Book of Mormon Criticism of Calvin

[JarMan]

12 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

It's not. Perhaps you could explain why it is - apart from your intuition. This is one of those things where your intuition (as opposed to an understanding of statistics) is not your friend. Lots of texts and writers quote entire chapters in the middle of larger works. And some chapters in a variety of works have special value within a specific context. So they get quoted more often. Your argument would make more sense if no one else, anywhere else, were to have quoted the entirety of Isaiah 53 in the middle of a larger work. But we know that this isn't the case. In fact, we know that one of these two sources that you are point to, does this, in the way that he does it (Grotius) because someone else did it before him, and he is copying their work. And this tells me that this isn't an important data point at all.

It isn't all that similar. But I give you credit for continuing to try to use the broadest possible terms to create your similarities. The Book of Mormon asks a specific question. And then it uses Isaiah 53 and an interpretation of Isaiah 53 to answer that question. It is not the same as the question that Grotius asks. Grotius isn't writing to a Jewish audience. The following is from the translator's preface to the edition that I provided earlier (since I prefer to allow others to make these kinds of statements):

This is not an attempt to convert the Jews. It is an apologetics work more generally. What is a prooftext? It is a term used to describe the use of a passage of scripture to defend a particular doctrine or theological principle. Prooftexts have been used for thousands of years. Both Christians and Jews have used Isaiah 53 as a prooftext. So this isn't (by itself) an important data point - especially when using a macro lens to look at it. Is Grotius a Christian? Is his attempt to identify the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 with Jesus? Yes. Is Abinadi a Christian? Is his purpose to identify the suffering servant with Jesus? No to both counts. Is the debate between Abinadi and the priests of Noah an external apologetic or an internal discussion? It seems internal to me.

So yes, both are using Isaiah 53 as a prooftext. And there isn't anything special about this. On the other hand, they are using the prooftext for very different purposes in very different contexts to answer very different questions. And again, this means that your reducing these discussions to this simple similarity is a way of concealing these differences. Your argument is simply a bad argument based on an inappropriate use of parallels without considering the differences.

You haven't shown how they are alike. You have merely claimed that they are. Most of Grotius's use of scripture is simply borrowed from earlier authors. The sources can often be identified explicitly. Here is a brief excerpt from J. P. Heering's Hugo Grotius as Apologist for the Christian Religion: A Study of his Work De Veritate Relionis Christianae (1640) (Brill, 2004) - emphasis added:

Rabbi Hadarsan refers to the 11th century AD Moshe ha-Darshan. In this particular work, there is some original material from Grotius, but there is very little. And unlike the Book of Mormon, Grotius makes regular references to his sources. The Book of Mormon refers us to nothing but the scriptural text.

It's getting pretty old constantly reminding you what's going on in this discussion. For the nth time, I'm not trying to claim these two texts are related. I know there are differences in the texts and I don't care. You asked me to identify how Grotius used a particular scripture. I've chosen Isaiah 53 because there's a record of what he said. I've pointed out at least three similarities in how Grotius and the BoM used it. If there are differences it doesn't matter. What matters is if there are contradictions, and I don't see any.

12 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

As a side note, here is another contradiction between Grotius and the Book of Mormon. Grotius was a firm believer that the biblical text was complete and without error. Heering (p. 70) explains to us that:

This is very different from the Book of Mormon's assertion that many plain and precious things were removed.

This is not at all what Grotius thought. He recognized contradictions in the bible, like Paul's eschatology. He saw some biblical books as being more valuable than others and was quite interested in the apocrypha and extra-canonical texts like Enoch.

12 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Yet, this isn't what the Book of Mormon teaches. In fact the Book of Mormon goes a very different direction - and it comes in at least two specific ways. The first is that the Book of Mormon argues that mankind does not have absolute agency - and that when man acts in ways that are contrary to the will of God because he does not have agency, that it is not counted as sinful. The Book of Mormon takes this even further (away from Arminianism) by asserting that man can in fact have little enough agency that they cannot choose to have faith. The second is that man can do good without it being caused by the grace of God (just that this good isn't enough to be salvific). In other words, the Book of Mormon denies the idea that 'this grace of God is the beginning, continuance, and accomplishment of all good. Alma reiterates this point a bit later.

