Book of Mormon Criticism of Calvin

[Grug the Neanderthal]

4 hours ago, Calm said:

Doesn’t make sense. Why would a Nephite record refer to a church that was primarily based in Europe and the Mediterranean, that was even more localized while plain and precious things were removed from scriptures as having dominion over the whole world?

Who was the Book of Mormon written to and who is being prophesied about in this chapter?

 

5 hours ago, Calm said:

It makes it clear in the vision the phrase Great and Abominable Church is more about rejection of Christ than an actual organization. 

The Great and Abominable church is not exclusively the Catholic Church, but I believe that in the historical context of the verses in 1 Nephi 13 we've been discussing, the completely apostate and corrupt Christian Church (Catholic church) during the Middle Ages and Protestant Reformation is primarily what is being referred to. 

[Grug the Neanderthal]

26 minutes ago, Calm said:

Yet the pilgrims were removing themselves from the jurisdiction of the Church of England, which was not Catholic.

The Church of England was not much of a step up from the Catholic church. To the Pilgrims who were Seperatists, and the Puritans who would soon join them in Massachusetts, the Anglican Church needed to be purified and have the rest of the apostate Catholic elements removed. They were seeking the pure undefiled version of Christianity, free from the apostate teachings, practices, and rituals of Catholicism. 

Edited January 23, 2023 by Grug the Neanderthal

[Calm]

15 minutes ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

The Church of England was not much of a step up from the Catholic church. To the Pilgrims who were Seperatists, and the Puritans who would soon join them in Massachusetts, the Anglican Church needed to be purified and have the rest of the apostate Catholic elements removed. They were seeking the pure undefiled version of Christianity, free from the apostate teachings, practices, and rituals of Catholicism. 

Which is why it is inaccurate to tag a whole organization as the GandA, especially when there were many sincere, good Christian disciples, men and women who chose the Catholic Church as their vehicle to serve their fellowmen.  These disciples of Christ should not be condemned simply because they belonged to the same church as some greedy and power hungry bastards.

It isn’t logical to claim the Catholic Church is the GandA and then add so was the Anglican Church or whatever.  You have shifted from labeling a church to labeling behaviour that makes an organization a part of the GandA, which is now defined by you as a collection of churches.  But the GandA behaviours are not universally present in all of the churches, so it makes more sense to speak of those who act in GandA ways without assigning them to a specific church.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Calm

[The Nehor]

15 minutes ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

The Church of England was not much of a step up from the Catholic church. To the Pilgrims who were Seperatists, and the Puritans who would soon join them in Massachusetts, the Anglican Church needed to be purified and have the rest of the apostate Catholic elements removed. They were seeking the pure undefiled version of Christianity, free from the apostate teachings, practices, and rituals of Catholicism. 

The Puritans were ironically more intolerant than the Catholics.

[JarMan]

2 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

Considering that I’ve asked twice now to give me a brief rundown of what you consider to be your strongest piece of concrete evidence, and yet you refuse to do so, this is quite the false accusation. 

Sorry, but there is no brief rundown. Either you'll dig into the Carmack papers or you won't. That's the strongest evidence. If you've watched my video, then we can focus on that. You've given no indication you have. If you have, then point out specifically why this doesn't qualify as evidence.

2 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

Again, history is complex and impossible to fully capture in a prophecy consisting of a handful of verses. 

There’s nothing in this prophecy to suggest that the great and abominable church and the mother gentiles are one and the same. On the contrary, it’s quite clear that they are not referring to the same thing. I also said that in the context of these specific verses that I believe the great and abominable church PRIMARILY (not exclusively) refers to the Catholic Church. The reason is that prior to the reformation, this was the sole Christian church in Europe. We should also include the Eastern Orthodox Church here and to a certain extent the major Protestant state religions, like the Anglican Church.

Escaping the clutches of the corrupt and fully apostate great and abominable church was a process. The reformation in the 1500s was the beginning, but it was only a step in the right direction. Which is why people from Protestant European nations still felt oppressed and came to America seeking full religious freedom. 

