The members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are in the New Testament (NT) this year.1 The last time we were deep in the NT, we were naive to leadership in times of national and world stress. We had experienced so many years of bliss that we forgot what being a leader meant. COVID-19 struck just after we finished our last study of the NT. As we have explore the NT, I hope we pay special heed to the leadership exemplified by John, Jesus, Peter, and Paul.

In D&C 82:8-10 we learn that God wants to bind himself to His Zion people. He is kind enough to provide insight on how we can ‘act before him’ to become as He is. Maybe it is just my thinking when I hear this verse read; However, I often hear this verse imply a type of inverse slave/master relationship between God and us. In the second half of verse 10, I understood that God would throw us to the lions if we didn’t do what he said.

His meekness honors our power of agency and waits for us to invite. He can work with His prophets in their agency to initiate, consolidate, and facilitate His plan. His meekness would not allow Him to manipulate them or dictate what they must do to enact His plan. He persuades, and with any persuasion, there are alternatives that they can choose. He is prepared for their choices, but He will not discourage or limit their voluntary intention to seek His views.

Lately, I try to take quotes from our general authorities and theologians on descriptions of attributes and principles we should have and put them into questions about God. My posts “Does God have faith (Romans 3:3)?” and “Does God exercise faith?” are two examples of this idea. Understanding that our experience on earth does not represent the plan’s culmination, we are, nonetheless, God’s children here to learn of Him and how to act and be like Him. Christians are all too willing to teach the concept “What Would Jesus Do?” in getting us to exemplify the attributes of God in our lives. The assumption of that statement, is that we can do what Jesus does.

Chad Ford introduced me to the term ‘Dangerous Love’ that pushed me to see the love he describes as the love of God. Chad helps us see love as a willingness to be right in the relationship over being right in the facts. We can view love as a willingness to bring as many parties into the solution or plan as possible. Does the love that Chad describes help us understand God’s love?

I am reading The Grace of God, The Will of Man: A Case for Arminianism, and I have found the authors to be articulate in their explanation of the difference between Arminianism and Calvinism. The two theologies are relatively consistent in their views of God’s Omnipresence. But, their opinions on Omnipotence and Omniscience are different, and the contributing authors highlight these differences. The theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints appears to be much more aligned with the Arminian view, but we have some Calvinistic strains. In this post, you will see how the LDS community caveats the Omnis and be able to compare our caveats to other theologies.

Omniscience is not used in the Bible or Latter-day scripture. This leaves humanity guessing as to whether God agrees with the word He has never used in His revelations. All Christian religions have taken the concept into their vocabulary; However, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has done little to dogmatize the definition of omniscience. Let’s look at the history of omniscience and how various Christian denominations define it.

The Old Testament has multiple verses that tell us that God is a jealous God. The Book of Mormon and the New Testament have just a couple of verses that reference the jealous God. Oxford’s definition from a Google search of Jealous helps us see that Zealous is just as viable of a translation when reading scripture. It also helps us see that ‘Jealous’ is most often used to understand that there is an intense emotion attached to a being’s relationship to their possessions or relationships.

N.T. Wright is the C.S. Lewis of our day, according to Robert Millet and with that comparison, he has such clout that religious scholars respect his word and Time magazine publishes his articles. Last December, he wrote a short essay titled, ‘The New Testament Doesn’t Say What Most People Think It Does About Heaven’. He calls out Plato, of whom Aristotle was a student, for creating the conventional Christian view of humanity dying and leaving this world to go up to heaven.

Latter-day scripture has a curious phrase about wisdom that pops up quite often. It is the use of the words, ‘for a wise purpose’ about God working with a prophet on a current decision that affects the future. In 1 Nephi 9:5, Nephi is the first to introduce us to the phrase when he says, ‘the Lord hath commanded me to make these plates for a wise purpose in him, which purpose I know not.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

In Romans 3:3, we encounter a bold statement from Paul about God. He says, ‘For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?' Paul’s question forces all readers of the bible to ask, ‘What is the faith of God?’ A quick search on the internet will leave a searcher wanting concerning any explanation about the ‘faith of God’* because any description of the attributes of God leaves out faith.

This week most of the Christian world will celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Much of Christianity recognizes the physicality and mortality of Christ. However, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stands apart from traditional Christianity in proclaiming that Christ’s mortality and then immortality through resurrection was progression in God’s plan. It was not a brief interlude to commune with His creatures on earth so that He could get back to His timeless immateriality.

