Hyrum Andrus (1952) on Micah 4 (cf. Isaiah 2:2-5)

 When offering the various definitions of “Zion” in Latter-day Saint thought:

 

4. To the location of the “mountain of the house of the Lord,” Micah gave the name of Zion, as he predicted its establishment in the “top of the mountains” in the latter days as a place distinct from Jerusalem. There had formerly been a Zion and a Jerusalem in the land of Palestine, but “the prophet Micah, ‘full of power by the spirit of the Lord, and of judgment, and of might’ predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and its associated Zion, the former to ‘become heaps,’ and the latter to be ‘plowed as a field’; and then announced a new condition that is to exist in the last days, when another ‘mountain of the house of the Lord’ is to be established, and this is called Zion.” In many Latter-day Saint sermons in the belief has been expressed that this prophecy is in process of fulfillment at the present day by the activities of the Church in the mountainous regions of the West. This definition is in close alliance at present with that given under the former heading, differing only by stipulating a definite location of the Church at a given time. (Hyrum Leslie Andrus, “World Government as Envisioned in the Latter Day Saint ‘City of Zion’” [MA Thesis; Brigham Young University, 1952], 8-9)

 

 

According to Mormon interpretation, Micah, the ancient Israelite prophet, spoke of the latter-day Zion as being synonymous with “the house of the Lord . . . in the top of the mountains” (i.e., while Zion is located in Western America). Following its erection a subsequent era of peace wherein men would “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruninghooks” was to follow. Paralleling these peaceful conditions, Micah states, “the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Joseph Smith spoke of these two points government by noting: “Now there are two cities . . . a New Jerusalem to be established on this continent, and also Jerusalem shall be rebuilt on the eastern contingent.” (Hyrum Leslie Andrus, “World Government as Envisioned in the Latter Day Saint ‘City of Zion’” [MA Thesis; Brigham Young University, 1952], 95)

 

 

Brian Hales, "Joseph Smith, Book of Mormon Editor"

 

Joseph Smith, Book of Mormon Editor

Madison N. Pierce on the Use of Psalm 102 (LXX: 101) in Hebrews 1:10-12

  

At first glance, this is a particularly interesting selection by the author of Hebrews. In most other instances, he has selected a text where God the Father was already the speaker and identified other unspecified participants (e.g., the addressees); here, however, the author has selected a psalm that appears to be without any dialogue. Instead, it is just a Psalmist’s cry to the Father. But this is not the case in Greek traditions. Throughout Greek Psalm 101 (MT 102), the speaker describes his affliction and plight as a temporary, mortal being, while praising God for his permanence. Verse 24 of the MT contains the consonants ענה , which can designate one of two verbal roots. The MT seems to favor one option (I: “to oppress or humiliate),” while the Greek favors another (II: “to answer”), represented by ἀπεκρίθη. The latter introduces a dialogue between the speaker and God:

 

He [God] answered him by means of his strength [ἀπεκρίθη αὐτῷ ἐν ὁδῷ ἰσχύος αὐτοῦ], . . . “You are from the beginning, Lord . . .” (101:24b–26a)

 

Greek traditions not only introduce the curious “answer,” but also another potential participant. Who is the one who receives the answer (the “him”)? Throughout this psalm, the speaker has referred to himself in the first person, and God in the second, as well as the third. But in verse 24, we have two third-person references. Who is the other participant? Perhaps the author of Hebrews was also intrigued by this question. Nevertheless, he seems to either overlook 101:24b–25, where the one answering laments his own temporal existence, or reason that the answer does not begin until verse 26.

 

In other words, the author, seeing that he is to expect some answer, may then look forward to the portion that can be read with God (or in this case more specifically the exalted Christ) in mind. If this is the strategy utilized by the author, then it is not the most straightforward interpretation in Hebrews 1, but even if this insight is not the best explanation, then this still does not minimize the result of the text’s application to Christ in Hebrews.

 

In Hebrews, the addressee of Greek Psalm 101, the Son, is called “Lord” (κύριε), a title attributed to Christ elsewhere in Hebrews also (2:3; 7:14; 12:14; 13:20). Thus between this citation and the prior (Ps 44:7–8), the author has presented Jesus as both God and Lord. Although some quibble with the meaning of these titles being applied to Jesus – arguing they hold little more significance for him than they did for the previous royal recipient, for instance – the rest of this citation does little to undermine his authority. In it, the author continues to contrast the evanescence of the angels and the eternality of the Son by presenting first the Son’s role in creation (1:10), and then his stability from the time when the world is “rolled up” and “destroyed” until eternity (1:11–12). Like the angels, particularly in contrast to the Son, the earth is temporary (in its current “shakable” state; cf. 12:25–29), but Jesus is always the same (cf. Heb 13:8).

 

Even so, the Son’s presence at or role in creation presented by the author, for some, does not allow for the necessary “distinction between his eternal and his temporal existence.” As Caird argues, when Christ is exalted to his “cosmic role,” he is raised above the angels; he is praised for his role in creation simply because “he is the man in whom the divine Wisdom has been appointed to dwell, so as to make him the bearer of the whole purpose of creation.” He was not present at creation, but is “figuratively deemed so” (emphasis original). Now near the end of the catena, it seems even clearer that the author has presented the Son as a personal, embodied entity. He is a Son to the Father (1:5–6), and he is a companion to humans (1:9). Further, he is in conversation. The Father speaks to him (1:5–13; 5:5), and he speaks back (2:12–13; 10:5–7). No single citation (or speech) or title proves this definitively, but the evidence taken as a whole suggests it. (Madison N. Pierce, Divine Discourse in the Epistle to the Hebrews: The Recontextualization of Spoken Quotations of Scripture [Society of New Testament Studies Monograph Series 178; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020], 57-59)

 

 

Excepts from Joseph P. Farrell's Summary of Maximus the Confessor's (d. 662) Theology

  

(1)

 

Proper theological method subsumes theological questions and doctrines under two correlative headings of Christology and Triadology, for all properly theological doctrines would appear to have christological and triadological implications. Any proposition, method, or other statement which does not start directly and consciously from this context does not go under the name of Christian theology.

 

All theology must therefore be thoroughly grounded in the distinction of person and nature. Each of these categories must be given equal weight and emphasis with the other. Consequently, there are two basic ways in which this distinction may be lost. On the one hand, person may be subordinated to nature in order of concepts to such an extent that it becomes absorbed in it as a special kind of attribute of nature. Within the context of the discussion on predestination and free will, the apokatastasis implies just such a confusion, for the human nature of Christ was seen to determine every human person's eternal bliss in spite of, and apart from, the individual's gnomic reception of the grace conferred by Christ. On the other hand, nature may be subordinated and confused with person, and to some extent, defined as the aggregate of persons. The doctrine of the limited atonement is perhaps an example of this process, for the human nature of Christ is defined in terms of its efficaciousness for a predetermined number of individual elect: Christ loses no one that the Father has given Him, but raises them up at the last day.

 

. . .

 

(4)

 

In Christ’s human nature which is consubstantial with all men, God humanly wills, decrees, and perfectly fulfills the salvation of all men, for no human being is untouched by His Incarnation, and nothing is detracted from His sovereignty as God is individual persons choose not to accept salvation.

 

Nothing is lost to His sovereignty as God Incarnate precisely because nothing is lost to the perfection of His human nature; it retains its full integrity as human nature despite the fact that individual persons reject Him. Hence, the expression current in some evangelical circles, “once saved always saved”,  bears a certain truth, if seen in this context, namely, that all human nature, once assumed by Christ in its totality, eternally abides in and with God by virtue of the Word’s hypostatic union with it.

 

(5)

 

Christ, being truly consubstantial with all men, truly died for all men, and this His atoning Passion, Death, and Resurrection are in no way limited.

 

In turn, the doctrine of the limited atonement may be reversed to show its hidden and heretical implications: If not all men rise with the second Adam then not all die with the first Adam. There would consequently be some men who, not being affected by the consubstantiality of Christ's human nature, would not be consubstantial with Him. Therefore, they would not be in Adam either. Not being in Adam, they would have no need of Christ. This is a denial of the inheritance of ancestral sin, and is therefore Pelagianism. The way out of this impasse is the distinction between person and nature, and between the mode of the employment of the will and the natural will itself.

 

Furthermore, if Christ's human nature is efficacious in salvation only for a number of elected individuals, then it would appear that Christ's humanity, insofar as it is efficacious for those individuals, is united with them not naturally but only by the object of their wills, since His human nature itself is not united with them. This union only in object of will between God and man in Christ is Nestorianism.

 

It would also appear that, on this view, the human nature of the elected individuals gives nothing to election, and Christ's human nature certainly does not, as it affects only the elected individuals. Human nature therefore either has no will, which is a kind of "anthropological" Apollinarianism, or it is merely ineffectual in salvation ("soteriological" Apollinarianism). Christ's human decision of salvation at Gethsemane is therefore illusory, and this is Docetism. (Joseph P. Farrell, Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor [South Canon, Pa.: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1989], 222, 224-25, emphasis in bold added)

 

What Most Readers Miss About the Sword of Laban

 

What Most Readers Miss About the Sword of Laban

Lawrence Feingold on the Urim and Thummim and Its Relationship to the Casting of Lots in Acts 1

 Commenting on the vestments of the High Priest outlined in Exo 28:

 

The most mysterious part of the vestments were two objects, the Urim and the Thummim, which went on Aaron’s breastpiece and were used as sacred lots to discern the will of God. The judges or kings who led the people could thus consult God’s will in difficult matters. In Numbers 27:21, God commands that Joshua be invested with some of Moses’ authority to lead the children of Israel after him: “And he shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall inquire for him by the judgment of the Urim before the Lord; at his word they shall go out, and at his word they shall come in.”

 

We see King David in 1 Samuel 23 consulting the Lord through the high priest Abiathar’s ephod, which contained the Urim and Thummim. When David was seeking refuge from Saul in the city of Keilah, he consulted the ephod of Abiathar as to whether Saul would besiege the city of Keilah. On receiving a positive answer, he asked whether the men of Keilah would then hand him over to Saul. Once again the answer was positive, and David fled immediately from that city.

 

The Urim and Thummim were still being used to discern God’s will in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. Ezra 2:63 and Nehemiah 7:65 recount an episode in which the Urim and Thummim were consulted regarding certain men who claimed to be of priestly descent but whose names were not found in the genealogies: “The governor told them that they were not to partake of the most holy food [reserved for priests], until there should be a priest to consult Urim and Thummim.”

 

In Acts 1, Peter used lots in a similar way to determine God’s will for a successor to Judas. This strikes modern ears as very strange, but it should be connected with the tradition of the Urim and Thummim. Peter has become high priest of the New Covenant, and so he not unnaturally took up a prerogative of the Aaronic high priest.

 

After Pentecost, however, lots were never used again to determine the will of God. Prayer and the gift of counsel, one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, fully poured out on Pentecost, take the place of the casting of lots. The Urim and Thummim can thus be seen as types of the gift of counsel which is given to all the confirmed faithful in the Church through the Holy Spirit. It remains in all who are in a state of grace, and fully blossoms in the lives of the saints. (Lawrence Feingold, “Typology of the Old Testament Priesthood,” [2013], pp. 6-7)

 

Baptism and the Imagery of Being "Clothed Upon" in the Tripartite Tractate

Source for the following: Geoffrey S. Smith, Valentinian Christianity: Texts and Translations (Oakland, Calif.: University of California Press, 2020)

 

Background:

 

The Tripartite Tractate is the fifth text in Nag Hammadi codex I. Since no title appears in the manuscript, the Tripartite Tractate has received its editorial title on the basis of its division into three parts by scribal decoration. Spanning eighty-seven manuscript pages, the Tripartite Tractate offers a comprehensive account of salvation history, beginning with the ineffable God and the population of the heavenly realm of fullness with eternities, and culminating in humanity’s final return to the Father. While the anonymous Tripartite Tractate was once thought to be the work of Heracleon, scholars now reject this attribution on the basis of theological differences between the work and Heracleon’s surviving writings. (p. 165)

 

English translation (from Coptic):

 

The baptism that we previously discussed is called “garment of those who do not strip themselves of it,” because those who will clothe themselves in it and those who have received redemption wear it. It is also called “the strength of the truth that does not have destruction.” Without wavering and movement it grasps those who have received the <restoration> even as they grasp him. Iy is called “silence” on account of the tranquility and imperturbability. IT is also called “bridal chamber” on account of the agreement and the lack of division of those who know that they have known him. It is also called] “the light that never sets and has no flame,” since it does not illuminate, but those who have worn it are made of light. They are those whom he wore. (p. 245)