10 replies to this topic

[Rob Bowman]

Dan,

I am going to comment on your blog post, “On the Univocality of the Bible.” You wrote:

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A common misapprehension among amateur and some professional Bible scholars is the assumption of the univocality of the Bible. According to this assumption, the Bible manifests a single theological and ecclesiastical paradigm which allows exegetes, in their minds, to appeal to and synthesize texts separated by several centuries and virtually irreconcilable worldviews in the interest of the extrapolation of doctrine and, secondarily, administrative guidelines.

As you will recall from our discussion in another thread, when I asked you about it you affirmed that reading scripture “univocally” is a mistake with regard to the Book of Mormon, D&C, and Pearl of Great Price, as well as (even if not as much as) the Bible. Thus, you take the view that none of the scriptures in the LDS Standard Works may be read univocally.

My first observation is that it would appear that many Mormons, including some professional Mormon theologians, approach the LDS scriptures (i.e., the three other than the Bible) on the very sort of assumption of “univocality” that you reject. Indeed, I would suggest that official publications of the LDS Church routinely proceed from this same assumption.

Examples are all over the place. Consider the LDS doctrinal manual Gospel Principles, which all Mormons are encouraged to study throughout this year and the next. At the end of each chapter, the manual provides a list of scriptures to study, drawn from all four of the Standard Works. The first chapter gives the following list:

· Acts 7:55-56 (Son at the right hand of the Father)
· D&C 88:41-44 (qualities of God)
· Psalm 24:1 (the earth is the Lord's)
· Moses 1:30-39 (Creation)
· Alma 7:20 (God cannot do wrong)
· Joseph Smith--History 1:17 (Father and Son are separate)
· Alma 5:40 (good comes from God)
· John 14:6-9 (Son and Father are alike)
· Mormon 9:15-20 (God of miracles)

Note that this list draws from every “canon” within the Standard Works—the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, D&C, and two very different books in PGP. The assumption here is that every part of the Standard Works teaches the same coherent doctrine about the nature of God (the subject of the first chapter).

I know that you agreed, when I asked you, that one should not read any of the scriptures univocally; that this caution applies to the LDS scriptures and not just the Bible. But I think it significant that in your blog you made this observation only about the Bible. I’m not saying you were hiding anything—not at all—but that such cautions or qualifications come more naturally from you as a Mormon with regard to the Bible than with regard to the Book of Mormon, D&C, or PGP. It isn’t insignificant that the Articles of Faith qualify the status of the Bible as the word of God by the caveat “so far as it is translated correctly” but gives no such qualification with regard to the Book of Mormon.

In my judgment, if Mormons were to insist on the limitations of the LDS scriptures as zealously as many of them do with regard to the Bible, it would open up some startling perspectives. They would recognize that the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham teach “virtually irreconcilable worldviews” (to use your words), and they just might recognize that the reason for this is that their “translator” went through some worldview changes of his own.

You wrote:

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I believe the root of this assumption is the belief that the Bible contains all the necessary information for the institutionalization and administration of a community of faith, which, in my opinion, seems to be related to the idea of biblical inerrancy. After all, conflicting theologies would all but undermine the “God-breathed” nature of all scripture, according to the more conservative definitions of inerrancy.

You are conflating (it’s a good word!) two concepts here. Biblical inerrancy simply affirms that what Scripture we have unerringly expresses what God chose to reveal in those writings. From a conservative evangelical point of view, the Old Testament was inerrant even when the New Testament did not yet exist. Thus, inerrancy is a different concept than that of the sufficiency or completeness of Scripture. If you wish to maintain a doctrine of open canon and continuing (or rather restored) revelation, you can do so and not abandon the univocality of Scripture. Of course, evangelicals affirm both the univocality (i.e., theological unity) of the Bible and the completeness of the canon. Nevertheless, these are two distinct issues.

I agree, though, that conflicting theologies would undermine the view that the texts containing these conflicting theologies were divinely inspired. For example, if Paul’s epistles and the epistle of James really teach contradictory soteriologies, as many people claim, then either Paul’s epistles or James’s epistle is less than fully inspired by God—or perhaps both are less than fully inspired. I don’t see how one could coherently affirm both of the following propositions simultaneously without equivocation:

1. James’s epistle is divinely inspired and teaches that works are prerequisite for salvation.
2. Paul’s epistles are divinely inspired and teach that works are not prerequisite for salvation.

Do you consider these two statements compatible (again, without equivocation)? I don’t. In my opinion, there are logically a finite number of ways of handling this problem:

· Accept statement #1 and reject statement #2.
· Accept statement #2 and reject statement #1.
· Reject both statements #1 and #2.
· Accept both statements #1 and #2 but with equivocation (e.g., assert that “prerequisites for salvation” means something different in #1 than in #2, or that “works” means something different in #1 than in #2).

Evangelical theologians take the second or fourth option; they either argue that James does not teach that works are prerequisites for salvation, or they argue that James means something different by “works” than Paul means, or some similar explanation.

You wrote:

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In a recent discussion I was asked my opinion concerning the reception of the Holy Ghost without baptism. Someone opined that Acts 10:44–48 showed baptism was not necessary for the reception of the Gift of the Holy Ghost. His perspective, I believe, asserted the univocality of scripture, as he seemed to aver that any soteriological paradigm must be able to account for every related event or doctrinal exposition in the Bible. No loose ends may exist, and so Acts 10:44–48 manifests no exceptions or unique or aberrant policy, but rather a clue to unpacking the Bible’s single and consistent doctrine of baptism.

