Episode 169: D&C 69 – Section 93 (Feat. Duke of Earl Grey)
Read along with us at CompareDandC.com
Joseph channels John Chapter 1 to tell us God is always with us, then admonishes his BFFs and their families to toe the line (again).
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Podcastriarchal Blessing: Dr. Faustus
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My Book of Mormon 
August 5, 2017 at 3:50 pm
So about the baptism of Jesus. There is no baptism of Jesus in the Gospel of John. John preaches a high Christology, think “The word became flesh”. In John, Jesus is clearly fully devine from the beginning of time.
There are actually three different things recorded in the synoptic gospels that the Father says to Jesus at his baptism.
Matthew 3:17 says “*This* is my son in whom I love. In him I am well pleased”, talking to the crowds.
Mark 1:11 says “*You* are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased”, talking to Jesus.
In the original version of Luke 3:22, it said: “You are my son, today I have begotten you”.
These earliest versions of Luke sound like a low Christology in which Jesus is just a man who is given power by the Father to fulfill the Father’s mission. This power was given to him at his baptism. This was a common belief in the early church but was later considered a heresy as the high Christology of John won out. So Joe’s interpretation actually does track with Luke, just not the Luke that existed in Joe’s time, and definitely nothing like the Johannine high Christology he’s referencing.
Also, to make things more confusing, Luke used Mark as a source text, often quoting it verbatim. So the arguably higher Christology of Mark’s baptism was earlier. But, since the change was clearly intentional by the author of Luke, it seems like this was an important enough belief in the Lukan church to modify earlier scripture.
Oh, and then there’s the Docetists, who believed Jesus wasn’t human at all. So also there’s that
So textually speaking, the topic of when Jesus became devine is all Calvin Ball.
It was awesome to meet the Duke in SLC. Great job on the record guys!
August 6, 2017 at 5:10 am
Good explanation – I thought it was odd this section said he became divine at his baptism since in Mormonism his baptism was purely ceremonial and only to check that ordinance box.
August 5, 2017 at 9:15 pm
Duke! Good to hear from you on the air! Great collab on one of my absolute favorite sections!
Infants on Thrones covered this last month in their episode on “a Short History Of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson.
I wrote up a long comment there… and I apologize for rambling a bit but I’ll paste it here for discussion in case anyone wants to pick through it ^_^
The Speed of the Light of Christ
I was recently studying DC93 and ALSO just happily passed a physics course with a research project on the speed of light.
And you know what? I was honestly surprised to find out that the Speed of Light isn’t just some number measured by experimentation… it’s just the rate of propagation of electromagnetic waves.
That rate isn’t some arbitrary number either… it’s the inverse-square root of 2 things… electric permittivity and magnetic permeability… big made up words that represent how far electrons can reach and how far magnets can reach…
But know what else has these kind of relationships? Resonance… when you’re doing audio editing and you need to use a low pass or high pass filter, you use this relationship between the strength of some capacitor and some inductor in a circuit, and you get a certain resonant frequency… go above or below that and one component will quickly drown out the other… tap into one of those (the capacitor or the inductor) and you get that fantastic audio filter.
A similar relationship works to keep so much in good balance, and these balances and equilibriums are critical to our universe… they also tend to happen naturally in some cases, and by critical design in others.
You can rely on a rocket scientist to get a satellite into a steady orbit, but you’d need a hand on the controls if you want to make it meet well with a space station…
A physics professor could calculate the exact angle and velocity for a baseball to land exactly in an outfielder’s glove, but couldn’t tell you a thing about the outcome of even a single swing of a bat, let alone how to play a whole game.
In short, the laws of physics will govern all agent actions, but can’t do a damn thing to predict or manage their actions.
What does this have to do with the so-called “Light of Christ”?
The light of Christ is what let’s the sun shine, lets the moon orbit the earth and go through its phases… it keeps the earth spinning and, according to Smith, gives natural order to all life.
You could easily replace the word “Light” with “law” (or logos, if you prefer).
The light of Christ is what gives all men (supposedly) an inate sense of purpose, of right and wrong.
And, as Smith pointed out in the Infants on Thrones sermon (because I have wanted to call it that sense before I ever heard your podcast 🙂 ), if man does not learn anything more than these instincts (to eat, sleep, and mate) then he is no more than a beast of the field.
But here is the Agency of man, and also the condemnation of man… that we are absolutely the only animals dumb/ smart enough to question these laws… to be skeptical, to ask questions that don’t even need to be asked, and dare to seek for their answers… to knock on doors we weren’t even designed to knock on.
So we will ask, we will seek, and we will knock. And only a fool would try to command us to do otherwise.
Needless to say, I think Joseph Smith, in his last days before his religion killed him, had come to understand quite a lot about how things work in this universe.
Call him a fraud if you want, but that dude, by the end, was so close to ruling God right out the equation… especially with lines like “God did not have the power to create us”, or deferring to the concept that God is just another man like us… or that he is a whole council of beings, not one entity…
Joseph even taught in that sermon that man can know truth by what “tastes right”… cognitive dissonance, cognitive resonance… exactly what we always grew up calling the “holy ghost.”
I don’t know where his intent was at his last days… was he a con artist? Or was he a man that understood so much about the nature of the universe and knew that the only way to get other people to understand what he did was to make up visions and new scriptures and revelations.
I might not be sticking around much longer in the LDS church, but I would have loved to sit and get to know Joseph with his facade dropped.
In the end… even in physics, we get to the point where we just start making up words for stuff… hell, even the word “spectrum” comes from scientists (Newton? Correct me) seeing diffracted light and considering the new images to be “ghosts” or “spectres.”
So maybe the best way to reach the common man is with base instinct words… demons, curses, spirits, visions, magic…
If so, Joseph was a genius.
But the church today is just a bunch of people pretending to be prophets for the sake of perpetuating tradition… and they do nothing but fuck up lives with the notion that every damn policy change they decree is an holy revelation from God.
August 6, 2017 at 1:16 am
More Duke!
August 8, 2017 at 3:34 am
It was a lot of fun to be on the show last week. Thanks, Marie and Bryce, and everybody!
I guess that Monson t-shirt of mine isn’t being sold anymore, so there’s no point trying to pimp it out. But for anyone curious, it looks a little something like this, minus the brick wall:
August 8, 2017 at 3:39 am
Duke, the shirt is amazing! Thanks for having us in your home. Also,thanks Marie and Bryce for letting me observe podcasting magic!