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Faith Crisis and Reconstruction Podcast Series, Episode 11: New Testament and Belief in God

In this episode, I discuss New Testament scholarship that can be difficult to a traditional LDS testimony. We will analyze the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith and determine if it’s appropriate to separate these two concepts. I will give my best defense for why one would want to believe in God. Then we will discuss various models of defining God, including the Hinduism avatar concept of personifying a more abstract definition of God with a more relatable and metaphorical avatar. This is difficult material and the intended audience is for those who are already struggling deeply with belief in Jesus and in God. The goal is to dump ideas that make it more difficult to believe, identify what we see as intellectually valid and religiously and spiritually meaningful, and reconstruct faith with those guiding principles.

Topics:

• Traditional LDS view of New Testament
• Scholarly view of the New Testament
  • historical Jesus
  • Gospels
  • Paul
• Evolving or conflicting Christology in the early Christian movement
• Great Apostasy
• Progressive Christian views of Jesus
• Why believe in God?
• Models of belief in God
  • Traditional
  • Progressive Christian
  • Jordan Peterson
  • Transhumanism
• Hindu avatars and concept of personifying abstract ideas of God
• Historical Jesus vs Christ of faith
• My testimony of Jesus, God, and the gospel of Jesus Christ