Speaking of Latter-day Saint claims about the Great Apostasy, Corey Miller, a former Latter-day Saint who is now an Evangelical Protestant, wrote:
All of this suggests a steep burden resting on the Mormon testimony in favour of the LDS movement to show that for thousands of years, since the death of the last apostle, millions of bright Christian thinkers and committed devotees have been misinformed, misled, or otherwise severely lacking in their faith and theology. Were they misinformed until Joseph Smith came along, claiming to have seen and conversed with God and, thus ushering in the restoration of that which has been lost for eons? Consider what is more probable: One man’s claim of literally seeing God who informed him that for thousands of years millions of brilliant and godly Christians and Jews were lost and in the dark? Or that this one man himself was lost and in the dark? (Corey Miller, “In Search of the Good Life” in Corey Miller, Lynn K. Wilder, Vince Eccles, and Latayne C. Scott, Leaving Mormonism: Why Four Scholars Changed Their Minds [Grand Rapids, Mich: Kregel Publications, 2017], 19-77, here, p. 28)
Miller is sorely mistaken if trying to argue from his personal incredulity will be meaningful to informed Latter-day Saints. We are not exactly ignorant of our being a minority faith in the broad Christian spectrum, and, ipso facto, our views entailing that the vast majority of professed Christians have been greatly mistaken about the true Gospel.
Furthermore, one cannot help but note that utter hypocrisy of such a complaint. Miller is now an Evangelical Protestant. In his view, countless hundreds of millions of Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have been greatly mistaken about the nature of the Gospel, such as baptismal regeneration, the nature of justification, its relationship to sanctification as well as the nature of sanctification itself, and the Marian doctrines and dogmas. Would Miller accept a criticism from a Roman Catholic apologist that, as hundreds of millions of people, both past and present, throughout the ages, have held to the personal sinlessness of Mary and her bodily assumption mean that it must be true, and that the Protestant rejection thereof is less probable due to numbers? Miller is guilty of argumentum ad populum.
Miller, in time honoured Evangelical anti-Mormon fashion, assumes, but never exegetically proves, Sola Scriptura. Note the following comments in his essay:
We have the Scriptures given to us so that if we come across a particular idea, we can test it against Scripture to see if it holds up (cf. 1 Thess. 5:21) (Ibid., 32 [for Miller, “Scripture” is exhausted by the “Bible”])
The Bible, as God’s Word written, is the final authoritative source for knowing how to understand what God has revealed. (Ibid., 33)
Needless to say, Miller is guilty of eisegesis of 1 Thess 5:21, and is simply dead-wrong in claiming that the Bible is formally sufficient. For a full-length treatment of this issue, see the online version of my book:
Needless to say, as I document in the above document, Sola Scriptura is an exegetical ability according to apologists thereof (e.g., James R. White). Furthermore, there are other sources of authority for the Christian according to the Bible, such as the Church (see the discussion of Acts 15 and the Council of Jerusalem).
On 1 Thess 5:21 (cf. 1 John 4:1), here is my exegesis provided in Not by Scripture Alone:
1 Thess 5:21 and 1 John 4:1
Prove all things; hold fast to which is good. (1 Thess 5:21)
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1)
These verses are sometimes cited to “prove” that the Bible is the final source of authority and guidance for a Christian. The irony is that these verses cannot possibly mean such, even if Sola Scriptura is true. After all, contemporary with Paul, Timothy, and John, the books of the biblical canon were still being inscripturated. Furthermore, the apostle John twice acknowledges that his written record of Jesus does not deny other extra-biblical records or traditions (John 20:30; 21:35), so long as these traditions do not oppose his teaching and that of the other apostles (cf. 1 John 2:18-19; 4:1-3; 2 John 7-9). For John, the test for authentic Christian teaching is not “Is this written?” (or “Is it part of the Biblical canon?”) Paul echoes this in 1 Tim 4:1, yet it was the same Paul who told Timothy to “. . . stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or by our epistle” (2 Thess 2:15 [see my post on this verse and how the NIV distorts the underlying Greek]) and “hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 1:13).
Furthermore, the warning in 1 John 4:1 is not against those claiming to have additional revelation from God, but those who deny the humanity of Jesus Christ. This is explained in 1 John 4:2-3:
Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whetherof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already it is in the world.
