Gospel Tangents Podcast

Some people trust in God, but God either leaves them hanging, or answers in a way they don't understand. Are some disappointed in God? Others are quite lax in their religious devotion. Should God be Disappointed in some? Kurt Francom answers. Check out our conversation... https://youtu.be/GrCpDaAfw6o Don’t miss our other conversations with Kurt: https://gospeltangents.com/people/kurt-francom/ transcript to follow Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission transcript to follow Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved

In LDS Culture, we are constantly told to keep ourselves pure so that the Holy Ghost can dwell within us, that somehow sin separates us from the Holy Spirit. But there are cases where the Holy Ghost ministered to clearly sinful people. How do we explain that? Does God dwell in unholy temples? Kurt Francom will tackle that question. Check out our conversation... https://youtu.be/afEWYDY82_M Don’t miss our other conversations with Kurt: https://gospeltangents.com/people/kurt-francom/ transcript to follow Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission transcript to follow Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved

Kurt Francom is the author of "Is God Disappointed in Me?" He says God is never disappointed in us and embraces grace. But did he go too far? Is orthodox Kurt Francom spouting heresy? Check out our conversation... https://youtu.be/zRMArlcd3CQ Don’t miss our other conversations with Kurt: https://gospeltangents.com/people/kurt-francom/ transcript to follow Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission transcript to follow Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved

We're going to be discussing Mormons and crime. Steve Mayfield passed away on March 30, 2024. This interview is from 2018 where we discussed his collection of Mormon crime, both good guys and bad guys. For example, did you know that it was a Mormon FBI agent who arrested Patty Hearst following her participation of a bank robbery? We'll also discuss one of the most notorious spies in U.S, history, Robert Hanssen. Hanssen was also a Mormon FBI agent who passed secrets to the Russians. Of course, Steve also has a collection on the Mark Hofmann case, and we'll discuss his work with George Throckmorton who discovered how Mark Hofmann was forging documents. The "Dead Lee Scroll" is also a forgery we'll discuss, that hasn't been definitively tied to Hofmann. Check out our conversation... https://youtu.be/JzCO6LI5lXg transcript to follow Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Mormon Connection to Patty Hearst Kidnapping Introduction I’d like to introduce Steve Mayfield.  We’ll talk about Mormon involvement in the Patty Hearst kidnapping case.  Did you know that it was a Mormon FBI agent that arrested Patty?  Check out our conversation… GT:        00:01:01             Welcome to Gospel Tangents. Steve:   00:01:03             Thank You. GT:        00:01:04             I'm excited to have Steve Mayfield here. He is a documentation collector and we're going to talk a little bit about Mark Hofmann. We're going to talk a little bit about the Mountain Meadows Massacre. We're going to talk a little bit about the FBI and Mormons. Steve:   00:01:31             Yes. GT:        00:01:32             Which I think will be a lot of fun. So, Steve has some amazing stories and so why don't you get us a little bit about your background? Steve:   00:01:36             Okay. GT:        00:01:37             How did you get involved in collecting? Steve:   00:01:39             Oh, gee. Well, I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area. For those interested in genealogy, I'm a seventh generation Latter-day Saint. So, my family history goes all the way back to Ohio in one family line and Nauvoo. And I've always had an interest in history. When I was in high school, my desire was to be a history teacher specifically, maybe teach seminary or institute. But when I was a senior in high school, this was way back in 1974. Most people weren't even around. We had one of these field trips to San Francisco and it included Golden Gate Park, the Chinese Tea Garden, an unofficial trip to the Haight-Ashbury, for those who remember that area, and also tour the FBI office. And I just fell in love with what people in the FBI did, all that work that I wanted to become the next was Efrem Zimbalist Jr, who happened to be the star of the TV show FBI back during the '60s. After I graduated from high school, I served my mission in Colorado-Nebraska. And in late 1972 I was assigned to way out east to Grand Island, Nebraska, which is kind of hard for person used to mountains when it's all flatland and wintery. One of the members of the local LDS district presidency out there was also the local FBI agent. So, we had a number of conversations. I indicated my interest in working with the FBI. And so, he suggested, well, get hired on as a clerk or clerical position with the bureau and then get a college degree and then you might become an agent. So, we put the paperwork in. I came home in February of '73 and then by July I had received my appointment to work as a file clerk in San Francisco. Steve:   00:03:27             I was there for four years. Of course, all this time I'm worried. I love history, but yet I'm in law enforcement. How can I intermingle? Well, my whole working career has been in law enforcement, but I seem to have come across historical occurrences in each of the agencies I worked for. When I was at the FBI, I was there during the attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford.

