Benjamin McGuire

He asked to be flamed. Regardless, don't you have the same problem with someone who is declaring that the intention of scripture (and the gospel) is to assert that the subjection of women is a part of the Christian gospel?

The "rule over" part, at least in the language, is pretty clear. It is the word translated as "desire" that is problematic. The underlying Hebrew word is unique. It is the only occurrence of that word in that form (there are highly similar words in Genesis 4:7 and Song of Solomon 7:10). Part of the challenge is that the Genes 4:7 text shows a relationship: "7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." It is another difficult text. The other problem is that the LXX (the Greek Old Testament) is also very different from the Hebrew, and seems based on an original Hebrew word with a single letter difference from the Hebrew - leading a lot of readers to believe that there was a copyist error in the Genesis text. The Greek word means to turn back. And this could be understood in a couple of different ways. It could mean a turn back to the husband (either as a refuge or as a turning away from everyone else to focus on the husband), or it could mean to turn back on the husband - to have a difficult relationship. The text remains ambiguous on what this should mean in any case. I will take up your offer. /flame on The real problem is that we have to recognize that scriptural texts are cultural in nature. Certain things in the scriptures were both highly progressive at the time they were written and also completely misguided with respect to the new light and knowledge that has come into the world since they were written. We are told in the Book of Mormon to recontextualize scripture by likening it unto ourselves - by reflecting on it in light of the greater understanding that we have today. This idea that you put forward, that we should ignore that light and understanding in favor of a literalist interpretation is really what lies at the heart of biblical fundamentalism. It is particularly un-Christian (and contrary to the gospel as understood by LDS) to use this sort of interpretative guideline to promote sexist interpretations and understandings. Paul himself gives lots of other advice. Some of that advice is also very questionable. And, after all, Paul also comments in 1 Cor. 7: "The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife." If the man rules over the wife, so to does the wife rule over the husband. One thing stands out to me. In 1978, Elder McConkie quoted 2 Nephi 26:33 - And then he says this: Men and women are equal and should be understood as equal in the Gospel. And the reality is that any time that we argue that someone should rule over someone else (and of course Paul has more to say about this in terms of slavery), we are moving away from the Gospel of Jesus Christ - and in that last day, if we use the scriptures to justify inequality, we will be found on the left hand of God - claiming that all we did, we did in God's name (and justified by His scriptures), and yet, completely missing the point of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This includes those who have these kinds of misogynist attitudes - who think that their role is to be the one in charge, to make the decisions, to put women (and feminists) in their place. You are an absolutely poor example of a follower of Jesus Christ @teddyaware. /flame off

He was. His German translation was likely part of a Hutter polyglot - Hebrew, German, Latin, Greek. There was almost certainly some familiarity with Campbell's (English) translation (if nothing else than through Sidney Rigdon). There is some influence (probably indirect) in the JST from this. Joseph Smith had taken Hebrew lessons from J. Seixas almost a decade earlier at this point - and at the time (1835), Oliver Cowdery was sent east to purchase a number of books for the study of the scriptures - which included among other things a Gibbs Lexicon and a Moses Stuart Grammar. So, I think that it's fair to say that he had at least more than a minimal exposure to other translations and other understandings of the text. There was certainly a desire to become a competent reader in the original languages of the text. And there is little question that the impact of the Seixas lessons on the way that he interpreted scripture was profound. He also uses the various lexicons in the efforts that resulted in some of the KEP translational documents.

Why? You are presenting some really wrong ideas here. And it is really important to point this out because you are engaging with non-LDS and trying to persuade them that this is relevant LDS belief ...

Except it isn't that simple. This is a sort of prooftexting. It doesn't appear to be what was meant in the text. And the reality is that the Church eventually rejected this notion of sealings of adoption and instead patterned the relationships on biological familial relationships. That is, these sealings were replaced with sealings between children and their parents. Between these two things, your interpretation isn't meaningful at all. It is really as simple as that.

There is little question though, that even without a strong Catholic presence in the US in the early 19th century, there were certainly strong anti-Catholic sentiments. And the anti-credalism in the early U.S. (in which early Mormonism participates) is a part of this. The rhetoric was at times at odds with the practice - as you note. But Mormonism maintained this position considerably longer - because it was buoyed by early interpretation of the Book of Mormon.

In my opinion, the NIV.

