Christology and Matthew 19:17

And behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him, Why callst thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. (Matt 19:16-17 [cf. Mark 10:18; Luke 18:19])

This is a problematic passage for Trinitarian Christology at it differentiates, not simply between the “persons” (a poorly-defined term in Trinitarianism to begin with) of the Father and the Son (ambiguously tolerated), but “God” and the Son. Much ink has been spilt on this passage, but let us look at its interpretation in early Christian writings which reveal that Jesus was being distinguished from God:

·       JUSTIN, an early Church Father, writing n 140-160, writes in his Dialogue 101.2: “One is good, my Father in the heavens.” This very early quotation is not what we read in the Bible today.

·       EPHREM: Commentary on the Diatessaron XV.9, in both the original Syriac and the Armenian (2 manuscripts) reads: “One is good, the/my Father who [is] in the heaven.” Ephrem died in 373, and the Syriac manuscript of the Commentary is fifth century.

·       TATIAN, about 172, composed the Diatessaron (the Gospel harmony upon which Ephrem was commenting), on the basis of the Gospel texts current then. And this citation agrees precisely with Justin’s.

·       IRENAEUS: Haer. V.7.25 (pre-185): “One is good, the/my Father in the heavens.” Another second century source confirming the “wrong” version of Matthew 19:17.

·       HIPPOLYTUS: Haer V.7.25 (pre-222): “One is good, the/my Father in the heavens.” Another early Christian Father has the “wrong” version.

·       CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: Strom. V.10.63 (composed c. 207): “One is good, the/my Father.”

·       PSEUDO-CLEMENTINE HOMILIES: XVI.3.4 about 260 AD. “For one is good, the/my Father in the heavens.”

·       VETUS LATIN MS e (apud Matthew, fifth century): “Unus est bonus, pater.” This is the second most ancient manuscript and it also has “Father.”

·       VETUS LATINA MS d (apud Luke, fifth century): “Nemo bonus disi unus Deut pater.” ”Father” again. (Clifford Hubert Durousseau, “Appendix 1: On John 20:28: What Did Thomas Say in Hebrew?” in Anthony F. Buzzard, Jesus was not a Trinitarian: A Call to Return to the Creed of Jesus [Morros, Ga.: Restoration Fellowship, 2007], 385-412, here, p. 411).

KJV Mistranslations in the Sermon at the Temple?

Al Case (AKA RPCman), a former Latter-day Saint, under the section, "Influenced by the KJV of the Bible," raises the following objections to the Book of Mormon:

Why don't the Book of Mormon quotes from out of the Old Testament agree to earlier Latin, Syriac, Coptic, or Patristic texts?

Example: Matthew 5:27 and 3 Nephi 12:27 "by them of old time" not included in earliest Greek (should have said "to them of old")

Matthew 6:4, 6, 18 and 3 Nephi :4, 6, 18 "openly" added later

Matt 6:13 and 3 Nephi 13:13 "lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" should have said, "and do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one".

Firstly, it should be noted that the doxology in the Sermon at the Temple (Matt 6:13 [cf. 3 Nephi 13:13]) is not a problem--indeed, biblical scholars such as Joachim Jeremias and early Christian texts such as the Didache show that Jesus would have uttered a doxology at the end of the Sermon on the Mount (see here and here).

Let us examine the other objections Case raise against the Book of Mormon:

Matthew 5:27//3 Nephi 12:27:

While the earliest Greek texts do lack the phrase τοῖς ἀρχαίοις, the meaning of the phrase is implicit in the Greek whether or not the phrase is original. This is because the parallel sayings in Matt 5:21 and 5:33 contain the phrase τοῖς ἀρχαίοις, so these words are understood in v.27 (via subtext), just as they are understood in vv. 38 and 43 where no Greek manuscript evidenced a need to repeat the obvious either. (John W. Welch, Illuminating the Sermon at the Temple & Sermon on the Mount [Provo, UT.: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1999], 202).

Matt 6:4, 6, 18//3 Nephi 13:4, 6, 18

While the extent textual evidence does support the term "openly" (ἐν τῷ φανερῷ) was added later, the only possible meaning of these verses is that God will openly reward the righteous with treasures in heaven at the final judgment. This understanding is sustained by the Greek verb for "reward" (αποδιδωμι). It has a wide variety of meanings, including "to give retribution, reward, or punishment." Its prefix απο can mean among other things, "out from." For example, in the word "apocalypse," the prefix απο means "out from" that which is hidden. In the verb αποδιδωμι, it may convey the idea of being rewarded απο, that is, "out from," the obscurity of the acts of themselves, or openly. Thus, one does not need the phrase ἐν τῷ φανερῷ in order to understand that "he who sees in secret will reward you απο, openly" (ibid., 205).

