Category: Latter-day Saint Thought

No doubt SOME found the posts unwelcome in challenging a historical theology central to belief. That’s totally understandable, and I’m guessing that attitude would fit the vast majority of active members. A similar percentage would likely find debates over controversial topics in Mormon history unwelcome. Lots aren’t interested in delving in.

A telling aspect of the Restoration is what the golden plates couldn’t do.

Before I move on, I’m feeling like we’re getting a little confused over a few issues. 1) Claiming that the more “standard views” of the books I’ve mentioned are somehow novel or unsupported. 2) That I’m somehow going out on a limb by presenting such views as “pretty standard.” 3) That I’m doing something edgy…

A Public Square Magazine article has been making the rounds about the history behind the Church being caught flat-footed in responding to probably the most influential piece of anti-Mormon literature of the 2010s. Not that people in the Church ecosystem didn’t have good responses, but at the time it hit the traditional institution on whom…

Okay I want to get to my bigger point about how I think Greek stuff is good, and how they developed very good stuff in line with Mormonism. But first I want to do a few more posts on OT historicity because I think it’s interesting. One of the biggest issues related when the Pentateuch…

So as I went over my notes on the two books I wanted to discuss, I noticed that it would be good refer to a trend they both mention: that the books after the Pentateuch in the OT, especially the history books, don’t seem to know about the Pentateuch. My apologies if this is well…

For the last several weeks, Syria has been a rare and unlikely bright spot in a grim world.

As I did last year, in case it’s of use to anyone, I’ve prepared a list of my top 10 books that I’ve read this last year. (That can include books that were not published within the last year, though the majority of them were published in 2023 or 2024). Also, since I published 25…

So, yes, I did want to repost this one as well, but frame it a little differently than how I had originally. This continues a series where I argue that Joseph Smith’s perennialism, I think, allows for greater flexibility to deal with biblical scholarship that seems to be increasingly calling lots of the OT historicity…

Forgive me for reposting this, but I wanted to have this up on the blog so that I could refer to it in future posts. So here I’m continuing my posts arguing that Joseph Smith was onto something in embracing the ancient theology, or larger truth in addition to the Bible. While the Bible in…

A brief PSA: the blog was having problems so we reset it and lost some content, so apologies to everybody who spent the time to comment only to have it be lost in the memory hole.

Four years ago, I brought up resources to assist in study of the Doctrine and Covenants. There were some significant books that were mentioned, but not as many as I had assumed there would be. That launched me on a path that has led to my book, Fragments of Revelation: Exploring the Book of Doctrine…

I put up part one a while back (sorry, many life distractions in the meantime) and am finally getting up part 2. The bigger purpose of these posts is to share some thoughts on a bigger point about rethinking the grand narrative of biblical metahistory that we’ve constructed of  Mormonism. Mormons tend to argue for…

Periodically someone or another will issue a call to remove hymns with militaristic themes or martial music from the hymnbook, or at least rewrite them to make them overtly pacifistic. The sentiment is noble and understandable, but mistaken. The new hymnbook may reduce the number of martial hymns or soften their edges, but I hope…

“Someday my prince will come, / in the Millennium, /  and he will say to me, / ‘Will you be number three? / I will be true to you, / and you, and you, and you…’”

Attention everybody: