Currently Evangelical from the Beginning see related

"Behold, with the Father we speak, and in his presence we stand, being children of malice and grown strong in all righteousness and soberness.  For no longer shall the Law say, 'Do not commit adultery', to him who has no desire at all for another's wife; and, 'You shall not kill', to him who has put away from himself all anger and enmity; and 'You shall not covet your neighbor's field or ox or ass', to those who have no care at all for earthly things, but store up the heavenly fruits; nor, 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth', to him who counts no man as his enemy, but all men his neighbors, and therefore cannot stretch out his hand at all for vengeance.  It will not require tithes of him who consecrates all his possessions to God, leaving father and mother and all his kindred and following the word of God.  And there will be no command to remain idle for one day of rest, to him who perpetually keeps sabbath--that is to say, who in the temple of God (which is man's body) does service to God and in every hour works righteousness."

--Irenaeus of Lyons
(Proof of the Apostolic Preaching 96)

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

How is everyone?  I've been doing quite well lately.  Finally took a bit of a vacation Saturday at Atlantic City, NJ.  Turns out that some procedures for the tour got switched around from last year.  See, up until last year, you'd pay $40 for the bus trip there and back, but upon arrival you'd go to the casino and they'd give you $30, with hopes that you'd play the games and lose your money back to them, as well as some more after getting hooked.  Now, they just give you a $30 coupon that can be inserted, only once, into a slot machine and cannot be redeemed for cash.  Completely contrary to the description given by the tour bus people.  So yeah, we kinda got shafted there.  After standing in an endless line to get the coupons and then blowing everything on the slot machine, we finally grabbed some lunch and hit the beach.  I need to hit the beach more often; it was great.  Got some reading done, enjoyed the waves, got a bit of a tan...  Good times.

Reading:

Since my last post, here are the books I've finished reading:

• The Rapture Question by John Walvoord
• The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. Colin Gunton
  • Some of the chapters near the end were better than the ones at the beginning.  Thankfully.
• Mormon Doctrine by Bruce McConkie
  • It's done!  It's finally done!
• The Evangelical Essential: What Must I Do to Be Saved? by Philip Janowsky
  • A defense of the standard Lutheran version of justification by faith.  Janowsky essentially contended that nothing that Jesus taught matters because it pertains to the era of the Law, not of the Gospel, and so Paul must be given precedence over Christ in this respect.  (I think that would've taken Paul by quite a bit of surprise...)  Ultimately, Janowsky and his opponents both make the mistake of, in effect, pitting Jesus against Paul in terms of what one must do to be saved, rather than find a more holistic picture.  Better luck next time, Janowsky.
• Reasoning from the Scriptures by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society
  • It took a while, but I finally finished this book, which is a guide for Jehovah's Witnesses in meeting objections and questions.  The section on the Trinity was especially horrendous.  For the most part, the book consists of quotations from Scripture with minimal explanatory framework, and most of what is offered, is bad.  Some of the arguments are horrid, while others are often quite sound because the opinion being opposed is ludicrous.  Perhaps someday I wouldn't mind writing a book-length response to Reasoning from the Scriptures...

Current reads:

• The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation, and Commentary, trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali
• Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Vol. 2), ed. James Charlesworth
• Christian Education: Its History and Philosophy by Kenneth Gangel and Warren Benson
  • This is a really interesting book.  It does a great job of reviewing, not just the history of Christian educational theory per se, but indeed sketches a sort of outline of Christian thought on a lot of things.  I especially enjoyed the section dealing with Alcuin of York.
• Evangelical from the Beginning: A History of the Evangelical Congregational Church, ed. Terry Heisey
  • This is the most recent book on the history of my denomination, the Evangelical Congregational Church.  The editor, Dr. Terry Heisey, is my best friend Daniel's uncle.  Heisey wrote pretty much all of it, being one of the few people on the committee who really did anything.  It begins with roots in the Reformation and then in Wesleyan thought before moving on to Jacob Albright, the founder of the Evangelical Association.  He had been ordained as a Methodist minister after conversion, but had to set out on his own to preach in German to German-speakers.  The Evangelical Association grew and, in 1894, experienced a split that resulted in a distinct United Evangelical Church.  In 1922, the United Evangelical Church opted to merge back into the Evangelical Association as the Evangelical Church (which later merged with the United Brethren in Christ to become the Evangelical United Brethren Church, and then with the American Methodist Church to become the United Methodist Church), but because of the underhanded tactics used to force the merger, many dissenting churches--including the bulk of the East Pennsylvania Conference, held fast to their refusal to merge and became the Evangelical Congregational Church.  It's a very interesting book, and I especially enjoyed the anecdote about Bishop Heil, who was unable to attend a conference... because he'd been hit by a train.  And lived to tell the tale.  How does a man get hit by a train, for crying out loud?
• Live with Jehovah's Day in Mind by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society
  • Haven't gotten very far in it yet.  It's a treatment of the twelve "Minor Prophets", though not in the same commentary form as, e.g., Pay Attention to Daniel's Prophecy! or Revelation--Its Grand Climax is at Hand! or Isaiah's Prophecy: Light for All Mankind.  Nothing really objectionable just yet.
• Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller
  • So far, not so bad, despite the title, which continues to reinforce the elevation of "spirituality" over "religion", where the latter is caricatured (as is so lamentably common) as a ritual-based system of purely human origin that neglects any relational aspect to the divine, and is rooted in a purely mechanistic view of God (put coin in, candy comes out).

