The Mormon Monk

I’ve figured out the job thing, and the book is back in my editor’s hands, so it’s time to resurrect my alter ego, the Mormon Monk. And, in honor of my book, how about a monkish meditation on Eden ? Let’s review: Eden was a place without death or disease, and it was inhabited by a man who knew so much about the natural world (theologians reading Genesis 2:19 have said) that he understood the nature of each animal as he met it and gave each its appropriate name. But transgression of divine law caused God to exile Adam and Eve from this paradisiacal existence; instead of reaping nature’s bounty, Adam would have to till the land and farm. I’ve summarized the Eden story because it bears a striking resemblance to the narrative laid out by Kenneth Kiple in his one-volume comprehensive history of food, A Movable Feast . While most of us think about the “primitive” hunter-gatherer peoples who lived before the invention of agriculture more than thirteen millennia ago with pity, acc...

Beloved Readers, Please forgive me for the extended absence. I've been doing the academic job search thing and revising a book, which has left me with little discretionary time. But, since I should hear back about jobs today and my book is due to the editor on Friday, I promise a return in March. Thanks for your patience ! The Mormon Monk

A few weeks ago I received an email from someone I love who has been troubled by a doctrine central to the restored gospel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When Joseph Smith received the first vision that called him as a prophet, he saw "two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other-- This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him! " (Joseph Smith History 1:17). Through this experience Joseph learned that God the "Father has a body of flesh and bone as tangible as man's; the Son also" (D&C 130:22). While most Christians I know imagine an anthropomorphic God (ie, one that looks like us), the God they imagine is incompatible with the deity described by the  Westminster Confession  and other important Christian creeds, "a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions." By insisting that God possesses a ph...

I'm thinking about Isaiah . Come join me!

Regular readers may know that I'm sympathetic to Hugh Nibley's description of money as "congealed wickedness," so I couldn't help but laugh--and think deeply--when a couple of stories recently caught my attention in which money became an important substitute for something like faith or love. Consider, for example, the recent example of an entire town in Cambodia which converted to Christianity in order to save money :  At upwards of US$500, the cost of slaughtering a buffalo to revive a relative condemned to ill-health by the spirits has pushed the Jarai indigenous minority residents of Somkul village in Ratanakkiri to a more affordable religious option: Christianity. In the village in O’Yadav district’s Som Thom commune, about 80 per cent of the community have given up on spirits and ghosts in favour of Sunday sermons and modern medicine.  Sev Chel , 38, said she made the switch because when she used to get sick, it could cost her hundreds of dollars to ap...

All entries in my recurring series, "Great Are the Words of Isaiah" will now be hosted at a content-specific site: greatarethewordsofisaiah.blogspot.com . Check out the inaugural post now--and I'll be migrating previous Isaiah essays from this blog soon.

When I served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I frequently distributed copies of the Book of Mormon to individuals who wanted to learn more about the Church. Many of those individuals eventually began to read the book from cover-to-cover, and when they did, they invariably had questions about the exact same passage in 1 Nephi 4:9-18. This is the point at which Nephi--seeking to recover the brass plates (which contain much of the Old Testament and his family's genealogy)--is confronted with the opportunity to kill Laban and take the plates by force. In a development that surprises almost every modern reader who is familiar with the Old Testament command "Thou shalt not kill," Nephi is "constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him" (1 Nephi 4:10). Nephi's dilemma--whether to obey the Decalogue ...