You are simply wrong. The Arminian view (much like Calvanism) asserts total depravity to man. From birth. Benjamin does not. He says this three times in this sermon in verses 18 and 19: -

"the infant perisheth not that dieth in his infancy; but men drink damnation to their own souls except they ... become as little children, ... the natural man is an enemy to God, ... unless he ... becometh as a child."

This is not Arminianism. More to the point though, Grotius discusses the natural man very differently than you are. So perhaps you can find in Grotius some different reference to this idea that you claim he should have. I haven't yet been able to. Grotius did not have the same views on several of these topics as did, for example, Servetus (where we first started this discussion).

You are not describing Arminianism correctly. The 5 articles of remonstrance from 1610 were crafted to sound as much like Calvinism as possible because of the politics related to the dispute. After a few decades the Arminian view really starts to be expressed in a way that makes the differences obvious. Arminians believe in prevenient grace, which allows a person to exercise faith. We find this idea in the BoM several times.

13 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

No. No. No. Archaisms exist within the public awareness of language. You don't have to be familiar with a phrase in a book to understand that phrase as an archaism. The books merely represent the persistence of the language in popular awareness. Texts represent the only way that we can measure that awareness - but as I have pointed out, there are solid reasons to believe that these kinds of archaisms persist in spoken language as well as written language - and in that context, they come in to play as representations of formal language - of the sort we might hear during a religious sermon. As long as that language persists in the environment, there is no reason to assert that the author had to know Holinshed or any other work. Language doesn't work the way that you keep asserting that it does.

I haven't ever said that a single person should know them all. The Book of Mormon contains only a tiny portion of the archaisms that exist - a tiny portion. For someone to be familiar with those forms is not as unexpected as you seem to think it is. I am not ignoring what's going on here. I am telling you that you have such absolutlely wrong assumptions about the persistance and use of language. Language simply doesn't change as quickly or as absolutely as you seem to suggest that it does. And you are hyperfocusing on a single small set of these archaisms that exist in the Book of Mormon. There is this strangeness in your argument in part because you haven't done any of the original research - so you don't really understand the arguments you are employing. Most of what we would term archaisms in the Book of Mormon are found in the King James Bible. But we both know that this is generally taken out of the discussion because we all know that archaic or not, that language was prevalent in the 19th century and would continue to be prevalent through the middle of the twentieth century when we finally start seeing alternate English Bible translations. The number of archaisms in the Book of Mormon is actually a tiny percentage of the text. This suits Skousen's and Carmack's arguments fairly well. It doesn't help yours.

But most of the text is Modern language. This isn't a redaction. There isn't mostly archaic language with small pockets of redacted modern language put in by a redactor. We have a Modern language text with small bits of EModE in it. And the content is modern. You haven't brought up any content that cannot be found in texts in the 19th century. Can you find material in the Book of Mormon that reflects content that could only come from the 17th century? I really don't think so.

No, actually, you don't get a different feel when reading Skousen's text. Again, you seem to be suggesting that there is this huge quantity of archaisms in the text. There aren't. I have never labeled the text as a pseduo-archaic text. I have suggested that Book of Mormon incorporates archaisms as a way of helping direct the reading of the text in a certain way (not an uncommon tactic). This is very different from the pseudo-scriptural efforts that you (and Skousen and Carmack) refer to. The text doesn't read like an EModE text with modern redactions. If you think that this is the best description for it, then provide me with a known example of an EModE text that has undergone the same level of redaction that you are arguing for in the Book of Mormon and lets compare them. It should be easy enough, right?

The reason the BoM looks like an early modern text with modern redaction is because that's the best way to explain the early modern elements. You haven't presented anything close to coherent that explains them.

