Recently, Blake Ostler got me thinking about social trinitarianism.
A Christian brother just emailed me today this critique. Michael Rea has been thinking other thoughts in regards to the social trinitarian paradigm.
Here I am posting a paper, sourced from the University of Notre Dame. What is Brad going to think of me over at Defensor Veritatis?
I must say, though, the paper was very interesting.
If you were to visit our church on any given Sunday, the front page of the church bulletin would have these three words:
Always the Word”
I think I picked that mantra up from a Chuck Colson book that I read a long while back. I like it. It places authority above fallible church hierarchy in the written word that unveils the living Word.
If you think it is a prideful, exclusionary statement, well, it is. Who is greater than the Word? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
From now on, I will be posting on AlwaystheWord.org, sermon and Bible study snippets (from Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, and Wednesday nights), alongside other posts. Stay tuned.
LDS friends, here is a different window:
Four Big Descriptions about the Messiah
You can also find our church website’s posts in the links at the bottom of the HI4LDS sidebar.
Listen to who is giving us the latest insights into the secrets of Christianity. Various stories of Christianity are being told. Who do you think of “America’s biblical scholars” are telling the truth? Or do you think they are all telling the truth?
Special Issue – U.S. News & World Report (keep on sale through March 11, 2008) (more…)
Ok.
The alarm clock woke me up early this morning. I spent the first five minutes figuring out who am I? and where am I? (more…)
I read this article today, and didn’t like it one bit.
“And Lead Us Not” (pp. 28-30) in Harper’s Magazine (December 2007)
[“By David Lewis and Philip Kitcher, from “Divine Evil” in Philosophers Without Gods, published in August by Oxford University Press. Lewis, a professor of philosophy at Princeton, was the author of several books, including Counterfactuals and On the Plurality of Worlds. The essay is based on an outline he wrote before his death in 2001. Kitcher is a professor of philosophy at Columbia.”]
Standard versions of the Argument from Evil concern the evils God fails to prevent: the pain and suffering of human beings and the sins people commit. The most ambitious versions of the argument claim that the existence of evil is logically incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and completely benevolent deity. In my view, this version succeeds conclusively. But I think the usual philosophical discussions of the problem of evil are a sideshow. What interests me here is a simpler argument, one that has been strangely neglected.
We might start instead from the evils God himself perpetrates. In duration and intensity, these dwarf the kinds of suffering and sin to which the standard versions allude. For God has prescribed torment for insubordination. The punishment is to go on forever, and the agonies to be endured by the damned intensify, in unimaginable ways, the sufferings we undergo in our earthly lives. In both dimensions, time and intensity, the torment is infinitely worse than all the suffering and sin that will have occurred during the history of life in the universe. What God does is thus infinitely worse than what the worst of tyrants have done.
Before we continue, do LDS friends believe this logic? First, I believe that the Bible teaches the existence of evil and that God is powerful, knowing, and loving. Do I understand it all? No, but I trust the God who both knew all about the evil that engulfed his celestial and terrestrial creation and the Son’s body that would be sacrificed on account of the evil. Here are several reasons Jesus died: 1) “that he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;” 2) that he might “deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” 3) and that he might “make reconciliation for the sins of the people” (a propitiation – a sacrifice to appease the Father who hates moral evil and is radically opposed). Truly, no evil tyrant has voluntarily died for his enemies that they might live as revealed by the incomprehensible act of love displayed by this eternal Ruler. (more…)
Would you like to know what magazines I read? I couldn’t resist this quote I saw today from a Salt Lake City local luminary and Baptist preacher.
Salt Lake Magazine (December 2007)
The magazine features (p. 117) a number of funny and serious quotes by Pastor France Davis (I don’t know the man) of Calvary Baptist Church in Salt Lake City. Here are a couple serious ones.
