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Locked on 08/03/2007 6:34:01 AM PDT by Religion Moderator, reason:
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Posted on 07/26/2007 5:03:33 PM PDT by tantiboh
Democratic political consultant Mark Mellman has a very good piece up today at The Hill on the baffling and illegitimate opposition among voters to Mitt Romney due to his religion. I liked his closing paragraphs:
In July of 1958, 24 percent of respondents told Gallup they would not vote for a Catholic for president, almost identical to Gallup’s reading on Mormons today. Two years later, John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic to assume the oath of office. Within eight months, the number refusing to vote for a Catholic was cut almost in half.
[snip]
Mellman also discusses an interesting poll he helped construct, in which the pollsters asked half of their respondents whether they would support a candidate with certain characteristics, and asked the other half about another candidate with the exact same characteristics, with one difference. The first candidate was Baptist, the second candidate was Mormon. The Baptist had a huge advantage over the Mormon candidate, by about 20 points.
[snip]
However, more recent polls have attempted to fix the anonymity problem. A recent Time Magazine poll (read the original report here), for example, got to the heart of the question by asking respondents if they are less likely to vote for Mitt Romney specifically because he is a Mormon. The result is not as bad as some reporting on the poll has suggested. For example, while 30% of Republicans say they are less likely to vote for Romney because of his religion, fully 15% of other Republicans say that characteristic makes them more likely to vote for him. And while many have reported the finding that 23% of Republicans are “worried” by Romney’s Mormonism, the more important (but less-reported) number is that 73% say they hold no such reservations...
(Excerpt) Read more at romneyexperience.com ...
After listening to a few minutes of that, it isn’t difficult to see how easily it could suck Mormons in to lending to it credibility. Wow, your cult leads to so many roads, all heading toward the broad gate on the wide road.
AMPU stated:
“I have dear friends who are in mormonism. I truly like them.
I’d do anything for them as friends. That doesn’t mean
I have a good view of moromonism (it’s a cult) or would
vote for a mormon who ran for POTUS. Lower offices, maybe.
POTUS? No.”
Did you really think about what you stated? A Mormon running for POTUS is, in your view, DQ’d and if he or she is running for lower offices “MAYBE” he or she is not DQ’d?
Mormons can be a member of the club, but just can’t hold an office in the club, right?
Yeah, it’s only scholarly work of non-Mormon, Biblical scholars.
Face it when one examines the roots of early Christianity it is not the same as Orthodox Christianity. It is just lazily accepted as such.
And you have some unkind things to say. In your words, “So what?”
Half the idiots who took the poll thought it asked, “Would you vote for a moron?”
Thanks! Glad to see that religion is up for debate within reason.
You Apologists have this nasty little streak of ‘if you won’t let me make the rules and define your Christianity, I’ll tear it to shreds and spit on it, then march proudly back into my godly temple.’ Your comments prove what spirit leads you. Thank you for the exposure of yourselves.
You probably think Dan Brown is a Bible scholar.
~”You Apologists have this nasty little streak of ‘if you won’t let me make the rules and define your Christianity, I’ll tear it to shreds and spit on it, then march proudly back into my godly temple.’”~
Hmmm... How’s it feel?
A bit like the liberals in this country. Accuse your opponents with doing what you do. And why not? It’s gotten them a majority; it might work out well for you also.
Do you get nosebleeds way up there on your righteous perch?
Interesting post. At least we know who on Free Republic would likely DQ Lincoln from being POTUS today and would not vote for him because of his lack of Christian faith.
~”Do you get nosebleeds way up there on your righteous perch?”~
From time to time. But, then, I do live in Denver, and I suspect I’ve inherited my mother’s hypertension.
Seriously, MHG, we go in circles. We accuse each other of the same things.
But, you see, I’m perfectly happy to back down. I am on the defensive. I have NEVER EVER posted ANYTHING on these forums calculated to tear down your faith. There may be isolated examples, but I can’t think of any LDS FReeper who has, either. I think your religious beliefs are incorrect, and I make no bones about that; but if that’s how you want to believe, I’m not going to try and stop you. On the contrary, I’m most likely to encourage you on your spiritual path.
On the other hand, my cohorts and I have been on the receiving end of every attack against our faith that can be imagined, all in the stinking rotten sheepskin disguise of “concern for our souls.” Don’t get me wrong; my personal spiritual growth has been tremendous, so I’m not complaining. What I’m doing is pointing out the competing standards.
Mormons are on the defensive. And we plan to remain so. The aggressors in this idealogical war are our detractors. It’s our holy men who are being vilified; it’s our sacred beliefs that are being ridiculed; it’s our cherished practices that are being lampooned; and it’s our members who are being disqualified by some as worthy candidates for the highest levels of leadership, regardless of demonstrable qualification. Mormonism would barely be discussed on these forums if our detractors didn’t insist on bringing our “evils” to the light of day. And the discussions would be much less cantankerous if those “evils” being “exposed” weren’t so often such blatant misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
I’ve decided on this thread, though, to call a spade a spade. I can’t help it of you perceive that to be a “righteous perch.”
