Currently Mormon Doctrine By Bruce R. McConkie see related

"Unless a Christian has performed good works, he cannot prove his faith at all, and since he cannot prove that it exists, it must be considered as altogether non-existent."

--Salvian
(On the Government of God 4.2)

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

Greetings to all.  I've been doing relatively well lately.  No real issues like I mentioned before, thankfully.  My girlfriend's been keeping me company for over a week now, and she'll be here through Sunday night.  I'm looking forward to a trip to the beach on Saturday--haven't been there in years!

Oh, and since no one has yet, please feel free to check out my last post and offer some feedback on those legal scenarios and other questions?

Reading:

I realized recently that I omitted two books from the list in my prior post: An Inconvenient Book by Glenn Beck and Armageddon, Oil, and the Middle East Crisis by John Walvoord.  Other books I've finished reading since my last post:

• Father, Son, and Spirit: The Trinity and John's Gospel by Andreas Köstenberger and Scott Swain
• Israel's 48 Signs of Christ's Return by Gordon Lindsay
• Evangelical Reunion: Denominations and the One Body of Christ by John Frame
• Understanding the Last Days: The Keys to Unlocking Bible Prophecy by Tim LaHaye
  • Hahahahaha.  That's all I really need to say here.
• A Common Calling: The Witness of Our Reformation Churches in North America Today, ed. Keith Nickle
  • A fairly brief report by some council for Lutheran-Reformed relations.  It was of limited interest to me, since I come from neither tradition, but it did make a decent follow-up to Frame's book.
• Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? (Counterpoints), ed. Wayne Grudem
  • Very interesting.  The charismatic side had a stronger case to make than I would've expected.  I'm still in the "open but cautious" camp, but I'll have to do some heavy contemplation at some point of the more charismatic end.
• The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God by Robert Wilken
  • I <3 this book.  (Yes, "<3".  Get over it.)  It's very well-written, and rather than being a comprehensive review of the church fathers, it's more topical, using particular fathers as examples, and the book has a sort of beauty about it.  I recommend it.
• The Church in Prophecy by John Walvoord
  • I borrowed this book from the church library yesterday after church.  We ran a few errands, and I managed to finish the book before I got home.  How is that just?

Other books:

• The Qur'an: Text, Translation, and Commentary, trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali
• Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Vol. 2), ed. James Charlesworth
• Mormon Doctrine by Bruce McConkie
• Reasoning from the Scriptures by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society
• The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. Colin Gunton
  • Not what I thought it'd be, to be quite honest.  I'm not really that enthused about the contents just yet, but maybe the chapter on the Trinity will change my tune.
• The Rapture Question by John Walvoord
  • Smears amillennialism as spiritualizing what obviously should never be spiritualized--he never clarifies exactly what he means by "spiritualized", unfortunately, and seems to see no middle ground between that and full-on literalism (as understood, naturally, as his reading of the text).  Also has the typical dispensationalist problem with Israel and the church, and does not spend nearly enough time contemplating Romans 11.  Ultimately, preterist amillennialism is off the map as far as he's concerned, which is a shame, since he seems to at least want to deal with the full spectrum of opposing opinions.  Better luck next time, Dr. Walvoord.
• Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller
  • I'm in a book discussion group on this, so I'll be pacing myself greatly--two chapters a week.  Had the first meeting last night, and it was actually quite enjoyable.

After that discussion group, I finally got a chance to check out my pastor's personal library, including his special case of old books (including one from the year 1809).  I must say, I'm quite drawn to his 1885 Emphatic Diaglott and his 1914 copy of the Photo-Drama of Creation.  And he's got plenty of great material in his home office as well, including the complete works of John Wesley, all of John Calvin's commentaries, and all of Cornelius Van Til's works (which, considering that he knew Van Til, makes sense).  Also some other cool stuff, like Yamauchi's book Pre-Christian Gnosticism.  I look forward to seeing that room again.  It makes me feel all good inside...

