Martin Luther Lecture by Prof Cary

I listened to a lecture series on Martin Luther from the Teaching Company by Prof. Cary.  This turned out to be a nice experience.  I got the series because of something that I read or heard about Martin Luther that interested me in learning more about him.  Here's what I'd learned that I didn't know before.  First Luther was not just some unknown monk that suddenly became famous when he posted his 95 Theses.  He was a monk but he was also a Priest and was very well known and educated.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out that Luther showed great faith when he entered the monastery, he was giving up the life of being a lawyer and going against the wishes of his father, and then when he was convinced that the Catholic Church was wrong he left the monastery, the life he'd known and been living into the unknown on faith.  Anyway this made me want to learn a little more about Luther, and since we were going to be driving a lot over the holidays I got the Luther tapes.

First I was pleasantly surprised to find that this series was given by Prof. Cary.  I listened to a series by Prof. Cary "The History of Christian Theology" and liked it so much I got a second set called "Philosophy and Religion in the West" so I was excited that he'd done this set as well.  It's funny because I only realized who the lecturer was after starting to listening to it.

I really liked this set of tapes primarily for the reason that Prof. Cary seems to me to be a Christian believer.  He says that he's a Lutheran and he says that he realizes that there are some problems with what he believes and that he just accepts those problems as opposed to accepting the problems that come from believing in Calvinism.  I don't remember off the top of my head what the problems were but I like the way that he stated it.

He also talks about "traditions" and explains it very well.  He says that he can listen to a car engine and not hear anything wrong but a mechanic that has been taught the "traditions" of car mechanics can listen and tell that a spark plug, or something, is not working right.  No text has an inherent meaning to it in only has meaning with the traditions we bring to it.  That seems right to me.

Prof. Cary I feel is very insightful as to Luther.  He's hard on him when he should be hard on him, such as his treatment of the Jews, and his seemingly intransigence.  For example Prof. Cary thinks that the Reformation wouldn't have taken place if Luther had not decided the the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) was the anti-Christ.  Luther didn't say that a certain Pope was bad (Many people had said that including Erasmus.) but that the entire RCC was anti-Christ.  Prof. Cary admits that's a hard statement especially when it's obvious, as I feel, that the RCC is not the anti-Christ.

I liked these lectures and highly recommend them.

Prof Ehrman – Caveat Emptor

I've listened to a series of lectures by Prof. Bart Ehrman from the teaching company.  Before I started listening to his tapes I read some of his books.  I'd heard about his writings in the notes of some FARMS papers.  His name popped up enough that I got (as is I actually bought them) a couple of his books and read them.  The books that I've read have been "Lost Christianities", "Misquoting Jesus" and "The Text of the New Testament."  On the last book he was the co-author of with Bruce Metzger and it was the 4th version of the text.  The book is considered the introductory text of New Testament textual criticism and I was surprised to see that Prof. Ehrman was the co-author because it basically means that Prof. Metzger was passing the torch to Prof. Ehrman.  Prof. Metzger wrote the first three versions himself.

The three lectures sets that I've recently listened to by Prof. Ehrman are "The New Testament", "The Apostolic Fathers" and "Lost Christianities," but the first lecture series that I listened to was "The Historical Jesus."

I actually think that Prof. Ehrman is pretty interesting as a lecturer and writer.  He must be because he's written a ton of books and does a bunch of lecture series and he's got some of my money.

The first lecture set that I listened to by Prof. Ehrman was called "The Historical Jesus."  I've read a lot about this topic and nothing that Prof. Ehrman said in the series really shocked or surprised me.  He started out with the standard description of Apollonius of Tayana.  For anyone who doesn't know about this guy his story sounds exactly like Jesus, except he's not the Son of God so no one hears of him except trivia experts and people trying to destroy Christianity.

One thing that I found interesting was his description of how a historian handles miracles.  He was apologetic and said that he couldn't say that miracles didn't happen but that as a historian he could only deal with probabilities and since most people don't walk on water the way to bet is that a story of someone walking on water probably didn't happen.  He then asks how the listener deals with miraculous stories of other religious leaders.  I have to admit that made me think.

