On February 25th (2014) the Mormon Church posted a new article in its Gospel Topics section: “Becoming Like God.” Deseret News says this essay accomplishes “explaining the faith’s doctrine” on the topic, and the Salt Lake Tribune likewise says it “explains Mormon teaching” on humans becoming like God. The essay is 3,500 words long, includes 56 footnotes, and reflects a “contribution of scholars.” Yet for all of this, readers learn surprisingly little of what “becoming like God” actually means within Mormonism.
The essay provides descriptive phrases such as:
Latter-day Saints… consider every person divine in origin, nature, and potential- Each possesses seeds of divinity
- all people may “progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny”
- the divine nature that humans inherit can be developed to become like their Heavenly Father’s
- [God]…can help each willing, obedient child of God receive of His fulness and glory
- men and women have the potential to be exalted to a state of godliness
- to live as God lives, to love as He loves
And on it goes, talking about “humanity’s divine nature and potential,” but never plainly defining what that actually consists of.
The essay shifts into apologetics mode to defend the Mormon doctrine of deification. The reader learns that the Bible talks about men becoming gods – after all, it tells us that humans are created in God’s image; Paul says we are the offspring of God; and Psalm 82:6 says “Ye are gods,” children of God. Early Christian church fathers spoke of human divinity. Yet, in the midst of this 800-word apologetic section, we are told, “What exactly the early church fathers meant when they spoke of becoming God is open to interpretation…” Thus far in the essay, the reader does not know what the Mormon doctrine of “becoming like God” specifically means, nor does he know what the Christian concept of deification means, but he does know that both faiths use the word “deification.” A footnote further clarifies, “There are likely important differences as well as similarities between the thinking of the church fathers and Latter-day Saint teachings.”
When the essay arrives at Joseph Smith’s teachings and LDS scripture citations, the language becomes a bit more pointed, speaking of people receiving “a fulness of God’s glory and be[coming] ‘gods, even the sons of God,’” being “made equal to Him.”
“[T]hose who keep covenants, including the covenant of eternal marriage, will inherit ‘all heights and depths.’ Then,’ says the revelation, ‘shall they be gods, because they have no end.’ They will receive ‘a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.’” (Essay quoting D&C 132:19-20)
Though this language provides a little more insight into Mormon exaltation or deification, it is still not very clear. What does all this strange-sounding jargon mean? It would have helped had more of D&C 132:19-20 been included, because that further explains that these people who keep covenants “shall inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions, all heights and depths…Then shall they be gods because they have all power, and the angels are subject to them.”
When the essay quotes “Joseph Smith’s most detailed known discussion of divine nature and exaltation” found in the King Follett Discourse, readers learn that
“God ‘was once as one of us’ and ‘all the spirits that God ever sent into the world’ were likewise ‘susceptible of enlargement.’ Joseph Smith preached that long before the world was formed, God found ‘himself in the midst’ of these beings and ‘saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself’ and be ‘exalted’ with Him.
“Joseph told the assembled Saints, ‘You have got to learn how to be a god yourself.’ In order to do that, the Saints needed to learn godliness, or to be more like God.” (Essay quoting from several different versions of the King Follett Discourse, all found at josephsmithpapers.org)
While Joseph Smith’s teaching could be a very helpful tool in understanding Mormon exaltation/becoming like God, the essay informs readers that, due to the wind blowing on the day the Prophet spoke and “the limitations of transcription techniques,” all that is available of this important doctrinal sermon is an “imperfect” account that “is not canonized” so “it should not be treated as a doctrinal standard.”
Following Joseph Smith, the essay tells readers, “the doctrine that humans can progress to exaltation and godliness” was taught by fifth LDS President Lorenzo Snow in his “well-known couplet: …As God now is, man may be”; affirmed by LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley; captured in song by early Latter-day Saint Eliza Snow; and included in a 1995 Ensign article by Mormon apostle Dallin Oaks when he wrote that Mormon theology “begins with heavenly parents. Our highest aspiration is to be like them.”
Thus ends the portion of the essay that was provided to “explain” the Mormon doctrine of “becoming like God.” Honestly, an explanation of this doctrine using the exposition found in the Achieving a Celestial Marriage student manual would have been much more clear:
“God is an exalted man who once lived on an earth and underwent experiences of mortality… The progression of our Father in heaven to godhood, or exaltation, was strictly in accordance with eternal principles… By definition, exaltation includes the ability to procreate the family unit throughout eternity… All who obtain this exaltation will have the privilege of completing the full measure of their existence, and they will have a posterity that will be as innumerable as the stars of heaven… The Father has promised us that through our faithfulness we shall be blessed with the fulness of his kingdom. In other words, we will have the privilege of becoming like him. To become like him we must have all the powers of godhood; thus a man and his wife when glorified will have spirit children who eventually will go on an earth like this one we are on and pass through the same kind of experiences, being subject to mortal conditions, and if faithful, then they also will receive the fulness of exaltation and partake of the same blessings. There is no end to this development; it will go on forever. We will become gods and have jurisdiction over worlds, and these worlds will be peopled by our own offspring.” (1976, pages 129 and 132; emphasis retained from the original)
Here, in under 200 words, “exaltation” is clearly defined; “fulness” is clearly defined; “becoming like him” is clearly defined; and human “godhood” is clearly defined.
Instead of clarifying and explaining this Mormon doctrine that is said to be “central to the gospel of Jesus Christ,” the recent Gospel Topics essay uses 3,500 words to say next to nothing about it. But then, the Church’s essay does seem to identify clear teaching such as that found in the student manual quoted above as “cartoonish” or a “caricature” of the doctrinal reality.
Rather than spell out the official tenets of Mormonism, the Church essay informs readers of how Mormon members “imagine exaltation,” seeing “the seeds of godhood” in nurturing and loving children, in giving service, and in the order of the universe. The closest the essay gets to revealing the actual meaning of “exaltation” (as historically taught by Mormon leaders) is this:
“[W]hile few Latter-day Saints would identify with caricatures of having their own planet, most would agree that the awe inspired by creation hints at our creative potential in the eternities.”
LDS author Richard Bushman told the Salt Lake Tribune that the “Becoming Like God” essay “defines a boundary of what we truly believe and also tries to make it as appealing as possible.”
It’s pretty obvious that the Church was trying to make Mormonism sound appealing (and mainstream), but do people really come away from this essay with clarity regarding the Mormon doctrine of exaltation?
Apparently not, for since the posting of this essay dozens of media outlets have been proclaiming, “LDS church affirms that its faithful won’t get their own planets in afterlife” and “Mormon Church reveals people do NOT get their own planets in the afterlife” when in fact the essay actually says no such thing — if it did, it would be at complete odds with Mormonism’s historic official doctrinal teachings on exaltation. (Check out the MRM website and two related Mormon Coffee posts here and here to read about authoritative and clear Mormon teachings on Mormons, planets and the afterlife.)
In the end, the Mormon Church’s lengthy Gospel Topics discourse leaves readers with little more than a few “hints” of this crowning doctrine of the “restored” gospel – that is, the eternal future that Mormonism promises is awaiting those who become Gods.
OK, so they’re getting their planets despite what the news media is saying.
It only makes sense that these exalted LDS folks get planets. After all they’re going to be procreating spirit children like rabbits and they need a place to put them. Brother, you wouldn’t want them hanging around the house for all of eternity would you?
And where in Gods’ Word do we find any of this? We don’t find it in God’s Word because it isn’t there. We have the writings of the Church Fathers, we have the writings of the heretics, we have Church history and we have Church tradition in addition to the Bible. None of this LDS doctrine appears any where. BTW, does it appear in the BofM.
This notion doesn’t appear in other Mormon sects, as I like to point out continually. Like the LDS doctrine of salvation, this men-to-gods and getting your own planet is also a slow-roll-out. The “essay” appears to do little to clarify the doctrine.
I think the LDS church got caught with its magic underwear down when the musical “Book of Mormon” became a hit and proclaimed the planets scenario. The LDS church is always behind the curve and reacting to societal pressures then calling it “revelation”.