(My girlfriend, by the way, is currently reading: The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel; Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament by John Walton; The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity by Philip Jenkins; and Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time by William Lane Craig.)

More Fun with Jehovah's Witnesses:

It's been a while since I've reported any of this here, so I might as well get back in the habit of saying something now and then.  I stopped because the reports got dull--no controversy, not much to talk about.  But the past few times have been quite discussion based, and so I'm going to give you some modified forms of my records.

Let's rewind to 30 May.  That day, it was just me and 'Uriah'; 'Shem' couldn't make it, and I actually don't think I've seen him since.  After a little bit of smalltalk and petting my cat, we chatted a bit about some JW publications I'd like.  When we finally got to business, we worked through the first eleven paragraphs of Chapter 7 in What Does the Bible Really Teach?, which deals with having hope after a loved one has died.  Nothing was especially controversial here--he thoroughly enjoyed most of my answers--except for one paragraph (#11) which attempted to use the case of Lazarus to teach that consciousness ceases absolutely at death.  Since we already hashed through some of the afterlife questions in a previous session and will no doubt return to them after we get further along, I pointed past that disagreement to the point that the Bible focuses very little on the 'afterlife' and much more on resurrection.

I then managed to go on a rant about the Word of Faith movement for quite a while.  I think it started when I was talking about visions of heaven and hell in intertestamental Jewish literature, and somehow shifted into the 'visions' of Word of Faith teachers... and from there I ran through some of the more eccentric teachings of the movement, including many that Uriah had never heard.  So we spent some good time exploring the insanity of a third party.  He agrees that they're pretty far removed from reality.

Also, Uriah found out that there are two scheduled publication releases for the upcoming convention, and that they're supposed to be different from previous releases somehow.  At least, that's what he's heard. I'm looking forward to it.  According to Wikipedia, this year may see a release of a JW study companion to Acts of the Apostles. That'd be pretty interesting if so, and I wouldn't mind getting a copy.

Our next meeting took place a week later.  I had mistakenly thought that we were supposed to meet at 1:30, but it was 1:00, so J1 caught me by surprise while I was typing up this post at TheologyWeb.  We chatted for a little bit--he brought me a couple of pamphlet-style publications, as well as the latest Watchtower and Awake!.  (Regarding the back page of the latest Awake!, by the way, please watch this interesting YouTube video.)

It didn't take too long before we dove into the remainder of the chapter (paragraphs 12-25) from What Does the Bible Really Teach?.  The first portion of it, everything until paragraph 20, was thoroughly unobjectionable, in my view.  So we had no controversy until we reached that. Paragraph 20 asserts that some individuals will not be resurrected at all at the time of judgement:

Does this mean that ever human who ever lived will be resurrected?  No.  The Bible says that some of the dead are in "Gehenna." (Luke 12:5)  [...]  So Gehenna is a fitting symbol of everlasting destruction. Although Jesus will have a role in judging the living and the dead, Jehovah is the final Judge. (Acts 10:42)  He will never resurrect those whom he judges to be wicked and unwilling to change.

We'll get back to that after a while, but see this post I did a while back. The next couple of paragraphs (21-22) set forth the JW belief in a heavenly resurrection as spirit-beings for some, and the two paragraphs after that (23-24) dealt with the anointed.

During my brief rundown in delineating what paragraphs 21-22 were about, I explained a bit of my own view as well, and thoroughly managed to take Uriah by surprise.  He'd never met anyone who firmly believes in the resurrection of the body and the new heavens and new earth while also not believing in the resurrection of the anointed class to a heavenly existence.  He had so much stuff running through his head after that, that he kept stumbling over the words for the next few paragraphs, and at one point he just randomly stopped in mid-sentence to think for about a minute or so.  The perplexity was great and evident.