I am going to parody the above paragraph for the purpose of making a serious point. Suppose you ran across a blogger whose church did not teach that baptism was necessary for salvation. In fact, to make this more realistic, let’s imagine it’s a blog by a Quaker or Friend, since they often do not regard the Bible as inerrant or fully inspired. Suppose this blogger wrote the following:

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In a recent discussion I was asked my opinion concerning the necessity of baptism for the reception of the Holy Ghost. Someone opined that Acts 2:38 showed baptism was necessary for the reception of the Gift of the Holy Ghost. His perspective, I believe, asserted the univocality of scripture, as he seemed to aver that any soteriological paradigm must be able to account for every related event or doctrinal exposition in the Bible. No loose ends may exist, and so Acts 2:38 manifests no exceptions or unique or aberrant policy, but rather a clue to unpacking the Bible’s single and consistent doctrine of baptism.

I don’t believe you would accept this reasoning. In fact, I don’t think you would have employed the reasoning you did if a fellow Mormon had opined that Acts 2:38 showed baptism was necessary for the reception of the Gift of the Holy Ghost. You would most likely have agreed, since the claim as to what the verse shows happens to agree with your doctrinal position. I’m pretty confident about this, since this is exactly how Gospel Principles (for example) uses Acts 2:38. I quote:

“We Must Be Baptized for the Remission of Our Sins.... The Apostle Peter taught, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins’ (Acts 2:38).”

Is there anything wrong with what Gospel Principles does here? It makes a dogmatic doctrinal assertion, “We must be baptized for the remission of our sins,” and then backs it up with Acts 2:38 as a proof text. In principle, this is no different than an evangelical citing Acts 10:44-48 to show that baptism is not a prerequisite for the remission of our sins.

I am not bothered here about who is right in the above debate. Both Acts 2:38 and 10:44-48 are Scripture. Moreover, even if I did not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible (which I do), I would be very slow to accept the easy out that one of these passages reflects an “aberrant policy” or that they are inconsistent with one another. After all, the same author included both passages in the same book, and from what I can tell Luke was an extremely intelligent fellow. It is therefore likely that he understood these two passages in Acts to cohere in some way. I can understand someone suggesting that Galatians and Numbers might not be on the same page theologically, but I begin to suspect a hypercritical stance when someone suggests that Acts 2 and Acts 10 might also be at loggerheads theologically. I’m consistent in this principle, by the way: I’m disinclined to think that Joseph Smith would contradict himself from, say, 1 Nephi 2 to 1 Nephi 10. It would be possible for him to do so, but my working method would be to look for some harmonization since more than likely the author (be he Nephi or Smith) would not contradict himself in so short a space. To fail to consider explanations that give the text and its author some benefit of the doubt is unjustifiable.

You wrote:

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I take a different approach to interpreting doctrine in the Bible. I make no confession of biblical inerrancy, and I believe the biblical texts are in no way free from theological speculation, propaganda, polemic, rhetoric, and human error. I think that asserting the univocality of the Bible tangles up the exegete in the hermeneutic circle and in attempts to reconcile theological and administrative inconsistencies to contemporary dogmas.

I rather think the reverse is the case. Those who are committed to a contemporary set of dogmas that rest on an authority other than Scripture will feel free to set aside anything in Scripture that does not fit those contemporary dogmas. They will be quick to seize upon proof texts that seem to support their dogmas and to explain away or dismiss as “theological speculation, propaganda, polemic, rhetoric, [or] human error” statements in Scripture that fail to cohere with their dogmas. This type of hermeneutical circle is really quite common. On the other hand, those who are truly committed (not just in lip-service fashion) to Scripture as theologically normative and authoritative will work hard to take into consideration all that Scripture says, breaking out of their hermeneutical circle if necessary to accommodate elements of the Scriptures that do not fit their paradigms.

You wrote:

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While most Bible scholars aren’t often caught up in bickering about contradictions in the Bible and other apologetic arguments, I believe the assumption of biblical univocality still wriggles its way into academia. It is primarily manifested in attempts to homogenize or reconcile the theologies of diachronically distinct cultures and peoples. Early monarchic perspectives on the divine council, for instance, were not identical to those of Second Temple Judaism, which incorporated a conflated pantheon, an expanded angelology, and a more transcendant view of YHWH. Anthropomorphic perspectives of deity changed, as did ideas of monotheism, salvation, the source of evil, corporate responsibility, law, scripture, priesthood, nationalism, cult, and pretty much everything else. The New Testament, in and of itself, is no exception. I think these considerations need to be addressed before one can assert that “the Bible says” one thing or another, or that a scripture in John or the Psalms should be interpreted according to a specific paradigm because it is expounded upon that way in Genesis or Isaiah.

As I have already argued, your view on this subject is far more extreme than questioning the “inerrancy” of the Bible. Let’s go back to your example of Acts 10:44-48. I think you brought up that example because, in your understanding, most of what the New Testament says about baptism seems to confirm that it is a prerequisite to receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. This is why you could criticize those whose view of Scripture leads them to maintain that “Acts 10:44–48 manifests no exceptions or unique or aberrant policy.” Your comment here presupposes that most (at least) of the rest of the New Testament agrees with the view that baptism is a necessary prerequisite for reception of the gift of the Holy Ghost. In your view, Acts 10:44-48 is an anomaly, some sort of exception or unique situation or aberrant policy not in keeping with the prevailing view of baptism in the New Testament. Such an assessment assumes that there is a prevailing view that one can determine.

