Excerpts from R. T. Mullins, Eternal in Love: A Little Book about a Big God

 

This classical understanding of God leaves the Christian with a curious notion of God’s goodness, love, and rationality. To start, God has no reason to create anything at all since the values of possible creatures are not appropriate objects of divine response. Thus leaving us with an arbitrary creation. Further, God has no reason to love his creatures, nor any reason to engage in self-sacrificial acts on behalf of his creatures. Any self-sacrificial acts on God’s part would seem to be utterly arbitrary. Why die for creatures that you do not deem to be worthy of responding to? On a divine whim? That hardly seems like a fitting reason for the cross. Yet the problem is deeper than this.

 

The God of classical theism can only act on behalf of his own self-interest since his own goodness is the only value that is appropriate to respond to. Self-sacrificial acts are, by definition, not in one’s own self-interest. Thus, the God of classical theism cannot perform self-sacrificial acts. That hardly looks anything like the Christlike God who dies for the sake of his beloved children. As I see it, The God of classical theism cannot be considered loving nor morally perfect. It should come as no surprise, then, that a contemporary classical theist would argue that love and moral goodness are not really divine perfections! Tor this, and many other reasons, Christianity is simply incompatible with classical theism. (R. T. Mullins, Eternal in Love: A Little Book about a Big God [Studies in the Doctrine of God; Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2024], 26)

 

 

To be sure, there are passages like Num 23:19, 1 Sam 15:29, and Mal 3:6 that say that God is not a man that he should change his mind. Yet those passages are all very clear in the respect to which God does not change. None of them say that God does not change in any way, shape, or form. In each case, the passages say that men are liars who do not keep their promises. God is not like that. When God makes a promise, he will keep it. His promises are not empty lies. What these passages teach is that the promises of God are trustworthy. They do not teach that God is completely and utterly unchanging. They simply teach that God will not change his mind about the promises that he has made.

 

Traditional accounts of God’s omnipotence and perfect moral goodness factor this in by saying that the almighty God cannot change the past nor undo the promises that he has previously made. Changing the past is logically impossible, and failing to keep a divine promise is morally unacceptable. Thus, it is unthinkable that God would fail to keep his covenantal promises. This is important to keep in view when one is reading Hosea 11. Again, this passage teaches that God does change his mind because he is not like a suborn man who lacks compassion. God will change his wrath to forgiveness toward his chosen people. Why? God made a covenantal promise toward his people, and he plans on keeping that promise. (R. T. Mullins, Eternal in Love: A Little Book about a Big God [Studies in the Doctrine of God; Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2024], 45)

 

 

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Emanuel Conţac on μενουν in Luke 11:28

 After surveying the use of μενουν and its implications for Luke 11:28, Emanuel Conţac concluded that:

 

The three main ways of rendering the conjunction menoun suggest that the translators tend to choose the equivalent that fits best their own theological position. The first two options are equally possible, but the context suggests that Christ implicitly confirms the woman's statement, correcting her at the same time. Rendering menoun through a construction of the type "so it is, but . . . and" appears as incorrect, being probably the result of an attempt to soften a statement of Jesus that could have been used by Protestant theologians in the controversy with the Orthodox, regarding the attitude that Christians must have regarding the Mother to the Lord. (English translation of Emanuel Conţac, Dilemele fidelităţii: condiţionări culturale şi teologice în traducerea Bibliei [Cluh-Napoca, Romania: Logos, 2011], 259)

 

 

 

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Emanuel Conţac on μενοῦνγε (cf. μενοῦν) in Romans 9:20; 10:18 and Philippians 3:7-8

 

In Rom. 9:20, the value is contrastive; the apostle's remark is meant to counteract the imaginary interlocutor's objection to God: "Then why do you blame me? For who can oppose His will?" To this question, Paul answers: "But in fact, who are you, man, to answer back to God?" According to Caragounis, menounghe confirms the insignificant character of man, compared to God.

 

In Romans 10:18, the argumentation is similar: to the question that would require an answer in the negative ("Didn't they hear" - μη ουκ ηκουσαν; Paul responds from a citation from Psalm 18:5 (LXX): "On the contrary, their voice went through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.")

 

In Philippians 3:7-8, menounghe is used to strengthen a statement. The Apostle Paul says that what was a gain for him he considered a loss, for Christ. Then, this time with reference to the present, he adds: “Well still, I count everything as a loss compared to the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord." (English translation of Emanuel Conţac, Dilemele fidelităţii: condiţionări culturale şi teologice în traducerea Bibliei [Cluh-Napoca, Romania: Logos, 2011], 256)

 

 

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Brigham Young (June 20, 1874) on Latter-day Saints being co-workers with Christ

  

Are we co-workers with the Savior to redeem the children of men and all things pertaining to the earth? I will answer for the Saints and say that we most assuredly believe we are. All who, while in the flesh, received and were faithful to the Priesthood, labored with the Savior while they remained here, and when they passed into the spirit world their labors did not cease, but they passed into the prison, and, to this day, they are preaching to the spirits there, and laboring for the salvation of the human family and for the earth and all things pertaining to it. (Brigham Young, June 29, 1874, in The Collected Discourses of Brigham Young, ed. Richard S. Van Wagoner, 5 vols.[Salt Lake City: The Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2009], 5:1118 [kindle ed.])

 

 

 

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The Apocalypse of Elijah: Enoch and Elijah will, at the time of the resurrection, will descend from heaven and receive "spiritual flesh"

The Apocalypse of Elijah (dated from the first to fourth century A.D. according to O. S. Wintermute) 5:30-35 read as follows:

 

³⁰ On that day, the Lord will judge the heaven and the earth.

 He will judge those who transgressed in heaven,

and those who did so on earth.

³¹ He will judge the shepherds of the people.

