3 Nephi 15:8 [Book of Mormon]
“For behold, the covenant which I have made with my people is not all fulfilled; but the law which was given unto Moses hath an end in me. “
As many times as I read this sentence it does not make sense, especially from a Christian perspective. For Christ instituted a New Testament (that is another story here, why the English/reformed keep using this term covenant rather than testament, but a testament is a type of covenant so I'll get off of that one for a bit.) and therefore the old covenant is necessarily done away with, if the new is to come into being. As for the law, Jesus says not one jot or tittle of it will pass away. So it seems this is backwards.
21 comments:
"Hath an end" doesn't here mean "has a finish." This is the Old English "end" as in "purpose." As in:
Q: To what end did the law of Moses exist?
A: To point to the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ.
That is the sense in which I think 3 Nephi is here using the word "end."
Who made the covenant? I think Mormons consider the covenant a Jehovah thing from the Old Testament, not made with Jesus. Isn't this Jesus talking in the BoM?
It means that Jesus is at the finish line of running the law race. So if you want to get to Jesus, you have to run the law race. That's the way you fulfill the covenant.
That is a race no human can complete, not even the best ultra-marathoner or iron man.
By that standard, we are all screwed out of the big prize, because no one keeps the law. The best that anyone can hope for is the lowest level of heaven that we all obtain by default. Jesus might as well be calling us all a bunch of losers. He is rubbing it in our our face in this passage.
In other words, covenant fulfillment = the means to the end, where the law is the means.
Law, law, law. Jesus is the new Moses.
Benjamin,
Thank you for that explanation. I do appreciate you being willing to give those, and I do find them to be a bit more helpful than those that have come before, especially as others had a tendency to hit and run so to speak.
However, I am aware of the different ways that the word "law" and "end" can be interpreted. The problem is I do not see this sentence, especially in the over all context from which I grabbed it meaning what you say it means.
The sentence invites one to distinguish between law and covenant. If the "law" take on the interpretation you here give it, and it is not the law from which not one jot or tittle will pass away, then this law necessarily is that which contains the covenant or is the same as the covenant, which Jesus just prior says has not been fulfilled.
But that is where the real problem is, because it was this "covenant" that Jesus fulfilled, this is why there is now a New Covenant, or a New Testament as it is better translated, because the Old was fulfilled.
So one is left asking why Jesus speaks one way to his disciples in Jerusalem, and another way to his disciples in N. America or wherever this book supposedly took place.
One is also left wondering what covenant, because the devout Jews that fled Jerusalem in the 6-5th century B.C. to come to the new world, populated with old world animals, seem to have forgotten to bring the Torah, which contained the covenant, with them. And in any case, decided early on it did not apply to them any way, as they began to build new Temples straight way.
> "Who made the covenant? I think Mormons consider the covenant a Jehovah thing from the Old Testament, not made with Jesus. Isn't this Jesus talking in the BoM?"
I couldn't say what Mormons think as I'm not a Mormon, I'm RLDS. But I can tell you what the Book of Mormon says and what I think it means.
Who made the covenant? It is made between men and God. God set the conditions of it but, in the Book of Mormon's view, men have the free agency to accept or reject it and subsequently be accepted or rejected (respectively) by God. Covenants are by definition require the free agreement of at least two parties. Since the Book of Mormon affirms the divinity of Jesus in no uncertain terms, when I use the term, "God" I here mean it in the orthodox Trinitarian sense. When Abraham made covenant with God, he made covenant with the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Bible tells us Christ existed "from the foundation of the world." http://bible.cc/ephesians/1-4.htm
Now, part of the fundamental point to the whole narrative of the Book of Mormon, repeated over and over running all the way through the book; one might say even it's main theme is that the atonement of Christ is effectual for salvation throughout ALL TIME; that it works without regard to any consideration of time or space. That it was effectual for persons who believed in Jesus BY NAME even up to six hundred years before Jesus was born. The Book of Mormon would view Old Testament covenants as covenants with Jesus just as much as New Testament covenants.
> "One is also left wondering what covenant, because the devout Jews that fled Jerusalem in the 6-5th century B.C. to come to the new world, populated with old world animals, seem to have forgotten to bring the Torah, which contained the covenant, with them."
Have you read 1 Nephi or did you just skip all the way to 3 Nephi? They DID bring the Torah with them!
Though I do believe that Christ was the point of the law, my previous interpretation of the passage in question may be completely erroneous. This passage reads differently in my 1908 RLDS Authorized Edition of the Book of Mormon, in which the passage is found in 3 Nephi 7:9. http://www.centerplace.org/hs/bofm/3nephi.htm
It may even be that both my interpretation AND the passage itself may be in error. As a Latter Day Saint, I am not committed to the traditional view that written scripture is absolutely without error. On the Title Page of the Book of Mormon, which is not a printer's addition but according to Smith's claim was translated from the gold plates and is part of the text itself, it says, "And now if there are faults, they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment seat of Christ."
