Mormon Studies Collection (45 vols.)

Ben said:

I don't think either JoD or History of the Church has many explicit Bible references to get tagged in Logos. 

If the collection  would link to cited references to and within the BoM/D&C/Pearl (much like FL does with Quran references) that would make research easier. That’s what I hope for. The Kindle version could be hard to use on those grounds.

MJ. Smith said:

Bob said:

it seems you are violating the forum rules now.

Posts removed. What I had intended as strictly informational was not taken as such. I inadvertently crossed the line in attempting to prevent misinformation being taken as fact. My apologies. Yes, I have trouble ignoring false "information" and can easily be drawn into arguments not needed on the forums by it ... I am aware of this weakness and try to catch it before it catches me.

MJ,

I certainly can do the same thing and have done the same.  And we all can do that, in the moment.

Many thanks for all the tips/suggestions/information/etc. from all your posts!  It's very informative and helpful.

Bob 

A good Mormon Studies Collection should in my opition include source material considered essential to such a collection by Mormon scholars, and additionally source material considered essential by apologists to Mormonism (by that I mean essential for academic research, not for embarrassing Mormons.)

As far as I can tell, this collection includes neither. I'd certainly pay $40 for a solid Mormon Studies Collection, but unfortunately this collection doesn't seem to be put together with much care.

Jeffrey Visser said:

What do you suggest should be added to it to make it more complete?   Maybe James White's Letters to a Mormon Elder? Or Is the Mormon my Brother?  Maybe Forgotten Trinity?

I’d be interested in authoritative but non-dogmatic works that would give me context for claims made in favor or against. Assuming I haven’t misinterpreted Ben, the works other than BoM/D&C/Pearl don’t fit that.

Jan Krohn said:

Copyrighted books can't go into community pricing, so James White's books are not really an option. But I'm quite sure I've seen him use Logos in his live streams, and as a customer he might be willing to give some input on the contents of such a collection. Ron Rhodes would be another scholar who has done a good amount of research on Mormonism.

I am not sure how many non-copyrighted books have a good understanding of today's Mormonism.  I have noticed that in the last 5 years, they have been using more and more Christianese like "Jesus is the divine" and "only-begotten son of God" that lack the Christian meaning of those terms. A good resource that defines Mormon terms as Christians use them and as Mormons use them to show the difference would be helpful for those investigation Mormonism and those who are defending Christianity against Mormonism.  The resource should also explain how those terms stop short the orthodox Biblical definitions of the eternality of the son (and the Father in Mormon Theology) and the lack of divinity of Christ while he lived on earth.   

You are right, someone like James White may be able to help find resources that fit. 

Jeffrey Visser said:

I am not sure how many non-copyrighted books have a good understanding of today's Mormonism.  I have noticed that in the last 5 years, they have been using more and more Christianese like "Jesus is the divine" and "only-begotten son of God" that lack the Christian meaning of those terms.

Agreed. Mormons are also becoming more active here in Europe. So we do need some good resources.

Copyrighted works carry a fixed license fee though. However, community prices are determined by production cost divided by number of supporters. It really only works for public domain works as well as Faithlife produced resources.

So the most customer friendly solution would be producing the copyrighted works separately from the historic ones.

I have a list of good recent scholarly material here. https://community.logos.com/forums/t/88557.aspx

Evangelical counter-cult materials tend to distort the groups they are looking at. Would James White sell as a "mormon expert" to the average logos user? Almost certainly. Would it be helpful in actually understanding Mormonism? No. 

Also, once again, I dispute the casual theological assertions being cast on this thread, but won't contest them.

Ben,

I've seen you around on the forums for a while and I appreciate the respect you continually show towards others.

Wow, I’m surprised the subtle theological discussion is still going on 🤔 

Anyway, I’ll up my bid once I see more progress.  I’m confident it’ll make it cheaper than $30

DAL

DAL said:

Wow, I’m surprised the subtle theological discussion is still going on 🤔 

Not surprising ... paper tigers are scary.

But the original (and remaining) point regarding this package, is 'it's old'. It's like attacking a Christian's beliefs from theologian or pastor quotes a century ago. The Christian recipient just stares at you ... huh?? 

Now, true, Protestants have a theologiy that locks on to original documents. But progressive revelation traditions move along ... something being changed means nothing ... that's what a Diety does (and indeed ... in 2nd Peter, the Diety changed).

If indeed, you get this package, it'll make good hee-hah discussions for the choir, but do little for your apologetics. And Logos won't be giving you another more recent package. Which LDS happily sells. 

Ben said:

"Ben - Would you consider yourself a Mormon?"

Yes, and have been for all 20 years I've been using Logos and on the forums. And I'll prove it by saying, since calling it "the Mormon Church" can be misleading, we'd really prefer to use the full name, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I'm a Latter-day Saint, a follower of (fully divine son of God savior) Jesus, a student of Biblical languages (MA), and a historian. Those who think Latter-day Saints only remain so through ignorance are engaging in naive and somewhat condescending thinking, and probably steeped in anti-cult material.   

Thank you for your reply.  It explains why you favor certain resources and authors.  I appreciate your candor. 

DMB said:

But the original (and remaining) point regarding this package, is 'it's old'. It's like attacking a Christian's beliefs from theologian or pastor quotes a century ago. The Christian recipient just stares at you ... huh?? 