All of Prof. Ehrman's books and lectures are very interesting but you have to listen to them with the understanding that he's talking to you as a lapsed Evangelical Christian.  I obviously don't know his complete history but he does give a little background in the introduction to "Misquoting Jesus" and it sounds like he went into higher learning as a believing Evangelical Christian and came out as an agnostic New Testament Scholar.  When talking about the teachings of Paul he flat out states that Paul teaches that we're saved by grace alone.  Now I understand this being said by a Born Again Fundamentalist Christian, but it surprised me coming from a scholar.  I can think of a number of other interpretations of the teachings of Paul that I've heard from other scholars that Prof. Erhman doesn't even hint that may be there.

He takes the scholarly idea that Christianity was made up – at least that's what it always sounds like to me when I hear it.  Here's what he describes.  Jesus had a few followers who spread out after he died and they started talking about the wonderful things that Jesus did.  Over time the stories that were told about Jesus were slowly changed and modified and then finally written down.  Prof. Ehrman actually gives as an example the party game of "Telephone" where one person at the end of a line of people tells a person a sentence and then each person whispers the same sentence to the next person and then at the end of the line the last person repeats the sentence and everyone laughs at how funny the differences are.  That basically is how the Gospels came about.  Cool huh?

Another thing that Prof. Ehrman talks a lot about is apocalypsism.  I had actually never heard of acpcalypsim before I listened to Prof. Ehrman which kind of surprised me.  I've heard of apocalyptic literature before and I know that there are people who consider the apocalypse the end of the world because of Revelation.  Here's how it works.  The last book in the Bible is called Revelation and the reason it's called Revelation is because that is the English translation of the Greek word Apocalypse.  Francis Ford Coppola make a famous Vietnam War movie called "Apocalypse Now"  based upon a Joseph Conrad novel called "The Heart of Darkness" and suddenly everyone now knows that apocalypse means the end of the world.  Well apparently it does mean that now.  I'd always thought that it just meant a piece of literature which describes a persons tour of heaven (and sometimes hell) with an angelic being accompanying the tourist giving explanations of what is being seen.  However, after listening to Prof. Ehrman, and some other series, I guess that apocalypsim is a term which means you believe the end of time is next week.  So according to Prof. Ehrman Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist who was an apocalypsist (Are you surprised that Jesus was a disciple of John?  I was, but apparently the superior baptizes the inferior according to Prof. Ehrman's understanding of early Christian customs.) which means Jesus was and Paul who was a follower of Jesus is an apocalypsist.  Prof. Ehrman seems to find joy in doing things like saying "An early 1st century apocalyptic prophet said..." then he pretty much quotes Matt 24 then he gleefully tells us that it is a prophecy of Jesus with the obvious implication that he's a false prophet.

Despite all these things I have learned some insights from Prof. Ehrman.  For example he points out in Romans that Paul talks about the "Law" on two levels.  One level was the "Law" that seemed to apply to Jewishness, and another level was the "law" of an ethical level.  I thought that was a pretty good way to describe it because I've always been amazed at the commandment lists that Paul lays out that he expects Christians to live by.  However, after pointing all this out he never addresses the implications again.

I found one other amazing description given by Prof. Erhman.  There was a movement in early Christianity called gnosticism of which one of the primary claims was that there was a secret gnosis, or knowledge, which is what the Greek word gnosis means.  Prof. Erhman goes through a convoluted explanation that gnosticism arose from Jewish apcalyptism that arose in the 3rd or 2nd Century BC.  I found it laughable, but it was an excellent demonstration of how scholars ignore Acts 1:3-4 which is where it says that Jesus spent 40 teaching all things about the Kingdom of God.  What and where is that teaching?  Nibley says this is the reason that gnosticism rose because there was the tradition about that teaching.  Nibley's not the only person that I've read mention this, Margart Barker does as well, and others.  Not Prof. Ehrman.

I found the tapes OK especially if you know what your going to be getting before starting with them.

Still Reading the BKC and an Addition

I really enjoying reading through the Old Testament with the Bible Knowledge Commentary.  I actually enjoyed reading the giving of the law in the Exodus and the explanation of the Tabernacle.  When they explained the size of a cubit being around 18 inches supposedly.  No one really knows what the size is but that's the accepted estimate.  I also understood just what they were talking about with the clothing or the high priest.  The reason that I understood this this time is that it's explicitly explained in the book.  As I was reading about the clothing for I realized that I bought an illustrated book about the Old Testament that probably had pictures that would show the cloths and the tabernacle.

I went and got it it's called "Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament: An Illustrated Reference for Latter-Day Saints."  I decided that I'd read the book as well and it's been pretty interesting as well.

