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Joseph M. Spencer’s Followers (18)
Joseph M. Spencer
More books by Joseph M. Spencer…
“beware of reading strange mystical insights into obscure imagery. Don't start asking weird questions about butter and honey, wondering whether there's some kind of deep mystery contained in the image. And don't assume that the "young cow" refers to some future prophet, while the "two sheep" are his counselors, or some such nonsense. Isaiah doesn't speak in mystical allegories, as is sometimes assumed. Keep it simple. I think you'll find, as you read other translations, that Isaiah's far simpler than you've imagined. Seriously.”
― The Vision of All: Twenty-five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record
― The Vision of All: Twenty-five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record
“Shall we tackle the most difficult bit of advice? let's do. Here it is, put far too strongly at first: Stop looking for Jesus in Isaiah. ... All too often, we read Isaiah, talking to ourselves in something like this way: "This doesn't make sense. Nor does this. Oh, that sounds like Jesus! Okay, this doesn't make sense again. Nor that. Oh, Jesus again! Now this doesn't make sense. . . ." ...”
― The Vision of All: Twenty-five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record
― The Vision of All: Twenty-five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record
“It is essential to love that it be, not a focus of two persons on each other, but of two persons on the same thing external to them both.
Although it has always been on offer, God's love cannot really be experienced unless or until one works side by side with him at transforming the world--unless or until one has confronted real affliction with him ("suffer[ed] with him,' Paul says in Romans 8:17) while tackling the task of remodeling the world (in what Paul calls, again in Romans 8:17, being "joint-heirs with Christ").
Love, in other words, has to be understood as more than a mere emotion; it is a way of being together in the world or, better, a way of working together to change the world.
What begins as a kind of instrumentality--I hope only to be a tool in God's hands--eventually becomes a very real partnership, ideally bound by covenant.”
― For Zion: A Mormon Theology of Hope
Although it has always been on offer, God's love cannot really be experienced unless or until one works side by side with him at transforming the world--unless or until one has confronted real affliction with him ("suffer[ed] with him,' Paul says in Romans 8:17) while tackling the task of remodeling the world (in what Paul calls, again in Romans 8:17, being "joint-heirs with Christ").
Love, in other words, has to be understood as more than a mere emotion; it is a way of being together in the world or, better, a way of working together to change the world.
What begins as a kind of instrumentality--I hope only to be a tool in God's hands--eventually becomes a very real partnership, ideally bound by covenant.”
― For Zion: A Mormon Theology of Hope
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