Ezra Taft Benson Making Open Theistic-Leaning Comments During the October 1981 General Conference

 Many Latter-day Saints who are not Open Theists tend to be inconsistent. As one notable example:

 

In 1832, he prophesied that the southern states and northern states would shortly be divided in civil war, that this war would be the beginning of world wars which would eventually involve all nations and result in the death and misery of many souls. Specifically, he said that the great Civil War would begin with a rebellion in South Carolina. (See D&C 87.) This prophecy was published to the world in 1851.

 

As every schoolboy knows, the Civil War began with the secession of South Carolina from the Union, and other states followed. When Lincoln sent provisions to the Union forces at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, the Confederate forces opened fire on the fort. Since that fateful day in 1861, the world has seen as a result of warfare the death and misery of many souls.

 

The desire of the Prophet Joseph Smith was to save the Union from that bloody conflict. He recognized the iniquity of slavery and urged Congress to abolish it and to pay the slaveholders from the sale of public lands. The message went unheeded, and nearly one-half million souls died in the Civil War. (Ezra Taft Benson, "Joseph Smith: Prophet to our Generation," General Conference, October 1981)

 

It appears that Benson (who was not an Open Theist) believed that there was a real possibility that things could have happened differently had people heeded the warning of what is now D&C 87.

 

On D&C 87 itself, as well as other issues relating to Joseph Smith’s prophecies, see:

 

Resources on Joseph Smith's Prophecies

 

Scriptural Mormonism Podcast Episode 100: Noah Airmet on Covenantal Non-Dogmatism

 

Episode 100: Noah Airmet on Covenantal Non-Dogmatism

Dale A. Brueggemann on the Egyptian Background to Luke 16:19-31

  

Another Egyptian descent story is that of Setne and his son, Si-Osire. In this story, an Egyptian is allowed to return to the land of the living to deal with a Nubian magician who has been overpowering Egypt’s magicians. This emissary is reincarnated as Si-Osire, the child of Setne and his wife. At a funeral for a rich man and a pauper, Si-Osire hears his father express his longing that he might have the fate of the rich man. He subsequently takes his father on a tour of the Underworld that highlights the fate of three classes of the dead: those whose good deeds outnumber their bad ones, like the pauper; those whose bad deeds dominate, like the rich man; and those whose good and bad deeds essentially balance out. The tour shows the rich man degraded and the pauper elevated to sit beside Osiris (compare Luke 16:19–31). When Si-Osire grows up, he vanquishes the Nubian magician and returns to the Underworld. (Dale A. Brueggemann, “Descent into the Underworld, Critical Issues,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. John D. Barry et al. [Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Press, 2016], Logos Bible Software edition)

 

Stephen De Young (EO) on Josephus's Comments about the Old Testament Canon in Against Apion

 Commenting on Josephus, Contra Apion, 1.37-44:

 

Josephus does not merely express this grouping of texts to be the Scriptures according to his opinion or to be the canon as he received it from within his own community. Rather, he makes the claim that every single Jewish individual on earth, from birth, recognizes these and only these books. He further states that every one of those individuals obeys these Scriptures and is willing to die rather than violate a single command.

 

On its face, Josephus uses rather extreme hyperbole. Newborn infants have no opinion on the relative authority of various religious texts. Even a casual reading of the books that Josephus endorses reveals that the vast majority of Jewish people paid little attention to any of the commands of the Torah, let alone demonstrated a willingness to die for them. While Jewish martyrs existed, particularly in the Maccabean period as described in the books that Josephus here seems to marginalize, they were certainly never the majority any more than one can generalize from the Christian martyrs just how committed the majority of Christians were. Josephus also denies the editorial activity within the various texts that make up the Hebrew Bible, despite its being readily apparent even in translation.