Since the surgery I haven't been able to start doing the body weights exercises so I've been riding the exercise cycle every morning and I've really been enjoying the reading that I do.

The History of Hell from Christian History

The Christian History Magazine sent this nifty little book that has snippets of writings of theologians writings about hell throughout history.  It was pretty iteresting and it got me thinking about how LDS doctrine provides the "Whys" of theoloty.

Why is there Hell?  That is a good question, and I like the answer that John Stuart Mill gives.  "I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures: and if such a being can sentence me to Hell for not so calling him, to Hell will I go."

So if we can't say a person is good who would send a person off to eternal punishment for seemingly insignificant reasons we shouldn't then call that person God, and say He is unfathomable.

Here is the problem as I see it.  In Classical Christianity God is outside of time and creation and then decides that he will create creatures and a place for them to live.  Why?  That is un-answerable.  But some of the possibilities are that God wanted creatures to worship him.  Or that God wanted creatures to love him.  Or God wanted creatures to share his existence.  Or that God wanted creatures that he could love.  However, the point is that God created this existence and the way that it is.  So he created hell and creatures to go to hell.  He also created heaven and creatures to go to heaven, but again the question is why, but as John Stuart Mill points out the fact that Being that will create creatures to suffer means that he cannot be called good no matter what extenuating circumstances there are.

The LDS view is not perfect but at least it avoids a Being who creates creatures who's sole purpose is to suffer.  As I understand LDS doctrine there are eternal intelligence's and matter.  These two things are joined and can progress.  God is the greatest of these beings and he makes it possible for others to follow him if they choose too.  That's the difference in LDS doctrine and other Christian theologies.  We believe that for some reason Christ had to offer himself as a sacrifice and He willingly did so because all beings have the ability to make choices.  Those beings who choose not to follow God go somewhere where God is not and since God is light and love, if you go where God is not you go to a place where there is no light or love, a place of darkness.

Classic Christianity says that God the Father came up with a plan that required his son to suffer infinite punishment for the beings he made.  However the LDS and Christians agree that it is only because of Grace of Christ that we are able to enjoy the blessings of God and not anything we do ourselves.

BYU Studies 5

I read the fifth volume of BYU Studies, but I don't remember anthing special about it except that it had articles with long quotes in German and French.  I skipped those.

BYU Studies Vol 4

I'm slowly reading through the BYU Studies Journals.  They're included in the LDS Library 2009 CD which is an awesome deal.  It's so awesome that you can't get it anymore.  On this blog I'm going to start with Vol 4 because I've read the others already and I'm not going to go back to them.

Vol 4 was for the year 1961-62 and I really enjoyed BYU Studies.  It was written in 1961 the year I was born so that's very cool.

It's cool seeing how different the Journal used to be when it was starting out.  It seemed to be more oriented to literature and didn't have as many gospel oriented articles as it does now.  That's just my impression.  Some of the articles I just set aside because I wasn't interested in them, or didn't have any idea what they were talking about.  When I read the current Journals I almost always read them all the way through, unless it's really boring or I just can't get interested in what the article is about.  I'm not sure what my criteria is for reading or not reading an article is.  I guess it just depends on if I like it or not.  Some of the articles in the volume were fascinating.

The first two articles "Poetry in the Free World" by Carlton Culmsee and "Response" by Veneta Nielsen were talks that were given to some type of gathering of poets and were talking about the calling of poets and how they are to touch and change the world.  They had some pretty good ideas.

"Plato's Trinity And Problem and Promise in University Life" didn't finish reading.

"The War-Making Power: Congress Vs. the President" by Van L. Perkins.  This was a fascinating article.  It was talking about the Korean War, and the "Formosa" and some islands incident.  I was reading this and wondering just where is Formosa, and wondered if it's Thailand and that was correct, Thailand used to be called Formosa which means "Beautiful Island" in Dutch or Portuguese I think.

The fascinating thing about this is that the Vietnam War, or involvement with Vietnam or whatever you want to call it was just getting started when this article was being written.  I guess that the author probably knew about Vietnam but I wonder if he knew just how much the article's title was.

