{"id":87011,"date":"2020-07-28T19:45:11","date_gmt":"2020-07-29T01:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=87011"},"modified":"2020-07-28T22:09:14","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T04:09:14","slug":"prophets-as-it-were-without-honor-in-their-own-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/07\/prophets-as-it-were-without-honor-in-their-own-country.html","title":{"rendered":"Prophets, as it were, without honor in their own country"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Joe<\/a>
A photograph recently taken in Richmond, Missouri, by my friend Joesph A. Cannon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many years ago, at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society in Denver, Colorado in November 2001, I participated in a debate focused, officially anyway,\u00a0on creation ex nihilo<\/i>, cosmology, and trinitarianism.\u00a0 Moderated by Richard J. Mouw (president of Fuller Theological Seminary at the time), the three-hour discussion involved not only me but Blake T. Ostler<\/a> (Salt Lake City), Hollis T. Johnson<\/a> (Indiana University), and David L. Paulsen<\/a> and Stephen D. Ricks<\/a> (both, like me, affiliated with Brigham Young University).\u00a0 The Evangelical Protestant panel featured Francis J. Beckwith (Trinity International University), Paul Copan (Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and Trinity International University), William Lane Craig (Talbot School of Theology, Biola University), Carl Mosser (University of St. Andrews), and Paul Owen (Montreat College).\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was, shall we say, a spirited and entertaining evening.\u00a0 At least for me.\u00a0 I thought that the Latter-day Saint side did reasonably well and made a positive impression.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Several of the affiliations have changed since then, of course.\u00a0 David Paulsen, for instance, is retired.\u00a0 Professor Johnson passed away slightly more than a year ago, in 2019.\u00a0 Francis Beckwith resigned as president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, and resigned his membership in it altogether, when he returned to the Catholic Church in 2007.\u00a0 Now at Baylor University, he was elected president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association in 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, for my purposes here, I want to mention just one small portion of the debate.\u00a0 At a certain point, William Lane Craig, who certainly ranks among the most prominent Evangelical Protestant philosophers in the English-speaking world and for whom I have considerable respect \u2014 he is also, by the way, a formidable and highly experienced debater \u2014 contrasted the evidence for Christianity with the evidence for \u201cMormonism.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m paraphrasing, but I think I\u2019m reasonably close to his actual words:\u00a0 \u201cChristianity,\u201d he said, \u201chas eleven credible witnesses to its fundamental claim, the resurrection of Jesus.\u00a0 Mormonism has absolutely nothing that\u2019s even remotely<\/em> comparable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I remember glancing at the moderator, Richard Mouw, himself a committed Calvinist but a kind and fair-minded man.\u00a0 He looked back at me and rolled his eyes.\u00a0 It was, really, as if Dr. Craig had fastened a debater\u2019s equivalent of a \u201cKick me!\u201d sign to his posterior.\u00a0 Because the Restoration does<\/em> have credible witnesses \u2014 and, whether coincidentally or by divine design, there are (if one has in mind the official witnesses to the Book of Mormon) even precisely eleven<\/em> of them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a>
Another photograph recently taken in Richmond, Missouri, by Joseph A. Cannon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A few years thereafter, in connection with a lecture in the Midwest, my wife and I drove around a bit in western Missouri.\u00a0 It\u2019s perhaps a weird interest of mine, but I was trying to track down the graves of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon in that part of the state near Independence.\u00a0 (Many of them are located there.). Driving through the countryside, though, we saw church after church festooned with signs and even banners inviting people to enroll for tours to the Holy Land.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, nobody is a stronger advocate of touring the Holy Land than I am.\u00a0 I\u2019ve lived in Israel\/Palestine for about a year, all totaled, and have visited it more times than I can count.\u00a0 I\u2019ve\u00a0 even led somewhere between fifteen and twenty such tours myself.\u00a0 But I really wanted to be able to tell the residents of that part of Missouri that, while they were thinking about traveling to Israel in order to visit sacred sites connected with scriptural history, the landscape right around them was dotted<\/em> with the graves of witnesses directly comparable to those described in the New Testament.\u00a0 Yet, I\u2019m betting, they were unaware of that fact.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from Steamboat Springs, Colorado<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Many years ago, at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society in Denver, Colorado in November 2001, I participated in a debate focused, officially anyway,\u00a0on creation ex nihilo, cosmology, and trinitarianism.\u00a0 Moderated by Richard J. Mouw (president of Fuller Theological Seminary at the time), the three-hour discussion involved not only me but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[259,1809,918,5691,2905,1815,9419,55,313,704,5688,921],"class_list":["post-87011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book-of-mormon-witnesses","tag-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","tag-david-whitmer","tag-eight-witnesses","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-lds","tag-missouri","tag-mormonism","tag-oliver-cowdery","tag-restoration","tag-three-witnesses","tag-witnesses"],"yoast_head":"\nProphets, as it were, without honor in their own country<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Many years ago, at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society in Denver, Colorado in November 2001, I 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