So here in a couple of minutes is what the LDS sect believes. Planets get a mention at 2:15. This is a good rendition because there’s enough Christianity mixed into it that we can see how a counterfeit works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlbDHejQFV4
Sharon,
I believe that you misunderstood part of the essay. You comment – ”But then, the Church’s essay does seem to identify clear teaching such as that found in the student manual quoted above as “cartoonish” or a “caricature” of the doctrinal reality.”
Here is the part of the essay you are referring to with context around it –
Note what I have bolded. It initially states that the traditional heaven is usually shown as people sitting on their own cloud with a harp. Then it says ”similarly” that LDS heaven is reduced in ”media” to people receiving their own planets. It does not state, nor is it referring to, church manuals/materials, but is referring to the common media – for example Falcon’s usual outbursts here on this site.
In actuality, the LDS teaches, and this is found in the D&C, that this earth will become the Celestial Kingdom for all who lived on it (D&C 88:18-20).
I disagree with your thoughts that the essay is vague about the doctrine of exaltation. It literally states that – ”The doctrine of humans’ eternal potential to become like their Heavenly Father is central to the gospel of Jesus Christ”. Also, in the quote above it states – “… most [LDS] would agree that the awe inspired by creation hints at our creative potential in the eternities.” Our own creative potential – what does that mean after referencing the creation of this universe? But then again, it could be that I am LDS and ‘grew up’ with this language and the writer of the essay has not written it in non-LDS phraseology. But when it uses phrases like becoming like God and having our own spirit children like God, etc, to me it is clear.
Ralph……..buddy, you’re going to hurt my feelings with your characterizing what I write as “out bursts”.
Ralph where is what I say untrue? I’ve yet to have anyone of you TBMs refute what I, or for that matter, any Christian poster here writes.
Here’s your problem Ralph; you just don’t like the way I express myself. That’s really the bottom line. Why do you want to make this about me? I think I know why. It’s because it’s easier to go after me then defend the false gospel you embrace. You know the truth Ralph. You’re just not ready to give up on your sect of Mormonism.
So don’t give me this people sitting on clouds playing harps routine. You try this every time we address the topics of LDS folks becoming gods and having their own planets to rule. It’s the same tactic you use Ralph on every topic we comment on here. That is, you try to find something, anything and in defense of Mormonism say, “SEE, SEE it’s just like that!!”
Mormons having planets to rule as gods is NOT a caricature. Its’ what your sect of Mormonism teaches and believes. So don’t give me that harps and clouds routine.
You believe you will become a god, your wife a goddess and that you will together procreate spirit off spring into eternity who will then populate the worlds you have created. Is that a falcon out burst Ralph or is it what you believe? I can’t wait for the nuance of a reply to what is an accurate description of Mormon doctrine.
I can always count on our LDS posters to try and muddy the waters and not be direct when addressing these things that are foolish, embarrassing and which are not a caricature but do reflect what the LDS believe.
Ralph
Here’s a short extract from a letter I wrote to the Daily Mail, I suggest you read it.
“You use a quote from the LDS article saying that “the ‘cartoonish image of people receiving their own planets’ is not how members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints envision it.” without ever having looked into the truth of that claim so perhaps you would consider using the following quotes from church prophets & leaders in the interests of presenting a more balanced article. They should be enough to convince even the most ardent apologist that this latest essay is yet another example of the ongoing deception practised by the cult.
“The Father has promised us that through our faithfulness we shall be blessed with the fullness of his kingdom. In other words we will have the privilege of becoming like him. To become like him we MUST HAVE ALL THE POWERS OF GODHOOD; thus a man and his wife when glorified will have spirit children who eventually will go on an earth like this one we are on and pass through the same kind of experiences, being subject to mortal conditions, and if faithful, then they also will receive the fullness of exaltation and partake of the same blessings. There is no end to this development; it will go on forever. We will become gods and HAVE JURISDICTION OVER WORLDS, and these worlds will be peopled by our own offspring. We will have an endless eternity for this.
– Joseph Fielding Smith Jr., Doctrines of Salvation, Vol.2, p.48
“The real life we’re preparing for is eternal life. Secular knowledge has for us eternal significance. Our conviction is that God, our Heavenly Father, wants us to live the life that He does. We learn both the spiritual things and the secular things SO THAT WE MAY ONE DAY CREATE WORLDS AND PEOPLE AND GOVERN THEM.
Teachings of Mormon prophet Spencer W. Kimball 1982
“Each one of you has it within the realm of HIS POSSIBILITY TO DEVELOP A KINGDOM OVER WHICH YOU WILL PRESIDE AS ITS KING and You will need to develop yourself and grow in ability and power and worthiness, to GOVERN SUCH A WORLD WITH ALL OF ITS PEOPLE.
From a church lesson for 4-11 year old children
It’s time to wake up Ralph, time to open your eyes, time to admit you’ve been fooled & time to see that deception is a way of life in the LDS
Ralph,
You are being disingenuous again. You bring up that the earth will become a celestial kingdom for all who live on it, but you fail to mention that Jo taught this in 1832 – LONG BEFORE he changed his doctrine about it. 10 years later, it was three degrees in the Celestial Kingdom, not one. If you want to go back to doctrines that were obviously changed later, and claim that that is now the standard, then we can assuredly say that the temple ritual and celestial marriage, which were not introduced until 1843, are really not true Mormon doctrine either. Your post is purposefully obtuse. Falcon is dead on right, and you know it. Your little diversion with D&C 88 is ridiculous. You only tell part of the story, to try and seem more Christian.
That the Mormon Hierarchy has taught that ONLY men and women who live in polygamy will attain the highest degree of the celestial kingdom and get “their own planets” is beyond dispute. The church’s obvious tactics to dumb this down, (which you have taken to like a duck to water) to appear more Christian is transparent. Unfortunately your own interpretations of Mormon Doctrine do not suffice to clarify what Sharon posted. And lets test what you say about Sharon.
You say that she “misunderstood” part of the essay. Sharon said, (in CONTEXT)
But you say that Sharon somehow misunderstood about what was in the essay because,
What did SHARON say? That “the church does seem to identify clear teaching such as that found in the student manual quoted above as cartoonish.” The essay says, “Latter-day Saints’ doctrine of exaltation is often similarly reduced in media to a cartoonish image of people receiving their own planets.”
So how did Sharon misrepresent? She did not. She told us exactly what the church did in their essay. Identify how the clear teaching about the Mormon doctrine of Exaltation (which she, Sharon quoted above in HER article) is portrayed as “cartoonish”, or a “caricature”. Who does this, is irrelevant. She never even hinted at what you twist her words into.
Yes, the MEDIA or “critics” do say that Mormons teach that they will have their own planets, (BUT SO DO MORMON “AUTHORITIES” THEMSELVES) and that has been lambasted by apologists and the Church as being a caricature of what Mormon Exaltation is (as proved in the essay).
But the fact is, it is a CENTRAL TENANT of the doctrine, which you then try to (in a very disingenuous way), obfuscate – by quoting one of Jo’s older “revelations” BEFORE he added this to the doctrine; which is, in your mind I’m sure, very slick, but only comes across as deceptive.
It is you, Ralph, who have done what Mormon apologists always do, take a sentence structure that you can use to distract from the real purpose of the article, which you shed no light on, and then craft a rebuttal to your own made up version of something that was never said. You then give us YOUR VERSION of what YOU THINK Mormon Exaltation is, (and only in part) quoting from “revelations” that were obviously added to and had their meanings radically changed by Jo years later.
I have shown Ralph to be disingenuous, and here is why. Mormons ADDED to the doctrine that is portrayed in D&C 88. Here is how,
Franklin D. Richards wrote this for the Millennial Star in 1854:
Notice what Richard’s argument here is (in relation to proving Adam God) which works for the CK argument as well, that “the Lord” would “reveal unto my Church things which have been kept hid.” As Heber C. Kimball taught,
Kimball (as did others) showed how Jo’s version of the CK had EXPANDED and changed in later teachings. Yes, the CK would be on earth. But it would be left behind when Mormon god candidates finally learned all they needed to. If we use what Ralph tells us as factual doctrine, then HELL would also be here. And that makes no sense, until you read what these men ACTUALLY SAY about it, which Ralph and his fellow apologists NEVER MENTION. Notice that Kimball speaks of us going to other earths, the one, for example that Adam came from, that Eloheim came from, from where Jehovah the Lord came from… and says no, we will not. Those are their earths, not this one. Those are the earths of the Hierarchy of Gods: Adam and the Grandfather God, Eloheim, and LATER, you will get to be “A FATHER OF AN EARTH YOURSELVES”.
