Posted on 09/03/2010 5:27:36 AM PDT by Paragon Defender
Glenn Beck has been in the news lately and, not surprisingly, so has his religion. Some have warned Christians to be wary of Beck, not because of his political views but because of his religious affiliation. He is, they say, not a real Christian.
I'm betting, though, that he is. I don't know Mr. Beck personally, but he belongs to the same church I do, and I'm a pretty mainstream member. I'll wager that his beliefs resemble mine.
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth. I also believe in Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, the Lord of all humankind, who, before being born to the Virgin Mary, was the Jehovah of the Old Testament. I believe that Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, that he was crucified, died and was buried. While his body lay in the tomb, he descended into the realm of the spirits of the dead and preached the gospel there. On the third day, Jesus rose, physically, from death. He ascended into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of the Father. He will return, however, in power and great glory, to judge the living and the dead. In the meantime, we can receive guidance from the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Trinity.
I believe that Christ founded a church in order to teach his doctrine and administer the ordinances of salvation to all humanity and that the fellowship of the Saints, Christ's disciples, transcends not only all ethnic, cultural and national divisions but even death itself. I believe in the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the body, which are made possible only through the gracious Atonement of Jesus Christ, in whom we have our only hope of salvation. And, finally, I believe in everlasting life.
Some will have recognized that the structure and phrasing of the two paragraphs above were modeled, quite consciously, on the ancient "Apostles' Creed" — a text dating to roughly the late fifth century. In the modern translation favored by the Church of England, the Apostles' Creed reads as follows:
"I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended into hell. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
"I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen."
Now, obviously, I've changed the language a bit. Mostly, I wanted to use more familiar or more typically Mormon terms. For instance, the word "catholic" is rarely used, nowadays, in its original sense of "universal" — it should be obvious that Henry VIII's church isn't announcing its surrender to the pope when it recites the Apostles' Creed — but Latter-day Saints do most definitely believe that the church established by Jesus has a universal mission.
More significantly, where the original Apostles' Creed says that Christ was "conceived by the Holy Spirit" ("conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto"), Latter-day Saints will want to insist that Jesus is the divine Son of God the Father. The scriptures are completely silent as to the mechanism of Christ's conception, and they do say that the Holy Spirit came upon Mary (Luke 1:35), but they also plainly declare that Jesus was and is "the Son of the Highest" (Luke 1:32). And emphasis on the fact that Jesus is the Son of God the Father scarcely seems a plausible basis for claiming that Latter-day Saints aren't Christians.
Believing what we do, because we agree so closely with the traditional Apostles' Creed, either Glenn Beck and I (and, for that matter, Mitt Romney and Harry Reid) are Christians, or those who formulated the creed and all those who have affirmed it during the centuries since then haven't been, either.
THX 1138
I am not corresponding with you with the expectation of changing your mind. Nor can you ruin my day. Only God can do that.
We are both entering our testimony in this exchange. Perhaps the lurkers will find something interesting here.
Indeed, my posts on this thread have centered on the Names of God. It is pure ecstasy for me to talk about the Names of God. Conversely, when a Name of God is used as a curse, which is common in Hollywood, I am revulsed. And when a Name of God is misappropriated or diminished, I am compelled to reply.
To think that the children of God look nothing like him is to deny the type and pattern of the earth and the Bible.
Which is to say, God is not an old grey haired man on a cloud.
The beginning of real space and time is the unavoidable conclusion of the measurements of cosmic microwave background radiation from the 1960’s forward. The universe is expanding. Space/time does not preexist, it is created as the universe expands which means there was a real beginning of space and time.
Indeed, that was the most theological statement ever to come out of modern science. (In the beginning…) And ever since, scientists have tried to obviate the need for God the Creator by positing novel physical cosmologies.
But they all fail on real space and real time – including Hawking’s imaginary time model – because no matter how far back one moves the goalpost, e.g. multi-verse, physical causation requires both space and time:
In the absence of time, events cannot occur.
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. [There is] no speech nor language, [where] their voice is not heard. – Psalms 19:1-3
Or to put it another way, that we are autonomous creatures and that autonomy exists “in” space/time does not mean that the Creator of this universe is ipso facto an autonomous entity, i.e. Jesus Christ is the brightness of the Father’s glory (Hebrews 1:3.) And every Christian is indwelt by the Spirit.
For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. - Colossians 3:3
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye [are] the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. - John 15:4-5
God is not thingly. He IS (YHvH) One. That is His Name, I AM.
