Before discussing my 3 Bible suggestions from OTFTW 1, we need to discuss the KJV a bit. Below is a slightly fleshed-out Institute handout I’ve used in my Bible classes. Continue reading “OTFTW 2: Is the King James a Good Translation”
The Mormon Rawls Project: The Original Position and the Council in Heaven I
Authors note: The following is the second in my Mormon Rawls Project Series. It is also the expansion of my first ever post here at FPR.
When Rawls develops the concept which he labels “justice as fairness.” This does not mean that a just society is one which is fair, but instead that principles of justice must be determined under conditions which are fair to all.
While fairness may not be something commonly found in the world, we can imagine what the conditions of fairness might appear like. This is what Rawls does when he introduces the original position (OP). The original position is a hypothetical situation where representatives come together to determine the principles of justice that will govern the basic structure of society (the basic structure being the political and economic institutions which impacts ones life-chances) . It is these principles that would guide the development of a constitution and further development of law and policy.
In order to ensure that these principles are chosen under fair conditions. Rawls introduces the device known as the veil of ignorance. The veil of ignorance prevents the participants from knowing the particulars of their own situation and standing in the world. They are unaware of their own wealth, gender, race, and geographical situation. They are essentially stripped of the knowledge that might lead than to pick principles of justice which benefit themselves or people like themselves rather than principles that benefit all and which could be accepted by all. Continue reading “The Mormon Rawls Project: The Original Position and the Council in Heaven I”
Desire
Michel Foucault traces the West’s shift in concern from sexual acts to sexual desires to second-century Greek thought, a shift which was fully embraced and completed by Christianity, in his series, The History of Sexuality. This transition to concern for desires, the interrogation of desires, the confession of desires, and the hermeneutics of desire inform the modern conceptualization of the self, specifically the idea that our desires, when they are properly known to us through the act of interpreting them, reveal the “truth” about ourselves. While the ancients had developed a system of regulating desires, the specific contribution of Christianity was the hermeneutics of the self.
Continue reading “Desire”
The Good Samaritan as The Other
The parable of the Good Samaritan is well known and much beloved. The image of the caring Samaritan tending to the bruised and bleeding traveler speaks to the goodness of mankind; despite the self-love of the world.
I have noticed that this parable often shows up in secular moral theory as an example of an acceptable religious concept for the public square (See “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” by John Rawls). It is also used in a number of ways that…well…few Mormons might expect (see section 6 of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion”). [Author’s Note: I will be revisiting both of these at a future date]
What strikes me most about this parable is not so much the story itself, but Christ’s use of a Samarian as the protagonist. Not only do the Levite and the Priest fall short of their neighborly obligation, but the one who is the good example is from a despised people. Continue reading “The Good Samaritan as The Other”
Is Greed Good?
This is the topic for the newest Public Square discussion over at Patheos.
Mormon Halacha and Common Law
In kosher law, wine is only kosher when it has been produced and handled by Jews. In this way this kosher law is distinctive from the LDS “Word of Wisdom” in that it is not about the substance of the drink, but how it is handled. There is one exception to this rule, however. If the wine produced by Gentiles is boiled, it becomes kosher. On its face, there is no logical principle why boiling the wine would render it ritually clean, but that is not the point. Rather, the point is that the law is such, and one determines whether or not one has observed the law by an examination of the practices involved.
Latter-day Saints have a similar prohibition against wine, but it is not with respect to how it is prepared or handled, but with its alcohol content. In this way, there is a similar exception to halachic law that once the alcohol has been purged the wine is safe to consume. Most Latter-day Saints that I know will eat a meal that has been cooked with wine, provided that the meal was cooked at a sufficient temperature to boil out the alcohol. However, I don’t know any Latter-day Saint that would cook an entire bottle of wine, and then cool it for drinking. There seems to be something wrong with the drinking of cooked wine, but not with the eating of it.
Continue reading “Mormon Halacha and Common Law”
Brand Spanking New
Like many Christians I like to read and re-read Romans 5-8. Paul uses very vivid imagery to portray both sin and grace as powers that can exercise dominion over human life. Death and the law are likewise rendered in apocalyptic terms. These chapters come to something of a climax in Rom 8:3
3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Now I’ll stop here and ask you to reflect on what sort of things strike you as important about this passage. Since there are no wrong answers you are free to answer in whatever fashion you like but do take a moment and think about it.
The Formation of the Gods
I have suggested before in more oblique ways that the humanist account of the stable subject is at odds with Mormon doctrine of divinization, and in this way Mormonism has more in common with the psychoanalytic account of the formation of the subject and the Foucaultian/Althusserian account of subjectivation. I’d like to explore in brief more of this argument.
Continue reading “The Formation of the Gods”
Women as the True Disciples and Apostles of Christ in the Gospel of Mark
The Gospel of Mark, written c. 65-70 C.E., is the earliest of the four gospels (even being edited and reused as a source text for the Gospels of Luke and Matthew), and offers a unique perspective among the gospels on the meaning of discipleship and following Jesus. [1] Mark places heavy emphasis on the suffering(s) and death of Jesus, and understands true Christian discipleship in terms of literally following Jesus’ example through experiencing and enduring suffering and persecution for the gospel (Mark 8.34; 10.28). Continue reading “Women as the True Disciples and Apostles of Christ in the Gospel of Mark”
Neither Male Nor Female
Galatians 3:28 is certainly the most important biblical text in feminist and anti-feminist interpretation in the last century. This text promises that “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” The last pair in this list, male and female, has proven the most controversial. While most comemntators accept relatively straightforwardly that social divisions between ethnicities and economic/legal categories have no place, the division between the sexes has proven more difficult to reconcile. I offer a brief sketch of recent positions that have been taken on this text.