Category: Scriptures

Reflections on Meetings in the Church of Christ

by Chad Nielsen • May 19, 2020 • 34 Comments

One of my favorite quotes of all time about Mormonism focuses on the concept of Zion. “Zion-building is not preparation for heaven. It is heaven, in embryo. The process of sanctifying disciples of Christ, constituting them into a community of love and harmony, does not qualify individuals for heaven; sanctification and celestial relationality are the essence of heaven. Zion, in this conception, is both an ideal and a transitional stage into the salvation toward which all Christians strive.”[1] Fiona and Terryl Givens have captured here what I find to be one of the most essential parts of my religion—the development of a community based on love and discipleship to Christ. That, to me, is one of the core reasons for the Church—to provide a place where we can begin to learn and practice the things that are necessary for us to live in a heavenly community, even though the lived experience often falls short of that goal. Now, there was something profoundly ironic about studying the founding of the Nephite Christian church during a time that we are unable to attend worship services in the modern Church in last week’s “Come, Follow Me” curriculum. I was grateful for the chance to do so, however, since there will come a time, sooner or later, that the current situation stabilizes enough to return to regular Church meetings and each of us will need to make the decision about returning to those meetings. …

Monotheism and Mormonism

by Chad Nielsen • May 6, 2020 • 82 Comments

One of the most central and difficult issues of Christian theology is how to fit together a commitment to monotheism with a belief that Jesus is a divine being. While we, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have resolved some aspects of this in our own ways, we still have areas that are unclear when it comes to working out this theological knot. While I’m aware that we are looking at scriptures and doctrines that represent ideas that have evolved over time, my hope today is to muse on what we currently believe as a community based on the scriptures and the teachings of Church leaders and try to work towards a better understanding of the issue (as much for myself as for any readers). We have several competing commitments in our doctrine that complicate the issue of the Godhead and Jesus’s status in our theology, including a commitment to monotheism. We are part of the Judeo-Christian religious family and Israelite theology committed itself to belief that there only existed one God—their God—known at various times as Yahweh/Jehovah/the Lord, Elohim, El Shaddai, and a few other names as well. Think, for example, of the proclamation: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”[1] This commitment to believing that there was one God passed on to Christianity, as indicated when Paul wrote that: “Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in…

Seer Stones and Grammar

by Chad Nielsen • April 28, 2020 • 18 Comments

Book of Mormon translation is one of those interesting subjects that is central to the ongoing Book of Mormon wars. As well, to me, one interesting aspect about the Book of Mormon is how self-aware of its own creation it is. For example, in Mosiah 8 (part of this week’s “Come, Follow Me” discussion), there is a discussion about seership and the use of “interpreters” that allow the owner to “look, and translate all records that are of an ancient date” (Mosiah 8:13). In the case discussed in the scriptures, the seer is King Mosiah II and the record is the Jaradite plates that Zeniff’s colony discovered. While it doesn’t explicitly link this to the future translation of the Book of Mormon, it is interesting to be given a glimpse into the same method that Joseph Smith said he used to produce the Book of Mormon being used within the Book of Mormon. Ultimately, we don’t know much about the process by which the Book of Mormon was brought to us or the role of seer stones (interpreters) in that process. There is a mountain of conflicting evidence to sift through in trying to pin down a viable theory of translation. As Grant Hardy wrote: “There is still no consensus among LDS scholars as to how the translation process worked. Some think that Joseph received spiritual impressions through the seer stone that he then put into his own words, while…

