...your eyes will be opened...you will be like God... Satan.
If I understand the gospel correctly, this it self is in error. It presupposes that God is surrounded by a veil. Now maybe there is more then one veil spoken of in the Bible, but the only veil I know of is the one that was torn in half by God himself when he finally gave up his life at the cross. Would someone confirm for me or correct me if I'm wrong in this matter.
And then there's the matter of God being omnipresent everywhere so even though the Jews presumed that God was behind the veil, he was also on the other side too, except the inner sanctuary was designated as being a Holy place by God.
I'm interested in reading the whole article and the other parts of the series, but for now I'm going to have to put this on hold with the other hundreds of things to do and hopefully will get back to this thread and articles in the series and the comments on this article.
Anything can be explained to sound like the stupidest idea ever if you want to explain it that way. I’m not going to attempt to explain any of it here because its not the time or place.
I guess my point is that we don't just sit around church talking down others and I don't understand the hate. You guys act like a bunch of missionaries rode their bikes up to the airport and hijacked the planes on 9/11. Wrong religion guys. Just ask yourself why you are so busy doing this when we should be encouraging everyone to hold to the conservative movement.
And no, I am not planning to vote for Mitt in the primary because he isn't conservative enough. If he is the one that gets picked though, I’ll vote for him over anything with a D behind their name any day.
**(God is an exalted man)**
This is heresy.
Jesus Christ is true man and true God.
God is true God
The Holy Spirit is true God.
Thanks for the ping on this!!!
Ping
“Secondly, if God has not eternally been God, then obviously there must have been a God or gods before Him “
Even better, there must have been multiple Goddesses stretching back to eternity to bear spirit children.
Wackier and wackier, Alice follows the rabbit down the hole.
“There are few passages in all of LDS literature more often cited, quoted, and discussed, than this one.”
He forgot to add the qualifier ‘by critics of Mormons’ The King Follet Discussion is not part of our cannon, the idea contained in the quoted part is not church doctrine, and the KFD is rarely mentioned in Mormon meetings.
“This, and the two paragraphs that follow, rank right next to the First Vision in their impact upon LDS theology to this very day.”
That claim is absurd. A non-canonical person opinion (that is hardly even mentioned most of the time) ranking up there with the First Vision? Give me a break.
“The first phrase, God himself was once as we are now, has been so often repeated that it has become a given in LDS teaching.”
If by God you mean Christ, yes. It is our doctrine that Christ was as man is. I though orthodox Christians taught that as well, calling Christ ‘fully man’. With their views of the trinity, saying ‘As man is, God once was’ should be quite acceptable to orthodox Christians.
“This, and the saying of Lorenzo Snow that we will examine later, “As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become,” have attained a status in Mormon theology that ranks them as carrying as much authority as any other statement about God.”
As man is God once was, the NT talks specifically about that. Christ walked the earth as a man. The idea that men can (through grace) become deified was part of original Christianity:
Saint Irenaeus
- “Do we cast blame on him [God] because we were not made gods at our beginning, but first we were made men, then, in the end, gods?
- How then will any be a god, if he has not first been made a man?
- Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, of his boundless love, became what we are that he might make us what he himself is.”
(the above quotes taken from: Henry Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Clement of Rome to St. Athanasius (London: Oxford University Press, 1956)
Clement of Alexandria
- “Yea, I say, the Word of God became a man so that you might learn from a man how to become a god.”
Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks, 1.[
and
- “if one knows himself, he will know God, and knowing God will become like God. . . . His is beauty, true beauty, for it is God, and that man becomes a god, since God wills it.”
Clement of Alexandria, Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, 3.1 see also Clement, Stromateis, 23
Justin Martyr
- “[in the beginning men] were made like God, free from suffering and death,” and that they are thus “deemed worthy of becoming gods and of having power to become sons of the highest”
Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 124.
Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria
- “The Word was made flesh in order that we might be enabled to be made gods. . . . Just as the Lord, putting on the body, became a man, so also we men are both deified through his flesh, and henceforth inherit everlasting life.”
Athanasius, Against the Arians, 1.39, 3.39.
and
- “He became man that we might be made divine.”
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54.
Augustine of Hippo
- “But he himself that justifies also deifies, for by justifying he makes sons of God. ‘For he has given them power to become the sons of God’ [John 1:12]. If then we have been made sons of god, we have also been made gods.”
Augustine, On the Psalms, 50:2.
Then you have more modern theologians teaching the same idea and acknowledging deification was part of early Christianity...
C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.”