Now, true, Protestants have a theologiy that locks on to original documents. But progressive revelation traditions move along ... something being changed means nothing ... that's what a Diety does (and indeed ... in 2nd Peter, the Diety changed).

If indeed, you get this package, it'll make good hee-hah discussions for the choir, but do little for your apologetics. And Logos won't be giving you another more recent package. Which LDS happily sells. 

So, if I understand you correctly, Mormons today would probably not see the works in this set as authoritative? Setting aside theological debate about the concept of changing revelation, that does seem to reduce  the value of the collection.

if I have misunderstood you, could you please expand on this?

Ben said:

There are nuances about what authoritative means of course. But none of these things were ever authoritative in the first place, except for the book of Mormon, pearl of great price, and doctrine and covenants, which are canonized.

Thanks for that insight. My interest in dealing with denominations outside my own Church is learning what they do believe in context and avoid misrepresenting them. It’s beginning to sound like this collection might not meet my need.

David Wanat said:

if I have misunderstood you, could you please expand on this?

Well, in the first place, Ben is the better source. But regarding the books that Ben lists above ... if you 'argue' from them (as evangels argue from Biblical text), will that get you very far? The answer is probably not ... there's more that follows. And like in 2nd Peter, there's no inherant demand for some sort of required logic ... revelation is revelation. A Diety reveals as necessary.

Solely my own opinion (but directed at Logos), and that is, that evangels/Logos don't really highlight what underpins their theology. One of the ironies of the late 1800s (before the evangels switched inspired texts ... Westcott), the best debates were between restorationist preachers, and LDS.

Adam Borries (Faithlife) said:

DAL said:

Maybe they were just interested in the private parties for them only?

That's enough of that, DAL. 

Alright, every one seemed to carry on why are you getting on to me? You need to chill buddy you seem to be reading too much into my posts!

DAL

Please delete this entire thread and focus on the new one promoting the bid only! Everyone has violated the forum rules, so no need for this thread to exist! My apologies if someone got offended!

DAL

“Just one question Ben.  You stated you are a “Latter day saint.” So if I called you a Christian, would you correct me and say, “No, I’m a latter day saint”?”

I wouldn’t correct, but I would specify, something like “I’m a Christian of the Latter-day Saint variety.” 

Jeffrey Visser said:

What do you suggest should be added to it to make it more complete?

Fawn Brodie’s “No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith” would be a good addition.

Gerald and Sandra Tanner from the Utah Lighthouse Mission,  spent their lives researching & investigating Mormonism‘s claims. They have a number of resources available that would be helpful, chiefly “The Changing World of Mormonism”. 

I would like to see those resources added to the Mormon collection

Ben said:

I would specify, something like “I’m a Christian of the Latter-day Saint variety.

Ben, I’m curious as one who has some knowledge about Mormonism as I was raised LDS and my Mormon ancestors go back to the earliest days being converted directly by Joseph Smith in Palmyra and others by Orson Pratt in Ontario in 1835.

I was taught that the Mormon church was the only true church and that Smith said that ”all other creeds were wrong and abominations in God’s sight”. Pratt said, “The gates of hell have prevailed and will continue to prevail over the Catholic Mother of Harlots, and over all her Protestant Daughters;...the apostate Catholic church, with all her popes and bishops, together with all her harlot daughters shall be hurled down to hell...”.

It seems that in recent times the church has softened its harsh rhetoric to try and fit in to the greater Christian church community. Seeing as you are one who seems to be very familiar with Mormon resources, is there any documents or literature that point to a softening of LDS opinion regarding non Mormon churches in recent times? 

I think a good resource for this set would be one that compares Orthodox Christianity with LDS theology. 

For example, Looking at the eternality of the Father in Orthodox Christianity and the belief that the Heavenly Father was born and lived as a man on another planet before coming here as god with a body in LDS theology.  Or that Jesus was born spiritually to the heavenly father (like us) as the elder brother of Satan and didn't become a god until after his death as opposed to the orthodox belief that Jesus was not created and always existed as God.

We could go deeper, but this is not a theology discussion.  The type of book that I would like added may be similar to the Kingdom of the Cults by Walter Martin, but would need to be updated to show the latest beliefs of the LDS church because, as has been stated here, the historical LDS church is different than the current LDS church in their beliefs. 

I don't know if these collections ever changed due to comments here, but it might be good for Logos to split this into 2 separate resources - one containing BOM, D&C, and associated LDS scripture and the other containing the historical books.  It might have a better change to be produced then. 

Ben said:

your primary explainer of LDS theology has been Evangelical explainers, you have a highly distorted view. And that’s all I can say

Ben, I'm not sure if this directed at me or not but that is why I ask for Mormon sources that would respond to that question. In 1983 I held a public debate in SLC called "Mormonism vs. the Bible" in which I invited Mormon input and participation as well as the input of a couple of former members of the church. It was a highly enlightening evening, though the evening was somewhat hampered by a blizzard taking place at the time. 

Seems what would be helpful is for the LDS to put out a publicly available systematic theology that is broadly recognized. Then they can say this is what we actually believe and it would help put an end to a lot of these problems and accusations. I think many Logos users would purchase something like this (I would!) that could be viewed as authoritative. Then the debate can at least be held on more solid ground. Instead we get things like these being former primary resources that are so outdated they no longer count. Transparency would go a long way here instead of so much secrecy.