Greek: οὐ γὰρ ἐπαισχύνομαι τὸ εὐαγγέλιον, δύναμις γὰρ θεοῦ ἐστιν εἰς σωτηρίαν παντὶ τῷ πιστεύοντι, Ἰουδαίῳ τε πρῶτον καὶ Ἕλληνι.

My Translation: For I am not ashamed of the good news [some manuscripts “of Christ”], for it is the power of God toward deliverance to all those trusting, first to the Jew and to the Greek.

KJV: For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

My translations are purposefully stretched and should not be viewed as more accurate than the KJV translation unless I say so in the post. I'm trying to show the range lying between the original Greek text and the English.

Update May 2013

This scripture has been removed by the Church Educational System from the Scripture Mastery list. However, it had remained within this list for over two decades and as such is still familiar to many graduates of the LDS Church's Seminary program. So I'm keeping this exploration of it online, but it is no longer applicable to CES.

Paul! We've reached the letters of Paul! I'm so happy!

Paul was a 1st Century convert to the Jesus movement. He relates in his own letters, and it is later recorded in what might be two fictionalized retellings in Acts, how he began his association with the movement by persecuting them. Paul appears to be from the city of Tarsus, and was a unique convert to the movement who left as much of an imprint upon it, if not more, than the historical Jesus around whom the movement began. Paul was possibly a Roman citizen (which, if true, would be where his Latin name, Paulus, comes from), was well-educated, and was a Pharisee before something caused him to believe that Jesus of Nazareth has risen from the dead and was indeed the promised Messiah for Israel. Through Paul's theological explorations of the meaning of Jesus's death and resurrection, Christianity was transformed and universalized into a new system of belief and worship that quickly spread across the Roman world.

Of course, the transition from Paul's unique theology to the eventual development of orthodox Christianity was not direct or instantaneous. We've been looking at scriptures from the four gospels, all of which were written after the complicated letters of Paul were composed, and from the first Gospel, Mark, to Matthew and Luke, and ultimately to John, the writings and viewpoints of Paul are largely absent from the writers' perspectives, though some of Luke's account of Paul's life in Acts seems to line up slightly with Paul's theological focus (though Luke's history of Paul's life does not line up very much at all with Paul's own summarization of his conversion as given in Galatians and seems to have been fictionalized).

However, while Paul was obviously not influential among the various groups of Christians where and when the Gospels were being written, the influence of his writings continued to grow through the decades, influencing later writers to quote him and still other writers to imitate him and pretend to be him in later letter-writing endeavors (which we'll talk about when we get to the scripture mastery verses from 2 Thessalonians, which ironically warn Christians against letters that seem to come from Paul or other authorities and yet 2 Thessalonians itself seems to be one of these false-Paul letters).

Paul's Letter to the Romans

Moving on from Paul as an author, let's zero in a bit more onto the epistle in question: Romans. Of the letters we're confident that Paul actually wrote, Romans is the most organized, complicated, and well-thought out. The context of the letter is that Paul is preparing a trip to Rome, where he has never been before, and he is writing a letter outlining his theological view of Jesus to send to friends of his there in advance of his arrival (this letter was sent with one of those friends, Phoebe, an early female deacon from one of Paul's congregations). We have no historical indication of how the letter or Phoebe were received, though traditions preserved in Acts seem to indicate that Paul spent considerable time in Rome after arriving, possibly under house arrest by Roman authorities.

Why would Paul send a letter like this? It seems that Paul had considerable trouble with other Christians not agreeing with his particular viewpoint on the Jewish Law and the relationship of Jesus and other Christians to it. Paul also had to deal with issues of authority. While he called himself at times an Apostle he was a convert to the movement long after the death of the historical Jesus and there is no record anywhere in the New Testament of any official election or ordination for Paul as Apostle (such as was given to Matthias in Acts 1 when he was elected by lottery to replace Judas Iscariot in the Twelve; the author of Luke-Acts says that they sought out a person who had been a disciple from the beginning and who was a witness to the resurrected Jesus with the rest of the disciples at the end of Luke, both qualifications that Paul would fail against). In other letters, Paul makes reference to some of his theological opponents claiming more authority than himself, even going so far as to refer to his opponents mockingly as “super-Apostles”. Much of Paul's personal history, given in Galatians, is given to express how Paul's ideas and teachings did not come from things he learned through other Christians (implying that Paul instead got them through revelation).

While Galatians is also a dense theological work detailing Paul's beliefs about the Law of Moses and God's covenant people of Israel and God establishing a new covenant through Jesus, that letter seems to have been written in the heat of a furious passion after Paul learned that a previous congregation of his had been partially turned against him and his teachings by later Christian missionaries. Romans, on the other hand, seems to be Paul testing the waters ahead of his arrival, in a way saying “Here's who I am, here's what I teach, and here's why I think it's right. And by the way, I'm planning on coming through, will that be okay?” So in Romans, Paul sets about illustrating his theology carefully.

I think that the biggest shame of all about this scripture mastery verse is that it's the only scripture mastery verse from the entirety of Romans. As you can tell by everything I've already said, I think that even if you don't believe in Christianity, you should read Romans slowly and carefully (along with Galatians and the other genuine Pauline epistles) because 1) Paul was a very complex and complicated writer, and 2) Paul's writings matter when it comes to understanding what Christianity eventually developed into. Far more than the Gospels. Christianity was a movement started by Jesus, but through Paul it became a religion about Jesus.

The Context for the Verse

So how does this verse measure up against this call to understand Paul's theology? While it's not a total miss, it's pretty weak sauce indeed.

This verse is part of Paul's introduction to the letter, where Paul is transitioning from saying “Hi” to the beginning of his argument about how the death of Jesus the Messiah brings about a new covenants with God that brings salvation.

He starts off by saying he's not “ashamed” of the good news of Jesus. What is there to be ashamed of? At this period of time, quite a bit. Remember that when Paul is writing there are no gospels or any other writings we're currently aware of. There were many oral traditions floating throughout the Greek-speaking world in a giant game of telephone, but apart from a hypothetical collection of the sayings of Jesus that may have been assembled at this time (called “Q”), nobody had yet attempted to sit down and write down a history of Jesus making use of all of the stories Christians were telling each other about Jesus through word of mouth. And aspects of the stories were influenced by the more difficult aspects of the historical Jesus: things Christians almost certainly wished they could avoid:

• Just like many other failed messiahs Jesus had been executed by the Roman authorities, probably for the crime of sedition and setting himself up as “King of the Jews”.
• Jesus had begun his ministry by being baptized under the authority of John the Baptist, the leader of a different group of Jews that only partially decided to follow Jesus after their leader was killed.
• Jesus was obviously from Nazareth but most Jews expected the promised messiah to be born in Bethlehem.
• Christians were still confused and fractious amongst themselves as to how Jewish or non-Jewish they were supposed to be.
• Jesus preached an apocalyptic message of the coming Kingdom of God, but that Kingdom had failed to show up after his death.
• Some of Jesus's prophecies simply had not occurred. Some converts who had been promised that they would not “taste of death” before the Kingdom of God arrived had started to die. Jesus's prophecy that the Jewish Temple would be destroyed had not occurred (but it actually would happen a few years after Paul's probable death when the Temple was burned during the Roman occupation of Jerusalem in 70 CE).
• There were other figures of the ancient Mediterranean, both Jewish and Gentile, where parts of their life stories seemed to match up uncomfortably well with the various stories commonly shared among early Christians about the life and miracles of Jesus. One of these figures, the pagan philosopher Apollonius of Tyre, who admittedly lived after Paul died, had a life story that so closely matched up with that of Jesus that followers of Jesus and followers of Apollonius each accused the others of having ripped off their leader's true history. However, apart from Apollonius, during the time of Paul there were other stories of gods and heroes, though none of them match up quite as neatly in all their details, but it's possible that these similarities were similar enough to cause confusion and doubt as to their truth in Jesus's life.

In short, there was a lot for early Christians to be ashamed about. Christianity did not begin as a clearly-defined movement distinct from anything else, but as a messy conglomeration of Jews who believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah sent to Israel even though he'd been executed and had never achieved any greatness as the Jewish prophecies foretold of the Messiah.

Mormons can easily identify with this statement of “not being ashamed of the Gospel of Christ”. They also have a similar list of embarrassments about their faith, a list which is actually longer than most average Mormons might consider. Just do a Google search for “Joseph Smith Polyandry”, “Book of Abraham Facsimiles”, “Council of Fifty”, “Seer Stones and the Book of Mormon”, “Horses in the Book of Mormon”, or many other similar issues and you'll see much that LDS youth have which they might choose to “not be ashamed of”. I'm not saying that they should be ashamed of those things, any more than early Christians should have been ashamed that their Lord had been executed as a criminal; I am simply saying that it should not be surprising if some of them are ashamed of these things. Paul's declaration that he is not ashamed is an apologetic declaration of strength, because he knows there are many things that he could be ashamed of, but he chooses not to be. Why? Let's read further.

