Latter-day Saint apologetics

GAL18

“Though argument does not create conviction, lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.”

Austin Farrer · quoted by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Scripture Difficulties

10 of 15

Scripture

Nephi and Laban

How can a disciple of Christ defend Nephi’s killing of Laban, and is 1 Nephi 4 a license for private violence?

Nephi did not invent a personal ethic of murder. He was commanded, after resistance, to slay a man who had robbed, assaulted, and sought to kill, so that a nation would not dwindle in unbelief. The brass plates were the scriptures of a people. The God who commanded Abraham, who judged Egypt, and who holds life and death is the same God. This is not a template for vigilantes.

Open answers
Scripture

“After All We Can Do”

Does 2 Nephi 25:23 teach that we earn salvation by works, or that we are saved by grace after we have done all we can do?

Nephi does not contradict Paul. He labors to persuade people to believe in Christ and to be reconciled to God, ‘for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.’ The clause is not a wage scale. It is a confession that even our best is not the price of redemption. Grace is the ground. Covenant faithfulness is the path.

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Scripture

Isaiah in the Book of Mormon

Why is so much of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, and does that prove Joseph Smith copied the King James Bible?

Nephi, Jacob, and the risen Lord command the people to search Isaiah. The Nephite record quotes, weaves, and interprets him because he testified of the Messiah and of the scattering and gathering of Israel. English Isaiah in the Book of Mormon often wears King James dress. That is a translation fact, not a confession of fraud. The Great Isaiah Scroll already showed that Isaiah is ancient, stable, and worth copying at length.

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Scripture

The Lost 116 Pages

If God is all-knowing, why were the 116 pages lost, and does that story prove Joseph was covering a blunder?

Martin Harris lost the first manuscript. The Lord forbade a retranslation of the same plates and pointed Joseph to the small plates of Nephi, already prepared as a second witness of the same period. That is not a con man’s scramble. It is the Jeremiah pattern: a burned scroll, another scroll, and more words besides. Doctrine and Covenants 10 said the thieves would alter the stolen text. The safeguard was already in the plates.

Open answers
Scripture

Changes in the Doctrine and Covenants

If revelations are from God, why were early revelations edited, expanded, and arranged as the Doctrine and Covenants grew?

The Doctrine and Covenants is a living book of revelations given ‘after the manner of their language.’ Joseph and later publishers clarified, combined, and sometimes expanded texts as more was understood and as the Church’s organization grew. That is how Jeremiah’s second scroll worked. It is how canon has always worked. It is not a secret that the Book of Commandments is not identical to the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants.

Open answers
Scripture

Violence in Scripture

How should Saints read the wars of the Old Testament, the Book of Mormon battle books, and the violent stretches of our own history?

Scripture is not a pacifist tract, and it is not a manual for holy murder. The Lord forbids murder, commands defense of family, and weeps over slaughter. Some judgments in scripture are His, not ours to imitate. Nineteenth-century Saints were often victims of violence and, at Mountain Meadows, some were guilty of it. Context explains; it does not excuse.

Open answers
Scripture

Apparent Biblical Contradictions

If the Bible is the word of God, why do some passages seem to disagree, and does that undo the Restoration’s use of scripture?

The Bible is true. It is also a library: law, prophecy, gospel, epistle, copied by many hands, translated into English. Apparent contradictions are not a new discovery of the internet. Proverbs itself places two opposite sentences back to back. The Restoration’s answer is not inerrantist panic and not skeptical unbelief. It is the eighth article of faith, the Book of Mormon’s witness of plain and precious loss, and more revelation.

Open answers
Scripture

Is the Bible Infallible?

Don’t Christians have to believe the Bible is without error? If it has contradictions, later additions, lost books, and scribal changes, doesn’t that sink both inerrancy and the Restoration?

We love the Bible. We refuse the later claim that every word agrees. Which day was Jesus crucified? Mark has them eating the Passover; John still has it coming. Who was Joseph’s father — Jacob, or Heli? How did Judas die? Inerrancy has to pick. Article of Faith 8 does not. More scripture is the cure, not the crime.

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Scripture

The Pearl of Great Price

What is the Pearl of Great Price, and can Moses, Abraham, and Joseph Smith—History stand as scripture beside the Bible?

The Pearl of Great Price is a small canon of Restoration texts: the Book of Moses, the Book of Abraham, Joseph Smith—Matthew, Joseph Smith—History, and the Articles of Faith. It is named from the Savior’s parable. It restores Enoch, the premortal council, the work and glory of God, and the Prophet’s own history. Ancient Enoch books from Qumran and 1 Enoch show that Judaism already remembered more Enoch than Genesis 5 printed.

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