Recently, Brother Micheal Otterson, who is the media relations director for the LDS Church, wrote a wonderful essay on whether or not Mormons are Christians.
I recognize that Creedal Christians have a specialized definition of “Christian,” and Later-day Saints are not “Christians” by that definition.
Latter-day Saints, they say, are not Christians because they reject the Trinitarian doctrine of the Nicaean Creed, and instead believe in a Godhead of three separate beings (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) who are one in purpose.
Aside from the question of how Protestants square Creedal Cristianity with their doctrine of Sola Scriptura, we should examine whether they apply their creedal definition consistently?
I remember the first time that I read John Milton’s Paradise Lost discovering that Milton presented God the Father and Jesus as two distinct beings. In particular this passage where the Father asks the equivalent of the famous Whom shall I send? query in LDS scripture:
To observe the five year anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, I want to post two extensive quotes that I find applicable and inspiring.
First, John Donne’s beautiful Meditation XVII. Even if you have read it before, please reread in the context of the September 11th tragedy.
On this Christmas Eve, I quote from J. R. R. Tolkien’s marvelous essay on Faerie Stories:
...I would say that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the opposite is true of Fairy-story. Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite—I will call it Eucatastrophe.The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories.
I have posted this previously elsewhere, but seeing as it is Christmas once again, and I have this new blog, I thought I would post it anew.
The ancient Scandinavians envisioned the Universe as a giant ash tree they called Yggdrasil or Mimameidr, the World Tree. Yggdrasil was described in the poems of the Poetic Edda1 as “ever-green” (Voluspá2 19).
A few years ago, I stepped back from our just-decorated Christmas tree to admire it in the dimly-lit room and suddenly this Scandinavian universe-as-tree imagery came pouring into my mind.
I am disturbed and angered by an article today in the National Review Online by Kathryn Lopez entitled Defining Life Down . The article discusses improvements in the ability to detect Down Syndrome in unborn babies during the first trimester of pregnancy and how parents are increasingly using that information to justify killing their unborn children with Down Syndrome.
As a child I was a stubborn learner and spent my second grade year of elementary school in a resource reading group.
It is a shame that the wonderful book that is Flatland is primarily appreciated by mathematicians and physicists and virtually unknown among those who read and study literature. In addition to its interesting mathematical insights, Flatland is an ingenious socio political satire, an amazing treatment of the issues of faith and reason, a brilliant examination of prophets and revelation and how our limitations make it nearly impossible for us to comprehend things that are, nevertheless, true. It also is a discussion of the nature of God and upon what merits he is worshiped. Flatland accomplishes all of this in a fascinating fictional narrative of less than one hundred pages.