“For it is the power of God unto the delivering of all who believe, first to the Jew and to the Greek.” Paul's shamelessness comes because he believes that the good news of Christ is what God uses to deliver everyone who believes, both Jew and Gentile. Now, if most Seminary students are taught this verse the way I was taught it, the emphasis would be on the not ashamed part. I was told that I should be proud of my Mormon faith and heritage, and stand boldly in the face of ridicule and mockery. I was not told to do so because my religion brought about salvation, but rather to do so because my Church was the Only True and Living Church Upon the Whole Earth. I suppose from a certain point of view it could be argued that this is essentially the same thing: ie, if I belong to the One True Church, then I also belong to the only Church through which salvation is possible. But for Paul, the power of God to salvation is the good news of Christ to those who believe. Belief is a very important concept to Paul, no matter how much it gets trivialized by some LDS youth teachers (I know that the idea that Paul's central message was about the saving power of faith in Christ was trivialized for myself when growing up). This verse is a small example of that, but there are many more direct verses within Romans and other epistles to support this viewpoint. The entire letter, when read as a whole, is about how Jesus's death provides a real path to salvation for all people as opposed to the previous covenant God established with his chosen people of Israel through the Torah.

As for the specifics of Paul's teachings about how faith in Jesus is of primal important in his role as God's Messiah and in God's plan for his creation will be better explored when we look at James 2:17-18, so we'll wait until then.

Why Do I Think This Is Part of Scripture Mastery?

I think the main purpose of this scripture is to encourage LDS youth to not be ashamed of the mockery and ridicule they might experience for membership in the LDS Church. I think the rest of Paul's message about the efficacy of salvation to those who believe, first Jew and then Greek (basically saying all humans), tends to get lost when taught to most LDS youth. I would love to be proven wrong about this, of course. Frankly, though, I think it's a shame that from the entire Epistle to the Romans, this is the only verse that ends up in the Scripture Mastery list. Paul's writings are very influential throughout the rest of Christianity, and Romans is where he expresses his ideas about salvation by faith in Christ clearest. Because LDS soteriology (a fancy way of saying their ideas about salvation) is so focused on what an individual must do instead of what an individual must believe (though beliefs are important for Mormons as long as those beliefs impel certain actions) I shouldn't be so surprised that Romans gets such a short shrift in the Scripture Mastery list. In a possible future list I'd hope that Romans is better represented.

#Mormon #ScriptureMasteryNT #AcademicBiblical

Greek: 55 ὑπάρχων δὲ πλήρης πνεύματος ἁγίου ἀτενίσας εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν εἶδεν δόξαν θεοῦ καὶ Ἰησοῦν ἑστῶτα ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ θεοῦ, 56 καὶ εἶπεν, ἰδοὺ θεωρῶ τοὺς οὐρανοὺς διηνοιγμένους καὶ τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐκ δεξιῶν ἑστῶτα τοῦ θεοῦ.

My Translation: 55 But being filled with the Holy Spirit, he looked earnestly into the sky, he saw the glory of God and Jesus set by the right side of God, 56 and he said, “Look! I see the heavens drawn apart [some manuscripts “opened wide”] and the son of man set by the right side of God.”

KJV: 55 But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing > on the right hand of God, 56 And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.

My translations are purposefully stretched and should not be viewed as more accurate than the KJV translation unless I say so in the post. I'm trying to show the range lying between the original Greek text and the English.

Update May 2013

This scripture has been removed by the Church Educational System from the Scripture Mastery list. However, it had remained within this list for over two decades and as such is still familiar to many graduates of the LDS Church's Seminary program. So I'm keeping this exploration of it online, but it is no longer applicable to CES.

A Quick Note

It's a lot of fun to write these posts, but I want to do even better. So I'm slowing down the pace in order to give each individual post some time to hopefully spread through the Internet. A new Scripture Mastery post should appear every Monday and every Thursday. I'm asking anyone who has been enjoying this series to please comment, share/post links, ask questions, post rebuttals, and what have you. I'm relatively confident in what I'm doing, but I've already been able to find and fix some problems in previous posts due to people getting involved. Share you experiences in Seminary or Sunday School about these scriptures. Ask questions about other areas and scriptures (I can only really answer translation questions about the New Testament personally, though I feel rather confident in my knowledge of the “Old Testament”, better called the Hebrew Bible, too). And if you're enjoying this, please just drop a quick note to say so. Just a quick “Thanks” or “Cool beans” really makes my day. Thanks! Now onto the post!

The Context: Stephen's Martyrdom in Acts

We're back to an author we've seen before! The book of Acts is unique in the New Testament: it is the only sequel. The author of Acts is the same person as the author of the Gospel of Luke. Luke is often the favorite evangelist of people to read: he likes to focus on people and stories instead of on dense sermons and dialogs. And here in Acts it is no different. The verses in question are not part of a sermon delivered on the nature of God, but are in fact the last words of a long, emotional exposition on Jewish history, delivered by the movement's (apparently) first martyr (not counting Jesus).

In the Book of Acts, the main character is no longer Jesus, who has ascended into heaven, but is rather the Holy Spirit, who is the main mover and motivator of the many stories. The entire book is about how the good news of Jesus the Messiah's death spreads from a small group of followers in Jerusalem and Galilee to many cities in Greece and Asia minor (modern-day Turkey). It's split up into two parts, the first is the story of Peter and how the “way” (Luke's name for the movement that seems to be the original Christian term for their diverse movement) endured through the initial growing pains of being led by human beings into new areas of the world both physically and theologically (though there's some good evidence that Luke is cleaning up the complexities of the real history he's covering and simplifying the story considerably), and the second is how the conversion of a bitter enemy, Saul of Tarsus, leads the movement to the Gentiles and eventually to the whole world. The verses in question comes from the first part of the work. Peter and the other apostles have elected seven men to help them administer the needs to the young movement so that they can be free to preach as missionaries. However, these seven men quickly become preachers and missionaries themselves, so it's unclear to me how well this plan was thought out.

The martyr is Stephen (a Greek name, perhaps a glimpse of an early Gentile convert to the movement before the traditional start as related by Luke where Peter is given a vision of unclean animals he is told to eat), who has just finished telling the Jewish leaders how wicked they are and how they are following a pattern of wickedness throughout their history that has led up to their crucifying Jesus even though he fits into this pattern of their history as well and that they are murderers and lawbreakers because of it. (The sermons that Luke gives to his main characters in much of Acts are really quite inflammatory texts, so it's little wonder that the speakers keep having trouble with their audience.) He then proclaims that he sees Jesus in vision with God, and the crowd are so incensed that they decide to stone Stephen to death on the spot.

Jewish leaders did not have the authority to kill Judeans without Roman approval. This is usually given in Sunday School as the explanation for why Pilate, the Roman procurator of Judea, was involved in the sentencing and execution of Jesus (and indeed that was probably why the Romans were involved, but if so, we've lost record of what Jesus's crime against Rome actually was). But here in this story we have the Jews killing someone without any apparent legal problems. Perhaps one of the executions, of Jesus and of Stephen, didn't occur as written, then? Perhaps in the case of Stephen's death this story of the leaders of the Jews executing Stephen for blasphemy is based on early traditions of Christ followers being beaten up and killed by vigilante mobs or other, less authoritative groups than the Sanhedrin of the Jews. Perhaps Luke wants to express the violent trouble that early Jesus followers were having and so he takes the historical martyr Stephen and turns his story into an somewhat mythologized, exemplary tale of early Christian martyrdom and persecution that many unnamed people faced. There's no way to know, of course. It's all supposition, but Luke is not what we in the 21st Century would consider a “historian,” but is more of a propagandist. He's using history as a tool to express his message.

Also note that we are given a glimpse into the last, inner moments of Stephen. We aren't just told what he said he saw before the crowd decides to kill him, we are told what he saw before he died. Of course, it's the exact same thing that he said he saw, but Luke as narrator gives us a view of Stephen's vision that nobody else could have seen. Since the author of Luke-Acts, whoever he (or possibly she) was, never claims to divine revelation as one of their sources, we can assume that this vision of Stephen's has some artistic perspective applied to it (and even if the historical Luke who is traditionally viewed as author wrote it, he was an ancient doctor and convert to the movement and not an apostle or other source with divine authority, just a historian). Did Stephen really say what he thought he saw at the end of his sermon? Were his words accurately conveyed through the intervening decades between his death and the writing of Acts? Who kept the tradition alive all of those years, and how much did the story grow or change during that time? And above all, how strongly should we view Stephen's vision as we have it in Acts 7 as a statement of doctrinal importance?

LDS Views

But anyways, enough of the context and questions (though I could literally go on for a thousand more words about the book of Acts, which is without a doubt one of my favorite New Testament works as even the author can't scrub out the messiness of humanity evident in the small group of Jesus followers he is chronicling). Why was this scripture chosen by CES for LDS youth to study and memorize to help them throughout the rest of their lives? Well, on the surface, this appears to be a scripture that fully supports the idea of the now-risen Jesus as a divine figure. Stephen proclaims to the Jews around him that his spiritual leader, the executed Rabbi Jesus, is now set next to God himself. Stephen is proclaiming the power and authority of Jesus in the coming Kingdom of God, which, more than anything it seems, incenses Luke's villains who then agree to kill him. So it seems to be a scripture supporting Jesus as God's divine messenger, and would thus be a perfectly appropriate scripture in Christian and LDS theology, except that we've already covered other scriptures that would say as much and there are other more-famous New Testament scriptures that are not part of the scripture mastery list that also say as much.