 

Josephus was a member of the party of the Pharisees. His view on which Scriptures were authoritative within Jewish communities reflects this perspective, and the Pharisees would have agreed with him. But, even within Palestinian Judaism, not everyone was a Pharisee. Other religious parties existed in the first century within Palestine, and these parties had different collections of Scriptures that exercised authority within their communities. This is even more true of Jewish communities scattered across Egypt, Ethiopia, Mesopotamia, and the Roman world, reaching as far as Spain in that era. Josephus does not report objective fact but rather asserts that he and his fellows are right, over against competing parties. He goes a step further by asserting that everyone really knows that he is right, even if he or she won’t admit it.

 

This proclamation by Josephus, then, while an important early witness to the understanding of one slice of Second Temple Judaism, is a flimsy basis on which to argue for the practice of the Christian Church in contemporary society. It is especially weak given that it conflicts with two millennia of Christian experience across the Christian world. Among early Christians, each community received a set of authoritative texts as its Old Testament based on the texts that held authority in the preceding Jewish communities. Christian communities in Palestine received the canon of Palestinian Judaism; those in Egypt, Alexandrian Judaism; those in Ethiopia, Ethiopian Judaism.(Stephen De Young, The Whole Counsel of God: An Introduction to Your Bible [Chesterton, Ind.: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2022], page 37 of 116, Kindle ed.)

 

Robert Alter on Isaiah 5:7

  

justice . . . jaundice . . . righteousness . . . wretchedness. This translation proposes English equivalents for the Hebrew wordplay, where the meaning of the two second terms is somewhat different. The Hebrew is mishpat, “justice,” mispaḥ, “blight,” and tsedaqah, “righteousness,” tseʿaqah, “scream.” (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 2:636)

 

Robert Alter on שְׂכִיָּה (KJV: Pictures) in Isaiah 2:16

  

lovely crafts. The translation follows a scholarly proposal for the noun sekhiyot, but its meaning is obscure, and the conclusion about what it might be is dictated chiefly by the poetic parallelism. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 2:629)

 

Radak (David Kimhi) on Jeremiah 17:9

  

Radak on Jeremiah 17:9:1

עקוב הלב. לפי שדבר על הבטחון שהוא רע כשישים בטחונו באדם וזה תלוי בכונת הלב כמו שאמר ומן ה' יסור לבו כמו שפירש לפיכך דבר בכונת הלב ואמר כי הלב עקוב יותר מכל דבר כלומר מרמה כי יוכל אדם להראות בפיו ובמעשיו טוב ויהיה לבו רע ומי ידע זה בלתי האל לפיכך אמר מי ידענו. ואמר אני ה' חוקר לב והמרמה תלויה בלב לא בפה ובמעשה כי אף על פי שתהיה לפעמים המרמה בפה שיאמר דברים שהכונה בהם על שני פנים או יעשה מרמה בידיו הכל הוא בכונת הלב לפיכך אמר מכל כי אין דבר מרמה כמו הלב: (source)

 

“The heart is crooked.” Since he has spoken about trust, which is bad when a person places his trust in man, and this depends on the intention of the heart, as he said, “and his heart turns away from the Lord,” as he explained, therefore he speaks of the intention of the heart and says that the heart is more crooked than anything else—that is, deceitful. For a person can appear with his mouth and in his actions to be good, while his heart is evil, and who can know this except God? Therefore he said, “Who can know it?” And he said, “I, the Lord, search the heart,” and deceit depends on the heart, not on the mouth or on action, for even though deceit is sometimes in the mouth, when one says things that are intended to be understood in two ways, or practices deceit with his hands, everything is according to the intention of the heart. Therefore he said, “above all things,” for nothing is as deceitful as the heart.

 

 

Radak on Jeremiah 17:9:2

ואנוש הוא. ענין כאב ושבר כמו אנוש כאבי אנושה מכתי ויאמר על דרך השאלה בכאב הלב ביגון או בדאגה או בעסקים רעים או במחשבה לפיכך אמר ואנוש הוא ואמר חרפה שברה לבי ואנושה:

 

“And it is incurably sick.” This is a term for pain and brokenness, like “my wound is painful, my blow is severe,” and it is said figuratively of heartache, grief, worry, evil circumstances, or troubled thought. Therefore he said, “and it is incurably sick,” and he said, “My heart is broken with shame, and I am sick.”