Here are my thoughts on this specific question - The theology of the Book of Mormon is, at times, progressive. There are two distinct views in the earlier parts (Lehi and Abinadi) and then later, these two are brought together. It is Moroni that we tend to get the most complete synthesis of the two. Moroni tells us this (Moroni 7:27-28): There are other (I would suggest less complete) references to this idea - but here, Jesus is described as having received his "rights of mercy" from the Father. The atonement is about two things - justice and mercy. I think that sometimes we focus more on the justice part - because it is easier to understand. And if all we need to think about is justice, then perhaps a single drop of blood would be enough. But the thing about mercy (and we see this in the New Testament in the parable of the laborers and in the parable of the prodigal son, and so on) is that mercy, at least on the surface doesn't even have the pretense of justice. There is no fairness there (at least not as we generally recognize it). Earlier, I suggested that Mosiah 15 was of interest to me. Here is my interpretation (vss 1-9) - I think that this is addressing some of the same sort of concerns that we find in the statement of faith from Chalcedon. There we read: Truly God, and truly man. So what if we replace the words in Mosiah 15 - what if I use "truly God" or "true God" everywhere I read "the Father" and "truly man" or "true man" everywhere I read "the Son"? The theology here is fascinating. LDS have often read this passage as referring to God the Father and God the Son as separate persons - but I think that this is not what Abinadi means here. But Abinadi doesn't stop with the question of how the Messiah could be both God and man. Abinadi is interested in the functionalism of such a duology. What comes out of this is that by the atonement, God breaks the bands of death - but it is also the atonement that gives Jesus the power (as one of us - wholly human) to stand between us and justice - this is the mercy that Moroni speaks of. And I think from an LDS perspective, that one drop of blood might have been enough to answer justice. And in fact, since the victory over death is something that is external to our mortal existence, it is the divine nature in Jesus that overcomes death. But I think that it is the "exceeding the debt" that gives the man Jesus the necessary right of mercy that Moroni mentions. What I mean by this is that in LDS thought, despite the debt of justice being paid in full for all, not all enter into God's presence at the final judgement. That determination is made by the Son. And because this mercy is not always 'fair' in the way that we understand it, I would argue that by suffering what humanity suffers (and then some), Jesus can answer us (or rather we are perhaps forced to accept his judgment) because we cannot say that He does not understand our suffering - that He cannot understand why we did what we did, or made the choices that we made. Likewise, because mortality is inherently unfair (and unjust), He can, by experiencing what we experience (and then some) can understand when one of us was pushed beyond our capacity to bear - and in this way, the test of mortality becomes a level playing field from His perspective. Two individuals who made the same choices - for one there needs to be accountability, and for the other, mercy - because the sum of their experience was different, and the quality of their agency in that moment was different, and their willingness to accept the mercy of God may continue to be different, and so on. Alma 7:12 also describes this - And you can see here how there is a demarcation between the two. He takes on death to loose the bands of death (to answer justice). But He takes on the infirmities of the people "that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that He may know according to the flesh how to succor His people according to their infirmities." I think that there is something transcendent in the idea of a God who suffers our suffering, who shares our grief, who feels our pain - so that He can fully express the mercy that we need. And the theology here that He experiences it according to the flesh: not as a transcendent God, but as a mortal man. There is the repeated emphasis here that it is the man Jesus who must experience all of this. Perhaps this is an unfinished christology - but I think such readings help us understand why many in the LDS community tend to lean towards a more universalist understanding of the atonement based on the mercy of a God who experiences as man what we experience.

So I have a few thoughts - First, Mormonism as a whole does not (yet) have much of a specialized language for theological discussion. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the basic gist, as I understand it, is that early Mormonism displayed a protestant distrust of creeds (and creedal language), and so it chose to define its theology through the language of scripture - by redefining that language rather than trying to create new terminology that could be given more precise definitions. To use two examples on both sides of this issue, I might point to LDS discourse about the term "transgression." Or the absolute sense of confusion if I were to ask members in an LDS Sunday School class what they thought of the penal substitution theory of atonement. This is an important issue because when we get to this question about whether LDS have the freedom to ponder the meaning of atonement, there isn't, within the LDS Church, a particularly well defined description of what atonement is, or how it works. It is more of a functional description of what it does (the end result). Consequently, I would argue that there really isn't a dogma here. Further, if we measure the general requirements for full participation in Mormonism as represented by the requirements for temple participation, the list of recommend questions is relatively short and contains nothing at all about questions like this. One could argue that you could have very heterodox views on the atonement and still be able to have full participation in the LDS Church. I might go a bit further and suggest that there are a few other key LDS issues that will slow or delay the development of such a dogma - Early LDS schisms were not really comparable to the schisms of early Christianity. The succession crisis following the death of Joseph Smith, and the schisms that come with the end of polygamy are both of a distinctly different nature. On top of this, Mormonism has, for the most part (and this is certainly due to the way that Mormonism developed in its early years) managed to keep a central authority. So there hasn't been a need for anything (yet) like an ecumenical council, where dogma is hashed out and determined. Partly because of this, dogma is more likely to be found in policy (the LDS Church Handbook of Instruction) rather than in approved lesson materials. The LDS Church generally does not publish formal statements of doctrine - about the closest we have come is the Proclamation on the Family - but even there we have a document which contained nothing new (just material that gets re-prioritized) - it was correlated. And even with that document, leaders have found it necessary to make clarifications - which have come in material found in the Handbook of Instruction. Material in the Handbook is really more aimed at identifying heterodoxy and heresy rather than orthodoxy. So, at least for the time being, I don't believe that we will see a push towards dogma (certainly not in my lifetime). Further, for issues like this where there isn't a historical context with a lot of detail, the notion of correlation in the LDS Church makes changes towards a more dogmatic approach difficult. All of this, of course, is a different set of issues from whether or not an LDS member can find support for various views within authoritative sources.

