What makes scripture....well....Scripture?

[jay santos]

Well, they are always up for interpretation, but for starters the PH ban and Acts 10:34.

See also 1 Corinthians 14:34 and women speaking in church
D&C 132 and polygamy, although its still practiced in an eternal sense today so I guess it kind of works when coupled with OD1.
We also apply a more Peterian (I'm sure that's not a word) gospel than Pauline.

Those are off the top of my head. I'm sure there are plenty others.

Yeah, but I think any of these can be reasonably explained.

[Moliere]

Yeah, but I think any of these can be reasonably explained.

That's fine, but it's not the base of my argument. Would you then agree that the canon is then official scripture even given the way it was written and constructed compared to today's view on scripture? Also, what is your take on GC talks being scripture? Hymns? Books authored by GAs?

[Solon]

While I would suggest that "scripture" in today's LDS church would come from prophetic fiat, it is perhaps more useful to discuss the formation of the New Testament.

Several factors led to the formation of the "canon" of the New Testament sometime in the fourth or fifth centuries (and even then with variations). The earliest recognized compilation of the NT is the Codex Sinaiticus, which included The Shepherd of Hermas and the Gospel of Barnabas.

Irenaeus of Lyons did much to codify the "apostolic" books of the New Testament in the second century, and his ideas were incorporated, expanded, and publicized more broadly by Eusebius of Caesarea in the 3rd-4th centuries. Irenaeus' most famous work Against Heresies is an important source for understanding the competing traditions in early Christianity. Eusebius used Irenaeus' ideas extensively in compiling his Ecclesiastical History.

Both Irenaeus and Eusebius felt a strong need to connect the Christianity of their day with both the Old Testament (Septuagint) and the Christianity of Christ's day. So both worked hard to establish a clear succession of intellectual, scriptural, and administrative authority from the apostles. This, in effect, became a litmus test for assessing a scripture's authenticity and authority: was it written by someone who had known Jesus personally? If not, was it written by someone who had known someone who had known Jesus? And so on. This was a mixed bag for Eusebius. On the one hand, he assigned ultimate authority to those writers and texts from the apostolic tradition: the older the writer, tradition, or text, the more intrinsically reliable it must be. However, Eusebius was not afraid to discount various scriptures or beliefs promulgated by his forebears which disagreed with the Christianity of his time.

In the third book of his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius divided known Christian writings into three categories: “Agreed Upon,” “Disagreed,” and “Spurious.” Eusebius described the debate among the churches over the authenticity and authority of several texts in today's traditional NT canon, including James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation of John, categorizing all these as “Disagreed,” and he characterized the Shepherd of Hermas as spurious. Like Irenaeus, Eusebius appealed to Christian traditions to determine authenticity and authority, and he asserted that the “Agreed Upon” books were those which were true, genuine, and recognized.

Finally, we shouldn't discount Geography as a factor. The Alexandrine writings were more popular with the congregations of Egypt; the Antiochene with the people of the Near East; and so forth.

In the end, the formation of the NT canon was a gradual process, and the contributions of writers/theologians like Irenaeus and Eusebius weren't intended to produce a canon as much as they were meant to prove uninterrupted succession from the apostles and to promote uniformity and orthodoxy. Hence, there are no easy answers for what makes "scripture."

[jay santos]

That's fine, but it's not the base of my argument. Would you then agree that the canon is then official scripture even given the way it was written and constructed compared to today's view on scripture? Also, what is your take on GC talks being scripture? Hymns? Books authored by GAs?

I don't know about all that. I just thought that was an interesting statement you made about scriptures in the canon being against church doctrine. I can think of stuff like "God is spirit." But it seems easy to explain away anything based on context and interpretation.

[Moliere]

I don't know about all that. I just thought that was an interesting statement you made about scriptures in the canon being against church doctrine. I can think of stuff like "God is spirit." But it seems easy to explain away anything based on context and interpretation.

Yet we don't assign the same level of explanation and scrutiny to other scriptures? Instead we take 1 Cor 15:29 at its literal reading and we explain away other scriptures that are contradictory. I short, we cherry pick, but this thread was intended to discuss this.

[Moliere]

[FONT=Arial]In the end, the formation of the NT canon was a gradual process, and the contributions of writers/theologians like Irenaeus and Eusebius weren't intended to produce a canon as much as they were meant to prove uninterrupted succession from the apostles and to promote uniformity and orthodoxy. Hence, there are no easy answers for what makes "scripture."

This is why I started the thread, because it seems like an interesting thing to discuss.

Thanks for the brief history lesson. I always enjoy your posts.

[Green Monstah]

This is not easy. But I'd say that Paul's having written all those epistles is almost a matter of LDS scripture (even though he probably didn't).

Yeah, I tried to dig into this topic a bit in my GD class, but I could tell it wasn't a place where a lot of people wanted to go (to my dismay).

I loved teaching NT this year, and I'm a little nervous about BoM next year (even though I know it better than any other book of scripture we use).

[Green Monstah]

I think there are a few answers.

1. Tradition (as it relates to the Bible) Without regard to who we think wrote the Bible, or whether they're right or not, we fall in line with the mainstream. Even as it relates to the JST, I think we intentionally omit portions that upon futher analysis were likely blatantly wrong (that's just a hypothesis; I've never read from the Inspired Version, and I usually discount the JST footnotes).