Yes there is, if you've been paying attention. Verses 5 and 9 describe the great and abominable church of the many nations and kingdoms as bringing people into captivity. Verse 13 describes people going out of captivity. The clear inference here is that they were escaping the captivity of the nations of the great and abominable church. The colonists weren't coming to America to escape Spain or Catholic control. The relatively few Catholics who did come, came to share Catholicism with the natives.

You're right that the great and abominable church primarily refers to the Catholic church. But the Catholic nations need to play a major role in this story or it doesn't make sense. There need to be multiple Catholic nations at war with the protagonists. We need something like the 1588 Spanish Armada vs the English. Or the 80 years war between the Spanish and Dutch (1568 - 1648). Or the numerous naval battles with the Portuguese in the early 1600's.

[Calm]

8 minutes ago, JarMan said:

That's the strongest evidence.

And yet those most familiar with the material don’t see it as evidence for your theory as far as I aware.  Has Carmack said anything in discussion here that suggests he thinks you are on to something?

I think Mormon and Tyndale getting together in the afterlife and preparing a translation for Joseph to receive when the time came makes more sense than someone well off and educated in Europe writing a novel/pseudo scripture heavy duty manuscript and it getting passed through a few hands over a before it somehow gets to poor boy Joseph or one of his companions without leaving any trace of itself.

I am also open to pockets of the language surviving here and there in the Americas.  
 

Are there any other theories?

Edited January 23, 2023 by Calm

[JarMan]

1 minute ago, Calm said:

And yet those most familiar with the material don’t see it as evidence for your theory as far as I aware.  Has Carmack said anything in discussion here that suggests he thinks you are on to something?

If you go back to my previous post you'll see I was saying it was the strongest evidence that the BOM has an early modern origin. There are a number of theories that could support that view, not just mine. As far as I know, Carmack doesn't believe the early modern English indicates it was written during that time. But if any other work (that didn't have all of the religious baggage) was shown to have that amount of early modern language, the natural assumptions would be that it was actually produced during the time period represented by the language. And by the way, Skousen has pointed out a number of early modern themes in the text, including the Abinadi story.

[JarMan]

9 minutes ago, Calm said:

I think Mormon and Tyndale getting together in the afterlife and preparing a translation for Joseph to receive when the time came makes more sense than someone well off and educated in Europe writing a novel/pseudo scripture heavy duty manuscript and it getting passed through a few hands over a before it somehow gets to poor boy Joseph or one of his companions without leaving any trace of itself.

Look, people do this all the time on this forum, but it makes no logical sense to compare the likelihood of a supernatural event with a natural event. It's a category error and completely meaningless. If people want to believe in the supernatural, fine. But don't go slipping it into what amounts to a scientific comparison.

[Calm]

2 minutes ago, JarMan said:

Look, people do this all the time on this forum, but it makes no logical sense to compare the likelihood of a supernatural event with a natural event. It's a category error and completely meaningless. If people want to believe in the supernatural, fine. But don't go slipping it into what amounts to a scientific comparison.

Fine, though I wasn’t being all that serious, I just find it dang entertaining to think about…go with the other option of pockets of language surviving, a not uncommon occurrence world round, the option I was completely serious about.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Calm

[mfbukowski]

8 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

Since I find this theory to be without any basis, I don’t have any interest in reading articles that may or may not have evidence for it. I don’t consider the supposed Calvin connection to be legitimate at all. If you have any actual concrete evidence for your theory, please share it. 

You won't read articles that have the evidence for the idea, then ask for more articles that have evidence for the idea.

Brilliant.

Glad you won't read this anyway 

Edited January 23, 2023 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

Yet the pilgrims were removing themselves from the jurisdiction of the Church of England, which was not Catholic.

The word "catholic" means "universal", and so even Catholics are not "catholic".

Yet of course the abominable church IS universal, and therefore "catholic".   

Everybody is right, so time for bed😴

 

 

[Calm]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

The word "catholic" means "universal", and so even Catholics are not "catholic".

Yet of course the abominable church IS universal, and therefore "catholic".   

Everybody is right, so time for bed😴

 

 

The Church of the Lamb of God is universal as well and therefore catholic.   

