This is Interesting

Here is a chart that shows increases at 370 higher education institutions across the United States. I guess now we know where some of those tuition increases are going.



(BYU tends not to follow the trend in tuition increases. I suspect it does not in the compensation of the president but what would I know.)

Today's Maxwell Quote

From A Wonderful Flood of Light (1990), 73:

Some people expect—almost demand—that God will reveal himself on their terms and even according to their own schedule. Yet they would still reject God, especially if it should turn out that He resembles us mortals too much!

Something Found Along the Way

One of the sacrament speakers today had a great quote by President Gordon B. Hinckley. I have not been able to locate it, but I stumbled on this one looking for it:

We live in an age of compromise and acquiescence. In situations with which we are daily confronted, we know what is right, but under pressure from our peers and the beguiling voices on those who would persuade us, we capitulate. We compromise. We acquiesce. We give in, and we are ashamed of ourselves. . . . We must cultivate the strength to follow our convictions. (Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley, 135, ellipses in source.)

Today's Maxwell Quote

From All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience (1980), 17:

If God did not know our predilections and our choices even before we made them, and had not planned accordingly, we might well have ended up having Joseph Smith born in Manchuria and the Book of Mormon plates buried in Belgium! A less than omniscient god would be more like the earnest but fumbling Caesars who dot the landscape of history than a living, all-knowing God.

Though His plans are known to Him, there is no premature exposure of the Lord's plans. This could bring unnecessary persecution upon an unready Lord's people. Further, a premature showing of His power and strength in support of His Saints could cut short the trial of our faith.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience (1980): 31:

A good friend, who knows whereof he speaks, has observed of trials, "If it's fair, it is not a true trial!" That is, without the added presence of some inexplicableness and some irony and injustice, the experience may not stretch us or lift us sufficiently. The crucifixion of Christ was clearly the greatest injustice in human history, but the Savior bore up under it with majesty and indescribable valor.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience (1980), 21-22:

Was it not God who, from the beginning, reminded earthlings that the wisdom of men is foolishness? We are only discovering, afresh, what He has long told us about all man's puny efforts that do not rely upon Him. Mortals are fretting over the weakened arm of flesh, but God has told us for centuries to beware of those biceps!

A Category in which BYU Ranks Third

BYU's Law School is ranked third in return on investment, according to one source. Congratulations!

Squishy Love

Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University, has a thoughtful article called "No Squishy Love" on the wrath of God and how certain strands of thinking have a tendency want to think of God as love only. He quotes H. Richard Niebuhr on certain theological projects:

A God without wrath brought man without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.

He also quotes Tertullian of the Marcionite sect:

a better god has been discovered, one who is neither offended nor angry nor inflicts punishment, who has no fire warming up in hell, and no outer darkness wherein there is shuddering and gnashing of teeth: he is merely kind. Of course he forbids you to sin – but only in writing.

The Latin of this is:

deus melior inventus est, qui nec offenditur nec irascitur nec ulciscitur, cui nullus ignis coquitur in gehenna, cui nullus dentium frendor horret in exterioribus tenebris: bonus tantum est. Denique prohibet delinquere, sed litteris solis. (Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem 1.27).

The god of Marcion looks very similar to the god of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. His description is as follows:

God is not demanding. He actually can't be, because his job is to solve our problems and make people feel good. In short, God is something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he is always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process. (Christian Smith, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, with Melinda Lundquist Denton [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], 165).

So the obvious question for those who believe in a god of squishy love: What happens if you are wrong?

Today's Maxwell Quote

From Sermons Not Spoken (1985), 84-85:

We should think of God in terms of His divine attributes, for He is perfect in His love, mercy, and compassion—as well as in His justice. Only then can we begin to understand why His anger is kindled and to appreciate the loving concern which underlies His wrath. God's love for us is perfect, and His desire for our happiness is so deep that when His anger is kindled this signals much more than we realize. Our God is not preoccupied with other concerns, nor is His ego offended, as are ours. Such narrow views of Him do an injustice to God who is perfect in His justice.

. . .

God's anger is kindled not because we have harmed him but because we have harmed ourselves. We are His children and He is a perfect Father. He does not want us, for instance, to take His name in vain, but this is because of what happens to us when we do. Our profanity cannot diminish from His Godhood, His love, His omnipotence, or His omniscience. But our profanity does damage us and can damage us profoundly.

A.D. 430

The year 430 is noted for the death of Augustine. He died at the age of 75 when the town where he served as bishop, Hippo, was besieged by the Vandals.

Augustine was a typically hedonistic youth. He had prayed:

Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo. "Give me chastity, but not yet." (Augustine, Confessions 8.7).

