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.

One of the features of Latter-day Saint thought is the deep and committed response to God’s children having agency or free will. We see this as the founding thought of the cosmos, one that existed as long as God (D&C 93:29-31, 2 Nephi 2:11). In fact, it is ’the agency of man’ to receive and reciprocate the light or love that was ‘plainly manifest unto’ each of us from the ‘beginning’ (D&C 93:31) that aligns quite well with Jesus’ two great commandments in response the question of the greatest commandment in the law (Matthew 22:37-40).

The thesis that God is beyond time has sometimes been introduced to account for God’s omniscience or foreknowledge. For Latter-day Saints, as for the Bible, God’s omniscience is “in time.” God anticipates the future. It is “present” before him, but it is still future. When the future occurs, it will occur for the first time to him as to his creatures. The traditional concept of “out-of-time” omniscience does not derive either from the Old or the New Testament but is borrowed from Greek philosophy. -Brigham Young University’s Encyclopedia of Mormonism-

So, I think that the relativized version of this is relativized to a being who has perfected his way of being relative to other beings.

James Faulconer

Stop and read that quote a few times and make sure you can see what Jim is saying. Do you believe there is such a thing as perfected relativity?

Dr. James E. Faulconer, a philosopher, theologian, and research fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute, was on the Maxwell Institute podcast to discuss his latest book - Thinking Otherwise: Theological Explorations of Joseph Smith’s Revelations. James Faulconer’s discussion covered many topics that we discuss on MostMovedMover. I enjoyed every minute and found joy in aligning his views with a few of our posts. The list below highlights the relationship between snippets of his quotes with posts from MostMovedMover.

One horn of this dilemma is the argument that if an action was caused or necessitated, then it could not have been done freely and hence the agent is not responsible for it. The other horn is the argument that if the action was not caused, then it is inexplicable and random, and thus it cannot be attributed to the agent and hence, again, the agent cannot be responsible for it. -Paul Russell: Freedom and Moral Sentiment, p. 14-

Paul Russel discusses the ‘Horns of the dilemma’ found when we get at the root of determinism and chance. Either way, the extreme of both views means that free agents do not control their choices. They are simply science experiments moved by the experimenter. The religionists hold to God as the great mover in the deterministic model, and the scientists welcome the randomness of nature and laws of physics as the great mover. I believe that both worship a golden calf. William James’ provides a third horn that can resolve the conflict in his 1884 ’The Dilemma of Determinism’.

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?

A Greek woman had an ailing daughter who arrived at Jesus’ feet to beg for His miracles in her family. Jesus responded, ‘Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.’ His response seems to say that His mission did not involve her or her people. He had a plan, and it did not involve miracles for her as a Greek woman. She then responds in humility, ‘Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.’ This response gives Jesus insight into His mission and His interaction with her. He responds, ‘For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.’ Did the Greek woman change Jesus’ mind?

Time and the cardinal attribute of enduring (Elder Neal A. Maxwell) In the April 1990 General Conference, Elder Neal A. Maxwell shared a touching message titled, ‘Endure it Well’. He has some great discussion about the benefits of time that is worth reviewing on MostMovedMover. This post should be read along with my two other posts about Elder Maxwell’s views on time (7/19 post and 3/20 post). As we work through his quotes, I highlight a couple of questions about progression, endurance, time, and mortality.

In 2017 Kathleen Flake gave the Annual Neal A. Maxwell Lecture. The entire presentation is engaging and worth your time. I expect to share a few snippets from her presentation in future posts about Joseph Smith and Priesthood insights. This post focuses on a short answer she gave at the end of the discussion about timelessness. I want to imagine what she says is unimaginable. One eternal round means timelessness? The short clip below shows a gentleman asking a question about ‘one eternal round’ and how Kathleen would deal with beginnings and ends.

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.

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.

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.

I have been listening to conference addresses by Apostles and Prophets starting with the April 1971 conference, which is provided on the church’s website or on the Gospel Library app. I have made it to October 19801, and I found Bruce R. McConkie’s, ‘The Lord God of the Restoration message. This general conference message came a few months after the famous, or maybe infamous, The Seven Deadly Heresies talk at BYU in June.

In June 1883 The Chautauquan magazine asked, “If a tree were to fall on an island where there were no human beings, would there be any sound?” 1 This is one of those philosophical questions that can create a lively conversation if asked among the correct group. Today, I have a similar question, “If nobody understands the truth, is it still a truth?” I know that I may have already made half of the eight people that read this blog stop reading because they don’t want to have this lively conversation.

Background I first encountered Terryl Givens name while watching ‘The Mormons’ in 2007. He was included as an expert on Latter-day Saint beliefs. He had been publishing in the LDS space since 1997. Around 2014 I listened to him, and Richard Bushman at a Mormon Studies conference at The University of Virginia while visiting my nephew. Wrestling the Angel I just finished Wrestling the Angel and found the book to be thorough in its discussion of the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In Doctrine and Covenants 130:7 we read; But they reside in the presence of God, on a globe like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before the Lord. This verse is often quoted as a statement of God’s timelessness by Latter-Day Saints1. However, few remember the question and answer in verses 4 & 5 of this same section.

Background: My nephew shared this amazing podcast from the Maxwell Institute at Brigham Young University of a conversation between Terryl Givens and Steven Peck. You can watch the video of the podcast below or read the full transcript. I have included a few impactful parts of their conversation that relate to our discussion here at mostmovedmover.com. As I was sharing ideas from this podcast with my daughter, she shared D&C 133:17 and D&C 65:1 where the Lord asks us to ‘make his paths straight.

Background: In October 2017 Elder Ronald A. Rasband shared a message titled, “By Divine Design”. This talk caused a little bit of a stir in my ward. I think the teachers that got a chance to teach this talk in a lesson at church may have over-interpreted his talk and created a false idea that Elder Rasband was not promoting. I heard about two different teachers getting a little exasperated at how the talk seemed to imply that God controlled every moment in our lives and neither of them could work out how that could be true.

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.

I have found two enlightening thinkers in LDS theology. From what I have read and the places that they publish, their work is well respected among LDS religious scholars. They are also recognized in the broader community of theological scholars. David L. Paulsen has been on my radar for years. I have enjoyed all his material on philosophy and theology. Additionally, I have read a couple of articles by Blake T.

The following is the full excerpt from the chapter on the brother of Jared in Christ and the New Covenant. I have added the various emphases. Before examining the doctrinal truths taught in this divine encounter, it will be useful to note two seemingly problematic issues here, issues that seem to have reasonable and acceptable resolutions. The first consideration rises from two questions the Lord asked the brother of Jared: “Why hast thou fallen?

President Wilford Woodruff shared this story in his journal. He was the third president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. On the 23rd of November my wife, Phoebe, was attacked with a severe headache, which terminated in brain fever. She grew more and more distressed daily as we continued our journey. It was a terrible ordeal for a woman to travel in a wagon over rough roads, afflicted as she was.