Joseph L. Robinson wrote,
As we see here, there will be many “Adam & Eve’s” that will have their own planets, because “the names of the first man and woman OF EVERY EARTH THAT WAS EVER ORGANIZED” would be Adam & Eve. The reason why Mormons don’t like to reveal the truth about getting their own planets, is because it is central to this doctrine of ADAM GOD. But it is a fact.
James Beck wrote in 1861,
Obviously, these things were being taught and the “saints” understood them perfectly. It is only later Mormon “apologists” who seem to have a problem with this doctrine, which Jo and Brigham taught, and they want everyone else to believe that it is HARD to understand, or that they meant something else. But they did not. The quotes above PROVE IT. But I doubt our Mormon apologist friends will have anything to say about it, because that is their M.O. Take an innocuous sentence out of context and divert the conversation and then quote some obscure scripture while leaving out the BIG PICTURE. The plethora of quotes that SHOW they are wrong.
Brigham Young taught,
They will get a glorified body, but then are at the beck and call of the married gods, who because they are married get to be gods. According to D&C 132 they are the slaves of those who have a “better resurrection” or higher glory. Smith said,
You have to be married so you can be a Mormon god. This is so that when you get your own planet, you can have spirit babies by your many wives and people them with your spirit children. Any Mormon who says this is not Mormon Doctrine is purposefully lying.
Brigham Young also taught that Mormon “apostates” would become the devils of those worlds, until they degenerate so far that they devolve back into “intelligences” and are then recycled as a spirit baby of some future Mormon god, which perhaps may even become gods themselves! Since devils are needed in the Mormon plan of salvation, this was a logical choice, according to Young. There would always be Mormon Apostates to make devils out of! Ready made Satans! This was Mormon doctrine to Brigham Young, but wasn’t to Joseph F. Smith. Such is the consistency of Mormon “prophets”, who change their minds about the validity of each “prophets” “revelations” constantly, and explain it all away by saying that they finally received more “light and knowledge” that wasn’t available when the original statement, revelation, policy, doctrine, regulation, was first implemented. God reveals “folklore” and “speculation” to them all the time, it seems.
On the last post, I delved into this doctrine and not one of our Mormon apologists had a thing to say about it. The overwhelming evidence is too much for them to even attempt to refute it. The only argument they have, is that it is “folklore” or “opinion”, but I also proved that this is a modern Mormon lie. This doctrine of the earth as a staging planet was taught by Jo himself, and added upon by later “apostles” and “prophets”,
But Mormon “prophets” DO teach that God progresses!
The Mormon God could easily have been a sinful man. He might have even been a recycled Son of Perdition!
And,
But how did the FIRST Mormon God come to be? This whole scenario collapses because it is totally illogical. This does not explain the God of the Bible, it makes Him into a totally different God, one like the Gnostics, or the Heretics that sprang out of their teachings.
Are all these Authorities wrong? Modern Mormons would have you think so. And what happened to Orson Pratt, who taught what Modern Mormon “prophets” teach today:
This has ever been the problem with Mormonism, that it teaches that God still PROGRESSES IN KNOWLEDGE. That he CAN’T be “all knowing”. This is not Christianity, but some kind of weird Gnosticism. This is what you get by following false prophets, and those today are no different, only in that they learned to shut up to perpetuate the lie that they are a Christian sect.
Some more quotes about getting your own planet:
Brigham Young,
Heber C. Kimball,
Spencer W. Kimball, who taught in Conference,
Orson Pratt,
Orson Pratt even once tried to speculate how the FIRST MORMON GOD could have come into existence:
Particles of “intelligence”? Yet, that is what the Mormon God (according to Jo Smith) once was. An “organized intelligence”.
As the Father’s was, by his father and so on and so on. Marion G. Romney stated,
The whole object of Mormonism is to BE GOD. They want to have the same power, be worshiped in the same way, and become GOD. Not partake of God’s divine nature and live with him again (as if this wasn’t enough), but BE GOD’S OF THEIR OWN WORLDS, be “Saviors”, and all that OUR GOD is. This is so unlike Christianity, no wonder Mormons try desperately to hide it and deny it with their “folklore” rants.
Any questions?
grindael and old man,
Thank you very much for keeping the “Ralphs” honest. They either don’t have a clue about what Mormonism has taught or they are blatant liars. I get so tired of these Mormon wannabee apologists coming on here and trying to finesse Mormon teaching and doctrine. You know what comes next, because you both are experienced at the game these folks play? Oh yea, it’s going to be the old “bear the testimony” time because they are painted into a corner and the only thing they can depend on is their “feelings” which they think is truth revealed.
So which era of Mormonism do these folks want to buy-into? I’ll tell you what era. It’s the one that they feel most comfortable with. I’ve observed this massaging of the message way too often and quite frankly, I find it absolutely and totally dishonest.
And here’s the other thing. We’re going to get a lot of this “you don’t understand” nonsense. I will be forced to once again point out to them that “understanding” and “believing” are two different things.
All of us who post here understand perfectly what Mormonism and all it various sects have and do teach, believe and practice. It’s too bad these LDS folks can’t be honest with themselves.
Or Falcon,
They will tell us once again to read the Book of Mormon, which has so little of the evolved teachings of Jo Smith in it, that it is utterly useless as a way to determine what Mormonism really is.
“They will tell us once again to read the Book of Mormon”
Exactly what my ex was told to do a few weeks after she stopped going to church.
Don’t they realise that very little LDS doctrine is found within its pages & that was one of the reasons she left? She found the truth only after reading the New Testament alone in her own home without the ‘aid’ of church manuals.
If we read Rev 4: 8-11 we see what Mormon males can attain , according to their leaders
teaching . Sitting on a throne ruling over a vast kingdom of subjects ( their offspring ) receiving
adulation as a Almighty God , having successfully followed in their own heavenly Father’s
footsteps to also earn that status .
Ralph has said that this picture in Rev 4: 8-11 will be a reality for him as well one day if he
keeps working hard to be found worthy in following the Mormon church religious system they
call the ” restored “gospel . It takes prodding to get many knowledgeable Mormons to admit
they can become Almighty Gods and even inherit planets to accommodate their progeny ,but
this is carefully handled so that new members not be alarmed by such doctrine , doctrine they
were never outright told of before joining . In the last few decades this doctrine has been forced
out of the shadows and into the public light more largely because of ministries like MRM and
also the internet . But the current Mormon leadership resorts to carefully worded public
statements to not admit too much , this diverts attention away from it .
The Mormon people are being led by men who have short- changed them .
You know, I remember a conversation I had with Shem, I think it was, wherein he told me Adam is the god of this world. As god, his role was to organize and populate earth, but we are not to pay as much hommage to him as compared with Jesus or the Father.
I’ll leave the interpretation of that to others….
I think the SLC LDS sect of Mormonism is just flat out embarassed by the “become a god, get your own planets” label that’s been placed on them. They are making an attempt to re-brand their business and product but I think it’s going to be hard going for them. The reason is because there is just too much information available as grindael has pointed out.
The FLDS, on-the-other-hand, are not embarassed nor do they shy away from their roots. They embrace polygamy, adam-god, the BoA and any of the other doctrines that became the cornerstone of Utah style Mormonism.