As we see, the arguments forwarded by Case do not hold any water. Such is typical of many of the criticisms against the antiquity and authenticity of the Book of Mormon.

B.H. Roberts on the Motive Force in the Atonement

B.H. Roberts is one of my favourite Latter-day Saint theologians, and I do look forward to “nerding it up” with him and a number of other people (e.g., Paul; Joseph Smith) in the life to come. In what has to be one of the best books on Mormon theology, Roberts offered the following comment on the motives behind the atonement of Christ and man’s participation in salvation. What strikes me as interesting is that Roberts (correctly) did not read 2 Nephi 25:23 as a statement supporting legalistic/Pelagian soteriology (see James Stutz’ excellent exegesis of the verse here).

Motive Force in the Atonement

What shall prompt a Deity to make such an atonement? The answer is: two attributes of the Deity now of a long time kept in the background, viz., love and mercy. They will supply motive for atonement. We have seen and considered at some length the helplessness of man in the midst of those earth conditions necessary to his progress, viz., knowledge of good and evil. God saw man's helplessness from the beginning; and:

So loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him might not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved (John 3:16-17).

This love prompts the Son of God to suffer for the individual sins of men as well as for the sin of Adam in Eden. He undertook to pay the penalty due to each man's sin, that there might be ground for man's justification under the law; that mercy might claim the sinner upon conditions that love may prescribe. And so Paul says:

By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God (Eph. 2:8).

The law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did <much> more abound; that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness, unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 5:20-21).

And in harmony with this a Book of Mormon Prophet—the first Nephi—declares:

We know that it is by grace we are saved, after all that we can do (2 Ne. 25:23).

Man's Cooperation With God Necessary to Salvation

Notwithstanding this doctrine of being "saved by grace after all that men can do," yet in securing redemption from the consequences of man's individual sins, the cooperation of man is required; his acceptance, through faith, of God's plan for his salvation; acceptance of Jesus Christ and his redemptive work—obedience to him manifested by baptism, or burial in water for the remission of sin. The baptism being the symbol of the death, burial, and the resurrection of the Christ, and also the sign of the convert's acceptance of the Christ and the atonement he has made for the sins of men. Then also the acceptance of confirmation into membership of the Church of Jesus Christ by the laying on of hands, by which comes also the baptism of the Spirit—the Holy Ghost—bringing the convert into fellowship and union with God, by which he becomes spiritually alive—"born of the spirit," by reason of which he has become united to the spirit life of God, and hence put in THE WAY of eternal progress.

The gospel so far as the individual man is concerned is the "power of God unto salvation" (Rom. 1:16) to everyone that believes it, and obeys its prescribed ordinances, and its covenant of thereafter continuing righteousness. In the difference between the redemption from the transgression of Adam and redemption from man's personal sins, the one being free, unconditional, and universal; and the other being free, possible to all, but conditional, and therefore limited to those who comply with the conditions, there is to be observed nice discriminations in the justice of God. Free and universal redemption comes from the consequences of Adam's "fall," because that "fall" is absolutely necessary to the accomplishment of the purposes of God with reference to man's progress; without it nothing may be done for his progress. He must know the distinctions between good and evil in order to make progression, though that knowledge may not be acquired but by a "fall" from a state of innocence. Therefore, since that fall is necessary to these ends, justice demands that there be provided free and universal and complete and unconditional redemption from its consequences. But in the case of man's personal sins they are not absolutely necessary to the accomplishment of any general purposes of God. Of course, the earth-environment of man, including the broken harmonies as he finds them, may be necessary to the individual experience of man; but all that will abundantly come once men are at the same time free to choose, and good and evil is set before them. But what is here meant is that it is not an absolute necessity that individual men should sin, or that they sin without limit. Men can refrain from sin, if they will; the power is in them. They are brought into earth-life able to stand, "yet free to fall." They have power to choose good and to follow that instead of evil, if they so elect. Therefore, while it is eminently proper that the atonement of the Christ should be made to include satisfaction to justice for the personal sins of men, and the debt of suffering due to them should be paid, and paid vicariously, since man is powerless to offer expiation for himself, and it is needful that ample provision be made for the justification of man's pardon; yet it is also in accordance with justice that man shall cooperate with God in bringing about the blessed result of his deliverance from the consequences of his personal sins; and that conditions shall be required as necessary to participation in the forgiveness provided, such conditions as belief in and acceptance of the terms of atonement; repentance of sin, and a hearty cooperation with God in overcoming the evil, and its effects, in the human soul. (B.H. Roberts, The Truth, the Way, the Life: An elementary Treatise on Theology [ed. Stan Larson; Salt Lake City: Smith Research Associates, 1994], 505-7)

James White on the First Vision

On his facebook page, James White commented on a recent article in the Salt Lake Tribune on the different accounts of the First Vision (click here) with the following comment:

Wow...wish I had time to write a response to this! An amazing example of "spin" indeed! The wheels have truly come off the Mormon bus and it is sitting axle-deep in sand, going nowhere. And this is the kind of thing you expect when things are falling apart: pure spin, shallow excuses. Anyone who knows the accounts knows how contradictory and evolutionary they are, and how they are NOT like Paul's account of his conversion.

