Equipping Saints • Engaging Culture • Examining Claims
The Garden’s Oldest Whisper: How LDS Cosmology Repackages Genesis 3:5 ❦ ❦ ❦ I. The Architecture of an Older Whisper Of all the doctrines a religion must defend, the doctrine of God is the one upon which everything else turns. As Latter-day Saint Apostle Dallin H. Oaks once told an audience at Harvard Law School,…
A Theological and Historical Examination from a Traditional Christian Perspective ✦ ✦ ✦ INTRODUCTION There may be no claim more central to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints than the claim that the heavens, sealed shut for nearly two millennia after the death of the apostle John, were torn open again in upstate…
The 1894 “Servitor” Sealing of Jane Manning James: A Theological and Historical Examination ❦ ❦ ❦ Introduction: A Question Echoing Across the Centuries On a December day in 1884, an aging Black widow in Salt Lake City dictated a letter to the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She had walked…
The Doctrinal Architecture That Keeps the LDS Church Alone Introduction: A Quiet Standoff in the World’s Religious Landscape Few religious phenomena of the modern era are as instructive — or as misunderstood — as the relationship between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS Church, sometimes still called the Mormon Church) and…
A Theological Examination of Eternal Progression, Premortal Life, and the Eternal Presence of Heavenly Father I. Two Promises, One Soul: The Knot at the Center A faithful Latter-day Saint who has knelt at a sealing altar in a temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been given two promises that, on…
Bibliographic Context The pamphlet, No. 231 in the Herald Publishing House series (Lamoni, Iowa — then the RLDS headquarters), was written by Elder A. B. Phillips and printed in 1912. Phillips’s central thesis is that forty “eminent archaeologists and authors” had, by the early twentieth century, unwittingly confirmed the Book of Mormon’s narrative of ancient…
Image: A digitally enhanced photo by this author of the Gilbert, Arizona LDS Temple. A Historical and Theological Examination of the Most Sacred Mormon Rituals ❦ ❦ ❦ Introduction: A Cathedral Built in Seven Weeks On the second floor of a modest mercantile building in Nauvoo, Illinois, on the warm morning of May 4, 1842,…
A Christian Examination of the Latter-day Saint Doctrine that the Atonement Was Accomplished in the Garden of Gethsemane ✦ ✦ ✦ Introduction: A Tale of Two Gardens Ask a hundred traditional Christians where the atonement of Jesus Christ was accomplished, and ninety-nine will point to a hill outside Jerusalem’s wall called Golgotha, the Place of…
Why the Entire Mormon Restoration Stands or Falls on One Man, Joseph Smith ❦ ❦ ❦ Introduction: The Hinge on Which Everything Else Turns There is a particular kind of theological conversation that, no matter where it begins, ends up in the same place. It may begin with the Book of Mormon. It may begin…
A Traditional Christian Examination of LDS Missionary Authority ❖ ❖ ❖ Introduction: The Doorstep and the Title Almost every American adult has met them. Two young men in dark trousers, crisp white shirts, conservative ties, and bicycles leaning against the curb. Pinned over their left breast pocket is a black plastic name tag bearing the…