1. Penal Substitutionary Atonement rules the day at the New Cool Thang.  This is the most humorous post that I have ever seen at the Thang.  Of course, what does one expect when everybody carries around KJV Bibles?

2.  Should we look for an LDS KJV Study Bible?  Well, probably not at Faith Promoting Rumor.  Source it at BYU-Idaho, and then watch Glenn Beck take it national.  🙂

3.  Brian questions, Are “Fundamentalist Mormons” Truly Fundamental?  So let me ask you this question, “Are ‘Independent Fundamental Baptists’ truly fundamental?” (again I am smiling)

Grant Hardy made a memorable scholarly statement in the preface of The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text, edited by Royal Skousen (Yale, 2009).

The relationship between the two books [the Book of Mormon and the KJV] has yet to be explored fully (xxiv).

So what do LDS scholars have in store for writing about this vital issue?  Any books to be published in 2011?

The 400 year anniversary will soon be upon us.  Note here.  Note the 2011 Trust.  Note here. And here.  And here.  And here.  And here.

1)  “The relationship of the subjects to God is seen more as a continuum than a dichotomy.  It is a hierarchy of beings, some of whom are closer to God and some farther from him.  The gods are literally what God is in kind because they share in his holiness and act pursuant to his authority in divine prerogatives, such as governing, atoning, creating, and bearing the divine name. . . . God is at the top of the hierarchy and is incomparably great in the sense that no one else can occupy this supreme position or receive the honor that he does” (p. 92).

2)  “In the first century, neither Jews nor Christians believed in creation out of nothing” (p. 93).

3) “The text of the Ascension of Isaiah is essential in grasping early Christian views of the Godhead and relation between the Father and the Son. . . .  The highest God is a being of glory, quite distinct from the Son (and Lord); both are distinct in glory and person from the Holy Spirit, who is also an angel” (p. 102-103).

4)  Justin Martyr believed that Jesus was a distinct God  . . . . a subordinate God . . . a second place God . . .  to the Most High God (p. 114-116).

5)  “The notion suggested by Richard Bauckham that allusions to Psalm 110 envision Christ on the very throne of God misrepresents Christ’s status. . . . Christ is the Davidic king, and the Davidic king is the Son of God who has been deified as a God to be God’s vizier and ruler on earth” (128).

6)  “That Paul does not intend to simply equate the Father and the Son with the ‘one God’ is made clear by the fact that they are joined by [Greek word] (kai, ‘and’), meaning essentially ‘in addition to’ ” (144).

7)  “Once again, there is no thought that Christ is somehow identical to or ‘included with the unique identity of’ God” (151). . . . “God fills believers with a fulness of God just as Christ is filled with a fulness of deity in Colossians” (152).

8 ) “[Hebrews 1:9] refers to two Gods:  God who is seen as Jesus, and ‘your God,’ who is God the Father who anoints Jesus as the Messiah or Christos” (154).

9) “Christ does not claim to be identical or equal to Yahweh; rather, he is the agent of the one true God” (185).

10) “First, the New Testament clearly identifies ‘the one true God’ with the Father alone and not with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together. . . . The designator ‘one God’ is always and specifically reserved for the Father alone in the New Testament” (200).

11) “The Father has the property of being the ‘only true God,’ but the Son does not” (211).

–Taken from Exploring Mormon Thought:  Of God and Gods (Greg Kofford Books, 2008).

What am I suppose to say?  What is Blake trying to do to the status of my Savior, my Lord, and my God?

Blake T. Ostler gave to me the third volume in his Exploring Mormon Thought series a while ago.  The book has almost 450 entries in its bibliography.  I don’t know where Blake has the time to research all this.  Seriously, how many hours per day does this lawyer allot to theological reading?  This is incredible.  Does he have a research assistant like many evangelical professors do?

I am highly interested in what kind of schedule Blake maintains for fulfilling the writing of his scholarly LDS works.

I have read up to page 221 in Of God and Gods.

I knew it.  I knew sometime down the road this would be brought up as an analogy for LDS Social Trinitarianism.

When it is asserted that “the Father is God” and “the Son is God,” but “the Son is not the Father,” these assertions can be logically consistent given the assumptions of social Trinitarianism.  It is like asserting that “Dieter Uchtdorf  is a member of the First Presidency,” “Thomas Monson is a member of the First Presidency,” but “Dieter Uchtdorf is not Thomas Monson.”  There are three in the First Presidency but only one First Presidency.   Moreover, if we assume that everything that is done by any member of the First Presidency must be by unanimous agreement and that whatever information is shared with one member is shared with all three, then we begin to get a close analogy to how identity statements function in ST propositions.” (pp. 220 – 221).

