At the invitation of an acquaintance who is on the faculty at the medical school of the University of Utah, my wife and I joined him and two Egyptian-American Muslim guests for an interfaith gathering at the Salt Lake Tabernacle last evening. The fireside was connected with the model of the Old Testament tabernacle that has been touring Utah in recent weeks and months, and, although it was conducted under the auspices of the Church of Jesus Christ... Read more
My wife and I took Lou Midgley out to lunch today. He is one of our very favorite people, and it was a vintage visit with the irrepressible Lou: I don’t think that he had been thirty seconds in our car before he was well into a discussion on David Hume, Hume’s famous skepticism, and Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Great stuff. Over a seafood lunch, we also discussed the Second World War, the atrocities committed by the... Read more
Note: This blog entry is a continuation of the discussions at “On Being ‘Perfect’ (Part One)” and “On Being ‘Perfect’ (Part Two)” and should be read in the context provided by those brief entries. “Be ye therefore perfect,” says the King James Version’s translation of Matthew 5:48, “even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Let’s first look at the original Greek words that are twice translated as “perfect.” The first, as one might expect,... Read more
At the conclusion of last night’s Interpreter Radio Show, in which I joined with Martin Tanner and Terry Hutchinson, Terry kindly gave me a copy of a new book that he and his father in law have just self-published: Grant R. Gifford and Terry L. Hutchinson, The Temple: Pathway to Heaven (Alpine, UT: Pine Ridge Publishing, 2022). It looks very interesting, and I eagerly anticipate getting into it. The book is available in paperback form, I notice, at... Read more
The estimable Jeff Lindsay has penned an enthusiastic book recommendation: “Relational Faith: An Essential Book for Understanding “Faith” as Used in New Testament Times and for Appreciating the Restoration” Here’s an excerpt from what he has to say: There’s a new book, Brent Schmidt’s Relational Faith, that may be one of the best resources around to help Latter-day Saints and perhaps many other Christians understand and explain what the Bible means when it talks about faith in Christ. Not... Read more
I’ve begun to read Sean McDowell and Jonathan Morrow, Is God Just a Human Invention? And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2010). On pages 11-12, they quote an observation from Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism: Three generations ago, most people inherited rather than chose their religious faith. The great majority of people belonged to one of the historic mainline Protestant churches or the Roman Catholic... Read more
Here are links to three items that have recently been posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Conference Talks: “The Day of Atonement, the Mosaic Temple, and the Christian Sacrament of Communion: Links and Symbols” This presentation was given by Shon D. Hopkin at the Interpreter Foundation’s 2014 Temple on Mount Zion Conference, on Saturday, 25 October 2014. The New Testament in Context Lesson 19: “Rejoice with Me; for I Have Found My Sheep Which... Read more
It hasn’t been an especially pleasant week or two for Mike Parker, a friend of mine and a really good guy who, under the pseudonym of Peter Pan, has run a sadly necessary blog called Neville-Neville Land for the past several years. Mike has been taking quite undeserved hostile fire from a curiously symbiotic alliance of aggressive critics of the Restoration (most if not all of them atheists) and one or possibly two vocal believers in the “Heartland”... Read more
Several years ago, I posted a quotation from George G. Ritchie, M.D., regarding the near-death experience that he purported to have had in 1943, when he was twenty years old and serving in the military: “What did you do with your life? It seemed to be a question about values, not facts: What did you accomplish with the precious time you were allotted? How much have you loved with your life? Have you loved others as I am... Read more
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The Book of Mormon and a Gospel View of War
Two new articles have appeared on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: ““In the Cause … of their God”: Clarifying Some Issues Regarding the Book of Mormon and a Gospel View of War,” written by Duane Boyce Abstract: A recent effort to think about war concludes that the Book of Mormon displays two righteous approaches to conflict: a violent approach that is justified and therefore “blessed;” and a nonviolent approach that is higher than this and therefore “more blessed”... Read more