Review: Buried Treasures: Reading the Book of Mormon Again for the First Time

by Chad Nielsen • April 24, 2020 • Comments Off

Michael Austin’s book, Buried Treasures: Reading the Book of Mormon Again for the First Time is a quick, insightful and though-provoking read about the Book of Mormon. The book began its life as a series of blog posts at By Common Consent, documenting some of Austin’s thoughts as he read the Book of Mormon in-depth for the first time in decades (after spending a significant amount of time during those decades focused on literary criticism and Biblical studies). The book, published by the By Common Consent Press earlier this year, takes the form of a collection of short essays that, as put by the author, are “not scholarly articles, or even well-thought-out personal essays; rather, they are the record of a deeply personal experiment upon the word.”[1] A bit of background on the author: Michael Austin is a former English professor who currently serves as an academic administrator in Evansville, Indiana. He has published several books and articles, with the subjects of political discourse in the United States of America and literary criticism of the Bible and Mormon Literature being some of the notable topics. A few of his published books include Re-reading Job: Understanding the Ancient World’s Greatest Poem (Greg Kofford Books, Inc., 2014), That’s Not What They Meant!: Reclaiming the Founding Fathers from America’s Right Wing (Prometheus, 2012), and Reading the World: Ideas that Matter (W. W. Norton & Company). He also has written for the By Common…

Race and Lineage among early Latter-day Saints

by Chad Nielsen • April 21, 2020 • 27 Comments

Race is an incredibly sensitive topic, but it is also an incredibly important topic to discuss and understand. A number of important books have been published about the racial narratives that were adopted by early members of the Church in recent years, including Max Perry Mueller’s Race and the Making of the Mormon People (The University of North Carolina Press, 2017). Kurt Manwaring recently sat down with Max Mueller to discuss the book in a 10 questions interview. What follows here is a summary of the interview, but I encourage you to go read the full interview here. Max Perry Mueller is an assistant professor of religious studies at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a fellow at the Center for Great Plains Studies. He describes himself as “a theorist and historian of race and religion in American history, with particular interest in indigenous and African-American religious experiences, epistemologies, and cosmologies.” He turned his interest to the Latter-day Saint experience because of the “insider/outsider paradox” that is a part of our culture and the fact that while “Latter-day Saints have been stand-ins for ‘American,’ … in their exceptional-ness, they remain set apart.” As he went on to say: Race, of course, factures heavily into these historical and cultural understandings of Latter-day Saints. Non-Mormon Americans have projected their own anxieties about race, religion, and gender onto Latter-day Saints since the Church’s founding. And at the same time, Latter-day Saints have responded by projecting…

Revisiting Sherem

by Chad Nielsen • April 14, 2020 • 12 Comments

Many of my choices in books this year have been influenced by a decision to try and catch up on literature about the Book of Mormon. I feel a bit overwhelmed, to be honest, since there’s a lot out there and I have been more focused on the New Testament in recent years. I recently finished reading Christ and the Antichrist: Reading Jacob 7, a collection of essays on Jacob 7 that resulted from a two-week gathering of the Mormon Theology Seminar. There are both a published book version and a free PDF version offered through the Maxwell Institute. It’s a good read, and I felt like there some interesting takeaways that have changed how I see Sherem (the titular antichrist). Sherem is an interesting character. We don’t know where he comes from, but Jacob portrays him as a no-good, trouble-causing vagabond that shows up on the scene and disrupts Jacob’s congregation and people. Jacob even goes as far as telling Sherem to his face that: “thou art of the devil,” and still refers to him as a “wicked man” after his repentance and death.[1] Jacob also structures his telling of the story to present Sherem as a sort of anti-prophet, inverting a trope from the Hebrew Bible where “there came a man of God” who delivers a message to someone in authority, often followed by showing a sign that God’s power is behind him.[2] Instead, Sherem’s coming is noted…

Laban… as a Christ Figure?

by Michael Haycock • April 11, 2020 • 17 Comments

This Holy Week I’ve been monitoring my employer’s livestreamed Roman Catholic masses and services, meaning that I (for the first time) attended a Holy Thursday mass and a Good Friday service. So it happened that, during the reading of the Gospel of John in the Good Friday service, I noticed something peculiar. In response to Jesus’s raising of Lazarus from the dead, the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” (John 11:47-50, NRSV) In the KJV, for reference, that last line is rendered thus: “It is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.” I was roughly familiar with Caiaphas’s role in the Passion narrative, but I had never clued into this particular pseudo-utilitarian line of reasoning — reasoning that was, in John’s telling, effective enough to convince the Council to pursue Jesus’s execution. This time, my mind immediately jumped to the…