I would remind you that you’re the one who called the end to our “truce.” The ironic thing is that, while you accuse us of having “this nasty little streak of ‘if you won’t let me make the rules and define your Christianity, I’ll tear it to shreds and spit on it, then march proudly back into my godly temple,’” if you were to leave Mormonism alone, you would never hear from me on the topic of religion again.
So who’s really suffering from the nosebleeds?
So, could we say that the slaves wouldn’t have been freed if the ecclesiastically parochial had been in charge back then? That this would be two nations?
Such are the consequences of choosing leadership based on imposition of narrow definitions, rather than on the basis of greatest merit. The great men - with their warts - would never be elected to lead us.
Wow, discounting a Michael Ramsay nominee! I didn’t think you would reach such a level!
Margaret Barker’s book Temple Theology has recently been shortlisted for the Michael Ramsay Prize for theological writing.
On this page:
Overview and works pre-1987 · The Older Testament (1987) · The Lost Prophet (1998) · The Gate of Heaven (1991) · The Great Angel (1992) · On Earth as it is in Heaven (1995) · The Risen Lord (1996) · Commentary on Isaiah (1996) · The Revelation of Jesus Christ (2000) · The Great High Priest (2003) · Temple Theology (2004) · An Extraordinary Gathering of Angels (2004) · The Hidden Tradition of the Kingdom (2007) · Temple Themes in Christian Worship, to be published by T & T Clark, 2007
Although she did not publish any book until 1987, she had at that time been engaged for many years on the study of the Jerusalem temple and the apocalypses, accumulating the material which became the basis for subsequent books. The results of the research into temple mythology and symbolism proved to be more significant than she could have anticipated when the work began, and she finds herself redrawing the map of biblical studies and particularly of Christian origins. She is concerned at the gulf that has opened up between biblical scholarship and the churches.
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The Older Testament
Barker’s first book, published in 1987 was The Older Testament. The Survival of Themes from the Ancient Royal Cult in Sectarian Judaism and early Christianity (London: SPCK 1987, reprinted Sheffield: Phoenix Press 1985). This was a study of the Enochic tradition, written long before Enoch became fashionable, and the ideas were first published as ‘Some Reflections on the Enoch Myth’ in The Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 1980. She proposed that the Enochic mythology was that of the first temple, the pre-Deuteronomic and pre-Mosaic religion of Jerusalem. With a basic pattern established, she was able to detect several places in canonical texts where an older tradition had been suppressed and rewritten, and a comparison of ancient versions suggested that this tension between the older mythology and the newer Mosaic monotheism was a living issue well into the second temple period. It was crucial for understanding the roots of Christianity. She offered new readings of Isaiah, later developed as the Isaiah section in Eerdman’s Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids and Cambridge UK, 2003), and new readings of Deuteronomy and Job, making her initial proposals about temple symbolism and divine names. Her subsequent study of the early Enochic material and the Parables of Enoch has shown them to be a deposit of high priestly tradition, many of the motifs and allusions being drawn from the pre-Deuteronomic cult of the first temple. Of special importance here is Robert Murray’s theory of a ‘Cosmic Covenant’ (The Cosmic Covenant, London: Sheed and ward, 1992). which underlies and antedates the better known covenant patterns of the Old Testament. She built on one aspect of his work to reconstruct the priestly world view fundamental to her theory of the atonement and to any reconstruction of the biblical view of creation. Further comparative study is revealing more first temple elements; evidence of light mysticism, evidence of a female divinity, [who has already been the object of much interest on the part of other scholars, but with a very different approach and conclusion], evidence of a concept of resurrection and evidence of a possible antecedent to the second temple Day of Atonement ritual.
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The Lost Prophet, 1988
Barker’s second book, The Lost Prophet. The Book of Enoch and its Influence on Christianity, (London, SPCK 1988, reprinted Sheffield: Phoenix Press 2005) introduced the then virtually unknown book of Enoch to a wider public. Its teaching on the fallen angels and the origin of evil, the vision of God, the Son of Man and the original Cosmic Covenant, were shown to be key elements in the earliest Christianity.
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The Gate of Heaven, 1991
She then turned her attention to temple symbolism and published The Gate of Heaven. the History and Symbolism of the Temple in Jerusalem (London SPCK, 1991) testing the hypothesis that, as priestly lore tended to be conservative, Philo, the son of a first century CE priestly family, was more likely to have drawn his temple symbolism from the ancient tradition than from a recent fashion for Hellenisation. Using evidence from the deutero-canonical and pseudepigraphic texts, Qumran and rabbinic material, as well as early Christian texts and liturgies, she proposed: that apocalyptic writing was the temple tradition; that temple buildings were aligned to establish a solar calendar, thus explaining the astronomical texts incorporated in 1 Enoch; that the temple symbolism of priest and sanctuary antedated the Eden stories of Genesis; that the temple buildings depicted heaven and earth separated by a veil of created matter; that the throne visions, the basis of the later Merkavah mysticism, originated as high priestly sanctuary experiences, first attested in Isaiah but originating in the royal cult when king figures passed beyond the temple veil from earth into heaven, from immortality to the resurrected state, and then returned; that the Day of the Lord/the Day of Judgement was the myth of the Day of Atonement and that atonement was the rite of healing and recreation rather than propitiation; that a characteristic concept of time and eternity was crucial to understanding this material as the area beyond the temple veil was beyond time; that much temple symbolism survived in Gnostic texts, suggesting that the bitterness apparent in many of them derived from the upheavals and exclusions which followed the establishment of the second temple.