But consider this:
“……the idea of moon men was commonly held among Mormon leaders…”
“[Oliver B.] Huntington received a blessing from his father, William, on 7 December 1836. As recorded in the Patriarchal Blessing Book, the text reads: ‘I lay my hands on thee & bless thee with a father’s blessing.… Thou shalt be called to preach the gospel to this generation.… Before thou art twenty one thou wilt be called to preach the fullness of the gospel, thou shalt have power with God even to translate thyself to Heaven, & preach to the inhabitants of the moon or planets, if it shall be expedient, if thou art faithful all these blessings will be given thee …’ Other early Mormon blessings expressed similar sentiments. On 15 December 1836 Lorenzo Snow received a blessing under the hand of Joseph Smith, Sr.: ‘Thou shalt have great faith, even like the brother of Jared. Thou shalt have power to translate thyself from one planet to another, power to go to the moon if thou desire it, power to preach to the spirits in prison. Power like Enoch to translate thyself to heaven …’ On 21 February 1836 Joseph Smith, Sr., blessed Jonathan Crosby, saying: ‘Thou shalt … Be caught up to the third heavens, and behold unspeakable things, whether in the body or out.… And when thy [p.210] mission is full here, thou shalt visit other worlds.’ Wilford Woodruff recorded in his journal on 3 January 1837 that Zebedee Coltrin ‘Pronounced great blessings upon my head by the Spirit of Prophecy & Revelation.’ Among other things the blessing said that he ‘should visit COLUB & Preach to the spirits in Prision & that I should bring all of my friends or relatives forth from the Terrestrial Kingdom.’ These blessings are congruent with Joseph Smith’s conviction that translated beings were ordained by God ‘to be ministering angels unto many planets.'”7
And finally one of my favorites from Brigham Young:
“Who can tell us of the inhabitants of this little planet that shines of an evening, called the moon?… when you inquire about the inhabitants of that sphere you find that the most learned are as ignorant in regard to them as the most ignorant of their fathers. So it is in regard to the inhabitants of the sun. Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain. It was made to give light to those who dwell upon it, and to other planets; and so will this earth when it is celestialized”.8
http://www.mrm.org/moon-men
Some LDS person might ask, “Why don’t these people believe the restored gospel?” That’s really an easy question to answer. There are all sorts of competing messages out there in the spirit world that vie for the attention of people. What I always do is go back to the Word of God and compare the message being presented with that which is in God’s revealed Word. If it doesn’t match up, I dismiss it.
Mormonism is easy to dismiss because it is so far off the bubble that it not only presents itself as false, but as fictitious nonsense. Not only do we have a man cavorting with a magic rock to receive messages from the spirit world, but we also have a denial of God, a denial of Jesus, a denial of God’s revealed plan of salvation, but also a promise that if a person gives all to a false religious system, they will become gods and rule their own planetary system.
I think it’s time to repeat a favorite observation which is, “To cult members, the more outrageous and convoluted an idea is, the more they embrace it.” It’s counter intuitive but it’s the reason why some people get drawn into cults. The message is so far out there that they are attracted to it. Strange stuff but that’s the reason why people have to put a check on their feelings and learn to discern spiritual truth.
The real problem for the LDS essay writers is how do you explain the planet system in a way that it can be hedged, nuanced and sort of denied but really not.
That’s actually the challenge that faces the LDS church and its amateur apologists about just about everything doctrine and historically related.
Remember when former “prophet” GBH went on the Larry King show and denied the doctrine of men becoming gods without really denying it? The LDS church pulled the same maneuver back in the 19th century with polygamy.
LDS folks do the same thing when they post here; then they get frustrated because we won’t accept their explanations. The problem is that the explanations offered deny reality
Denying reality. It’s the LDS way.
Falcon,
The Moon Men doctrine has been hand-waved by most Mormons, simply because they have done what they do with anything that they don’t like, relegate it to folklore. What I find most interesting is this quote from Hyrum Smith, which was given with Jo right there with him:
On April 27th1843, in sermon titled “The Plurality of Gods and the Different Worlds” Hyrum Smith thought it important enough to preach that the Moon and the Sun were inhabited, in front of the Saints:
You know that this is the basic tenant of Adam-God? “…they are UNDER THE SAME ORDER AS THIS EARTH IS UNDERGOING and [have] undergone the same change. THERE WAS AND IS A FIRST MAN ADAM, AND A SAVIOUR IN THE MERIDIAN OF TIME, the same computing time and all… in all things in order… for this world WAS PATTERNED AFTER THE FORMER WORLDS…
Of course we know that Brigham Young taught that for every world there was an Adam & Eve and that they “fell with their creations”, and that every world had a Savior that would come in the meridian of time. Hyrum got this directly from Jo, as did Brigham Young. Even William Law, in the Nauvoo Expositor wrote about this,
Right here, we see that Jo taught that God could “fall” with all of his creations, which is another central tenant of Adam-God. Each world is created by a god, who then goes there and “falls” to give his spirit children the opportunity to gain mortal bodies. That god then has sex with one of those spiritual children who have become mortal in the “Meridian of Time” to create the “Savior” of that world.
Mormons thought at that time, that every star was a world, that the moon, the sun, etc. were inhabited as this world was. Jo absolutely taught this doctrine, and passed it on to others. It is all tied together in the “Big Picture” of Mormon Theology.
One other interesting point I can make. Joseph Smith preached the same day and was there when Hyrum made this statement in front of an entire congregation. That he says, “many things that will bring knowledge to our understanding but the foolish understand not these things” shows that he was entirely serious. These are the words of an ordained ‘prophet’ of God. Then we have this statement of Brigham Young, (that you quoted in part Falcon), not only a belief, but also important enough for Young to preach it over the pulpit:
Now the interesting thing that connects the Hyrum Smith statement with Youngs. Notice that Hyrum says,
Now that is an interesting thing to say, “Jesus Christ is the light of the sun”. Notice what Young says,
Exactly what Hyrum Smith said, “Christ is the light of this planet”, (the sun).
I might mention here, that there are some problems with Laub’s dates. He kept notes, but didn’t compile them all until 1846, and did some of the dating by memory. Eugene England thinks that the sermon by Hyrum took place in 1844 instead of 1843, and it does make more sense, since Jo was preaching the plurality of the gods often during that period. Hyrum had, back in March of that year (1844) told the “saints”,
Notice that Hyrum Smith here denounces polygamy, which the hierarchy were all practicing. He then tells those that are teaching that, to also stop teaching “the mysteries”. You know, that is exactly what Wilford Woodruff said about Adam-God. Is there a pattern here? Sure is. But then, William Law and others found out about these teachings and were in open rebellion against him shortly after this. Just before this notice by Hyrum Smith, Jo had organized the Council of 50. His Diary reads, (for March 10, 1844)
I believe the sermon by Hyrum was on the 28th of April, 1844, and in Jo’s Journal for that date, it reads,
On the same day, all of the Nauvoo dissenters were cut off from the Church. They then began their Nauvoo Expositor project. I believe that Jo and Hyrum started preaching on the plurality of gods in early April because of the things that were being spread about by the dissenters and Elders that overheard the doctrine being discussed by them. There are many entries in Jo’s diary that the Elders (not the hierarchy) were ordered to preach only the “1st principles”. Notice also, that Hyrum says in his sermon that “the foolish” do not “understand these things,” which also supports the 1844 date, since many were at that time speaking of them.
April 27, 1843 was on a Thursday, so I think it is unlikely that is the correct date.
grindael,
Excellent post! It’s what I’d call a “door slammer”! BANG!!!
The faithful LDS folks do not have any idea that this is what the founders of their religion taught, believed and practiced. No wonder the FLDS say that the LDS have gone into apostasy. No wonder that Mormon sects like the temple lot say that the LDS and FLDS have gone into apostasy. And you it is true that the SLC LDS try to simply dismiss all of this 19th century Mormonism with a wave of the hand. This shows absolutely no integrity on their part and demonstrates that it’s all an attempt to keep the religious corporation afloat.
I’m sick of these lame excuses about opinion and folklore and continuous revelation and “that was a long time ago”. The foundation of Mormonism was built on the creative imaginations of a bunch of religious amateurs.
When Smith dumped his original Book of Commandments and restructured the church to solidify his power and authority, a bunch of his followers said, “No Way”, identified him as a fallen prophet and formed their own group. They were at least smart enough to get out.
That’s a great quote by William Law. Grant Palmer reports some very interesting facts about this man’s life story. It would be worth a MC article.
