Any Mormons on here read the CES Letter?

[RebeccaJ]

RebeccaJ:

Now y’all just have to figure out that you are not worthy of, and never will be, of God’s greatest gift. When you do, it’s ok by me (for what that is worth) to claim that’s hows it’s always been.

Only the worthy will inherit Eternal Life. The worthy are those who have cleansed themselves of sin through the Atonement of Christ.

Revelation 7:14 And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

This does not say that everyone else is excluded from heaven. I understand this exlcusion position, as it is common in Christianity, among some Catholics, all Evangelicals and Mormons.

It is not the position of the Catholic Church, however, and there are good scriptural reasons to be inclusive of all people who love God. Including those whose ideas of God are in error (such as Mormons).

I hold no belief that you will be excluded from heaven, for not accepting the truth that you have obviously rejected, and by which acceptance, you would be baptized. I believe that God will be your judge, and is not I who judges you, nor any man on earth, and especially not any Mormon.

 

[Prodigal1984]

Lol that verse you cited from Revelation is cited about twenty times throughout the BOM 600 years before John even wrote it.
See the tribes in America had better revelation than us. They knew the New Testament verses and Jesus Christs name and his atonement centuries before Jesus even was born. They were special I guess.
Sarcasm…

 

[gazelam]

gazelam:

RebeccaJ:

It is only more recently (relatively) that Mormons are now leaning towards the right understanding of salvation, that is, it is not possible to repay Jesus.

Please share quotes of latter-day Saint leaders talking of repaying Jesus.

See Boyd Packer’s conference talk titled “The Mediator”, where he uses a made up story to describe what Jesus has done for humanity.

“Then,” said the benefactor, “you will pay the debt to me and I will set the terms. It will not be easy, but it will be possible. I will provide a way. You need not go to prison.”

Psalms 116:12 How can I repay the Lord for all the great good done for me?

Clearly Christ did something for us that we can’t do for ourselves. No one can give something to nor do something for Christ that somehow relieves His past suffering on our behalf. However, scripture is contains several monetary analogies concerning Eternal Life.

Matthew 20:1 The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard.

In the Parable of the Talents, a reward (i.e., Eternal Life) is given only to the faithful stewards.

Matthew 22:17, 21 Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?.. At that he said to them, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.

Elder Packer’s imperfect analogy uses money, which is fungible. The atonement isn’t fungible. I have no problem with imperfect analogies that remind us that we have a duty to God.

It appears that Catholics have no qualms singing Psalms 116. See here also.

 

[Horton]

None of these verses speak of money.

 

[Arandur]

More to the point, they don’t speak of saving ourselves by the repaying of our debt (Pelagianism/Semi-Pelagianism). They speak of making an offering to God, but it is wholly insufficient for our salvation; we cannot save ourselves, and even our actions have no merit apart from Christ, and uniting them to Christ. Which is the whole point not only of Jesus’s atonement and co-operation with Grace, but also of the Jesus uniting himself to the Church as his Body, through the Eucharist. The Mass is the very process by which we are united to him, with him – and this is only possible because we participate in and partake of the Sacrifice of Christ himself, at the altar.

Many Christians have lost or even actively reject that sense of Sacrifice in their communion or worship services. Yet it is that which Jesus says gives life; “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life within you.”

The economy of salvation is incoherent outside of the Catholic Church.

 

[adamhovey1988]

I haven’t gotten to read all of this, can someone summarise it for me?

 

[Thomasbradley312]

Forgive me , it is actually used 1,500 times. It came to pass.

 

[gazelam]

The Apostasy That Wasn’t by Rod Bennett. No, it wasn’t made specifically in refutation of Mormonism. And it really focuses on the Arian crisis as the main historical evidence, as it is the crucial time period related to most accusaions against the Church.