Resurrection and the Timing of Healing

by Chad Nielsen • April 11, 2020 • 11 Comments

Bear with me as I go out into the theological weeds to explore an obscure doctrinal debate about the resurrection. As my wife and I studied the “Come, Follow Me” curriculum section on Easter, we discussed Amulek statements about the resurrection in Alma 11. Our question was: What exactly does it mean to “restored to its perfect frame, as it is now, or in the body” (Alma 11:44)? Does it mean that the body is perfectly brought back to the condition it was when it died (“as we now are at this time”) and may undergo further healing and development or that it is brought back in a perfected, ideal state (“its perfect frame”)? Decades ago, the same question was asked by a priesthood quorum. According to a Church periodical: It was the opinion of some members of the class that when the body comes forth it will be just as it was when it was laid down. That is to say, if an arm or a leg were missing or the person otherwise maimed, the body would come forth as it was laid down and the restoration of any missing part would be added later. Others thought that it would come forth in physical and mental perfection. When they turned to the then-apostle Joseph Fielding Smith for clarification, he wrote that: “There would be no purpose whatsoever in having the body of any individual come forth from the dead…

The Way and the Ancient Gospel

by Chad Nielsen • March 29, 2020 • 5 Comments

Along with “baby Yoda” memes, Disney’s Mandalorian made two phrases trendy: “This is the way,” and “I have spoken.” Being a Star Wars fan, the phrases quickly made their way into the lexicon of my household. So, it was humorous to me to find an entire lesson in “Come, Follow Me” this year entitled “This is the Way,” even though it makes sense in context. Towards the end of his record, Nephi lays out the Doctrine of Christ in detail and concludes that: “This is the way; and there is none other way nor name given under heaven whereby man can be saved in the kingdom of God” (2 Nephi 31:21), which was the focus of the lesson. All Star Wars humor aside, I find it interesting that Nephi concludes his discussion of the Doctrine of Christ with the statement “this is the way.” The reason why I find that interesting is that early disciples of the Lord in the eastern hemisphere didn’t think of their religion as “Christianity” or call themselves “Christians” at first. If we believe the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament, “it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians,’” and the term may have initially been a term of reproach (something like calling a Latter-day Saint a “Mormon” or “Mormonite”).[1] Before then, their religion seems to have simply been called “the Way,” which is how it is referred to throughout Acts.[2] …

Notes on the Book of Abraham

by Jonathan Green • March 26, 2020 • 60 Comments

I’m only a translator in the sense that people keep paying me to translate things for them.

The Olive Tree Restoration

by Chad Nielsen • March 23, 2020 • 12 Comments

There have been some common underlying themes to several Times and Seasons posts these past few months. The three themes or questions that I have in mind at the moment are: “What is the nature of the Great Apostasy?”, “What is the nature of the Restoration?”, and “What is the relationship of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with the broader tradition of Abrahamic faiths?” I’ve posted about the Church’s Interfaith efforts, about B.H. Robert’s understanding of the Church of the Devil and the Church of the Lamb of God, and an attempt on my part to understand the First Vision based on what is presented in the textual accounts of the event. Steven Smith discussed the comparisons of the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed and to yeast in the post The humbling of the kingdom?, asked what it means to be the True Church in the form of a conversation, discussed an alternative approach to understanding restoring the church, and also brought up the ideas of the Christian story and the Mormon story as ways to approach our own self-understanding. While the continuing focus on these topics hasn’t been premeditated or coordinated between us, they are apparently weighing on our minds. And they apparently continue to do so, since I have a few thoughts to share on the subject based on my study of Zenos’s allegory of the olive tree in Jacob 5 this week.…