People tend to work together better and more when they feel pressure or exclusion from a dominant group. So here in Utah, groups of Baptist, Methodists, Catholics and Episcopalians talk to each other more than they would do in a place where they’re more evenly dispersed.” (more…)
Thanks Geoff B. for the tip.
“You won’t want to miss this local cast performing a local favorite in one of the oldest operating theaters in Idaho, the newly-renovated Virginia Theater!”
The Virginia Theatre in Shelley, Idaho presents a live stage performance of the beloved family film, Rigoletto.
Last week, I packed my whole family into the car to see this. Munching on popcorn and candies, we had a blast. A nice girl who has attended our church sang the part of Gabrielle.
It was fun. And yet it is not hard to detect the LDS cheer on the celestial.
Tonight is the last performance. Get your tickets.
Coming up: A Christmas Carol
Last night, our church family explored the extraordinary text of Genesis 6:1-4. Before I knew it, an hour zipped by in our biblical study and discussion.
Lots of scripture texts bounced around in my mind from Job (sons of God), Psalms (gods), II Peter, Jude (Enoch), Numbers (Nephilim), and back to Genesis. (more…)
Musings on Mitt Romney’s Speech
Yesterday, I stayed home and spent more time tiling some more of the floor in our house. During this manual labor, I had time to listen the whole day to conservative talk radio. And what an experience that was! It will leave you jangling for weeks.
I heard Rush Limbaugh on Mitt’s speech. Then locally in Southeastern Idaho, LDS Neal Larson (the “extreme fisherman” caller is hilarious.). Then Sean Hannity. Then LDS Glenn Beck. They all had me laughing at various turns on their highly favorable perspectives on the speech.
As a great storyteller, Glenn described the whole experience of sitting in the audience of around 200 VIPs and listening to Mitt Romney. And he also talked about sleeping for only a couple hours the night before and then sitting with Richard Land yesterday morning and trying to communicate the “deep doctrine” of Mormonism in 40 seconds. I could hardly tile my floor, I was laughing so hard.
Glenn basically said, If you have questions, look up the professors at the LDS universities. [Sidenote – Doesn’t one of his daughters attend BYU-Idaho in Rexburg? I am sure from Glenn’s angle, Rexburg is a land of sagebrush out in the middle of nowhere.]
And the local media on Mitt? Yesterday, the front page of our local Post Register quotes Kirk Jowers, a Romney supporter and director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah:
I had no expectations that he would get into the theological weeds of Mormonism. There simply isn’t the time to address all of the issues that some people may have with the Mormon faith.
I don’t expect Mitt Romney to do this either. I wouldn’t want him to do this. But beyond the BYU professors, I do expect LDS apostles to step up to the plate and dialogue with evangelicals in 2008 over “theological weeds of Mormonism”.
I have a couple questions that have been emailed to me by friends, so I will place them in the thread later.
Musings on Divine Logic – the Bible
I believe that Scripture is divinely inspired, the very breathed-out words of God. I believe that it is illogical to say that living, inspired words of prophecy from an open heaven are contradictory. I don’t understand all God’s words fully because of my limitations, but I do trust that the Bible is perfect logic. I believe in the incarnation of Christ (100% God who became 100% man) this Christmas season.
My presuppositional faith maintains that the biblical oracles are not illogical. Therefore my inductive reasoning studies continually operate off the divine text.
But I tend to believe that Joseph Smith rejected the Bible text as infallible divine logic. I believe he would have made the OT JST changes even with the evidence of the DSS material, etc. and etc. Joseph Smith simply did not accept the Bible as being logical. And if he thinks that the text in many parts is illogical, why does he say the biblical scriptures are inspired?
My friend, Jacob, would say I am anti-logic. He is correct in this sense: I am anti to the logic that impugns God’s holy texts as anti-logical or incoherent. It is my premise that the JST in seeking to solve “alleged logical contradictions” spawns more illogical inductive reasoning with the biblical scripture. Hence, more confusion for Christianity.
Does this make logical sense?
Jesus in Idaho Falls 