I actually have this book, but I didn’t like the author’s style. My bookmark is at chapter 2 and will probably stay there. Having a book refuting apostasy start with “So piercing were the stars, so black the firmament overhead…” tells me that I’m in for some storytelling mixed in with the history. Just not my style…

My other point here was that there’s simply no evidence in history of the Mormon distinctives. Nowhere is recorded anything like their distinctive beliefs, structure, or interpretations of Scripture.

Here are a couple of distinctive Latter-day Saint beliefs found in early Christian writings.

1. Creation solely from pre-existent matter

Justin Martyr wrote the following:

And we have been taught that He in the beginning did of His goodness, for man’s sake, create all things out of unformed matter ; and if men by their works show themselves worthy of this His design, they are deemed worthy, and so we have received–of reigning in company with Him, being delivered from corruption and suffering. (First Apology X [ANF: 1:165], emphasis added)

1. The belief that man can become like God

Cyprian said: What Christ is, we Christians shall be, if we imitate Christ. (Cyprian, “On the Vanity of Idols,” The Treatises of Cyprian, 6:15, in vol. 5, Fathers of the Third Century, 469.)

Hippolytus said: And thou shalt be a companion of the Deity, and a co-heir with Christ. . . . For thou hast become God: . . . thou hast been deified, and begotten unto immortality. (Hippolytus, Philosophumena (The Refutation of All Heresies), book 10, chapter 30, in Fathers of the Third Century: Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, Appendix, vol. 5 of Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 153)

1. Christ is subordinate to the Father

Justin Martyr wrote:

“[T]here is said to be, another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things; who is called an Angel…. I shall endeavor to persuade you, that He is said to have appeared to Abraham, and to Jacob, and to Moses, and who is called God, is distinct from Him who made all things – numerically, I mean, not [distinct] in will.” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 56[ANF 1:223])

I could go on…

 

[gazelam]

I always thought Mormonism is more similar to Iglesia Ni Cristo in the Philippines or La Luz Del Mundo in Mexico. Claiming apostasy and modern day apostles and such. At some point it almost gets comical.

It’s closest to pre-Hellenized Christianity, because that’s what the Restored Gospel is.

 

[gazelam]

None of these verses speak of money.

If that is your position, what do you believe that the laborers from Matthew 20:1 hired by the landowner would receive at the end of the day?

 

[RebeccaJ]

Horton:

None of these verses speak of money.

If that is your position, what do you believe that the laborers from Matthew 20:1 hired by the landowner would receive at the end of the day?

Matthew 20:1-16 Explained | Catholic Answers Q&A

The general idea of the parable is that everyone comes to the vineyard (faith) at different points in their lives. Some people are lifelong disciples of Jesus, and some people convert only toward the end of their lives. In the kingdom of God, both groups are treated the same. By human standards, we perhaps might view this as unjust. Yet Jesus points out that the reward for their long work (heaven) is fair, and the only reason that others receive this same reward is because of the generosity of the owner of the vineyard (God). It is his (God’s) to do with as he pleases. So long as we have not been treated unjustly, how could we reasonably complain that God is generous to others?

 

[Stephen168]

Here are a couple of distinctive Latter-day Saint beliefs found in early Christian writings.

1. Creation solely from pre-existent matter

It’s closest to pre-Hellenized Christianity, because that’s what the Restored Gospel is.

Joseph Smith did not restore a gospel. He invented one, and in this case agrees with Plato not Christianity.

“Others take the view expressed by Plato, that giant among the Greeks. He said that God had made all things out of pre-existent and uncreated matter, just as the carpenter makes things only out of wood that already exists. But those who hold this view do not realize that to deny that God is Himself the Cause of matter is too impute limitation to Him, just as it is undoubtedly a limitation on the part of the carpenter that he can make nothing unless he has the wood. How could God be called Maker and Artificer if His ability to make depended on some other cause, namely on matter itself? If He only worked up existing matter and did not Himself bring matter into being, He would be not the Creator but only a craftsman”. - Saint Athanasius

 

[Arandur]

As is typical, quoting without understanding.