Sharon,
I honestly don’t see anything problematic in the way the article from LDS.org is presented. I get that you disagree with our doctrine. No issues with that. But to suggest that somehow the presentation is not forthcoming or completely honest is really stretching it, in my opinion. I don’t think the church is withholding information to readers of the statement. It is pretty open and fair.
By the way, I just read a paper by Ernst Benz, a non-LDS German professor of church history from the University of Marbug:
“One can think what one wants of this doctrine of progressive deification, but one thing is certain: with this anthropology of his, Joseph Smith is closer to the view of man held by the ancient church than the precursors of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin were, who considered the thought of such a substantial connection between God and man as the heresy, par excellence.” Imago dei: Man as the Image of God”, The FARMS Review 17/1 (2005) (2005)
Here’s my commentary on the article:
From the article’s introduction: “The teaching that men and women have the potential to be exalted to a state of godliness clearly expands beyond what is understood by most contemporary Christian churches and expresses for the Latter-day Saints a yearning rooted in the Bible to live as God lives, to love as He loves, and to prepare for all that our loving Father in Heaven wishes for His children.”
Potential to be exalted to a state of godliness? What does that mean? This seems like a ‘teaser’ in which advertisers use to get people’s attention.
“Several biblical passages intimate that humans can become like God…These passages can be interpreted in different ways. Yet by viewing them through the clarifying lens of revelations received by Joseph Smith, Latter-day Saints see these scriptures as straightforward expressions of humanity’s divine nature and potential.” Again, what is the article inferring as humanity’s divine nature and potention? What is the source of the difference in opinion?
The article does state, “Many other Christians read the same passages far more metaphorically because they experience the Bible through the lens of doctrinal interpretations that developed over time after the period described in the New Testament.” It lists a few quotes from early Christians whose quotes are also subject to interpretation.
The article then talks about Smith and his revelations, and how he and others could not have known certain things. (Familiar lines…) It obviously lifts up Smith, and while it talks of being like god and deification, it never directly states the goal is to become a god with your own world.
(And I have to quote this, because it is such propoganda: “That was the last time the Prophet spoke in a general conference. Three months later, a mob stormed Carthage Jail and martyred him and his brother Hyrum.”)
The next section addresses what has been taught since, and it continually avoids the direct statement that the goal is to become a god. It only reiterates that there is a divine nature in mankind, and states that there is a belief in eternal progression.
Following that section is one discussing polytheism, which it does not deny. As to the topic of becoming a god, no direct mention and more of the same in an emphasis on striving for godliness. Interestingly, here we see an LDS description of the godhead. It also includes this interesting quote, “When humans abandon God’s selfless purposes and standards, “the heavens withdraw themselves [and] the Spirit of the Lord is grieved.”49 Pride is incompatible with progress; disunity is impossible between exalted beings.”
Next we see an apparently contentious part of the article, “A cloud and harp are hardly a satisfying image for eternal joy, although most Christians would agree that inspired music can be a tiny foretaste of the joy of eternal salvation. Likewise, while few Latter-day Saints would identify with caricatures of having their own planet, most would agree that the awe inspired by creation hints at our creative potential in the eternities.” Are they denying the peopling of new planets as taught by previous leaders? Another old pattern… These leaders apparently were only awe struck at the possibility of getting your own planet.
In that same section, the essay writes, “They see the seeds of godhood in the joy of bearing and nurturing children and the intense love they feel for those children, in the impulse to reach out in compassionate service to others, in the moments they are caught off guard by the beauty and order of the universe, in the grounding feeling of making and keeping divine covenants. Church members imagine exaltation less through images of what they will get and more through the relationships they have now and how those relationships might be purified and elevated. As the scriptures teach, “That same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.””
So apparently the goal of church members is relational with others, and not what they will get? As if relationships are not getting something, and as if being in charge of another world (though not yet explicitly stated) is not a motivator.
The last section, before the conclusion, discusses how important this belief is to LDS. However, it is framed in such a way as to emphasize divine nature, not becoming gods. In it, the essays says, “While many Christian theologians have expressed the magnitude of the Savior’s Atonement by emphasizing human depravity, Latter-day Saints understand the magnitude of the Atonement of Christ in terms of the vast human potential it makes possible.” So LDS positive, Christians negative.
It further states, “Latter-day Saints believe that it is only through the Atonement of Jesus Christ that we can have a sure hope of eternal glory and that the power of His Atonement is fully accessed only by faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end in following the instruction and example of Christ.” Wait. Where’s the mention of receiving the glory after all we can do? Where’s the mention of doing what the LDS tell us we have to do to meet our end of the bargain?
Ah, here’s a line on those rituals: “An awareness of humans’ divine potential also influences Latter-day Saints’ understanding of gospel principles such as the importance of divine commandments, the role of temples, and the sanctity of individual moral agency.” But that’s it. Because that sentance is followed by: “Belief that human beings are actually God’s children also changes Latter-day Saints’ behavior and attitudes. For example, even in societies where casual and premarital sex are considered acceptable, Latter-day Saints retain a deep reverence for the God-given procreative and bonding powers of human sexual intimacy and remain committed to a higher standard in the use of those sacred powers. Studies suggest that Latter-day Saints place an exceptionally high priority on marriage and parenthood, a consequence in part of a strong belief in heavenly parents and a commitment to strive for that divinity.” So the rest of society is bad, LDS are good, and they really are good at marriage and parenthood, which is of course because of their belief in their heavenly parents, whom they can become like.
Disappointingly, the conclusion only states: “All human beings are children of loving heavenly parents and possess seeds of divinity within them. In His infinite love, God invites His children to cultivate their eternal potential by the grace of God, through the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. The doctrine of humans’ eternal potential to become like their Heavenly Father is central to the gospel of Jesus Christ and inspires love, hope, and gratitude in the hearts of faithful Latter-day Saints.”
Still, nothing explicitly stating the belief in question is whether or not LDS believe we can become gods. Only more of the same language such as we can become like god, and our eternal potential, and we have divine seed in us.
All of this reads like an advertisement, not a description of what the belief actually is. It takes a couple cheap shots at the competition, and lifts up its own. For someone looking for real information, they will not find it there. Now, I do think it is possible to be much more informative with this belief. However, it is more like a travel advertisement looking to convince people to visit any given attraction rather than truly inform.
FOF
Thank heavens you got that quote from FARMS.
So if you want to really snow people, pick out a guy with an exotic sounding name, from a foreign University. It’ll do the trick. BTW the definition of an “expert” is anyone who is more than five hundred miles away from the presentation site.
So who is this guy? What are his qualifications? Is what he writes accurate and true?
You better come here armed with more than a single quote from some obscure source.
According to Rolf Dingleberry of the University of Lipnitz in the Hague “Mormonism, as proposed by Joseph Smith, with it’s emphasis on the deification of man and the ruling of planets by man-gods, has more to do with ancient mythology than anything found in Grimm’s Fairy tales”.
I think it would do you well to do a little more study than to depend on the hacks at FARMS. BTW ever hear of a guy by the name of Emanuel Swedenborg. Check him out. You’ll find out where Smith got his ideas.
Back to the drawing board Buddy!
You know FOF…………………
It took me about five minutes of a google search to get some information regarding the quote you gave above from the German intellectual. As usual, there’s a rest of the story.
Why do you Mormons do this? Do you not think we are going to check out a source and a quote? I would think with your academic credentials, you’d run this stuff down to get the rest of the story instead of depending on FARMS.
From p. 72 of the link provided below.
http://books.google.com/books?id=Pbi_OfkPhzwC&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72&dq=ernst+benz+mormonism&source=bl&ots=cpmuMko-Yc&sig=VS2NnugGFIaQDqOx7ocUlo6KuMo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WmMWU7nRCMr22QXCwICIBA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=ernst%20benz%20mormonism&f=false
MJP- I think the article is fair in its representation of our beliefs. If you survey members of the church on this topic, what will they say? I would venture to guess that almost all of the members would say that they see the Celestial Kingdom being all about living in the presence of Heavenly Father, living with our loves ones, and spending time doing good and furthering God’s purposes, including creating new life. It would be a rare member who would insist that they are shooting for ruling over other people and having lots of power. Yet, this is how we are almost always portrayed by our critics. And you seem to take this position in your criticism of the article.