13 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Except that Abinadi doesn't present us with a governmental theory of atonement. This is a theological discussion, with a very different purpose than Grotius's attempt to ground the nature of human rights. From Abinadi:

This builds on 2 Nephi 2. Here are verses 8-10:

This presents two stages. The first stage is an atonement from the fall - and the resurrection of Jesus "breaketh the bands of death" for all mankind. After which, all mankind is brought into the presence of God at which point the Son has the power to intercede on behalf of the righteous. This is not a governmental theory of atonement. It is closest to a penal substitutionary theory of atonement. A little later in verse 26 we get this:

So, here, we are told that because the Messiah redeems humanity from the fall of Adam, they gain the capacity of agency. Abinadi continues this line of thinking:

To repeat myself, this is not a governmental theory of atonement. From your link on this theory:

Penal substitutionary theory suggests:

The Messiah, according to Abinadi, stands between humanity and justice having taken upon himself the iniquity of mankind. There is very different from Grotius.

The BoM is pretty consistent in presenting a governmental theory of atonement. It emphasizes God's love. It satisfies the demands of justice. It provides a substitute to suffer man's punishment. It's eternal in scope. I don't think any of the other atonement theories check all of these boxes.

13 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

But, as I pointed out, your examples are not typical, are they. You are stretching a great deal here to create a problem that doesn't need to be addressed - except perhaps by Carmack and Skousen.

The problem that exists is that you haven't been able to explain how numerous archaisms got into the text. 

[Benjamin McGuire]

8 hours ago, JarMan said:

What matters is if there are contradictions, and I don't see any.

And this is the problem. They are there. I am trying to point them out - and you keep saying that they don't exist. But whatever.

You say that you aren't arguing that the texts are related - but this just isn't true. You are arguing that they are both written by the same man - and because of that, that they are written in the same approximate time frame and in the same environmental context. These are arguments about a relationship between the texts. This is the part of the case that you are making. So it puzzles me why you are so insistent that you are doing anything but this. Perhaps you don't understand the implications of your own arguments, I don't know - but you are certainly arguing that the texts are related. In the similar fashion you have been arguing that the Book of Mormon is related to other texts (like Holinshed). When you argue that an author read Holinshed and borrowed language from his text - this is an argument for a relationship between texts.

8 hours ago, JarMan said:

This is not at all what Grotius thought. He recognized contradictions in the bible, like Paul's eschatology. He saw some biblical books as being more valuable than others and was quite interested in the apocrypha and extra-canonical texts like Enoch.

Why don't you actually quote some Grotius so we can discuss it then. But I should point out that none of the things you just mentioned contradict what I stated. Grotius's problems with the text (assuming that he had any) never, ever, rose to the level of 1 Nephi 13:28 - "there are many plain and precious things taken away from the book, which is the book of the Lamb of God." Grotius's view is the complete opposite of this - the text is accurate, and rather than the Church removing these plan and precious parts, Grotius claims that those responsible for the transmission of scripture were inspired and nothing was left out.

8 hours ago, JarMan said:

You are not describing Arminianism correctly. The 5 articles of remonstrance from 1610 were crafted to sound as much like Calvinism as possible because of the politics related to the dispute. After a few decades the Arminian view really starts to be expressed in a way that makes the differences obvious. Arminians believe in prevenient grace, which allows a person to exercise faith. We find this idea in the BoM several times.

I am describing it appropriately. Well, it isn't me. I am quoting another source (that I referenced). Take your disagreement up with them. I am outsourcing this sort of stuff specifically for that reason.

But that isn't really the point. I am not trying to compare the Book of Mormon to Arminianism. I am comparing it to Grotius (who you claim wrote the book). Provide the text from Grotius that shows how Grotius's view of the natural man is perfectly in line with the Book of Mormon's view. That would be the best way to settle this dispute.

8 hours ago, JarMan said:

The reason the BoM looks like an early modern text with modern redaction is because that's the best way to explain the early modern elements. You haven't presented anything close to coherent that explains them.

No. The Book of Mormon doesn't look like an early modern text. Period. The Book of Mormon looks and reads like a Late Modern text with some archaisms thrown in. I challenge you to find me an Early Modern text and provide a substantial chunk of it (2 or 3 paragraphs) for comparison. I'll repeat the problem you have - you are taking this backwards. You are assuming that the Book of Mormon is somehow an EModE text (based on Skousen's and Carmack's claims). But you haven't actually read much in the way of Early Modern English texts.

The funny thing about the EModE elements (archaisms) is that the one we have been debating - the phrase 'the more part of' - is one of Skousen's and Carmack's best arguments. They only move in my direction if we start looking at their other examples.

