Posted on 12/16/2007 11:15:52 PM PST by Mobile Vulgus
Mormons aren't Christians ...
... and other thoughts on religion and politics sure to get your blood boiling
Herewith, my views on religion and the politics of the present moment, with something to offend just about everyone:
1. Mormons aren't Christians. I don't mean that as a criticism, only as a descriptive phrase. When Mormons claim Jesus Christ as their savior, there's no reason to doubt their sincerity and good will, or even to deny that they are in some way followers of Christ. Yet Mormonism rejects foundational doctrines of traditional Christian orthodoxy, such that it is impossible to reconcile with normative Christianity.
2. Anyway, the Latter-day Saints church teaches that all other Christian churches are apostate. A heretic is someone who rejects one or more doctrines of religion, but an apostate is someone who has rejected the religion entirely. How is it, exactly, that you can get mad when people you regard as apostates consider you to be ... apostate? How does that work?
3. Theologically, this is a big deal. But politically, so what? Mormons vote like Southern Baptists and come down on the same side of most issues of public morality like conservative Christians do. If you're a socially conservative lawmaker, wouldn't you rather have a Mormon in your legislative foxhole than a Kennedy-style cafeteria Catholic or progressive mainline Protestant? I'm no Romney fan, but is there really no meaningful political difference between Good-Mormon Mitt and Bad-Catholic Rudy, to say nothing of Liberal-Protestant Hillary?
4. There are plenty of good reasons for conservative Christians not to vote for Mr. Romney, but his religious beliefs are not among them. Do Christians want to be in the position of rejecting a candidate whose political views and moral values they agree with, solely because they don't like his religion?
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.I received a testimony of the Truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, the coming of Jesus in the flesh by the same spirit, at the same time. That means it was from God.
2 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:
3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
If someone becomes a God, they start their own reality, their own universe dimensions, et cetera. This "get your own planet" thing is really insulting!
Exalted men create new universes!!
What a deliciously attractive new meme for young Mormons to latch onto and launch a new set of apologetics from.
It really does let you completely escape some of the more confounding internal inconsistencies of Mormon doctrine.
E.g., The King Follett Discourse version of how God came to be God through "Eternal Progression" is irreconcilable with the immutable God of the Book of Mormon. Irreconcilable if you adhere to the tired old notion of the universe.
But hold on a minute... stop the presses... we've got a new meme!
Just put Father God's eternal progression to become an exalted man into a universe that is external to our (Father God's created) universe. So now, God can be understood to have been changeable in the external universe, but unchangeable in this universe.
Uh, no offense, but my mother warned me not to get into a car with strangers. And there a lot of people a lot smarter than me. And there are some pretty long threads where I have learned lots of stuff.
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Apparently, I must make it simple for you, we can Via Artificial insemination create a virgin birth today.And would that 'virgin birth' have ANY relationship to the unique Birth of the Christ Child?
I do not claim to be a Biblical scholar, but in the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary, their commentary on this verse says:
'James, the Lord's brother—This designation, to distinguish him from James the son of Zebedee, was appropriate while that apostle was alive. But before Paul's second visit to Jerusalem (Ga 2:1; Ac 15:1-4), he had been beheaded by Herod (Ac 12:2). Accordingly, in the subsequent mention of James here (Ga 2:9, 12), he is not designated by this distinctive epithet: a minute, undesigned coincidence, and proof of genuineness. James was the Lord's brother, not in our strict sense, but in the sense, "cousin," or "kinsman" (Mt 28:10; Joh 20:17). His brethren are never called "sons of Joseph," which they would have been had they been the Lord's brothers strictly.'
So in answer to whom Paul was referring, he was James the Good, First Bishop of Jerusalem, and kinsman to Jesus Christ.
Actually....the one (James) that was beheaded was a cousin. You can prove this quite easily.
He was the brother of John: [Acts 12:2] And he killed James the brother of John with the sword.
At the crucifixion: [John 19:25] Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.