Your comments in response to our view to sexual purity seems a little judgmental and hyperactive. Yes- we place a big emphasis on reverence for the ability to produce human life. And that, by and large, translated into behavior. That does not require us to see non-LDS as “bad” as you suggest. It is a simple citation of evidence that our belief in the family’s role in eternity effects behavior in this life. So what? Do you really take offense at that?
Many here have suggested that the church should be able to produce a statement that is much more specific about what exaltation entails. As if you guys offer anything as specific. Why don’t you provide your doctrinal explanation of what going to heaven will entail. Happy? Joy? Fulfillment? Productive?
falcon- and? So there are some people who disagree with Benz. Do you expect something different? News flash- there is almost always disagreement and opposing views in the academic community in any field, including religion and Christian history. This is a simple, but strong opinion about how our doctrine on deification is closer to what existed in the ancient church than what is found in non-LDS Christianity. This is an opinion from a scholar who has studied the matter extensively for his career. He has some authority and expertise. Does his opinion settle the question in stone? No. This is a professional opinion. You guys seem like you this stuff is so foreign to you. You are so easily threatened.
FOF says,
This is an opinion from a scholar who has studied the matter extensively for his career. He has some authority and expertise. Does his opinion settle the question in stone? No. This is a professional opinion. You guys seem like you this stuff is so foreign to you. You are so easily threatened.
I say,
Not at all it’s just that appeal to authority is the oldest logical fallacy in the book. However it seems to be your Modus operandi.
You just got through claiming that “modern scholarship” holds to the documentary hypothesis popularized long ago in Germany. When in fact this idea is very dated and has lost ground over the last 30 years or so.
Now you quote the opinion of another German scholar who has been dead for decades as if that is supposed to support your cause.
Common FOF you can do better than that.
If you have evidence present it quit playing games……. That might have worked in the eighties when these guys were in the accidence but not in the age of Google
peace
FOF,
I’m surprised you haven’t quoted an atheist. That’s another favorite place for you LDS folks to go for support. This guy you quoted had his work torn apart and discredited and I can tell from your rather tepid response in defending him, that you’re not all that convinced of his scholarship.
I have some advice for you. Instead of hanging out at the FARMS website, why don’t you go to your local Christian bookstore and get some good books on the history of the first four hundred years of the Christian faith and also pick-up the volumes dealing with the writings of the Church Fathers of this time period.
The fact of the matter is that you are grasping at straws trying to find something, anything that even gives a hint of support for what the false Mormon prophets taught. It’s foolish nonsense and like I said previously, the more convoluted and off the wall an idea is, the more those trapped in cults love it.
Find the Lord Jesus Christ. Put your faith in Him for eternal life and get into the NT. Bottom line? You’re not going to become a god and you aren’t getting any planets to rule.
Our TBM Mormon friends are trying to defend something that has no defense in the context of the Biblical text, the writings of the Church Fathers or in the traditions of the Christian faith. This idea that is promoted by this particular brand of Mormonism’s that men will become gods, resurrect their wives, trip out to some planets the new god has created rule over the spirit offspring they’ve procreated is childish. It’s not even good science fiction.
It appears that our Mormon friends believe that if someone reads the BofM and gets a good feeling that this is a confirmation not only of the truthfulness of the BofM, but also anything else the LDS church puts out. My reading of Moroni’s promise/challenge is for the BofM only and not for the rest of the creative project; false as the promise is. After all, we have all of these other sects of Mormonism that wouldn’t go near the LDS teachings on becoming gods and ruling personal planets and yet accept the BofM as inspired scripture.
That’s the problem with embracing false prophets. They can run believers all around the mulberry bush and the folks just love the energy it produces. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.
Lurkers, the Holy Spirit of the Living God is calling you to receive the gift of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ Our Lord. There are no planets for you to rule and no spirit offspring to worship you as a god.
There’s a real problem with Mormons trusting their leaders. Actually it goes back to the first erroneous decision to trust in their feelings to determine whether or not the BofM is true. Then what follows is an acceptance to anything and everything the LDS leadership teaches which translates into an never ending re-do of doctrines which are suppose to define the religion.
I remember Sandra Tanner talking about how her and Gerald began examining Mormonism with fresh eyes and finally got down to the BofM only. Well it wasn’t long before their belief in Joseph Smith’s creation dissolved also. Evidence and facts are very stubborn things but so are a person’s emotions.
Mormons have been instructed to trust their feelings for the truth and it all starts with the BofM. Emotions are like a drug and once addicted to the feelings that are produced by the false promises, it’s hard to let it go. Worse yet, the emotions cloud the Mormon’s thinking and they find themselves in constant pursuit of any thread of hope that their testimony has a basis in reality. Alas, it doesn’t.
So here we have this incremental slide into total acceptance of the teachings of the original prophet Smith and then the long hard slog out, once the truth starts to be acknowledged. I would think that the idea of becoming a god and creating your own planets to rule would be pretty easy to give up because it’s so out there. But that form of thinking that produces the emotions that fuels the faith of a Mormon is very difficult to get past for the true believers.
Here’s a better way. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that who so ever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
There is One God and Father, One Christ, One spirit and One Body of believers that constitutes the Church.
At what point in the recruitment process, does the LDS prospect learn about becoming a god, ruling his own planetary system, procreating spirit off-spring with his goddess wife and all of the other fundamental aspects of the restored gospel?
How many recruits would assent to being baptized in the LDS church knowing this information up front. If they aren’t told, I’d say that’s fraud. It’s fraud because people are being asked to make a commitment to a religion without fully knowing what the religion teaches.
I talked to a young man one time here in the mid-west who when he joined the LDS church he thought he was joining just another branch of Christianity, like the Lutheran church he had grown up in. He had met a Mormon girl, fallen in love and prior to getting married, he joined the LDS church. His first trip through the temple was a real eye-opener. It left he and his wife speechless. It wasn’t long before he and his LDS raised wife left the church.
I found it very interesting that his wife hadn’t been aware of what was going on with the religion she had been a part of her whole life. Of course when they left they lost all of their LDS friends. Thankfully they didn’t live in the Mormon bubble so they wouldn’t face the sort of societal sanctions that those who do, face when they leave.
I never miss an opportunity to tell people the fundamental truths about the LDS church. I figure it’s a way of cult proofing them. The people I tell generally react in stunned silence. Just the knowledge that the LDS church teaches that the men will become gods and rule their own planetary system and procreate spirit off-spring into eternity is enough information.
This restored gospel has nothing to do with the Lord Jesus Christ and what God is offering us through Him. Jesus is the truth, the way and the life and no one gets to the Father except through Him. Going to a temple made by men to participate in religious rituals not born of the Spirit of God is not only a waste of time but a ruse and a hoax.
It doesn’t matter if someone is sincere and devout in their beliefs, if those beliefs are wrong the results are the same; separation from God for eternity.
Fof, on specificity: here we see another example of not understanding the criticism. I could care less about how specific you are in what it entails, but past leaders have given specific details. That’s interesting. But it’s more that the article never states that the divine nature/exaltation actually means becoming god outright. That’s the problem.
Our specifity: we frankly don’t know, so why would we specify when we don’t know. All I know is an eternity with God is all I need.
You are portrayed that way because it is so obvious a part of the psyche. We believe we will continue God’s will and retain relationships, too, without the populating planets. We are very content with that. Why aren’t you?
Sexual purity does not translate into practice. Divorce rates are no different in Mormonism and Utah is right up there interest viewing of porn. Yes, others live there, but do you really mean to tell me it is absent in the LDS. Church? its nice to say, and I am sure you do believe it, but so do we. We have problems in those areas, too.
As such, I feel the essay was an advertisement more than a helpful guide to learn the reality of LDS belief.
fifthmonarchyman,
I stand by my claims about source criticism. The responses here simply show how backward you guys really are over a wide spectrum of topics and issues, including LDS research and scholarship. Any serious student of the Bible should understand source criticism and the arguments and evidence related to that topic. I allude to it here and the response indicates almost no understanding of what it is.