But now look at what you are really saying about the biblical teaching concerning the nature of deity. As I documented in our first discussion here, and as you agreed, the prevailing theology that runs throughout the Old Testament and right into and through the New Testament accepts that “conflated pantheon” in which the number of deities recognized as objects of worship was reduced to one. The prevailing theological perspective that dominates the biblical texts is also one that suppressed (I think this is how you view it) older “anthropomorphic perspectives of deity” in favor of a more transcendent conception of deity as incorporeal and immaterial. You acknowledged that the “conflation” of Elohim and Yahweh took place early in Israel’s history, earlier than most or all of the Old Testament writings, and of course earlier than the New Testament, which appears to presuppose throughout this “conflation” of two deities as one God. To show that there was an earlier religious belief in which Yahweh and Elohim were two different gods, you appealed to a couple of texts that you admitted were imbedded in texts that also reflected their conflation. The more than one thousand texts that treat Yahweh as Elohim (=El Elyon) are explained away as reflecting a conflation of the two deities under the pressures of socio-political factors, while the two texts that might speak of them as two different gods are regarded as representative of the earlier view. Now you are the one who is seizing upon what appear at best to be anomalies, “exceptions,” or “aberrant” wording in a couple of isolated texts, and on that basis sweeping aside as lacking any authority the thousand-plus texts that articulate the traditional Jewish and Christian doctrine.

Such an analysis of the biblical texts completely negates any meaningful role for those texts as authoritative or even useful for learning the truth about God. You found a couple of puzzle pieces in a thousand-piece puzzle that are difficult to fit into the picture shown on the outside cover of the box, and so on that basis announce that the original puzzle was that represented by the two unusual pieces while the 998 pieces represent a radical alteration of the original picture. The problem here isn’t inerrancy; the problem here isn’t even “univocality.” The problem here is that the Bible simply doesn’t support your theology, and so you are appealing to apparently anomalous texts to justify stripping the Bible of any authority in matters of faith.

Again, I think as a Mormon you can more or less get away with taking such an attitude toward the Bible. There is a venerable tradition in LDS thought of tossing into the potentially bottomless pit of “it wasn’t translated correctly” or “many plain and precious things were lost” anything in the Bible that doesn’t square with current LDS doctrine. But let’s not kid ourselves that this is about Christians naively (so-called) thinking that the Bible is inerrantly consistent from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. After all, what your view really amounts to is thinking that the Bible almost without fail teaches the wrong doctrine from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. Furthermore, you’ve really got the same problem with the Book of Mormon. It also “conflates” what you view as separate deities into one God. Again, you can’t explain this away by saying that as a Latter-day Saint you can view the Book of Mormon as the word of God without understanding this to imply that it is absolutely inerrant. The Book of Mormon is at least as consistent as the Bible in teaching monotheism. Your real problem is that the Bible and the Book of Mormon are far too univocal, or much too close to being univocal, in their supposed “conflation” of the deities into one God. You might argue that they are not perfectly or inerrantly univocal on the matter, but they are so close to being univocal in this doctrinal matter that your contrary evidence looks very much like a couple of stray anomalous points on an otherwise beautiful straight line.

Finally, I would reiterate that your view seems to stand in some conflict with the way Mormon authorities and teachers generally handle the Bible. Do a search in LDS Library for such phrases as “the Bible says” or “the Book of Mormon says” or “the Bible teaches.” Mormons generally feel comfortable making such statements. It is only when evangelical Christians cite the Bible against LDS doctrine that some Mormons start looking down their noses at the naïvete of assuming that the Bible can function as a sourcebook of systematic theology.

Edited by Rob Bowman, 28 January 2010 - 09:32 PM.

[Kevin Christensen]

A few comments from the gallery.

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The more than one thousand texts that treat Yahweh as Elohim (=El Elyon) are explained away as reflecting a conflation of the two deities under the pressures of socio-political factors, while the two texts that might speak of them as two different gods are regarded as representative of the earlier view.

There are more than two texts that distinguish the texts.   Elohim, the Hebrew for God,  a plural can often be generic gods, as in the RSV Deut. 32:43, which expands the MT based on addition text in the DDS.

Praise, O heavens, his people,
Worship him all you gods (‘elohim)

Margaret has a little introduction to the ideas provided in her The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God here:

http://www.theway.or...k/431Barker.pdf


Remember that Dan has already provided valuable insight on the use of Elohim:

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A good book on this is Joel Burnett's A Reassessment of Biblical Elohim, which concludes the term ????? was originally an abstract plural. This is similar to other Hebrew abstractions, like ???? (life), ????? (old age), or ?????? (maidenhood), and it would have meant something like "divinity," or "deity." The plural of 'l appears all over the languages of the Semitic family with a singular meaning. Over time the repeated usage in reference to Israel's deity concretized the word (made it definite - God instead of god). The adjectival, generic, and simple plural senses remained, so the usage is mixed. This is why YHWH is often followed with ??????, or "our god." With the singular ??, it is most often making reference to the deity named El, but there are plenty of exceptions. Josh 22:22, for instance, has it in the construct: ?? ????? ???? ("YHWH, god of gods"), and at Josh 24:19 we have ??? ?? ???? ("he is a jealous deity"). When used generically it should be understood in the same sense as elohim ("deity"). Where ?? is the nomen rectum in a construct phrase it is generally to be understood as a proper name.

On the other hand, El Elyon translates as Most High God, and is not an interchangeable synonym for Elohim.  In the New Testament Jesus is said to be the son of the Most High, not the son of Yahweh.  Further, Yahweh’s titles are applied to Jesus.  I recommend the interesting chapter in The Older Testament on the distinctive contexts in which the El Elyon title appears.

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Biblical inerrancy simply affirms that what Scripture we have unerringly expresses what God chose to reveal in those writings. From a conservative evangelical point of view, the Old Testament was inerrant even when the New Testament did not yet exist. Thus, inerrancy is a different concept than that of the sufficiency or completeness of Scripture.