[Mark 15:40] There were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome.
[Matthew 27:56] Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedees children.
From the above three scriptures we have determined that Salome is the mother of Zebedee's children and also the sister of Mary. This would make her "Aunt Salome" to Our Lord.
[Matthew 4:21] And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them.
We now know that James and John are first cousins to Our Lord. This also explains why Our Lord gave the care of His mother to John....a close family member. [John 19:25-27] Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home. The disciple of course was John.
Jesus had a very tentative relationship with His blood siblings. This is demonstrated quite remarkably in [John 7:1-5] After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him. Now the Jew's feast of tabernacles was at hand. His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, shew thyself to the world. For neither did his brethren believe in him.
There are Three things which jump out at you in these verses. These Brethren are not camp followers as they do not believe in Our Lord (verse 5). They are disgruntled and they taunt The Lord by telling him He should go to the Festivals anyway.....knowing that the Jews are out to kill him. They want Him dead (verse 3)! We sometimes forget just how much Our Lord was hated.....even by His own family [Mark 6:3-4] Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. But Jesus, said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.
No....the James that was killed by Herod [Acts 12:2] was cousin James. The James who Paul saw in Jerusalem [Galatians 1:19] was the "Now Converted" brother of Our Lord and leader of the Jerusalem Church [Acts 15:13-15].
OK, let me go back and reread what I wrote this morning.
This will just take a few seconds.....
Nope, I didn’t say you were slighting Catholics. Not even close. Maybe all the replies to you are getting jumbled up together in your mind?
I do think the Catholic church has a huge hierarchy, what with being almost 2,000 years old. But mediation is a too strong a word. It’s more of a voluntary intercession. But that’s just my opinion.
Anyway, I was making an observation (aren’t we all on this web site?) about how sad it is that as Christians, we can’t, in the words of Rodney King, “Just all get along.”
So I've been trying to think (very difficult for me -- smoke starts coming out of my ears) about this and I came up with .... drum roll please ...
What we have here is a failure to communicate a problem with paradigms (and actually "failure to communicate" is not so far off.)
AS I never tire of pointing out (oh yes I do) even in Dante there is an indication that us Calflicks have acknowledged that God reaches outside the Church to save people without sacramental participation. Dante got in trouble but not for saying that.
So the one word, the hinge, kind of, in what you wrote would be "need", and what we might mean by it.
And the reason I haul in the "means what I want it to mean" word "paradigm" is that, well over here we have me: For me, confession (complete with penance), sacrament, "Sunday Duty", "Holy Days of Obligation", rosaries, Novenas, Liturgy of the Hours, sacramentals, and blah blah blah are not burdens I shoulder because I "need" to. They are gifts which encourage, strengthen, and assist me in my, what, life in Jesus.
And, and this is hard even for me to quite understand yet, I don't really think that much about "Salvation", least of all in terms of "getting into heaven". I think about Jesus, and about recognizing Him in others. God willing, my soon to be "name in religion" will be Gabriel of Mary, because it is so important to me that each one of us receive the proclamation that we are highly favored and that God wants to conceive His love in us for us to bear into the world. But my name might almost have been (will might almost have been - what tense is THAT?) John Baptist, because sometimes I recognize the presence of Christ and leap for Joy.
And like an unborn child, wile I may be leaping for joy, I am not asking myself, "What must I do to 'get into heaven'?" Jesus is here, one way or another, and that's a happy (albeit sometimes frightening) thing.
While over THERE (and "there" includes some poor misled and unhappy Catholics, I guess) there are people wondering about if they know they're saved, if one is save once is one saved always, and so on and so forth. And while, in one sense, the correct answer to "What must I do to be saved?' is "Nothing, It's been taken care of!" the people over "there" seem to process everything in terms not of God's presence and love in their lives right now, but only in terms of "qualifying" for "Salvation".