This is typical of White--bald assertions passed off as truth and question-begging.

To read the different accounts of the First Vision and how they are compatible with one another, see the essays in Exploring the First Vision, ed. Samuel Alonzo Dodge and Steven C. Harper. Also, see D. Michael Quinn's refutation of an "argument" White has used before (pilfering from Wesley Walters et al.)--that there were no religious revivals in 1819/1820.

To discuss one such "contradiction" White et al. like to present, critics will claim that early Mormon theology was reflective of Modalism. One of the purported "proofs" of such is the claim that Joseph Smith said he only saw Jesus Christ in the 1832 account of the First Vision, and, they argue, Joseph believed that the Father, Son, and Spirit were not three persons but modes of a single person. However, this is false. Firstly, Joseph Smith never said the only saw Jesus Christ in the 1832 account, so that is a logical non sequitur (see this page). Secondly, Joseph’s comment that “the Lord opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord" is not a proof of Modalism and/or Joseph claiming only Jesus was present; indeed, Joseph’s comment at the beginning of the account that he received a testimony from on high reflects language in the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants of the person of the Father, so is actually implicit evidence of two heavenly personages being present in the 1832 account.

Perhaps a killer blow to the charge of Modalism being the Christology of the 1832 account, however, is none other than the words of Jesus Christ Himself, where there is clearly a distinction of the persons of the Father and the Son:

[B]ehold, and lo I come quickly as it is written of me in the cloud clothed in the glory of my Father.

The glory that the person of Jesus Christ possesses when he comes again in glory (his Parousia) is not his own, but the glory given to Him by the Father; there would be no such distinction if they were one and the same person. For more on this issue, see David Paulsen and Ari D. Bruening, “The Development of the Mormon Understanding of God: Early Mormon Modalism and Other Myths”

And yes, James--the different accounts of the First Vision are similar to those of Paul's conversion narratives.

Yet again, James White embarrasses himself.

The NIV's mistranslation of Philippians 3:14

In a previous post, I discussed how the NIV deliberately mistranslated 2 Thess 2:15 and 3:6, as well as showing that scholars such as N.T. Wright are very critical of the NIV, especially when it comes to its translation of the Pauline corpus. Another example of a mistranslation in the NIV is Phil 3:14:

The NIV renders the verse as follows:

I press on onward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

The Greek of the text reads:

κατὰ σκοπὸν διώκω εἰς τὸ βραβεῖον τῆς ἄνω κλήσεως τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ.

The term τῆς ἄνω κλήσεως τοῦ θεοῦ is not correctly rendered by the NIV; instead, it refers, not to Paul being called to heaven, a lame attempt to mistranslate the Bible to support the false concept believers immediately go to heaven after their death (cf. this discussion of 2 Cor 5:6-9 and Phil 1:23), but that the calling of Paul originates from God. Peter O'Brien, a Reformed Protestant and New Testament scholar, commenting on this passage, wrote:

κλησις can be understood in its customary Pauline sense of the divine calling to salvation, particularly the initial summons, while the prize is that which is announced by the call. On any view του θεου indicates that it is God himself who issues the call, while εν Χριστω Ιησου probably signifies that it is in the sphere of Christ Jesus himself that this summons is given. In the immediate context the prize (το βραβειον) is the full and complete gaining of Christ for whose sake everything else has been counted loss. (Peter T. O’Brien, The New International Greek Testament Commentary: Philippians [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991], 433)

What further militates against this understanding of Phil 3:14 is that the context is about, not the intermediate state of believers, but the resurrection (cf. Phil 3:21).

Yet again, the NIV has shown itself to be an unreliable (and rather deceptive) translation. If Evangelicals (correctly) reject the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World Translation for its deliberate mistranslations which often affect the theology of the text to support JW theology (see the NWT rendition of John 1:1c and Col 1:16, for instance), they should reject the NIV for what it truly is—a mediocre translation that should be substituted with a scholarly translation of the Bible (e.g., the NRSV).