Do we believe that we can feel satisfied? Or do we all wonder as did the Apostles of old in saying, ‘From whence can a man satisfy these men … here in the wilderness?1 In Proverbs 13:25 we are told, ‘The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul: but the belly of the wicked shall want.' We often struggle to find satisfaction when so many immediate needs pull us into envy and might appropriately classify us as having the belly of the wicked.

Introduction I am reading The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence by John Sanders. It is a thorough explanation of openness or relational theology. His writing is clear, and he is sources and footnotes are detailed. In Chapter 6, Risk and the Divine Character, he discusses the varied views of Omniscience (6.5). As I have had discussions with friends, I have heard many of these views explained (without being given a name).

James E. Faust shared a devotional at BYU in 1993 titled, The Voice of the Spirit. Mormon messages used this talk to create the following message. Elder Faust shares an impactful quote about light (or truth) being part of our very essence. Signaling that truth is much more than facts. You will not be able to travel through life on borrowed light. The light of life must be part of your very being.

According to John Sanders, the concept of truth has multiple meanings. There are three main theories of truth in Western thought. The correspondence theory: This theory holds that truth is that which corresponds to a state of affairs or fact of reality. The coherence theory: a statement is true if it fits (coheres) with a set of other statements accepted as true. The pragmatic theory: an idea is true if it is fruitful and workable in relation to our experience.

Meekness in context In my previous post I asked, ‘How might we describe God’s attribute of meekness?' I have pulled a few lines from that post to help highlight how His quality of meekness could explain our1 interaction with Him. Patient and responsive to agency He is open to our earnest petitions and will modestly, graciously, and discreetly support us in our journey. As the holder of perfected meekness, he will be patient with our learning, and He will sincerely share all that He can with any that desire.

His and our attribute At times we discuss attributes that we must have to progress in the kingdom of God, but we limit the conversation to us and forget that God also holds the fullness of those attributes. I will review scripture and latter-day prophet’s words on meekness to see if we can understand God’s meekness. In a later post, we will examine what the perfected attribute of meekness implies about our relationship with him.

Background The simple answer is yes. The more complicated conversation is in how God exercises faith. I hope to use scripture, the Lectures on Faith, and some insightful commentary around the first lecture to discuss how His faith could be applied.1 Lectures on Faith Latter-Day Saint history has a unique interaction with a set of philosophical notes on faith that were developed by early leaders of our church. For a long time, many would say that Joseph Smith was the author.

Background: My last post about the omniscience of God motivated me to look at the LDS topical guide under God, foreknowledge of. I quickly realized that foreknowledge is a very complicated concept in protestant Christianity and in LDS teachings. Before we tackle the references under God, foreknowledge of, Election, Foreordination, and Predestination we need to work through what each word means, how they relate, and how they are different. One of the issues with each word is that their definitions are nuanced by the various beliefs of each Christian theology.

Background I have had a few discussions recently where I have been surprised by the answers given concerning God and how he relates to time. Once again, I think many of us are unwittingly letting Aristotle’s unmoved mover philosophy drive our beliefs in God. The scriptures are full of clear statements about God and his relation to time. The Old and New Testaments have a few verses that provide value to this discussion.

In December of 2000, Clark Pinnock published an article titled, “God as Most Moved Mover”. He had previously worked on a book titled “The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God” that I believe pushed this theology out into the open. However I don’t think that book used the phrase ‘Most Moved Mover’. He then published a book titled, “Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness” in 2001.

Background In “Does God have a Future?" John Sanders explains the open theist view of omniscience and foreknowledge. Here are a few key quotes; I prefer to think of “perfect” in dynamic terms: relational perfection. God is always in perfect relationship with us, and as the relationship changes so God changes. -Pg. 90 First, let me say that Jesus did not experience “powerlessness.” Rather, he exercised the power of love and chose not to use other types of power available to him.

Background In God of the possible by Gregory Boyd he makes an eloquent argument about the joy of our sociality as humans and how this relates to traditional views of the exhaustive foreknowledge of God. In light of the Latter-Day Saint view on the sociality of heaven being similar to our current existence, I found his argument enlightening. He asked some great questions in the quotes below. Why would this eternally static view of divine knowledge be greater than a view of God enjoying novelty, adventure, spontaneity, creativity, and moment-by-moment personal relationships?

In Elder Holland’s book titled, Christ and the New Covenant, I first encountered the fascinating idea that God could change his behavior based on our prayers and faith. This paragraph stretched my mind. A final explanation-and in terms of the brother of Jared’s faith the most persuasive one-is that Christ was saying to the brother of Jared, “Never have I showed myself unto man in this manner, without my volition, driven solely by the faith of the beholder.