This definition reminds me of Voltaire and  Paingloss’s philosophy of the Best of All Possible Worlds.  The most useful paradigms provide puzzle formulation, with viable ways to test them.  An assumption that the text unerringly expresses what God chose to reveal for us to consider does not bestow upon us the ability to unerringly discern his intent.   But we can try to  account for is the state of the Hebrew texts as we have them, which can tell a story, if we let it.  For one approach that does account for the state of the Hebrew, the Greek, the DDS, the Aramaic Targums, and other sources, and finds a story to tell, try this:

http://www.thinlyvei...ker/context.htm

I find the comparison between that story and another independent approach offered up in 1 Nephi 13 to be irresistibly inviting.

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There is a venerable tradition in LDS thought of tossing into the potentially bottomless pit of “it wasn’t translated correctly” or “many plain and precious things were lost” anything in the Bible that doesn’t square with current LDS doctrine.

There  are also new approaches to the Bible, noting the state of the MT Hebrew as we have it, in comparison to other sources.  

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Texts dealing with Holy Ones and the Holy One have significant elements in common: theophany, judgment, triumph for Yahweh, triumph for his anointed son, ascent to a throne in heaven, conflict with beasts and with angel princes caught up in the destinies of earthly kingdoms. Many of these texts are corrupted; much of their subject matter is that of the "lost" tradition thought to underlie the apocalyptic texts. The textual corruption and the lost tradition are aspects of the same question. (Margaret Barker, The Older Testament, 119).

Barker surveys a number of examples and concludes, "The MT has changed 'sons of God' to 'servants,' and removed all explicit references to the heavenly beings who were to be judged. It is important to remember that the changes in the MT always follow the same pattern, and that this pattern distinguishes it from much at Qumran, and also from much in the New Testament." (Barker, 211).
Part of the story the texts tell us involves the editors and their methods.   Since God provided the Bible and an increasingly complex contextualization for it, I think we can make a case that He wants us to think about those editors and methods.
Back to Rob:

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Furthermore, you’ve really got the same problem with the Book of Mormon. It also “conflates” what you view as separate deities into one God. Again, you can’t explain this away by saying that as a Latter-day Saint you can view the Book of Mormon as the word of God without understanding this to imply that it is absolutely inerrant. The Book of Mormon is at least as consistent as the Bible in teaching monotheism.

To get more up-to-date on the Book of Mormon, you really should read Brant Gardner’s Second Witness Volume 1 on 1 Nephi, “Excursis: The Nephite Understanding of God”, pages, 214-222, an earlier  version of which is online here:

http://www.fairlds.o...rmons_Book.html

The difference in harvest regarding the Book of Mormon teaching comes in  where the seed is planted (a new and enlightening context) and how the seed is nurtured.

Back to the gallery.

Kevin Christensen
Pittsburgh, PA

[maklelan]

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

Dan,

I am going to comment on your blog post, “On the Univocality of the Bible.” You wrote:

As you will recall from our discussion in another thread, when I asked you about it you affirmed that reading scripture “univocally” is a mistake with regard to the Book of Mormon, D&C, and Pearl of Great Price, as well as (even if not as much as) the Bible. Thus, you take the view that none of the scriptures in the LDS Standard Works may be read univocally.

I don't believe in inerrancy in scripture, and so I don't believe that scripture should necessarily be accepted as univocal. Even the title page of the Book of Mormon recognizes that human error can influence the text.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

My first observation is that it would appear that many Mormons, including some professional Mormon theologians, approach the LDS scriptures (i.e., the three other than the Bible) on the very sort of assumption of “univocality” that you reject. Indeed, I would suggest that official publications of the LDS Church routinely proceed from this same assumption.

Examples are all over the place. Consider the LDS doctrinal manual Gospel Principles, which all Mormons are encouraged to study throughout this year and the next. At the end of each chapter, the manual provides a list of scriptures to study, drawn from all four of the Standard Works. The first chapter gives the following list:

· Acts 7:55-56 (Son at the right hand of the Father)
· D&C 88:41-44 (qualities of God)
· Psalm 24:1 (the earth is the Lord's)
· Moses 1:30-39 (Creation)
· Alma 7:20 (God cannot do wrong)
· Joseph Smith--History 1:17 (Father and Son are separate)
· Alma 5:40 (good comes from God)
· John 14:6-9 (Son and Father are alike)
· Mormon 9:15-20 (God of miracles)

Note that this list draws from every “canon” within the Standard Works—the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, D&C, and two very different books in PGP. The assumption here is that every part of the Standard Works teaches the same coherent doctrine about the nature of God (the subject of the first chapter).

The problems of inconsistency and error rarely undermine texts that are representative of doctrine, and they can be identified and overcome for the most part. In addition, I don't think using a verse here and there from each of the standard works necessarily indicates a univocal view of the standard works.  

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

I know that you agreed, when I asked you, that one should not read any of the scriptures univocally; that this caution applies to the LDS scriptures and not just the Bible. But I think it significant that in your blog you made this observation only about the Bible.

My blog is primarily for secular biblical scholarship. I rarely address issues directly related to Mormonism.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

I’m not saying you were hiding anything—not at all—but that such cautions or qualifications come more naturally from you as a Mormon with regard to the Bible than with regard to the Book of Mormon, D&C, or PGP. It isn’t insignificant that the Articles of Faith qualify the status of the Bible as the word of God by the caveat “so far as it is translated correctly” but gives no such qualification with regard to the Book of Mormon.