8 hours ago, JarMan said:

The BoM is pretty consistent in presenting a governmental theory of atonement. It emphasizes God's love. It satisfies the demands of justice. It provides a substitute to suffer man's punishment. It's eternal in scope. I don't think any of the other atonement theories check all of these boxes.

I'm beginning to think you haven't read the Book of Mormon, either. And perhaps that you really don't understand the theological underpinnings of the various theories of atonement. The text of the Book of Mormon reads:

Quote

... standing betwixt them and justice; having broken the bands of death, taken upon himself their iniquity and their transgressions, having redeemed them, and satisfied the demands of justice.

This is not a governmental theory of atonement - this is the language of classic penal substitution. It doesn't matter how many boxes you check - you are going to run into this problem here. This isn't to say that the Book of Mormon is Calvanistic in its atonement theology - it doesn't limit the atonement at all in the way that Calvanism did. But it certainly is not governemental theory (and more particularly it isn't Arminian governmental theory of atonement).

8 hours ago, JarMan said:

The problem that exists is that you haven't been able to explain how numerous archaisms got into the text. 

I have. I will say it again. The Book of Mormon uses archaisms deliberately as formal language as a rhetorical device to enhance the text's claims of being a translation of an ancient scriptural record. The author of the text (whoever that author was) deliberately used most of these archaisms as part of this rhetorical strategy. This includes the scattered references to and many of the paraphrases of the King James text of the Bible. That is the explanation that I have been providing for the better part of a decade now.

Edited February 18, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[JarMan]

8 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

And this is the problem. They are there. I am trying to point them out - and you keep saying that they don't exist. But whatever.

You say that you aren't arguing that the texts are related - but this just isn't true. You are arguing that they are both written by the same man - and because of that, that they are written in the same approximate time frame and in the same environmental context. These are arguments about a relationship between the texts. This is the part of the case that you are making. So it puzzles me why you are so insistent that you are doing anything but this. Perhaps you don't understand the implications of your own arguments, I don't know - but you are certainly arguing that the texts are related. In the similar fashion you have been arguing that the Book of Mormon is related to other texts (like Holinshed). When you argue that an author read Holinshed and borrowed language from his text - this is an argument for a relationship between texts.

When I say the texts aren't related, I mean that one is not directly relying on the other. The reason that is an important distinction for this discussion is that you keep pointing out where the texts say different (but not contradictory) things, as if that is somehow important. The only way that could even be important is if I was trying to say that one text relied on the other. Of course the texts say different things. They are written for completely different purposes. Any differences you point out are meaningless. We could go to any author's body of work and show that they say different things in different contexts. This is you not understanding the implications of your own criticism.

If you truly want to show that there's a problem, you need to show a contradiction. A different context is not necessarily a contradiction. You are ignoring this nuance but I'm not going to let you get away with it.

8 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Why don't you actually quote some Grotius so we can discuss it then. But I should point out that none of the things you just mentioned contradict what I stated. Grotius's problems with the text (assuming that he had any) never, ever, rose to the level of 1 Nephi 13:28 - "there are many plain and precious things taken away from the book, which is the book of the Lamb of God." Grotius's view is the complete opposite of this - the text is accurate, and rather than the Church removing these plan and precious parts, Grotius claims that those responsible for the transmission of scripture were inspired and nothing was left out.

No, he did not say that nothing was left out. CFR.

8 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I am describing it appropriately. Well, it isn't me. I am quoting another source (that I referenced). Take your disagreement up with them. I am outsourcing this sort of stuff specifically for that reason.

But that isn't really the point. I am not trying to compare the Book of Mormon to Arminianism. I am comparing it to Grotius (who you claim wrote the book). Provide the text from Grotius that shows how Grotius's view of the natural man is perfectly in line with the Book of Mormon's view. That would be the best way to settle this dispute.

Why don't you provide your source again, then? I went back and couldn't find it. I don't think you are understanding some important nuances.

And you are conflating two different issues. One issue is whether little children are sinless. The other issue has to do with the depravity of humans. And by your description, the BoM contradicts itself since it describes all men as fallen (total depravity) and yet provides that little children are sinless. I will look for things directly from Grotius on both topics. 