So it seems that for Mormons, again, this scripture says so much more. Mormons in Seminary and Institute usually interpret Stephen's proclamation literally: Stephen actually saw Jesus standing on the right side of God. In other words, Stephen saw two people: Jesus and God, and they were next to each other. Jesus is even identified as standing on the right-hand side of God. So Stephen saw two people, just like Joseph Smith claimed to see in (one of the accounts of) his First Vision. And God must have been visible, and not some mysterious spirit, because Stephen saw him enough to know that it was God and that Jesus was standing next to him. Ergo, this is a vision that confirms the rather non-traditional LDS idea of an embodied God the Father and speaks against the (again, completely mistaken) idea of the Trinity being a Modalist God. This popular narrative that the LDS viewpoint helps illuminate aspects of the Bible that have confused regular Christians for millennia arises yet again (I'd love to talk about this rather arrogant viewpoint when it comes to the baptism of Jesus, where it usually reaches it's most appalling mockery, and will perhaps do some once I am finished with this Scripture Mastery series). Because obviously, if more Christians just read their Bible they'd see this stuff, right? (The same could be said of hyper-patriotic American Mormons reading their Book of Mormon, though, to be fair. If they read it closer they'd see that it's not nearly the pro-American, pro-Democracy work they often purport it to be.)

Other Perspectives

So what are we to make of the common LDS perspective? Is it valid? Yes, it is valid. From a literal perspective, much (though not all) of this view holds. Of course, this scripture says nothing about whether the Father (or even the Son) has a body, and as we've discussed before, the usual Mormon idea of the Christian Trinity is actually heretical itself, and is called Modalism and while many average Christians might subconsciously adhere to it or even teach it, it was denounced as a heresy even before the Arian controversy in the 4th Century. But you can validly read it as a statement of Stephen seeing two individuals next to each other in vision.

But should this scripture be taken literally? I'd argue against it. First of all, the questions surrounding the context bother me. If there is a doctrinal point to be made, there are better places to make it than from the mouth of a person who is about to die and be thus unable to further explain the importance of what he has seen, and there are better people to relate it than an anonymous historian who enjoys creating sermons and speeches for his characters to say some thirty to forty years after the fact. So off the bat, I already have serious doubts about the importance that the author meant to place behind this statement.

Secondly, the less-literal interpretation is just as valid. Stephen has finished a long exploration of Jewish history, covering how God has given his people laws and prophets to guide them and how the people often reject them. He then accuses the people of having broken the Torah by killing God's latest messenger of Jesus, and finishes by proclaiming that Jesus is a messenger of God because he sees him in vision with God. The vision as described could mean that Jesus is standing on the right-hand side of God literally, or it could be that Jesus is set (also a valid interpretation of the verb) in a position of authority in relation to God. Jesus is God's “right-hand man,” in other words.

“To sit at the 'right hand' of the king was an honor (see 1 Kgs 2:19). In Ugaritic myth* the artisan god Kothar-and Khasis is described as sitting at the right hand of the storm god Baal. See G. R. Driver, Canaanite Myths and Legends, 61-62.” (Net Bible, Psalm 110:1, Footnote 4)
*Corpus des tablettes en cunéiformes alphabetiques 4 v. 108-10

So it could be less a statement of their separateness and more a statement that Jesus is indeed who Stephen said he was: a divine messenger approved of and sent by God. And, in the context of Stephen's sermon on Jewish history leading up to the wrongful death of Jesus, it seems that this is the emotional climx where Stephen gets to say that Jesus's position in God's plan is supreme. In context, it seems to be a very odd place to put any sort of statement on the nature of God, and appears to be merely a statement on the authority of Jesus. Saying that God is embodied would have bothered 1st Century Jews far less than saying that the radical preacher that had been executed a few years before was God's messenger and that they are thus murderers and sinners against God. Which implication would have led to Stephen's death? That the executed Jesus was now in a position of authority.

Why Do I Think This Is Part of Scripture Mastery?

To me, it seems we've already covered the authority and position of Jesus enough in previous scriptures as given (“Jesus Christ, whom [God] has sent”). Thus, I see little reason to pluck this relatively innocuous verse from its obscurity in Acts and elevate it to the status of one of only 25 scriptures to memorize from the New Testament. There are so many other things that could have been pulled from Acts, but this one made the cut. I think the biggest reason is again because it is viewed as an anti-Trinitarian scripture (which it is not; it is at most an anti-Modalist scripture). It adds very little else to an understanding of Jesus in LDS theology apart from this stance. Again, I would not be surprised to see this scripture dropped from any future reformulation of the Scripture Mastery list. It is used to argue against an incorrect conception of what the debate over Mormon-Christian theology is about.

#Mormon #ScriptureMasteryNT #AcademicBiblical

Greek: αὕτη δέ ἐστιν ἡ αἰώνιος ζωή, ἵνα γινώσκωσιν σὲ τὸν μόνον ἀληθινὸν θεὸν καὶ ὃν ἀπέστειλας Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν.

My Translation: But everlasting life is this, that they all might come to know you, the one true god, and that you sent Jesus Christ.

KJV: And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

My translations are purposefully stretched and should not be viewed as more accurate than the KJV translation unless I say so in the post. I'm trying to show the range lying between the original Greek text and the English.

A Quick Note”

It's a lot of fun to write these posts, but I want to do even better. So I'm slowing down the pace in order to give each individual post some time to hopefully spread through the Internet. A new Scripture Mastery post should appear every Monday and every Thursday. I'm asking anyone who has been enjoying this series to please comment, share/post links, ask questions, post rebuttals, and what have you. I'm relatively confident in what I'm doing, but I've already been able to find and fix some problems in previous posts due to people getting involved. Share your experiences in Seminary or Sunday School about these scriptures. Ask questions about other areas and scriptures (I can only really answer translation questions about the New Testament personally, though I feel rather confident in my knowledge of the “Old Testament”, better called the Hebrew Bible, too). And if you're enjoying this but don't really want to do anything grand, please just drop a quick note to say so. Just a quick “Thanks” or “Cool beans” really makes my day. Thanks! Now onto the post!

The Death of Jesus in John's Gospel

This is a popular one throughout Christianity. It's from John 17, which is a long prayer given by Jesus to God at the Last Supper, sometimes called the “Intercessory Prayer”. One reason it's popular is that this prayer occupies the place of the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew, Mark, and especially Luke. Whereas in those gospels Jesus is portrayed as suffering in prayer, as in Mark, or perhaps a little ambivalent such as asking God to “remove the cup” before his upcoming death in Luke, in John Jesus is fully in command of the situation, and this prayer to God is a plea not to remove the cup but rather for God to honor and uplift Jesus's disciples. In John's gospel, Jesus does not approach his death with apprehension; in fact, for John, the death of Jesus is not portrayed as a possibly-unexpected event, but is the climax of the book with John working in symbolism of a emperor's coronation into the narrative. For John, the death of Jesus is the crowning achievement of Jesus's work and the event that heralds the full arrival of the kingdom of God upon the world (John's gospel, while still containing some apocalyptic elements, seems to have been written long enough after the death of Jesus for much of the apocalyptic warnings of the coming kingdom of God to be replaced with the spiritual arrival of the kingdom as the gospel of Jesus being accepted and spread by his followers; this tends to happen when people who feel that they were promised they'd live to see the coming kingdom of God begin to die and you need an explanation). (See my post about the differences of the Gospels if you want to know more about these four very different and non-coordinating works.)

Jesus Sent By God

One of the main reasons for the inclusion of this verse, I feel, is the honorable and correct use of it as a pro-Christ verse. This is a verse that is central to Christian and Mormon theology: God sent Jesus Christ, and that eternal life is wrapped up in developing a relationship with God and Christ. So much is wrapped up in this concept for both Mormons and Christians, so I approve of its inclusion for this reason. But I'd argue that there's another less honorable and pretty much incorrect reason for this verse to be included in a list of the most important scriptures from the New Testament for LDS youth, and it has to do with Jesus's statement that life eternal is to know, or understand God. In other words, it's commonly assumed that having a correct understanding of the nature of God is part of attaining eternal life, which for Mormons means living the same kind of life as God the Father: life as a god.

The Only True God

One interesting aspect of this verse is the phrase ton mónon alāthinón theón, the only true god. Monon should be recognizable to English speakers in the numerical prefix “mono”: monorail, monocle, monogram, monotheism, etc. It means “one”, “single”, “only”. This is a verse that seems to have been used during the debates of the Nicene Council of 325 CE, part of the Arian heresy that divided much of the Christian movements during the early Fourth Century. To try and simply summarize what was actually a very complex debate, the Arians felt that only God the Father was an eternal God, and that Jesus, while still divine and unique, was a being created by the Father in the distant past before the creation of the world. In explanation of their viewpoint, the Arians pointed out that the terms “Father” and “Son” were without meaning if applied to multiple beings who had always existed alongside each other and who were equal in all power and glory. Countered by the proto-orthodox viewpoint (which only later developed into the strong Trinitarianism, but was an idea around long before Nicea and wasn't invented there, merely promoted as correct) that this resulted in a worldview of three gods, which was polythesim and was soundly denounced many times in the Bible (such as in the 10 commandments), the Arians responded by using this verse to imply that while Jesus was a god, he was not a True God. Jesus himself in this verse acknowledges that the Father is the only “true” God. Thus, they argued, the commandments for only worshiping God the Father alone were still upheld, because there was only one “true” God in the universe. Jesus was a different kind of god because he had been created by the one “true” God. Needless to say, the nuance in such a view didn't last in Christian thought, but Arianism itself held out for hundreds of years after the Nicene Council as one of the most popular strands of Christianity in the world.