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The Great Angel, 1992
In The Great Angel. A Study of Israel’s Second God (London: SPCK, 1992) she tested the hypothesis that when the early Christians read the Old Testament as an account of the pre-incarnate Christ, they were reading in a traditional way and were not innovators. She proposed that pre-Christian Judaism was not monotheistic in the generally accepted sense of that word. From a comparison of ancient versions of the OT she proposed that Israel had known a High God and a second, national God, known as the Son of God Most High. Since crucial textual variants arose relatively late, as can be seen from the Qumran evidence, the second God remained a living issue during the second temple period. The hypothesis was tested in Philo, early rabbininc texts (building on the work of A Segal Two Powers in Heaven Leiden: Brill, 1978, but reaching very different conclusions), in Gnostic texts and, with unexpected success, in the Christian writings of the first three centuries. Finally she tested the hypothesis in the New Testament where the results convinced her that this was the key to understanding Christian origins. She concluded that when the Christians declared ‘Jesus is the Lord’ they were affirming that Jesus was the final manifestation of Yahweh, the national God of Israel in the Old Testament. Thus the origins of Trinitarian belief are pre-Christian, and the heir to temple tradition is Christianity. The sensitive nature of these results made further study imperative, but nothing she has discovered since has in any way altered these conclusions. The Lord of the Old Testament as the Lord of the New Testament was fundamental to all her subsequent work. This book caught the attention of Mormon scholars [Latter Day Saints] who now take a great interest in Margaret Barker’s work.
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On Earth as it is in Heaven, 1995
As the Second God was a high priestly figure in human form, she returned to temple symbolism research in order to reconstruct more of the role of the high priest, especially in the atonement rituals. She published these results in On Earth as it is in Heaven. Temple Symbolism in the New Testament (Edinburgh T&T Clark, 1995) in effect a supplement to The Gate of Heaven. She proposed that the high priest had been a divine figure, and not, as is usually held, a representative of the people. The controversy surrounding this claim to divinity was demonstrated from the variant traditions about the high priestly vestments. He was an angel, the manifestation of the Lord on earth, and thus the divine Son. Temple rituals ‘were’ the realities of heaven, and atonement was the high priest, as the Lord, absorbing the effects of evil into himself and destroying them by dying symbolically in the vicarious death of the goat. Thus he renewed the creation with his own blood/life. She considered this to be the greatest but unacknowledged problem of Christian origins, namely how the animal sacrifices of the temple related to the human sacrifice of someone declared to be the Son of God. Evidence in Origen confirmed that the earlier church had known the true significance of the goats on the Day of Atonement. It was at this point that she realised that the light mysticism of the temple was crucial for understanding resurrection.
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The Risen Lord, 1996
The fourth stage of her work was assembled in outline to deliver as the Scottish Journal of Theology lectures in 1995, and published as The Risen Lord; the Jesus of History as the Christ of Faith (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1996). She applied the results of earlier temple research to the figure of Jesus and concluded that even the canonical materials described Jesus as one who lived and died within the tradition of the high priesthood. She challenged much of the scepticism of recent scholarship - hence the book’s subtitle The Jesus of History as the Christ of Faith - arguing that the texts should be read on their own terms and in the context of first century Palestine. She proposed that Jesus saw himself as one of the high priestly initiates, one of the resurrected ones, and that this mystical experience is recorded in the Gospels as his baptismal vision. After this experience he believed himself to be the Lord, the Son of God Most High, the high priest who had come to perform the final act of atonement at the end of the tenth Jubilee. Thus the whole of the ministry was the post-resurrection period, a position confirmed by material in Gnostic texts, especially the Gospel of Philip, but also in early Christian writers such as Irenaeus. Re-reading the New Testament, early Christian and early Gnostic texts with this paradigm gave remarkable results; it explained much of Paul’s salvation imagery, which derived from the older covenant beliefs; it explained the Parousia hope, as the return of the high priest from the holy of holies; it explained the origin of the belief that Jesus’ death effected atonement; it explained the form of the early baptismal liturgies; it accounted for the high priestly imagery of the Letter to the Hebrews. Evidence emerged of an esoteric tradition in the early church in which the arcana of the temple were transmitted. Her initial work in this area was published in an article ‘The Secret Tradition’, in The Journal of Higher Criticism 2.1 (1995) pp.31-67.
Commentary on Isaiah, 1996
She then wrote a commentary on Isaiah in 1996, as a part of the Eerdman’s Commentary on the Bible project, but due to publisher’s delays, this did not appear until 2003. She argued that Isaiah was the crucial influence on Jesus in forming his understanding of his mission, and that the Isaiah tradition continued to be dominant in the early church. In origin, it had represented the world view of the first temple, an Enochic and non- Mosaic faith, and that this was known to the Christians who consciously looked back to the first, the true, temple.