The distinction between Calvinism and Arminianism on the issue of depravity is prevenient grace. This is the part you are missing. The principal of prevenient grace, which is essentially agency to choose God, is found several times in the BoM. But first, let's look at depravity in the BoM in a few instances.

Mosiah 3:19 "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit..."

Alma 12:22 "...Now we see that Adam did fall by the partaking of the forbidden fruit, according to the word of God; and thus we see, that by his fall, all mankind became a lost and fallen people."

Alma 34:9 "...yea, all are fallen and are lost, and must perish except it be through the atonement which it is expedient should be made."

We see here that the BoM does put forth "total depravity" since it says that all are fallen from Adam. Calvin's view has Christ saving only his elect, with nothing anyone could do to change that. The Arminian view inserts prevenient grace which is the principal that gives people the ability to choose Christ. So the big takeaway here is agency given by God to choose Christ (or not) = prevenient grace. Here are a few examples:

2 Nephi 2:26 "And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon..." Notice the "not to be acted upon..." This is a rejection of predestination.

Helaman 14:30-31 "...God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free.  He hath given unto you that ye might know good from evil, and he hath given unto you that ye might choose life or death..."

Alma 42:27 "Therefore, O my son, whosoever will come may come and partake of the waters of life freely; and whosoever will not come the same is not compelled to come..."

8 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I'm beginning to think you haven't read the Book of Mormon, either. And perhaps that you really don't understand the theological underpinnings of the various theories of atonement. The text of the Book of Mormon reads:

This is not a governmental theory of atonement - this is the language of classic penal substitution. It doesn't matter how many boxes you check - you are going to run into this problem here. This isn't to say that the Book of Mormon is Calvanistic in its atonement theology - it doesn't limit the atonement at all in the way that Calvanism did. But it certainly is not governemental theory (and more particularly it isn't Arminian governmental theory of atonement).

Simply claiming the BoM isn't consistent with governmental theory of atonement is not the same thing as showing it. You're going to have to show me where the contradiction is. I don't think there is one.

8 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I have. I will say it again. The Book of Mormon uses archaisms deliberately as formal language as a rhetorical device to enhance the text's claims of being a translation of an ancient scriptural record. The author of the text (whoever that author was) deliberately used most of these archaisms as part of this rhetorical strategy. This includes the scattered references to and many of the paraphrases of the King James text of the Bible. That is the explanation that I have been providing for the better part of a decade now.

You haven't been able to show how the author could have known these archaisms. These are rare forms that were almost non-existent, if not completely non-existent, in current use. You just proclaim such with no evidence. The corpora evidence works solidly against you, here.

Edited February 18, 2023 by JarMan

[Benjamin McGuire]

26 minutes ago, JarMan said:

you truly want to show that there's a problem, you need to show a contradiction. A different context is not necessarily a contradiction. You are ignoring this nuance but I'm not going to let you get away with it.

Look, I have been showing contradictions. It isn't different contexts. It is different ideas. And these ideas were important within the religious discourse that Grotius was engaged in. You keep denying it, but they are still there.

28 minutes ago, JarMan said:

No, he did not say that nothing was left out. CFR.

I thought you read his material ...

Book 3, Section 15, has the heading: "An Answer to the Objection of Scripture Being Altered".

Quote

It must be owned, that, as in other books, so in these it might happen, and has happened, that, through carelessness or perverseness in the transcribers, some letters, syllables, or words, may be changed, omitted, or added. But it is very unreasonable, that, because of such a difference of copies, which could not happen in so long time, there should arise any controversy about the [New] Testament or book itself; because both custom and reason require that that should be preferred before the rest which is to be found in the most ancient copies. But it can never be proved that all the copies are corrupted by fraud, or any other way, especially in those places which contain any doctrine, or remarkable point of history;
...
Neither is any remarkable passage altered; for such an alteration must have something designed by it, and then that part would plainly differ from those other parts and books which are not altered, which is no where to be seen; nay, as we observed, there is a wonderful harmony in the sense every where. Moreover, as soon as any of the apostles, or apostolical men, published any thing, doubtless the Christians took great care to have many copies of it, as became pious persons, and such as were desirous of preserving and propagating the truth to posterity
...
Nor was there at that time any one in the church of so great authority as to have been obeyed, if he had designed to alter any thing; as is sufficiently manifest from the liberty taken by Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Cyprian, to differ from those who were of the highest rank in the church.
...
And what we hinted concerning the Divine Providence, relates as much to the principle parts as to the whole books; that it is not agreeable thereto that God should suffer so many thousand men, who were regardful of piety, and sought after eternal life with a sincere intention, to fall into an error that they could not possible avoid. And thus much may suffice for the books of the New Testament, which, if they were alone extant, were sufficient to teach us the true religion.