The Modalist Heresy

Mormons have a viewpoint that is similar to the Arians, but it should not be confused as being the same viewpoint (and for those familiar with the homoiousios/homoousios debate of Nicea, go ahead and laugh). Mormons began in a period of American history where many traditional aspects of Christianity were being examined, doubted, and experimented with. One aspect of traditional Christianity that many original converts had trouble with was Trinitarianism. The basic idea of Trinitarianism is that God is composed of three beings: the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Now, as to whether God is a title for all three, an aspect of the three that arises through their mutual love and unity, or whatever, is a subject of much debate and thought. The basic idea is simply that there is one God and three persons. Unfortunately, it is rather easy for many Christians to unwittingly slip into another heretical belief when trying to understand how a singular God is composed of three persons: modalism. Modalism is the belief that there is only one God who appears to be three different people at different times and in different places. To over-simplify, it's the belief that God has a “Father” mask that he wears when he needs to be the Father, a “Son” mask that he wears when he needs to be the Son, and a “Holy Ghost” mask for when the Holy Ghost is working in the world, but it's the same person behind all three masks. Most Mormons are surprised to find that this view is a heresy, because it tends to be the viewpoint we are taught growing up in the Church of what “other Christians” believe. Modalist thought can be found throughout Christian history, but it is always regarded by Christian theologians as heretical and is corrected when found. That doesn't mean that it doesn't continue pop up all over the place even in congregations nowadays, and it was commonly said to be an issue for many early seekers in America's Second Great Awakening. Even Thomas Paine, the writer of the revolutionary tract Common Sense, discussed the oddity of the Trinity in his Age of Reason. It's bound to happen when people continue to use analogies to try and explain the mystery of the Trinity such as “It's like water: it can be solid, liquid, or gas but it's all water,” or “It's like an egg: you have the shell, the whites, and the yolk, but it's only an egg when all three are united together.”

Mormons and Their “Trinitarian” Straw Men

I still have more research to do on this point, so from here on out it's my own supposition (though I'm rather confident in this hypothesis), but I think it can be shown that the great divide between Mormons as non-Trinitarians and other Christians as Trinitarians has its roots in Mormon rhetoric and not in anti- Mormon rhetoric. In other words, I think Mormons started self-identifying as non-Trinitarians decades before other Christians even cared about the issue. I would argue that issues that are related to that divide, such as Mormons believing in an embodied God or in human deification and theosis, can and occasionally do live side by side with traditional Trinitarian thought. I think that eventually as Christians in general turned against Mormonism during the 19th Century it was originally because of polygamy and the strong control exerted upon members by Church leadership. Eventually, some Christians heard that Mormons also identified themselves as anti-Trinitarianists and so came to agree that this was an issue, and today the argument that Mormons cannot be Christians because of the Council of Nicea has been ongoing for so long that everyone on both sides of the divide has forgotten who first started saying it and everyone simply believes it is true because it's been said for so long by both sides. However, I'm still doing my own research into what the earliest Mormon narratives on Nicea and the Trinity were and when and if they changed.

Anyways, all of this is a very long way of saying that I think this scripture is present because it's one of the main anti-Modalist scriptures (the Arians in particular loved to use anti-Modalism scriptures and arguments because it helped force their opponents into the uncomfortable position of possibly having to argue against Arian ideas using heretical terms and ideas from earlier Modalist thinkers). Jesus is talking to God and mentions himself as being separate. Mormons (incorrectly) assume that this scripture is thus speaking against Trinitarianism. For Mormons, this rejection of Trinitarianism is, oddly, one of the most important differences between Mormonism and Christianity. In the First Vision account, where God and Jesus visit Joseph Smith as a young boy to start him on the road to becoming a prophet, Mormons routinely will point out that Joseph saw two “personages” in the grove where was praying and not one. But remember, this is because they've been perpetuating the idea of a modalist Trinity for so long that today it is simply an accepted point among Mormons that Christians are Modalists. However, this isn't true, and unfortunately the elevation of this scripture to be included in a list of the most important scriptures for LDS youth almost certainly involves this scripture being used to combat this false view of what other Christians “believe”.

Why Do I Think This Is Part of Scripture Mastery?

For two reasons, one good and one bad. The first, good reason is because it is a scripture that speaks to one of the central doctrines of Christian and Mormon theology: God sent Jesus Christ. However, the second bad reason focuses on the idea that life eternal is to “know God”: for most Mormons this knowledge includes a true understanding of the nature of God as “non-Trinitarian,” placed against a straw-man conception of “orthodox Christianity” that is actually heretical for traditional Christians.

#Mormon #ScriptureMasteryNT #AcademicBiblical

These are the posts I've made as part of my Scripture Mastery in Context project for the Christian New Testament. The project is an attempt to study the 25 scriptures the LDS Church Educational System expects high school students to memorize from the New Testament.

Update May 2013

The Church Educational System revised the lists of Scripture Mastery recently and this new list removed a number of the old scriptures, altered the extent of a couple, and added a number of new selections.  The following list has been revised with the new scriptures.  I'll be writing posts for those as I can, but this was quite the unexpected change and I don't have much prepared yet about it.

Series Description Posts

• Introduction
• Conclusion

Scripture Mastery Posts

• Matthew 5:14-16
• Matthew 11:28-30
• Matthew 16:15-19
• Matthew 22:36-39
• Matthew 28:19-20
• Luke 24:36-39
• John 3:5
• John 14:6
• John 14:15
• John 17:3
• Acts 2:36-38
• Acts 3:19-21
• 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
• 1 Corinthians 15:20-22
• 1 Corinthians 15:40-42
• Galatians 5:22-23
• Ephesians 4:11-14
• Philippians 4:13
• 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3
• 2 Timothy 3:15-17*
• Hebrew 12:9
• James 1:5-6
• James 2:17-18
• 1 Peter 4:6
• Revelation 20:12**

* Number of verses altered from 2 Timothy 3:16-17 ** Number of verses altered from Revelation 20:12-13

Old Pre-2013 Scripture Mastery Selections

• Matthew 6:24
• Matthew 25:40
• John 7:17
• John 10:16
• Acts 7:55-56
• Romans 1:16
• 1 Corinthians 10:13
• 1 Corinthians 15:29
• 1 Timothy 3:1-5
• Hebrews 5:4
• Revelation 14:6-7

Additional Posts Related to the Series

• The Christmas Stories
• The Gospels
• Commonly Mistaken Readings of Some New Testament Verses

#Mormon #ScriptureMasteryNT #AcademicBiblical

Greek: Ἐὰν ἀγαπᾶτέ με, τὰς ἐντολὰς τὰς ἐμὰς τηρήσετε·

My Translation: If y'all love me, y'all will observe my commandments.

KJV: If ye love me, keep my commandments.

My translations are purposefully stretched and should not be viewed as more accurate than the KJV translation unless I say so in the post. I'm trying to show the range lying between the original Greek text and the English.

When I mentioned that the Jesus of John's gospel likes to talk, I'm not kidding! John 14 begins a discourse from Jesus to his disciples that lasts for several chapters without any real interruption. The context is the famous Last Supper, mentioned in all four gospels and also in the genuine letters of Paul. Jesus is here giving his last sermon to his disciples, preparing them for his death and (in the Gospel of John, at least) for how his death will bring the Kingdom of God fully to them. The broader context is difficult to summarize; I'd recommend that you go and read John 14 for yourself. The best I can say is that Jesus is talking about his commandments and about love.

Frankly, I'm going to commit a huge blasphemy here and say that I don't really find this scripture to be engaging at all. I'm dreading this write-up because of the boredom this verse inspires to me. I'm wanting to talk about how it is emblematic of the Mormon doctrine of the importance of works, but frankly I think the case for this to be made is weak. Jesus is here making a command that his disciples show their love of Jesus by following what he had told them to do. He is not saying that they must do so or else they will not enter the kingdom of God. He is not saying they must do so or suffer wrath. He's saying that their love of him should lead to their doing what he said to do. A little later, in verse 21, he indicates that the way to show love for Jesus is by keeping his commandments. They're not two things that lead from one to another, they're equivalent things. So does this really have much to do with salvation by either grace or by works? Not really, I'd argue, without reading a lot into the text.

A better question here would be, “What are the commandments of Jesus?” The typical LDS answer (indeed, the answer of most biblical inerrantists as well) would be that anywhere in the Bible where Jesus says to do something, then that is one of his commandments. Is this the case?

John's Jesus is remarkably ambivalent about the Jewish law (unlike Matthew's Jesus, with whom we've spent the most time so far). If we look through this chapters-long discourse, the answer becomes clear when we look at the next chapter (remember that there are no real chapter divisions in John's original work; this is all the same thing). John 15:10-14 says,

If you obey my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you, and your joy maybe complete. My commandment is this—-to love one another just as I have love you. No one has greater love than this—-that one lays down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.

And just a bit later in verse 17:

This I command you – to love one another.