Joseph Smith's use of the term "translated" includes a much more broad semantic range than the word generally has today. It means transmitted as much as it means translated. The Book of Moses, for instance, is called a translation despite no actual Vorlage in any other language. Because the Bible has a much longer and more problematic history of transmission, and because so many manuscripts and translations exist, that caveat is added. The Book of Mormon has only been through one ostensible translation, and it claims to be inspired. Mormons don't believe, however, that inspired necessarily means inerrant, and the caveat that Moroni himself adds to the Title Page makes that clear.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

In my judgment, if Mormons were to insist on the limitations of the LDS scriptures as zealously as many of them do with regard to the Bible, it would open up some startling perspectives. They would recognize that the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham teach “virtually irreconcilable worldviews” (to use your words), and they just might recognize that the reason for this is that their “translator” went through some worldview changes of his own.

I don't agree that these worldviews are irreconcilable, but I definitely agree that Joseph Smith's worldview grew a great deal. Numerous revelations were received after the publication of the Book of Mormon that expanded and refined his view of the nature of God and his relationship to humanity. Since this dispensation enjoys the restoration of all things, and past generations didn't have access to the fullness of the gospel, I don't think it's a problem to recognize that a text recorded between 600 BCE and 430 CE manifests different worldviews than a text composed in the second millennium BCE and copied over a thousand years later. I recognize that you don't accept these perspectives on these texts, but within the LDS worldview they don't at all undermine my view.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

You wrote:

You are conflating (it’s a good word!) two concepts here. Biblical inerrancy simply affirms that what Scripture we have unerringly expresses what God chose to reveal in those writings.

The meaning of inerrancy is still a hotly debated topic within Evangelical Christianity, as it is between different Christian denominations. My post is explicitly aimed at the more conservative (or "fundamental") definitions of inerrancy.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

From a conservative evangelical point of view, the Old Testament was inerrant even when the New Testament did not yet exist. Thus, inerrancy is a different concept than that of the sufficiency or completeness of Scripture. If you wish to maintain a doctrine of open canon and continuing (or rather restored) revelation, you can do so and not abandon the univocality of Scripture. Of course, evangelicals affirm both the univocality (i.e., theological unity) of the Bible and the completeness of the canon. Nevertheless, these are two distinct issues.

Yes, I know they're two different issues, but they're very clearly interrelated. To say that the scriptures unerringly express what God chose to reveal implies a univocal text. In other words, if the entire Bible is God's unadulterated message, and God doesn't change, then his message must be consistent; ergo, univocality.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

I agree, though, that conflicting theologies would undermine the view that the texts containing these conflicting theologies were divinely inspired. For example, if Paul’s epistles and the epistle of James really teach contradictory soteriologies, as many people claim, then either Paul’s epistles or James’s epistle is less than fully inspired by God—or perhaps both are less than fully inspired. I don’t see how one could coherently affirm both of the following propositions simultaneously without equivocation:

1. James’s epistle is divinely inspired and teaches that works are prerequisite for salvation.
2. Paul’s epistles are divinely inspired and teach that works are not prerequisite for salvation.

Do you consider these two statements compatible (again, without equivocation)?

I do not.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

I don’t. In my opinion, there are logically a finite number of ways of handling this problem:

· Accept statement #1 and reject statement #2.
· Accept statement #2 and reject statement #1.
· Reject both statements #1 and #2.
· Accept both statements #1 and #2 but with equivocation (e.g., assert that “prerequisites for salvation” means something different in #1 than in #2, or that “works” means something different in #1 than in #2).

Evangelical theologians take the second or fourth option; they either argue that James does not teach that works are prerequisites for salvation, or they argue that James means something different by “works” than Paul means, or some similar explanation.

And those who make that argument would be stuck in the hermeneutic circle. Both texts have a simple reading, and those simple readings seem to conflict with each other. While an objective approach would be first to determine the most likely meaning of each text via a variety of exegetical methodologies and then accept them, agreement or not, the approaches you explain take Paul to be the standard against which James must be reconciled (why Paul's view? Because that's what theologians have taught). In doing so one appeals to a synthesis of the parts of a whole to understand the whole (the Bible's view on soteriology = Paul's view + James' view + other views), but also appeals to the whole in order to understand the parts (James' view must be reconciled with the "biblical" view, represented in Paul). It's a never ending exegetical loop.

[maklelan]

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

You wrote:

I am going to parody the above paragraph for the purpose of making a serious point. Suppose you ran across a blogger whose church did not teach that baptism was necessary for salvation. In fact, to make this more realistic, let’s imagine it’s a blog by a Quaker or Friend, since they often do not regard the Bible as inerrant or fully inspired. Suppose this blogger wrote the following:

I don’t believe you would accept this reasoning. In fact, I don’t think you would have employed the reasoning you did if a fellow Mormon had opined that Acts 2:38 showed baptism was necessary for the reception of the Gift of the Holy Ghost. You would most likely have agreed, since the claim as to what the verse shows happens to agree with your doctrinal position. I’m pretty confident about this, since this is exactly how Gospel Principles (for example) uses Acts 2:38. I quote:

“We Must Be Baptized for the Remission of Our Sins.... The Apostle Peter taught, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins’ (Acts 2:38).”

Is there anything wrong with what Gospel Principles does here? It makes a dogmatic doctrinal assertion, “We must be baptized for the remission of our sins,” and then backs it up with Acts 2:38 as a proof text. In principle, this is no different than an evangelical citing Acts 10:44-48 to show that baptism is not a prerequisite for the remission of our sins.