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The Revelation of Jesus Christ, 2000
She then embarked upon her most ambitious project to date - an exposition of The Book of Revelation, showing that it stood in the tradition of the temple apocalypses as had been reconstructed it in her earlier works. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to Show to his Servants what must soon take place, (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000) showed that many of the visions recorded in Revelation were known to Jesus and inspired his ministry. He spoke of these things to the inner group of his disciples, and John was the disciple authorised to reveal the visions and the prophecies as they were fulfilled in the years between the death of Jesus and the fall of Jerusalem. The ‘little apocalypses’ in the synoptic gospels are summaries of this aspect of Jesus’ teaching, but only summaries because the whole corpus was available in Revelation. The Letters to the Seven Churches were sent from the Jerusalem church to Asia Minor, to warn the young churches there against St Paul. They are the oldest material in the NT apart from the visions of Jesus as recorded by John. The whole of Jesus’ ministry was understood both by him, and later by his disciples, as the ministry of Melchizedek described in the Qumran Melchizedek Text. The great high priest was expected to appear at the start of the tenth Jubilee and to complete the final atonement and renewal of the creation. In the life and death of Jesus, the hopes that had been ritualised in the Day of Atonement were being realised in history. The death of Jesus was the first part of the great atonement, and the expected Second Coming was his return from the holy of holies to complete the atonement and renew the creation. John’s vision of the mighty angel in Revelation 10 was his personal vision of the return, after which John taught that the Parousia would be delayed. The Christian prophecies in his keeping were compiled into the Book of Revelation, and as such form a record of the first generation in Jerusalem/Judea, but the prophecies about the second coming were not a part of the final scheme. These were relegated to the fragments at the end of the work.
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The Great High Priest, 2003
The next phase of her work appeared as The Great High Priest. The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy (London and New York: T&T Clark/Continuum, 2003). This was a collection of papers, some previously published in journals. The catalyst for this new phase in her work had been the Liturgy of the Orthodox church, which she attended for the first time in February 1999, and realised that the ancient church had preserved temple tradition and symbolism. The volume contains a papers on:
Secret Tradition, evidence that the church preserved the secret teachings and practices of the ancient high priesthood. Jubilee, and the significance of the Qumran Melchizedek text as the context for the ministry of Jesus in the tenth Jubilee.
Atonement, reconstructing the meaning of atonement in the temple context and thus proposing a new way of understanding a fundamental Christian teaching. Atonement was the Lord’s self offering to renew the creation. Liturgy, showing how most of the imagery associated with the Eucharist derived from the Day of Atonement and not from Passover.
Priests as angels, and the belief in theosis, humans becoming divine.
The holy of Holies in the temple representing invisible creation and the outer hall representing the visible creation. The holy of holies was the unity at the heart of creation, the angel state, and became the model for the idea of the Kingdom of God.
The temple veil as the boundary between the two worlds, woven to symbolise matter. The high priest’s vestments had a similar meaning and were came to symbolise incarnation.
The Lost Lady of the temple, the mother of the Messiah known as the Holy Wisdom, and how she had been literally removed from the temple by King Josiah and then obscured in the written sources.
The link between Pythagoras and temple thought, the patterns of first temple priestly tradition in Plato, especially Timaeus, and how this has led to temple tradition being identified as Platonism in some early Christian writing.
The problems of the development of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament early in the Christian era, and its implications for recovering the Hebrew Scriptures as the early Church knew them. The Jewish Scriptural tradition developed in reaction to Christianity and so the Church has the ‘wrong’ Old Testament.
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Temple Theology, 2004
Temple Theology, London: SPCK 2004, was developed from her 2003 Cardinal Hume Lectures in Heythrop College, London, and shows how the restoration of the original temple and its teaching is the key to understanding the role and teaching of Jesus. It is the best introduction to four key areas of temple theology: Creation, with the temple built to represent the creation, the significance of the holy of holies and the veil. Covenant, showing that the Eternal Covenant binding all creation together, was the covenant of the Last Supper and thus the basis of the Eucharist. Atonement explaining the original meaning of atonement, the blood/life of the Lord renewing the broken bonds of the covenant of creation. Wisdom, introducing the symbols of the almost lost Wisdom tradition of the temple: the Bread of the Presence, the Tree of Life and the anointing oil.
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An Extraordinary Gathering of Angels, 2004
An Extraordinary Gathering of Angels, London: MQP 2004, explores the world of angels, the beings of the holy of holies and how they relate to the visible creation. By means of 170 coloured illustrations, drawn from Christian, Jewish and Muslim art, together with an anthology of extracts from ancient and modern texts, she describes the role of angels in the Bible and in worship, in cosmology and cosmic harmony, as guides and guardians, and as the agents of inspiration and revelation.