Some Reflections on Evangelical-LDS Dialogue:

I recently started a thread at TheologyWeb to put forth some reflections of mine regarding theological dialogue between evangelical Christians and Latter-day Saints ("Mormons"), and I'm reposting the contents of my initial post here:

I've been thinking a lot about this topic over the past few weeks, especially while reading through various threads here, and I wanted to jot some thoughts down into writing.  Forgive the lack of much coherent organization throughout the post, as I have little intention of stringing particular reflections together in any sort of comprehensive whole.  Then I figured, why not do it here?  Apologies if I misrepresent anything from either side--call me out on it, please.

The first thought on my mind is something that I definitely see as a problem in evangelical 'countercult' ministries today: a deeply entrenched tendency to avoid interaction with real LDS apologetics at times, and also a heavy reliance on statements by LDS prophets (I use this term here as a reference for all presidents of the LDS Church, past and present).  With that said, I think one can draft a sort of taxonomy here:

• Category 1: Canon.  This includes, on the LDS side, the material in the Bible--at least as understood by Latter-day Saints--the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, and D&C.  This, clearly, has the highest authority.
• Category 2: Leadership.  In other words, the statements and writings of influential past leaders.  The LDS side of this includes perhaps a privileged subsection--let's refer to the statements of the prophets themselves as (2.1), so that (2.2) can include, e.g., the contents of books like Mormon Doctrine, since Bruce McConkie never served at a level above that of Apostle.  We might make a further distinction within (2.1), such that (2.1.1) refers to those statements by prophets that are regarded, either by the prophets themselves or by the Church as a whole, as being specially inspired.
• Category 3: Apologists and Scholars.  This is, by its very nature, a rather diverse category, and so has to be treated as such.  It consists of the statements, writings, arguments, and perspectives of various LDS intellectuals--B. H. Roberts, Sterling McMurrin, Hugh Nibley, Stephen Robinson, the FARMS folk, Blake Ostler, etc., etc. (and, on the lesser end, folks like Jeff Lindsay).
• Category 4: Laymen and Laywomen.  The views of the rank-and-file faithful.

These categories obviously have some overlap in the content of what they espouse--for example, some form of theism must obviously be common to (LDS1)-(LDS4)--but there can also be drastic differences.  While (LDS2) may imply a broad geography for events described in the Book of Mormon, a limited geography is the more common postulate of (LDS3).  What may be commonplace in certain subsets of (LDS2) may be utterly foreign to (LDS4), and vice versa.

A similar taxonomy can be applied to the other side as well.  For evangelicals, we might suggest that (evangelical1) includes the Bible and only the Bible; (evangelical2) includes, among others, the Church Fathers, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley, etc., etc.--your mileage may vary depending on your particular theological tradition, and to that extent, so will the weighting of particular thinkers in terms of importance.  We might select a subset here, (evangelical2.1) as with the others, for materials such as the Apostles' Creed, the Niceno-Constantipolitan Creed, the Definition of Chalcedon, the Quicumque vult (= Athanasian Creed), and so forth.  (evangelical3) and (evangelical4) have rather obvious parallels in (LDS3) and (LDS4) respectively, without a doubt.  And, just as above, these categories have significant overlaps--again, consider theism as one common denominator in (evangelical1)-(evangelical4)--as well as divergences.  The theology of an evangelical layman (or laywoman) may have little in common with that of Athanasius, Martin Luther, or John Wesley, for example.