You claim that source criticism has “lost ground” over the last decades. So then what has replaced it? The traditional belief that one author is responsible for the 5 books of the Pentateuch? Not even close.
You guys are hiding, as you always do, from research and evidence that threatens your own religious foundations. Your own doctrines and beliefs can never stand the scrutiny you direct toward the restored gospel. It would really bother me to my core if I employed such obvious double standards in my search for truth. You guys demonstrate cognitive dissonance as profoundly as anybody out there.
The quotation from Ernst Benz shows that there are scholars who have spent their lives studying the early church history and doctrines who believe LDS doctrines on deification more closely reflect the early church beliefs than any of the Christian doctrines today.
You guys are completely dependent upon writers and thinkers from your own faith community to support your positions. Yet you demand that LDS provide non-LDS scholarship to support our claims. When we do that, you find some reason to dismiss those opinions and that research. It really is pathetic.
Great, th re are scholars who say that. Whopper. There are also scholars who say otherwise.
I told you that FOF would only respond with ad hominems. He completely ignored my long post about Source Analysis. This is typical of folks that have run out of ammunition. How many times have we been right here folks? It is not only those who lean Evangelical that have criticism for the Documentary Hypothesis, but others as well. The point of this, is that FOF wants to broadbrush the issue. This is always done to mitigate against what the scholarly community really thinks.
Not one of us here has contended that the DH is NOT a hegemonic position of the scholarly community, but only that it is not what FOF broadbrushes it to be. And there is division about the details of the theory. Much division, as David Clines (a proponent and NOT Evangelical) has detailed in the article I linked to.
So FOF’s statement that we are “completely dependent” on writers and thinkers from our “own faith” is simply a lie. Another deception perpetuated as a desperate attempt to gain back ground totally lost by him. And the reason why most Evangelicals are critical of the DH, is because of the natural vs. supernatural argument. Something that FOF claims to believe in, yet he would rather poison his own well to try and score points. This is so typical of many Mormons that post here. Notice also that FOF is TOTALLY SILENT about the same approach to the Book of Isaiah. He won’t touch that one. Why? Because it destroys the Book of Mormon. That shows his hypocrisy and his own admitted bias and double standard.
Mormon deification is nothing like what early Christianity portrays. This has been so thoroughly debunked that for FOF to even advocate it shows how little he knows about the subject. And most of those that agree with the Mormon stance, simply don’t understand Mormon Doctrine, or have been snowed by Mormon Apologists. Richard Mouw is a classic example of this. Even with direct evidence, he still believes the whitewashed version of Mormon Doctrine, which rejects the King Follet Sermon and downplays that men will become Gods. What they actually believe is that men are ontologically the same as God, which is anti-Christian and can’t be proven from the Bible nor by way of the Early Church Fathers who rejected any notion of more than ONE GOD. (A Trinity).
That we here know both sides of the argument and have studied it, but still are critical of the DH, really sticks in FOF’s craw. What he doesn’t like is that we are not afraid to explore the obvious flaws of his little pet theory, which he only advocates because in HIS MIND, it somehow bolsters his Modern Mormon Doctrinal views that are contradicted by actual Mormon Doctrine. FOF is full of double standards, that my friends is his M.O. The fact that he has been reduced to ranting, shows that this is true.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
I told you so.
FOF said,
The quotation from Ernst Benz shows that there are scholars who have spent their lives studying the early church history and doctrines who believe LDS doctrines on deification more closely reflect the early church beliefs than any of the Christian doctrines today.
I say,
Do really want to use this guy as your authority? I had never heard of him so I did a quick Google search
quote:
After the ” seizure of power “of the Nazis , he became in 1933 a member of the SA . In 1935, he received an associate professor at the University of Marburg. In 1937 he became a member of the Nazi Party . In the same year he was appointed professor of Church history and dogma and history of German mysticism. A professor at the University of Vienna he refused. In World War II he served as pastor Division, including the Ukraine……………….
Benz was an unconventional researcher who also dealt with issues that usually remain on the margins of traditional churches and the history of dogma .
end quote:
from here
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Benz&prev=/search?q%3DErnst%2BBenz%2Breligion%253F%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3D4nO%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26channel%3Dsb%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D597
So apparently your chosen scholar was a Nazi who worked for the Führer while faithful Christian theologians like Bonhoeffer were languishing in prison camps.
He spent his much of his time popularizing stuff on on the margins like mysticism and non-Christian Religions like Buddhism .
Now none of that means that his conclusions are necessarily incorrect but given his demonstrated judgement don’t you think we should have some evidence before we accept his opinions?
Do you have any actual evidence for his contention FOF?
peace
FOF said,
Any serious student of the Bible should understand source criticism and the arguments and evidence related to that topic. I allude to it here and the response indicates almost no understanding of what it is.
I say,
I’m quite familiar with source criticism I just find it to be generally unconvincing hyperskeptical and dated. That is why I asked for actual evidence that the theology of the OT evolved. I find your unwillingness to provide any to be evidence that you are the one who has limited understanding of the topic.
You say,
You guys are completely dependent upon writers and thinkers from your own faith community to support your positions.
I say,
Actually I strive to be dependent on evidence and not rely on human authors of any stripe to support my positions. All humans are biased an fallible and are often wrong. You won’t find me quoting scholars opinions very often.
I ask for actual evidence, Do you have any?
You say,
Yet you demand that LDS provide non-LDS scholarship to support our claims. When we do that, you find some reason to dismiss those opinions and that research.
I say,
If you want to support a claim it is best to provide evidence. If the opinions of other men is all you have you need to be prepared provide convincing reasons why we should care what those men have to say.
peace
Poor FOF.
You are exhibiting what we see here continually with true believers in Mormonism. They buy the religion of Smith emotionally and then they try to justify it with flawed logic.
The German you are in love with has made an appearance here before. You have no intellectual integrity FOF because basically what you do is haul out the work of FARMS and consider it research.
As I have mentioned, why don’t you do some real study and see what the early Church preached, taught and canonized as orthodox doctrine.
Guys like you who embrace a man as a prophet who used to run about the country side at night with his band of like mined occultists trying to find buried treasure by looking into the ground with a magic rock, are to be pitied.
Then you double down by embracing an idea of becoming a god and ruling your own planets. Seriously, are you OK? You are appearing foolish. I think you need to take a break.
Fifth,
Did you read his paper? Here. I’ve read it. What he does is try and say that Augustine broke with tradition and invented an Imago Dei, that was nothing like the “original” Christians. But what he does NOT do, is provide ANY EVIDENCE of this at all. He quotes Mystics. He tries to tie Mysticism to Deification. He doesn’t pursue this in any kind of logical step by step manner, but is all over the place, and his paper is really a jumbled mass of contradictions. I don’t have time today to get into it, but I will show in the future what I mean.
These are the kinds of people that are attracted to Mormon Deism. This is all they can pull out of their hats. Another author, Jordan Vadja, who also wrote about Smith has even more problems with his version of the Divine Nature. It doesn’t agree at all with what the Bible, and the Early Church Father’s taught, and he does what Mormon apologists do, take every single quote out of context. And here is where it gets weird.
Here, they claim that Vadja is a “Catholic Priest” and therefore his interpretation is what Catholics think. But then read this, by Quentin L. Cook, from the Ensign in 2002:
Seeing as he was influenced by Mormon Doctrine for his entire life, it is disingenuous in the extreme, for the Neal Maxwell Institute to promote him as a “Catholic Priest” without informing about his Mormon influenced background. But this is all they have.
fifth monarchy man,
I posted a simple statement from a non-LDS scholar who has studied the issue and whose opinion suggests our doctrine represents the early church doctrine closer than any other modern doctrine. I don’t know what he bases his opinion upon specifically. We should take from this that no scholarly opinions should be considered on issues, whether they be the BOM, BOA, or any other issue, without an open discussion of the primary evidences? Because I am certainly OK with that. I posted the statement because so many of the evangelical arguments against our canon come down to opinion statements from non-LDS scholars. Forgive me.
falcon,
First, the language you use, including “the German you are in love with,” does little more than undermines any credibility one would like to give you. It is more than a little fitting that your post is about members of my church making decisions based upon emotions. Your posts are little more than emotional rants themselves.