The question of the necessity of baptism for the remission of sins or for salvation wasn't my concern, though. In addition, I'm not approaching the text from a devotional point of view, but from an academic point of view. The ancient view of the doctrine of baptism cannot be reconstructed through a synthesis of all the perspectives from the New Testament. Elements will invariably be missing and conflicting ideas will be reconciled in a way unintended.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

I am not bothered here about who is right in the above debate. Both Acts 2:38 and 10:44-48 are Scripture. Moreover, even if I did not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible (which I do), I would be very slow to accept the easy out that one of these passages reflects an “aberrant policy” or that they are inconsistent with one another. After all, the same author included both passages in the same book, and from what I can tell Luke was an extremely intelligent fellow.

And he may not have been trying to provide a consistent picture of the doctrine of baptism. He may just have been explaining what happened.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

It is therefore likely that he understood these two passages in Acts to cohere in some way. I can understand someone suggesting that Galatians and Numbers might not be on the same page theologically, but I begin to suspect a hypercritical stance when someone suggests that Acts 2 and Acts 10 might also be at loggerheads theologically. I’m consistent in this principle, by the way: I’m disinclined to think that Joseph Smith would contradict himself from, say, 1 Nephi 2 to 1 Nephi 10. It would be possible for him to do so, but my working method would be to look for some harmonization since more than likely the author (be he Nephi or Smith) would not contradict himself in so short a space. To fail to consider explanations that give the text and its author some benefit of the doubt is unjustifiable.

I disagree. I don't think he was trying to use the text as a manual for church leadership. The genre is clearly intended to be historical narrative. It has an ideological slant, but is clearly not worried about the same questions that worry modern theists. It doesn't bother the author to mention serious disputes between apostles, for instance. Why should we believe that the order of baptism and the reception of the Holy Ghost is even a concern?

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

You wrote:

I rather think the reverse is the case. Those who are committed to a contemporary set of dogmas that rest on an authority other than Scripture will feel free to set aside anything in Scripture that does not fit those contemporary dogmas. They will be quick to seize upon proof texts that seem to support their dogmas and to explain away or dismiss as “theological speculation, propaganda, polemic, rhetoric, [or] human error” statements in Scripture that fail to cohere with their dogmas. This type of hermeneutical circle is really quite common.

But if the doctrine rests on authority outside the scriptures then there is no circle. The hermeneutic circle comes from claiming the doctrine is made up of the combined parts of the whole scriptural corpus, and that, at the same time, the scriptural corpus must govern the interpretation of the individual parts. If the authority rests on something else (on modern prophets and the priesthood, for example), then there is a starting point and an ending point. You said that we feel free to set aside anything in scripture that does not fit our dogmas, which precludes a hermeneutic circle. Those who wrestle with conflicting texts to try to subjugate them to the other texts and the scriptures as a whole are the ones caught in the circle. Now, I'm not going to claim that no Latter-day Saints get caught up in the hermeneutic circle. It happens frequently, and with ecclesiology it's inevitable.  

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

On the other hand, those who are truly committed (not just in lip-service fashion) to Scripture as theologically normative and authoritative will work hard to take into consideration all that Scripture says, breaking out of their hermeneutical circle if necessary to accommodate elements of the Scriptures that do not fit their paradigms.

This is a respectable goal, but I don't think this is an accurate representation of the position you hold. After all, you've asserted elsewhere that no other deities exist in the worldview of the authors of the Hebrew Bible, and yet I have pointed in our other discussion to numerous texts that explicitly reference other deities as beings with existence and even with responsibilities in God's universe. I have yet to see an Evangelical reply to this problem that attempts at all to accommodate that fact. They responses I have seen have all attempted to mitigate it in the interest of dogmas based on other scriptures.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

You wrote:

As I have already argued, your view on this subject is far more extreme than questioning the “inerrancy” of the Bible. Let’s go back to your example of Acts 10:44-48. I think you brought up that example because, in your understanding, most of what the New Testament says about baptism seems to confirm that it is a prerequisite to receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. This is why you could criticize those whose view of Scripture leads them to maintain that “Acts 10:44–48 manifests no exceptions or unique or aberrant policy.” Your comment here presupposes that most (at least) of the rest of the New Testament agrees with the view that baptism is a necessary prerequisite for reception of the gift of the Holy Ghost. In your view, Acts 10:44-48 is an anomaly, some sort of exception or unique situation or aberrant policy not in keeping with the prevailing view of baptism in the New Testament. Such an assessment assumes that there is a prevailing view that one can determine.

I didn't bring up the issue in an effort to advocate an LDS view of baptism. I brought up the issue because I don't agree with the idea that doctrine can be derived from a synthesis of biblical texts that treat individual problems. This happened to be a discussion on which I was asked to comment by a friend. I responded to that friend that I didn't think the texts presented a uniform procedure or doctrine.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

But now look at what you are really saying about the biblical teaching concerning the nature of deity. As I documented in our first discussion here, and as you agreed, the prevailing theology that runs throughout the Old Testament and right into and through the New Testament accepts that “conflated pantheon” in which the number of deities recognized as objects of worship was reduced to one. The prevailing theological perspective that dominates the biblical texts is also one that suppressed (I think this is how you view it) older “anthropomorphic perspectives of deity” in favor of a more transcendent conception of deity as incorporeal and immaterial.

