The Reasonableness of Christianity Blog

Ok, so I will admit that I followed the link at Marginal Revolution to the ChatGPT AI language model and played around for a few minutes. It seems like the model has a hard-coded relativistic philosophy of truth - or at least of religion - and it is also hard-coded to deny that it could be biased toward any philosophy at all, which is obviously absurd. I use the word “hard-coded” incorrectly, I’m sure, having no knowledge of how the model actually works. I suppose there aren’t any larger lessons to be learned from this, other than the fact that it is useful to be aware of the philosophies that subconsciously influence our way of thinking. And it helps to be aware of one’s own biases. These feats are obviously not possible for this language model. We started with some conversation about baseball and then I turned to religion.  Me:  Do all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints go to Heaven when they die? ChatGPT:  Members of the Church of Jesus Christ...

One of the doctrines that differentiates my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from mainstream Christianity is the doctrine of eternal progression, or becoming like God. I think all Christians accept that through Christ’s grace He can make us more like Him, although the nature of that gift can be understood in different ways.  For example, John 14:20 says "At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." In John 10:34 Christ says "Ye are Gods," quoting Psalms. Paul teaches in Romans 8:16-17 "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together." These scriptures are moving and powerful, but of course can be interpreted in different ways. The teachings of modern prophets guide us to take these doctrines more literally than is typical...

Last week the online journal VoegelinView published an article I submitted about John Locke’s religious views. My post here on Leo Strauss’s reading of Locke is a sort of companion piece to what I wrote for the VV. Suffice it to say there is a huge misunderstanding about John Locke, with both political and religious implications. Thanks to columnist Lee Trepanier for suggesting that might submit my thoughts, and to editor Paul Krause.  Paul published my article despite being of a very different opinion personally, which shows a commitment to intellectual openness.  There is an LDS angle in the article, in that I feel Locke came to a lot of views that are very close to the LDS theological positions. I find that intriguing. I am also interested in Locke’s Christian rationalism. I would like to elaborate more on this topic at some point. Here is a paragraph from my article: In partial defense of Leo Strauss, Christian rationalism in the style of John Locke is all but dead today ...

Leo Strauss It is no secret that I am a fan of John Locke. I stole this blog’s name from the title of one of his books, after all. I am very impressed and inspired by his unique and refreshing combination of clear-headed reason and reliance on faith and scripture. I have to say I was a little dismayed and surprised when I saw that many or most political commentators today see John Locke as an atheist / deist / secularist, following the “Straussian” reading of Locke. This so strongly contradicted everything that I saw in my reading of Locke that it was quite baffling, and I felt a need to figure out what was going on. The Reasonableness of Christianity was the first of John Locke’s works that I came across (see my thoughts here ), as my interests (outside of my day job) are essentially Christian and religious. I found in Locke a scholar who taught that Christian revelation is not just reasonable, but that Christian religion is the best and only foundation for true reason. Locke wrot...

I have been following evangelical Christian Kyle Beshears’ Substack, in which he posts chapters of a book on The Church of Jesus Christ that he is working on. The book is intended for evangelical Christians and takes on a question and answer approach to explain the beliefs and history of The Church. I love the openness, and I love Dr. Beshears’ straightforward and fair approach. The truth-seeking intellectual honesty is refreshing.  The most recent post is on the nature of Christ, an essential and fundamental topic. As usual, Beshears accurately describes LDS beliefs about the nature of Jesus Christ. He does a great job of demonstrating the many aspects of our beliefs that overlap with evangelical Christian beliefs- such as the birth, life, ministry, Atonement, and resurrection of Christ as described and celebrated in both the Bible and Book of Mormon. After describing similarities, the remainder of the chapter reasonably focuses on the primary difference between our beliefs in ...

General Conference begins a week from Saturday. It is two full days of messages from Church leaders for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But they aren't just for Church members. One of my favorite stories about General Conference comes from my wife, which I will share with her permission. One year when she was a young girl, her family went to her grandmother's home on conference day hoping to watch General Conference on a local access channel because they didn’t have a TV in their home. The grandmother, who had been very angry and disappointed when her daughter (my wife’s mother) left the Catholic Church, excitedly showed them the program she had been watching on TV, telling them that this kind of God-fearing gospel learning is what they need, not the Mormon church. My in-laws looked at the TV and said, “Yes, that is General Conference! That is exactly what we want to watch!” Instantly the TV was turned off as the realization struck that this wasn’t ...

The wheel of history rolls forward. (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons) My last post ended on a note of pessimism for the future of our society. I promised I would follow that up with a more optimistic post. … Ok, so this one isn’t pure optimism, but at least maybe it’s more balanced? I will note up front that my personal bias in favor of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shows through strongly in this post – reader beware – and the ideas I express here are highly speculative. I used to wonder what was the point of end-times revelations. The prophecies aren’t really specific enough to plan by. We are told that Christ will come “as a thief in the night,” suggesting that the end-times prophecies were never meant as a clear timeline. Revelations tell of wars, plagues, disasters, and descriptions of what sound like at least partial societal collapse, but finally the Lord will return and usher in the Millennial reign of peace and glory. The internet is filled with piles of speculatio...

I enjoy writing in this blog because it gives me a chance to learn about topics that fascinate me - including sociology and history, especially as it relates to religion. But I readily admit that I am no expert, just learning as I go. Oddly, and sadly, I get the impression that all the insights I am gaining were at one time common knowledge and simple common sense, but have been obscured over the last 50 years or so.  For example, in my post on National Conservatism I wrote about the Christian origins of classical liberalism and Western prosperity, something I read about recently in a book by Larry Siedentop that was self-consciously going against the grain of modern scholarship - “to say the least, not fashionable,” as he wrote in the prologue. Here is my summary of the insight, from my previous post :  Christ taught us 2000 years ago that we are all children of God, and therefore spiritual brothers and sisters, no matter what family we come from, what gender, what degree of ...

I’ve been following Kyle Beshears’ Substack  where he is posting chapters of an academic book he is working on about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for a mainstream Christian audience. For some reason I find this kind of thing fascinating, like a chimpanzee might feel about reading Jane Goodall’s notes. As I’ve written before , Kyle Beshears has a deep understanding of his subject and reports it straight, to his great credit. In this post I will comment on his recent chapter, “Where did the Book of Mormon come from?” As with precious chapters, it is very respectful and gets the facts straight. I just want to briefly quibble with his summation of the state of the evidence for the Book of Mormon.  Today, the LDS Church maintains that the Book of Mormon represents ancient history, not merely theology. For this reason, corroborating evidence for or against its historicity has been the focus of many LDS apologists and skeptics seeking to verify or disapprove its a...

I recently read Yoram Hazony's book, Conservatism: A Rediscovery . While I disagree with the author's "National Conservatism" model for government and I question some of his history and theory, it was a book full of food for thought. There are some items that were not core aspects of the book but are worthy of some analysis. One of these items is Hazony's comments on epistemology, or how to identify truth. Remember that much of the book was a diatribe against rationalism and rationalists like John Locke that attempt to use reason to determine truth. (Hazony mistakenly and repeatedly accuses Locke of relying on "reason alone.") Given Hazony's fervent stance against rationalism, how does he propose that we determine what is true and good? Here is a quote from the book (my own transcript taken from the audiobook): We can say that a scheme of ideas is true and that it describes reality if it permits us to recognize the most significant causes operative...