[JarMan]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Fine, though I wasn’t being all that serious, I just find it dang entertaining to think about…go with the other option of pockets of language surviving, a not uncommon occurrence world round, the option I was completely serious about.

The problem is there’s no evidence for this. We have journals and other writings, but it all looks pretty standard for the time. 

[Grug the Neanderthal]

5 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

The word "catholic" means "universal", and so even Catholics are not "catholic".

Yet of course the abominable church IS universal, and therefore "catholic".   

The term Catholic Church was first coined in the late 2nd Century, when there was only a singular Christian church. This singular “universal” Christian church was already in deep apostasy by that point. As the sole Christian denomination for 1500 years, the fully apostate Catholic Church did exactly what is described in 1 Nephi 13 as the Great and Abominable Church. The major Protestant denominations that arose during the Reformation corrected some of the corruptions within the Catholic Church, but remained very much apostate and corrupt themselves. 

[Benjamin McGuire]

On 1/20/2023 at 7:19 PM, Calm said:

My memory is Ben M (it might be Ben S) debates the significance of the earlier language.  Iirc, he thinks it may be more a result of survival of the language in little pockets.  I may have confused him or Ben S with someone else though.  There is a thread or two discussing it with Brother Carmack on this board if you are interested.

I don't think that it survives in little pockets. I argue two points - one, that there is language in the Book of Mormon which post-dates EModE.  The second issue is a little more complicated. Skousen and Carmack relied on the OED to provide a list of latest usage dates for the archaic forms of EModE that they propose. The problem occurs in that anyone with a good search engine and access to large literary databases can find examples of these occurrences decades and even centuries after the OED's last entry. The OED is spectacularly poor at terminus dating for language. It is much better at earliest known usages - but this is a natural outcome of an exploding body of literature (there is a lot less surviving literature from earlier time periods).

Language isn't itself something that can be broken into discrete slices. We don't have an EModE period with a specific beginning and a specific end - we use these terms more broadly to define periods of change in language. But people don't suddenly become unable to read EModE after a certain point in time, and they don't stop using that language over night. Change of this sort takes generations.

What I proposed was a purpose for the use of the archaic language in the text (and, it's a purpose that I think could find broad acceptance among both believers and critics). The text claims to be a translation of scripture. Had it come in absolutely modern English (at least modern in the 1829-1830 time frame) it would have been received quite a bit differently than if it used the archaic language that it did come with. People read the text differently because of the language. And I can find places where it uses archaic forms (from the King James text) when it quotes biblical phrases, and much more modern English in places where it simply paraphrases the biblical text. This sort of shift suggests that the use of the archaic language is not only deliberate, but that it is is also a part of the texts rhetoric. This sort of evidence argues directly against the idea that the text was written hundreds of years earlier. I put some preliminary views on this idea in my 2016 FAIR presentation.

[Benjamin McGuire]

6 hours ago, JarMan said:

But don't go slipping it into what amounts to a scientific comparison

I wouldn't call what you are doing a scientific comparison.

Explain to us your method.

Explain to us how your theory is falsifiable.

Those are really good places to start. The scientific method is fairly straight forward. We develop a theory. We create a way to test the theory. Then we test it to see if it succeeds. The interesting thing is that it has to be in some way universal. It has to be falsifiable. We have to have prediction. Simply looking for things that support your argument and ignoring everything that doesn't isn't remotely scientific (it is the antithesis of the scientific method). This is why I keep reiterating my point that the differences really matter.

If you provide a method and the method is good, then the only thing left to ask is whether or not you appropriately apply it when you collect your data. But I am still back thinking about the validity of your method. It isn't clear at all to me that you have one, or that it is falsifiable, or how I would test it on a known circumstance to see if it is valid in a known context. And until these issues are clear, I don't think you can claim that this is in any way a scientific comparison.

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

The term Catholic Church was first coined in the late 2nd Century, when there was only a singular Christian church. This singular “universal” Christian church was already in deep apostasy by that point. As the sole Christian denomination for 1500 years, the fully apostate Catholic Church did exactly what is described in 1 Nephi 13 as the Great and Abominable Church. The major Protestant denominations that arose during the Reformation corrected some of the corruptions within the Catholic Church, but remained very much apostate and corrupt themselves. 

