CES Letter v. The Book of Mormon pt. 2 - LDS Discussions | Ep. 2061
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.6 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 10 September 2025
⏱️ 106 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We are back today for part two of our examination of the CES Letter vs. the Book of Mormon. The CES Letter is perhaps one of the most influential documents in Mormon studies, and for years the LDS Church has criticized it and its author, Jeremy Runnells. Is this a fair treatment by the Church, or are Jeremy's questions on church doctrine valid?
In this series, we are going point by point through the questions raised in the CES Letter to discuss how they line up with the Book of Mormon, as well as the responses the Church has provided thus far.
Some of the questions we’ll cover include:
-Why is there no archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon?
-Where did the events of the Book of Mormon actually take place?
-Why does the Book of Mormon share so many similarities with other books from Joseph Smith’s time?
-Does the Book of Mormon reflect a Trinitarian view of God?
Join us today as we attempt to answer these questions—and more.
___________________
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. |
| 0:03.8 | LDS Discussions Edition. |
| 0:05.4 | Yes, LDS Discussions is not dead. |
| 0:07.9 | It's still breathing. |
| 0:09.4 | It is August 20th, 2025. |
| 0:12.4 | My birthday. |
| 0:13.3 | I'm 56 years old. |
| 0:15.2 | I have a relatively full head of hair. |
| 0:17.6 | No, I don't color my hair. |
| 0:19.8 | And I'm living my best life. So I just have to tell you |
| 0:23.2 | all, the 50s are not as bad as you may fear. They're pretty dang good. Anyway, happy birthday to me. |
| 0:29.9 | And we're excited for another episode of LDS discussions. For those who don't know, LDS discussions, |
| 0:35.3 | is a series, 60 plus episodes in the making where we try to look at Mormon Church truth claims as neutrally and objectively and as evidence-based as we possibly can. |
| 0:48.7 | We sometimes our biases seep through, but we do our best to let you learn about Mormon Church |
| 0:54.6 | Truth Claims and their validity as part of a series. |
| 0:57.6 | This series is best consumed in sequence. |
| 1:00.1 | So you can go to the LDS Discussions playlist on YouTube on the Mormon Stories |
| 1:04.4 | podcast channel, or you can check out the LDS Discussions series on Spotify, |
| 1:11.4 | which you can see on video now or also on Apple podcasts, |
| 1:14.2 | on audio. |
| 1:15.1 | There's lots of different ways to consume it, |
| 1:16.7 | but it's best consumed in sequence. |
... |
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