Benjamin,
God bless your soul. You write:"It may even be that both my interpretation AND the passage itself may be in error. As a Latter Day Saint, I am not committed to the traditional view that written scripture is absolutely without error. On the Title Page of the Book of Mormon, which is not a printer's addition but according to Smith's claim was translated from the gold plates and is part of the text itself, it says, "And now if there are faults, they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment seat of Christ."
You make my case for me. You don't believe at all then that the Book of Mormon is accurate or true. And neither do the mormons. So why do you keep it around? Why even bother with it as a religious text at all?
See, Scripture is either true, or it isn't scripture. It is either God's word or it is not. Gods word is true. John 17:17 (ESV)
"Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth."
But you would have me and others abandon the sanctifying truth of apostolic scripture, and join you in hypothesizing over a book of suspicious origin, written by a charlatan, with numerous anomalies, historical inaccuracies, internal contradictions, of which it says of itself that it is inaccurate and maybe not true.
Yes, because God is a God of uncertainty? I think not.
Yet I can say of utmost confidence that what we have in the canonical scriptures is absolutely true and accurate. And what it says flatly contradicts what the Book of Mormon says.
If you would like to investigate these claims I would do so with you. I could recommend to you off the top of my head, "religion on Trial" by Craig Parton which is sort of like the cliff notes to John Warwick Montgomery's "Tractatus Logico-Theologicus".
There are other books also.
But if you are not sure that it is true, and think it may be erroneous, even to the point of the doctrine it espouses, than it is quite a vile thing to go around preaching it as truth. And a pointless thing to argue with me about what it means.
> "You make my case for me. You don't believe at all then that the Book of Mormon is accurate or true. And neither do the mormons. So why do you keep it around? Why even bother with it as a religious text at all?"
No, there is a difference between admitting that there may be a few isolated passages that may contain some small degree of error and admitting that this may be the case with any large portion of the book.
Benjamin,
Your position is untenable. If it is the word of God than it has to be true. One cannot take a book like the book of Mormon and say, a couple sentences in there may be wrong, but over all it is true. Why? Because then one never knows if the sentence he is looking at is true or not, and this skepticism necessarily bleeds over the whole book to every sentence they are looking at. I mean this is worse than contesting the longer ending of Mark, or whether James should be in the canon!
With those, at least, you have a specific section with which you can operate with your skepticism, and weigh the available evidence for or against, and you can anticipate how it might change the meaning of the rest of scripture or not, and the doctrine that follows from it.
But with a vague supposedly divinely inspired statement translated from the golden plates, that says, there are possibly errors in there somewhere, the whole book is now in question.
And one word can change the meaning of a sentence. One sentence can change the meaning of a paragraph. One paragraph can change the meaning of the whole chapter, indeed the whole book. Ask any author. Why do you think guys like Hemingway wrote and rewrote the ending to "For Whom the Bell Tolls" multiple times, and literary critics love pouring over the discarded manuscripts? Because it is intriguing to see how it changes the whole story.
So what we now have, with the Book of Mormon is gibberish, complete and utter gibberish. But the rest of the world knew that.
> "One cannot take a book like the book of Mormon and say, a couple sentences in there may be wrong,"
Yes one can, and in fact this is the only sensible way to interpret the Book of Mormon based on it's claims about itself, for it says this about itself on it's title page.
> "Why? Because then one never knows if the sentence he is looking at is true or not, and this skepticism necessarily bleeds over the whole book to every sentence they are looking at"
I believe scripture is useless without the confirmation and enlightenment of the holy spirit, not only in the author but in the reader. And according to the Book of Mormon's claim, it is by the holy spirit that the reader is to know whether what they read in scripture is true or not. Along with the Catholics, we reject the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Trying to interpret the Book of Mormon from an assumption of Sola Scriptura is to become like the king of Siam who believed Abraham Lincoln was destined to lose the Civil War because his army didn't have any elephants.
"I believe scripture is useless without the confirmation and enlightenment of the holy spirit, not only in the author but in the reader. And according to the Book of Mormon's claim, it is by the holy spirit that the reader is to know whether what they read in scripture is true or not. Along with the Catholics, we reject the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Trying to interpret the Book of Mormon from an assumption of Sola Scriptura is to become like the king of Siam who believed Abraham Lincoln was destined to lose the Civil War because his army didn't have any elephants."
Benjamin,
Do you know what the doctrine of Sola Scriptura is? i suppose you can reject it if you like, but then you are rejecting scripture.