And you should understand that the people at FARMS did not write the paper from Ernst Benz. Benz is not LDS, and he does not work at FARMS. Posting an article from somebody else does not transfer authorship to the poster. Do you understand that?
Grindael- Did you know that authors and scholars can write papers that are opinion papers without providing all of the evidence upon which they are basing those opinions? Yes. It is true. The paper from Benz does not claim to be a list of evidences.
Your claim that Elder Cook’s account of Jordan Vajda is “disingenuous” is absolutely ridiculous. Was Vajda a Catholic Priest? If he was a Catholic Priest, is there a reason somebody else should not claim that he was a Catholic Priest? How much did LDS doctrine influence him “over his life?” A lot? A little? Can you tell how much? What did Elder Cook leave out that would have demonstrated that influence? Where exactly did Cook or anybody else claim that Vajda’s interpretation is what “Catholics think?”
You make so many unwarranted assumptions and conclusions, it makes a person’s head spin.
Because the Maxwell Institute posts an article like this, you insist that “this is all they have.” The rhetoric and bias could not be more obvious.
By the way, here is a good paper on the current issues in source analysis, but I forgot to include it in my post on the other thread. You might enjoy it.
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/bad368008.shtml
Hey grindael,
Wow, Is that what qualifies as scholarship supporting Mormonism . If I did not know better I’d say it was an April fool’s day hoax. I would venture to say that a paper like that would never get published today. It’s laughable
You are right that it contains little or no supporting evidence other than the reported opinions of the mystics. Is that sort of thing really supposed to convince anyone?
I challenge any lurkers to not take anyone’s word for it but instead take some time read the NT and early Christian writings even the writings of those I would deem to be heretical. This stuff is all freely available on the internet.
If you find anything to support the LDS concept of deification please let me know. I promise that I will give it prayerful consideration. I know that as of yet I have not seen anything to show that JS or BY had a clue what the early church thought about such things.
peace
from FOF’s link
quote:
The Documentary Hypothesis, it must always be remembered, is precisely that: a hypothesis. It is an attempt to explain the literary phenomena of the Pentateuch: clear narrative contradiction, repetition, and discontinuity. It posits that the best explanation for these features is the existence of four independent documents that were combined into a single text, basically the canonical Pentateuch as we now have it. It is the literary solution to a literary problem, no more and no less.
end quote:
I say
I have spent a lot of time reading and studying the Pentateuch and I’m at a loss to see this “clear narrative contradiction, [odd or unexplainable] repetition, and discontinuity”.
Jesus and the Apostles and countless other students of Scripture throughout history have also studied meticulously these documents and failed to see a “literary phenomena” needing to be explained. The Documentary Hypothesis thought up to explain a phenomena that does not exist.
It amazes me that a Mormon would want to go down this hyper-skeptical path. I can think of lots of “literary phenomena” in the BOM just begging for an naturalistic explanation that presupposes the lack of any influence from the Holy Spirit.
Would you accept such scholarship as normative for you?
I once again ask for actual evidence that OT theology evolved. Do you have any?
peace
FoF said,
We should take from this that no scholarly opinions should be considered on issues, whether they be the BOM, BOA, or any other issue, without an open discussion of the primary evidences? Because I am certainly OK with that.
I say,
I can not believe you need to get the Junior High lecture on appeals to authority. It can be legitimate to use the opinions of others as support of your own position but even a good Appeal to Authority is not an exceptionally strong argument and you need to be sure the authority you use meets some basic criteria to be taken seriously…. for example
1)The person has sufficient expertise in the subject matter in question.
2)The claim being made by the person is within her area(s) of expertise.
3)There is an adequate degree of agreement among the other experts in the subject in question.
4)The person in question is not significantly biased.
5)The area of expertise is a legitimate area or discipline.
6)The authority in question must be identified.
When you appeal to unnamed “Modern Scholarship” or to a long dead “unconventional researcher” and popularizer of fringe issues like mysticism. You can expect some skepticism.
Not to sound like a broken record but
It’s always better to present actual evidence
peace
FOF,
Leave it to you to get it wrong. First of all I didn’t say the German you are in love with works at FARMS. I think most people who read what I wrote understand that FARMS digs these guys’ work up to try and bolster the sinking ship of Mormonism. You’re not the first to haul out this guy because most of you TBMs run to FARMS for your information.
Your testimony is emotionally based and then you flail about trying to find some rational basis for what you desire to believe. I’ve been to Mormon historical sites. The tour guides are constantly trying to work up the emotional angle. I can see the Mormons on the tour really dig it.
Really, why else would you be so into the Mormon program if it wasn’t for the emotional buzz. Mormonism certainly isn’t supported by any form of real evidence.
Most of the folks you do battle with here are former Mormons. They figured it out. If you stick around here eventually so will you. It happens. It’s just a matter of time. I think you know your fighting a losing battle.
Uhm, primary evidence is not someone’s opinion. Primary evidence is not merely a piece of paper with written opinion (though that could be primary evidence of the authors opinion). The quoting of Benz in the sense that fof quoted him was solely an appeal to authority, and is decidedly not primary evidence to show the Documentary hypothesis is true. All it does is demonstrate one Christian scholar’s opinion.
I suggest looking up Daubert to get an idea on how a court would treat expert opinion. 5th is right, it is very limiting…
But the point of his paper was that Jo Smith “restored” something that Original Christianity had. He provided NO EVIDENCE at all to attest this. But then, you don’t comprehend much, do you FOF?
Again, you didn’t READ what I said,
I said the Maxwell Institute was disingenuous. Sheesh. Cook provided the evidence that they are. And yeah, that IS all they have. Flawed exegesis and dishonest scholarship on this topic.
You misquote, misread, and comprehend so little of what I write that it makes me sick. Again, please put my words in quotes above your “explanations”. It may help with your comprehension problems. But I doubt it.
Fifth,
Yes, that is typical of what Mormons have to offer. So far off the tracks that they should be ashamed of trying to pawn off such nonsense. But that is what desperation creates. They can only appeal to the fringe.
FOF though, eats it up. I feel sorry for him.
FOF says:
“I would venture to guess that almost all of the members would say that they see the Celestial Kingdom being all about living in the presence of Heavenly Father, living with our loves ones, and spending time doing good and furthering God’s purposes, including creating new life.”
So… when you and I received our first anointing in the temple to become a “king and a priest …to rule and reign in the house of israel forever” that meant that we won’t get to do that? Please explain that one for me.
I, along with plenty of other on here have a stack load of books and official manuals (like achieving celestial marriage) that say that we will reign, create worlds etc…
You are deliberately lying now. You sound like my father when a non mormon asks him about these doctrines.. he lies his ass of and tries his best to make mormonism sound mainstream. It’s embarrassing.
This convo reminds me of the video that was posted last year of the old mormon and the two young christians in front of the temple. The old guy tries his best to sound mainstream but fails spectacularly and just sounds completely odd when he is forced to admit what mormons really believe.
I was just on the phone with janstorm and we were reminiscing about our washing and anointings.
I was lucky enough to go through back in the “naked” days when we wore an open sheet. Janstorm got to do it fully clothed. He got the “speedy” anointing.
Man oh man how times changed.
What is it they say in the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet? “No petting, except in the temple”? Oh wait…
Well, it wasn’t “heavy” petting.. just a few light touches here and there.
I’m still bummed I missed out on the “five points” endowment era. They changed that right before I went through.
I’ll never get to slit my throat in a temple.
Womp womp womp 🙁
In all seriousness, when I first learned about how the temple ceremony had been drastically changed right before I went through, I was really disappointed. I had just finished reading “The Great Apostasy” and I was completely dumfounded that Talmage rips the Catholics for changing ordinances and rituals while the LDS church was doing the same and nobody thought anything of it.
It bothered me for a long time but I managed to put it on a shelf.
Here are a few.