It's been a while, but this article just hit my feed. To deal with the expected fallout of the decision (which went against the state of Wisconsin), the Wisconsin DoJ is arguing that the best remedy is to simply remove the benefit to all religious organizations and make everyone pay unemployment taxes: What is going on here, and the purpose of this article, is that Wisconsin is going to ask the Court if the elimination of the unemployment exemptions meets the Court's standard for equality. This seems likely to be the case, despite the protests from Catholic charities. My own interests are simply that the discussion dovetails so well with my earlier comments and expectations.

The reason why Mormonism dumps the cross (which comes to the forefront in 1915) is because of strong anti-Catholic sentiment in the leadership of the LDS Church. And while the idea of no celebrating the death of Jesus through the use of the cross is among the arguments that was fronted in 1915, it was only one of these arguments. Anti-catholic sentiment drove the continued taboo on crosses in LDS worship at least through the Presidency of David O. McKay. In the 1970s, much of the animosity towards Catholicism has disappeared. And with it, most of the arguments against the use of the cross. But because this one issue wasn't directly related to Catholicism, and since the LDS Church wasn't interested in lifting the taboo against crosses that had existed for a half-century, this idea became the central talking point for continuing the taboo. The resistance to the cross was not original to Mormonism - it comes through European Protestantism. In early America (as in parts of Europe) there was a distinct resistance to using the cross in religious settings. Mormonism drew from those traditions. And when many of the religious organizations relaxed their approach to the cross and started to incorporate them (and other elements formerly associated with Roman Catholicism), Mormonism did not. For those interested in the history of the issue, I would recommend two books (and a third which only has a relatively small section on it). First, Mike Reed's Banishing the Cross. This is a purely LDS take on the subject of the Mormon relationship with the cross as a symbol and its use. Second, Ryan Smith's Gothic Arches, Latin Crosses: Anti-Catholicism and American Church Designs in the Nineteenth Century. This is useful because it deals specifically with the issue of architectural design and symbolism. It uses (and references) a number of sources which go into much greater detail over the clashes between Protestantism and Catholicism - which mirror some of the Mormon-Catholic experience. Third, there is a chapter that deals with this subject in Gregory Prince's David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism. There is a lot of additional good material on this issue - but these three make a good starting point for the LDS perspective. To quote from Smith (p. 6): Our discussions of the issue of the cross have lost most of their original context, but it is the historical context which explains why the view became so prevalent, why it has persisted, and also why the remnant of the explanation that we have seems to really miss the point.

This statement would be nice, if it was accurate. It is misleading (at best). In the King Follett Discourse (shortly before his death), Joseph Smith made this statement: Joseph Smith was referring to a German translation by Luther. (My current belief is that Joseph was using a Hutter Polyglot). The only reason why the KJV was used regularly was because it was the only widely available English Translation. It wasn't until the publication of the RV in 1887 that the LDS leadership began to more enthusiastically embrace the King James text. And it was more because they were opposed to the translational choices (and corrections) that were found in the RV. This was further strengthened because of the decision to canonize the Book of Moses along with JS-Matthew (in 1880). That the new translations moved the base text further from the JST emendations, was considered evidence that the new translation was worse. Joseph Smith himself had simply stated that he believed in the text as it was written by the original authors - and made efforts over the course of his life to read the text in its original language. It is only after the RV comes out that the LDS Church begins to catch a case of KJ-onlyism. Even though some of the newer translations are much better, we are too entrenched in our KJV text use. So we use it because it is practical to use it with an LDS audience. But I prefer other translations. Then again, I also have a BHS sitting on my shelf, along with a Nestle-Aland. So I have choices when I need precision.