One problem that I see with a lot of 'countercult' materials--and others have said this very forcefully before me--is that there is an almost meticulous avoidance of in-depth interaction with (LDS3).  The typical pattern is to mine (LDS2) for data, give it the authority of (LDS1), and portray it as though it were (LDS4).  This has got to stop.  As someone said, it's time to compare our best with your best, and that largely amounts to pitting (evangelical3) against (LDS3).  I think I once ran across a defense of this practice on the part of many 'countercult' ministries to the effect that their goal is to reach the average Latter-day Saint, and so their focus is on (LDS4), not (LDS3).  Focusing on (LDS3) would not be as evangelistically useful, or so the argument goes.  (Can't find that article now, but if I do, I'll let you know.)  Personally I find this somewhat problematic.  First of all, as said above, in practice (LDS4) is virtually disregarded in favor of (LDS2); and second, why not try treatments of (LDS1)-(LDS4) together?  Why not do it all?  Yes, it's certainly more challenging, but let's not wimp out here.  (LDS3) is being sorely neglected, and that's simply intolerable.  (After all, atheists routinely ignore (evangelical3) in their critiques of Christianity, often dismissing it as mere hand-waving without any sort of effort to engage it.  The result, quite naturally, is an abysmal mess of ARG--"already refuted garbage".  How can we be so smugly confident that a similar practice of ignoring (LDS3) won't result in the same?  Maybe it would, or maybe the situation is different in some relevant way--but the best course of action seems to be to seriously engage (LDS3) so as to remove all doubt.)

I think that one frequent stumbling block in dialogue enters because of the LDS Church's claim to prophetic and apostolic leadership.  Evangelicals frequently expect that (LDS2.1.1), and to some extent (LDS2.1) as a whole, will be held to have higher authority than Latter-day Saints generally do.  I think the undergirding assumption here is that, even when a prophet is not directly delivering an inspired message, they will generally teach accurate theology--in other words, a low margin of error, however we might happen to set the bar for "low".  Moreover, there is also the general belief among evangelicals that being a prophet and being a heretic are generally mutually exclusive, and so when we note statements in (LDS2.1), we naturally assume that they will be within the bounds of LDS orthodoxy.  (It is a fairly simple leap from there to assuming that those statements will be anywhere close to mainstream within LDS orthodoxy, but this is a leap we make all-too-readily in many cases where we probably shouldn't.  Please keep us accountable on this point.)  There's the further matter of some confusion between what needs to be classified in (LDS2.1.1) vs. (LDS2.1.2) with regards to Brigham Young's discourses--one particular infamous statement of his has often been taken by evangelicals to mean that his discourses must all be classified, not only as (LDS2.1.1), but that this subsection of (LDS2.1.1) should be placed on par with (LDS1) in terms of inspiration and authority.  Maybe we're right in understanding him that way, maybe not.  I'm just saying that it's what often happens, and if Latter-day Saints disagree, then please help us to understand why.

Another thought: in discussions of the Trinity--and I hope that Nick's thread will be of some help in clearing this up--one common problem is that many Latter-day Saints often ask whether, in evangelical thought (which is, at its core and at its best, thoroughly and unequivocally Trinitarian), Jesus and the Father are "separate and distinct".  The problem with this is that, while those terms are similar and often taken to be synonymous, many evangelicals consider them to have different connotations.  "Separate" seems to imply a degree of separability and independence that, for evangelicals, we cannot in good faith affirm; and so some of us wary of this apparent implication, eschew the word "separate" in favor of "distinct".  We want to affirm "distinct" very strongly so that no one will mistake us for modalists, but we do not want to affirm "separate" because we want to maintain our emphasis on the unity of Father and Son.  So the routine coupling of "separate and distinct" puts us in quite a bind, because no simple answer can be given without extreme risk of misunderstanding.  LDS folks, please understand that some of us really do use those terms differently, and so I ask for some more care when phrasing questions or considering our position.