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The Hidden Tradition of the Kingdom, 2007
The Hidden Tradition of the Kingdom, London: SPCK, 2007 describes the roots of the idea of the Kingdom of God. She locates the original Kingdom ideas in the holy of holies, the place of the throne, and shows how the ideals of the holy of holies were the inspiration for the various later beliefs about the Kingdom. She shows how fashions in scholarship have obscured much of the ancient evidence, and then reconstructs the traditions of the high priesthood - Enoch and Melchizedek as well as Aaron - before reading the gospel evidence with this new paradigm.
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Temple Themes in Christian Worship, to be published by T & T Clark, 2007
Temple Themes in Christian Worship, London: T&T Clark, forthcoming December 2007, explores the earliest links between Synagogue and Church, and questions the ‘synagogue’ roots of many Christian practices, finding them rather in the temple. She develops the implications of the ‘Second God’, originally set out in The Great Angel, and then locates the origin of Christian baptism in the high priestly initiation rituals and not in existing Jewish conversion rites. She relates the Maranatha prayer to the ancient tradition of temple theophanies, and expands on the significance of angels, harmony and music in the liturgy, suggesting the original context of the Sanctus. The Wisdom tradition is proposed as a formative influence in the Eucharist, to be developed in a future book on Marian imagery.
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“... if you were to leave Mormonism alone, you would never hear from me on the topic of religion again.” ... Yeah, we really believe that what with the thread posting history over the past six months at FR.
http://speeches-files.byu.edu/freefiles/provider2/type2/Barker_Margaret_2003.mp3
Oh my! Don’t listen! You may be insulted! Nevermind those non-Mormon scholars if their work supports an idea outside of the orthodoxy!
by Darryl L. Barksdale
When I was eight years old, I lived in a tiny house on a quiet side street in Downey, CA. My best friend was a rough-and-tumble tomboy from across the street named Maria. I can still remember sitting on the cinderblock fence that separated my backyard from the parking lot of our ward building and talking religion with her. Maria attended a Catholic school, and while I don't remember much about those discussions, one of the things that stands out quite painfully was that I always lost. Always. She was deadly.
Although the details of those exchanges have long since escaped me, one of the passages that I do remember her drilling into my forehead was that, "God is spirit." Now, to an eight-year-old whose entire religious repertoire at that time was a smattering of the Articles of Faith, this was devastating stuff. My understanding of scriptural exegesis at that point in my Primary experience was insufficient to the task. My religious training was not a total loss. I was fairly comfortable with "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam."
It would be nearly 25 years before I would again think about that experience. It happened one lonely night in Richmond, VA, when I had logged onto AOL, a new Internet service, for the first time. One of the posts I was reading stirred these memories of my friend Maria. The author was using the very same passage Maria had used years before to "prove" that God did not--could not--have a physical body. "God is spirit," he said, "therefore, the Bible says conclusively that Mormonism is flat wrong."
As I grew in my acquaintance with the scriptures, the writings of the early church fathers and other sources, I discovered a fascinating pattern. In debating with me, many detractors used the same isolated scriptures over and over again to condemn the Church. I also discovered that as I researched these arguments, I found abundant evidence from scripture, often from the same passage from which they quoted, that contradicted these arguments. I wondered how these people could consider these passages to be valid evidences to support their position.
Often, the rational used by my debating partners to explain why I did not understand their application of scripture to a doctrine was that I simply was not "indwelt with the Holy Spirit." Apparently, if I was "indwelt with the Holy Spirit," then the "right" interpretation was very clear, and I should accept it, regardless of what the rest of scripture had to say. It seemed that 'being indwelt by the spirit' was defined by if I understand their interpretation.
Where did this doctrine of "indwelt" arise? Until fairly recently, some denominations (such as the Southern Baptists) have embraced a doctrine called "Soul Competency" or "Sufficiency." This doctrine is closely tied to the doctrine of the Priesthood of all Believers, and teaches that each believer has the ability and the "right" to interpret the Bible correctly for himself:
Soul Competency means that Baptists are competent to interpret scripture according to the dictates of conscience and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.1
This doctrine is not to be confused with the doctrine of being guided by the Spirit, as taught by Latter-day Saints. This doctrine is used to rationalize the fact that the Baptist has core beliefs different from their Methodist brother, who believes differently than the Presbyterian brother, etc. Certainly, no Latter-day Saint that I am aware of would argue against our individual right and ability to read and interpret scripture under the influence of the Holy Ghost. However, there is an important distinction separating the doctrine of "Soul Competency" from being "guided by the Spirit." Latter-day Saints believe the Holy Ghost will lead us to truth. Being guided by the Holy Ghost means the Latter-day Saint has an objective moment defined by the physical manifestation of the Holy Ghost bearing witness or leading the saint to truth. In contrast to the 'soul competency' doctrine, Latter-day Saint doctrine means that our conscience has little to do with 'scriptural interpretation.' Truly being guided by the Holy Ghost should bring all men to the same conclusion. Radical, conflicting differences in core beliefs imply the Holy Ghost is not evident in at least one of the arguments.