You yourself, are the one who is doubting, what does the Holy Spirit tell you? How do you know it is the Holy Spirit? This is why it is untenable, by what would you test this spirit if not by scripture?
But when it comes to the canonical writings of the New Testament, one knows the Holy Spirit is there, because it was he who guided the pen of the apostles, It was Christ himself who promised to them the Holy Spirit. To deny that he is then operating through their words is to deny the Holy Spirit, is to deny that the books are scripture, it is to deny that Christ is Lord.
Now many people do in fact do that. But there are very logical reasons to believe these writings. And there is at least a good amount of evidence attesting to their veracity.
There is none of this for the Book of Mormon. You say that the reader must also have the Holy Spirit, in what way? Are you maintaining that I do not have the Holy Spirit? by what direction. How do you know it is not you who does not have the Holy Spirit, by what have you tested the spirit that guides you here.
And why can you not then tell me if this verse is erroneous or not. Does it not give you a warm fuzzie?
Do you see where that goes? No where. It is an untenable position. It calls into question the entirety of the book.
There is not this uncertainty concerning the New Testament.
> "Do you know what the doctrine of Sola Scriptura is? i suppose you can reject it if you like, but then you are rejecting scripture."
Obviously you don't know what the doctrine of Sola Scriptura is. Certainly though this may not be the whole meaning, one of the things it means is, "Scripture alone."
Now, if I said, "People should never eating waffles without maple syrup" would I be rejecting waffles? No, but I would be rejecting "Waffles alone."
> "You say that the reader must also have the Holy Spirit, in what way? Are you maintaining that I do not have the Holy Spirit?"
This I cannot say. But if I am correct that the Book of Mormon is true and if you do have the Holy Spirit then it would follow that you are not listening to it.
Benjamine,
Sola scriptura from my lutheran tradition, that scripture is the sole source and norm for doctrine. And therefore No doctrine can be admitted that does not have scriptural support, and any doctrine that is in contradiction to scripture must be rejected, as it says in Gal. 1. So to believe that you can hold doctrine in contradiction to the clear word of god is to reject scripture, because scripture itself does not allow for your position!
Now, perhaps I do have the spirit, and am listening to it. In fact I know I am because I listen to the new testament which promises the spirit in baptism. And the holy spirit tells me the same as my reason does that the BOM is a lie.
> "Sola scriptura from my lutheran tradition, that scripture is the sole source and norm for doctrine. And therefore No doctrine can be admitted that does not have scriptural support, and any doctrine that is in contradiction to scripture must be rejected"
The problem is that this doctrine destroys itself, for it does not itself have scriptural support.
Certainly anything that is in directly contradiction to the scripture cannot be true if the scripture is true. That is just the law of non-contradiction and you're right that Paul warns against accepting another contradictory gospel in Galatians 1.
But as to only doctrines contained in the scriptures being admissible, you Lutherans love to say that but you don't keep to it! And Galations 1 does not say this!
Benjamin,
Good, now we have agreement at least on the law of Non contradiction and Galatians 1. So if you are going to introduce another doctrine you have to show me that the holy canonical scripture we have in the New Testament is wrong. Good luck with that.
Also I would like to know which doctrines of ours you think are extra Biblical, or contradictory to scripture.
No sir there is a difference between a doctrine being "additional" and/or "extra-Biblical" and being contradictory. Nothing contradictory is admissible. That doesn't mean nothing is admissible.
Benjamin,
Did I say there wasn't a difference between additional and contradictory? No, but that which you would have me believe is not only additional, but also contradictory.
Second you would have to prove the need for anything additional in the first place, and that it actually does come from god, and not the deranged mind of a sex addict or other sinner.
Third, go ahead and answer my other question. Concerning which docrtines or doctrine are Lutherans out of line with scripture? Ask your local LCMS pastor for a catechism, tell him I'll pick up the tab, even for a Book of Concord, which spells out what and why we believe what we do, appealing to scripture through out.
> "No, but that which you would have me believe is not only additional, but also contradictory."
I think the burden of proof there is on you.
> "Second you would have to prove the need for anything additional in the first place,"
I think it's fairly obvious that appealing the Bible alone isn't settling the differences between the many churches which all claim to be following it.
> "and that it actually does come from god,"
That continuing revelation is necessary can be argued for fairly well but just as no one can prove the miracles of the Bible to anyone determined not to believe in miracles, neither can anyone prove the Book of Mormon, which if true is completely a miracle, to anyone determined not to believe in it.
Benjamin,
I'm Just going to answer your questions on my post "Mormons don't believe the Book of Mormon" because you raise it there also.
Post a Comment