2. The Works of JS, intended to be scripture, that aren't blatantly wrong. I'd say we'd classify this as scripture (whether officially canonized or not). To our credit, we've kept some parts of the D&C intact even though they seem to be false prophecies (at least, a common sense reading makes them seem as such)).

3. I think Church considers the words of current, modern-day prophets to be scripture, but not all. Many LDS would find difficulty with classifying some of what is in the JD as scripture, even though BY, et. al and the saints at the time probably absolutely believed the discourses to be scripture. But, the un-canonized scripture is subject to being superseded by successors, which makes it difficult to ascertain precisely what non-canonized scripture is.

[Moliere]

Personally, I view scriptures in the same way that I view old-school GAAP (sorry for the accounting reference). Pre-2008, GAAP was basically set by several different regulatory bodies, resulting in some differences and outright contradictions from one body to the next. It wasn't until sometime in the 1980s that the "house of GAAP" was established that set 4 different levels of GAAP with the most authoritative at the top and the least authoritative at the bottom. Basically you had the FASB and SEC at the top setting the most authoritative literature and then you had the AICPA and other accounting bodies issuing interpretations or practice manuals that had less authority. I think there is something similar in law in that codified law is more authoritative, followed by Supreme Court decisions, followed by trial court decisions, etc.

I view the scriptures in a similar stratification. In fact, if I had to put together my own "House of Scriptures" for Mormonism it would probably look something like this (with Category A being more authoritative):

Category A - Current canon (KJV Bible, Book of Mormon, D&C & PoGP)
Category B - (1)Statements, Proclamations and Declarations issued by the 1st Presidency (Proclamaion on the Family, multiple statements on evolution, 1949 statement on the Negro question, etc.) and (2) Teachings of Joseph Smith
Category C - General Conference talks given by the 1st Presidency and Apostles as well as certain books written by 1st Presidency and Apostles (Jesus the Christ, Christ and the New Covenant, Mormon Doctrine, etc.)
Category D - General Conference talks given by Seventys and/or other auxiliaries
Category E - All other (current membership practices, local leader talks/counsel, personal journals, Work and the Glory series, writings of C.S. Lewis, etc.)

It's obvious to me that the current canon is almost untouchable, except in cases where it doesn't fit into the correlated doctrine. It doesn't matter if it's authorship is in doubt or fully unknown, we still regard it as the baseline of test for scripture. In a sense we do the same thing Solon alluded to in his post in that we base everything off the most ancient and scriptural sounding texts as we deem these to be more authoritative than the living prophets. While this flies in the face of recent conference talks that bluntly state that living prophets are more important, it's obvious that in actual practice this has almost never been the case....even in the case of the Negro Doctrine it was not the case regardless of what BRM stated.

But using the current canon as our baseline has also led to our continued assimilation into modern Christianity. The more we rely on validating current practices with the Bible and BoM, the more we fall lock step in line with the Evangelists and other Christians. Sure, some differences will exist due to the D&C and PoGP, but for the most part we have shed a lot of our peculiarity through validation of our doctrine through current canon.

Correlation has probably played a part as we strive to show modern commandments throughout ancient scriptures, but in reality we have turned our prophets and apostles into interpreters and not revelators. This is fine by me, but it's also the reason that General Conference holds less intrigue for me than it once did.

[Sullyute]

I view the scriptures in a similar stratification. In fact, if I had to put together my own "House of Scriptures" for Mormonism it would probably look something like this (with Category A being more authoritative):

Category A - Current canon (KJV Bible, Book of Mormon, D&C & PoGP)
Category B - (1)Statements, Proclamations and Declarations issued by the 1st Presidency (Proclamaion on the Family, multiple statements on evolution, 1949 statement on the Negro question, etc.) and (2) Teachings of Joseph Smith
Category C - General Conference talks given by the 1st Presidency and Apostles as well as certain books written by 1st Presidency and Apostles (Jesus the Christ, Christ and the New Covenant, Mormon Doctrine, etc.)
Category D - General Conference talks given by Seventys and/or other auxiliaries
Category E - All other (current membership practices, local leader talks/counsel, personal journals, Work and the Glory series, writings of C.S. Lewis, etc.)

I didn't want to muddy up the other thread more than it was, but I wanted to see how you feel "time" affects your house of scriptures catergories? As an example, catergory A is timeless; catergory B is good for 100 years, but after that can can lose authority to a catergory C; Catergory C is good for 50 years but then would lose authority to a catergory D...etc.

[Moliere]

I didn't want to muddy up the other thread more than it was, but I wanted to see how you feel "time" affects your house of scriptures catergories? As an example, catergory A is timeless; catergory B is good for 100 years, but after that can can lose authority to a catergory C; Catergory C is good for 50 years but then would lose authority to a catergory D...etc.

Good question. I've joked about a statute of limits on GC talks and doctrine. I think there is some evidence of that being the case, although correlation has a way of consciously avoiding the discussion altogether so I'd say it's not always "time" related.

In theory they would all be timeless, but I think that only true in practice for Category A. Basically anything else can be overturned with a simple revelation, and as I've already stated there are some things in Category A that are not exactly in line with church doctrine.

But basically anything is timeless as long as it advances your own agenda