Quote:
Originally Posted by Tex
Stendahl is great. I won't pretend I've read a lot of his stuff, but I've seen him interviewed a couple of different times and he's always left me impressed.
And he's been very kind to the church, which doesn't hurt. 
Is there a reason a Harvard Divinity School theologian would consider the BoM an ancient document? |
Exactly. I knew I was being captain obvious here, but apologists at FARMS *have* indeed used Stendahl as some kind of validation of the BOM antiquity, which has always boggled my mind. (Chino made a brief reference to the apologetic value of the talk, which is why I was unsure of how he was interpreting it.) Stendahl is nothing if not generous, tolerant of others' beliefs, and dipolomatic. His talk is a great example of these qualities, but even the excerpts quoted by ChinoCoug make it clear (to me at least) what he is really saying. If Stendahl had not made it clear in the book chapter I referred to (at least I'm almost positive that's where the quote comes from), then the only other possibility would be that Mormon as editor is doing the biblical expansion. I read a FARMS article one time that asserted that this could have been what Stendahl meant. But it simply wasn't, since he said elsewhere what he meant. As Stendahl himself wisely said, if you want to know what someone thinks or believes, go to the source itself/himself.