Dave, your quote seems a mile rebuke—an admonitions that we should only read from church approved books. It that is true, why do the General Authorities themselves quote from non-LDS sources?

I am a profuse reader of books published by Deseret Books. I don’t watch much television and in my spare time I find it useful to gain insights from non-LDS authors. I don’t do this to learn new doctrines. Rather, as is often the case with CS Lewis, I find that a specific author will sometimes have the ability to crystallize a concept or provide an insight I had not considered before.

While I recognize the perception that the church has all truth, and therefore it is unnecessary to read what others might said, I believe that there have always been people on the earth who were entitled to inspiration from our Heavenly Father and that we can sometimes gain from their insights.

With regard to CS Lewis and the use of only approved literature, I had an interesting experience several years ago. The faculty within our college at BYU would often meet in the faculty lounge for lunch. The conversation usually focused on athletics. I’ve never been intensely interested in sports but attended for the congeniality. One day after the discussion concluded, I had a few minutes before class and so was reading Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. A member of our faculty, a good man, a Bishop, but avid athlete asked me what I was reading. I told him CS Lewis and that I hoped to spend Saturday finishing the book. He frowned and asked me if CS Lewis wasn’t “one of those Protestant ministers?” I told him that he was a Protestant, but to my best knowledge was not a minister.

“I don’t think you ought to be reading that stuff,” he replied. It isn’t an approved church book. I didn’t tell him that CS Lewis was often quoted by David O McKay, Richard L Evans, Neil Maxwell, and a host of other general authorities. Our conversation was congenial, but as he left it his message was unmistakably clear that reading CS Lewis on Saturday would not get me closer to the Lord.

I was not offended, one can always quietly disagree. My friend f inished lunch before I and as he was leaving I was asked him how he was going to be spending his Saturday. His eyes brightened and he smiled proudly. “I’ll be watching the Minnesota/Ohio State game!” he said.

The typical Mormon response, especially from apologists, is that the prophet need only reveal the revelation and not necessarily understand it’s nature. If we apply that to Joseph there’s no reason the same logic couldn’t apply to Luther.

That said of course I think the main issue is Luther is typically wrong, and often in a very distorting way. The best we can say is that he’s better than Calvin. So he’s wrong both in theology and in interpreting the underlying texts.

That said, even a trip to the orthodox Deseret Books leads to tons of books that go through all these things in regards to LDS scripture. So we as a Church can’t say the resources aren’t there.

By contrast, there’s no claim that Genesis is revealing what Enuma Elish REALLY means as much as transforming it to say something new and different. (N.b. The relationship between the two is quite overstated in this analogy.)

If God “speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding,” then why do God’s modern prophets treat essentially every scripture as history and/or applicable to us in our day, as written? Or to put it another way, if Genesis 1, for example, was meant as, say, a way of impressing on ancient Israelites’ minds the majesty of YHWH and his creation, and not as an account of how all this stuff physically came to be, then why have God’s modern prophets always understood it to be about physical creation? Or from yet another perspective, why does God give immediately expedient scripture (or allow something to be accepted as scripture), knowing it will be misunderstood by later generations, without providing a mechanism (such as through his prophets) to avoid that misunderstanding?

As in all good books every literary device is used in the Bible that will drive the lesson home. It contains, history, poetry and allegory. These are not always distinguishable, now that the centuries have passed away since the original writing.

, as Ardis shows here .

While I love that he says “we can’t really recognize these natively anymore”, I do wish he had expanded beyond “history, poetry and allegory.”

“For my soul delighteth in plainness; for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men. For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding.” (2 Ne 31:3)

“For behold, the Lord doth grant unto all nations, of their own nation and tongue, to teach his word, yea, in wisdom, all that he seeth fit that they should have; therefore we see that the Lord doth counsel in wisdom, according to that which is just and true.” (Alma 29:8)