I have no full post on questions for you as of yet.  But verse 3 is a BIG DECLARATION for the I-15 Corridor.

Don’t you think that this verse might lean more in support of creation ex nihilo than to the doctrinal, fundamental  LDS idea of “eternally existing matter”?

F.F. Bruce has encouraged me to look outside the canon as well for fun.

2 Macc. 7:28 – where the mother of seven martyrs reminds her youngest son how God made the world “out of things that had no existence” (ek ouk onton)

2 Baruch 21:4 – “O thou . . . that hast fixed the firmament by the word, . . . that hast called from the beginning of the world that which did not yet exist”

2 Enoch 25:1-4 – “I commanded . . . that visible things should come down from invisible.”

Questions for Hebrews 10

Observation

1.  What can the Law never do?
2. What is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats?
3. What was prepared for Jesus? (v. 5)
4. We are sanctified through what? (v. 10)
5. What can animal sacrifices never do?
6. What happened to the veil of Herod’s temple?  What is the veil to the heavenly temple?
7. Since Jesus is our great priest, we are encouraged to do what three actions (“Let us”)?
8. How have the readers of Hebrews suffered? (vv. 33-34)?
9. What are all the O.T. passages quoted in this chapter?
10. If verse 38 is a severe warning, what is verse 39?

Interpretation

1. Would it be acceptable to equate the Holy Spirit with Yahweh?
2. A man, who has been sanctified by the blood of the covenant, can be in danger of doing what (v. 29)?   How do you interpret this verse?
3. If God remembers your sins no more, is there any more need for you to confess any sins?
4. “The day drawing near” (v. 25) – what is that day?
5. What is the difference between doubt and apostasy?

Application

1.  Are there some sin memories in your life that plague you continually?
2. What are some of those repetitious rituals that you might be tempted to rely upon for achieving forgiveness before God?
3. What are the hindrances and temptations that seek to keep you from being fully submitted to the Father and doing His will?
4. How are you doing with the “Let us” exhortations in this chapter?
5. How has someone else stimulated you toward love and good deeds?  How have you encouraged someone to persevere in the faith?

Questions for Hebrews 9

Observation

1.  What was in the ark of the covenant?
2. What is the Greek word for mercy seat?  Where else in the Bible do we see this word?
3. How often does the high priest enter into the “second” (the Holy of Holies)?
4. The high priest offers gifts and sacrifices for what kind of sins?
5. Do these gifts and offerings make the sinner perfect in conscience?
6. Where in the Old Testament do we see the blood and ashes being sprinkled?
7. How is verse 14 Trinitarian?
8. Without shedding of blood, there is no what?
9. Is Jesus coming a second time?
10. How would you summarize chapter 9?

Interpretation

1.  How do you translate thymiaterion in verse 4, altar of incense or censer?
2. What is the Greek word for “symbol” in verse 9?  How does that shed light on the priesthood service?
3. What is the human conscience? (v. 9)
4. What is the “a time of reformation”? (v. 10)
5. What is a mediator? (v. 15)

Application

1.  Do you have a clear conscience?
2. What have you been freed to do?
3. Can you sing the precious hymn, “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus”?
4. Are you eagerly awaiting the return of your great High Priest?
5. What can you add to the sacrifice of Christ?

Guess where Glenn Beck is landing for his pre-July 4 celebration?

Stephen Prothero writes in his latest book, God is Not One (HarperOne, 2010) (see the latest review):

Christianity is now so elastic that it seems a stretch to use this term to cover the beliefs and behaviors of Pentecostals in Brazil, Mormons in Utah, Roman Catholics in Italy, and the Orthodox in Moscow. (p. 67)

Verily, I think it is a stretch.  But my Mormon friends don’t.

Notice the section in the book devoted to Mormonism (pp. 82-84).

Do you know what William Tyndale wrote as he translated Hebrews into English, around 475 years ago?

 . . . Now therefore to come to our purposes again, though this epistle (as it saith in the sixth) lay not the ground of the faith of Christ, yet it buildeth cunningly thereon pure gold, silver and precious stones, and proveth the priesthood of Christ with scriptures inevitable.  Moreover there is no work in all scripture that so plainly declareth the meaning and significations of the sacrifices, ceremonies and figures of the old testament, as this epistle: in so much that if wilful blindness and malicious malice were not the cause, this epistle only were enough to weed out of the hearts of the papists that cankered heresy of justifying of works, concerning our sacraments, ceremonies and all manner of traditions of their own invention. . . .