Book Review, Apocalypse: Reading Revelation 21-22. Julie M. Smith, editor.

Posted on September 22, 2016 by guest

Review, Apocalypse: Reading Revelation 21-22. Julie M. Smith, editor.

From the Proceedings of the Mormon Theology Seminar.

Published by The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

Full disclosure up front: generally, I don’t consider myself a fan of doing “Mormon theology.” Not that I find the concept inherently incorrect, but that the results (usually) disappoint me. However, this slim volume, from “The Proceeding of the Mormon Theology Seminar” is a happy exception; even if I didn’t find value in all the essays, I found the collection, overall, quite valuable. Continue reading →

WWJSHDHHL (What would Joseph Smith have done had he lived?)

Posted on February 4, 2016 by guest

Really, it doesn’t matter.

I see too many, usually of the progressive stripe, constantly trying to determine what Joseph Smith intended to do, where he would have gone – ordain women, have a different church structure, whatever.

This is pointless, really (and I’ll use C.S. Lewis to show how). Continue reading →

Book Review: “How Do I Know If I Know?” by John Byetheway.

Posted on October 17, 2014 by guest

Title: How Do I Know If I Know?
Author: John Bytheway
Publisher: Deseret Book
Genre: Devotional
Year: 2014
Binding: Softcover
Number of pages: 138
ISBN: 9781609079215
Cost: $9.99

Reviewed by Ivan Wolfe for the Association for Mormon Letters

John Bytheway has made a fairly nice niche for himself writing books aimed at Mormon youth that do quite a few things well: He doesn’t talk down to them, he avoids overly complicated language, and he presents the ideas straightforwardly.

I could see a complaint that his writing is too simplistic in handling controversial aspects of the gospel (his work is not at all like Adam Miller’s recent “Letters to a Young Mormon” which does tackle hard issues). However, such a criticism would be missing the point. Continue reading →

Equal and Opposite Sins?

Posted on September 11, 2014 by guest

At college (Ricks College, which really dates me!), one of the oddest controversies I encountered dealt with students complaining that the DJs were playing a filthy, dirty song about sex at every dance. Now, I have no complaints about people actually complaining about songs that are actually and explicitly about sex, but this one was a bizarre one: “Life is a Highway” by Tom Cochrane (this also dates me, since most people are more familiar with the recent Rascal Flatts in the Pixar Cars movie).

Continue reading →