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Ahimsa
Guest
Yes, that is true. But that is a different idea than the “spirit is matter” idea.
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KathleenGee
Guest
God is…‘I Am Who Am’…and Spirit.
So the state of being is Spirit…but God’s.
From how I understand Buddhism, it is enlightened awareness, the acceptance and endurance through suffering as its aim.
In Christianity, God the Father created the universe through the Word…Christ the Eternal Word Made Flesh. So all of creation is a reflection of God the Creator and Christ. And when Christ was risen, all things were made new from the bondage of sin.
But we Christians are to partake in this work, and mainly it is not about working on improving water quality, creating wetlands, working to fight air pollution, and so on, but to confront the evil of mortal sin in our own individual lives. Christ’s grace is sufficient for us.
So the state of being is Spirit…but God’s.
From how I understand Buddhism, it is enlightened awareness, the acceptance and endurance through suffering as its aim.
In Christianity, God the Father created the universe through the Word…Christ the Eternal Word Made Flesh. So all of creation is a reflection of God the Creator and Christ. And when Christ was risen, all things were made new from the bondage of sin.
But we Christians are to partake in this work, and mainly it is not about working on improving water quality, creating wetlands, working to fight air pollution, and so on, but to confront the evil of mortal sin in our own individual lives. Christ’s grace is sufficient for us.
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BartBurk
Guest
He was referring to the golden plates the Book of Mormon was written on.
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FidesSpesCarita
Guest
Umm. Yes it does preclude that. By definition. Matter is physical, takes up space. Spirit is non-material, does not take up space, is not physical, etc. By definition they are different. To say otherwise is to debate the meaning of the word “is”.
A spirit is a spirit. There is no such thing as a material spirit. Spirit can influence matter, but is of itself immaterial. To make the claim that they are two forms of one substance is a logical fallacy.
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BartBurk
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Obviously, Joseph Smith disagreed with the traditional concept of spirit. This would be an instance of “revelation” that we as Catholics disagree with. Mormons believe in “intelligence” which may be closer to what we as Catholics would call spirit, but I’m not sure about that. I don’t know if Mormons would see “intelligence” as material.
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FidesSpesCarita
Guest
This is similar to the point I was attempting to make earlier. I disagree with the assumption but hold the argument itself to be weak, as it can so easily be explained away.
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Tony888
Guest
Everything in the Quad is considered Doctrine, so what Joseph contributed to the BoM, PoGP, and D&C
I’m not aware of any proclamations made by Joseph and his council of apostles that are exclusive of the above.
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valentino
Guest
How do you know this to be true?you can watch tv shows where there are photos of ghosts (which I don’t believe).Is that where you get your information?ThEre are numerous photos of flying saucers too which most have been proven false.When I hear people say they have seen ghosts or cloud like visions of people I don’t view that as prove.
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zaffiroborant
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I think you need to spend some time on MD&D to get an understanding of the extreme range there is on just what constitutes “Mormon Doctrine” . What has always struck me is the refusal of the LDS leadership to ever come and with a definitive declaration of what is and what isn’t doctrine. “I don’t know that we teach that” doesn’t cut it. As far as I can see the don’t even define the outer limits of doctrine leaving members to not only be blown about by the whims of men but by their own imaginations.
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MtnDwellar
Guest
I suspect that if Mr. Smith had used the word substance and said that “All spirit is substance.”, he would have been nearly in line with the teachings of “substance and accidents” proposed by St. Thomas and St. Augustine.
Perhaps Mr. Smith was trying to convey a similar teaching in different terms.
Perhaps Mr. Smith was trying to convey a similar teaching in different terms.
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BartBurk
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I’m absolutely sure he wasn’t trying to teach that.I suspect that if Mr. Smith had used the word substance and said that “All spirit is substance.”, he would have been nearly in line with the teachings of “substance and accidents” proposed by St. Thomas and St. Augustine.
Perhaps Mr. Smith was trying to convey a similar teaching in different terms.
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Jim_Dandy
Guest
No, Joseph Smith was teaching materialism. God is material. All is material “All spirit is matter, but is more fine or pure. and can only be discerned by purer eyes. We cannot see it, but when our bodies are purified *, we shall see that it [everything, including our own spirits] is all matter.”I suspect that if Mr. Smith had used the word substance and said that “All spirit is substance.”, he would have been nearly in line with the teachings of “substance and accidents” proposed by St. Thomas and St. Augustine.
Perhaps Mr. Smith was trying to convey a similar teaching in different terms.
No matter how fine or pure it is, matter occupies space. This, according to Smith, would include all that Christianity deems ‘spirit,’ which is not material and does not occupy space.