Read what the church says today about that- it's on the website. Just look it up for yourself 

[Grug the Neanderthal]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Read what the church says today about that- it's on the website. Just look it up for yourself 

I know what the church says today on its website. What I’m saying is consistent with that.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Grug the Neanderthal

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

I know what the church says today on its website. What I’m saying is consistent with what that.

Good. Didn't sound like that to me.

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I wouldn't call what you are doing a scientific comparison.

Explain to us your method.

Explain to us how your theory is falsifiable.

Those are really good places to start. The scientific method is fairly straight forward. We develop a theory. We create a way to test the theory. Then we test it to see if it succeeds. The interesting thing is that it has to be in some way universal. It has to be falsifiable. We have to have prediction. Simply looking for things that support your argument and ignoring everything that doesn't isn't remotely scientific (it is the antithesis of the scientific method). This is why I keep reiterating my point that the differences really matter.

If you provide a method and the method is good, then the only thing left to ask is whether or not you appropriately apply it when you collect your data. But I am still back thinking about the validity of your method. It isn't clear at all to me that you have one, or that it is falsifiable, or how I would test it on a known circumstance to see if it is valid in a known context. And until these issues are clear, I don't think you can claim that this is in any way a scientific comparison.

Tacos and boats have parallel shapes, and you can even put stuff into either one, and that is a scientific fact. 😱

 

[The Nehor]

8 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

The term Catholic Church was first coined in the late 2nd Century, when there was only a singular Christian church. This singular “universal” Christian church was already in deep apostasy by that point. As the sole Christian denomination for 1500 years, the fully apostate Catholic Church did exactly what is described in 1 Nephi 13 as the Great and Abominable Church. The major Protestant denominations that arose during the Reformation corrected some of the corruptions within the Catholic Church, but remained very much apostate and corrupt themselves. 

“As the sole Christian denomination for 1500 years….”

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!

[Calm]

Oops

Edited January 23, 2023 by Calm

[Grug the Neanderthal]

18 hours ago, JarMan said:

If you've watched my video, then we can focus on that. You've given no indication you have. If you have, then point out specifically why this doesn't qualify as evidence.

I watched the video. The way you frame the “facts" it kind of sort of looks like a partial match between Calvin and Servantes and King Noah and Abinadi. However, if we dig even a tiny bit deeper it all falls apart. 

For one thing your characterization of Calvin as a womanizer is false, as is your description of the Calvin Servetus affair.

Here’s one of many sources that shows that your depiction of the Calvin Servetus affair is false:

https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/calvin-servetus-affair

Calvin wanted him spared and tried to persuade him to recant his anti-trinitarian “blasphemy." He also pled with the counsel to put him to death in a more humane way than burning at the stake. 

Really very little in the two stories matches, and what little similarities exist are clearly coincidental.

[Grug the Neanderthal]

21 hours ago, Calm said:

Which is why it is inaccurate to tag a whole organization as the GandA, especially when there were many sincere, good Christian disciples, men and women who chose the Catholic Church as their vehicle to serve their fellowmen.  These disciples of Christ should not be condemned simply because they belonged to the same church as some greedy and power hungry bastards.

I think you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying. It was the completely apostate and corrupt Catholic Church organization that I believe is primarily being referred to as the Great and Abominable church in 1 Nephi 13. I don’t believe that it was referring to every member of the church. Not at all. In fact I consider some of those Catholic “heretics" who were persecuted and put to death by the Catholic Church to be the Saints of God mentioned in this same chapter.

21 hours ago, Calm said:

It isn’t logical to claim the Catholic Church is the GandA and then add so was the Anglican Church or whatever.  You have shifted from labeling a church to labeling behaviour that makes an organization a part of the GandA, which is now defined by you as a collection of churches.  But the GandA behaviours are not universally present in all of the churches, so it makes more sense to speak of those who act in GandA ways without assigning them to a specific church.

I don’t see any problem with lumping the Anglican Church in with the Catholic church. The Anglican church during the Reformation period was still very much Catholic. The church was only created because King Henry VIII wanted a divorce, which the Pope forbid. It had very little to do with reforming corruption in the church and returning to the pure original form of Christianity. 

