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The Divine Council and its Doctrinal Implications: an EV-Mormon Discussion

Several months ago, I mentioned Mike Heiser’s paper, “ You’ve Seen One Elohim, You’ve Seen Them All? A Critique of Mormonism’s Use of Psalm 82 .” Heiser wrote his dissertation on the topic of the Divine Council, and runs a website entitled The Divine Council which is aimed somewhat at Evangelicals, who tend to misunderstand the Old Testament text on this topic. He also works for Logos, which provides excellent Bible resources and study tools.
Heiser, an Evangelical, “feel[s] more strongly than ever that there is not a single doctrine that is untouched by the subject.”

He presented 8 ideas that Mormons would probably agree with, but Evangelicals would not, such as “The term monotheism is inadequate to describe what it is
Israel believed about God and the members of his council.”

He then presented 8 ideas that Evangelicals would probably agree with, but Mormons would not, such as “Corporeal appearances of deity are not evidence that God the Father has a corporeal nature.” I don’t disagree with a few of his eight listed here, but it’s a thoughtful list.

Heiser agreed to allow FARMS to distribute his paper, with a follow-up by LDS student/author/good guy David Bokovoy (Hebrew Bible, Brandeis), and a final word by Heiser.

The whole thing is well worth reading, and a model of LDS-Evangelical scholarly interaction.

Special bonus: On his website, my blogname  Nitsav is the second Hebrew word from the right.

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The LDS Temple and National Security: A Romney-Related Hypothetical

Romney’s politics are irrelevant for this post, as the same hypothetical would apply if Harry Reid were running for President.

How does an LDS President attend a Temple session? Can enough LDS secret service personnel be found to accompany him through a session? Does the Temple have a strict no-gun policy? Would he just not attend for 4 years? Would the DC Temple become a security concern, or a potential terrorist target. Would it be swept for bugs? Would Temple Recommends be heavily scrutinized to prevent someone from faking their way in to get at the President?

Has Romney or anyone else asked these questions?

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Playing Fast and Loose?

The recent Ensign article by the Hafens has already seen discussion at T&S and FMH. I’d like to add a comment, but first point out that I appreciate the tone and direction it took. I have found good guidance and much to think about in the Hafens’ other writings. I have no wish or motive to make them or the Hebrew professor upon whom they relied look bad, but they have presented a flawed argument, which attempts to correct ignorance (a good and noble thing) but unwittingly does so with misplaced apologetics (a bad thing.)

Continue reading “Playing Fast and Loose?”

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Spontaneous Sacrament Meeting Talk

Last Sunday, before Sacrament meeting, one of the counselors approached me and my wife with a slip of paper. “We don’t think our speakers are going to show up today, and this is our backup procedure.” The paper read, “please take a few minutes to discuss a favorite scripture or two that has strengthened your faith in Christ, brought you comfort, or deepened your understanding of the Gospel.”

As it turned out, the speakers did not show up and the first three people given these slips of paper took a combined total of 15 minutes. Add the rest hymn, and I had 30 minutes of sacrament meeting, a pulpit, and any topic I wanted. 🙂


Here’s what I ended up delivering, about 15-20 minutes worth. Continue reading “Spontaneous Sacrament Meeting Talk”

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Missing the Forest

In my home ward, my Dad is the SP, and my Mom has taught Institute, Seminary, and Continuing Ed. for adults for many years. The GD class tends to be made up of those actually interested in original setting and scholarly interpretations, as well as the usual kinds of discussion and application. Consequently, the class tends to be happy when all three of us end up in GD, twice yearly or so.

I happened to be home once last year during a lesson on some chapters from Isaiah. The teacher did a decent job, but the comments all tended in one direction. By typical GD standards, it was probably quite good. But afterwards, as I walked out, one man I know well asked me, “Why didn’t you say anything about Isaiah?” Continue reading “Missing the Forest”

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Elder Bednar on “spiritual creation”

As far as I can tell, there is neither established doctrine nor GA agreement on what “spiritual creation” constitutes, nor on the nature of each account in our dual-creation accounts (ie. Genesis 1-2:4, 2:4ff.) I did a good bit of research on the topic in preparing a presentation a few months ago.

In the recent broadcast Stake Conference, Elder Bednar said something that struck me as relevant to the first question above. I had my laptop, and I typed it down word-for-word, or as close as I could get.

“Morning prayer is the spiritual creation of our day.”

Though from context he intended this to be about the importance of beginning the day with prayer, I think it also implies that he holds spiritual creation to be nothing more than the mental planning stage of creation, the blueprints, as it were. (There are interesting visuals suggesting this in the filmed editions of the Endowment. Beyond that, however, the version of creation in the temple combines elements from the dual accounts in the scriptures, and does not have a dual account the way Genesis does.)

I suspect that this is not how most members understand “spiritual creation” but given my experiences and education, I no longer trust my own intuitions about what the average English-speaking member thinks.

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Oxford Press Puts It All Out There

Oxford Press, like some other publishers, have been cooperating to make their books available in various electronic forms. I’ve mentioned Logos before, as one example. Google books is another, as J. Stapley points out.

I’m also aware of two subscription services, which most University students can access for free through a University connection. The first is something called Ebrary.com I stumbled over this at BYU when I was looking for Marc Brettler’s Creation of History in Ancient Israel and discovered that they had an electronic copy of his The Book of Judges. This and many other scholarly books are available and text-searchable through ebrary. I haven’t played with it much, and I have no guidance to how to use it or finding out if your University has access.

The second subscription service is www.OxfordScholarship.com which publishes Oxford titles. A recent announcement proclaims that starting in September of this year, “the majority of its scholarly monograph publishing” will be available on-line. This will include some excellent titles, available wherever you can get internet access (University proxies) , negating the need, perhaps, for interlibrary loan or typing out lengthy quotations into your notes.

A few of Oxford’s relevant titles- Marc Brettler’s How to Read the Bible and Teryl Givens’ By the Hand of Mormon, will both be worthy additions. Notable already are Mark Smith’s Origins of Biblical Monotheism and Jerome Murphy-O’Connor’s biography of Paul, and Hoffmeier’s Ancient Israel in Sinai, to pick a few of the nuggets 🙂

A complete pdf list of all religion books currently available can be downloaded from the bottom of this page.

Edit: Looks like By the Hand of Mormon is already available .