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An Exhortation To Study God’S Two “Books”, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

From the birth of modern science at the end of the sixteenth century, Galileo famously believed that God had written two books — the scriptures and the Book of Nature. The scriptures, he contended, should be interpreted by scholars and theologians, whereas the Book of Nature was the province of scientists:

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Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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Questioning: The Divine Plan, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Some critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, chiefly of the secular variety, claim that Latter-day Saints are mind-controlled robots who are forbidden to think for themselves. I collected an example of this claim nearly twenty years ago that will serve to represent many other such expressions before and since.

Seeing Ourselves Through The Eyes Of A Friendly And Thoughtful Evangelical, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Some Latter-day Saints will recall Richard Mouw from the introductory remarks that he offered in November 2004 when the Evangelical Protestant apologist Ravi Zacharias was the featured speaker at a special interfaith meeting in the Tabernacle on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah. In the course of his remarks, Professor Mouw apologized to Latter-day Saints for the way in which Evangelicals have often treated the Mormon faith. Carrie Moore, of the Deseret News, reported about Zacharias’s speech on 15 November 2004:

Toward Ever More Intelligent Discipleship, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

The temporarily rather comfortable “fit” between the Restored Gospel and American civic religion is a thing of the past, and we contemporary Latter-day Saints seem to find ourselves in a more and more marginalized position, theologically and socially. This was where our predecessors, both earlier in this dispensation and among the first Christians, were located, and it may not be an altogether bad thing. It will, for instance, force us to take our beliefs more seriously, less casually. And it may well drive us back to the unique resources provided by the Restoration, which have much to offer.

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Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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Some Notes On Faith And Reason, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Philosophers and theologians, believers and unbelievers, friends to faith and enemies, scientists, historians — these and many others have devoted a very great deal of time and attention for centuries to the relationship between faith and reason.

Front Matter

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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The Sibling Scandals Of The Resurrection, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

I’ve recently picked Stephen T. Davis’s Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection up again.1 It’s an impressive book that had a pivotal effect on my thinking when it first appeared. Davis, the Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College in California, argues that “Christians are within their intellectual rights in believing that Jesus was raised from the dead.”2 “The thesis of the book,” he explains, “is that the two central Christian resurrection claims — namely, that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead and that we will all be raised from the dead — are defensible …

Reason, Experience, And The Existence Of God, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Both reason and experience are essential to religious life, which should be neither completely irrational nor entirely cerebral. But surely, of the two, the experience of direct and convincing revelation would and should trump academic debate, and most obviously so for its recipient. The Interpreter Foundation was established in the conviction that reasoned discussion and analysis necessarily have a place in faithful discipleship, but also in the confidence that divine revelation has genuinely occurred. The role of reason, accordingly, is a helpful one. It serves an important ancillary function. However, it does not supplant experience with God and the divine …

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Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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Reflections On The Mission Of The Interpreter Foundation, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Early in the 1980s, my father suffered a serious heart attack. My wife and I were living in Egypt then, and we learned the news via a telegram from my brother.

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Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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Ancient Affinities Within The Lds Book Of Enoch Part One, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, David J. Larsen

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

In this article, we will examine affinities between ancient extracanonical sources and a collection of modern revelations that Joseph Smith termed “extracts from the Prophecy of Enoch.” We build on the work of previous scholars, revisiting their findings with the benefit of subsequent scholarship. Following a perspective on the LDS canon and an introduction to the LDS Enoch revelations, we will focus on relevant passages in pseudepigrapha and LDS scripture within three episodes in the Mormon Enoch narrative: Enoch’s prophetic commission, Enoch’s encounters with the “gibborim,” and the weeping and exaltation of Enoch and his people.

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Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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Reflecting On Gospel Scholarship With Abū Al-Walīd And Abū Ḥāmid, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

The theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (d. AD 1111 in his Persian hometown of Tūs, after spending much of his career in Baghdad) has sometimes been characterized as the single most influential Muslim besides the Prophet Muḥammad himself. The Andalusian philosopher and jurist Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Rushd (d. AD 1198 in Marrakesh, modern-day Morocco, but ultimately buried in his family tomb in Córdoba, Spain) is generally considered to be the greatest medieval commentator—whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim—on the works of Aristotle. Often known as Averroës, a corruption of his Arabic name, …

Introduction, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

In the spring or early summer of 1820, “some few days” after his epochal vision of the Father and the Son, the young Joseph Smith gave an account of the experience to a Methodist minister with whom he “happened to be in company.” The minister had been active in the “excitement” about religion that inspired Joseph’s fateful decision to go alone into the woods near his house to pray. Naïvely, the boy expected his story of a Bible-like divine manifestation to be well received. It was not.

Introduction, Volume 6 The Modest But Important End Of Apologetics, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

I first became involved in apologetics because I wanted to defend the truth of beliefs that are important to me and to defend the character of leaders for whom I have great respect, even veneration, against attack. I’m offended by falsehoods, prejudice, and injustice. I wanted to help faltering members who were sometimes besieged by intellectual challenges for which they had no adequate response. I also desired to assist interested observers to see sufficient plausibility in the Gospel’s claims that they would be able to make its truth a matter of sincere and receptive prayer. My hope was to clear …

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Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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Elder Neal A. Maxwell On Consecration, Scholarship, And The Defense Of The Kingdom, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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Charity In Defending The Kingdom, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

On Maintaining Fairness and Charity

With one striking exception, leaders and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are, and al ways have been, flawed people. (No better quality of human is available.) “We have this treasure in earthen vessels,” the apos tle Paul said, referring to the gospel and its mortal ministers, “that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).

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Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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