Embracing Jacob’s Sermon

by Chad Nielsen • March 17, 2020 • 25 Comments

One of the more awkward moments of my time in graduate school came when I was reading a book about Mormon polygamy while taking a break in the lab. A visiting scientist from Pakistan who was doing research in the same lab saw me reading the book and asked me: “That looks like an interesting book. Are you preparing to take a second wife?”, then joked about taking a second wife himself. A bit flustered, I explained that my wife and I weren’t interested in expanding our family that way, that my church had stopped practicing plural marriage over a century ago, and that I was reading the book to better understand my ancestor’s decisions. It was an interesting conversation, needless to say. The previous week’s reading in the “Come, Follow Me” curriculum includes Jacob 2, the epicenter for discussing polygamy in the Book of Mormon. Recently, a good friend who has chosen to leave the Church asked me: “Do you think the church will eventually disavow the polygamous teachings in the Book of Mormon?” I was somewhat surprised at the question, since the section in the Book of Mormon in question already disavows polygamy, calling the practice “an abomination” that causes “sorrow … [and] mourning” for the women involved. It also forcefully states that the word of the Lord is that “there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have…

Sacrament Prayers and the Doctrine of Christ

by Chad Nielsen • March 9, 2020 • 5 Comments

I am always interested in seeing how ideas grow, develop, and take shape of the years. I suppose that is part of why I find the study of theology so interesting. As I was studying the “Come, Follow Me” curriculum this last week, it struck me how the sacrament prayers seem to have developed and formulated alongside the Doctrine of Christ in the Book of Mormon. Early in the Book of Mormon, the prophetic triumvirate of Lehi, Nephi, and Jacob propose a controversial change to the traditional Hebrew religion, a change based on their revelations and their understanding of Isaiah that they called the Doctrine of Christ. Towards the end of his record, Nephi summarizes this doctrine as follows: Wherefore, my beloved brethren, can we follow Jesus save we shall be willing to keep the commandments of the Father? … Wherefore, my beloved brethren, I know that if ye shall follow the Son, with full purpose of heart, acting no hypocrisy and no deception before God, but with real intent, repenting of your sins, witnessing unto the Father that ye are willing to take upon you the name of Christ, by baptism—yea, by following your Lord and your Savior down into the water, according to his word, behold, then shall ye receive the Holy Ghost; yea, then cometh the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost; and then can ye speak with the tongue of angels, and shout praises unto the Holy One of Israel.[1] There is the nucleus of the future sacrament…

The Crux of Historicity

by Jonathan Green • February 24, 2020 • 43 Comments

For all their differences, the essential and irreducible historical dilemma of the Old Testament, New Testament, and Book of Mormon is very much the same.

What Has Isaiah To Do With Nephi?

by Chad Nielsen • February 22, 2020 • 2 Comments

In the neighborhood where I grew up, there was a yard that had landscaping that baffled me. It was a grassy plain with a few small trees, and then about a half-dozen boulders scattered among the grass. The boulders were what baffled me—they didn’t seem to fit in with the landscaping around them and they certainly made mowing the lawn more complicated than it otherwise would have been. I’m sure they made sense to the person who put them there, but as far as I could see, it seemed like the homeowners had survived a meteor shower and then decided to live around the scattered meteorites rather than remove them from their yard. Up until recently, I felt much the same way about the Isaiah chapters in 1 Nephi and 2 Nephi. They seemed like meteorites dropped into the middle of the text, or perhaps strange filler episodes that didn’t help move the plot forward. When I came across them, I generally acknowledged that they were Isaiah, skimmed over them and moved on without trying to understand how they fit into the rest of what Nephi was saying. Watching me read Isaiah in the Book of Mormon would have resembled watching my neighbors mow around the boulders in their yard. That may be a show of my own failings in approaching the scriptures, but I suspect that I’m not alone in taking that approach. Lately, however, I’ve been trying to…