When he was nineteen he read Cicero's Hortensius and decided to study philosophy. Yet, as Peter Brown notes, he was "the only Latin philosopher to fail to master Greek." (OCD 148). Still, it was a conversion. He would later convert to Manichaeism, and then to Neo-Platonic Christianity. "Augustine developed his ideas with an independence that disquieted even his admirers" (OCD 148). In part this is because "Augustine's major works are landmarks in the abandonment of classical ideals." (OCD 148).

Some people celebrate Augustine, others disdain him. I worry a bit when I see some who claim to be Christians who worship Augustine.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From this article:

Not a day passes in the television news or in the press without our seeing some secular solutions being sincerely advanced to solve vexing human problems. These solutions usually involve lower ways, however sincerely offered they are, and they resemble trying to play shuffleboard on a slippery hillside, using a twisted stick for a cue, with a misshapen lump for a puck.

Some Notices that Bear Repeating

I have mentioned these before, but I will repeat them.

From this entry:

Normally blogs have some sort of comment feature. The purpose behind such a feature is to have readers leave behind thoughtful comments. In reality, however, comments on most blogs that I have read are ignorant, hate-filled, and incoherent diatribes.

For that reason I do not allow comments on the blog, even the occasional good one.

From this entry:

The views expressed in this blog are the author's own. They do not necessarily represent those of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

I understand some people view that as an understatement.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From this article:

Of course we all need affectional security and to be loved! Yes, recognition can be healthy! Likewise, we are to enjoy life amid a like-minded community of Saints. But to like being liked for its own sake is unhealthy. Similarly, overmuch concern with public image can cause us to rearrange priorities rather than striving to have Jesus’ image in our countenance (see Alma 5:14, 19).

Apostasy in 1 Maccabees

Anyone who is at all familiar with the basic story of the revolt of the Maccabees will not be surprised that the book opens up discussing apostasy. The successors of Alexander, according to the author, "filled the earth with evil" (1 Maccabees 1:9):

In those days [the days of Antiochus Epiphanes] wicked sons came from Israel and persuaded many saying: We will go and make a covenant with the nations round about us, since we have abstained from them many evils have come upon us. And the saying was good in their eyes. And some of the people were pleased and went to the king, and he gave them authority to enact the standards of the Gentiles. And they built a gymnasium in Jerusalem according to the custom of the Gentiles. And they made themselves uncircumcised and apostatized from the holy covenant and joined themselves to the heathen and sold themselves to do iniquity. (1 Maccabees 1:11-15)

So the author sets up the opposition, one can make a covenant with God or with the Gentiles, one cannot keep both. Those who wanted to accommodate the world are depicted as apostatizing from their covenants. Unlike some uses of the verb apostatize in Greek, the apostates are depicted as not revolting against the king, but their covenants. The king, who has already been identified as wicked, gives them authority to do what they want. So, for Maccabees, apostasy may be perfectly compatible with possessing authority. They also have standards, but those standards are those of the Gentiles rather than those deriving from the covenant.

Of course, one of the historical ironies of the Maccabees is that while the Maccabees revolted against a corrupt monarch, they became equally corrupt in their turn. Apostasy is a constant problem.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From this article:

If becoming popular requires participating in the follies and the fashions of the world, it is too big a price to pay for fleeting approval. Consider Pontius Pilate. He reluctantly pleased the mob by doing the “popular thing” in order to avoid a civil disturbance. Ironically, Pilate, a scant few years later, lost his status anyway because of a disturbance in Samaria.

As one looks at the sweep of human history, its lessons are so quickly forgotten. Illustratively, Winston Churchill chose as the theme for his final volume dealing with the history of World War II the prescient words, “How the Great Democracies Triumphed, and so Were able to Resume the Follies Which Had so Nearly Cost Them Their Life” (Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 6: Triumph and Tragedy, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1953, p. ix).

Greco-Roman Hittites

The Hittites, for modern scholars, a nation of people living in Anatlia from about 1800-1200 BC. The spoke the earliest attested Indo-European language, a distant cousin to English. (The Hittite word for water is watar.) The Hittites seem to have been wiped out aroun the time the Israelites entered the promised land.

Most of the Hittites in the Bible (think Uriah the Hittite, you know, the guy David betrayed to his death to cover up his adultery with Uriah's wife, Bathsheba) are the various Neo-Hittite kingdoms in the areas of modern Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. They too spoke an Indo-European language, Luwian, but also Aramaic, a Semitic language. These kingdoms disappeared in the Assyrian expansion by the end of the eighth century. Conventional wisdom says there were no more Hittites after that time.

Conventional wisdom is wrong.