A rationale to 'read into scripture the dictates of our own conscience' has been addressed by many scholars. The German biblical scholar Werner Stenger warned against this tendency very clearly by observing that:
Theologians belong to that group of poor readers who find in texts only what they already know. What echoes back to them from Scripture [are] the very words that they themselves have shouted into its forest. Any theologian seeking to avoid finding only himself or herself in scripture must...exercise "caution, patience, and delicacy" in "the art of reading well."2
With amazing consistency, opponents of the Church are guilty of not reading very well. Shouting extra-biblical ideas and theologies into the forest of scripture, they find and accept only those passages that seem to support the latest pet theories, theologies and dogmas, ignoring all the other clarifying and defining truths that are available, even within the same canon.
Peter H. Davids, a professor of biblical Studies and New Testament at the Canadian Theological Seminary, commented at length about this tendency towards a "functional canon" that exists in many belief systems today.
We do not believe that one has any real authority if he or she removes material from its context. To snatch a few paragraphs from this chapter and read them out of the context of the whole would be to distort their meaning.
To look at Paul in isolation from the teaching of Jesus is to distort Paul's message and thus not to draw from biblical authority at all.
But before we quickly condemn a particular school of thought, it is important to realize that for each community there is probably some such canon within a canon functioning. The difference is that some are conscious of it, and others are not.3
Professor Davids describes how this practice can manifest itself. See if any of this strikes a chord of familiarity:
One example of this is found in ways a particular tradition uses biblical sections. For example, if a tradition's canon centered on Paul, one might find that Gospel texts were rarely preached on, and when they were used in sermons they functioned mainly as illustrations of an underlying Pauline text. That would mean that the teaching of the Gospels themselves would rarely if ever be heard in that community. The Church might assert that the Gospels were fully authoritative, but the Gospels would not function as authorities in its preaching.
Another example might be the use a church makes of certain books or parts of books. The epistle of James is a case in point. Because it is difficult to reconcile it with Paul, it has tended to be sidelined and ignored in many churches. But within that book some passages are even more thoroughly ignored.
For example, James 5:14-18 argues that if a person in a church is ill the elders should come and pray and that this prayer of faith will heal the sick individual. Furthermore, Christians are to confess their sins to each other and pray for one another that they may be healed. A year or so after I completed a doctoral thesis on James it occurred to me that I had never in over twenty years in the church heard of an instance in which James 5:14 had been followed, although there was no lack of sick people in the churches I had known. In other words, while the text in James was in the Bibles that the hundreds of Christians and dozens of elders I had known had in their homes (and as often as not in their hands every Sunday), it had apparently not functioned as an authoritative text for them. It was not that anyone has chosen to disobey the text. It was simply that it had been ignored in teaching and preaching. When the Scripture was read, it simply was not seen. For all practical purposes it was not in the canon...
Each tradition has its own group of "Texts To Ignore." This is never stated explicitly for if it were the texts would not be ignored. Rather, the focus of the community or the tradition is such that some texts are never read, or if they are read they appear irrelevant and are passed over quickly. The texts have their own intrinsic authority, but in that community they have no extrinsic authority.
Hermeneutical discussion assists one in discovering how one is interpreting scripture and thus what one might be filtering out of scripture. Interaction with the full world of critical scholarship means that one is looking at Scripture from a variety of angles and traditions, many of which will be different from one's own. The result will be a tendency to see one's own blind spots and correct the shortcomings of one's theology.4
Don't we all wish our opponents would sit up and take notice of what this author is attempting to convey? For that matter, don't we wish our own members would do the same?
As I mentioned before, one of the passages I remember Maria drilling into my head to "prove" the Trinity was "God is spirit" (John 4:24). Since this passage clearly states that God is spirit, she said, it is impossible to even begin to believe that God has a body.
Maria's argument was an example of this kind of "poor reading," or "canon within a canon." In this case, the context and a careful examination of the other writings of this author clarify the meaning of the passage immediately. One has but to read the rest of the verse to get a clear understanding of what the author meant: "God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."5
It is not uncommon for people to quote only the first phrase of this passage and leave out the rest as an attempt to "prove" that God cannot possibly have a physical body. Why? Because it completely refutes the meaning they insist on "shouting into the orchard" here.
