease we have in reading, writing, and communicating makes it easy to misunderstand Paul’s letters. Continue reading
Come Follow Me: 1 Corinthians Part 2
Corinthians, continued
The latter part of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians has a definite flow and organization to it. While our tendency is to zoom in on a single verse or even sentence, sometimes we miss the forest for the trees. So, let’s start with an overview and then zoom in a little.
Chapters 8-11 deal with two seemingly unrelated topics: food and sexual immorality. This is puzzling to us, but logical to Paul’s readers. We’ll return to this to unpack why.
In chapter 11, Paul regulates some issues about how the community should function, both relating to gender and the Lord’s Supper, which Latter-day Saints call “the sacrament.” (Shortened, apparently, from “the sacrament [ordinance] of the Lord’s supper.”)
Then he moves on to a potentially more destructive issue; the Corinthian saints are highly competitive and trying to one-up each other, but with spiritual gifts. Who is the most blessed? Who is the most spiritually in-tune? This is not terribly unusual. The Apostles themselves had argued about which of them “was the greatest” and even asked Jesus to settle the matter- Luke 9:46, 22:24, Matt 18:1 Continue reading
Come Follow Me: 1 Corinthians, Part 1
Come Follow Me: Romans
Paul’s letter to Romans “has been the most studied of the apostle’s writings — indisputably Paul’s theological chef d’œuvre….With only slight exaggeration, one could claim that debates over the main ideas in Romans split Western Christianity…. [Nevertheless], for those who may have time to study in greater depth only one Pauline letter, Romans would not be my recommendation, even though it is the most important.” So says eminent Catholic New Testament scholar Raymond Brown in his Introduction to the New Testament.
If there’s a theme for today, it’s given to us in an understated way by 2Pe 3:16 – “There are some things in [Paul’s letters] that are hard to understand.”
Perhaps Romans’ opacity contributes to its ability to be wrestled into saying things it’s really not.
“Romans has suffered for centuries from being made to produce vital statements on questions it was not written to answer.“ NT Wright, IDB
Yeah. Well, onwards. “I can read hard things,” to borrow a current theme.
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