That sounds very, very different from 1 Nephi 13:29 -

Quote

... because of the many plain and precious things which have been taken out of the book, which were plain unto the understanding of the children of men, according to the plainness which is in the Lamb of God—because of these things which are taken away out of the gospel of the Lamb, an exceedingly great many do stumble, yea, insomuch that Satan hath great power over them.

At any rate, moving on ...

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

The distinction between Calvinism and Arminianism on the issue of depravity is prevenient grace. This is the part you are missing. The principal of prevenient grace, which is essentially agency to choose God, is found several times in the BoM. But first, let's look at depravity in the BoM in a few instances.

Look I am not interested in the difference between Arminianism and Calvanism. It is irrelevant. What I want you to show me is what Grotius believed about salvation. That is the important issue here.

The Book of Mormon does not put forward a total depravity because it lists entire classes of people who cannot sin: little children and those without the law. Moroni 8 tells us: "For behold that all little children are alive in Christ, and also all they that are without the law. For the power of redemption cometh on all them that have no law; wherefore, he that is not condemned, or he that is under no condemnation, cannot repent; and unto such baptism availeth nothing."

This is not total depravity. As I keep telling you, you cannot rely only on the things that you believe are similarities - you have to account for the differences. Abinadi himself says in Mosiah 15:23 - "And little children also have eternal life." There is no requirement for them to choose God. They don't have to receive grace. They cannot sin. And so there isn't total depravity.

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

Simply claiming the BoM isn't consistent with governmental theory of atonement is not the same thing as showing it. You're going to have to show me where the contradiction is. I don't think there is one.

I did. The fact that you refuse to accept it isn't my problem.=

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

You haven't been able to show how the author could have known these archaisms.

I don't have to. The language is clearly in the environment. You cannot explain to me reasonably why they wouldn't have known it without having access to specific texts.

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

These are rare forms that were almost non-existent, if not completely non-existent, in current use. You just proclaim such with no evidence. The corpora evidence works solidly against you, here.

This just isn't true. And it doesn't really matter how many times you try to say it. There are hundreds of texts published in the first half of the 19th century using these forms. Hundreds of them. Yes, many of them quote older works. The King James Bible is one of these older works. I am just going to have to keep saying (even though you just don't get it) that you really don't understand the arguments that Skousen and Carmack made or how they apply (or don't apply) to the arguments you are making.

In any case, why don't we just stick with the contradictions between Grotius and the Book of Mormon. I have provided a pretty clear one. Are you going to accept it, or are you going to blame it on 'the redactor'?

[JarMan]

17 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Look, I have been showing contradictions. It isn't different contexts. It is different ideas. And these ideas were important within the religious discourse that Grotius was engaged in. You keep denying it, but they are still there.

I thought you read his material ...

Book 3, Section 15, has the heading: "An Answer to the Objection of Scripture Being Altered".

That sounds very, very different from 1 Nephi 13:29 -

Ok, I have to (sheepishly) admit to a bit of a blind spot here. However, I think there is a way to understand the plain and precious things taken away from the gospel from a Grotian perspective. The following is from The Historical Criticism of the New Testament: A Survey of Origins by Victor Paul Furnish:

Quote

Grotius believed that the Bible contained "the pure, classical form of Christianity" which had been lost in the course of the centuries. The humanism and classical training of Grotius (he had studied under the great philologist J. Scaliger) is evident here, for he was convinced "that in the earliest church biblical Christianity had been most purely grasped and understood", not yet overlaid with dogma.