1 Maccabees opens with the words:

And it came to pass, after the conquest of Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon, who came from the land of the Hittites (Χεττιμ), and he smote Darius, the king of the Persians and the Medes, and he reigned in his stead, and previously over Greece. (1 Maccabees 1:1)

The author of Maccabees identifies those place on the other side of the Mediterranean, not to mention Anatolia, as the land of the Hittites (Χεττιμ). This is also reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the Commentary on Habakkuk, the enemies of Israel (such as the Chaldeans) are identified as Hittites, which seems to indicate the same thing as it does in Maccabees. Modern scholars have often identified the Hittites of the Habakkuk Commentary as the Romans. It seems, in light of the Septuagint, that the term Hittite could either be a geographic or linguistic designation. Geographically it would be the lands northward and across the sea from Israel. Linguistically it would mean Indo-Europeans.

Thus a notion of Hittites continues at least a millennium after the people that modern scholars recognize as Hittites have disappeared from the scene.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From this article:

Jesus gave us the ending demographics: wide is the gate and popular and broad is the way that leads to destruction (see Matt. 7:13). The narrow and straight way that leads to salvation, alas, is the path less traveled by. Hence, there is no way we can both move with the herd and also move toward Jesus. Nevertheless, there are some who try to serve the Lord without offending the devil. Others want “to serve the Lord but only in an advisory capacity,” cautioned President Marion G. Romney.

Matthew 24:7-8.

Continuing the theme of wars and rumors of wars, Jesus adds:

ἐγερθήσεται γὰρ ἔθνος ἐπὶ ἔθνος καὶ βασιλεία ἐπὶ βασιλείαν, καὶ ἔσονται λιμοὶ καὶ λοιμοὶ καὶ σεισμοὶ κατὰ τόπους· πάντα δὲ ταῦτα ἀρχὴ ὠδίνων.

For nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and plagues, and earthquakes from place to place, but all of these are only the beginning of sorrows. (Matthew 24:7–8)

An interesting sidelight on these verses is that within two hundred years of this being written the words λιμοὶ and λοιμοὶ were no longer distinguished in pronunciation. Someone listening (and scriptures, indeed all writings at the time, were read aloud) would not be able to distinguish the two. This and the similarity in spelling (there is only one letter difference between the two) explains why manuscripts like Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and a number of others drop out the explicit mention of plagues. They were all written after the shift in pronunciation. Interestingly, many of the modern editors (such as the Alands and the United Bible Society) have failed to recognize what is going on and have followed the incorrect reading.

Today's Maxwell Quote

From this article:

We should not really be surprised at how some of the foregoing reflect the absence or neglect of the holy scriptures. History tells of those who, without sacred records, soon denied the Creator! (see Omni 1:17). The untaught can, so quickly, become unbelieving. They form a rising generation who do not understand the words of prophets and who do not believe in the Resurrection of Christ, as when there “arose another generation … which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel” (Judg. 2:10; see also Mosiah 26:1–4).

Holy scriptures testify powerfully, but they also familiarize us with the history of what God has done for His people. This spiritual memory is so essential. Consider this relevant verse, often neglected in favor of the special verse it precedes: “Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts” (Moro. 10:3).

Holy scriptures, when searched and believed, help us to “remember,” as it were, from the sacred records. These are part of the institutional memory of the kingdom of God. Hence, Alma observed to his son, Helaman, how sacred records, in effect, “have enlarged the memory of this people” (Alma 37:8).

Matthew 24:6

Jesus continues his sermon by warning his disciples that not only would they have to face false prophets but:

μελλήσετε δὲ ἀκούειν πολέμους καὶ ἀκοὰς πολέμων· ὁρᾶτε, μὴ θροεῖσθε· δεῖ γὰρ πάντα γενέσθαι, ἀλλ’ οὔπω ἐστὶν τὸ τέλος.

Ye shall hear wars and rumors of wars. See that ye do not worry for all these things must occur, but the end is not yet. (Matthew 24:6)

While the disciples should worry about false Christs (Matthew 24:4-5), they should not worry about wars or reports of wars (and there were a lot of wars during the Roman Empire). Wars do not signify the end. One might lose one's life in war, but not one's soul. A false Christ, however, could cause one to lose one's soul. They are the greater danger.

Note that the perspective already presumes a life after death, even a resurrection of the dead, although the first instance of a resurrection is not for another week.

At the time Christ gave this sermon, Pilate was sitting in his palace; he would be more concerned about an uprising, a rumor of war, than sorting out true and false Christs. Barabbas was probably sitting in his cell, a false Messiah awaiting trial for inciting an uprising unaware that soon he would be set at liberty by the true one.

War is a terrible thing, a wicked thing, an evil thing. It is not, however, the worst thing. It may legitimately claim our attention, but there are other things that deserve more attention.