And Jehovah hath become king over all the land, In that day there is one Jehovah, and His name one. – Zech 14:9 (YLT)
The LORD will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one LORD, and his name the only name. – Zech 14:9 (NIV)
And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day there shall be one Lord, and his name shall be one. – Zech 14:9 (RHE)
Indeed the Catholics around here will gladly testify of the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine. And I will see their testimony and raise them the real presence of the body of Christ of which all Christians are members.
For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also [is] Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether [we be] Jews or Gentiles, whether [we be] bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. - I Cor 12:12-14
Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. – I Cor 12:27
Is what they say true? Yes. Is there more Truth to be known? Yes.
The vision and mind of mortal men is limited in perception to three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. The testimony of any man is a glimpse, a slice. Only God sees “all that there is” all at once and all that we can know of it is what He reveals to us or permits us to see.
For example, a fly with all his limited perception and reasoning might believe he is traveling at 5 mph if he could think in those terms. But if he is in your car and you are traveling 65 mph, then he actually going 70 mph. And if you are driving on the equator, then he is going 1,170 mph (circumference of the earth 24,901.55 miles divided by 24 hours.) But that’s not all because the earth travels 149,600,000 miles every 365.25 days (67,000 mph) and so the fly is going 68,170 mph. And the solar system orbits the Milky Way galaxy at the speed of 486,000 mph so the fly is going 554,170 mph. And it doesn’t end there because the universe is expanding (space/time itself) and that at an accelerating rate.
The fly is telling the truth but he does not know what man knows. He can’t.
And we can’t know all that God knows.
Man is not the measure of God.
And anytime man tries to superimpose his own mind onto his understanding of God, he ends up with a reduction, a small ‘god’ that fits his mind, a ‘god’ of his own imagination, a ‘god’ that he can portray, e.g. as an old grey haired man on a cloud. But that is a false god, an imagining, an anthropomorphism.
Thank God that His adopted children realize this. We can admire the beauty of Michaelango’s Creation of Adam without leaving the Sistine Chapel with a false impression of Who God IS because we actually know Him.
But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
But God hath revealed [them] unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned.
But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. II Cor 2:6-16
And concerning man being made in God's image, I would like to point out that the Hebrew word neshama which is translated as "breath" means spirit.
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and [of] the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. - John 3:5-8
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, [even] to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. – John 1:12-13
But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. - Romans 8:9
Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. – Psalms 91:4
Wow, that’s excellent and a great story. Is that a temple in the background when he is with his family in a wheelchair?
Delphi-User, I agree with Alamo_girl, though I would say it differently, that we are 'just' testifying. That is, especially in so touchy a matter as "religion" the best way to begin is to speak gently, to listen intently, and to share questions -- not as in a cross examination but as a sincere inquiry.
I'm a Catholic, (so all the rest of you are going to hell, get over it ... KIDDING!) just so you know where I'm coming from. And I thought this time through I would sort of let you know where things you said set off little buzzers in my head and what I think about those buzzers. But I do not mean, "I'm right and you're wrong, nyah!" This is about 'sharing' (or inflicting?) the kind of thinking a Catholic does when he reads your good post. And the C.S. Lewis quote is excellent. My personal belief is that God is WAY more generous than we expect Him to be, and we should trust in that and try not to sweat the small stuff.
The Bible says "God is a Spirit..." (I get beat up with that all the time :-) So, is he subordinate to the laws of the spiritual realm? Jesus was mortal, was he subject to the laws of the mortal realm? I submit that being in a realm is not necessarily to be subordinate to it.A_G knows that I tend to rant about Protestants being 'materialists'. I think maybe what I mean is 'empiricists', but anyway. The word "spiritual" is very versatile. And I guess I see more among lots of non-Catholics that they divide "everything that is" into material and spiritual. Then the Spiritual gets to be whatever one wants it to be.
For me, the radical division is between "uncreated" and "created." And this affects my reading of my next quote from you, to wit:
IF God exists, then "Ex Nihilo" is wrong for God existed, hence no Nihilo.
(You're gonna love this, NOT!) We (I mean Catholics of the more or less Thomistic school, even dilettantes like me) God is not a thing and He does not exist! -- At least He does not as things exist. Tillich actually says it well, that He "lets things be (or exist)." He is not a member of the set "things that exist"; He MADE that set and, at least until the Incarnation was essentially outside it.
(Again, I'm not going for agreement; I'm just sketching another view point.)
For a glimpse of a notion of what we might mean by that, one would have to look seriously at the so-called "First Way" of 'proving' the existence of God: the Unmoved Mover argument. This is because it 'demonstrates' that God must be outside of time and unchanging (and a bunch of other stuff) and therefore essentially different from everything else.