Reflections on the Tree of Life, Part 3: Christ and the Tree

by Chad Nielsen • February 12, 2020 • 2 Comments

The tree of life and its fruit mean many things to many different people. Immortality, eternal life, the presence of God, and Jesus the Christ are all important meanings of the tree in our tradition, but many more could be stated. Among Christians, one prominent meaning of the tree of life is as a symbol of the Christ. One way in which this is the case was hinted at when the apostle Peter spoke of Jesus’s death and crucifixion as being “killed by hanging him on a tree.”[1] The cross is referred to as a tree elsewhere in the New Testament as well, and, as C. Wilfred Griggs wrote, “Some have noticed that the Greek word used in these passages is the same as that used for the tree of life in the Septuagint, different from the usual New Testament word for tree. According to a number of sources, some early Christians thought of the cross as a tree of life.”[2] The tree and its fruit can be seen as a symbol of Jesus the Christ. The New Testament references to the cross as a tree took root and caused some commentary among Christians about the cross being the tree of life. For example, St. John of Damascus wrote that: “The tree of life which was planted by God in Paradise pre-figured this precious Cross. For since death was by a tree, it was fitting that life and resurrection should be…

Reconsidering the Lamanites

by Chad Nielsen • February 5, 2020 • 14 Comments

One of the major points of discussion in recent weeks is over an error in the printed “Come, Follow Me” manual. A Joseph Fielding Smith quote with racist content was included in the discussion of 2 Nephi 5 and it was only noted that it does not accurately reflect Church doctrine after the manuals were printed. The decision was made to change the digital version of the material but to send out the manuals as printed, with the belief that most members would be using the digital version. Church statements to the press have focused on re-affirming that Church rejects racism in any form and disavows racist teachings. At a meeting of the NAACP in Utah, Elder Gary E. Stevenson expressed that the quote was a mistake and that he wants members to disregard the printed version. He also stated that: “I’m deeply saddened and hurt by this error and for any pain that it may have caused our members and for others.”[1] It’s been an issue that has fed into the ongoing discussion of the Church’s efforts to deal with racism. Now, there are many unresolved questions with this error. For example, what exactly is the review process for the “Come, Follow Me” manuals and how did the quote pass inspection? Will the official institute manual for the Book of Mormon also be updated to remove the quote?[2] Will the Church tell members to disregard the printed version via…

Book of Mormon Stories: New Verses for the Liahona, Nephi’s Bow, and Building the Ship

by David Evans • February 1, 2020 • 4 Comments

I teach nine-year-olds for Primary, and I’ve started composing new verses to the old primary song Book of Mormon Stories as a way to recap the events before we get into discussion and activities. Here are four verses (which are arguably terrible but also instructive: I’m clearly not a songwriter) that go along with tomorrow’s Come, Follow Me lesson for 1 Nephi 16-22. At the end of many lines are optional interjections (in the style of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer“). I share them in case they might be useful for primary or family lessons tomorrow. The Liahona Lehi and Sariah needed guidance on their way. (in the wilderness) One day Lehi left his tent right at the break of day. (good morning!) There was a ball outside, and it did show them the way. (how curious!) The Liahona led if they lived righteously. Nephi’s Bow Nephi and his brothers went out hunting to find food. (delish!) Nephi broke his bow and his whole family did boo. (boo!) Nephi built a new bow, asked his dad where he should go. Lehi prayed, Nephi hunted, they all ate. (yay!) Building the Ship Then the Lord called Nephi, told him he should build a ship. (wow!) His brothers did make fun of him so that working they could skip. (lazy!) Nephi did remind them of all that the Lord can do! (miracles!) They got mad, then got shocked, and helped grudgingly. (fine!)…