And in other news, while you use the word "institution", don't forget that for us the church, pillar and bulwark of truth, as 2Tim, 3:15 says, is the body of Christ. Yeah, sure it has institutional aspects. After all "corporation" means "body", and whatever else happens we can be sure that scribes and bureaucrats will always be able to find employment.
But my body has, from time to time, belly-button lint. That however is not the most important thing about this aging corpse. And the "institutional" aspects of the Church are not of the "esse" of the Church. SO yes, I CAN honestly argue there isn't some institutional mediation going on there. Gosh, you Bible alone guys none the less have a BOOK, a THING (with or without zippers) that seems critical in mediating God's grace.
And in yet still other news, Yes, I guess one could say that there are mediatory devices, like sacraments and such, in the Church. So I'm asking myself in what way does a pipe ADD something to water.
And yeah, that's not a perfectly apposite question, I guess, because water has to be somewhere and not somewhere else, while God is everywhere.
Reality calls, and my kitty is trying to type with me, so I'll close with suggesting that God does not NEED sacraments to save us, but we need things to do and to handle as helps in our life with Him.
Well, given the fact that you posted convenient excerpts of the article in support of a presupposition, it's not really the article I take issue with. You are trying to present the Council of Nicea as being a purely political event with no practical significance. The article itself presents it as anything but. Arianism had already been condemned soundly at Alexandria. The church already recognized it as heresy. The notion that Constantine's recognition of this as a major division in the church that needed definitive address somehow renders the Council anything but what it truly was (the church coming together to formally and institutionally condemn heresy) is both fallacious and absurd. But such a position sure makes for a convenient justification of your own heresy :)
Honestly, that is my perspective, but then I know I have a perspective, you are still acting as if your perspective is reality, LOL!
My perspective is not the one in direct contradiction to the Bible, friend.
Joseph may or may not have sung through his hat, but I could make some comments about people speaking through theirs here.
So you question whether or not Joseph Smith placed a "Seer Stone" inside a hat and buried his face in the hat in order to translate the "Reformed Egyption" on the gold plates Moroni revealed to him into the Book of Mormon?
So you do not buy into the great three in one Oil Theory? How about the Bible, is it complete and inerrant?
I absolutely believe in the Trinity...in one God who is three in Person and one in essence. I do not need to place the authority of the Council of Nicea over that of Scripture to believe so, for the Scriptures themselves attest to this truth. And yes, the original Scriptures were complete and inerrant.
Really? Where exactly did I get my facts wrong? Please read my page and tell me any place where I have my facts wrong. I also tried to keep clear with formating and language where I am quoting and where I am Opining.
Well the most obvious is the fact that, at least in the case of your recount of the Nicene Council, you use a rather convenient historical interpretation (with no real hard basis in fact...just your own spin on one particular group's recount of the event) as an excuse to dismiss a theological doctrine (namely, the Trinity).
The sum total of your argument is:
The doctrine of the Trinity was defined by the Nicene Council.
The Nicene Council was the result of Constantine's request for a peaceful resolution to theological conflict within the church.
Therefore, the doctrine of the Trinity is false.
That argument is completely unsound and invalid.
Not only that, but you claim that the Trinity was the "creation of a pagan emperor named Constantine." No person with any basic level of reading comprehension would draw that conclusion from the link you provided. As I pointed out, Arianism had already been condemned in Alexandria well before Constantine requested the Nicene Council. If you wanted to be even remotely accurate, you would readily admit that if anything it was the creation of the bishops at the Council, not Constantine. But having the doctrine be the product of bishops from throughout Christendom doesn't have the same dramatic effect does it?
Moreover, you say "this was [Constantine's] expressed purpose according to records he had kept of the event." The last portion of that sentence links to the Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Nicene Council. NOWHERE IN THAT ARTICLE is there any quotation or citation from records Constantine had kept of the event. But again, it has a much more dramatic effect to claim otherwise, doesn't it?
You are speaking as though you've presented this ironclad case against orthodox Christianity, but the truth is you do not even have the basic facts correct, let alone a sound logical argument against orthodox Christian theology.