Ambiguous quotes from Justin Martyr taken without full context. He hardly states the Mormon position on creation, does not say that God did not create matter. On the contrary, he has contemporaries, even students, who are more explicit about ex nihilo creation (Tatian and Theophilus). Justin WAS a Platonist, so maybe he did hold Plato’s pre-existent matter theory – but boy, what a nasty shock to your stated position that Mormonism is “pre-Hellenized” Christianity, for this (and much of the rest of Gnosticism and poly- or heno-theism) is Hellenic…

Of course, the Scriptures themselves really offer a lot here, followed up consistently through Judeo-Christian thought. John 1, many places in Paul’s letters, some references to God’s creation in Psalms, etc. And very explicit in 2 Maccabees 7:28: “I beg you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed.h And in the same way the human race came into being.”

You might find these interesting: Blogging Scripture HIS Way: Creatio ex nihilo: A Critique of the Mormon Doctrine of Creation
https://carm.org/did-god-create-the-universe-from-nothing

Catholic doctrine includes “deification” or “apotheosis,” but we mean something very different from the Mormon interpretation. For it is as Paul says, we are made “partakers” of the divine nature. It is union with God, elevation in that union through Christ. It is not that we become superpower gods over our own worlds, equal to God. That is an alien concept to Judaism and Christianity, and would have been received as the highest blasphemy and abomination.

Similarly, with the relationship of the Son to the Father; precise Trinitarian formulations, stated in ways that do make for improper analogies, were centuries off in Justin’s time. He did not state that Jesus was a separate god. As the Arian Heresy revealed, that was an innovation. The People of God had always believed in the One-ness of God, as well as the Three Persons, without yet having worked out precise details. But they knew what the Apostles taught, and they were stubbornly insistent on that, and that lead to understanding of what God was NOT.

This is gone into in some depth in the book I mentioned. The imaginative descriptions are the Author’s attempts to put the reader in the time and place, and make the historical people involved more approachable and real, not just names in a dusty ancient source. He doesn’t spend much time on that kind of narrative, really. He spends much more time, particularly after he has set the stage early in the book, with the actual back and forth, including many quotations from the original sources, on both sides.

 

[gazelam]

As is typical, quoting without understanding.

Ambiguous quotes from Justin Martyr taken without full context. He hardly states the Mormon position on creation, does not say that God did not create matter.

There is nothing ambiguous about Justin’s quote!

And we have been taught that He in the beginning did of His goodness, for man’s sake, create all things out of unformed matter

Note. Justin said that God created in the beginning. So, therefore no creating happened before then. Note also. God did create all thing out of unformed matter. The unformed matter was there before God’s creating began, and all things were created out of the unformed matter per Justin.

On the contrary, he has contemporaries, even students, who are more explicit about ex nihilo creation (Tatian and Theophilus).

If Paul Copan can be believed, Tatian and Theophilus were the first ECFs “who expressly advanced the proposition that matter was produced by God”. This shows a change from the previous belief of creation ex-materia, and is an early sign of doctrinal apostasy.

Justin WAS a Platonist, so maybe he did hold Plato’s pre-existent matter theory – but boy, what a nasty shock to your stated position that Mormonism is “pre-Hellenized” Christianity, for this (and much of the rest of Gnosticism and poly- or heno-theism) is Hellenic…

W. D. Davies, Professor of Theology at Duke University (and a Congregationalist minister) wrote:

Mormonism is the Jewish-Christian tradition in American key. What it did was to re-Judaize a Christianity that had been too much Hellenized”. (W. D. Davies, “Israel, the Mormons and the Land”)

Edwin Hatch wrote:

“A large part of what are sometimes called Christian doctrines, and many usages which have prevailed and continue to prevail in the Christian Church, are in reality Greek theories and Greek usages changed in form and color by the influence of primitive Christianity, but in their essence Greek still” (Edwin Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church (Gloucester, Mass.: Smith, 1970), 350)