Reflections on the Tree of Life, Part 2: The Presence of God

by Chad Nielsen • January 27, 2020 • 6 Comments

Truman G. Madsen once wrote: “Religious literature, ancient and modern, is replete with images of a tree of life that is to be planted in a goodly land by a pure stream. Some typologies regard it as the link at the very navel of the earth—the source of nourishment between parent and child—and place it at the temple mount in Jerusalem, where heaven and earth meet. The fruit of this tree is most precious.”[1] The tree of life is often portrayed as a tree from heaven, a symbol of paradise or of God’s presence itself. Hence, it is fitting that imagery of the tree of life is often present in the temples—places where heaven and earth meet. The tree of life tends to be found in places where God is present. An interesting article published in the Ensign years ago observed: “Tree of life symbolism permeates the Old Testament. The tree symbolizes not only eternal life but also God’s presence. For example, Adam and Eve’s exclusion from the tree was also exclusion from the presence of the Lord. Thus, whenever man regained God’s presence, a tree of life representation was used to symbolize that reunion.”[2] The initial tree of life is found in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve “heard the sound of the Lord God walking the garden” (Genesis 3:8). When they were cast out from the garden and the tree, they were “cut off both temporally…

The Church of the Devil and the Church of the Lamb of God

by Chad Nielsen • January 13, 2020 • 10 Comments

One of the more controversial aspects of Nephi’s vision of the tree of life is the great and abominable church or church of the devil. In his record, Nephi states that “there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil” (1 Nephi 14:10). At times, Church leaders and members have associated “the church of the devil” with specific organizations, such as the Roman Catholic Church, while at others, they have tried to use it as a metaphor for any organization that promotes evil. In recent history, the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have stressed the latter. Yet, there is also a Church of the Lamb of God that is spoken of by Nephi that is also worth discussing as an opposite counterpart of the church of the devil. In his vision, Nephi reports seeing “the formation of a church which is most abominable above all other churches” that was founded by the devil and that “they have taken away from the gospel of the Lamb many parts which are plain and most precious; and also many covenants of the Lord have they taken away” (1 Nephi 13:5, 26). What this church of the devil was and how it participated in the Great Apostasy has been a matter of discussion over the years. Most famously, Elder Bruce R. McConkie taught…

Reflections on the Tree of Life, Part 1: Immortality and Eternal Life

by Chad Nielsen • January 6, 2020 • 2 Comments

Between reflecting on Mack Wilberg’s choral piece “The Tree of Life,” preparing for the Book of Mormon Come Follow Me curriculum, and studying the Revelation of John the Divine these past few weeks, the tree of life has been on my mind. I thought I might share some reflections on the subject by highlighting possible meanings of the tree of life and its fruit in a series of posts, including immortality and eternal life, the presence of God, and Jesus the Christ. Immortality and eternal life are two of the possible meanings of the tree of life. In the Hebrew Bible, the tree of life is one of the two most notable trees in the Garden of Eden—alongside the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (see Genesis 2:9).[1] When Adam and Eve transgressed, the Lord God noted that if they happened to “take also from the tree of life, and eat” that they would “live forever” (Genesis 3:22). This ties the tree of life explicitly to immortality.[2] We see a similar meaning in the Book of Alma, where Alma preaches about the resurrection of the dead and is challenged to explain the resurrection in light of the tree of life being protected by cherubim and a flaming sword, which his opponent interprets to mean that “there was no possible chance that they should live forever” (Alma 12:21). Alma responds that “if it were possible for Adam to have…

Notes on Revelation

by Jonathan Green • December 11, 2019 • 4 Comments

When I teach Revelation 1-11 to my youth Sunday School class, I’ll probably start off by saying something about gasoline.

What are the best books to accompany your study of the Book of Mormon?

by David Evans • November 20, 2019 • 22 Comments

Next year, we’ll be studying The Book of Mormon in the Come, Follow Me program for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. During this year’s study of the New Testament, I’ve benefited from reading complementary material, such as — as I was reading Romans — Adam Miller’s excellent Grace Is Not God’s Backup Plan: An Urgent Paraphrase of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. What are your favorite books that you’ve read or that you are anticipating reading to accompany your study of the Book of Mormon? I’ll put some of mine in the comments below to get us started, but I’d love to hear yours.