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were “gods” and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him-for we can prevent Him, if we choose-He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said”
Westminister Dictionary of Christian Theology:
Deification (Greek Theosis) is for orthodoxy the goal of every Christian. Man, according to the Bible, is ‘made in the image and likeness of God’...it is possible for man to become like God, to become deified, to become God by grace. This doctrine is based on many passages of both O.T. and N.T. (Psalms 82: (81) .6; 2 Peter 1:4), and it is essentially the teaching both of St. Paul, though he tends to use the language of filial adoption (Romans 8:9-17, Galatians 4:5-7) and the fourth gospel (John 17:21-23).
William R. Inge, Archbishop of Canterbury:
“God became man, that we might become God” was a commonplace of doctrinal theology at least until the time of Augustine, and that “deification holds a very large place in the writings of the fathers...We find it in Irenaeus as well as in Clement, in Athanasius as well in Gregory of Nysee. St. Augustine was no more afraid of deificari in Latin than Origen of apotheosis in Greek...To modern ears the word deification sounds not only strange but arrogant and shocking.
( for more info including Biblical support for theosis, see http://fairwiki.org/index.php/Deification_of_man)
“God was once a man like us. A number of things must then be true. First, God has not eternally been God.”
Christ was in the beginning with the Father, Christ is from everlasting to everlasting (D&C 61:1). He was Jehovah in the OT, the mortal Christ in the NT. At no time did he lose his godhood even when he walked the earth as a mortal man.
“Secondly, if God has not eternally been God, then obviously there must have been a God or gods before Him (unless one embraces the idea that the universe sprang into existence without divine assistance).”
Again the author ignores that in LDS theology, Christ walked as a mortal in the universe that he himself created before he took on mortal flesh.
“When speaking of the character of God, Smith insists that God came to be God. This continues the idea that God was once something other than what He is today”
Again, in Christ we see an example of progression by a divine personage:
Luke 2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.
So, there was a time where Christ did not have all wisdom, else how could he increase in wisdom. Likewise there was a time where he did not have God’s complete favor. Yet he had not lost his godhood.
“Smith then strikes directly at the heart of Christian orthodoxy–at a belief held by Christians from the very beginning–in saying that he will refute the idea that God has been God from all eternity”
It sounds to me as though he disagrees with the meaning that orthodox Christians attach to ‘from everlasting to everlasting’. LDS scriptures also repeatedly affirm God to be from everlasting to everlasting. The phase can be seen as indicating existence from the begging to the end, but nothing about the phrase requires that existence to be static as so many suppose. In fact with Christ being from everlasting to everlasting, and Christ clearly progressing in various ways in his mortal life, it’s perfectly reasonable to say that being from everlasting to everlasting isn’t a static existence.
“This is doctrine, pure and simple, and it is not something upon which a person can disagree and remain a follower of the Prophet.”
Again the author imposes on the reader his personal opinion of what Mormon doctrine is, contrary to the facts. The KDF is not doctrine, and it doesn’t matter what leader says something or how emphatically they say it, or even how popular an idea is among members of the church, it is not doctrine unless it is formally accepted by the church as doctrine.
There are times that prophets speak on behalf of the Lord, and times they speak of themselves and the KDF is an example of the latter type. The KFD never went through that process to be accepted as doctrine, and members are free to disagree with it.
“Smith insists that God’s time as a man is parallel to the life of Christ here upon earth. Obviously, then, Smith means what he says: God was a man like we are men, human beings, going through the same experiences of life that we are.”
Actually, it seem Smith meant that God was a man like Christ was a man. Smith is taking a very literal view of John 5:19 (The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.)
“The simplest means of demonstrating this is to point out that the number of exalted beings is increasing as time passes.”
Ah, but projecting the limits of time onto the eternities is invalid in our theology. Time is something we are subject to, but not God. Eternity is not some never-ending length of time but an existence outside of time altogether. Because the eternities are outside of time, there is no ‘going back in time’ in the eternities. Without time concepts like ‘first’ also fall by the wayside as well.
“Mormon Apostle Orson Pratt noted in his book, The Seer”
A source the church (and Orson Pratt) have repudiated as being out of line with the doctrines of the church. That the author would use it shows a low level of scholarship.
I find it of interest that a man who, in his statement of beliefs, says that some man will be saved and others will not, because God has already made up his mind and we can do nothing to change it, BUT I MUST CHANGE MY WAYS.
“... man became spiritually dead, totally unwilling and indeed incapable of seeking after God. God, from eternity past, having foreordained all things, joined a certain people to Christ Jesus, so that He might redeem them from their sin and in so doing bring glory to Himself. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died in the place of this elect people...” from http://aomin.org/AOFAITH.html
Since, by James White”s own belief, I am already where God has placed me, I am already fulfilling God,s plan. I can do nothing to change, by his belief. How many of us are not among the “elect”?
Mormons sound like something like the heretics the Arians..and the blessed St Athanasius refuted them 1,300 years ago
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2816.htm
What will be will be.