He will ask about the flock of sheep,

and they will be given to him,

without any deadly guile existing in them.

³² After these things, Elijah and Enoch will come down. They will lay down the flesh of the world, and they will receive their spiritual flesh. They will pursue the son of lawlessness and kill him since he is not able to speak.

³³ On that day, he will dissolve in their presence like ice which was dissolved by a fire. He will perish like a serpent which has no breath in it. ³⁴ They will say to him, “Your time has passed by for you. Now therefore you and those who believe you will perish.” ³⁵ They will be cast into the bottom of the abyss and it will be closed for them. (OTP 1:752-53)

 

Tucker S. Ferda noted that:

 

In the Apocalypse of Elijah, it is said that Enoch and Elijah, who were thought to be in heaven and never died, will “come down” and receive their “spiritual flesh” at the time of the resurrection (5:32). (Tucker S. Ferda, Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2024], 373)

 

 

 

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Nate B. Oman on the Incorporation of the Church and H. Michael Marquardt

  

The traditional date and place for the incorporation of the Church of Christ, later renamed The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is April 6, 1830, in Fayette, New York. Because no documents from 1830 attesting this event have survived, some writers have suggested that no such legal organization ever occurred. (Nathan B. Oman, Law and the Restoration: Law and Latter-day Saint History [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2024], 103)

 

See, e.g., David Keith Stott, “Organizing the Church as a Religious Association in 1830,” in Sustaining the Law: Joseph Smith’s Legal Encounters, ed. Gordon A. Madsen, Jeffrey N. Walker, and John W. Welch (Provo: BYU Studies, 2014), 113-40; H. Michael Marquardt, “An Appraisal of Manchester as Location for the Organization of the Church,” Sunstone, February 1992. According to Marquardt, no legal organization was attempted in New York and the alleged incorporation was a later invention designed to fool creditors in Ohio. However, Marquardt, who is not a lawyer, fails to explain how an earlier Church incorporation would have frustrated collection efforts against the Church or Church officers in Ohio. Nor does his article point to any legal proceedings in Ohio in which the New York incorporation was invoked to shield Latter-day Saint debtors, although there were numerous collection actions brought against Joseph Smith in the wake of the failure of the Kirtland Safety Society. (Ibid., 103 n. 25)

 

 

 

 

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Joseph Wilford Booth's Letter to Rev. H. K. Anketell discussing Latter-day Saint theology (January 10, 1905)

  

January 10, 1905 (Tuesday) [Aintab]

 

Read from the Bible, Chron 24, and news paper and then wrote to Rev Mr Shishmanian at Constantinople (see Nov 23 [1904]). Also wrote the following to Rev. H. K. Anketell, British Embassy, Constantinople.

 

My Dear Friend,

 

In your busy hours can you pause just long enough to receive greetings and well wishes from one who dearly loves you for your very manliness? I heartily thank you for every expression of your kindness to me during my recent and also my former visit to Constantinople. If my humble petitions have any influence at the Throne of Grace, they will not be offered in vain for one who has made a bouquet of happy memories in the life of a humble servant of the Lord. You have done so much by your kindness. In this age of prejudice and pharisaical sanctify among many of the clergy of the day it is now refreshing for me to meet one so liberal in thought, so broad minded in principle, and so tolerant in religious opinions as I have found at the chapel of the British Embassy at Pera.

 

Pray do not mark me as a flatterer. I love the plain simple truth and to tell it when and where occasion requ[i]res. Fulsome adulation is a species of duplicity deserving censure almost equal with hypocracy, and therefore I would despise myself were I to flatter (save in jest) another to whom I owe profound respect and compliments.

 

Mormonism is nothing if it not be a practical religion. It teaches me to be honest, pure, truthful, in fact a Saint—a Latter-day Saint. Progression is our motto. If I am not better to day than I was yesterday what good has my religion done me? “be ye perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” How except through progression? And one beautiful thought in the Mormon doctrine is that progression is eternal. Perfection is not only relative, not absolute, and even the Creator, Our Father, is a progressive Being, still creating and still building worlds on the frontiers of the everlasting universe, adding to his glory and might. To be deprived of the privilege of progression would not be perfection.

 

And now what is the relationship of man to Deity? Is it not that of father and children? The Holy Bible tells us that “we are to be like him”—natural it is not? And it is not reasonable to suppose that a child can be like its father? I concede the difference between man and God is immeasurably greater than the difference between the little helpless infant in the cradle and the potentate wielding his scepter of power from the throne, but mark you, 50 short years bridges the latter difference while man has the countless ages of eternity before him to reach that exalted state of perfection to which our hope is leading us in Christ.

 

These thoughts are possibly new ones to you, or perhaps stated in a new light, but I am sure they will not be case aside without a serious consideration of them by one so logical and reasonable in conclusions as you are. The following couplet expresses all I have told you, in these words,

 

“As man is God once was.
As God is, man may be.”

 

I trust you will continue your investigations of Mormonism which is only another name for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is now attracting the interest of the world as an every day practical, reasonable religion and its influence is growing for  good. It is going to redeem the world from sin and wickedness, and through it is the [g]reat millennium will be soon ushered in. It is the fulfilling of the ancient prophesies concerning the establishment of Gods Kingdom upon the earth in the last days.

 

Pardon me for this long letter. I thought only of writing a note of thanks when I began. My wife joins me in getting to you and thanks you for your picture. She would like to meet the wife and daughters of a man so noble as I have described you to her. May the Lord bless you abundantly in all your good work.

 

Very Sincerely Yours.

J. Wilford Booth. (Joseph Wilford Booth, Journal, January 10, 1905, in Missionary in the Middle East: The Journals of Joseph Wilford Booth, ed. James A. Toronto and Kent F. Schull [Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2024], 387-89)