Of course, the Scriptures themselves really offer a lot here, followed up consistently through Judeo-Christian thought. John 1, many places in Paul’s letters, some references to God’s creation in Psalms, etc. And very explicit in 2 Maccabees 7:28: “I beg you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed.h And in the same way the human race came into being.”

continued…

 

[gazelam]

This Maccabees verse contradicts Genesis 2:7 then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Of course, any mention of creation in the Bible must assume creation ex-materia per the meaning of the words used. Catholic Priest Stanley Jaki stated:

The caution which is in order about taking the [Hebrew] verb bara in the sense of creation out of nothing is no less needed in reference to the [English] word creation. Nothing is more natural, and unadvised, at the same time, than to use the word as if it has always denoted creation out of nothing. In its basic etymological origin the word creation meant the purely natural process of growing or of making something to grow. This should be obvious by a mere recall of the [Latin] verb crescere. The crescent moon [derived from crescere] is not creating but merely growing. The expression ex nihilo or de nihilo had to be fastened, from around 200 A.D. on, by Christian theologians on the verb creare to convey unmistakably a process, strict creation, which only God can perform. Only through the long-standing use of those very Latin expressions, creare ex nihilo and creatio ex nihilo, could the English words to create and creation take on the meaning which excludes pre-existing matter. Stanley L. Jaki, Genesis 1 Through the Ages (Royal Oak, Mich.: Real View Books, 1998), 5-6.

You might find these interesting: Blogging Scripture HIS Way: Creatio ex nihilo: A Critique of the Mormon Doctrine of Creation
https://carm.org/did-god-create-the-universe-from-nothing

I hope you find Blake Ostler’s response to Copan and Craig revealing and enlightening.

It is not that we become superpower gods over our own worlds, equal to God.

We inherit every last bit of glory, power, and wisdom that Christ inherits.

Romans 8:17 and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

He [Justin] did not state that Jesus was a separate god.

Justin could not have been clearer when he stated “another God”.

The People of God had always believed in the One-ness of God, as well as the Three Persons, without yet having worked out precise details. But they knew what the Apostles taught, and they were stubbornly insistent on that, and that lead to understanding of what God was NOT.

The People of God have always taken John 17:22 at face value which says:

so that they [Christ’s disciples] may be one, as we are one

Jesus praying for the oneness of His disciples offers a prayer of unity and one purpose identical to the oneness of Him and the Father. The prayer does not ask that the disciples become consubstantial with each other. Therefore neither are the Father and Son consubstantial with each other.

 

[Thomasbradley312]

Mormons always talking about the contradictions in the early Church and even the Bible.
How about the contradictions right in the BOM from what Mormons believe? You know this was the first thing after the ridiculous inaccuracies in the book to make me question my faith. The BOM doesn’t teach anything except that humans can’t go two years without warring over nothing, that Lehi and his sons such as Nephi, Alma etc knew more about Christ and even knew New Testament verses before they were even written. I wonder sometimes if Paul knew he was in fact stealing words which had already been written in a Mormon view. Noone talks about it but it is just logical. God, many parts of the book are word for word Bible.
Please present to me some evidence of the great battles between the Nephites and Lamanites. Please tell me what happened to the ruins of Desolation. Please tell me where Nephihah is. I really would like to know. From Alma you know there are so many battles it says bodies weren’t even buried. There were tens of thousands killed in some of the worst. Where are these swords? Where is the evidence? Why doesn’t the BOM have maps? Why can’t I go visit their sites like I can in Israel? It is quite easy. They never existed. It never happened.