My fellow protagonists assert this passage to teach (1) God is only a spirit and (2) spirits are not beings of material substance. Therefore, because God is a spirit, God has no form or ontological being. Consider some of the statements of today's more prominent theologians. Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes state:
It is the uniform teaching of Scripture that God is spirit. And a spirit does not have flesh and bones. Hence, it is incorrect to think of God as a physical being.6
John 4:24 indicates that God is spirit. Luke 24:39 tells us that a spirit does not have flesh and bones. Conclusion: since God is spirit, he does not have flesh and bones.7
Just because God made male and female does not mean that he is male and female. "God is Spirit" (John 4:24), yet he made people with bodies.8
The Bible is clear that "God is a Spirit" (John 4:24). And "a spirit does not have flesh and bones" (Luke 24:39). So, God does not have a physical face.9
John Farkas and David Reed state; "...what we read in scripture teaches us that God is of an entirely different form altogether: while man is mere flesh and blood, 'God is a Spirit' (John 4:24) or 'God is Spirit' (NIV, RSV)"10 Finally, Dr. Robert Morey makes the statement that "God cannot have a body because He is infinite spirit."11
Not all theologians are universal in this logic. Even non-LDS biblical scholars reject the notion that John 4:24 refers to a definition of God's person or being. Rather, they note that they represent various attributes of God in much the same way that other passages state that "God is love," and "God is light." For example, scholar Raymond Brown rejects the common Evangelical interpretation of this passage, and commented that John 4:24 "is not an essential definition of God, but a description of God's dealings with men."12
Brown argues that John 4:24 indicates that far from being the quintessential definition of God's being, it merely describes the fact that God has a spiritual nature. Even Evangelical scholar Craig Blomberg reluctantly wrote, "John 4:24 declares 'God is Spirit,' which by itself does not prove that God might not have a 'spiritual body.'"13
While agreeing that this passage is not the definitive statement that some scholars think it is, they cannot agree on what it does represent. To Blomberg, this passage teaches (through making several major assumptions) of the "omnipresence" of God. To Brown, it focuses on the Christ-centered nature of true worship (although, to make his interpretation "fit," Brown does have to change the phrase "spirit and truth" to "Spirit of Truth").
Many of the arguments used to interpret John 4:24 are straw-man arguments. These arguments seek to explain the passage in terms of what God is not; that is, God not having anthropomorphic characteristics. This logical fallacy of interpreting scripture according to a pre-defined concept of God's physical characteristics ("God is spirit"), instead of explaining the doctrine according to context is an example of poor reading.
Another problem with this interpretation involves the addition of the word only to the biblical text. This passage does not say that God is "only" spirit or that He is even "infinite spirit." To arrive at these interpretations, one has to "add to" God's Word concepts and words that do not appear either in the English or the Greek. It would seem that if one is "indwelt with the spirit," the dictates of conscience allows adding to God's Word.
Furthermore, the passage itself gives us great insight into the very truths to which our opponents have been blinded, and which fortify the argument against them, namely that man has both a physical and spiritual nature. The balance of John 4:24 states that "they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." This passage clearly reveals that man has both a physical and a spiritual nature, which coexists simultaneously; neither one is exclusive of the other. We are not only spirit, nor are we only body; we are both. Since Genesis 1:26, 27 clearly teaches us that we were created in the image and likeness of God, does it not stand to reason that God also could be a combination of spirit and body? After all, this is exactly what Christ taught us in his appearance to the apostles in the upper room.
Finally, if one goes about wantonly adding words to scripture to meet the dictates of our conscience, to fit it to one's personal theology, must one not also extend that practice to any other passages written by the same author that follow the same stylistic or literary pattern or structure? This would change "God is love" from a description of an attribute of God's dealings with men to an absolute definition of God's very being, which is not warranted and which is completely inappropriate. It is possible to carry the concepts used to teach the "God is Spirit" doctrine down a slippery slope, yet it does raise the question of where draw the line.
One of the more important hermeneutical rules for determining the author's intent of a passage is to examine not only the same author's usage of the same words in different places, but also of the same author's style and literary structure in different places.
Ironically, it is through allowing "scripture to interpret scripture" that we can expose the fallacies of these arguments. By examining other writings of John, particularly his epistles, we discover a distinct pattern in his writings regarding God's dealings with man, our responsibility towards Him, and the rewards that follow our obedience. For example, John clearly utilizes the following construct in several instances:
In other words, it follows a "God is x; whoever does x will receive y" format.
It is clearly evident from John's writings that it was not his intention for "x" to be taken literally in any of these instances as a defining declaration of God's actual being.
In I John 4:16, John states that "God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God." This verse demonstrates this structure perfectly, and shows a strikingly similar pattern with John 4:24.
John also repeats this pattern beginning in I John 1:5:
God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.14
Again, this passage follows this pattern precisely, although it is a bit more complex:
Clearly, a literal definition of God's being is not what John intended in any of these passages. Proper hermeneutics dictates that we "always interpret according to the known purpose of the author."15
As cited in some of the passages gleaned from anti-Mormon works, Luke 24:39 is often used to support their literal interpretation of John 4:24. The passage reads:
Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.16
This passage raises an entirely new set of problems for those who would interpret John 4:24 literally. Believers of the "God is Spirit" doctrine also usually hold to the doctrine that Jesus is the same ontological being (albeit with a different personality) as God the Father. If God is only a Spirit, then Jesus Christ is obviously not God, since he is not only a spirit. He has a resurrected, glorified body of flesh and bone as well as a spirit. He ate a piece of broiled fish and a honeycomb to prove it, as well as inviting His disciples to come forward and feel His hands and side. If God is truly only a spirit, then Jesus Christ could not be Him. "For a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have."
Another interesting problem is explaining why Christ, who they believe to be "fully God," could have a spirit and a glorified, resurrected body, and clearly be "fully God," while they deny the same possibility of the Father.
And finally, the most profound passage in relation to this issue is found in the epistle to the Hebrews, where Christ's glorified, resurrected body is called the "express image" of the Father's person: "Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person."17
How could Christ be the "express image of the Father's person" with a spirit and a glorified, resurrected body if the Father is only a spirit? If God, as Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes insist, does not have a face, how could Christ, who arguably did have one, be the "express image of [the Father's] person?"