The phrase, “is come in the flesh” is ἐν σαρκὶ ἐληλυθότα and literally means “has come in the flesh.” John’s comments are aimed against those that would argue in favour of a Docetic Christology, that is, one that denied that Christ was truly human (he only appeared human, to have suffered, to have died, and so forth, but in reality, he did not). LDS Christology, and the Christology of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price are antithetical to such a Christology. Note, for instance, Christ’s own words, revealed through the Prophet Joseph Smith, in D&C 19:18-19 which stresses the true humanity of Jesus:
Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup and shrink—Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparation unto the children of men.
Writing against the concept of the LDS testimony, Miller references Jer 17:9, “the heart is deceitful only above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it” and then writes that:
Not only do we not need to pray about the Book of Mormon, we should not pray about it. (p. 32, italics in original)
Such is representative of the poor attempts at exegesis, resulting in grade A eisegesis in his essay, so it is little wonder he eventually embraced a false gospel (Evangelical Protestantism).
The Hebrew word for “heart” is לֵבָב. The Greek term is καρδια. As any good Greek and/or Hebrew Lexicon will show, the term often denotes, not the organ, but the entirety of the person, and is often used positively in the biblical texts. Note, for example, these verses:
And Moses called Bezaleel and Aholiab, and every wise hearted man, in whose heart the Lord had put wisdom, even every one whose heart stirred him up to come unto the word to do it . . . And every wise hearted man among them that wrought the work of the tabernacle . . . (Exo 36:2, 8)
Psa 119:10-11 reads as follows:
I have turned to You with all my heart; do not let me stray from Your commandments. In my heart I treasure Your promise; therefore I di not sin against you. (1985 JPS Tanakh)
The Septuagint (LXX, Psa 118:10-11) reads:
With my whole heart I sought you; do not thrust me aside from your commandments. In my heart I hid your sayings so that I may not sin against you. (A New English Translation of the Septuagint)
The NET Bible has the following footnote for Jer 17:9 that is rather apropos:
The background for this verse is Deu 29:18-19 (Deu 29:17-18 HT) and Deu 30:17.
The Deuteronomy texts read thusly:
Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood. And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst. (Deut 29:18-19)
But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them. (Deut 30:17)
Obviously, the "heart" (which refers to the mind, will, and disposition of a man, not merely the muscle) is that of a person in a state of grievous sin (e.g., apostasy).
One final OT example would be that of Psa 78:70-72, speaking of King David
He chose his servant David, and took him from the sheepfolds; from tending the nursing ewes he brought him to be the shepherd of his people Jacob, of Israel, his inheritance. With upright heart he tended them, and guided them with skillful hand. (NRSV)
The Hebrew translated as "upright heart" is כְּתֹם לְבָבוֹ refers to a heart with integrity; the LXX phrase ἐν τῇ ἀκακίᾳ τῆς καρδίας refers to a heart that is innocent and without guile.
What is interesting is that, notwithstanding being fallen (including losing his initial justification due to his murder of Uriah and adultery with Bathsheba, requiring a re-justification), King David and his "heart" is spoken highly, not negatively, of.
New Testament examples would include:
And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures? (Luke 24:32)
Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? (Acts 2:37)
As one critic of Reformed theology noted about the common appeal to Jer 17:9:
Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
The argument is a “deceitful and desperately wicked” heart is not capable of seeking after God. This argument is very weak at best. Most importantly, however, the context does not support such a conclusion. Jeremiah is not saying the heart can only be bad. The very next verse reads, “I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.” Unless God gives man only bad things (which we know He does not), the heart must be capable of good fruit as well as bad. It should also be noted that prophets like Jeremiah often used hyperbole in their attempts to convince people of the truth. This verse cannot be ruled out as an example of that.
The poetic books also make use of hyperbole. Verses such as Psalm 51:5, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me,” are suspect. Even if such a verse of poetry is taken literally, however, the verse says the Psalmist was born in sin, but it does not say he was born into total depravity as Calvinists might wish. Being sinful and being totally depraved are not the same thing. (Gil Vanorder, Jr. Calvinism’s Concept of Total Depravity: 12 Reasons to Reject it [Createspace, 2015], 13)
Interestingly, the LXX renders Jer 17:9 rather differently than the Hebrew. The LXX reads:
βαθεῖα ἡ καρδία παρὰ πάντα καὶ ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν καὶ τίς γνώσεται αὐτόν
The New English Translation of the Septuagint renders this verse as follows:
The heart is deep above all else, and so is man, and who shall understand him?
The translators of the LXX clearly did not understand this verse to refer to the fallen nature of man’s “heart”; quite the opposite, actually.
For a good LDS discussion of this, see Jeff Lindsay’s page on the LDS “testimony.”
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