Another issue that I've seen is a persistent use of a "literal"/"figurative" dichotomy.  LDS ask evangelicals whether Jesus and the Father are "literally" one or "figuratively" one, and whether Jesus is "literally" the Father's Son or "figuratively" the Father's Son.  And sometimes, maybe LDS get frustrated with the outcome of these questions.  But the problem lies in the phrasing of the questions themselves.  I can perhaps speak only for myself, but I don't know if these questions make any more sense than asking whether something is literally or figuratively red.  Rather, to take it one at a time, there is a different spectrum to be used.  Let's suggest that for "oneness", the distinction is not literal vs. non-literal, but strict vs. loose senses of "oneness", which admits of a broader range than two options.  The strictest sense of "one", I might imagine, is the solitary unity of absolute identification: Father = Son in terms of absolute identity.  This would have to be some ridiculously intense form of modalism.  So, too, with slightly looser modalist usage: the Father and Son being one person, but distinguishable as modes of being.  Another type of modalism, with the 'Father' being the divine nature of Christ and the 'Son' being the human nature of Christ, seems to be looser still--as well as rather strange, but that's beside the point here.  Further out on the spectrum is the Trinitarian understanding--one being, but distinct persons.  Still further out is another position, perhaps: the Father and Son are two beings of the same rare kind-essence.  This can be tightened by emphasizing (complete) unity of purpose; a bare unity of purpose, without reference to essence at all, would be still further out, and I'm not sure whether there's anything beyond it.  The third position from the loosest end of the spectrum--that of unity of purpose and the same kind-essence--appears to be, with suitable adjustments for the LDS stance that humans, angels, and Gods are of a common kind-essence (as I understand it), an appropriate way of summarizing the (or merely "an"?) LDS view of the matter.  So here we can see how to chart evangelical and LDS views of "oneness", without any reference to metaphor, literalness, figures of speech, etc.  And maybe it's just me, but while this seems more complex and nuanced, it also seems to be a lot clearer and more conducive to substantive discussion.

Turning to the issue of the Sonship of the Son, again I have to say that I don't think the matter of "literalness" is all that helpful.  For example, I know what biological sonship is; I know what creative sonship is; I know what sonship by adoption is; and I have a sense for what (many) evangelicals believe about the eternal generation of the Son--a relation of hypostatic origin that constitutes an eternal filial relationship between two and only two persons (Begetter and Begotten) of the same kind-essence (and perhaps even the same individual-essence?), and so a relation deemed analogous in spirit if not in detail to biological sonship.  Some evangelicals might even say that biological generation (as in humans in particular) is analogous to the eternal generation because it is patterned after the eternal generation, with suitable modification for temporality and the involvement of sexual reproductions.  (Note that we have now developed technology that allows for sexual reproduction without sexual intercourse, but that it is nonetheless sexual reproduction.  Note also that I'm not really sure why I'm noting this.)  But I don't know that I'd call any of these four more "literal" than the others, which is why I personally have trouble interpreting LDS references to the "literalness" of the Sonship of Christ.  Many evangelicals understand this to mean biological sonship in both pre-mortality and mortality (see both side-notes below), and so infer the involvement of sexual intercourse in both cases.  I've often seen LDS object to this inference, but without much clarity on what "literalness" means.  Perhaps this is one area where we can further discussion by abandoning the "literal"/"figurative" divide, although this diverges from established LDS usage.

(As a side note, it is also my understanding that both physical birth in mortality and "spirit-birth" in mainstream LDS thought are subsumed under the category of, more or less, "biological generation", though I am open to correction if this is wrong.  I say "mainstream LDS thought" because I know that some LDS thinkers reject the idea of "spirit-birth" and instead contend that the relationship between our spirits and the Father in pre-mortality is perhaps one of adoption.  This is an appropriate place to note that the passages in the Bible interpreted in LDS circles as indicative of "spirit-birth" or "spirit-adoption" are often understood by evangelicals to be examples of creative sonship--as with the angels as "sons of Elohim", Malachi's reference of "one Father" (though this may have shades of the corporate adoption of Israel), and talk of God as "Father of spirits" in Hebrews.)

(As a second side note, I think I've seen LDS occasionally believe that evangelicals believe that the Son was begotten by the Holy Spirit on Mary.  Allow me to take this moment to say that I know of no evangelical thinker who affirms that the Holy Spirit is the father of Jesus.  Rather, when evangelicals speak of the begetting of Christ by the Father, we mean something that happened in eternity and had no reference to Mary; Christ's birth from Mary involved the Holy Spirit as an active participant, but the Holy Spirit was not an active participant in the eternal generation of the Son--and this holds for both sides of the debate about the filioque clause, except for certain ecumenical theologians who'd like to even things out by saying that the Son is begotten ex patre spirituque, which is obviously wrong.  As I understand it, in LDS thought the reason the Son is "only-begotten" is that this has reference to birth in mortality, and as such, the Son would not have been "only-begotten" prior to conception in Mary's womb.  But for evangelicals, the Son is eternally the "only-begotten" of the Father, which has nothing to do with human birth later on.)