The Bible talks about the 12 Springs of Moses for the 12 Tribes of Israel. George Potter has found them in Saudi Arabia. Check out our conversation... https://youtu.be/C98VYjaXF10 Don’t miss our other conversations with George: https://gospeltangents.com/people/george-potter/ transcript to follow Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission transcript to follow Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved

Where is the real Mt Sinai? Is it in Arabia? Most believe it is not the traditional site on the Sinai Peninsula. There are at least 13 possible sites for the real Mt Sinai. George Potter believes it is in Saudi Arabia, and gives his reasons for this. Check out our conversation... https://youtu.be/upjTItr7grE Don’t miss our other conversations with George: https://gospeltangents.com/people/george-potter/ transcript to follow Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission transcript to follow Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved

Is Gethsemane part of the atonement of Christ? Many LDS say yes, while Protestants generally say no. What do Deidre Green & Eric Huntsman say? Check out our conversation... https://youtu.be/b5UDmyEDQ98 Don’t miss our other conversations about atonement: https://gospeltangents.com/lds_theology/atonement/   Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission Is Gethsemane Part of Atonement? GT  00:47  I want to throw more one more question at you guys, and then we'll dive a little bit more into the book. So, I also spoke with a Lutheran pastor, Willie Grills, and he said, "I have a question for you, Rick." And I was like, I ask the questions. I don't answer questions. But anyway. (Chuckling)  So Willie had read Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine. And he said, "Is it true that Mormons believe," and so I'll throw this at both of you here. You can go back and see what my answer was and see if I got it right or wrong. But anyway, "Is it true that Mormons believe that Christ suffered all of the sins in the garden, rather than on the cross?" How would you respond to that? I won't tell you what I said. Eric  01:38  I think that there has been a pendulum that has swung. I think a lot of it had to do with in the mid-20th century, Joseph Fielding Smith, really taught a lot about Gethsemane, to compensate for an over stress or focus on the cross. Then, his son-in-law, Bruce R. McConkie ran with that. So, a lot of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s, that's what we grew up with. But if you look at the early teachings in the Church, and earlier leaders, it was, he suffered and died and rose the third day. I mean, that emphasis, I think, was more traditional on the cross. Then with Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie it swung to more Gethsemane, and I think in the 90s, and in this century, we have something which I think is more useful, we're in the middle. The way I teach this in a New Testament context is the garden is where he took upon himself the burden of not just our sins, but our sorrows, our heartaches, our afflictions, our sicknesses. That did cause suffering, because it was like the crushing of the olives, etc. But he carried that burden to the cross, where they had an end. So, I think what happens is, not only did we, within the church, I think, perhaps focus too much on Gethsemane, it also gave a lot of ammunition to people outside the church to say, "You Mormons have got it wrong. You think he just suffered for our sins in the garden," when that's never been what our scriptures--I mean, John Hilton has done a lot of work on this. He's actually done, with some of his research assistants, studies of Latter-day Saint conference discourses, etc. And up until about the 1950s and 60s, you did not have a primary emphasis on Gethsemane. And now starting in the 90s and since, you see something a little bit more balanced, both Gethsemane and the cross. Eric  03:28  And so I think it's partly a function of when most of us grew up. We grew up and it was a Gethsemane [emphasis.] And, you know, Bob Millet used to also say that it's natural for us to teach to our distinctives. Because we have an understanding of Gethsemane, thanks to Mosiah 3 and Doctrine & Covenants, section 19, that others don't. We really emphasize that. And I would add to what Bob said, I think sometimes we also react--this is not a positive thing. We react against what we perceive as the excesses of others. We thought people were focusing on the cross and suffering too much. So, we were skittish of the cross, and we wanted to emphasize Gethsemane, because we knew more about that. What I like to teach in New Testament context is it's not a discrete one-time atoning event, it's an atoning journey: Gethsemane, to the cross, and then all the way the garden tomb. In the Book of Mormon, atonement sometimes means atonement for sin,

