Theology
Did Peter Get Demoted? Was James the Real Leader of Early Christianity?
I just finished the book Saint Peter: A Biography by Michael Grant. I think it is misnamed. I don’t feel like I know Peter any better, but it is a good book for learning about early Christianity. The author describes how tough it is to really understand Peter both at the beginning, as well as […]
Did Paul Found Christianity?
Bishop Rick has mentioned a few times that he believes the apostle Paul invented Christianity, so I thought I’d create a post to address this specific issue. In my previous post on the Strangite Church, he said in a few comments, I believe Paul invented Christianity, not Jesus. There are only a couple of last minute, […]
Why Can’t God Speak English?
I received a surprising resurgence of activity from one of my oldest posts, Book of Mormon Geography. In the latest discussion, Bishop Rick asked, “Why would HF send a revelation that would not be understood?” Then he clarified it further stating, “Why would HF send a revelation to HIS “Prophet” (as opposed to any “prophet”) […]
Can Non-LDS Obtain Salvation? Of Course!
I’ve been having a heated discussion over at Christian Forums. Someone there linked to my article on Theosis. I was a bit nervous, as these types of forums can be not only heated, but strongly biased against our church. I decided to jump into the fray, and while there are some people there with some […]
Biblical Justification for Exaltation
I received a pingback from my previous post on Theosis from someone at Christian Forums. I have another post on President Lorenzo Snow’s famous couplet, “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be.” I’ve had a few exchanges with people over there. Since I spent so much time, I […]
A Mormon View of ‘The Lost Symbol’-Dan Brown
For my birthday, my wife gave me Dan Brown’s newest novel, The Lost Symbol. I don’t typically read novels–I prefer sports, history, religion, or biographies–but I read The DaVinci Code and loved it. Angels & Demons was pretty good. I had heard rumors that Dan Brown’s book was going to deal with Masonry and Mormonism, […]
Most Improbable Meeting
I came across this recent article at Christianity Today describing meetings between evangelicals and Mormons. Here are some interesting excerpts from the article: LDS president Thomas S. Monson and his two counselors permitted Standing Together, an alliance of 90 Utah evangelical churches, to use the historic Salt Lake City Tabernacle for a September 13 revival […]
Balaam: Prophet, Wicked One, Both, Neither?
I finally got around to one of my requests! Tara and I have been discussing several topics, such as the Priesthood Ban, Polygamy, and Abraham, and the story of Balaam always seems to come up. She takes the position that Balaam is a fallen prophet, but I think he never was a prophet. Here’s my […]
Did Moses Copy Hammurabi’s 10 Commandments?
A friend of mine let me know about this news item at Signature Books. Apparently, one of their authors (David Wright) has a new book published by Oxford University Press. For those of you who don’t know, Oxford is known as a pretty tough place to publish. They have pretty high scholarly standards, so getting […]
Pres Veazey on Scripture Literalism
Thanks to FireTag for letting me know about a recent statement by the current prophet of the Community of Christ. He talks about scriptural literalism. The videos can be found on the CoC website, and this quote comes from Chapter 4. Let me quote from Pres. Veazey directly:
Mormon Heretic 