Apostasy. Apostasy is the witnesses who are the backbone of the movement leaving and lamenting ever getting involved in it. Sure some came back but seeing they were con artists to begin with it isn’t hard to see it was just for power.
Apostasy is after Smith’s death, people following Young who added stuff never even conceived of and was totally rejected by most of Smiths family. That is an apostasy. You literally have an apostasy in every respect from what you argue occurred in the early Church to also say there was one in early Mormonism. So which Mormon church is the real one anyways? The LDS? Why? Why not Community of Christ? Why Brigham Young? The guy was a chain smoker and a drunk and yet Mormons revere him. To be honest the LDS may say Smith is a prophet but you know what most of their most bizarre beliefs came from Young.

So for all of you Catholics reading this Mormon apologists stuff, know I was once part of this group. I did a mission. I was fourth generation. Everything he is citing is on the archives page, he really didn’t research much himself, otherwise he would know using Justin Martyr as a source to say the early Church was made pagan by citing a guy who converted from paganism is chaos. I know the site he is getting this from and it is all rubbish. It is taking one quote that is part of something much larger and misconstruing it for their own purpose.

Mormonism is a fraud and the fact people are still defending it and trying to be educated in their rationale is praiseworthy because there is nothing logical or truthful in this.

 

[Thomasbradley312]

And even if there was an apostasy, Mormonism is the last thing the original Church was. There were no plates, and all the Book of Mormon is to me is just a nice fiction novel. If it was marketed as that I may be a fan to this day. But telling people to pray about a fiction book for some sort of confirmation is like telling someone to read the Communist Manifesto and if it makes you feel good you should be a communist.
Rationale thought. It is what drove me from that.
And the CES Letter is everything you need to know, to the point I don’t even feel like typing all of the issues with this fraud.

 

[adamhovey1988]

The Adam-God doctrine comes to mind.

 

[gazelam]

gazelam:

Horton:

None of these verses speak of money.

If that is your position, what do you believe that the laborers from Matthew 20:1 hired by the landowner would receive at the end of the day?

Matthew 20:1-16 Explained | Catholic Answers

The general idea of the parable is that everyone comes to the vineyard (faith) at different points in their lives.

Your description of the meaning of the parable is spot on and I wish I could give more than one . However, you’re skirting the issue of what would be paid to the day laborer from the landowner in the parable itself. In your opinion how would the landowner compensate the laborer? Landowners can’t grant entrance to Heaven.

 

[Stephen168]

Mormonism is the Jewish-Christian tradition in American key. What it did was to re-Judaize a Christianity that had been too much Hellenized ”. (W. D. Davies, “Israel, the Mormons and the Land”)

In context it seems he is repeating Mormon claims, not affirming them. He does not address any specific beliefs; like the hellenized beliefs held by Mormonism listed in the thread.

“To recapitulate very crudely: Mormonism asserts its continuity with Israel even genealogically. It returns to the roots of Judaism and Christianity in Israel. I t also restores the forms of Israel that it regards as having been corrupted by both religions through a kind of “ecclesiastical” fall. Its substructure and its structures are in the Old Testament and the New Testament. But it also reinterprets and accommodates or transfers ancient forms, in a very remarkable way, to an American setting and mode. Mormonsim is the Jewish-Christian tradition in an American key . Finally, I hazard a suggestion. Mormonism arose in a place and time when many utopian, populist, socialistic ideas were in the air. It gave to these a disciplined, organized American outlet and form: what it did was to re-Judaize a Christianity that had been too much Hellenized. But note that parallel with this American movement was a European movement, Marxist Communism, which also, from one point of view at least, was a protest in judgment.38 Let it be clear. We do not claim that there is any direct contact between Mormonism and Marxist Communism. But the former is the American expression of many of the same forces that led in Europe to Marxism. Mormonism certainly injected, and I hope will continue to inject, into the American scene the realism of Judaism and thus challenged a too-Hellenized Christianity to renew its contact with its roots in Israel. Is it too much to hope that by mutual interaction both Mormonism and traditional Christianity can be profited and instructed, and even corrected and possibly changed?” (W. D. Davies, “Israel, the Mormons and the Land”)