The author seems to think that Truman and Eisenhower took to much power unto themselves by their actions in Korea and Formosa.  Truman committed American forces before getting the UN OK for it, but doing it seems to have been a good thing.  I don't know exactly what was happening with Eisenhower but there was some problem over Formosa, and Eisenhower took a third, and new way than other presidents have done.  The article makes clear that the president as commander in chief can use the armed forces in ways that will get the USA into a "de facto" war.  I think the author says that this is what Truman did in Korea.  Eisenhower however saw that a situation in Formosa was arising that could very well lead to conflict.  He did something that no other president has ever done and got a pre-war declaration.  In other words he got Congress to pass a bill basically giving the president the OK to go to was with the Chinese over Formosa.  Some Senator's said when they voted for this that they weren't really doing anything that the president couldn't already do.  In my opinion, and the author says this as well, this would have been a very powerful political statement to the Chinese.

I'd never known this had happened and it really adds new understanding to what happened in Vietnam, and what is happening now, that our Nobel Peace Prize Winning President has used the presidential powers to get the USA into another war.

"Ibsen on Art"  This is a translation of a letter and an article by Henrik Ibsen.  The person who included it said that the things that Henrik said were meaningful to LDS artists of the time.  I didn't know who Ibsen was very well except that I'd recently heard a lecture about him from one of the Teaching Company Sets about Great Authors of the Western Tradition.  I also looked him up on Wikipedia.

At the time that he wrote this letter he was the director of the national theater of Norway and he was trying to get more money for the theater.  Of course this is always something that a director wants.  But the points that he makes are very interesting and applicable.  He says that the theater is the combination of all arts.  Painting, sculpture or the plastic arts as Henrik says, and literature.  OK I can see that this could be true, and I wonder just how much more it applies to movies which is an even tighter combination of all the arts.  Although I think the written word gets the short shrift in movies.

Which brings me to the second article "The Theater".  This was an article that was written by Henrik early in his career.  It talks about the fact that people go to the Opera to listen to the music but not to pay attention to the libretto.  The amazing thing is that I know what the libretto is.  Henrik says the opera is only great when t

"William James: Philosopher-Educator" by Truman G. Madsen.  Ok I like William James and Truman Madsen so I read this article and it was interesting.  William James sounds like he was a great teacher and influential man.

"Leonardo Da Vinci–Pioneer Geologist" by Daniel J. Jones  This was an interesting article and it sounds like Leo was very interested in geology and made some perceptive observations.  However, is he a pioneer if no one builds on his discoveries?  We already know he was a great man, now we know he was even greater.

"What is the Proper Role of the Latter-Day Saint With Respect to the Constitution?"  This was a series of articles that talked about the constitution that seriously got me to think about what the constitution is and what my relationship to it is.  I was seriously startled when I actually considered that the government might have responsibility to take care of people with social services, but it did.

Great series of articles I thought.

"A New Emphasis for the American Dream" by Weldon J. Taylor.  This article was very interesting.  It was written in the midst of the Cold War and basically it says that America has reached the point where they're able to fulfill the physical needs of most Americans, and in order to keep developing we're going to have to change the work environment of most Americans so that they can keep achieving higher levels of production.  The interesting about this article is it is saying things that the article presents as new ideas that might be controversial, but today are pretty much standard.  Basically it says that management is going to have to find ways so that workers fill more fulfilled at their jobs.

Reading Update

It's been a while since I've done some reading updates.  I've just been busy it's not that I haven't been reading.

The BKC, I've been reading it still.  Right now I read what it says about a chapter in the OT about every other day, the days that I ride my exercise cycle.  The problem is that it's not really saying anything that's caught my interest except recently.  I did discover that it looks like the authors is changed on every chapter.  The chapter on Exodus is written by John D. Hannah, and I seem to like the author of the first chapter on Genesis.  Allen P. Ross wrote the first chapter.  I guess if I'm really interested I could look up the authors information at the beginning of the book.

I guess that the reason that I haven't really noticed anything of interest is because of the truly story nature of the last couple of chapters.  But it may just be that I haven't been that impressed with the writer.  For example, when he was talking about the plague of the frogs he says that perhaps the frogs came out of the river because of the fact that all the fish were dead from the blood of the first plague.  That my be true, but it doesn't make much sense.  1.  If the frogs came out because of all the dead fish why did they wait until Aaron used his staff?  Why didn't the frogs come out of the bloody nile?  Do frogs like to swim in blood?  If the writer is going to use reason to explain the plagues he should at least make it reasonable.