Just sketching here.
Consequently, seeing the 'invisible' God is impossible for the "eye of sinful man" because he does not have a shape, a form in the μορφη sense, and our fallen eyes see only material things, and not all of them. And the "image", for us, is not a physical likeness but a metaphysical likeness in that we can really choose as He can and as my cat can't.
I submit that from your perspective... There is nothing before the earth, ...
Not necessarily. In fact almost certainly not. The creation of material things is not the only kind of creation we imagine God doing. As a trivial example, we imagine Him creating the idea of triangularity. But less abstrusely, we can imagine angelic creatures, creatures without bodies, who nonetheless change in time and place and are therefore 'things.' (The Catholic "conjecture" usually is that at their creation the angels decided irrevocably whether they were for God or against Him.).... Moving along.
We would say the 'knowledge" spoken of in Jeremiah 1:5 is not because we existed before our conception but because God is eternal and unchanging, and beholds all of time and space in His "here and now." So we do not see that text or similar ones as evidence of the pre-existence of the soul.
I don't see how laws of physics or logic apply to the Trinity
I don't think physics has anything to do with it. As for the laws of logic, how the doctrine works for me, at least, is to help me avoid errors logically downstream from it. I can detect that I am talking as if the Holy Spirit were a "function" of God, or as if Jesus were somehow less than God. Then, because of the mostly incomprehensible doctrine, alarm bells go off and I walk back over what I said or thought to look for a goof.
I guess, intellectually, it's kind of a matter of having things we think we MUST say, and then finding that the Trinitarian formula gives the best principle from which those statements can be formally derived, in a way analogous to that in which Newton's laws give principles which "save the appearances" and provide the basis of their most elegant explanation.
I hope this is interesting and informative with respect to knowing how my cult does business.
More than a year ago I asked a Mormon if he could refer me to a text of Mormon "systematic theology." Just recently, I have been castigated because the Big Bosses in my cult haven't published an 'official' systematic theology.
The LDS guy said that there isn't the 'discipline' of trying to express the LDS view in terms of philosophy, since philosophy is seen as something that really does not have a role in the conversation. My castigator did not (I think) understand that the philosophical attempt to systematize the truths accessible to philosophy results in different 'systems." Consequently, unless the Catholic Church endorses one kind of philosophical system as "right" (we do come mighty close, but we don't actually do it, which is why there's an obvious Aristotelian influence on Aquinas and an obvious Husserlian and Heideggerian influence on John Paul II) it cannot come out with a 'final' systematic theology. We wholeheartedly endorse the Philosophical enterprise, but we approach it in an essentially critical way affected by those truths we consider non-negotiable.
Bless you both.
I love your wit and patience and incisive presentation.
Speaking of incisive, are you sure you're not an attorney?
This is why you cannot understand or hear, (”find the point”), what the Spirit is saying to the Christians.......
Just as the Apostle John said........”We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.”.....1John 4:6
Keep the fight strong guys... I have avoided these for a long time because there were so many Anti’s on here that I was arguing several points all at the same time. Keep it up!
Resty, i am glad you liked the post.
Ah DU; talking about PEOPLE again?
I thought you gave that up for Lent?
Please; don’t point out our faults or you’ll NEVER have enough time to compose so many wordy responces to try to hide the fact that MORMONism is a religion built upon the supposed ashes of Christianity; in the world trying to do the works that Christianity had failed to do.
Perhaps they are NOT worried about what a MAN thinks, but what their GOD thinks about them following the CLEARLY DEFINED RULES in D&C 132.
What is 'evident' is the FACT that JS had no idea what he was talking about when he told his mamma, "I have learned for myself that PRESBYTERIANism is UNTRUE."
The PROOF of this is the FACT that no MORMON today has the SLIGHTEST idea what he was talking about either.
Hold this thought...
But MORMONism TEACHES just the opposite!
It claims His church was hijacked by men, and ONLY JS could straighten it out again.
Oh NO!
NOT before breakfast!
FLDS folks are NOT!! MORMON!
Then the very rocks would cry out against the LIE that is MORMONism!
Goody for you; then you are a much nicer man than I.
"Yo!
MAMA!
How many times I gotta tell you?
That PRESBYTERIAN crap ain't TRUE!"
WORD!
So; you trying to tell us that an ignorant farm boy from the early 1800's spoke ELIZIBETHAN English?
Is THAT a MORMON (a pox upon it) teaching?
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