I think it's very difficult to argue that the commandments referred to in this scripture mastery verse are anything more than directly linked with the explicit commands that Jesus gives to his disciples in the next chapter: that they love each other enough to die for each other. Sure, we can find many more commandments of Jesus in the other gospels, but the gospels were not written to be read together. They are not friendly sources towards each other. Each gospel is a unique piece of literature that attempts to stand alone in their depiction of who Jesus was and what his message was. To honestly discern what the author of the gospel was referring to beyond the command to love one another would best require going through the gospel of John from the beginning up to chapter 14 and try and decide what commandments he gives. If you'll go ahead and do that, you'll find a very different Jesus with a very different focus than the one we've been looking at in Matthew.

Why Do I Think This Is Part of Scripture Mastery?

I think this verse was chosen to try and impress upon LDS youth the importance of keeping the commandments taught to them by Church leaders. Since they hope that their students love Jesus, this is Jesus telling them, from an LDS point of view, that this love should be expressed through such things as avoiding coffee, tea, and alcohol, keeping chaste, being honest with others, paying tithing, and preparing for missions and temple rituals. However, I'd argue that this interpretation relies upon approaching the New Testament as a coherent whole where all of the books within it are designed to complement each other. The truth is not so nice and simple, and if we read the statement from John within the context of the Gospel of John, the commandments in question seem to be related to loving Jesus and loving each other. I cannot get behind the first interpretation as it creates a situation ripe for abuse by Church leaders, both local and at the top, who might exercise “unrighteous dominion”. The second interpretation is one that I whole-heartily can get behind. The world needs more love between humans.

#Mormon #ScriptureMasteryNT #AcademicBiblical

Greek: καὶ ἄλλα πρόβατα ἔχω, ἃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τῆς αὐλῆς ταύτης· κἀκεῖνα δεῖ με ἀγαγεῖν, καὶ τῆς φωνῆς μου ἀκούσουσιν, καὶ γενήσεται μία ποίμνη, εἷς ποιμήν.

My Translation: And other sheep I have, which are not of this court; I should lead them too, and they will hear my voice, and one flock will happen, one shepherd.

KJV: And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.

My translations are purposefully stretched and should not be viewed as more accurate than the KJV translation unless I say so in the post. I'm trying to show the range lying between the original Greek text and the English.

Update May 2013

This scripture has been removed by the Church Educational System from the Scripture Mastery list. However, it had remained within this list for over two decades and as such is still familiar to many graduates of the LDS Church's Seminary program. So I'm keeping this exploration of it online, but it is no longer applicable to CES.

Let's discuss the general non-Mormon view on this scripture first, and then we'll get to how this scripture is usually applied in the LDS Church.

This verse is in the context of a much longer discourse by Jesus about how he is the good shepherd willing to die for the sheep. Don't forget this context because it's important to how everyone else reads this verse.

In verse 10 onwards, Jesus explains what he means by the term “good shepherd.” He's not a hired hand, who would run away when danger appears and would leave the sheep to be destroyed. No, he's a good shepherd, who is willing to die in defense of his sheep. And Jesus says that God knows that Jesus dies for his sheep. And Jesus has other sheep, not of this enclosure, and he plans to bring them into the enclosure and have one herd. And the Father loves Jesus because he will die for the sheep, and Jesus is fully in command of the circumstances of his death. He has the power to die, and the power to take death back.

So, with that context surrounding the verse, it shouldn't surprise you that most people, believers and non-believers alike, feel that the author is describing how Jesus's death is for both the Jews as well as the Gentiles. The rest of the context in the sermon is describing how Jesus's willingness and ability to die for his sheep is what sets him apart from a hired hand as a good shepherd.

In Matthew's Gospel (which, I cannot stress this enough, is written from a Jewish perspective for what appears to be a Jewish group of Jesus followers), Jesus tells a Syrophonecian woman that he was sent only to the “lost sheep of Israel”; Jesus also himself avoids and tells his followers to avoid Samaria during his ministry. However, in John's Gospel, one of the first declarations by Jesus about being the Messiah is made to a Samaritan woman, and Jesus does not seem to share the same concerns. Also, while Matthew was written while there was still much uncertainty about the place and role of Greek believers, John was written a few decades later when the balance between Jewish Christians and Greek Christians was beginning to swing decisively in favor of Greek Christians having the greater numbers. So from this perspective it makes sense that the author of John would choose to mention that Jesus's mission to die for his sheep also extends to more sheep than just his original Jewish followers. Certainly by the time John was written it would have been obvious that the Christian message was seeing much more success in the world outside of Judea than within it.

The unique Mormon interpretation, on the other hand, is demanded by the Book of Mormon. In the Book of Mormon narrative, a group of Israelites have been led by God to the Americas. After Jesus's death and resurrection, he descends to the civilization of these Israelites and spends a few chapters in 3 Nephi talking to them and setting up an ecclesiastical organization among them before leaving. It's the theological climax of the book, featuring John's Jesus giving quotations from Matthew's gospel, and setting up his Church according to patterns recorded by Paul. Which is totally fine if you feel that the New Testament is a coherent whole (as most Mormons do). However, if you view the New Testament as a group of disparate works that do not make any attempt for agreement with each other, the appearance and behavior of Jesus in 3 Nephi is immensely troubling. (I've written more about the differences between the four New Testament gospels here.)

Anyways, the anachronisms and New Testament jumble are not the main point here. As part of his American discourses in the Book of Mormon, Jesus reveals to the people gathered around him, in 3 Nephi 15:16-24 that they are the “lost sheep” referred to in John 10:16. From 3 Nephi 15:21-24:

21 And verily I say unto you, that ye are they of whom I said: Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. 22 And they understood me not, for they supposed it had been the Gentiles; for they understood not that the Gentiles should be converted through their preaching. 23 And they understood me not that I said they shall hear my voice; and they understood me not that the Gentiles should not at any time hear my voice—-that I should not manifest myself unto them save it were by the Holy Ghost. 24 But behold, ye have both heard my voice, and seen me; and ye are my sheep, and ye are numbered among those whom the Father hath given me.

Jesus even acknowledges that many of his followers thought he was referring to the Gentiles, but he then alludes to Matthew's declaration (Matthew 15:24) that Jesus was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel (which in the Book of Mormon allusion becomes a reference to the lost tribes of Israel, referring to the lost remnants of the northern kingdom of Israel, destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 BCE). Because Jesus wasn't allowed to preach to non-Jews, then how could the Gentiles have “heard his voice”? The Book of Mormon demands that Mormons view the phrase “and they shall hear my voice” as a literal pronouncement about people hearing the actual voice of Jesus.

But Mormons do so by basically downplaying the second phrase: “them also I should bring, there shall be one flock, one shepherd.” In what way did Jesus bring the American civilizations (or, as the Book of Mormon implies, other lost pockets of Israelites worldwide) into a single flock (ποίμνη poímnā) with his Jewish followers in the fold (αὐλή aulā) of Jerusalem? The only way to keep this is to jump from a literal interpretation to a spiritual interpretation in the same sentence: they're brought into the same flock because they now all have the same gospel from Jesus's voice. So the interpretation says that in the midst of a long segment where Jesus, a Jewish itinerant rabbi, compares himself to a shepherd and his followers to sheep—-all of which I think everyone agrees should be read symbolically and not literally—-Jesus chooses to throw out a cryptic clue to his Judean followers about far-distant cousins living elsewhere in the world, followed by yet more symbolic language about bringing them together somehow. And the only reason for this interpretation seems to be because of a statement made in a fully separate gospel, Matthew, about Jesus not going to the Gentiles, a statement invalidated by other events in the gospel of John.

Obviously, I feel that the identification of the “other sheep” as Gentiles is completely correct, but that is because I feel that the Book of Mormon is a 19th Century creation. I do not feel that I am limited or forced in my perspective by what it has to say, and I'd even encourage believing Mormons to adopt a viewpoint of a 19th Century Book of Mormon to deal with issues like this. The narrators of the Book of Mormons apologize more than once for errors that may be in the book, so perhaps Mormons should adopt this verse in 3 Nephi as one of those errors. However, without a more flexible interpretation Mormons will continue to confuse other Christians when they point to John 10:16 as though it is biblical evidence for the Book of Mormon. It isn't.

Why Do I Think This Is Part of Scripture Mastery?

This scripture is kept because it is quoted by Jesus in 3 Nephi as biblical evidence for the existence of Book of Mormon peoples. However, this quotation introduces unnecessary complexity and really only stands as a valid interpretation after the Book of Mormon is already accepted as divine scripture. Without the interpretation provided by the Book of Mormon it is a scripture where Jesus prophesies how his gospel will go forth to the Gentiles (which, considering that the gospel of John was written nearly a century after the historical Jesus probably died and many Greeks were already believing in him as a divine figure, isn't really that impressive of a prophecy), and is a statement of how Jesus's death has meaning to both Jews and Gentiles together. John's main message is that Jesus died for the sins of the entire world, and this scripture stands fully in line with his main perspective and purpose.

#Mormon #ScriptureMasteryNT #AcademicBiblical

Greek: ἐάν τις θέλῃ τὸ θέλημα αὐτοῦ ποιεῖν, γνώσεται περὶ τῆς διδαχῆς πότερον ἐκ θεοῦ ἐστὶν ἢ ἐγὼ ἀπ’ ἐμαυτοῦ λαλῶ.