...Aaaaaanyway, once we got to discussion time, I started out with the issue of whether all people will be resurrected. So first Uriah explained the three-part division of righteous, unrighteous (both of these are resurrected), and blotted out (<Soup Nazi>"No resurrection for you!"</Soup Nazi>); I was surprised to hear Uriah state in his explanation that the third category wasn't really in the Bible.  So then we began discussing who might be in the third category, and Uriah stated that he really wasn't sure.  He thinks Adam is probable, and he leans towards putting Judas and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah there as well.  So then I asked him about Sodom and Gomorrah with reference to Matthew 11:24, and he thought for a moment and said he really didn't know, so he'd have to look it up.  More specifically, we established that he tentatively thinks that, when judgment day rolls around, both the people of Sodom and the unrepentant hearers of Jesus' condemnation will be non-existent, and so he isn't sure how it can be better for one non-existent group than for another non-existent group in a time when neither of them exists.  I also asked why Jesus spoke so universally of the resurrection in John 5:28, and he didn't really have an answer for that either.

I did get some clarification of some sort on one question I had regarding the anointed.  For JWs, or at least for Uriah, only the anointed are sealed with holy spirit, but all believers can receive holy spirit, be guided by holy spirit, even described as indwelt by holy spirit.  (I'll have to check my collection of JW literature to see if they contradict that.  So far that does seem to be fairly standard.) This took a tiny bit of sting out of an argument I constructed the night before, but not too much:

• (1) Everyone indwelt by the Spirit will have life given to their mortal bodies. [cf. Romans 8:11]
• (2) the anointed are indwelt by the Spirit [premise]
• (3) the anointed do not experience resurrection of their bodies [premise]
• ergo, one of (1)-(3) must be incorrect

He wasn't entirely sure what to do about this either, but he assured me that he'd look further into JW exegesis of Romans 8:11 for our next meeting.  Looking at verses 12 and 13 didn't help him evade the argument too much, unless he interprets "make YOUR mortal bodies alive" (Romans 8:11, NWT) as meaning something other than resurrection, which in light of the passage's explicit reference to raising Christ from the dead seems to be pretty cut and dry.

That's as far as we got on the sixth, and we met again on 20 June.  My girlfriend was there, of course, and during the hour before the meeting I scrambled around to do a bit of extra research to add to my notes (none of which I actually had to use this time).  It was the first time my girlfriend finally got to see me in action, I think. (She says it was "dreamy".)  The reason we skipped a week in there is that Uriah had to cancel because a Bethel speaker was coming to the Kingdom Hall.  I couldn't make it to that, unfortunately.

The first thing we did was a bit of small talk, and after I mentioned that my mother and her friend Adrian from North Ireland were in New York City that day, Uriah mentioned the one time when he was eight years old and in the scouts, and in New York City their leader accidentally took a wrong turn and led their troop into a topless bar.  I imagine that required quite a bit of explaining to parents.  I mentioned how a couple times when I was in NYC, I often walked past Bethel, and he said that he thinks they might eventually move increasingly out of the city to places like Patterson and some other town.

We then got to talking about the convention, which will be from the last day in July to the first two days in August, and he'll be glad to give me a ride if I don't mind being there an hour or so after it ends each day--which is fine with me, because come on, where better for me to hang out than after hours at a JW convention?  Also, we both agree that it'd be sweet if one of the book releases were indeed a commentary on Acts.

Next Uriah mentioned his research into the Sodom and Gomorrah bit, and his conclusion was that some people from Sodom and Gomorrah will be resurrected, but most will not.  He gave me an article from the 15 August 1982 Watchtower, so I'll have to read through it, look up some of the conflicting opinions, and ask him to look into them.

We then got to Romans 8:11 and had some fun discussion in circles (which was a pattern that was to mark the remainder of the day).  I got him to agree that "make YOUR mortal bodies alive" (Romans 8:11, NWT) has reference to the resurrection, and he agrees that Paul is addressing the anointed.  Uriah pointed me to Ephesians 2:4-6, and I then explained how resurrection was historically used both literally and metaphorically--in the Old Testament as a metaphor for Israel's return from exile, and in the New Testament as a metaphor for the current transformation in life that takes place upon acceptance of Christ.  I pointed out that Paul talks here in the past tense about our being raised up, which clearly must be metaphorical, and he agreed; so then we returned to Romans 8:11, which I pointed out appears to refer to literal resurrection, not metaphorical.  Ultimately, Uriah isn't sure why Paul said "mortal bodies" instead of "mortal lives".