The pre-1990 endowment was also very clear about who the founder and head of the orthodox sectarian Christian church(es) is. 

It's this corrupt apostate orthodox sectarian Christianity that spiritually holds its members capitive and keeps them from the truth. 

Hence the need for the restoration and preaching of the fullness of the gospel to the nations of the earth.

[JarMan]

54 minutes ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

I watched the video. The way you frame the “facts" it kind of sort of looks like a partial match between Calvin and Servantes and King Noah and Abinadi. However, if we dig even a tiny bit deeper it all falls apart. 

For one thing your characterization of Calvin as a womanizer is false, as is your description of the Calvin Servetus affair.

Here’s one of many sources that shows that your depiction of the Calvin Servetus affair is false:

https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/calvin-servetus-affair

Calvin wanted him spared and tried to persuade him to recant his anti-trinitarian “blasphemy." He also pled with the counsel to put him to death in a more humane way than burning at the stake. 

Really very little in the two stories matches, and what little similarities exist are clearly coincidental.

I've addressed this already in this thread, but I'll do it again here. You are getting your information from Calvin apologists. If you want to see how Calvin's enemies portrayed him you have to dig a lot deeper. I've read half a dozen Servetus biographies and number of commentaries. There are many accounts of this episode available online going back hundreds of years. Here's a snippet from one that addresses the issue you have raised:

Quote

Death at the stake by roasting with a slow fire is the most agonizing of all modes of execution. Even the Middle Ages, famous for cruelty, seldom carried out this punishment to an extremity. In most cases those sentenced to such a fate were not left to the mercy of the flames. They were strangled, or benumbed in some way. But this abominable death had been decreed for the first heretic sentenced to it by Protestants; and we can well understand that Calvin, when a cry of indignation rose from the humane persons still left in the world, would endeavour, long afterwards, very long afterwards, to shuffle off responsibility for the exceptional cruelty of Servetus's execution. He and the other members of the Consistory, so he tells us years after Servetus's body had been reduced to ashes, tried to obtain that the sentence of death by slow fire should be commuted into the milder one of death by the sword. Their labours had been vain. ("Genus morris conati sumus mutare, sed frustra.") In the minutes of the Council we cannot find a word about such frustrated endeavours; and what unprejudiced person will believe that Calvin, who throughout the trial had put the screw upon the Council to pass a death sentence on Servetus, and had gained his end, should have suddenly become no more than an uninfluential private citizen in Geneva, and should have been unable to ensure a more merciful method of execution? As far as the latter is concerned, it is true that Calvin had contemplated a mitigation of the sentence--but only if Servetus were to purchase this mitigation by a spiritual sacrifice, by a last-hour recantation. Not from human kindliness, but from crude political calculation, Calvin would then, for the first time in his life, have shown himself gentle to an adversary. What a triumph it would have been for Genevese doctrine if Servetus, just before going to the stake, had admitted himself to be wrong and Calvin to be right! What a victory to have compelled the Spanish blasphemer to acknowledge that he was not dying on behalf of his own doctrine, but must admit before the whole population that Calvin's was the only true doctrine in the world!

You might want to check out the entire book: THE RIGHT TO HERESY OR HOW JOHN CALVIN KILLED A CONSCIENCE or maybe just the chapter entitled The Murder of Servetus.

Whether Calvin was sexually immoral or not, his critics sure claimed he was. He are some quotes from a secondary source:

Quote

The image of Calvin as either a sex maniac (astonishingly) or ruthless dictator originates chiefly in French Catholic reception of him in the sixteenth century

 

Quote

Calvin, according to Bolsec, was irredeemably tedious and malicious, bloodthirsty and frustrated. He treated his own words as if they were the word of God, and allowed himself to be worshipped as God. In addition to frequently falling victim to his homosexual tendencies, he had a habit of indulging himself sexually with any female within walking distance.

Contrary to what many have tried to claim in this thread, the two stories are very similar. But you have to see the story from a critical point of view to understand this. Unfortunately, the google algorithm overwhelmingly favors apologetic accounts.

Edited January 24, 2023 by JarMan