Putting the Book of Mormon Front and Center

by Chad Nielsen • November 10, 2019 • 47 Comments

Elder B.H. Roberts of the Seventy once wrote that: So long as the truth respecting it is unbelieved {the Book of Mormon} will remain to the world an enigma, a veritable literary sphinx, challenging the inquiry and speculation of the learned. But to those who in simple faith will accept it for what it is, a revelation from God, it will minister spiritual consolation, and by its plainness and truth draw men into closer communion with God.[1] It can be difficult to pin down the Book of Mormon due to the many different things that can be used as evidence for or evidence against a divine origin for the book. In a recent 10 Questions interview with Kurt Manwaring, Tad Callister talked about his newest publication, A Case for the Book of Mormon, which discusses some of these evidences. What follows here is a short summary with commentary, but for those who are interested, the original discussion can be found by clicking here. Tad R. Callister is relatively well known at this point. He served as a general authority in the Seventies and might be remembered for giving short but pointed talks in general conference like “The Book of Mormon—a Book from God” and “Joseph Smith—Prophet of the Restoration”. He later served in the General President of Sunday School in the Church, where he was involved with bringing the “Come, Follow Me” curriculum to all age groups. He has also…

A Word of Wisdom or a Commandment?

by Chad Nielsen • September 30, 2019 • 14 Comments

The revelation that forms the basis of the Latter-day Saint dietary code refers to its contents as “a word of wisdom for the benefit of the Saints in these last days” (D&C 89:1). The Word of Wisdom was treated like its name implies during much of the nineteenth century—wide advise from God, but not a commandment. Today, however, parts of it are treated as a commandment—one that can result in being barred from the temple and Church callings if not followed. How did the Word of Wisdom become a commandment? It is surprisingly difficult to nail down a specific point in time in which this occurred. Three main options do emerge from my study of the issue, however: it was either always considered a commandment, the Latter-day Saints voted on and accepted it as a commandment, or it became a commandment when it began to be enforced. The first option is that the revelation was always considered a commandment. Many of the earliest Saints to receive it treated it as such—recollections of Kirtland and the eastern United States during the 1830s include many accounts where people threw their tobacco pipes in the fire or gave up coffee, tea and liquor for life like John Tanner did. At a meeting of the Kirtland High Council on 20 February 1834, Joseph Smith declared “that no official member in this church is worthy to hold an office after haveing the words of wisdom…

Bread and Water

by Chad Nielsen • June 26, 2019 • 4 Comments

In my previous two posts, I discussed questions relating to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Another question my friend asked was: “If you miss the bread do you take the water? … Obviously the best answer for the first is to make sure to take both but what is proper procedure?” I think many of us have been in this situation before, for one reason or another. When you are, do you just take the water? Do you ask that they bring the bread out to you before you take the water? Or do you just let it pass and try again next time? The short answer, after doing a bit of research, is that there are no unambiguous answers to the question available from the Church. Ultimately, it depends on how your view the ordinance and can be argued either way (to take only the water or that both bread and water must be taken). Both sides of the argument can summon scriptures and the words of prophets in support of their point of view. Today, I’ll be discussing some of the arguments in favor of needing both the bread and water every time. Next time, I’ll discuss the idea of only partaking of the water. The New Testament accounts of the sacrament being instituted have the bread and wine being served in short succession, with similar statements attending each. For example, the earliest account has Jesus breaking…

Why the Sacrament?

by Chad Nielsen • June 10, 2019 • 12 Comments

For Christians, the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was and is, in the words of one historian, “the central Christian ritual act.”[1] As Latter-day Saints, we participate in the breaking of bread and drinking of water on an almost weekly basis. Due to a few different reasons, I have been thinking about the sacrament a lot lately. So, I took the time to study the ordinance in greater depth, trying to understand why it’s so important and why we do it so often. During my study, I found several purposes for the sacrament and thought it might be worthwhile to share, since there were a few surprises (at least for me). First and foremost among those reasons is to remember Jesus Christ, but there is also looking forward to the Second Coming, focusing on how Christians can become one with God and with each other through Christ, and making or renewing covenants. The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper exists to help us remember. Paul’s account of the Last Supper (the earliest record we have) recalls that when Jesus took bread, he blessed and broke it, then said: “Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye…