Much of the rest of your page has the same glaring errors. Consider the following:
We believe we are Christian: A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic[1] religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the New Testament.[2] Christians believe Jesus to be the Son of God and the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament.
Mormonism does not even MEET the definition (from Wikipedia of all places) that you provide! MORMONISM IS NOT MONOTHEISTIC!!!
I'm sorry, but you are NOT a Christian and NOT on solid ground at all in your arguments. QED
First you say this: “Nope, I didn’t say you were slighting Catholics. Not even close.”
Then you say this: “Anyway, I was making an observation (aren’t we all on this web site?) about how sad it is that as Christians, we can’t, in the words of Rodney King, ‘Just all get along.’”
Was I saying anything to demonstrate not getting along with Catholics? I figured your reply had some relevance to what I said, but I may have been mistaken, and it sounds like I was.
As for the Catholic church being more a “voluntary intercession” than a “mediation,” note that the church requires, rather than merely encourages, its members to go through the institution — whether through receiving communion, confessing to a priest, being baptized and confirmed in a Catholic church, and so on. So it’s only voluntary in the sense that any religion is voluntary; one can choose to ignore the rules or leave it. But rules they are.
Just because "Dance With My Father" beat out Eminem for the Grammy is no reason to call the man a heretic.
I think that’s a very thoughtful reply, and I agree with much of it. I do, however, think you’re painting some false dichotomies. For instance, just because you enjoy what I’ve been calling institutional mediation (sacraments and so on) doesn’t mean they’re not required according to Catholic rules. You can love the mediation; you can think it’s a wonderful help in reaching Jesus, in whatever capacity. But the mediation is still there.
I agree that the Bible is Protestants main mode of mediation. I didn’t intend to argue that we have NO mediation whatsoever. I’m saying Catholics, while also using Scripture, have built up a byzantine collection of other forms of mediation — the Pope, the bishops, the bureaucracy; the rules about confirmation and confession and so on; even the ultra-scripted liturgy, to some extent (though that’s less so).
Also, I do realize that the Catholic church recognizes ways to be saved outside of Catholicism. But there are still rules for Catholics. People might be saved despite ignoring them, but the rules are still part of the system — or paradigm :) Moreover, Catholics haven’t abandoned the notion that they constitute the one true church, so obviously there’s a hierarchy where some Christians are more equal than others.
You have uttered the most brilliant statement I have seen on FR for a couple of years. Seriously.
"Mormons" and Christians" alike should take heed and attend to the really pressing issues that face us all as individuals and as a Nation....
Thanks, Tracer.
The one true Church stuff doesn't mean that some individuals are more equal than others any more than saying that the best way to deal with pneumonia is this or that anti-biotic means that people who got recovered fromppneumponia before anti-biotics were less equal than I. I'm just grateful for the anti-biotics,and wish everybody had the access to them that I did when I had pneumonia.
I guess the matter of scripted liturgy is another issue. I personally have ALWAYS, even before I was a Catholic, preferred scripted worship to un-scripted. As an Episcopal priest I wanted very much to avoid inflicting my own notions on the people entursted to my care. As a lay Catholic, I resent the heck out of the priests who think their own individual notions are so much better than those of the Church that they re-write the prayers and change the ceremonial to suit themselves.
I'm getting the idea that ecclesiology (and sacraments) is/are where the big difference between us is. IMHO the Church, from the Qahal Adonai up to the ecclesia, is a BIG notion. I'd venture to say that the part of I Cor where Paul is most expansive about the Holy Spirit is where he is also most discursive about the corporate church. And I think it is good askesis to gaze upon Old Widow Busybody and to remember that she is as much a part of the Body as wonderful I am.
I suppose if I ever get some free-time it would be good to do a word study on ecclesia in the NT. And this is because certainly the Gospel has a very strong element of the individual's relationship with God. So the dicing and slicing and whatnot will be demanding and interesting.
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