I will be speaking on Mormonism and the virgin birth. This will primarily be a walk-through of the relevant LDS sources with a brief evangelical Christian response. The main reason I want to do this presentation is to get the material on video (with a presentational feel) and get it on YouTube before the week of Christmas.
Location: UTLM Bookstore — 1358 S. West Temple Salt Lake City, UT
Time: Saturday, December 18, 2010 ยท 3:00pm – 4:30pm
Aaron, that's great. I hope that the eyes of sincere Mormons will be opened to hear this example
of why they should walk away from the leaders , leaders who can't be trusted to consistantly deliver
spiritual truth. May this effort of yours have a wide audience. God bless.
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The LDS ideas about the Virgin Birth are pretty disturbing. I don't even like to think about their view on it. Good luck!
Looking forward to the video once you've finished!
Me too!
On youtube yet?
Aaron,
Will you also comment on the doctrine of "immaculate conception' also? Its related, but that actually has to do with how Mary came into being. As far as I know thats only a catholic doctrine. "Hail mary full of grace…". How does the doctrine of the virigin birth relate to sexuality as practiced by christians? Does the LDS temple garments have anything to do with their teachings on this matter?
Not yet, I decided against posting the loooong and bumbling presentation and instead post segments of more polished versions of the presentation. First one up will be a simple video going over the material from McConkie on the subject.
Thanks for the update, Aaron. I am looking forward to it.
Undoubtedly there have been LDS who believe that God the Father had sexual intercourse with Mary. There are still some who do. I hope that Aaron's presentation points out the following things:
1. No statement by any LDS leader explicitly teaches that God the Father had sexual intercourse with Mary. Some of them hint at it, but nobody actually says it.
2. The real focus of such statements is on the literal father/son relationship between God the Father and Jesus Christ. LDS are concerned that some will mistakenly read Matthew's and Luke's words to mean that Jesus is the son of the Holy Spirit. LDS want to simply emphasize that God the Father is in fact the father of Jesus Christ in a literal way, and not in a symbolic way.
3. Those LDS who might believe that God the Father had sexual relations with Mary usually also believe that they were married. No LDS conceives of a situation in which unmarried individuals had sexual intercourse to procreate the Son of God.
4. Many (most?) LDS today do not believe that God the Father had sexual intercourse with Mary. It is an incredibly difficult thing to gauge because it isn't an issue anyone wants to talk about. For LDS, it is totally irrelevant to salvation and so we don't really care all that much. It becomes hard to know how widespread this folk doctrine is, but it is possible that only a minority believe it anymore.
5. Notions of sexual intercourse between God the Father and Mary spring from an era in which there was only one way to conceive a child….sexual intercourse. God revealed to LDS prophets that Jesus Christ is the son of God the Father, and then left LDS leaders and members to work out how exactly that works. In the early days of the Church, before the miracle of in vitro fertilization was developed, one logical conclusion was to suggest sexual intercourse.
6. Today, with the development of in vitro fertilization, nobody has any reason to suggest that the mechanism by which God the Father's chromosomes were contributed had to have been through sexual intercourse.
7. The LDS released the following statement to Fox News: "The Church does not claim to know how Jesus was conceived but believes the Bible and Book of Mormon references to Jesus being born of the Virgin Mary"
8. Nephi said the following: "And I looked and beheld the virgin again, bearing a child in her arms."
9. Ezra Taft Benson said: "He was the Only Begotten Son of our Heavenly Father in the flesh—the only child whose mortal body was begotten by our Heavenly Father. His mortal mother, Mary, was called a virgin, both before and after she gave birth"
10. Finally, this now famous statement from the LDS Newsroom is appropriate: "Not every statement made by a Church leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine. A single statement made by a single leader on a single occasion often represents a personal, though well-considered, opinion, but is not meant to be officially binding for the whole Church."
In summary, the LDS Church does *not* teach that God the Father had sexual intercourse with Mary. Some LDS leaders in the past have emphasized the doctrine that God the Father is the actual biological father of Jesus Christ's mortal flesh, and the implication in that day and age was that it must have been done through sexual intercourse. But it was never, ever, ever, taught as an "official" doctrine of the LDS Church, and it has been specifically repudiated by later prophets.
It is simply unChristian to misrepresent this issue, and to not tell the whole story. I hope that Aaron tells the whole story.