“The Father [God] has a body of flesh and fones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body and flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit.” D&C l30:22.
The Holy Ghost is not “spirit” in the Christian understanding of the term. Rather, according to Smith, he is material and therefore occupies space.
I started this thread to call attention to one of the perhaps lesser known reasons why Mormonism is not Christian.
God is a spirit; He does have have parts; He does not occupy space. He is immortal.
Jim Dandy*
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Ahimsa
Guest
Read your Bible.
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Ahimsa
Guest
That’s exactly what Mr. Smith was trying to say: spirit is substance, as is matter, but spirit is a much finer substance than matter.
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Ahimsa
Guest
Smith taught no such materialism. Materialism is the belief that matter is the ultimate foundation of reality. Smith didn’t teach that.
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Nicea325
Guest
500 years ago? So J.S. lived before the 19th century? I do not think you have a valid point. Second, Spirit is NOT matter. I cannot find one orthodox Christian (Apostle or ECF’s) from the first 500 years of the church who was teaching Spirit is matter,unless I am higly misinformed? God created MATTER and God in no shape or form is binded to His own creation. Spirit does not occupy space nor does it have size,weight,etc,etc.
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Nicea325
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RebeccaJ
Guest
FYI
D&C 131
7 There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes;
8 We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.
You should also be made aware the JS wrote very little, but relied on an amanuensis, which were men who were very close to him and who he trusted. Men such as his cousin Oliver Cowdery, his second counselor Frederick G Williams and W. W. Phelps, who was also Smith’s ghost writer in Nauvoo.
So no, they were not cobbled together from audience notes.
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Jim_Dandy
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Let’s see – believing that God is material – and that spirit does not exist but is, in reality, matter – and that all that exists is matter – is not the belief that matter is the ultimate foundation of reality? Hmmm.
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soren1
Guest
There are two reasons to believe that spirit is not material: reason and revelation.
From pure reason, the whole point of claiming that spirit exists at all is that conscious, rational life contains properties that transcend materialist reduction. There are technical philosphical arguments for this, but it is fairly plain to common observance. Everyone has a sense of what I am talking about. But however one parses the philosophical arguments, one can never face any difficulty in understanding the nature of the mind, and the personal dimension of human existence, that is clarified in any degree by positing a different form of matter that is more rarefied. This doctrine is an intellectula dead-end with no explanatory content, because it raises the immediate question, “What distinctive feature of the rarefied matter makes it alive?” You can’t explain why there is living matter by appealing to more living matter. Yet a genuinely transcendent spirit, because of its immateriality, possesses an infinite potency capable of containing the full breadth of thought and awareness that characterizes the human soul. It is also immune to the objection I have raised against the Mormon view.
The biblical evidence that spirit is immaterial is spread about, but gets one of its clearest treatments in Jesus’ dialogue with the Samaritan woman. When she asks him whether God should be worshipped in Jerusalem or Mt. Gerizim. Jesus replies that God can and will be worshipped anywhere, “in spirit and in truth.” Why? Because “God is spirit.” (Jn 4:24)
Mormons, including prophets as recent a Gordon B. Hinckley, have attempted to explain this verse by claiming that it simply means “God is spiritual.” It is true that the Greek construction, which literally reads, “Spirit the God,” could, grammatically, mean that. If only the context supported it. However, the entire point of Jesus asserting God’s spiritual nature is to answer the question about where in space God can be worshipped. The whole point is that transcendence of spatial limits is a property of spirit only. Jesus answers the Samaritan woman’s question by dissolving it: since God is not limited in space (as matter is) there is no exclusive location for pure worship, for spirit is as omnipresent as truth. Even more plain is the fact that Jesus explicitly reduces the Samaritan woman’s question to an error in understanding God’s nature: “You worship you know not what, but we know *what *we worship.” The resolution of the problem, “God is spirit,” is hence a definitional statement, as Catholics have always understood it, rather than a descriptive statement as Mormon leaders and apologists assert.
One could summarize the underlying components of the dialogue this way:
Samaritan woman: Where is God?
Jesus: You wouldn’t need to ask *where *he is if you knew *what *he is. He is spirit, and so he is everywhere.
(By the way, it illustrates just how historically vacuous LDS apologetics is that my exegesis of John 4:24 follows an argument that goes back at least to Origen, who gives a similar reading in the first four paragraphs of On First Principles. See here. Thus, the LDS reading was refuted almost 1500 years before Joseph Smith was born, yet I have yet to learn of a single LDS scholar who has seriously engaged this straightforward interpretation.)
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