I think that what the LDS view misses here is that we have given God an entire set of attributes involving his own physical body and so on - and when we think of Jesus as both God and man, we tend to extend those physical attributes on to Jesus. This creates confusion. For 3DOP, this confusion doesn't exist because they don't have to complicate the question. Jesus's physical existence is purely human (and this is a necessary condition of the atonement). For LDS theology, the better approach (which is largely being missed in this thread) is to understand that what Jesus brings with Him is potentially only that which He had in the pre-existence (which has nothing to do with his physical nature - His human nature). And while we sometimes (and I think at least one poster here has gone down this road) suggested that the Jesus must have been divine in His physical nature to suffer as He did, we also have to remember what Luke 22:43 tells us: "And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him." In that window of time when we were actively trying to create our own uniquely LDS systematic theology, we end up creating problems. To suggest that Jesus was able to undergo this suffering because He was uniquely God is in fact to undermine the nature of suffering in itself. It isn't because Jesus was God that the suffering matters, it is that Jesus was man. Mosiah 15 does it's best to differentiate between the two natures of Jesus and to point to the fact that it is the fully human nature of Jesus that allows for intercession to be made. To a God, there is no real suffering, there is no real temptation. To say that Jesus suffers in the capacity of His divine nature is to say that he suffered a trivial thing. And Mosiah 15 presents a view of atonement which I suspect is not all that different from @3DOP's, as well as a view of the nature of Jesus that isn't too far off (Mosiah 15 is quite similar in a way to Chalcedon's Statement of Faith). A final thought on the subject of this thread. There has always been (at least since the discovery of DNA) the idea that for Jesus to be God, to be the literal Son of God, that He must somehow be genetically half-divine - that His DNA was half-human, half-God (like perhaps the Greek demi-gods of myth). DNA is a mechanism of mortality. It causes aging and death. I don't see a reason to believe that God either has DNA or has a need for DNA - and that our DNA is somehow a flawed map of that DNA of God's. And yet there are those here who are so invested in this idea that they have argued that perhaps even ethnicity (identified as a collection of inherited genetic traits) was a characteristic of the pre-existence and that genetic variation in humanity was caused by God the Father having multiple celestial wives who had a range of genetic traits which caused such ethnic diversity. This is all nonsense in my opinion. But I think it helps point to the speculations that leads to these kinds of questions.

The oldest map of the world that we have is a Babylonian map (dated to around the 8th century BC). Encircling the known world are mountains. These mountains supported the heavens. They represented permanence. The phrase in Genesis 49:26 - "unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills" is akin to saying - "unto the ends of the earth" - both physically and metaphorically (as long as the earth exists). This goes back to your earlier comments - but it doesn't - at least in the context of Genesis - directly represent some specific place or range of mountains. The interpretation of making the everlasting hills the United States in LDS thought comes from Joseph Fielding Smith. I think it's a stretch.

No, it doesn't.

The practice and theology of sealings of adoption ended around 1894. The shift in the theology of the Celestial Kingdom no longer required it - and who you were sealed to stopped becoming a core criteria for your place in the Celestial Kingdom. With this shift, many of those sealings of adoption were replaced with sealings to biological parents.

The fascinating thing about all of this is that there was no 'pattern' given to Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith saw a garment. But even in the first ones made, there were changes. This comes from James Alred (July 10, 1844): Joseph adopted the collars into the design. This suggests, among other things, that there wasn't a sort of sewing pattern or garment patter, but a general look, with some instructions about what should be there. The one-piece garment was not original. It is pretty clear (at least from history) that President Joseph F. Smith's comments ought to be understood in the context of being "authorized", since it was only a few years later (1923) that President Heber J. Grant did in fact authorize significant changes to the garment. And at the time, the splinter groups (the polygamous off-shoots) argued that this was evidence of apostasy in the Utah Church. Without any first-hand statements to go by, I suspect that whatever Joseph received was more of a guideline. I think that - as with much that involves our temple worship - we tend to fixate on all of this, as if the material aspects are far more important than the symbolic or figurative nature the garments have. There is something else worth pointing out. When President Joseph F. Smith made his comment, most of the garments were hand-made at home instead of purchased. The process was nothing like it is today. There was a discussion published back in 1981 in a BYU student paper (as a follow up to the major changes made in the Garment in 1979), which noted the following: I found that last sentence in my quote to be interesting. It wasn't long after this that the Church updated it's policies on making your own garments - requiring that members could no longer make garments from scratch, although they could still make garments from officially sourced materials using authorized patterns. In 2010, the CHI was updated to inform members that they could only make the apron. And even that has been discontinued now. So, I think that President Joseph F. Smith's remarks might have some context that reflect a different intent than the suggestion that the garment can never change. That intent, now that the Church manufactures everything, isn't necessarily meaningful.