On Not Understanding the Atonement

by Nathaniel Givens • March 26, 2019 • 32 Comments

There are some pretty major aspects of our Latter-day Saint faith–and of Christianity in general–that I don’t really understand. Specifically: the necessity and efficacy of the Atonement. Repentance and forgiveness make sense to me. The Atonement is a mystery, and none of the explanations or theories resonate with me on a deep, personal level. I am convinced that the scriptural accounts–especially in the Book of Mormon and New Testament–are true. I believe what they tell me. I just don’t understand them. What I do feel, and feel viscerally, is the fundamental brokenness of the human condition generally and my own shortcomings in particular. The world is broken, and I am broken in it. I am just as utterly convinced of the splendid beauty which we may all glimpse from time to time within this broken world and among its broken inhabitants. We are broken, but we we dream of wholeness. That dream came from somewhere. Wholeness–perfection–is also real. What I don’t understand is how Christ and the Atonement comes into play in helping us get from the Point A of Brokenness to the Point B of Wholeness. There’s only one thing I’ve ever read that helped me start to build a scaffold across the chasm of my ignorance. That’s Sister Neill F. Marriott’s talk from the General Women’s Session of the October 2017 General Conference: Abiding in God and Repairing the Breach. I read the talk about a year ago,…

Disputations in Zion

by Nathaniel Givens • March 19, 2019 • 12 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, we reached the end of 3 Nephi 26 in our family scripture reading. It’s the culmination of Jesus Christ’s ministry to the New World and the founding of Zion. I’ve always been fascinated by Zion, and especially by the practical side of it. The concept sounds so utopian, but we’re supposed to be building a real Zion down here. How? I wish I knew, but the scriptures seem so tantalizingly silent on the details. In 3 Nephi 26, we get one of the hallmarks of Zion in verse 19: And they taught, and did minister one to another; and they had all things common among them, every man dealing justly, one with another. But of course around that we are explicitly told that we’re getting a redacted version of Christ’s teachings, as in vs. 16, “the things which they did utter were forbidden that there should not any man write them” and again in vs. 18, “many of them saw and heard unspeakable things, which are not lawful to be written.” Then, the night after reading chapter 26, we started in with chapter 27: And it came to pass that as the disciples of Jesus were journeying and were preaching the things which they had both heard and seen, and were baptizing in the name of Jesus, it came to pass that the disciples were gathered together and were united in mighty prayer and fasting.…

A Restored Gospel Christian Calendar

by Chad Nielsen • February 24, 2019 • 5 Comments

We sometimes speak of the idea of a holy envy—meaning something that we admire in another a religion. For years, while remaining active in my ward, I spent a considerable amount of time at a Presbyterian Church ringing English handbells. Over time, one feature of their worship that I developed a bit of a holy envy for is their use of a liturgical calendar. The liturgical calendar is an approach to remembering Christ’s life throughout the year. In Christian traditions that follow a calendar, the year is divided into a series of seasons with specific moods, theological emphases, and modes of prayer. Important holidays like Christmas and Easter are proceeded by periods of penitence, reflection, and preparation (Advent and Lent, respectively) and followed by several weeks of talking about the stories of Christ and Christianity that happened because of the events that the holidays focus on. Scripture readings and sermon subjects used in church are often based on the calendar, making the calendar the foundation of their worship services. The reason I have holy envy for the calendar is because it helps people focus on Christ throughout the year—particularly around Christmas and Easter. I wanted to try it out in my personal life, so I have been developing my own version of the calendar that incorporates readings from all of our scriptural cannon to use in Sunday evening scripture study or family home evenings. Strictly speaking, of course, it’s not…

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