Although the majority of our information about the historical Jesus comes from the Gospels, these sources cannot be used without care. They do not agree among themselves on matters important to the historian, large or small. How, then, shall we make our decisions?
The Original Position and the Council of Heaven I
As a political philosopher, I often feel lost in the deeper and more detailed discussions about scripture, doctrine, and the ancient world. However, the pre-existence, particularly the concept of a council in heaven is of direct interest to me and my own political theory. Let me explain:
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For Christ’s Sake 1: Romans
The expression “for Christ’s sake” occurs four times in the Authorized Version of the New Testament. Three instances occur in the authentic Pauline letters (Rom 15:30-31, 1 Cor 4:10, and 2 Cor 12:10), while one is in Eph 4:32. Very similar expressions such as “for Jesus’ sake,” or “for his name’s sake,” or “for the gospel’s sake” may also be found. For the moment, let’s look at the expression in Romans:
Flagellation of a Deceased Equine
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Or, Trying to Bring FPR Down Off Its High Horse
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😉
So, my wife and I are having a discussion about stuff I’ve read on the blogs and I mention the predestination / foreordination issue. I had posited earlier that in my view of how things are, as long as you personally don’t know what your final destination is, you still have free agency to make choices.
However, what happens when you are told? Consider Peter, told by Jesus “this night, before the #### crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.” (Matt 26:34) And then, of course, he does. Here’s the question though – what else could Peter have done? Suppose he had answered the questioners, “Yes, I knew him.” and then was beaten or killed. Pretty bad for Peter, but it would essentially have made liar out of Jesus (or at least, a false prophet.) Well, that couldn’t happen, right? In this case, it seems like Peter was stripped of his agency. Realistically, he still made the choices that caused him to fulfill Christ’s words, but what else could he have done? Was it even possible for him to make different choices?
Beats me. Along similar lines (my wife’s contribution to this enigma), what about people in the pre-existence? Some of them apparently come to Earth in angelic (?) form and later, when they do come to be mortals, they have some sort of leadership position. I’m shaky on this ground because I can’t keep track of who the various named angels are, or were or will be, as mortals. It’s like you have special circumstances in the pre-existence, and then you have special circumstances on Earth. What about everybody else? What was Adolph Hitler like as a pre-mortal? Were there hints of what he would become? If so, why do we come to Earth, after all? So that we can actually make the choices that decide our eternal fate and satisfy Justice? (sorry Mogget)
Historical Jesus 2: The Gospels
One way to approach the hard historical and theological questions about the reality and significance of Jesus is through a construct called the “historical Jesus.” Since there are few other sources, most of our information comes from the Gospels. How do the they stack up?
Secular Sam’s Guide to the Old Testament: Preexistence
Ol’ Sam was a little amazed to note that the lesson for this week included no biblical passages on the preexistence of Jesus. Sounds like a natural opportunity to complement the existing lesson, so here we go…
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Historical Jesus — Italian Trial
From Yahoo News — Original title “Did Jesus Exist? Italian Court to Decide”
Forget the U.S. debate over intelligent design versus evolution.
An Italian court is tackling Jesus — and whether the Roman Catholic Church may be breaking the law by teaching that he existed 2,000 years ago.
Classical Figures
One way to better appreciate the impact of biblical prose is through attention to the so-called classical figures. The “standard” reference work for biblical figures is E.W. Bullinger’s Figures of Speech Used in the Bible. Bullinger’s work, originally published in 1898 and since reprinted, contains sections on 217 different figures, some with more than 30 variations.
Secular Sam’s Guide to the Old Testament: Moses and Satan
At Faith-Promoting Rumor, we are inagurating a new series entitled “Secular Sam’s Guide to the Old Testament.” In this series, our goal is to make the insights of secular scholarship regarding the Old Testament available to the you, our loyal readers. There is some discussion within church society regarding the relative worth of secular training; we are not seeking to replace revealed truth, but rather we are trying to provide a summary of current scholarly thought regarding the Bible and its history (both the history of the text and the history depicted within). As we are reading the Old Testament in Sunday School this year, we decided to relate these posts to the weekly readings from the Old Testament and the Pearl of Great Price that the church will be encountering this year. We’re calling it “Secular Sam’s Guide” because it sounded better than anything else we could come up with. We hope that you will find this helpful.
As modern scholarship has yet to seriously address Moses 1 from a literary-historical standpoint, I have decided to focus my discussion on some of the figures involved, rather than on the text itself.
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Go-to Sources for Study of Genesis
I was going to hammer out a brief exegesis of the creation of humanity (Gen. 1:26-28), but I thought that would be less productive because it would have represented my viewpoints on it, which most likely don’t jive with correlation and would also appear terribly non-Mormon.
Instead, I’m offering here a list of good go-to sources for an in-depth look at the book of Genesis. These are sources that I’ve enjoyed using in my study of the book. I took an advanced Hebrew reading of Genesis this last semester and found a number of great monographs and commentaries which will help us with this wonderful book. Feel free to add others you’ve encountered as well! Note: none of these are Mormon.
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