Whose New Jerusalem Is It, Anyway?

[omorka]

Interesting article on Huckabee and Romney.

Also, the asymmetry is interesting - yes, Mormonism is a "new" variant of Christianity, and one homegrown here in America, but the sort of Bibliolatric fundamentalism that Huckabee practices (and preaches) is, too. It's a little older, but not much. It didn't come up with an extra couple of testaments, strictly speaking, but the ridiculous dispensationalism and other proof-text trappings might as well be, for all the relationship they hold to the Biblical text as written.

I'm not really very fond of either of them, but that one of them feels like he needs to explain himself on national TV from College Station, of all places, and the other one pretty much gets a bye is . . . bizarre.

Comments

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Dispensationalism? Proof-text trappings?

Not familiar with those terms as you use them.

[awbryan.livejournal.com]

Oh, you blessed innocent. Suffice it to say those are corollaries to Bibliolatry. Dispensations are supposed literal "contracts" with the Almighty that change the fundamental moral underpinning of the universe every few centuries. Proof-text is easier to understand: the logical endpoint of sola scriptura is that verse citation is a necessary and sufficient condition to "prove" a doctrine. Proof-text arguments usually work about as well as the argument that Grendels modor in Beowulf was an ugly demon, i.e., a deliberate misinterpretation of faulty translation. Religion is not symbolic logic, but since Aquinas people have tried to make it so.

As for Mormonism not getting a pass, it's yet another corollary of Bibliolatry. If the Word is God, then additional scriptures (and the innovations they contain) are functionally equivalent to polytheism. Mormons, of course, object to this view rather strongly, which is why the full name of the Mormon Church starts "Church of Jesus Christ..."

Having looked into Mormon theology, I must say it addresses a few of the excesses of Catholic and Protestant practice... and then falls right back into the same trap it crawled out of. The continuing insistence on deriving practice primarily from logical deductions of textual clues leads to much of their bizarre behavior. "Baptism for the dead", for instance, is the Mormon answer to reconciling the doctrines that (a) baptism is necessary for salvation, (b) Catholics and Protestants aren't real Christians, and (c) unbaptized infants don't belong in Hell even if that's what (a) implies. Never mind that the ritual actually has nothing whatsoever to do with the original purpose of baptism...