The challenge here is that we've always read 1 Nephi 13 as saying that things were literally taken out of the bible. However, if we read "taken away" as meaning being obscured by later dogma then I think this makes a lot of sense.

18 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

At any rate, moving on ...

Look I am not interested in the difference between Arminianism and Calvanism. It is irrelevant. What I want you to show me is what Grotius believed about salvation. That is the important issue here.

The Book of Mormon does not put forward a total depravity because it lists entire classes of people who cannot sin: little children and those without the law. Moroni 8 tells us: "For behold that all little children are alive in Christ, and also all they that are without the law. For the power of redemption cometh on all them that have no law; wherefore, he that is not condemned, or he that is under no condemnation, cannot repent; and unto such baptism availeth nothing."

This is not total depravity. As I keep telling you, you cannot rely only on the things that you believe are similarities - you have to account for the differences. Abinadi himself says in Mosiah 15:23 - "And little children also have eternal life." There is no requirement for them to choose God. They don't have to receive grace. They cannot sin. And so there isn't total depravity.

You're presenting a definition of total depravity that nobody else would accept. Even Calvinism has an exception for infants that are born in the covenant. Arminians have a broader exception for all children that have not reached the age of accountability. So the total depravity of the Book of Mormon is consistent with the total depravity of Arminianism. You are trying to create contradictions by changing definitions.

18 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Look I am not interested in the difference between Arminianism and Calvanism. It is irrelevant. What I want you to show me is what Grotius believed about salvation. That is the important issue here.

Arminianism is very important here since Grotius was a known Arminian. This seems pretty obvious. However, when we have primary material from Grotius, then obviously that should take precedence. With atonement theory we have a whole book by Grotius.

You claim the BoM sets forth a penal substitution atonement theory, so let's look at that. Penal substitution ideas generally come from Anselm, but Calvin, with a legal background, explained it in terms of law and justice. It's tempting to see Alma 42, for example, as Calvinist penal substitution: demands of justice, punishment affixed, justice claimeth the creature and executeth the law, do ye suppose that mercy can rob justice?, etc. Grotius, also with a legal background, kept many of these ideas developed by Calvin and others. Where he primarily differed was on the scope of the atonement. For Calvin, Christ's sacrifice was limited to the elect. For Grotius, it was an infinite atonement that applied to anybody who exercised faith. The infinite nature of the atonement is clear in Alma 34 and many other places. This makes the governmental theory a better match than a penal substitutionary theory

[Benjamin McGuire]

I am sorry that I have not responded to this last post. I have been ill the past few days, and didn't get out of bed much.

I think that this kind of says it all (and is probably a good place to end this discussion):

On 2/19/2023 at 3:55 PM, JarMan said:

However, I think there is a way to understand the plain and precious things taken away from the gospel from a Grotian perspective. The following is from The Historical Criticism of the New Testament: A Survey of Origins by Victor Paul Furnish

It is clear that you have intuited a position on Grotius and the Book of Mormon. I think that if you want to move your thesis forward, then you will need to adopt some sort of formal methodology and use that methodology as a framework in which to explore this idea (by formal, I mean a lite of criteria on how you identify and evaluate your evidence). This methodology will of necessity consist of several parts. The first (and one of the most important parts) is going to be to determine what in the text is attributable to the later redactor and what represents the original translation of the hypothetical source text. This method has to be completely independent of your claim of Grotius as an author. If it isn't, then you are simply creating a circular argument that will have no validity. In other words, you cannot argue that all of the material that doesn't sound like Grotius must be the work of the redactor - because such an argument already assumes that Grotius is the author (of at least some of the material). Once you have determined what parts of the text should be attributed to Grotius, then you can compare what Grotius has already written elsewhere to what you claim he wrote in the Book of Mormon. It needs to be a comparison of the sources (and not commentaries or histories). At that point, we can have a better discussion - on the appropriateness of the method, the appropriateness of its application, and on the conclusions you draw. You probably already understand this ...

At any rate, I suspect that this discussion will continue to be less and less productive, so why not end it now ...

 

[JarMan]

Thanks for engaging @Benjamin McGuire I know you spent a lot of your valuable time.