Not exactly. I think the biblical text begins to promote a view of deity as having a face that was largely hidden from humanity, but anthropomorphism continues well after the Bible. An immaterial and incorporeal deity was not developed in Christianity until the third century, and in Judaism it wasn't formulated until the Middle Ages.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

You acknowledged that the “conflation” of Elohim and Yahweh took place early in Israel’s history, earlier than most or all of the Old Testament writings, and of course earlier than the New Testament, which appears to presuppose throughout this “conflation” of two deities as one God. To show that there was an earlier religious belief in which Yahweh and Elohim were two different gods, you appealed to a couple of texts that you admitted were imbedded in texts that also reflected their conflation. The more than one thousand texts that treat Yahweh as Elohim (=El Elyon) are explained away as reflecting a conflation of the two deities under the pressures of socio-political factors, while the two texts that might speak of them as two different gods are regarded as representative of the earlier view. Now you are the one who is seizing upon what appear at best to be anomalies, “exceptions,” or “aberrant” wording in a couple of isolated texts, and on that basis sweeping aside as lacking any authority the thousand-plus texts that articulate the traditional Jewish and Christian doctrine.

If a text has a different perspective then it has a different perspective, irrespective of how many texts disagree. To insist that what those other texts say must harmonize with what the minority says is to presuppose a univocal text, which is clearly not an accurate view of the Bible. We've talked about the theories, now let's present an example of why a univocal view of scripture neglects what the scriptures actually say. Look at 2 Sam 24:1, where YHWH is said to compel David to conduct a census. In early Israel good and evil were both thought to come from one source: God (see Isa 45:6-7). When the Chronicler took up the text, in 1 Chr 21:1, a different view of the source of evil was common (thanks to the influence of dualistic ideologies), and so he changed "YHWH" to "Satan." This is quite a blatant example of changing the texts to fit contemporary dogmas, but it happens incredibly frequently throughout the Hebrew Bible. One who advocates a univocal reading will struggle to reconcile these two texts, but the Hebrew is crystal clear. The exact same phrase is used in each text (?????????? ????????????) with YHWH as the subject in the first and Satan as the subject in the second.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

Such an analysis of the biblical texts completely negates any meaningful role for those texts as authoritative or even useful for learning the truth about God. You found a couple of puzzle pieces in a thousand-piece puzzle that are difficult to fit into the picture shown on the outside cover of the box,

Now this is an absolutely textbook example of the hermeneutic circle. There is no picture on the cover. There are only pieces that have been thrown in a box for a number of different reasons. When you assert there's a picture on the cover you assert that there's a preconceived notion of what the Bible says, and that the pieces of the text must be made to match that notion. But where did the cover come from? Did it not come from the pieces? This consideration forces you to insist that you found out what the picture on the cover was by seeing what the pieces created when put together. That's the paradox and that's the hermeneutic circle. As ironic as it may sound, you've given me an absolutely perfect illustration of the hermeneutic circle.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

and so on that basis announce that the original puzzle was that represented by the two unusual pieces while the 998 pieces represent a radical alteration of the original picture. The problem here isn’t inerrancy; the problem here isn’t even “univocality.” The problem here is that the Bible simply doesn’t support your theology, and so you are appealing to apparently anomalous texts to justify stripping the Bible of any authority in matters of faith.

I disagree. Recognizing conflicting voices in no way invalidates theological authority. If so, Peter and Paul would have no authority.

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

Again, I think as a Mormon you can more or less get away with taking such an attitude toward the Bible. There is a venerable tradition in LDS thought of tossing into the potentially bottomless pit of “it wasn’t translated correctly” or “many plain and precious things were lost” anything in the Bible that doesn’t square with current LDS doctrine.

I've said it several times, and I hope I don't have to say it again: My academic treatments of the Bible (this blog post included) do not treat Mormon doctrine. They are secular observations on biblical scholarship. I have my faith and I have my scholarship, and the two rarely intersect. Please don't assume I'm being dishonest about this again.  

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

But let’s not kid ourselves that this is about Christians naively (so-called) thinking that the Bible is inerrantly consistent from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. After all, what your view really amounts to is thinking that the Bible almost without fail teaches the wrong doctrine from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. Furthermore, you’ve really got the same problem with the Book of Mormon. It also “conflates” what you view as separate deities into one God. Again, you can’t explain this away by saying that as a Latter-day Saint you can view the Book of Mormon as the word of God without understanding this to imply that it is absolutely inerrant. The Book of Mormon is at least as consistent as the Bible in teaching monotheism. Your real problem is that the Bible and the Book of Mormon are far too univocal, or much too close to being univocal, in their supposed “conflation” of the deities into one God. You might argue that they are not perfectly or inerrantly univocal on the matter, but they are so close to being univocal in this doctrinal matter that your contrary evidence looks very much like a couple of stray anomalous points on an otherwise beautiful straight line.

Finally, I would reiterate that your view seems to stand in some conflict with the way Mormon authorities and teachers generally handle the Bible. Do a search in LDS Library for such phrases as “the Bible says” or “the Book of Mormon says” or “the Bible teaches.” Mormons generally feel comfortable making such statements. It is only when evangelical Christians cite the Bible against LDS doctrine that some Mormons start looking down their noses at the naïvete of assuming that the Bible can function as a sourcebook of systematic theology.

Actually I quite frequently point out to Mormons and non-Mormons alike that the Bible should not be appealed to as a consistent exposition of any theology that can at all be called systematic. I also frequently point out that Mormonism has no systematic theology. You've been making quite a number of broad assumptions about my methodologies and presuppositions throughout this post. I don't appreciate that.

[calmoriah]

Rob Bowman, on 28 January 2010 - 09:30 PM, said:

some professional Mormon theologians........ It is only when evangelical Christians cite the Bible against LDS doctrine that some Mormons start looking down their noses at the naïvete of assuming that the Bible can function as a sourcebook of systematic theology.

Two quick questions to help clarify your discussion...

Could you identify those you see as "professional Mormon theologians", please.

Do you believe that LDS have a systematic theology (as defined in the academic community, not as describing a "coherent" or "organized" theology) or do you agree with Dan that we do not?