Uriah then asked me to turn to 1 Corinthians 15, esp vv. 35-40, 50-53. (We oddly had no discussion of the "flesh and blood" thing, which is surprising considering how prominent that argument is in JW literature.)  So first he asked me my opinion about corruptibility, which he interestingly identifies with physicality--not a mere association, but actually identification.  (Note to self: Ask Uriah whether Satan is incorruptible.)  We got into a discussion of everlasting life and immortality, and here I sort of fumbled; I opted to defer the question of whether the sinless angels have immortality, and I'll have to look more into that.

[Perhaps I'll find some help here in Summa Theologica I, Q50, art. 5, wherein Thomas Aquinas considers whether or not the angels are incorruptible?  His conclusion is yes.*  (Oh, and I just found a typo in my copy of the Summa...  the heading for I, Q53, art. 3 asks about an "angle" where it should be "angel"....  The very fact that I noticed this at all concerns me.)  I perhaps ought to also reference I, Q75, art. 6--which deals with the incorruptibility of the human soul.]

We returned to 1 Corinthians 15:53, a verse that was to dominate our discussion for quite a while.  I asked him what he thinks "this which is corruptible" means, and he answered the physical body; I asked him what "incorruption" is, and he answered that it's a state of existence as a spirit-being; and I asked him what putting on was, and he pointed me to Paul's description of spiritual armor.  So then I asked whether this verse was about literal resurrection, and he said yes.  I then asked what it means for the physical body to put on a state of existence as a spirit-being, and here we went for a loooong spirally ride.  He kept wanting to explain the passage in terms of 'putting on' God's principles of right living; I pointed out that this would be an apt description of conversion or sanctification, but not of resurrection.  He said at several points that a physical body actually cannot put on incorruption, and when asked about the verse in question, where Paul says flatly the opposite, he continually attempted to default to the godly principles explanation, which finally culminated in a statement that the physical body (that is, the person as a physical body) must accept godly principles so that one day the person--not the body itself--can be renewed in the resurrection by putting on incorruption.  (But, it will be noted, in this explanation the physical body never itself puts on incorruption, contra Paul--and I will return to this with Uriah sometime in the future to hammer this point home more.)

We then discussed some earlier verses (vv. 43ff.-ish), and Uriah attempted to point me to the metaphor of sowing and reaping.  I quickly asked him what "it" is, and he considered for a moment and said the body--specifically, the physical body.  So then I read through verse 43 with substitution of "physical body" for "it", and he said that it wasn't the body, it was the "life-force".  I then asked if the sowing was burial, and he said yes.  I pointed out that we bury bodies, not life-forces; and I believe somewhere in here he attempted to say that "it" changes referent within the verse, which clearly doesn't work.  I may be imagining that, though.  At any rate, he sorta gave up on this one and then asked me some questions about physical resurrection, like how God can raise up the same body after thousands of years.  Thankfully I'd recently glanced at a work used the analogy of iron filings hidden in sand and drawn out by a powerful magnet, so I used that analogy to explain it.  I couldn't recall at the time what it was, but I now realize that it was a passage from Abdisho bar Brika's Marganitha 5.7:

But, now, should any doubtingly inquire how bodies can rise again which have been destroyed, and which have mingled with the dust, which have been eaten of wild beasts, or consumed by fire, or drowned in water? we reply : Should a piece of iron be broken into impalpable powder, and be mixed with dust and sand, the hidden power of a magnet will at once separate the atoms from the dust and sand, and from whatever other heterogeneous bodies with which they may have been mixed; and if such virtue resides in the magnet, how much more possible is it for the power of the Creator, in His wisdom, to separate, bring together, and remodel the bodies of men at the resurrection!

