Section

Theology

Are Mormons Evangelical?

By September 2, 2008


The problem, of course, is in defining ?evangelical.?

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Rational Supernaturalism, Part I: Joseph Smith, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Angels

By August 17, 2008


Enlightenment thought brought many threats to eighteenth and nineteenth century religious movements.

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This is my body . . . or, Sally Quinn, PZ Myers, and the coming millennium

By August 2, 2008


Recently (and weirdly) the Holy Eucharist has been in the news.

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The Transcendentalist’s “New Bible”, the Book of Mormon, and the Romantic Quest for Modern Scriptural Texts

By July 2, 2008


Literary scholar Lawrence Buell, in his excellent New England Literary Culture, explored one of the most important ideas related to the antebellum Romantic thinkers–an idea that he defines as “literary scripturism.”

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A Mormon theology of the movies; Part I

By May 10, 2008


Before we can ask whether a Mormon theology of the movies is a viable idea, I suppose that making the case that a theology of the movies in general works would be useful.

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Miracles, Mormons, and Harry Emerson Fosdick: the challenge of inoculation

By April 27, 2008


Five years before the 1920s, a decade in which he did a least as much as John T. Scopes to instigate warfare between Protestant liberals and fundamentalists, and fifty years before Martin Luther King praised him as the greatest preacher of the century, the Baptist minister Harry Emerson Fosdick was appointed to the Jessup Chair in Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary. [1]

Fosdick was not really an original thinker, but he was a master teacher and popularizer. And, perhaps because of the agonies that he struggled through on his own route to faith, he had a powerful understanding of the anxieties that plagued his age. Because of the new Biblical criticism, Fosdick wrote,

The old use of the Bible became impossible to many preachers who, as much as ever was true of their fathers, believed in Jesus Christ as the world?s Saviour and wanted to proclaim his Gospel as the power of God unto salvation.[2]

In other words, these preachers – like Fosdick himself – believed passionately in God revealed in Christ. But they no longer accepted the accuracy of Biblical history. And they did not know what to do.

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Sacred Language

By April 22, 2008


One topic I find most interesting about Mormonism is the ability of the Latter-day Saints to create the sacred.

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Joseph Smith’s Theodicy

By March 11, 2008


If you are looking for a post that explores the rich theological possibilities of theodicy, this post is not it. While I find the topic interesting, I don’t want to address the questions associated with it here. Rather, I want to use the topic of theodicy as a starting point for a discussion on how we use Joseph’s teachings.

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The Role of History in Religion: Two Diverging Views

By February 19, 2008


We as Latter-day Saints love to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “The burden of proof is on the claim of there BEING Nephites. From a scholarly point of view, the burden of proof is on the…”


Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “But that's not what I was saying about the nature of evidence of an unknown civilization. I am talking about linguistics, not ruins. …”


Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “Large civilizations leave behind evidence of their existence. For instance, I just read that scholars estimate the kingdom of Judah to have been around 110,000…”


Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “I have always understood the key to issues with Nephite archeology to be language. Besides the fact that there is vastly more to Mesoamerican…”


Steven Borup on In Memoriam: James B.: “Bro Allen was the lead coordinator in 1980 for the BYU Washington, DC Seminar and added valuable insights into American history as we also toured…”


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