The fifth act of the play and the crucial role of the modern-day restored Church

This is a guest post by Ryan Hermansen, a BYU graduate who lives in Southern California with his wife and three kids. He enjoys writing about religion, philosophy, science, and ethics. Ryan blogs at www.fromwhenceitmay.com.

By Ryan Hermansen

N.T. Wright was the Bishop of Durham in the Anglican Church, and has written extensively as a New Testament scholar for many years. In a speech he gave entitled ‘How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?’ he made a remark that, to Latter-day Saints, rings with interest – though to many others it probably passes unnoticed.

This excellent speech deserves to be read in its entirety; for the moment, however, I want to focus in on one particular section that is of special interest to Latter-day Saints. Wright begins by asserting that the Bible needs to be viewed not as a rulebook, nor as a lexicon of ready-made answers to Gospel questions, but instead simply viewed for what it is: “an ancient narrative book.” Growing from this straightforward observation is the question, how can a narrative book such as this – predominantly a book of stories – be considered authoritative?
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Guest Post: The Strange Man’s Libertarianism

(The essay below was written for, but cut from the book “Rudderless Mariners: Libertarian Philosophy Vs. Inspired Leadership” by James B. Smith available now from Digital Legend Press.)

Cross-Posted at LibertyPerverted.com

It is important to examine at the libertarian idea proposed to me by Connor Boyack that only the individual has rights, communities do not. It will be argued here that just as the individual has the right to defend himself;  a group of individuals has the right to band together in self-defense by means of community standards and that this is attested to in Alma Chapter 30.

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M* Welcomes Michael D. Jensen

M* is pleased to welcome Michael D. Jensen as the newest member of our blogging team.

Michael D. Jensen lives in Vancouver, Washington with his wife and 4 kids. He loves running, reading, cooking, technology, and is a huge BYU fan. He currently serves in Church as an early morning Seminary teacher. He has a BS in Nutritional Science from BYU and a PhD in Biochemistry. Michael is an entrepreneur and is founder of several companies including EdgeAbove.comSyncBox.comTweetBeep.comSoloSEO.com, and LDS Scriptures (LDSScriptures.com). He developed the widely used app “LDS Scriptures App” as well as several other business apps and games. He blogs on his personal blog at mdjensen.com and can be found on TwitterFacebook, and Google+.

We look forward to reading Michael’s contributions to M*! Welcome, Michael!

M* Site Issues

M* recently experienced some issues that affected our sql database. The database is now restored, but some comments may have inadvertently been deleted. We apologize for this and appreciate your understanding.

Coincidentally, we have an opening for a new site administrator… 😉