The conversation never really got controversial again from there.  I think I may have thrown some serious wrenches in his exegesis, but I'm not really sure whether he realizes it or not.  So we agreed that on 11 July we'd get into Christ's resurrection and the issue of the anointed and unanointed, and eventually I'd like to start circling back to some of these topics and pick up some pieces.  Should be interesting.

(Also, please pray for my mother, who was recently diagnosed with degenerative joint disease and a herniated disc.  And while you're at it, since the first one is probably hereditary and I already have joint problems, feel free to pray for me as well.)

Gratia vobis.

Here is the text of Summa Theologica I, Q50, art. 5 (with the citations updated into my preferred format):

Whether the angels are incorruptible?

Objection 1:  It would seem that the angels are not incorruptible; for Damascene, speaking of the angel, says (De fide orthodoxe 2.3) that he is "an intellectual substance, partaking of immortality by favor, and not by nature."

Objection 2:  Further, Plato says in the Timaeus (§9): "O gods of gods, whose maker and father am I: You are indeed my works, dissoluble by nature, yet indissoluble because I so will it."  But gods such as these can only be understood to be the angels.  Therefore the angels are corruptible by their nature.

Objection 3:  Further, according to Gregory (Moralia 16.45), "all things would tend towards nothing, unless the hand of the Almighty preserved them."  But what can be brought to nothing is corruptible.  Therefore, since the angels were made by God, it would appear that they are corruptible of their own nature.

On the contrary, Dionysius says (Divine Names 4) that the intellectual substances "have unfailing life, being free from all corruption, death, matter, and generation."

I answer that it must necessarily be maintained that the angels are incorruptible of their own nature.  The reason for this is, that nothing is corrupted except by its form being separated from the matter.  Hence, since an angel is a subsisting form, as is clear from what was said above (I, Q50, art. 2), it is impossible for its substance to be corruptible.  For what belongs to anything considered in itself can never be separated from it; but what belongs to a thing, considered in relation to something else, can be separated, when that something else is taken away, in view of which it belonged to it.  Roundness can never be taken from the circle, because it belongs to it of itself; but a bronze circle can lose roundness, if the bronze be deprived of its circular shape.  Now to be belongs to a form considered in itself; for everything is an actual being according to its form: whereas matter is an actual being by the form.   Consequently a subject composed of matter and form ceases to be actually when the form is separated from the matter.  But if the form subsists in its own being, as happens in the angels, as was said above (I, Q50, art. 2), it cannot lose its being.  Therefore, the angel's immateriality is the cause of why it is incorruptible by its own nature.

A token of this incorruptibility can be gathered from its intellectual operation; for since everything acts according as it is actual, the operation of a thing indicates its mode of being.  Now the species and nature of the operation is understood from the object.  But an intelligible object, being above time, is everlasting.  Hence every intellectual substance is incorruptible of its own nature.

Reply to Objection 1:  Damascene is dealing with perfect immortality, which includes complete immutability; since "every change is a kind of death," as Augustine says (Contra Maximinium 3).  The angels achieve perfect immutability only by favor, as will appear later (I, Q62).

Reply to Objection 2:  By the expression 'gods' Plato understands the heavenly bodies, which he supposed to be made up of elements, and therefore dissoluble of their own nature; yet they are forever preserved in existence by the divine will.

Reply to Objection 3:  As was observed above (I, Q44, art. 1) there is a kind of necessary thing which has a cause of its necessity.  Hence it is not repugnant to a necessary or incorruptible being to depend for its existence on another as its cause.  Therefore, when it is said that all things, even the angels, would lapse into nothing, unless preserved by God, it is not to be gathered therefrom that there is any principle of corruption in the angels; but that the nature of the angels is dependent on God as its cause.  For a thing is said to be corruptible not merely because God can reduce it to non-existence, by withdrawing his act of preservation, but also because it has some principle of corruption within itself, or some contrareity, or at least the potentiality of matter.