Another note, inspired by John W . Welch, et al., eds., Knowing Why: 137 Evidences That the Book of Mormon Is True (American Fork: Covenant Communications, 2017):
“What Does It Mean to Speak with the Tongue of Angels?” (143-145)
2 Nephi 32:2 seems to suggest an implicit doctrine of human deification in the Book of Mormon — a text from which, critics have alleged, the Nauvoo-period teaching of human exaltation is wholly absent.
To this, I would add 3 Nephi 28:10, where the Nephite disciples are promised that “ye shall be even as I am, and I am even as the Father; and the Father and I are one.”
In an analogy to the transitive property of equivalence known from mathematics — according to which, if a=b and b=c, it follows necessarily that a=c — if the disciples will be like the Son, and the Son is like the Father, the disciples will be like the Father.
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I’m saddened to learn of the passing of Elder Alexander B. Morrison, an emeritus member of the Seventy:
“Elder Alexander B. Morrison, renowned scientist and LDS emeritus general authority, dies at age 87”
It was as a result of a meeting with Elder Morrison that I launched the Islamic Translation Series, which fairly soon expanded into the overall Middle Eastern Texts Initiative and which I led until I was shown the door by the new regime at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship in 2012. That project has now been handed over to the Dutch academic publisher E. J. Brill:
“Middle Eastern Texts Initiative Now Published by Brill”
I rather hope that Elder Morrison was unaware of this recent development. I don’t think that he would have been pleased.
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I like this item, from President M. Russell Ballard:
“Elder Ballard: We Need to Be Better at Answering Difficult Questions and Never Brush Them Off”
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An interesting piece from Tarik LaCour:
I agree that the distinction between so-called old-school apologists and “neo-apologists” is grossly exaggerated. We disagree on very little, and I count many of the “neo-apologists” as personal friends.
I think it important to keep in mind, though, that, while the “neo-apologists” and even most of the old-school apologists are decent human beings, I’m emphatically not. Anybody who has had any actual contact with me, whether in person or electronically, can testify to my mean-spirited viciousness and casual cruelty. The word doesn’t really capture the full horror of me, but I am a terrible, terrible person.
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