My Translation: If anyone would desire his desire to do, he will know concerning the teaching whether it is from God or whether I speak from myself.

KJV: If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.

My translations are purposefully stretched and should not be viewed as more accurate than the KJV translation unless I say so in the post. I'm trying to show the range lying between the original Greek text and the English.

Update May 2013

This scripture has been removed by the Church Educational System from the Scripture Mastery list. However, it had remained within this list for over two decades and as such is still familiar to many graduates of the LDS Church's Seminary program. So I'm keeping this exploration of it online, but it is no longer applicable to CES.

Well, it's been a wild previous few posts, so let's calm down a bit with this relatively normal and innocuous one. The context for this chapter is Jesus yet again speaking (seriously, he barely does anything else in John's gospel), this time in the Temple at Jerusalem during the Feast of Sukkōt. Previously his brothers had encouraged him to go down to Jerusalem during this very public feast, but he told them to go instead. Then he went secretly down after them. The authorities were looking for him, but couldn't find him. Then Jesus begins teaching in the Temple, and everyone is amazed at how much Jesus knows (John cares a lot more about portraying Jesus as awesome than he does about creating a logical narrative, so if you're a bit confused as to the context of how Jesus arrives in Jerusalem it's not meant to be historical, but to show that Jesus doesn't ever take advice or suggestions from someone else, but is always firmly in control of himself and his own ministry). The statement given in the Scripture Mastery verse comes at the beginning of Jesus's response about what he is teaching, right after he begins, “My teaching is not from me, but from the one who sent me.”

From a translation point of view, the only interesting thing about the verse is the first part, where Jesus says that if anyone *thélā to do his thélāma,* he will know whether Jesus's doctrine is divine or not. See how the two words are similar? They come from the same root, except that one is a verb, thélā (from *thélō),* and one is a noun, thélāma. The meaning is within the range of will, wish, desire, want, purpose, or even hunger (though usually the English word “will” covers most usages, including in this scripture where it's the best choice and the one the King James Version has). So, the first phrase, in a sense, means that if an individual works to make their desires or their purpose to be the same as God's desires or purpose, then they'll know.

For Mormons, this scripture has more application than just to Jesus's teachings in the Gospel of John. For Mormons, this is a promise applied to the entire restored gospel, and a similar scripture is found near the end of the Book of Mormon where readers are promised an answer to prayers about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.

However, this scripture introduces an important, and personally troubling, aspect to the Mormon formula for finding truth. If this scripture is inverted, then it provides a ready answer to objections about those who do not find truth in Mormonism.

I have a dear friend who was in a position where they wished to become a member of the Church and were taking the missionary discussions. Their family was relatively tolerant and open to other beliefs, and in sum it would have worked out well for them to receive revelation of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon (and, by extension somehow, the LDS Church). And yet the answer didn't come. They read, they prayed, they attended meetings, they studied, they kept the uniquely Mormon dietary rules, and the result was still nothing. At the time I personally found the experience extremely troubling. I was a few years home from my mission, and I'd spent those two years not just telling people they'd get answers to the Book of Mormon, but promising those answers and believing my promises. While on my mission similar experiences had occurred, but I, like most Mormons, had an answer for those previous situations: the individuals had not truly desired the message. They had not, as Jesus here says, been willing to do God's will. And so since they did not provide the needed effort on their part, God did not answer them.

Of course, this experience with my friend rocked me because I knew this individual well enough to know of their sincerity. I knew that there really wouldn't be anything substantial to hold them back from a message, and I knew that they had more to gain and very little to lose. And yet the answer didn't come.

This scripture was used by some friends who knew about the lack of an answer. This individual must have had something in the way, some personal blockage, some personal failing or fear or willful refusal to listen or obey, that had kept the answer from them. Because Jesus had promised in John 7:17 that if anyone “walked the walk” then they'd know.

But let's be honest here: how much is Jesus here referring to things like the Word of Wisdom, to baptism by immersion by LDS authority, or all of the things that Mormons believe must be done? Obviously, few Christians are going to agree with that. Many Christians like this verse as well, and the idea that it relates directly to Mormonism would be ludicrous to them. The common application outside of the LDS faith is that Jesus is speaking about himself and his message in John: the kingdom of God has already come (John is not very apocalyptic), Jesus is the Lamb of God sent by God to die for the sins of the world (John even rewrites history so that Jesus is crucified the day before Passover when the paschal lambs are being slaughtered in the Temple to reinforce this imagery), and belief in Jesus and his message brings salvation in God's spiritual kingdom. If you want to know this, then you need to align yourself with the followers of Jesus and do what they do (what Jesus followers are actually doing when John's Gospel was written is more than a little confusing, however).

But, in the end, if you feel that the good news of Jesus described in John is the same thing as the Restored Church brought about by Joseph Smith, then interpreting this scripture to be about the whole enchilada of the LDS Church makes sense and isn't wrong. While few would argue that it's a promise by Jesus about how one can know the divinity of Jesus's teaching, I think there's still a lot to be said as to whether or not it is also an explanation for why some people can't seem to receive an answer about the divinity. You know, does “If A, then B” also mean “If not B, then not A”? [I don't think so][], and I think it's dangerous and presumptuous to assume so.

Why Do I Think This Is Part of Scripture Mastery?

This scripture is included as a New Testament equivalent to Moroni's Promise in the Book of Mormon. It is also included to give an explanation to LDS youth as to why their peers may not agree with LDS beliefs even after giving them what appears to be an honest go.

#Mormon #ScriptureMasteryNT #AcademicBiblical

Greek: ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς· ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω σοι, ἐὰν μή τις γεννηθῇ ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ πνεύματος, οὐ δύναται εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν.

My Translation: Jesus answered, “Amen Amen I say to you, if a man is not born from water and wind, he cannot enter into the kingdom of the heavens.”

KJV: Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

My translations are purposefully stretched and should not be viewed as more accurate than the KJV translation unless I say so in the post. I'm trying to show the range lying between the original Greek text and the English.

I love this story from the third chapter of John. The author has done a superb job of making an engaging dialog based upon irony and misunderstanding. It's like a biblical sitcom piece, and it's funny. Not accidentally, either. The author has quite purposefully approached it in a way that would have been both entertaining as well as educational.

I'm guessing most of you reading didn't know this. The problem is that it's difficult to appreciate in any language other than Greek.

Let's start with the context: this verse is from a larger dialog between Jesus and a certain Nicodemus, identified as one of the leaders of the Jews. Nicodemus approaches Jesus at night to meet with Jesus in secret. He comes because the miracles of Jesus have convinced him that there's something to Jesus.

Then Jesus begins “teaching” Nicodemus, except when he tells Nicodemus something he uses words that are ambiguous in meaning, and every time Nicodemus mishears or is confused by Jesus. The irony for a listening Christian audience, who know the insider language being used, would have been immense.

First off, Jesus tell him that unless a man is born ἄνωθεν (ánōthen), he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Ánōthen is a Greek adverb modifying the verb “born”, and it can either mean “again” or “from above”. The Greek is ambiguous (purposefully so in this case), and Nicodemus thinks it means “again”, so he asks Jesus if it's possible to be born a second time. Then Jesus explains what he meant, showing that the meaning Nicodemus should have used was “from above,” which is what the above verse is explaining. A man must have a spiritual rebirth, a birth “from above,” if he wishes to enter God's kingdom.

The rest of the story is like this. Jesus then begins talking about the spirit and wind in the worship of God, utterly confusing poor Nicodemus, because in Greek Jesus is using the same word for both “spirit” and “wind”, flitting back and forth in meaning in a way where you can't quite tell where he might mean “spirit” in this phrase or were he might mean “wind” in this other phrase. And then, in classic style for Jesus in the gospel of John, he begins talking in a long monologue (only in John's gospel does Jesus usually begin talking to people for a few bits of dialog before launching into long-winded sermons that last for multiple verses or even multiple chapters).

This use of purposefully ambiguous Greek is one of the reasons that most scholars feel that this section of John's Gospel cannot be historically accurate. The phrasing and ambiguity only work in Greek (that's why in English the chapter feels odd, because a translator must choose a meaning for the words being used), but Jesus and Nicodemus would have been speaking Aramaic. In Aramaic there is no equivalent to ánōthen, and so there is no way that John's Gospel, written in Greek, could be a record of a similar Aramaic discussion. Perhaps there was a similar dialog/sermon spoken by the historical Jesus, but if so then it was not the one we have recorded in John's gospel.

A few things about what is said here in this verse: Greek has a definite article (like the English word “the”: “the apple”), but not an indefinite article (like the English word “a” or “an”: “an apple”). The definite article is often used in places where it wouldn't be in English, such as with proper names or people (so in Greek, the scriptures often refer to God as “The God”). There is no definite article in front of the word “spirit” in this verse, and only a few verses later, Jesus begins a discussion of the spirit and wind. So is Jesus speaking about what Mormons would call “the Gift of the Holy Ghost” here? Possibly, but an equally valid reading would be the translation that I provided: “wind”. Is Jesus saying that entrance to the kingdom of God is predicated upon baptism and confirmation? Possibly, but he could also simply be referring to the elements that come from the air, where the heavens are: wind and water. So he could be saying that we must be born from heaven, or born spiritually, to enter God's kingdom. It's not a cut and dried issue to simply say, “This scripture says that baptism is required.” And to say that the scripture says that “confirmation” or “the gift of the Holy Ghost” is required goes way beyond the verse itself.