While these maps are based on descriptions found in the Old Testament, all of these descriptions are written long after the events they allegedly describe. From archaeological history, we know that none of the tribes of Israel actually occupied the territories as described in these sections of the Old Testament. The conquest was never complete. So we run into this very real historical problem when we try to use these descriptions in the way that you are using them here. The general consensus (and I agree with this) is that the first half of Joshua would have been composed in the mid-600s BCE, while the rest of Joshua came later - perhaps even in the post-exilic period. This makes the division of the land among the tribes more of a 'what should have been' rather than a 'what really was'. Genesis 49, which you quote, doesn't fit well with the much later mapping in Joshua. But the mapping in Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers doesn't exclude this ideal for Zebulon. These maps don't materialize out of thin air. We can loosely date them because of their resemblance to political maps that we have from other sources. Some of them match political divisions under Assyrian control, some under Babylonian control. And this contributes to the academic dating of the texts to periods of time that match the historical record.

If only I could see the future ...

Patriarchal Blessings began in 1833. In 1834, we have very few designations. By 1837 it was included in more than 80% of them, and within another few years had climbed to more than 90%. Most of the early years had relatively small sample sizes - except for 1835 which had a relatively low percentage of tribe designations. You can read some things about it here (I am not a huge fan of the article, but it is useful in this question). So including a tribe occurs more or less at the beginning of patriarchal blessings and very quickly becomes a standard part of it.

I doubt it. I don't personally think that any Latter-day Saint living today will be around for the Second Coming. On top of that, it is hard to believe that in a apocalyptic context that wealth will continue to have much value. If governments collapse, even land ownership becomes much less meaningful.

The Articles of Faith are not that technical in nature. The thing about the phrase "restoration of the Ten Tribes" is that it is a relatively common phrase used in the later 18th and early 19th century with a specific connotation and meaning. The Article of Faith is referring to this idea - it isn't inventing something new - and this was important because it wasn't being used to communicate with a small group with their own technical vocabulary.

The LDS Church believes in a literal restoration - in that there was land given to the twelve tribes as their promised land, and the restoration of all twelve of those tribes to that land becomes a part of the predictive signs of the Second Coming. The ten tribes that are lost have to come back, and Judah and Benjamin have to be restored (as well as Levi - which is also not one of the lost tribes). We have to remember that in 1841, Orson Hyde dedicated Jerusalem to the return of the Jews and the other children of Abraham. Israel (as we know it now) simply didn't exist.

The problem within the LDS community, however, is that there is a determinate time-frame that must exist. That determinate time-frame exists because there is a finite number of spirit-children (determined in the pre-existence) who will come to this earth to be born. It was the development of a pre-existence theology and narrative - the extending of creation earlier than a Garden of Eden that began to cause this shift in perspective. We went from something closer to your view to a view that while we may not know the time of its occurrence, that time is predetermined. Rather than the push to build the New Jerusalem, we have a theology that says that when the time is ready, God will instruct us, open doors for us, etc. We reinterpret that growing wealth of the Church as a preparation that we will be able to build Zion when the time comes. So the emphasis also shifts to the parable of the virgins with their oil lamps.

I'll tell you what - I'll recommend a few sources. You can read through them. Grant Underwood's masters thesis: Early Mormon Millenarianism: Another Look. And his The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism. Christopher Blythe's Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse. Dan Erickson's As a Thief in the Night: The Mormon Quest for Millennial Deliverance. One of the things that we have that is very clear is a very different view of millennialism now than was held by early Mormons. I don't think that this is particularly noteworthy. There are lots of theological changes that come in the Church. We don't have divisions in the Celestial Kingdom, for example, until 1905. We didn't seal people to their deceased ancestors until 1894 (we didn't start proxy priesthood ordinations until 1877). The LDS Church has been a rather constant string of changes. So to have changing views - even deeply held views - shouldn't be surprising. There was (and still is) a progressive nature to our LDS theology. For example, we no longer are trying actively to move the Church's headquarters to Missouri, to establish Zion in preparation for the millennium - and we are not trying to get members of the Church to move there. Of course, one of the biggest difference between now and 200 years ago is that we have our own history and our own theological developments. We aren't all converts from other (mostly restorationist) backgrounds. And we have seen (historically) too many predictions of the end of the world and the Second Coming to really take any of them individually at face value.