Baylor being Baptist affiliated doesn't make McClellan neutral.

McClellan is neutral. And highly respected.

 He works directly for the institution whose claims we're examining.

McClellan has not worked for LDS Christianity in years.

When did he stop working for them?

That's the difference. Baylor doesn't employ Baptist scripture translation supervisors to produce Baptist-approved content. The LDS Church did exactly that with McClellan. Not the same thing.

You are comparing LDS Christianity—that has scripture translators. To a University. Apples to oranges.

 

Restorationist Christianity describes historical origin. Not theological content. Harvard describing where a movement came from is not Harvard endorsing its theology. That's not how citations work. By that logic I can cite Harvard describing Islam as an Abrahamic faith and claim that validates every Islamic theological claim. It doesn't.

You are not having a good faith discussion here. You are trying to evangelize here. I did not claim that Harvard endorsed LDS Christianity.

Harvard –correctly—repeats the standard academic concensus cited by McClellan—LDS Christianity isa restorationist Christianity.

 

"The Bible contradicts the Bible" is your answer to every direct verse comparison. Think about what you just did. You used that single argument to avoid answering John 4:24, Psalm 90:2, Ephesians 2:8-9, and Matthew 22:30 simultaneously.

You are not having a discussion here in good faith. You are evangelizing. The Bible contradicts the Bible. That is just plain truth.

For John 4:24—I provided Biblical examples that contradicted your claim. “God is spirit.” But yet in the Bible—Moses speaks with God “face to face” and in the Bible-- Isiah, Jacob, and Job claimed in the Bible to have seen God.

The Bible contradicts the Bible. That is just simple truth.

For Psalm 90:2— You claiming God is everlasting, I actually quoted the Follett Sermon parts you left out that added key information—and quoted LDS scripture that shows that God is everlasting.

The Bible contradicts the Bible. That is just easy to recognize truth.

For Ephesians 2:8-9 I quoted  that “a reader in the 1800s would have understood, “after all you can do” to mean, “in spite of what you can do.”” Contradicting your claim. And that-- Latter-day Saint Christians accept, “grace for grace.”

 

 

If the Bible contradicts itself that badly it cannot serve as the foundation for your restoration claims either. You just sawed off the branch you're sitting on.*

Anyone who claims that the Bible is perfect or a history book is out of their mind pants on head.

The 2 Nephi 25:23 "in spite of" reinterpretation is FAIR Mormon apologetics invented specifically to answer this criticism. The text says after. Every reader from 1830 forward understood it as after. Joseph Smith's own contemporaries understood it as after. That's not exegesis. That's retrofitting.

No. The data is clear. The research is clear. “after all we can do” in other sources from the time period meant—in spite of what we do.

And there are other verses in the Book of Mormon that teach we are saved through the grace of Christ. The Book of Mormon teaches, “His grace is sufficient.”

The Bible teaches, “faith without works is dead.”

Matthew 22:30 doesn't say families aren't together in heaven. It says there is no marriage in the resurrection. Your coworker's mug doesn't require eternal marriage as a saving ordinance gatekept by a temple recommend interview. That's the distinction you're avoiding.

Its interesting seeing you use the term, “gatekeep.” But don’t think LDS are Christians.

That is interesting.

The Temples are an important part of the Bible. Old and New Testaments. There is no getting around that.

You asked if I think the Bible is perfect — no.

The Bible has hyperbole, stories from other cultures, and pseudepigrapha.

But we have thousands of manuscripts, scrolls, and fragments dating back far enough that we can verify with remarkable consistency what the original texts actually said. The Dead Sea Scrolls alone pushed manuscript evidence back a thousand years and the text held.

The Bible contradicts the Bible. What we have of the Bible.

We don't have that for the Book of Mormon.

We can track every change to every word in every edition of the Book of Mormon through the Critical Text Project.

 

 We don't have that for the Book of Abraham — and we actually do have those papyri. Egyptologists read them. They said something entirely different from what Joseph Smith said they said. That's not a translation discrepancy. That's a documented falsification. The church's own Gospel Topics Essays acknowledge the papyri don't match. Go read them.

 

Is your argument that the Book of Abraham is just like the Bible—pseudepigrapha?

The Bible isn't perfect. But it's the most verified ancient document in human history and it doesn't need a 19th century American prophet to correct it.

The Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants testify of the life, mission, and death and resurrection of Christ more per verse than the Bible.

The Bible contradicts the Bible. There are a lot of problems with the Bible.

 

You asked if I went from believing Latter-day Saint to citing Galatians 1:8 against Latter-day Saints. I didn't go anywhere. I'm still a member. What changed is that I stopped reading the New Testament through the filter of what the church needed it to say and started reading it for what it actually says.

It looks a lot like you are proseletizing.

 

The Jesus I found in those verified pages — eternal, sufficient, finished, present — is bigger than anything thirty-two years of correlated curriculum ever showed me.

I am glad you found Jesus.

I follow and worship Jesus.

Read the New Testament. Not for the church. Not against the church. Just read it. Its amazing how plain and precious and complete Christ's teachings are.

No one followed Jesus around with a camcorder. We have His writings because someone -long after the fact- wrote them down.

Acts 17:11.

Yeah, I don’t know. You criticize Dan McClellan. Open minded? That’s not a thing I see from open minded folks.