Of course, there's been a long tradition in Christianity of baptism and of the need for baptism. The Catholics viewed baptism as so essential that eventually they provided the means and the practice to extend baptism to all humans by infant baptism (though they still accept baptism by immersion for those who wish for it). Many Protestants also have had periods in their history where the importance of baptism by water was paramount.

Of course, nowadays there are very few denominations that view baptism as completely essential to salvation. And it's not like they arrived at this conclusion by ignoring their Bibles. There are perfectly valid ways to interpret ambiguities such as those found in John 3:3-5 that do not create a requirement of water baptism for salvation.

For Mormons, baptism is still of paramount importance. The Book of Mormon has the pre-Christian prophet Nephi writing in the 6th Century BCE that baptism by water is the only way to start on the road towards eternal life. The Doctrine and Covenants repeatedly presses this point, and the doctrinal position that not only is baptism essential, but the proper authority must be present means that Mormons believe only their baptisms can start people on the road to eternal life. This leads to such things as baptism for the dead and the worldwide missionary program. And, of course, scriptures like John 3:5 as found in the English King James Bible seem, at first glance, to support their viewpoint. However, there are many other Biblically-literate Christians who have read and are very familiar with the Gospel of John who recognize that the underlying scripture is based on the ambiguity of certain words and that it would be incorrect to state that only one interpretation can be valid.

Why Do I Think This Is Part of Scripture Mastery?

This scripture was probably chosen to give LDS youth a way to answer the question, “Why do you think that I have to be baptized into your Church to be saved?” Or to explain why baptism is important. Since nearly all youth who would be attending Seminary were probably baptized years before when they turned 8, I doubt that CES would feel the need to impress upon them the importance of baptism without it being from a proselytizing viewpoint.

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Greek: 36 Ταῦτα δὲ αὐτῶν λαλούντων αὐτὸς ἔστη ἐν μέσῳ αὐτῶν. 37 πτοηθέντες δὲ καὶ ἔμφοβοι γενόμενοι ἐδόκουν πνεῦμα θεωρεῖν. 38 καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· τί τεταραγμένοι ἐστέ, καὶ διατί διαλογισμοὶ ἀναβαίνουσιν ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ ὑμῶν; 39 ἴδετε τὰς χεῖράς μου καὶ τοὺς πόδας μου, ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι αὐτός· ψηλαφήσατέ με καὶ ἴδετε, ὅτι πνεῦμα σάρκας καὶ ὀστέα οὐκ ἔχει καθὼς ἐμὲ θεωρεῖτε ἔχοντα.

My Translation: 36 Now they themselves talking, he stood in the middle of them [some manuscripts add “and he said, “Peace to y'all'”]. 37 But they were terrified and became afraid, seeming to see a spirit. 38 And he said to them, “Y'all are troubled? And why do thoughts rise up in the heart of y'all? 39 Y'all look at my hands and my feet, for I am myself; y'all handle me and look, for a spirit doesn't have fleshes and bones even as y'all see I have.”

KJV: 36 And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 37 But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. 38 And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? 39 Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

My translations are purposefully stretched and should not be viewed as more accurate than the KJV translation unless I say so in the post. I'm trying to show the range lying between the original Greek text and the English.

Usually my process on these posts is to step back in time, in my head, to my own days in Seminary about fifteen years ago. Of course, this can't take into account any change in LDS culture or doctrine since then (and some LDS doctrines and cultural assumptions have shifted dramatically in the past twenty years), but it tends to provide a good starting off point for what I want to talk about.

However, in this case I remember distinctly being taught that this set of verses was Important (with a capital “I”) because it taught something that other Christians didn't believe. My hazy memory seemed to pull up a sense that other Christians didn't believe in the resurrection of the body, or that perhaps they felt that Jesus himself wasn't resurrected but was a spirit. However, in the intervening years I've made it my business to learn the general Christian viewpoints (mostly the main Protestant viewpoints) on the Godhead; I've made it my business to try and understand the theological underpinnings of basic Trinitarian doctrine. And I can't think of many Christians who actually deny the resurrection of the body (though most simply view it as an odd side doctrine of Christianity without much importance), and I can't think of any Christians who deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus as described in some of the Gospels. I must have been mistaken.

So I asked my wife, who did not grow up in Utah, what she remembers about this scripture from her Seminary days. “Hmm,” she said, thinking back, “I seem to remember being told that this scripture specifically refutes the idea that Jesus doesn't have a body. But that can't be right, can it? Because I don't think most Christians have any idea whether or not Jesus kept his body after he was resurrected and I think even less care about the idea.”

So, on the basis of a memory of Seminary from both Utah and Colorado during the late 90s, I'm going to assume that this idea was common in CES at the time: Luke's depiction of Christ's physical resurrection was important to Mormons in context of the beliefs of other Christians.

Turning to other sources, it seems that this idea may have its genesis with Elder LeGrand Richard's book A Marvelous Work and a Wonder which was in the missionary library before and while I was on my mission (but has since been dropped from the recommended books for all missionaries). Elder Richards uses this verse to combat an idea he feels is found in traditional Christianity, namely that God is “everywhere and nowhere, without body, parts, or passions.” Of course, this is a conception of God believed by *some, *but nowhere near all, Christians towards God the Father, and not Jesus. I think the only reason that Elder Richards felt that this verse was a correct refutation of this idea of God being without a body is because Elder Richards also seems to think that a Trinitarian viewpoint of God and Jesus has them being the same person, which it does not. Believing that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are merely three expression of a single being is actually a Christian heresy called Modalism or Sabelleanism. The Trinity occupies a mentally difficult place between the heresy of Modalism and the heresy of polytheism, walking the knife's edge between the two. Many Christians feel a deep sense of holy mystery about how the nature of God is both expressed in three persons perfectly united in one Godhood. This sense of holy mystery is not absent from Mormonism; I've found its best example is applied towards the exact mechanics of how Christ's Atonement, localized to a specific few hours in time and a single spot in space, can have an impact that is universal in both time and space. Mormons don't just accept that as a mystery: they feel a deep sense of profundity at how it's incomprehensible to them. There are few things that bother me more than hearing Mormons mocking the mystery of Trinity and mere minutes later expressing their wonder and amazement at how the Atonement surpasses understanding.

So I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of traditional Christian theology and Trinitarianism that makes Elder Richards feel that this verse is well-suited to be used against such beliefs. After all, if the Father and the Son are the same being, then how can God be without “body, parts, or passions” and yet Christ obviously has a body here in this verse? Q.E.D., right?

But that's all in the past: part of my childhood. Perhaps we've moved on from this sort of thinking, right? Let's see what the current manuals have to say on this subject.

The “current” Institute manual (which is woefully out of date in its biblical scholarship, its quotations of old LDS general authorities, and its social applications) is actually, somewhat surprisingly, rather silent on this particular section, preferring instead to focus on issues of the authority and priesthood of the apostles through what are apparently “meaningful silences” in the text by the authors in this story of Jesus appearing to them after his resurrection.

The Seminary materials, on the other hand, focus much more on how students should learn about the doctrine of resurrection in general from this passage and its context (yay for context! Student are actually encouraged to read further after this scripture to see that Luke's resurrected Jesus eats and drinks food). Of course, other scriptures on this subject are also brought up which might muddy the waters and imply more about this verse than what it says on its own. But I am glad to report that the official manuals only use these scriptures to further discussion of resurrection and what resurrected bodies “are like”.

Now, from my post-Mormon perspective, I'm glad that it appears that the scripture is no longer seen as useful in defending Mormon beliefs. Frankly, this scripture is actually rather useless in upholding any of the rather distinct doctrines of Mormonism, either those doctrines about resurrection or about an embodied God. Mormon believe that resurrection is *forever, *and that it is impossible for a resurrected person to “put off” their body. Except when some of them make exceptions against this permanence in the 19th Century and beyond in trying to account for Brigham Young's bizarre conception of Adam as the re-embodiment of God the Father. These ideas of physical bodies being “taken up” and “put aside” continue to pop up in hushed conversation and private gatherings as part of the “meat” of the Gospel and some of the “deep doctrines” that “everyone” knows about (I speak from experience, having heard some of this from multiple individuals as various times). Frankly, I think most Christians feel that Jesus, being God, cannot and should not be viewed as limited in any of his power and actions and that if Jesus wishes to have a body, then he can have a body, and if he wishes to put that body aside for a while, then he can do so. Because HE'S GOD, right?

And it's even more bizarre that this scripture, about the resurrected Jesus, would have anything to do with the nature of God the Father. Mormons believe that the Father is embodied just as the Son is embodied (though they have just as much confusion and lack of interest in the Holy Ghost as many Christians do), and while this doctrine provides much religious angst between some Mormons and some Christians, the nature of the Father is not illuminated in any way, shape, or form by this verse. Luke's Jesus never says, “Oh, and by the way, my body looks like my father's. Just FYI.” John's Jesus may make such statements, but John's Gospel is, as they say, a horse of an entirely different color.