Also, in the introduction he goes into a lot of the different ideas about dating the Exodus and problems with the different times.  That was very interesting, but not new, then he just picks the date that he wants to use and starts using that date.  This means that the writer says things like this would have been the Pharaoh at this time.  Then he says that one problem we have with the dating is that there is a mistake in the translation of Reed Sea, as Red Sea.  He does say that the Hebrews were miraculously delivered, my question is how?  If the Hebrews came to the Reed Sea, why were they worried about getting across a swamp?  I mean it might be hard to do, but it's not like going across the Red Sea is it.  Then what happened to the Egyptians, they all rode into the swamp until they were dead?  I guess I'll have to wait till I get to that part to find out what happens.  I guess I don't like the mixing of reality based with faith based writing.

However, now to the interesting part.  When Moses tells the Pharaoh that he will lift the plague of frogs that the Pharaoh should pick the time so that the Pharaoh would know that it was the Lord that stopped the plague.  Another thing that I'd never noticed was that the Lord says that he will treat the Land of Goshen differently than the rest of Egypt.  Never noticed that before, but it makes a lot of sense.

I've caught up on reading the Ensign and New Eras.  I'd gotten behind this year for some reason and made a point of catching up on all the back issues for this year.  I'd thought that I'd caught up with July when on the day I finished with July the August Ensign and New Era showed up so I started reading them again and now I'm done with them.  Yeah.

Here's my current reading schedule.  On days that I do t turbulence training I listen to the scriptures, one chapter in the Book of Mormon, and the New Testament for the rest of the time (currently).  Then when I do the interval training I read a thought from "Come Listen to a Prophets Voice", which is a book by Lloyd D. Newell of "daily counsel and inspiration."  Then I either read the Ensign or New Era or the Church book that I'm reading currently.  Right now for my morning reading I'm reading "Making Sense of the Doctrine and Covenants: A Guided Tour through Modern Revelations" by Steven C. Harper.  Provides background information of each section of the D&C.

On days that I do the exercise cycle in the AM I read a chapter of the Book of Mormon.  Right now I'm reading "The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text" that was edited by Royal Skousen.  It's cool, it's his attempt to recreate the Book of Mormon as Joseph Smith dictated it.  It has all the grammar mistakes that Joseph Smith made.  Dr. Skousen used the original manuscript where it exists, and the printer manuscript to recreate original text.  He also uses what he calls "Sense-lines."  There is evidence that Joseph Smith would read out a line of text and then make sure that the scribe had the line right before he moved on.  In the original manuscript there is no punctuation of any kind.  In the first printing of the Book of Mormon the printer edited the manuscript because he couldn't print a book sized paragraph.  So Dr. Skousen has re-punctuated the text and gives what he calls sense-lines which is what he things are the sections that Joseph read out to the scribe.  There is a fairly large introduction where Dr. Skousen give examples of things that are clearer in the original text.  For example there are a lot more "hebraisms" in the original text.  Also, Joseph's use of grammar was less than stellar which is what is expected from someone who was probably functionally illiterate.  Emma Smith in a quote later in life says that the production of the Book of Mormon was beyond Joseph Smith, and all you have to do is read some of his letters that he wrote himself from this time period, and this original text, and you begin to realize that Joseph had problems with the English language.  His writing got better as he worked on educating himself throughout his life.  Anyway, I really like reading this version of the Book of Mormon on my cycle riding days.

After I read a chapter from the Book of Mormon I then read the uplifting thought from "Come Listen to a Prophets Voice" then I read a chapter form the BKC and the corresponding chapter from the OT.  Then I read from the Ensign, New Era or the Church book that I'm reading in the morning as described above.

Besides all those books I'm also currently reading "Hearken, O Ye People: The Historical Setting of Joseph Smith's Ohio Revelations" by Mark Lyman Staker.  The title is pretty self explanatory, are when I'm not reading that I'm reading Vol 4 of BYU Studies on my iPhone.

So that's what I'm reading right now.  I just love reading.  I also just finished BYU Studies, Vol 50, Number 2 2011.  However, it was not very good.  Sometimes I love that journal and sometimes it just falls flat.  The only really interesting article in the edition was called "Last Rites and Dynamics of Mormon Liturgy" by Jonathon A. Stapely.  One of the books that was reviewed was the "Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text."  They reviewer seemed to like it as well.  Apparently there are some sections at the end of the book as well that sound as interesting as the introductory sections at the beginning were.  I'm looking froward to reading them.

So that's the round up on what's been happening in my reading life.