Geisler and Rhodes even refute themselves within two paragraphs, when they assert that Christ is "fully God" and thus "as much God as is the Father," while at the same time admitting "The Father--who in his divine nature is spirit (as is Jesus in His divine nature)--never became incarnate (as Jesus became incarnate), and hence does not have a human body as does Jesus."18
Taking scripture out of context is one of the most common foibles in scriptural interpretation. John 4:24 stands as a prime example of misinterpreted passages in Holy Writ. The rules of proper hermeneutics demand that we do the following to properly arrive at the most likely intended meaning of the author. In order to "read well," we must remember:
We, as apologists, must face the reality that our own flock has the very same tendency sometimes. As apologists, our task is three-fold. First, "wasting and wearing out our lives in bringing to light the hidden things of darkness wherein we know them."20 Secondly, correctly exegeting the texts that our brothers in alternative faiths insist on misusing. Finally, we must also educate our own members, open their eyes, and assist them in discovering the depth, richness, and beauty of scripture, and how to "read well" the truths found therein.
1 Bill J. Leonard, "Priesthood of All Believers," Southern Baptist Historical Society, www.baptisthistory.org/hottopics.htm
2 Werner Stenger, Introduction to New Testament Exegesis, translated by Douglas Scott (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing, 1994), 2.
3 Peter H. Davids, "Authority, Hermeneutics, and Criticism," New Testament Criticism and Interpretation, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing, 1991), 32.
4 Ibid, 32-33.
5 John 4:24.
6 Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes, When Cultists Ask: A Popular Handbook on Cultic Misinterpretations (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1997), 283-294.
7 Ibid., 22.
8 Ibid., 23.
9 Ibid., 30.
10 John Farkas and David Reed, Mormons: Answered Verse By Verse (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Publishing, 1992), 38.
11 Robert A. Morey, Battle of the Gods: The Emerging God of the New Age (Southbridge, Massachusetts: Crown Publications, 1989), 189.
12 Raymond Edward Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1990), 172 fn.
13 Craig L. Blomberg and Stephen E. Robinson, How Wide the Divide (Downer's Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 97.
14 I John 1:5-7.
15 Dr. D.R. Dugan, Hermeneutics: A Text-Book, 3rd ed., (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing Company, 1900) chapters VII and VIII, as quoted in Richard R. Hopkins, Biblical Mormonism: Responding to Evangelical Criticism of LDS Theology (Bountiful, Utah: Horizon Publishers, 1994), 37.
16 Luke 24:39, emphasis added.
17 Hebrews 1:1-3.
18 Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes, When Cultists Ask: A Popular Handbook on Cultic Misinterpretations (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1997), 284. How Did The "Spirit Only" Concept Evolve? Richard Hopkins theorizes that the vilification of anything material or physical was straight out of Greek Hellenistic neo-platonic thought. One of the earliest evidence we have of this misinterpretation of scripture is from both Philo of Alexandria and Tatian. In true Hellenistic form, Tatian writes "God is a spirit, not pervading matter, but the Maker of material spirits, and of the forms that are in matter; He is invisible, impalpable, being Himself the Father of both sensible and invisible things…" [Tatian, Address to the Greeks, as quoted in Richard R. Hopkins, Biblical Mormonism: Responding to Evangelical Criticism of LDS Theology (Bountiful, Utah: Horizon Publishers, 1994), 131.]
As Hopkins points out, Tatian, of course, fell into apostasy as a natural result of this and other heretical theologies he espoused. For example, Tatian was largely responsible for promoting the Gnostic Basilides' doctrine of creation ex nihilo (creation out of nothing). Tatian, born a pagan who converted to Christianity in AD 150, later left the Church to form a Gnostic group. [Barry R. Bickmore, Restoring the Ancient Church: Joseph Smith and Early Christianity (Ben Lomond, California: Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, 1999), 100-101.]
19 Dugan, as quoted in Hopkins' Biblical Mormonism, 37.
20 D&C 123:13.
Supposition as to what would have been the outcome. I shudder to think of the result that if Lincoln had not been elected, the other candidates (Breckenridge and Douglas) may have relented to the demands of seccession and we indeed would have two separatge nations. Or, more likely, slavery would have continued as an acceptable institution before ultimately being rejected. How many additional years that would have taken is anyone’s guess.
Indeed, it is sobering to consider the outcome if the ecclestiastical parochialism manifested by some on Free Republic carried the day when Lincoln was running for President.
What really interests me is to what extent his faith, or lack thereof, was an issue during his candidacy for the Presidency. Today, the ecclestiastical parochialists utilize a litmus test that would DQ Lincoln. If Lincoln indeed did not believe in Christ as the posting by nowandlater states, he would be, according to the ecclesiastical parochialists, a heretic, and therefore, unqualified for office. Sobering thought.
He may or may not have believed. The key is he refused to publicly declare his faith AND he stated he COULD NOT align himself with any Christian Church or Faith.
It would have be quite astonishing today. I guess there was more tolerance back then.
*been
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