Moving on to another issue, Jesus's statement that “a spirit” doesn't have flesh and bone should be analyzed. From a Mormon point of view, this statement has sometimes gained a particular importance in light of things said by Brigham Young and other 19th Century leaders. Supposedly, it's noteworthy that Luke doesn't have Jesus say that he doesn't have “flesh and blood”, because resurrected bodies don't have blood. Well, let me here and now state: I sincerely doubt that Luke would have made such a nuanced theological statement in the middle of his passion narrative, and that's assuming that the historical Luke is even the actual author of the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles (which has numerous reasons to be unlikely; the same author wrote both books, but it's doubtful that his name, or even possibly her name, was “Luke”). Also, the words in question are literally “fleshes” and “bones”. Flesh in this context means the squishy, meaty, bloody stuff that a body is made of. Blood is very much included in the sense of the word. Basically, the verse is stating quite clearly just how very physical the body of Jesus is: it has bones and squishy stuff. It doesn't just look physical, it is physical. The lack of mentioning blood isn't an oversight, but rather just a perfectly valid way of saying that Jesus's body is make of flesh and bone (and, by negation, a spirit is not made of such things).

For some Christians who feel that the Bible must be viewed as an inerrant whole (including Mormons, who tend to be inerrantists except where the Bible is either obviously wrong or where it conflicts with LDS theology), the use by Luke of “flesh and bone” instead of “flesh and blood” helps resolve a number of issues found outside of Luke's gospel. In Matthew 16:17, a previous scripture mastery scripture for instance, Jesus says that Simon was told that Jesus is the Christ by Jesus's Father and not by flesh and blood. And Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:50 says that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of god.” All of which would imply that God, and all in the kingdom of God, are without flesh and blood. But Christians in general believe in the resurrection of the body, and Mormons particularly believe that physical resurrection is permanent and that even God the Father has a resurrected body (except when they don't, as we've said). So the resolution is that resurrected bodies do not have blood. This is an explanation found outside of Mormonism, too (though it is relatively uncommon).

My solution? Paul is not the author of Luke-Acts, and the author of Luke-Acts is not the author of Matthew, and it took centuries for a coherent and consistent theology to develop among the followers of Jesus. I think using Luke's account to imply some sort of scientific theory of the bloodless state of resurrected bodies is more than a little bizarre, and makes about as much sense as explaining how Leia told Luke she remembered her mother's face being sad in Return of the Jedi, when her mother died during childbirth in Revenge of the Sith, though an appeal to the Star Wars trilogy of books written by Timothy Zahn. Are they all about Star Wars? Yes, but you're just going to have problems if you view all of them as being consistent with themselves and each other, even though they're all “official” Lucasfilm stories because while the authors might have been aware of each other they weren't working together. The biblical Luke's statement here simply has a particular dramatic flair that isn't found in other similar works, but to assume that his statement must be read in concert with other, separate writers is unfair to both Luke and those other writers.

Why Do I Think This Is Part of Scripture Mastery?

I think this verse's presence in the Scripture Mastery list is a relic of history that has been left behind officially (although I have no idea if it's been left behind in practice by most Seminary and Institute teachers and wouldn't be surprised to see if it's still very much alive in a continuing oral tradition). I think that from the perspective of the 2010's seminary program, this particular verse has lost its purpose. I would not be surprised in the least to see it dropped from any future re-assembling of “Scripture Mastery” lists that might be proposed. When the current Scripture Mastery list was first created, somebody felt, based on ideas popular at the time among Church leaders such as LeGrand Richards, that this was a great scripture to use against the general strawman conception of Trinitarianism and against the idea of God the Father being a spirit. In the intervening years, this usage has become increasingly obvious as a mistaken interpretation of both the scripture itself and of general Christian views, and so focus has instead focused on the physicality of Jesus's resurrection to try and impress upon LDS youth how the doctrine of resurrection is a physical one (though I doubt most LDS youth would know that physical resurrection is believed in by Christians but is usually just viewed as a curiosity and not of much attention).

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Greek: καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐρεῖ αὐτοῖς· ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἐφ’ ὅσον ἐποιήσατε ἑνὶ τούτων τῶν ἀδελφῶν μου τῶν ἐλαχίστων, ἐμοὶ ἐποιήσατε

My Translation: And the king, answering, will speak to them, Amen I say to you, whatever things y'all have done to one of the littlest of my brothers, to me y'all have done it.

KJV: And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my > brethren, ye have done it unto me.

My translations are purposefully stretched and should not be viewed as more accurate than the KJV translation unless I say so in the post. I'm trying to show the range lying between the original Greek text and the English.

Update May 2013

This scripture has been removed by the Church Educational System from the Scripture Mastery list. However, it had remained within this list for over two decades and as such is still familiar to many graduates of the LDS Church's Seminary program. So I'm keeping this exploration of it online, but it is no longer applicable to CES.

Matthew 25 has Jesus giving his final address to his disciples before entering Jerusalem. The setting is everyone sitting on the Mount of Olives overlooking the city. Jesus discusses the coming kingdom of God through parable and through prophecy. In this chapter we have Matthew's versions of some famous parables, such as the Ten Virgins and the Stewards. The particular “parable” that this scripture comes from is the Sheep and the Goats (cue the mental playback of Cake's “Sheep go to heaven, Goats go to hell”), which is less of a full narrative parable and more of a simple allegory. Jesus says that when he comes in his glory (remember we're dealing with an apocalyptic worldview in Matthew's gospel; the Kingdom of God is about to break forth over the world with glory) the “son of man” will assemble all nations before him and divide them just like a shepherd might divide a mixed flock of sheep and goats.

Matthew, again completely in line with his focus on Torah observance and the Jewish/Christian concerns for the poor and destitute of society, quotes Jesus as saying that the basis for this division will be the things the people have done to others: feeding the hungry and thirsty, housing the homeless, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and the imprisoned. Jesus says that the King (a character certainly associated with the “son of man” in verse 31, but not explicitly linked as the same character) treats the actions as though they had been done to himself. Conversely, in the next verses after the scripture mastery verse, the King says that all of the negative actions have also been done to him (not feeding the hungry and thirsty, not taking in the homeless, not clothing the naked, not visiting the sick and imprisoned) and as a result they are sent into “everlasting punishment”. For Matthew's Jesus, what matters is what you do, and how well do you adhere to those aspects of the Torah that encourage beneficent activities towards the marginalized of society. The call of many Jewish prophets in the Hebrew Bible was against those of wealth who oppress the poor, the widows, and the elderly. Also, the Torah explicitly mentions that during harvest-time, allowances must be made for the poor to glean from the fields. Matthew, as a Jewish Christian, portrays a Jesus who not only says that such things matter, but that such things matter eternally and that they will have a direct effect on each individual's long-term status after the arrival of the Kingdom of God.

All of which is in rather direct opposition to earlier Pauline thought, implying again that one of the purposes of Matthew's particular viewpoint might be to promote a more Judean and pro-Torah Christian theology against existing groups of Jesus followers who had rejected the Torah as a necessary code of conduct for believers in Jesus.

Unfortunately, we will not be able to get into a full discussion of Pauline views on faith and works until near the end of the series when we hit James 2:17. At that point, we'll have a lot to say about Paul (and all of the Pauline theology that the scripture mastery list skips over) and the relationship of his writings to those of other Christians.

Finally, this verse, and the idea that actions done to others are done to Jesus, almost certainly is the inspiration for the famous scripture in the Book of Mormon given by King Benjamin in Mosiah 2:17 (also a scripture mastery scripture which we'll come to soon enough). Also, some Christian thinkers have expressed the possibility that these good and bad actions are actions done within the Christian community towards other Christians. Many Christians who do get concerned about what this verse means for salvation by faith have adopted this viewpoint to reconcile things. Also, while Matthew as a Jew would have believed that all humanity was descended from Noah and was thus family, it is much more likely that in recording Jesus as saying “the least of these my brothers” he was talking about people who were already members of the coming Kingdom of God. A similar viewpoint seems to be expressed earlier by his Jesus when instructing the Twelve in Matthew 10:40-42,

40 Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. 41 Whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward. Whoever receives a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. 42 And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple, I tell you the truth, he will never lose his reward.

In his reference to “one of these little ones” many scholars think the reference intended by Matthew is to the disciples Jesus is sending out as missionaries. So this scripture might be more about salvation being based on truly belonging to the community of Jesus followers than a statement that salvation is based on works.

Why Do I Think This Is Part of Scripture Mastery?

On the surface, this scripture is a wonderful call for people to act with good actions towards others as an expression of their love for God. But is also supports the idea that actions matter: in the parable, those who did bad actions are sent into “everlasting punishment”. No mention of believing on the name of Jesus to be saved, no mention of grace. I think the reasons for having this scripture in the list is two reasons of equal importance: I think that the Church Education System truly wants to inspire LDS youth to be giving and kind when interacting with the rest of the world, but I also think that they want LDS youth to be equipped to use this scripture to push back when confronted by the idea of salvation by faith. The problem is that they've probably been given the false impression that salvation by faith is unbiblical and they've probably also been presented with a false straw man argument of what other Christians believe who adhere to Grace theology. But we'll cover this much more when we hit James 2:17, where this conflict and poisoning of the well before the fact is most potent.

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