Samuel M. Brown Lecture

Samuel M Brown MD is a critical care physician and self-identified Mormon intellectual.  This lecture was given at the LDS Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship (formally FARMS).  In this lecture Dr. Brown jokingly presents an intellectual scale that runs from Orson Pratt on one extreme to “crazy blogger” on the other.  Dr. Brown seems to indicate that he lies somewhere safely in-between Orson and Parley P. Pratt which would seem to suggesting that I am hanging out on the “crazy blogger” side of the scale. 

I enjoyed Dr. Brown’s descriptions of Protestant Christian tenents. In addition to beliefs about the person and life Christ, being Protestant means acceptance of additional theological beliefs that deal with scripture, revelation, and authority. 

Cessationism is the doctrine that spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues, prophecy and healing ceased with the apostolic age.

Volunteerism is the doctrine that there are no mandatory acts that a Christian must do for salvation.

Biblical inerrancy is the doctrine that the Protestant Bible "is without error or fault in all its teaching"; or, at least, that "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact".

The doctrine of the clarity of Scripture (often called the perspicuity of Scripture) is a Protestant Christian position teaching that "...those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them"

Closed canon is the doctrine that all the books in the Christian Bible and Hebrew Scriptures that together constitute the complete and divinely inspired Word of God. Only the books of the canon are considered authoritative in matters of faith and practice. The idea of a closed canon is that the Bible is complete; no more books are being added to it. God is not appending His Word.

Disestablishment is that the body of Christ is a spiritual reality and it doesn’t matter which physical church you belong to.

Sola Scriptura is a theological doctrine held by some Christian denominations that the Christian scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith and practice.

Sola scriptura ("by Scripture alone") vs prima scriptura where scripture is informed by tradition, reason, conscience, experience. 

Sola fide ("by faith alone")

Sola gratia ("by grace alone") monergism vs synergism.

Solo Christo ("Christ alone")

Soli Deo gloria ("glory to God alone")

Sola ecclesia ("the Church alone"), 

Sola caritas("Charitable-love alone") 

Sola Spiritus (In the "Spirit alone")

I like Dr. Brown’s points about:

 1. the timelessness of the Book or Mormon. God dwells in the Eternal Now and is the Great Seer of seers, so it should be of no surprise that He reveals details about the future, addresses current issues, as well as corrects perceptions about the past.  

2. I like the explaination of the Book of Mormon’s concern with and explanation of internal and external evidence.   External evidence includes signs and miracles as well witnesses and archeological evidence. Internal evidence involves the transformative change in the reader inspiring moral behavior as well as internal literary consistency.  

3.  Dr. Brown also discusses the weakness of language to convey meaning.  The Book of Mormon writers openly acknowledge these limitations.  The Bible also refers to these limitations when it says Christ prayed in words that could not be written or uttered. 

4. I agree that the Book or Mormon deals with many issues of the 19th Century.  But I don’t think its application is limited to that time period.  I have a hunch that Mormon included details that will serve as a blueprint of parallel events that will occur during the Tribulation leading to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  Many of these events have not yet occured and therefore cannot yet be appreciated. 

I find it singular that Ravi Zacharias would speak at the Salt Lake Tabernacle on the “sufficiency of Christ’s Atonement” and Moroni would address the sufficiency of the atonement after “denying yourselves all ungodliness” in Moroni 10.   However, I think I understand where Dr. Brown is coming from as I have tried to share the Book of Mormon with countless friends and neighbors and they seem to all repeat the line that the book doesn't “speak to them”. 

5. Lastly, I like Dr. Brown’s points about not separating the Bible from a living prophet. Once you try to stand on the Bible alone without the revelatory authority of a living  prophet, all translation, interpretation, and meaning of scripture immediately begins to diverge. We see this process occur with Ezra vs. Malachi in the Old Testament leading to rabbinical judaism and its various sects and we see it today in Protestantism. 

Dr. Brown highlights how a living prophet makes expanding the canon seamless as new scripture can be received and/or discovered.  The new scripture like the Jaredite plates were translated, verified, and endorsed by the prophet; and then ratified by the people as part of an open and living canon.