Daniel Wallace Answering Apologists for Inerrancy regarding Paul's Conversion Narratives

Acts 9:7	οἱ δὲ νδρες οἱ συνοδεύοντες αὐτῷ εἱστήκεισαν ἐνεοί, ἀκούοντες μὲν τῆς φωνῆς μηδένα δὲ θεωροῦντες.
	The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.

There seems to be a contradiction between this account of Paul’s conversion and his account of it in Acts 22, for there he says, “those who were with me. . . did not hear the voice. . .” However, in Acts 22:9 the verb ἀκούω takes an accusative direct object. On these two passages, Robertson states: “. . . it is per­fectly proper to appeal to the distinction in the cases in the apparent contradic­tion between ἀκούοντες μὲν τῆς φωνῆς (Ac. 9:7) and τὴν δὲ φωνὴν οὐκ ἤκουσαν (22:9). The accusative case (case of extent) accents the intellectual apprehension of the sound, while the genitive (specifying case) calls attention to the sound of the voice without accenting the sense. The word ἀκούω itself has two senses which fall in well with this case-distinction, one ‘to hear,’ the other ‘to understand’.”(Robertson, Grammar, 506.)

The NIV seems to follow this line of reasoning: Acts 9:7 reads “they heard the sound but did not see anyone”; 22:9 has “my companions saw the light, but did not understand the voice.” The field of meaning for both ἀκούω (hear, under­stand) and φωνή (sound, voice), coupled with the change in cases (gen., acc.), can be appealed to to harmonize these two accounts.

On the other hand, it is doubtful that this is where the difference lay between the two cases used with ἀκούω in Hellenistic Greek: the NT (including the more literary writers) is filled with examples of ἀκούω + genitive indicating understanding (Matt 2:9; John 5:25; 18:37; Acts 3:23; 11:7; Rev 3:20; 6:3, 5;(Rev 6:7 finds a parallel with the acc.!) 8:13; 11:12; 14:13; 16:1, 5, 7; 21:3) as well as instances of ἀκούω + accusative where little or no comprehension takes place (In some of these examples, the hearing is indirect (e.g., hearing about wars [Mark 13:7 and parallels]; of divisions [1 Cor 11:18]) where, on Robertson’s scheme, a gen. would be expected. Other examples showing the fallacy of this approach: in Jesus’ urging his audience to listen to his words and obey them, cf. the parallels in Matt 7:24 (acc.) and Luke 6:47 (gen.); the parallels of the angels’ articulate cry of “Come!” when they dispense with the seal judgments (Rev 6:3, 5 have the gen.; 6:7 has the acc.).) (explicitly so in Matt 13:19; Mark 13:7/Matt 24:6/Luke 21:9; Acts 5:24; 1 Cor 11:18; Eph 3:2; Col 1:4; Phlm 5; Jas 5:11; Rev 14:2). The exceptions, in fact, are seemingly more numerous than the rule! (Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1996], 133)

Joshua 12:8-24 versus the “echad is compound one” argument

I have addressed the argument that אֶחָד (“one”) refers to “compound” or “plural one”(!) in this blog, including:

Adam and Eve as "One Flesh": Evidence for Trinitarian Claims?

Echad does not mean "compound one"

To see the nonsense of this theory, I would ask a proponent of such a view to attempt to make sense of the instances of this number in the following king list in the book of Joshua:

The lands included the hill country, the western foothills, the Arabah, the mountain slopes, the wilderness and the Negev. These were the lands of the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. These were the kings:

The king of Jericho one (אֶחָד) the king of Ai (near Bethel) one (אֶחָד)

The king of Jerusalem one (אֶחָד) of the king of Hebron one (אֶחָד)

The king of Jarmuth one (אֶחָד) the king of Lachish one (אֶחָד)

The king of Eglon one (אֶחָד) the king of Gezer one (אֶחָד)

The king of Hormah one (אֶחָד) the king of Arad one (אֶחָד)

The king of Libnah one (אֶחָד) the king of Adullam one (אֶחָד)

The king of Makkedah one (אֶחָד) the king of Bethel one (אֶחָד)

The king of Tappuah one (אֶחָד) the king of Hepher one (אֶחָד)

The king of Aphek one (אֶחָד) the king of Lasharon one (אֶחָד)

The king of Madone one (אֶחָד) the king of Hazor one (אֶחָד)

The king of Shimron Meron one (אֶחָד) the king of Akshaph one (אֶחָד)

The king of Taanach one (אֶחָד) the king of Megiddo one (אֶחָד)

The king of Kadesh one (אֶחָד) the king of Jokneam in Carmel one (אֶחָד)

The king of Dor (in Naphoth Dor) one (אֶחָד) the king of Goyim in Gilgal one (אֶחָד)

The king of Tirzah one (אֶחָד) thirty-one kings in all. (Josh 12:8-24 NIV)