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March 28, 2020

God, Wisdom, and the Chess Metaphor

Let me start this post with a big caveat. Metaphors are useful for conveying ideas about specific points of reality and inadequate for conveying the entire complexity of our lived experience. The chess metaphor falls short in explaining the plan of salvation that God has for His kingdom. Still, it can be an excellent metaphor for understanding the relationship between God’s wisdom, power, knowledge and our agency. I want to frame parts of the chess game before we read the following quotes.
March 21, 2020

The scale from foolish to wise (1 Corinthians 1:25)

In 1 Corinthians 1:19-27 Paul tells us that foolish and wise are the same things, just different positions on the scale of wisdom. We would put wisdom as the great attribute at the top of the range and foolishness as the worst form of wisdom at the bottom of the scale. In verse 25 Paul states this fact clearly; Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; In my ‘What is wisdom?
March 14, 2020

What is wisdom?

What is wisdom? The prophet Jacob in the Book of Mormon provides one of the most succinct injunctions in scripture when he says, ‘O be wise; what can I say more?’ (Jacob 6:12). To Jacob’s question after the injunction, I would ask many of the following questions, Can you describe wisdom? Is wisdom that much different than knowledge? Does wisdom require an existence with randomness or uncertainty? Can one exemplify wisdom in a world without unknowns?
March 7, 2020

Yes, but He provides visions of the future...

Any of my friends that have been willing to engage me on the concept of a contingent future and openness theology often find the idea persuasive enough to ponder its impacts on scripture. Eventually, they ask a question about the many prophetic statements found in scripture. Their questions fall along the lines of the following, “What about …” the prophecy of the civil war starting in North Carolina by Joseph Smith?
March 1, 2020

Our choice to love (Mathew 15:1-13)

In 2 Nephi 26:23-28 we get a series of great questions about our relationship with the Lord to which all are answered with a ‘Nay’ from Nephi. Doth he cry unto any, saying: Depart from me? Hath he commanded any that they should depart out of the synagogues, or out of the houses of worship? Hath he commanded any that they should not partake of his salvation? Hath the Lord commanded any that they should not partake of his goodness?
February 21, 2020

Does God have tacit knowledge (John 5:19)?

John 5 provides a narrative of a conflict between Jesus and the Jewish leadership on Sabbath day activities. It is interesting that Jesus does not attempt to quote scripture to justify his behavior. Neither, does he build a strong logical argument using jointly believed assumptions. In verse 19, he simply states, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.
February 15, 2020

What did Elder Neal A. Maxwell think about God's knowledge of the future?

I previously asked, What did Elder Neal A. Maxwell think about time and God? and proposed that he may have tempered his views on fixed future omniscience based on conversations with Blake Ostler. However, I have since found a few more quotes from Neal A. Maxwell after 1984 that are still fairly forceful and I want to add to the record on mostmovedmover.com about his views in this additional post. I hope to be respectful to his words while discussing how they relate to an openness view of God’s future.
February 8, 2020

It's about time (Abraham 3 and D&C 130)

Introduction During the early ’90s (I think), my church ran some commercials under the catchphrase, ‘Family, it’s about time.’ One of them is below. I always thought the ads had a great play on the wording. The phrase could imply that it is about time that we focus on the family or that you can’t be family without investing time. It is from those commercials that I build the premise and title of this post.
February 1, 2020

Understanding the 'End from the Beginning' (Abraham 2:8)

I have heard Abraham 2:8 often used as a description of the timelessness of God. When friends reference this verse, they have a look that says, ’need I say more about the timelessness of God’ when they say the phrase, ‘God knows the end from the beginning.’ However, that phrase does not need to imply anything about timelessness. I will use Deiter F. Uchtdorf’s See the End from the Beginning April 2006 conference talk and Russell M.
January 25, 2020

Understanding the Rhythm of 'one eternal now'

“The great Jehovah contemplated the whole of the events connected with the earth, pertaining to the plan of salvation, before it rolled into existence, or ever ’the morning stars sang together’ for joy; the past, the present, and the future were and are, with Him, one eternal ’now;’ (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 220; History of the Church, 4:597)1. My wife has been reading Forgiving Ourselves: Getting Back Up When We Let Ourselves Down by Wendy Ulrich and shared with me a significant section of her book with an insightful way to understand ’eternal now ‘ where she says,2
January 18, 2020

The Lord Does the Future (1 Nephi 9:6)

As I have studied specific verses around God’s knowledge, I don’t see fixed future omniscience coming from the scripture. Still, I do see how many verses could confirm a preconceived belief in fixed future omniscience. 1 Nephi 7:12-13 and 1 Nephi 9:5-6 are two scriptures blocks that might confirm fixed future omniscience at first read. One of the complicated issues of fixed future omniscience is that it is often a lens that most of Christian society looks through to interpret scripture.
January 11, 2020

Lectures on Faith: Lecture Fourth on the Knowledge of God

I have written posts that included references to the Lectures on Faith in the past.1 I used those previous posts to discuss the attribute of the faith of God directly. This post discusses the attribute of the knowledge of God and how the Lectures describe His knowledge. We should carefully recognize what the Lectures on Faith explain about the knowledge of God to see what knowledge of God we must understand for our faith to grow.
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