Just a couple more reflections now.  (Rejoice, for this post neareth its end!)  I remember a thread in which the complaint was made that LDS missionaries seem unable to ably defend their beliefs.  The fact of the matter is that this is commonplace among both lay Latter-day Saints and lay evangelicals, and even among evangelical clergy.  Neither side gets off scot-free here, and we could both afford to do a whole heckuva lot better at training our folks to defend their beliefs, answer questions, and understand the other position(s).  However, it also seems that some form of fideism is more prominent in LDS circles than in evangelical circles.  That's not to say that it's necessarily more common, but that it's endorsed more regularly, even encouraged and commended.  Often this seems to tie in to a reliance on religious experience for generating testimonies.  Now, again, evangelicals do this too.  A lot.  (And as a personal note, it bugs the heck outta me.)  In my opinion, there's nothing inherently wrong with religious experience, or even its pivotal role in confirming religious beliefs, or even (perhaps) a role in creating certain beliefs.  However, that said, here's the crucial caveat: there are unequivocal experiences, and there are equivocal experiences.  The latter can be readily interpreted as more than one kind of phenomenon.  (One could argue that virtually all experience is technically the latter, since any sensory experience could be interpreted as veridical or as deception by a Cartesian demon, but that's why I said "readily", as the former is almost universally held to be vastly more probable than the latter.)  For the latter kind of religious experiences, we have to submit it to Scripture and allow any experience-derived religious beliefs to be contested by argument.  If the arguments lean sufficiently against those beliefs, then it may be time to reinterpret the confirming (or founding) experience.  This is something that I often don't see Latter-day Saints expressing a willingness to do (and the same is quite true for many evangelicals, I'll add).  Whenever a critic points out that one can have a "testimony" for, e.g., Islam that is apparently indistiguishable from that for Mormonism, the underlying point being made is, I think, precisely that experience (and/or its apparent implications) must be subject to reinterpretation and re-evaluation when the situation calls for it, because such experience is insufficient, in and of itself, to be a guarantor of truth.  (If it were a guarantor of truth, after all, then both Islam and Mormonism would be rendered true by their respective experiential bases, and unless we want to adopt a patently insufficient notion of truth, that just doesn't work.)

Finally, there's the matter of forthrightness.  This has also been a matter of discussion and perhaps contention between evangelicals and Latter-day Saints, at least here at TheologyWeb.  One criticism of LDS practice is that there is an unwillingness to be fully forthright with what they believe, whereas this is sometimes defended with an appeal to the milk vs. meat distinction in Hebrews, and other assorted texts.  I'm not going to get into the details of interpreting and applying that passage, except to say that I doubt very much that, if someone were to have asked the author a question about some theological point, I think the answer would have been more helpful than, "You're not ready to learn that yet.  But here are some answers to questions you didn't ask but I think you probably should have."  I'm leaning more towards thinking that the author would've actually answered the question, even if the answer were tailored to the level of the questioner and even if some extra background teaching were required.  Now, I should also note that some evangelicals have forthrightness problems as well, but the fact remains that there are certainly evangelicals who are willing to take a stab at any question regarding evangelical belief, at least so long as it's an honest question (and also frequently when we know it isn't).  There are also Latter-day Saints who would do the same, mutatis mutandis.  Both sides need to work on being more honest and forthright.  I hope that we can all agree on that. 

I think I've rambled long enough now, and so I'd really like to hear some further reflections on both sides of the aisle.  I'm not looking for this to turn into another bitter debate thread, so please try to keep it constructive for a change.  I'm certainly not looking for a repeat of the atrocity that was perpetrated on the "3 Things You Like about Mormonism?" thread.  But I'm confident that if we try, we can avoid letting yet another thread degenerate into debate about now this topic, now that one, etc., etc.

Miscellaneous:

So the past week or so has seen quite a few celebrity deaths.  I'd figured we'd met our quota, but they just kept happening.  Ed McMahon.  Farrah Fawcett.  Michael Jackson.  And then Billy Mays, which probably hit me harder than the first three combined.  In light of the last one, it's only fitting that I should link to this.

I did more work at the church library last week (catalogued 191 more books), and I plan to return on Tuesday to press onward with the miscellaneous stacks and maybe get a start on the fiction shelves.  While working there, we came across some material that belongs in the church archives rather than the library.  Copies of old special bulletins (such as the dedication service of the sanctuary) and conference reports, mostly, plus the church discipline and other materials.

Since I quoted such a large block of text, and since I'm trying to cut down on the length of my blog posts, I'll end here for now.

Gratia vobis.