A note from the British Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton’s 2008 Terry Lectures at Yale University, published as Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009): Dawkins falsely considers that Christianity offers a rival view of the universe to science. Like the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett in Breaking the Spell, he thinks it is a kind of bogus theory or pseudo-explanation of the world. In this sense, he... Read more
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004), the famous Swiss-American physician, psychiatrist, and author of, among many other things, the pioneering 1969 book On Death and Dying, was very well-known and quite influential during her lifetime — not for her views on life after death but for her study of the dying process, which led to new thinking in the health care profession about how to treat terminally ill patients. But she believed strongly in life beyond the grave. In fact, based... Read more
I want to flesh out here an argument that I heard very briefly mentioned the other day in a recorded discussion. It seems to me, while not a “slam dunk,” to be quite an interesting line of reasoning. All biblical citations are from the English Standard Version or ESV. According to John 6:53-58, Jesus said something very jarring while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum: 53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say... Read more
Martin Tanner and I will be hosting the Interpreter Radio show a week from Sunday — which is to say, on the evening of Sunday, 31 May, from 7 PM until 9 PM. For the first hour of the program, our guest will be Dr. Stanford Carmack. He will be on the telephone from his home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Here are links to three of the earliest articles that Dr. Carmack published in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day... Read more
Newly posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Book of Moses Insights #004: Enoch’s Prophetic Commission: Enoch’s Power Over the Elements and His Divine Protection (Moses 6:32, 34) Interpreter Radio Show — May 17, 2020 The 17 May 2020 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show featured Bruce Webster, Kris Frederickson, and Mike Parker. In this episode, they discussed returning to church worship in the midst of a pandemic as well as newly announced temples. Also featured, during... Read more
I’ve been reading for a few minutes every day — really every night, just before turning off the lights — in the Greek text of Acts, slowly going through a chapter each week. So, with that background, I offer a few rather obvious comments today on Acts 4. For my English text, simply so that it will be slightly fresh, I use the English Standard Version or ESV: 4 And as they were speaking to the people, the... Read more
The thirteenth-century poet Jalal al-Din Rumi is not only one of the greatest figures in the history of Persian literature but one of the very greatest of all Sufi mystics — Sufism being the mystical tradition in Islam. And Coleman Barks, who teaches poetry at the University of Georgia, has become a premiere Western interpreter of Rumi’s work. I quote here from Coleman Barks, trans., The Essential Rumi (Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 1997). Unfortunately, I’ve been... Read more
It’s time for another installment of notes from Paul McFate, 52 Good Reasons to Go to Church, Besides the Obvious Ones (Chicago: ACTA Publications, 2004): Improved Sex Life (33) — This one probably caught your attention. A 1977 study called The Redbook Report on Female Sexuality found that very religious women were more satisfied, sexually, than were moderately religious or non-religious women. A later study — Sex in America, carried out by researchers at the University of Chicago... Read more
Quite unexpectedly and entirely out of the blue — it being only the 409th consecutive Friday on which we’ve published an article — a new article has appeared today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. This one is by Kevin Christensen: “Table Rules: A Response to Americanist Approaches to the Book of Mormon” Review of Elizabeth Fenton and Jared Hickman, Americanist Approaches toThe Book of Mormon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). 456... Read more
Two lengthy contiguous passages excerpted for future reference from Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus — God and Man, 2d. ed., translated by Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A Priebe (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1977): To be sure, modern man apparently lives surprisingly well without being disturbed by the question about death. But it is very doubtful whether this picture is not deceptive. Ernst Bloch has expressed the suspicion “that death (we do not know for how long) can only... Read more
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