We're going to dive into some other atonement theories, including womanist views? Is that the same thing as feminist? Check out our conversation... https://youtu.be/4Zrf7wL3sbc Don’t miss our other conversations about atonement: https://gospeltangents.com/lds_theology/atonement/ Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission Objective vs Subjective Atonement GT  00:41  But I do like some of the other models. And I like--because I know, in fact, I just pulled up the Wikipedia article, because I was looking at it. It's really different than the one I remember from 10 years ago when I saw it. But I would like to hit some of the main ones. Could you describe for an audience who may not be familiar with other models? I want to get away from penal substitution, personally. I want to talk about the others, because I think people don't know what they are. So, Eric, you mentioned moral influence. I remember in your chapter, you talked about nonviolent and womanist. And I think Deidre, you're kind of the--you're the womanist [expert.] And is that just another word for feminism, that's not supposed to be as... Eric  01:28  Deidre, why don't we do this, because you're more of a theologian? Why don't I do the three classic approaches, and then we'll let Deidre do the more theological expansions. And for your listeners who haven't seen the book yet, we divide the book into two sections. The first is called Scriptural Historical Foundations and the second section is called Theological Exploration. So let me do the foundation part and then Deidre can do the expansion. Eric  01:52  Not everyone agrees with this, and the person who immediately followed me, Ariel Bybee Laughton, pointed out that this is an outdated rubric. But there was a Swedish scholar, Gustaf Alin, who came up with three major theories. And the one was objective, and then one was subjective, and one was what he called Christus Victor. And the objective is an umbrella for atonement models that are trying to change someone else besides ourselves. So, it's either for those who use the term propitiate, propitiate an angry God, or to ransom us from the devil, or somehow change something else. I mean, J.B. would, even, I think, subscribe to this: change nature and natural law that are demanding a consequence. Eric  02:40  Subjective models are that the atonement is changing us. And just fast forward to the Givens, healing would be a subjective model, the Atonement is changing us. What Gustav Alin pointed out with Christus Victor, and he had some good New Testament models for this, is that Christ was victorious over something like sin or a death. So, those were the three big rubrics. And we had people in the Middle Ages--Abelard was for--which one was that? He was objective, right? And then Anselm was subjective. This is outside of my ken here. But then we get into many other models. And so Ariel set the stage for that. And then someone like Deidre, who does so much with contemporary theology, was able to bring in these non-violent models. And yes, she'll tell you womanist is very much different from feminist. Go ahead, Deidre. Womanist Atonement Deidre  03:38  So, I work primarily as a feminist theologian. So the term womanist refers to women of color, specifically and largely black women. There are lots of different subsets, different names that people will use to specify women of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, with the recognition that feminism isn't a monolith. There's intersectionality, that issues like race, class, different social locations affect women differently. And so, Delores Williams, who I mentioned earlier, was one of these pioneers of womanist theology. She also made an incredibly difficult case against traditional atonement theories, specifically as a black woman, and talked about how this idea of what she called surrogate suffering,

Some people object to penal substitution as a model for atonement. Why does God require the death of Jesus? Is that part of a loving or a vengeful God? Dr Deidre Green & Dr Eric Huntsman weigh in on the pros and cons of penal substitution. Check out our conversation... https://youtu.be/FremIKcy8vw Don’t miss our other conversations about atonement: https://gospeltangents.com/lds_theology/atonement/ Copyright © 2024 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission Pros & Cons of Penal Substitution Interview Eric  00:38  What happens is, if it is this infinite, eternal thing that we experience and that we benefit from and yet it is infinite and eternal means the mortal mind can't fully comprehend it.  We necessarily fall back on models. And models help us understand what we're experiencing. And because some models make so much initial sense--so, for instance, people say, "Well, mercy can't rob justice and the Book of Mormon talks about how Jesus suffered for our sins." And so that aligns with what we have throughout Christian history called penal substitution. That's the one. And we have some very approachable models that some of our own leaders have given us. For instance, President Packer talked about the debtor theory. Or President Hinckley talked about, "He took a lickin' for me," this idea of substitution. Those work so well, and teaching our children or people in seminary or BYU religion classes, we assume that's all there is to it. And the reality is the Atonement is so rich and so deep that all these different models catch a different piece of it. Eric  01:41  One of the things we try to establish in the introduction is we think all of these models are important and useful. A couple of our reviews, which, fortunately, have been pretty positive so far, have said, "Yeah, they're showing us all these other ones besides penal substitution." And we have never suggested that penal substitution is not an important, if not vital, way of understanding the Atonement. It's just that there are additional ones, which the Book of Mormon, itself, supports. So, Fiona Givens, she and Terryl talk a lot about the healing aspect of the Atonement. Well, that's built into the Book of Mormon. And there are all kinds of other transformational models. One of our contributors, J.B. Haws, who was focusing on atonement in the Doctrine & Covenants, he took the idea of substitution and by taking the word penal out and giving us another concept that helps us understand why it is so vicarious. He didn't use this term, but the way I've described it to people is J.B., he actually has a model that his wife gave him about jeep-ing and having a problem, their natural consequences of making mistakes. And so I've kind of described that as consequential substitution. It's still substitution. But it's not just that there's some Shylock in the sky out there demanding his ounce of blood, if you've got the Merchant of Venice reference there, that it is substitutionary. But one of the things that, as Deidre says, has been attacked through the ages is well, who is demanding the punishment? Is a loving father demanding punishment, or is it a personification of justice, etc.? And so we laid out some of those. Ariel went to town on it, if you read her very deep chapter, which looks at all of these patristic models, Church Fathers approach to it. Even in the late antiquity, in the Middle Ages, there were so many different approaches just trying to catch a flavor of this. I like to describe these different models as being different pieces of a mosaic or different colored pieces of glass in a beautiful window. They're all casting a different light on it. So, we were just hoping we could present people all of these different ways that scripture and theology have tried to explain what Jesus has done for us. GT  03:44  Yeah, very good. I think, personally,

Scholars Diedre Green & Eric Huntsman discuss their book on Atonement, exploring different models of Christ's sacrifice and how grace plays a role. They delve into the complexity of atonement frameworks, including feminist and LDS perspectives, and examine the role of violence in theology.