Charity

I remember once, several years ago, a friend of mine made a comment about the translation of the thirteenth chapter of the first epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. This friend of mine commented that the more modern translation of the Bible referred to "faith, hope, and love" in this chapter, whereas the more traditional translations used "faith, hope and charity." This friend of mine thought that "love" was more what Paul was going for, and "charity" must have been a translation error.

Myself, having grown up reading the Latter-day Saint edition of the King James Version of the Bible, I thought it was strange that my friend would say that. I had learned in Primary that "charity is the pure love of Christ" as a young child, and I guess it kind of baffled me that someone else would find that term confusing. I have always felt like charity denoted a higher, purer form of love than that which we normally feel. I think the King James translators did this passage justice in rendering whichever Greek word for "love" that was used here as "charity."

A wise teacher of mine once taught us an interesting principle. If you take every reference to charity in this chapter and replace it with Christ, it still makes sense, since after all "God is love."

However, the same principle does not really apply to us. Can we place our own name in this chapter? Most likely not—at least I can’t. As I was saying before, charity is a Godly attribute that we should all be working towards, but the love that we usually have towards others usually still does not qualify as true charity.

Charity is the pure love of Christ. It is unconditional. Christ loves each and every one of us, regardless of our feelings towards Him or our fellow men. He was willing to lay down His life for every one of us—sinners all. He suffered beyond our comprehension (so great was the pain that blood came from every pore) in order to pay the price of our sins. He is always there, regardless of whether we want Him or not, ready to succor us. That is true charity.

I believe this is why charity is considered the greatest of all. If we truly have charity, then we are in the image of Him who redeemed us, and our Father will be well pleased with us at the last day. If we have not charity, however, then how can we say that we are true followers of Jesus?

Millennium Fever

Paul’s converts in Thessalonica were having Millennium fever. When Jesus ascended, He said that he would come again. The early saints were excited and waiting for that day to happen. Many of them not only expected it to happen within their lifetimes, but to happen shortly. Can you imagine being one of these new converts? They’ve heard the gospel, many of them from those who either personally saw Christ, or at least had heard one of the Twelve teach. They heard of Christ’s power, His miracles, His promised blessings—and that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. When the angels said he would come again, why wouldn’t they think it would be in their lifetime? They wanted to be present when He came in power and glory to lift up His followers and destroy the wicked.

However, things do not always work out the way that we want them to. As Paul taught, the Second Coming would not occur until after there had been a falling away. They knew that the world was going to fall into apostasy, even if the early Saints did not understand that. The Church would be destroyed from within (after all, ravenous wolves were going to destroy the flock from within). Ironically, the belief that the Second Coming was nigh actually brought about some of the apostate actions among the early saints in Thessalonica.

The first issue that Paul addresses in his epistle is that some of the people had stopped working. They assumed that the Millennium was soon at hand, so what’s the point in building up temporal things now when it will all be destroyed at Christ’s coming? A second problem was that people had been committing sin. This one is a bit strange to me. If they thought that Christ would soon come, would they not want to be extra righteous and prepare to meet Him face to face? However, that is not what they were thinking, as is obvious from the fact that Paul had to reprimand them. For some reason they had the erroneous idea that Christ would cleans them at His coming. Lastly, some were thinking that those who died before Christ came again were somehow missing out in His glory. Paul corrected this belief by teaching that the righteous dead will be raised at His coming to be with Him.

These things can all be applied to us today. Since the time of Joseph Smith, many of the saints have had the idea that Christ would come again in their lifetimes. Regardless of whether or not this is true, the Lord has commanded us to make good use of our time in probation in this earth. We should not decide that it is fruitless to pursue an education or employment because we will not need it when Christ comes again (this is erroneous anyway, since we are supposed to attain as much knowledge as we can in this life anyway). We should not decide that it’s not important for us to have food storage, or a savings, or insurance, or a retirement fund because we think the Millennium is just around the corner. We should have faith and make preparations for a long, fruitful life, but at the same time live worthily so that we would be prepared if He did come tomorrow.

Special Collections

The last time I attended the special collections seminar thing was about a year ago, so it's a little bit foggy now... However, I think I still remember most of what he talked about, since I've attended it two or three times. The thing that I remember best is the silly video clip that he showed us of the monk help desk for their "new technology"—the book. This is a very interesting (and humorous) reminder of the transition from using scrolls to using books. We can apply this knowledge to the books which Luke authored, namely The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Since a scroll was only so big, he had to split his works into these two separate parts. This isn't as obvious to us today, seeing as we can fit the entirety of the Old and New Testaments into one (albeit massive) volume, but in antiquity they didn't have the same technology we have today, and that includes books.
Even after books started to come into more widespread use, it was still nothing like we have today. Books were written on pages made of animal skin. It wasn't until much later that the process for manufacturing paper was invented. Books weren't printed either. They had to be painstakingly hand-written. The work of book writing was truly an art. The books they wrote were written in beautiful print, which looked virtually perfect to my eye. We were shown a copy of a page from a Bible that was hand-written by monks, and another that was printed, and I really couldn't tell the difference. The work that went into beautifying the books was amazing too. Even after the printing press came into use, so much effort went into hand decorating the books—it's truly amazing!
Seeing how difficult it was to produce writings in antiquity, it's of small wonder to me now that the Old Testament existed so long as simply an oral tradition before it was actually written down. Even much of Christ's earthly ministry wasn't written down until the Apostles and other eye-witnesses started to die off. It was truly a different world then than it is now. I can type this up and print if off in a couple minutes if I want to, and relatively cheaply too. I can also post it to this blog, and people from all over the entire globe have access to it instantly. It's really amazing how readily information is available to us, and how easy it is to share and spread it.

Paul's letter to the Galations

In class last week we talked about Pauls letter to the Galations. Dr. Holzapfel said that this epistle contains Paul's sharpest rebukes! This is pretty obvious when you look at the language he uses at the beginning of chapter 3: "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?"
So why was Paul so angry? The Galatians had accepted the Gospel of Jesus Christ which Paul taught them. However, after Paul left, other Jews came up from Jerusalem and started teaching the people. In essence, they taught that everything Paul said was good and correct, but just not sufficient. They taught that the Galatian converts needed to be circumcized as well as being baptized in Jesus' name. The Galatian saints heeded their teachings, and accepted these practices from the Law of Moses.
When Paul finally got word of this, he was furious. But why? Was it because he thought the Law of Moses was evil? Was he against people accepting these Jewish sentimens? Probably not. Paul himself had been a Pharisee—one of the strictest orders among the Jews—so he had lived the Law of Moses himself very strictly throughout his entire life. Later (assuming Dr. H's view that the Epistle to the Galations was actually written before the Jerusalem conference) Paul would openly censure Peter for being hypocritical in following the Law of Moses around the Jews but not the Gentiles. Was Paul just very opinionated on this point of doctrine, so he lashed out when someone disagreed with him? He probably had reasoning behind this.
Paul taught that salvation was in Jesus, not in the Law. When he saw the Galation saints accepting the teaching that they needed circumcision, and even worse, the bretheren from Jerusalem teaching this doctrine, he was abhorred. What they were teaching when the said what the Galations had done was not sufficient was actually saying that Jesus and his Atonement were not sufficient. They were teaching that baptism and faith in Christ were not sufficient for salvation, but that you needed to follow the Law of Moses. The teaching of that idea would most definitly have caused a fierce reaction from Paul. How can you teach that Jesus is not sufficient for salvation?! So, it doesn't really matter whether or not you're circumcized, or whether or not you eat pork. But if you think that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is insufficient for salvation, then that's the problem.