Thank you.

[cksalmon]

maklelan, on 29 January 2010 - 03:34 PM, said:

The Book of Moses, for instance, is called a translation despite no actual Vorlage in any other language.

Just so that I can understand your position, Mak, do you hold (1) that no Vorlage has ever existed
or (2) that it is no longer extant, but once existed.

I can't help but believe that your answer will clarify, to some degree, what you intend by "transmitted" in this regard.

cks

[maklelan]

cksalmon, on 30 January 2010 - 03:03 PM, said:

Just so that I can understand your position, Mak, do you hold (1) that no Vorlage has ever existed
or (2) that it is no longer extant, but once existed.

I can't help but believe that your answer will clarify, to some degree, what you intend by "transmitted" in this regard.

cks

I simply hold that Joseph Smith did not have a parent text in front of him. I'm not addressing the question of whether or not the Book of Moses existed in antiquity in written form.

[Rob Bowman]

Calmoriah,

Robert Millet is an obvious example of a professional Mormon theologian. So is Stephen Robinson.

Please define what you think "systematic theology" means, if it does not mean a coherent, organized theology.

calmoriah, on 30 January 2010 - 02:35 PM, said:

Two quick questions to help clarify your discussion...

Could you identify those you see as "professional Mormon theologians", please.

Do you believe that LDS have a systematic theology (as defined in the academic community, not as describing a "coherent" or "organized" theology) or do you agree with Dan that we do not?


Thank you.

[calmoriah]

I probably should not have used "coherent" as that implies a step by step logical linkage existing and that is not present in LDS doctrine.  There is some revealed doctrine that may even appear to be contradictory at this time because we don't know the underlying principle....nor do we attempt to define it by reason as our doctrine comes from revelation.



  For "coherent" I was thinking more along the lines of "understandable".  



  There have been several threads that have discussed the issue in detail---basically LDS don't do the type of theology that is called in academia "systematic theology".  Our theology, what there is of it, is derived from revelation and any gaps to be filled in will only be filled in by revelation and it is a premise of our faith that our doctrine is incomplete and therefore while it can be organized, it does not exist as a 'whole system'.  More detailed discussion here:

http://www.mormonapo...entry1208047940

Edited by calmoriah, 30 January 2010 - 08:38 PM.

[calmoriah]

The other thread I was looking for appears to have been lost so I will simply quote two comments Dan Peterson made that sum up the issue quite nicely imo (one of them is from the thread I linked to above I believe):


Daniel Peterson, on Jul 11 2006, 02:43 PM, said:

A reasonably good discussion of what the term systematic theology includes and entails can be found at

http://www.answers.c...ematic-theology

Notably, since at least the nineteenth century -- but I would certainly include massive works like St. Thomas's thirteenth-centurySumma Theologiae and Summa contra gentiles under this category, as well -- systematic theology has been characterized by the urge to create rigorously coherent systems that can, in principle at least, be deduced from a relatively small number of axioms, somewhat on the model of Euclidean geometry.

Latter-day Saints simply don't do this. We've produced no such works.
Daniel Peterson, on Oct 10 2006, 11:02 AM, said:

Systematic theology is a technical term whose meaning is not derivable merely by looking up the meaning of theology and the meaning of systematic and combining them. When I deny that Mormonism does or has "systematic theology," I'm saying nothing about whether or not Mormon doctrine is self-consistent, makes sense, or anything of that sort. I'm denying that Mormonism does the kind of theology that appears in other Christian denominations and goes by that name.

To get an idea of what I mean, pick up a copy of the one of the multivolume works of Systematic Theology published under that title by James Leo Garrett, Wolfhart Pannenberg, or Francis Sch�¼ssler Fiorenza and John Galvin. (These are three that I happen to be able to see from where I'm sitting at the moment.) Or, for that matter, examine St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae or his Summa Contra Gentiles. Note the organization of these books. Note their heavy reliance upon philosophical reasoning. Then ask yourself whether any comparable book or set of books has been produced in the Latter-day Saint tradition.

We don't teach, publish, or read anything that would be recognized by Protestant or Catholic academics as falling within the discipline of "systematic theology." (Even Blake Ostler's brilliant recent volumes on Exploring Mormon Thought, the closest that any Latter-day Saint has ever come to "systematic theology," are really exercises in philosophical theology rather than ventures in systematization.) And, again, please note that I'm not saying that our doctrine is incoherent, ill-thought-out, disorganized, overly fluid, or anything of the kind. I'm simply saying that the academic field known as "systematic theology" is not cultivated by Latter-day Saints.

[Rob Bowman]

Calmoriah,

Evangelicals also don't do "systematic theology" in the sense specified by Dan Peterson ("rigorously coherent systems that can, in principle at least, be deduced from a
relatively small number of axioms, somewhat on the model of Euclidean geometry"). Nor would I agree that Thomas Aquinas produced systematic theology as so defined, although he engaged philosophical issues (primarily with respect to philosophical objections to Christian doctrine). Evangelicals view theology as dependent on revelation; it is "systematic" insofar as it is possible to organize our understanding of the teachings of God's revelation in Scripture in a way that shows how these teachings are interrelated and coherent. Most evangelicals would entirely agree that our best systematic theology will acknowledge gaps in our knowledge as well as limitations in demonstrating the coherence of revealed truth.

Wayne Grudem, Millard Erickson, and Thomas Oden are three good examples of contemporary evangelical theologians who have written widely used and respected textbooks on systematic theology.

By the way, I never said anything about Mormons doing systematic theology. I said something about evangelicals doing it. I was already aware of Mormon disavowals that they don't engage in systematic theology.