then we’re going to misread and misunderstand, sometimes quite badly and perhaps with serious results in effect, that approach insists on reading scripture through the lenses of our modern cultural assumptions while also denying we’re wearing glasses.įor example, we quite naturally read language of Jesus-as-the-Father through the inherited lens of modern western Christianity, and then get confused or anxious at the Book of Mormon teaching “the Trinity.” ( It’s really not.

If, however, we insist on reading scripture with the assumption that God’s word is clear, plain, and timeless, needing no real context or interpretation, 2 This was Joseph Fielding Smith’s philosophy of scripture. Recognizing that fact is key to understanding its “weirdness” and uncovering the blind spots created by our own assumptions, time, and place. Reading scripture- ALL scripture, including D&C - is a cross-cultural experience. What if some of the truths New Testament authors were trying to convey are invisible to us, because we don’t recognize how they are being communicated or lack the implicit context to understand? Indeed, the New Testament “presumes a high knowledge of the context on the part of the reader and explains very little.” 1 Rohrbaugh, cited below It also means we tend to favor the Gospels over the epistles, particularly Paul’s.īut just as the Old Testament and D&C have implicit contexts (see here, and here for a sports analogy), so to do the Gospels and the rest of the NT as well. It leaves us wondering why, lacking explicit doctrinal statements, this detail or that story is included. They seem “easier” to read because of this, which tends to confirm our unconscious assumption that THAT kind of thing is indeed how scriptural truths are communicated. That is, Latter-day Saints are primed to look for explicit “doctrinal” statements “in the open,” like the ending of a parable, or perhaps marked by a “and thus we see.” The Gospels seemingly provide these in abundance, and so we tend to stop there, assuming that we’ve found the timeless truths they intended to communicate. Reading the Gospels, we find what we expect too easily. This post contains Amazon Affiliate links As we begin our year in the New Testament, we naturally start with the Gospels… which is a problem, funny enough.

Scripture different cultural contexts